Recent Posts

1901

Living Room / Re: Supreme Court Invalidates Software Patent...

« Last post by Renegade on June 20, 2014, 11:32 PM »

Seems more to me that you keep missing some deliberate sarcasm when you hear it.

(@Ren - For the record I have enough formal and informal education in economic theory to know all six of the major accepted definitions/schools of capitalism along with another six or seven neo-capitalist riffs on it. Ditto enough mathematical background to go beyond a purely humanities-level understanding of the topic. Hope that will put your mind at rest going forward. )

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 09:58 PM)

I completely missed the sarcasm. My bad.

Corporations lobbying for new regulations isn't "capitalism".

Go look up the definition for "Corporate Capitalism."

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 09:58 PM)

I know that quite well, but I'm missing your point.

For example:

https://en.wikipedia...Corporate_capitalism

Corporate capitalism has been criticized for the amount of power and influence corporations and large business interest groups have over government policy, including the policies of regulatory agencies and influencing political campaigns.

"Corporate Capitalism" makes as much sense as "unfree free market". It's just silly double-speak. You either have a free market, or you don't. When corporations purchase protection (regulations) from government thugs to exclude competition, you no longer have a free market... and... I'm missing what you're trying to say there. Or was that the point? That it's nonsense double-speak?

Creating a law doesn't make anything moral/ethical

I doubt anybody over the age of twelve seriously thinks it does.

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 09:58 PM)

Um, I think you're giving way too many people way too much credit.

Law is law - it's its own virtual reality - with its own agenda. Ethics and morality may be an influence on the legal system - or serve as an overall justification for one. But they're not the product of that system. They're more what you'd call guidelines.

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 09:58 PM)

My bet is that if those involved in the penal/judicial system were all kids having a colouring contest with colouring books, very few would be able to colour withing the "guidelines".

If a court actually succeeds in delivering justice, it's purely a side affect of interpreting and enforcing the law.

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 09:58 PM)

Yup.

Wish it weren't so. But that's the way it rolls in this country.

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 09:58 PM)

Not just there... The disease is global.

1902

Living Room / Re: Supreme Court Invalidates Software Patent...

« Last post by Renegade on June 20, 2014, 09:45 PM »

But if you're not, but just don't have the money for an attorney, then you're screwed.  In some cases, showing up with an attorney can also leave you screwed, because having the money to pay an attorney means that you obviously have the money to pay, even if you actually don't.  And then there's the money that you used on the attorney that could have been used to pay.

-wraith808 (June 20, 2014, 02:56 PM)

^ This.

There's just something wrong with that, no matter how much we say that "it's complicated."  Our Justice system is in love with the system rather than with justice.  And in many cases, our legal systems are anything but.  It shouldn't have to be this complicated, IMO.

-wraith808 (June 20, 2014, 02:56 PM)

^ And this.

The system has NOTHING to do with justice or peace or order or anything of the sort. It has only to do with punishment and retribution for imagined offences. It is solely aimed at maximising the amount of revenue for government and the penal system.

But, that's about the system in general. The patent/copyright/IP system is merely a reflection of the deeper decay and immorality of the broader justice system.

While the ruling in the OP may be a chip away at the rot, it is far from enough. The rot is spreading at far too great a rate for tiny chips to make much difference. Tiny chips merely slow the spread of the disease by miniscule amounts. So when the "justice" system hits you head on, it doesn't hit you at 150 mph - it hits you at 149.9 mph. Either way, you're in for a world of hurt.

But the justice system doesn't even need to slam into you to grind you into dust or spray you all over the road. Patent trolls merely need to threaten you. Monsanto Monsatan is a great example of this. They have used idiotic patents on non-infringing farmers to destroy those farmers. Cross contamination is all that they need to ruin people.

1903

Living Room / Re: Switzerland-based ProtonMail, yet another secure email service

« Last post by Renegade on June 20, 2014, 08:16 PM »

This image never gets old...
 (see attachment in previous post)

-wraith808 (June 20, 2014, 11:12 AM)

Hahaha! I'd not seen that before! (Or don't remember. Same diff.)

I kind of just wish SHTF would hurry up so that the corrupt roots can get pulled up and we can get on with rebuilding something slightly sane.

1904

Living Room / Re: Supreme Court Invalidates Software Patent...

« Last post by Renegade on June 20, 2014, 08:11 PM »

But the simple truth is our legal system is extremely complex broken fixed.

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 01:06 PM)

FTFY

The "poverty level" moves as needed for the benefit of those controlling the system.

