Comment: Re:Most likely inserted by Microsemi/Actel not fab (Score 1) 267
Maybe Chinese is his native language.
Comment: Re:Where's the professional paranoia? (Score 1) 326
Is that the same kind of oxymoron as the 'relative stability' of bitcoins?
Bitcoins *have* had an unprecedentedly stable price of approximately $5 since March 2012. This is more-or-less what we should expect, given that they've followed the standard Gartner hype cycle for emerging technologies pretty closely so far.
Comment: Re:And nothing of value was lost (Score 1) 326
Stable...and much, much lower. That is why most of these people will be unhappy: they bought into the Bitcoin system late in the game, and are going to see the value of their Bitcoins decline substantially.
The speculators who hoarded Bitcoins will be, but it won't make a difference for most people. If you want to send me $100 using Bitcoins, it doesn't matter whether they're worth $5, $0.05, or $500 apiece. As long as the price doesn't fluctuate too much between the time you buy $100 worth of bitcoins, and the time I convert them into about $100 worth of my local currency, then Bitcoin remains useful, and I haven't had to deal with PayPal, Western Union, or long bank transfer delays.
Comment: Re:Let me be first to say... (Score 1) 326
How is this not already handled by tort law?
Comment: Re:Let me be first to say... (Score 1) 326
Way to destroy the pace of innovation in that area, then. Pretty much everyone who used Bitcoinica knew it was risky, especially after the first break-in. Heck, the nature of Bitcoinica involved the possibility of losing all your money if the USD price of Bitcoins moved too much against your position.
Comment: Re:Incremental and/or parallel computing? (Score 1) 100
Guilt under what section of what law, specifically?
Comment: Re:Incremental and/or parallel computing? (Score 1) 100
I realise that the kind of idiots who like Bitcoins will be the same fools who drool over Google, and that these same monkeys won't see any problem with providing an algorithm which generates a secret to a third party for execution,
Bitcoin mining doesn't involve any secret information.
I'm not sure why you're slagging "idiots who like Bitcoins" so much, either. Sure, Bitcoin has attracted some cranks, anarchists, people who don't trust government-issued money, and speculators who will say all manner of things in attempts to influence the price of Bitcoins (both up and down), but have you actually looked at the crypto and the system of incentives built into the Bitcoin system? It's brilliant, and it's basically the micropayment system that everyone wanted back in the 1990s, but couldn't have because it didn't exist.
Comment: Re:NRC = Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Score 1) 100
Considering the hamfisted way our (Canadian) politicians have been running things, I wouldn't be surprised.
Comment: Re:Who pays for it? (Score 1) 60
For example, authors are charged almost $3,000 to publish a single article in PLoS Biology.
I've never heard anyone make a convincing case for why it actually needs to cost that much. I suspect those numbers are just a symptom of fat, money-hungry publishers adopting fat, money-hungry procedures.
FOSS developers already have systems for massive, worldwide peer review of open-access technical publications (their source code). If established publishers can't figure out how to charge *substantially* less than $3000 for an article, then I suggest that they get out of the business entirely.
Comment: Re:Oh wow! (Score 1) 60
Online movements can help speed up changes that are already gaining momentum.
You know, like the open-access movement.
You know, like the open-access movement.
Comment: Re:Well???? (Score 1) 75
3. Fake virus attack.
How do you think I lasted 30 years in IT?
All-Optical Networks: the Last Piece of the Puzzle 36
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel dept.
from the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel dept.
Esther Schindler writes "An MIT professor explains why "simple" ideas require hard science and how a gemstone might be the key to an optical network. As the story begins: 'For years, the dream of an all-optical network has lain somewhere between Star Wars and a paper cup and a string. Recent successful work on the creation of an optical diode is a virtual case study in both the physics and materials sciences challenges of trying to develop all-optical networks. It is also a significant step towards their final realization.' One answer may be... garnet. Yes, the January birthstone. 'The material that Ross and others in her field use is a synthetic, lab-grown garnet film. Similar to the natural mineral, often used as a gemstone, it is transparent in the infrared part of the spectrum. This makes synthetic garnet ideal for optical communications systems, which use the near infrared. Unlike natural garnet, it's also magnetic. ... While it works, it's too big and too labor intensive for use as a commercial integrated chip. For that, you need to grow garnet on silicon. The challenge that Ross's group overcame is that garnet doesn't grow on silicon.'"
Comment: At least I still have my stapler (Score 1) 238
If they ever take my stapler...
Comment: Re:But can they do it right? (Score 1) 298
Comment: Re:Obscure, Proprietary, Patented (Score 1) 298
I think you misunderstood my observation. I'm not saying they could replace the Bitcoin network with an incompatible one; I'm saying they could implement their trusted-third-party-based offline security model using the *existing* Bitcoin network.
It would be a lot like if I paid you in Casascius coins. You could accept them immediately as-is (trusting the hologram and the fact that you've seen me in person), or you could open them up and load their contents into the Bitcoin network before proceeding further.