alkimie2

My sentiments exactly. Windoze has largely caught up in terms of usability and lack of annoyance. The difference is the attitude. MSFT has become what Apple once was--responsive and considerate of users that have different needs and tastes. My company kind of forced me off OSX but I don't miss it. Still have 3 macbooks and 2 mini's at home. But I've also started using old W-class thinkpads. I feel much more in control of the thinkpads. Plus they are cheap as dirt and don't fight me every time I want to change something.

Sadly, as much as I would like the content all to be true, 'Quack' is my assessment too. They say they have been selling this in Austria for 11 years but want crowdfunding to take it abroad. Somehow that does not add up.

And in my experience dentists are really pretty open to innovation, especially 3d scanning and machining. Most recently I got a grinding guard and instead of taking an impression my dentist actually used a Danish scanner that pieced together a couple of hundred individual photos.

I can't seem to get the links to work. Hacker News effect?

I don't know. I was not blown away. I don't know why it is 'robotic' all it is doing is sliding one way or another. You could make something out of MDF on wheels and move it by hand easily. Much less effort and complexity.

(I'm not a member of The Dao, although I do have some Ether. I switched from engineering to law in the early 90's.)

I'm sure there are some lawyers who got involved--I was tempted to get some experience with the concept early on. I decided not to primarily because the basic concept of crowdsourcing decisions where the ownership interest determines who has most of the voting power and the major holders are likely to be new at it strikes me as, frankly, a silly idea.

But even if all the participants were lawyers or represented by lawyers there are still going to be bugs. Pick up any set of service terms for just about anything and there will be logical flaws. It's just human nature. There is no such thing as a perfect contract.

To me the most interesting thing about this episode is that The Dao included limitations imposing an time lock on withdrawal that gave the community some time to consider what to do and the pros and cons re the whales in the Ethereum community doing a hard fork in the name of justice.

how does that keyboard feel? It looks not that great from the photos. Was thinking to get the 15L for my son because the keys look the same as the HP version

I detest the idea of living in a space where I could not open a window. I barely tolerate it in an office environment.

Patents are territorial. If the English guy did not bother to patent in Denmark (highly unlikely especially at that time) then Lego was perfectly free to use the design and build on it.

This really does have a stench of scam and a whiff of foolish VC on it. But just like cold fusion you hope deep down that it might be possible.

I took a look at the patents which are easily found by searching on google patents for ubeam as assignee and there just wasn't that much disclosed. Sort of vague references to steering a beam. It did not appear to be enough to 'enable one skilled in the art to practice the invention.'

http://www.google.com/patents/US20150214764 (for example)

I did notice one thing: mention is made of capactivie micro-machines ultrasonic transducers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_micromachined_ultra... which seem to be in the same family as the micromachined mirror arrays commonly used in DLP projectors. My only experience with ultrasonic is with piezo.

One thing that I learned back then was that ultrasonics -bounce-. Aiming would be really, really hard. Not to mention that one thing people worry about in this field of steered array ultrasonics is 'necrosis' (which I don't like the sound of). Turns out that people use high powered steered beams to peer into peoples' skulls and to do things to the grey matter:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002099/

Even assuming arguendo that it would be possible to transmit measurable power via a steered ultrasonic beam, I certainly don't want to do it anywhere near my head!

I actually was in the Senate gallery yesterday and watched Diane Feinstein and a male senator co-author discuss to a largely empty chamber. In came former presidential candidate McCain whose 'questions' were more in the nature of 'how can any senator -not- vote to protect American's information-. It was certainly not a debate. To the male senator's credit he seemed mostly pushing for debate and amendment on the floor.

I found it odd that the author used the personal pronoun 'I' and felt free to apply her own evaluation of comments as the final word. ICANN is a public trust, not a personal fiefdom.

That happens to be a feature of my first car, a 1961 Peugeot 403. Seats folded perfectly flat to form a 'camp bed'. Here's a blog where you can see it--it is found on the first page of the second set of the manual.

http://peugeot403arg.blogspot.ae/

Loved that car, but the engine and especially the cooling system struggled in California. The other problem was that the car seat rails were built for lighter Europeans. I was all the time bending the seat rails.

It was not obvious to me how to save my work, other than as a webpage.

Not me. I used to go to the Sinapore F1. Even with ear plugs it was painful next to the track. It wore me out and really reduced my enjoyment. I for one welcome our new electric masters. I hope Singapore is one of the first to host. I'd definitely attend.

Ah! An area where bitcoin is superior to gold!

I have to respectfully disagree. It is not the transaction fees itself, but the currency exchange rates that kill you at one end or the other. (I would agree with you regarding intra-Europe CEPA transfers however.)

I'm American and have lived overseas for several years and the currency exchange rates in combination with the 10-20 USD fees are a constant annoyance. And an annoyance for my startup which operates in USD but does business in several countries. It badly affects margin for smaller payments.

