Happened to me:

Ring, ring, ...
Hello, I am calling about Friday's exam, I would like to know the result, my name is....
You failed the exam..
(shrug, wtf, ???).. Excuse me, but I haven't had the chance to tell you my name.
Everyone failed.
Oh.. OK.. thanks.... ahm... good day!(??)

It was a physics exam in an IT college... just for the record... Passed on the 2nd try, but I heard many had to take a stab at it multiple times:)

Not running flash? ... I am going slowly the way, that my browsers don't have flash installed in them. I have one with flash on my laptop. The rest is better without. If in 2013 a site doesn't offer me a html/js version of its content, then I don't want the content it offers.

I picked this attitude up when started to use IOS, then slowly spread onto my Linux and OSX boxes and oh.. it feels good to be flash fess...

It is like saying, that a nascar stock car is better than a luxury BMW or a Mercedes. For me, personally, that Android OS is not usable. For this, I still use an iPhone 4, and will not even upgrade to the iphone 5, because I find the screen unnecessarily big for what I want.

Some people want a sleek working fast OS and don't care how many ponies the phone has under the hood. I personally don't. So they can put an i7 with 16G memory and a TB in my pocket, as far as it is running android: I am absolutely not interested.

So it destroys it: in your head.

you gamble on stocks you lose.... nothing to see here.. move along please

If all the dumb-asses would actually stop trading it for FIAT currency and simply used it to sell/but services and goods, then this mess wouldn't be how it is now.
If the US declares it money and regulates it, then well, it is going to be like online gaming. Everyone does it mostly everywhere legally, except the US.

The question is: how far will they go to regulate it? They cannot control it, you can "hide" the protocol into anything and everything, you can carry the wallet on any memory device, hell, even the whole blockchain, even if it tripples or quadruples ...

So what is the plan, they kick the door on you and search your machine for a bitcoin wallet? Or they close all US exchanges? What about the local swaps and businesses already accepting bitcoin?

I am actually really interested in it as I am actively developing a payment gateway (not in the US) and some other interesting projects...

Your thoughts ?

So, does that mean that we can now say bye-bye to the feature where you can report police

"in countries where it is agains the law" ? (everywhere soon) ...

But the question is: can it mine bitcoins better than AMDs? :) ... sorry, i was missing the daily bitcoin article today ...

Completely wrong. The bitcoin network adjusts difficulty, so that every 10 minutes a new block is created. The reward for a block currently is 25BTC.

If ASICS are out (Avalon ButterflyLabs), then they will take most of the generated coins. They won't make more. So you can start "mining" with a supercomputer and the only thing you will see is that you will take most of the rewards. The network will speed up (transaction verification), but it won't inflate the coin. Actually price will go up as it won't be easy to mine by your windows gaming machine stuffed full of GPUs.

I am really new at this, but researching for a week. I don't think I am wrong, but if you think, please enlighten me!
cheers

You know those guys who start the day on youtube/facebook/ and only start to work when you nag them to death. If you don't they might do some "proof that I worked" BS at the end of the day? These are the guys who have to obey one rule and they cannot: be available between 9-5. Then you call, message, mail, call all numbers, all messengers, and the guy is no-where.

I have seen a complete telecommuting department of 30+ people ordered permanently to the office because a couple of these assholes.

That said: I work at 2 places at the same time. Since I don't have to prepare, make food (special diet, no take-out and soda machine for me), drive, socialise and all that, I can comfortably put 10 hours a day of coding/planning (infrastructure design, consulting with coders) on the table. I have an elliptical trainer and a garden. If my head is about to explode and I "only" have to read some specs or make a call, I walk/sit outside in the garden in natural light (tropics rule).

Now that is the good part. At one place my colleagues just don't get it. Communication is freakin' impossible with them. Even though the policy: code when you want/can, be available in business hours (US eastern 8-4). Guys don't answer mails, forget if you Skype/call instead, not on Skype sometimes for hours without notice (and messing up everything the night before in the GIT repos). It is just a mess...

So I think it is possible, it is good, but you simply have to screen the people and remove their rights if they fail to deliver/communicate.

