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Comment Re:They're worth $0 (Score 1) 232

You can transfer it to other addresses. Just because it's known that I own address A, doesn't mean it's known that I own address B. A transaction can be proved to have transferred from address A to address B, and that B now owns it, but there is no way to prove that the owner of address A also owns address B *without* gaining access to the local wallet file that contains the keys. This is how "offline" storage works. You generate a new address on a machine that never sees a network connection. The coins are still "stored" on the network, and anyone can see where they are, but nobody has access to the private key to sign it over to a new address without having physical access to the machine with the private key (or copies that have been made).

So yes, it can still be anonymous. You take the 3000 BTC as a known and identified user. You immediately transfer these coins to a bunch of other random addresses that you create. For all anyone else knows, you sold them to some guy on the street, some guy on ebay, some guy on craigslist, your brother Phil for that pizza. Prove I own that address? You would need my private keys to do that, and there's nothing preventing me from destroying the private keys as I empty the accounts. I have a coworker that pays me for lunch in BTC all the time. He only assumes that's my address he's sending money to. It could be my Grandmother in Switzerland, or a charity or open source project I'm fond of. He has no way of really knowing that without catching me with my private key.

Comment Re:How is this a good idea? (Score 1) 249

I don't get why. I have PrivacyGuard on CyanogenMod, and it allows me to individually approve or deny permissions. So far, no app has broken in any strange, unexpected way. Some apps ask for SMS permissions because they have the ability to text friends for shares. I deny that ability, because I don't use that feature. It may be legitimate, or they may have provided a legitimate excuse to mask more nefarious behavior. Likewise, I've blocked GPS access to all apps except maps. For anything else (weather, yelp, etc), broad tower based location is good enough. I deny internet access to any app that doesn't have a legit internet need. Google can still display ads if they want, the google services have access, let them proxy ads. Very few apps have access to my contact list. I have not seen a single application fail to do what would be expected based on the permissions I grant it. It also lets me see how many times an app requests certain permissions, and it's amazing (and a little comforting) to see how many apps never request unusual permissions that they ask for at install.

Comment Re:Windows XP Tablets (Score 1) 321

I had one. Loved the thing. I could type my notes in classes that lended themselves to that, and then flip it over and hand write notes and homework for other subjects, like physics and math. The reason for poor sales was likely due to price vs benefit. For a lot of people touch input is only useful in front of the TV, and for that $1500 is a lot of money for anything without an apple logo. Mine was a Toshiba Satellite, and I finally replaced it last month with a ThinkPad Yoga, because I really did not want to give up pen input.

Comment Re:Walled E-Mail: Facebook (Score 1) 121

Yes, and I don't get flooded with Spam and Phishing, so I'm okay with it. And to be clear, there is a huge difference between spam and advertising. I don't mind advertising. It's clean and often targeted to something I may actually be interested in seeing or learning about. Spam on the other hand is a constant barrage of things that rarely even make sense, are only occasionally in a language I speak, and promise that a beautiful 10 right down the street from me is totally in to nerdy 5's, and I need to message her today. I get spam on ICQ and Yahoo pager, so I no longer use them. I don't get spam on Facebook (with the exception of friends and game invites that I can easily and effectively block), I get advertising.

I'll take that trade.

Comment Re:why not just have a baby earlier? (Score 1) 342

I have no kids, not sure if I want them. But this is BS. Because I have no kids, I have a lot of time for other things. I spend time with friends kids, trying to be a positive influence for them. I volunteer with many charities that I wouldn't have time for with my own family. I am a volunteer firefighter, because my finances and time allow me to be so. I have never pulled a person from a building, but I have saved houses, pets, cut people out of cars, and performed CPR on a man for over an hour that ended up surviving. I have worked in disaster zones searching for unaccounted for people. I guarantee none of those people know my name or my story, but I bet they or their family remember someone (or a few someones) they had never met before showing up and making a difference.

You just have to decide what a legacy means to you. I do believe I have made a positive impact, and that my existence on Earth has mattered. Plenty of people are bringing kids into this world. What makes that a legacy, other than society has told you it is? My grandparents had kids, but I guarantee you they have no more of a legacy than I do. Don't believe me? What do you know about your great great grandparents? Your grandparents might remember them, but chances are, unless you go out of your way to study your genealogy, you don't know any more about them than any other random person that existed at the time.

Comment Re:Display tech? (Score 1) 103

I don't know about the others, but the Pebble is on all the time. It is ePaper, black and white only (no grey). It's on all the time, which I agree is absolutely a requirement. I know a guy with a sony smartwatch too, and it's always on, but seems to have more of an issue in sunlight from what he's described. "Oh yeah, it's great, I can see it in the sun. I just sometimes have to tilt it a certain way and shade it." (For the record, I have not seen it outdoors.) It is nice looking though and full color touch screen. The Pebble is easy to read outdoors, but has a weird splotchy but usable look if you look at it through polarized sunglasses. It's also not color or touch screen.

Comment Re:I kind of wouldn't mind a less fancy one... (Score 1) 103

I wear mine daily. It has the time on the top 3rd (big enough, because the e-Paper is actually much easier to read even in daylight than my old LCD watches), my next to appointments in the middle, and the weather on the bottom 3rd. And yes, I can just look outside for the weather, but in the areas of the US where it can be 20 in the morning and 70 in the afternoon, looking doesn't solve everything.

Comment Re:In 2007 Apple only allowed web apps on the iPho (Score 1) 333

I think the problem has a lot less to do with access to hardware and storage in most cases, and more to do with wanting something more responsive than a web page over a sometimes very poor connection (either speed or consistency). If all you offer me is a wrapper to an HTML interface, then your 10MB app is of absolutely no value to me, and since your website is not easy to use on this connection, I just won't use your services at all.

Comment Re:have your cake and eat it (Score 1) 361

That's very valid, and it may depend on the market, but I think this provides the incentive to give me the data I want how I want it. Voting with my dollar. I recognize it may not be cheaper for me, but a lot of people where I live would happily pay more. I live in a rural area, and I recognize there are costs that come with that. I have literally told my ISP that I would pay them quadruple what I pay them now just to actually get the service I should be getting. When I called their cancellation line, I told them I was going to leave for a wireless carrier that cost 4 times as much for half the promise, but they at least had a good record of delivering it. The guy literally just acknowledged my service sucked in my area and the company had no plans to do anything about it anytime soon.

I don't have a problem with paying for what I use. What I *DO* have a problem with is tiers like cell phones like to do. If I go over my data cap by 1MB, I get a $15 charge to bump me up by 1 GB. If a GB was a quarter, fine, that's a small enough billable unit, but at the cell phone rate it at least needs to be on a per MB level. Right now ISP's are wanting to put hard caps and tiers on things, so you can't just pay for what you use, you have to commit to $50 every month or $150 for he business class connection every month because I may not be ok with a 250GB cap every month, even though most it would be fine. THAT is not right.

Comment Re:have your cake and eat it (Score 1) 361

Most electric and water rates I've seen have a connection fee that includes the first X amount of power/water. I would envision something that's like, say (making numbers up here), $20 for the base connection and the first 10GB, then 10 cents/GB after that. *THIS* would give incentive to ISP's to give you all the bandwidth they could. We wouldn't all the power we want* (yes, I know, there *IS* technically a limit) available at all times if we still paid for electric on a per outlet basis, and we'd also still have houses with only one outlet per room.

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