I'm a big Amazon Prime customer and I do a lot of purchase for family and friends for delivery in the US. I don't dare use my overseas credit card to pay for it, but if Amazon were to accept BTC I could pay from where I live. That would be very valuable to me personally.

I'm interested in bitcoin because it takes control away from traditional choke point exchange bank and also could serve as a 'world currency' of sorts. I also think that it would make possible a lot of cross-border sales that currently face real practical impediments.

As a pretty happy galaxy nexus owner (that I just passed to my teenaged son), I've been pretty disappointed with the price point and apparent lack of commitment to the google phone line. As a consequence I've just bought OnePlus Ones for myself and my family based on their apparent commitment to cyanogen as native-from-the-factory load and a much better price point than the Google 6. It's a bit sad to see Google move away from the Nexus phones as a touchstone for value and 'pure' android, but good to see others (e.g., OnePlus) filling the ecological niche.

It will be interesting to see if OnePlus continues to fill this niche or evolves away from it.

Patents are territorial.

Unless he applies (has applied at this point) in a particular country, or has a Patent Cooperation Treaty application filed in some country and is pursuing it in a particular country, he is completely out of luck by publishing his algorithm. (And as another commentor mentioned, post-Alice, it's pretty unlikely that a patent applicant will succeed with software patent applications absent some pretty close coupling to something specific about the computer hardware.)

It's amazing to me that so many software developers have no basic grasp of IP--the thing they work so hard to produce. It's not like it's all that difficult: Copyrights protect the expression of an idea; patents protect inventions. This developer seems to think that copyrights protect ideas.

Ask yourself, do you know someone with relatives or business activities overseas? Then ask them about their experiences about doing international financial transactions of any kind.

It is expensive, time consuming, and generally painful. Consider buying something on Alibaba using bitcoin. I'd suggest that bitcoin adoption which is beholden to no particular country, opens up opportunities as a consumer, and more options for finding the right supplier overseas for business.

I've lived in the U.S., Asia and the Middle East, and to me bitcoin answers, or potentially answers, my needs.

And much as I have mixed feelings about paypal, I use it often for ebay and other vendors for convenience. Assuming their fees are not too high, I would not mind using them as an intermediary into traditional bank accounts.

Just a couple of not-very-deep comments:

The service did nothing at all on Chrome with ad-block-plus installed.

On Firefox the service did show some very nice blue balls moving from left to right after I did a search on some common video content and selected it, but that was about it.

The same thing applies to studying for the patent bar. I don't know anyone who didn't take the patent bar review class (giant thing in giant halls with non-stop lectures with no questions please). Taught me what I needed to pass the damn thing when the passing rate was below 50%

http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/exam/past/results/

I see a sort of structural flaw. They seem to be matching measurements against known materials and then reporting that. But where is the utility? Figuring out whether a pill is asprin or tylenol? I'd be interested in identifying characteristic of -new- materials unknown to the database. That's where the raw information is really crucial.

I'd suggest not. These are not semiconductors. They are tiny toroid ferrite cores with two windings around each--one for reading and one for writing.

I actually wrote to them to say:

"It is a really neat idea, but....

1. 15% is usurious. I know you have approximately a 2.2-2.8% cost built in through Visa, and I don't mind paying a percent or so extra, but 15%?

2. You provide no contact information of any meaning or any sense of who you are or where you are. You are handling money and ought to be willing to provide complete details of your company. This would allow your customers to do a basic due diligence."

The announcement was silent on the BTC they still retain. I can't find any direct statements by anyone at Gox that all they have left is 2K. I'd be very grateful if someone could point it out if it exists.

I called them just now as well. Same outcome. All information would be given through daily updates on the website. No email communication set up yet. My agent was much less specific about when the site would be updated with new information.

Interesting that they changed the language to "in light of" correct the grammar.

The poor grammar in the first sentence suggests someone for whom English is a second language.

That passive voice is maddening!

I've faced these authentication issues in Asia and the Middle East. There is an increasing willingness of authorities to trust non-traditional means of authentication through neutral third parties. For example, I recent pointed to a commercial corporate records provider as a source of authentication of a foreign corporation being in good standing and the local Middle Eastern authority was willing to go online, look for themselves and conclude that the information was correct. I beleive that such forward-thinking authorities will begin to participate in BTC hashing and be willing to gather the information for themselves.

If you think about it, this is a lot more convincing than getting a ribbon-covered document from a foreign jurisdiction that you may not be able to read, even if it authenticated by a series of trusted authorities (a chain of embassies in this case).

It strikes me as dangerous that developers seem to think that Apple (or Google) have a role in resolving disputes with 3rd parties. It seems odd to me that your attorney is focusing on Apple. I did a quick trademark search at the USPTO and at WIPO and I see no applications or registrations--that's a basic tool with which you can use to lever 3rd parties, including Apple.