If you are in software development an need to participate in planning/design (not just e.g. work on tickets on a ready product), then probably it makes sense to go to the office once a week to do some joint brainstorming. Maybe more. Depending. When people talk tech in the elevator, at the cafeteria, smoking area, gym, or etc ... good things happen. Ideas are born. When you just have a Skype call without using any presentation tool (whiteboard), then you feel the difference: it is not as effective.
The ADD ridden ones at least are (somewhat) forced to pay attention at meetings and at best can play with their phones, but if it is Skype, who knows what is on the other 4 screens. Worst experience : my colleague has his whole family screaming at the same time while we are having meetings. I am not talking a noise once in a while, or family arriving/leaving, but full time lunch serving and baby screaming all the way.

Most hated office things: 1. Half the room is cold, half the room is hot. Always, everywhere. 2. Morning chatter of yesterday's game, movie, news .. etc - fine, just do it outside if you see someone trying to work. 3. Asshole on speakerphone or asshole on personal call, calling 10th place to get new tires.... 4. food smell.. New rule: next time I have to smell your packaged paprika bacon-pork skin chips I can throw up into your hair..... If you touch my screen with the finger, I get to chop it off with a blunt cheese-knife.

1995-ish I wanted to write my thesis on IPv6. I did a lot of research, tests, then decided on a different subject that was closer to my heart at the time. (had to skip a year because of work abroad)...

2013: I am still on IPv4 and there is not even a hint that my ISP's employees even heard of it.

I honestly don't get it. OS-es support it, devices support it, network devices support it, it is just not happening. The fastest evolving technology, the billion-chillion dollar web, and we are still sharing IPs and paying premium for a damn public IP ....

How is that. Anyone care to share ?

Not sure anything over 125cc uses cables as a form of actuating brakes. Even my clutch is hydraulic, and it is a 300 2 stroke :)

The cost of an ESC(kind of)/dimmer device that can be safely controlled without burning themselves to ashes. If the oven already has some kind of timer (chances are good if it is an electric oven, especially if it has microwave) then probably it hasmind-bending proprietary crap running in it you would have to cut in half to interface to it.

But yes, a simple electric oven could be controlled with a few relays and a dimmer. I would be scared to automate my gas oven/burners though. It is OK that sometimes my lights turn on/off (crap X10 and some custom arduino code), but if my oven starts leaking gas .. well .. that is just creepy and bad :)

Actually, an atmega368 can comfortably run a serial 20x4 character lcd, a keypad, a serial (xbee) or ethernet, cost lest than $100 ... and you can put it on a motion sensor, so if the oven is off it turns on only when you are nearby.

But being an electric oven it is a watt-hog anyway. I prefer an electric oven, but the top has to be gas. I would be a little worried to have my gas appliance on the net. Maybe even without the net it can silently kill you with a leak.

But I agree with you and I don't get why they cannot put a microcontroller breakout. Then you could buy an ethernet, a USB or a serial module, or connect your own to the optoisolated ttl serial. Would make the devices maybe a few bucks more expensive...

Forgot this: some people try to not touch your screen after you ask, but they might have a poor judgement on distances, or they do not regularly use their hands/fingers, or dunno what. So even the ones who know your "rule" sometimes touch when trying to touch... How in the hell this works in their heads is a mystery for me. ...

At my last place I ended up taking everyone in our mini-conference rooms as I was sick of this behaviour. I worked there as a lead developer, so many people came to me with their ideas and issues and they were constantly poking at my 27 iMac. And that made me extremely pissed after some time :). I also removed every sitting opportunity/device (chairs, boxes, desks) from around my desk, so the only option was to go to a meeting room (effectively removing access noise from the developer room too)...

Yep, they get all defensive and upset and they just don't get it.

Surprisingly some technical people do it too. I worked with a guy for a few days once who was constantly chewing his nails (yuck). He would KNOCK on your laptop screen so hard the laptop moved, you could see the screen discolour, then you had this saliva-fingerprint magnifying various pixels. After I saw him doing this I NEVER showed anything to him on my laptop (even though it was a company laptop) and if I had to I connected an old CRT and kept my screen away from him.

If it is a workplace computer, that sometimes you need to tolerate this, but when people touch my laptop (even the keys or my trackpad) I tend to clean the whole thing with an alcohol wipe in front of them. That sends the message and puts you on their shitlist :) but hey !!!! Go to a men's room and see how many guys don't bother to wash their hands :O after holding their junk ...