Vector-based video: you just described Flash animations and that's what Flash excels at.

It already is. Check out OK GO's new gimmicky HTML5 website experiment slash music video and watch it bring your system to its knees. http://www.allisnotlo.st/

Oh, only runs on Chrome too even though it "claims" to be HTML5 (meaning standards-compliant, meaning can run on Opera and Firefox -> I suspect these browsers can run it, except that the lazy devs hardcoded Chrome checks into it).

Check out Bjork's new funky HTML5 site too:
http://bjork.com/

I pity the foo who tries to run that on a 600MHz machine.

HTML5 is actually slower and more bloated than Flash. The problem with Flash is not the runtime, it's the abusive content creators who don't know how to optimize content and leave you with massive preloaders, etc. (Looking at you, bloated Nike Sites!)

To see what I'm talking about how slow & bloated HTML5 is, check out Iain Lobb's Bunnymark benchmarking experiment and compare:

* the HTML5 version -> http://iainlobb.com/bunnies/bunnies.html
* with the Flash version -> http://blog.iainlobb.com/2010/11/display-list-vs-blitting-results.html

Almost everything you see being done in HTML5 today is something that's been done in Flash from 5-8 years ago. So, "the future" is actually pretty meh, retro. Oh, and am already hating HTML5/JS/CSS3 with the now unblockable obnoxious floating banner ads. At least with Flash, you can Flashblock em easily.

The difference between nerds and geeks: "I am not a nerd, Bart. Nerds are smart!" -Milhouse Van Houten

Methane is colorless and odorless. That's hydrogen sulfide you're smelling.

My Question:

It seems like the system is gamed towards early adopters who've practically just printed money, and all this hype is mostly for their benefit and not newcomers. -> Isn't Bitcoin just a scam being hyped by early adopters who've amassed amounts that current newcomers cannot hope to match given the ever-lowering drop rate of Bitcoins so they can cash in? It was very easy to print Bitcoins in the beginning by these early miners. There's no way in hell newcomers to the game can match them.

It's like trying to get into the Top 100 brag list of Progress Quest, a parody game infinitely more fun and productive than Bitcoin mining which works by having it run automatically in the background where your character will auto-attack, loot, level-up and go on fetch quests.

I said *on active duty*. When they get off work (go off-duty), they return to their private lives and it doesn't count anymore.

The police are public employees, they are salaried with taxes you pay them. Therefore, you are their bosses and they are working on *YOUR* time. You have the right to record and monitor what they do at work.

They're your goddam employees and you have the right to make sure they don't engage in shenanigans on YOUR time.

Moreover, one of the judges in one of the states (forgot which) already ruled that it is legal to record police who are on active duty because during then, they're "in public space", and not subject to the same privacy laws with wiretaps, etc. This was covered in a previous slashdot story.

Bitcoin is a scam meant to and promoted by early adopters who've farmed and hoarded them. Today, it's pretty much prohibitively expensive to try to generate bitcoins, thus locking out new user/farmers from trying to generate "free cash".

Meanwhile, early adopters who've been farming like crazy are now sitting on a crapload of free money they're trying to foist on people for real goods or services.

No thanks.

You need to form a team of these guys. They're called Sales Engineers. They're hybrids who are extremely technical and knowledgable people who are part of the sales teams.

They often come from engineering backgrounds and cross over to the sales team and are hybrids of the two critters you are discussing.

Maybe you can ask management to tack on "sales engineer" to the titles of some of your engineering guys and have them actively help out in sales (and get appropriately compensated). Their roles are extremely important as sometimes sales/marketing only people are not equipped to handle extremely technical questions about tech products and software solutions.

FYI guys, ElcomSoft is the company where Dmitry Skylarov worked -- the research guys who cracked the encryption on Adobe's PDF files.

Skylarov was arrested after flying to the U.S. to give an eBook security talk at DEF CON under the DMCA for software copyright circumvention blah blah.

Badly.

Did Sony fall for Little Bobby Tables again?

http://xkcd.com/327/

Sorry, kinda messed up some stats. It's every third house that has a gun, and Switzerland is said to be Europe's best-armed nation. Here's more:

The Swiss and Their Guns
* http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/the-swiss-and-their-guns-27329/

* http://www.davekopel.com/2a/Foreign/The-Swiss-and-their-Guns.htm (2 different articles)

This is a fallacy. The policy is of neutrality, not pansiness. Swiss males are required to go through compulsory military service, and they are required to keep their SIG 550 or whatever military rifles from service at home and keep them well-maintained. Switzerland has the highest ownership of guns per head in the entire world. The government also regularly sponsors shooting festivals where the swiss get to go to firing ranges and the government pays for all the bullets. If you try to invade Switzerland, every single house has a rifle and every male is trained, so prepare to get your ass kicked.

Watch this YouTube video: Why Switzerland Has The Lowest Crime Rate In The World

With regards to the neutrality of the Swiss, one story goes that the reason for this is that back in the day, the Swiss were known for being the baddest-ass mercenaries in Europe, so they would regularly get hired by the different countries to wage wars. The problem is, the Swiss would often end up find themselves fighting against fellow Swiss, so to put an end to this (and to also maintain peace within Switzerland), the Swiss declared themselves neutral.

You do not mess with the Swiss.

Wow.

You'll generate "0.00019867 bitcoins per hour" with this. It takes about 100-200 days nonstop to generate a single bitcoin with this if you're lucky.

If a bitcoin is $8 now, even if let's say it rises to $20, that'd mean you burned hundreds of hours of CPU time/electricity to earn a mere $20 in 6 months.

There are better things to burn your CPU time, electricity, bandwidth and attention on.