betterunix

15 ms·

91.
by betterunix 13y ago
For what it's worth, here is the Bank of Canada's explanation for why they target a 2% inflation rate as part of a broader goal of promoting price stability: http://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/
92.
by betterunix 13y ago
s/stealing/copying/
93.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Its silly to pretend that the abstraction is the reality" No more silly than pretending the the abstraction of "files" and "directories" is reality. No more silly than pretending that your computer is running
94.
by betterunix 13y ago
That is how the Internet works. You used multiple networks' property just to reply to my HN post. I doubt you paid all those networks, and I doubt that you could realistically use the Internet if you had to pay every network that sto
95.
by betterunix 13y ago
That sounds like an old-fashioned term for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
96.
by betterunix 13y ago
Internet companies already pay for their access: they pay their own ISP and hosting bills, just like Amazon pays UPS to ship packages.
97.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Many people in the US have quite a bit of choices: Cable, DSL, Cell+Internet, Wireless. Usually those that live in large urban areas. But the service and quality of these ISP's varies greatly, which Comcast--in my area, being t
98.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Netflix is network heavy and competes with Comcast offerings using Comcast's own network" Funny, back when I was a Comcast customer, I do not remember paying for "Comcast Network Access." I remember paying for &qu
99.
by betterunix 13y ago
You do pay extra. Your cable company passes along the cost of ESPN subscription to you, regardless of whether or not you want it.
100.
by betterunix 13y ago
"The paper only discusses blind signature algorithm" No, it seems to discuss something else. It starts out talking about blind signatures, then veers off with claims like this: "The novelty of the scheme is that unlike the o
101.
by betterunix 13y ago
The paper is very light on details. I am not even sure what security property is being achieved here. Is it some kind of group blind signatures protocol? Some kind of threshold system? Some kind of special-purpose multiparty computation
102.
by betterunix 13y ago
Or that these bills can be shot down over and over until municipal broadband is built out, at which point the battle will have been won. When people start getting better, faster, and cheaper service it will be pretty hard for legislators t
103.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Take Skype for example, it was well known that the US government had for a long time wanted access and, depending on who you ask, failed. After being bought by MS and reconfigured, it could be argued that there are now fewer access pr
104.
by betterunix 13y ago
Note that cutting off utilities access to another branch of the government is different, legally, from cutting off access to an individual or private organization. I hope this stands and sets a precedent as a protest tactic by state and lo
105.
by betterunix 13y ago
Who said they don't trust banks? I think what you are really asking is, "Why would people who see a get-rich-quick opportunity put their money in such an operation?"
106.
by betterunix 13y ago
I like to use this as an example of a problem that secure multiparty computation can solve i.e. that you can remove a buggy / malicious central dealer from a system.
107.
by betterunix 13y ago
It was a course on data structures, not on the C++ standard library. Referencing counting would have been the wrong thing for the lesson on doubly linked lists -- which was basically the first lesson of the course. "Modern" C++
108.
by betterunix 13y ago
It is not false in the context of the web being built on free software. The GPL is meant to prevent a situation where free software is used to create proprietary software that denies its users their freedom. In the case of web companies m
109.
by betterunix 13y ago
"Any course on crypto needs to address both algorithms in the abstract and the particularities of how they're implemented in the real world." I disagree. There is a rich theory of cryptography that is entirely abstract, for
110.
by betterunix 13y ago
For the same reason the GPLv2 has nothing to say about patents, even though patents are used to do the kinds of things the GPL was meant to prevent. The thing to keep in mind is that the changes that web companies make to free software are
111.
by betterunix 13y ago
Ah, sorry, I misunderstood what you meant there ;)
112.
by betterunix 13y ago
I never claimed that, read my post again.
113.
by betterunix 13y ago
You are ignoring the long list of companies that modify the Linux kernel for their own purposes, never releasing their changes, and sometimes using their modified kernel on a web server that runs web apps for their users. As long as they a
114.
by betterunix 13y ago
No, there is no proprietary code in the official kernel as distributed on kernel.org. There is a very long list of companies that have their own version of the kernel, which they keep to themselves, which contains their own proprietary c
115.
by betterunix 13y ago
"C is about as close to teaching the mechanics of the computer as you can get while staying portable" Why is it important to teach the underlying mechanics of a computer in a data structures course, or an algorithms course, or rea
116.
by betterunix 13y ago
"C++ is a grotesquerie more suitable for a carnival horror show than something you want to introduce to new programmers." In my experience TAing an undergrad course that used C++, almost all of the things that left students scratc
117.
by betterunix 13y ago
Scheme is a small language as well, and it is worlds better for teach abstract concepts. You can write far more elegant and compact implementations of data structures in Scheme than you can write with C. As for preferring one data structur
118.
by betterunix 13y ago
"I am suggesting Python, because it is probably the simplest programming language to learn." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_%28programming_language... (Otherwise I agree, start with something like this
119.
by betterunix 13y ago
Personally I take a different view: learn a high-level language, use it to study computer science, and if you feel like writing some low-level code go ahead and learn C (though even then, you could probably do better by bootstrapping a com
120.
by betterunix 13y ago
By the people who made the changes but never had to release them, by NDAs that people sign before they work for web companies, etc. There is nothing in the GPLv2 that says, "All your changes must be released." What it says is th

More ›