-Stoic Joker (June 20, 2014, 02:22 PM)

+1

That's called: capitalism at work. 

-40hz (June 20, 2014, 02:29 PM)

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.



Corporations lobbying for new regulations isn't "capitalism". e.g. The taxi industry and Uber and Lyft -- that is the furthest thing from "capitalism", but pretty much par for the course. When it's illegal for children to set up a lemonade stand without a permit, that's not "capitalism". Writing laws that exclude large swaths of the population from meaningful participation in "the system" is not "capitalism".

Patent trolls only exist because the system is rigged in their favour (they can extort people because the costs of the system are higher than the extortion [in many cases]). The backlash against them is merely a recognition that the system is rigged. Creating a law doesn't make anything moral/ethical any more than calling a pig a princess makes the pig a vampiric elite -- the pig is still just a tasty morsel waiting to be served on somebody's table. NOM NOM~! But, those get confused far too often - just as the MPAA or RIAA.

Ultimately, all legal arguments are simply nonsense, and nonsense in a photo-negative evil mirror of Alice's Wonderland. They are arbitrary and contradictory. Made up silliness that people have been conned into believing. The [legal] system merely serves its masters, and certainly not the interests of regular people, as patent trolling so vividly illustrates.

1905

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on June 20, 2014, 07:24 AM »

I was going to post this in the Basement where we have an actual discussion, though slow. But, decided to post it here as it's simply too good:

https://blog.ethereu...g/2014/06/19/mining/

It's long, so I'll only paste the really good part:

The second approach is somewhat different: create a mechanism for generating new hash functions, and make the space of functions that it generates so large that the kind of computer best suited to processing them is by definition completely generalized, ie. a CPU. This approach gets close to being “provably ASIC resistant” and thus more future-proof, rather than focusing on specific aspects like memory, but it too is imperfect; there will always be at least some parts of a CPU that will prove to be extraneous in such an algorithm and can be removed for efficiency. However, the quest is not for perfect ASIC resistance; rather, the challenge is to achieve what we can call “economic ASIC resistance” – building an ASIC should not be worth it.

If you understand that, it's damn good. If you don't understand it, it's an excellent example of using a layer of abstraction to solve a difficult problem.

1906

Living Room / Re: Google's new "Hey Indies! Pay or your video won't play!" subscription service.

« Last post by Renegade on June 19, 2014, 07:57 AM »

"Do know evil."

-Deozaan (June 17, 2014, 03:29 PM)

Awesome! 

http://www.digitalmu...-remove-music-videos

Everyone Calm Down. YouTube Is NOT Going To Remove Music Videos

God only knows. I can't find the agreement and too tired to look further.

1907

Living Room / Re: [GAME] Find something beautiful on Google Maps

« Last post by Renegade on June 19, 2014, 04:39 AM »

Canadian embassy in Japan is full of ninjas...

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/place/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%8A%E3%83%80%E5%A4%A7%E4%BD%BF%E9%A4%A8/@35.673401,139.727819,3a,90y,60h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sFa1MSViGG2UAAAAGOvOY_w!2e0!3e2!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xbab3e3f9a3060b5

1908

Living Room / Re: Switzerland-based ProtonMail, yet another secure email service

« Last post by Renegade on June 18, 2014, 10:39 PM »

Which brings us back to the "people problem" and the need for "men/persons of goodwill" to really make it happen.

-40hz (June 18, 2014, 10:11 PM)

You won't get many arguments about people being the problem from me.

The thing that makes me wonder how likely that will be is listening to the people you usually find involved in launching these "new" systems. They're hardly men of goodwill. Their attitude towards others is not very cordial. They love to casually refer to the general population as fucktards, sheeple, clueless, and stupid - secure in an unshakable belief in their own intellectual and moral superiority. Most I've met or talked to are unapologetically out for themselves - although they'll cloak it somewhat under the banner of "enlightened self-interest" and argue that "a rising tide floats all boats." Funny how much that way of thinking mirrors that of the old "trickle down" economic argument.

So...instead of the benefits trickling down, under the new system they'll now trickle up?

Hmm...not getting warm fuzzies over any of this.

-40hz (June 18, 2014, 10:11 PM)

I'm entirely missing your point. Really. I'm not trying to be difficult.

I don't think there's any debate over whether or not decentralised systems are more resilient than centralised systems. That's pretty much a given. So I'm not sure what you're getting at there...

With multi-signature in Bitcoin, you no longer have that same single point of failure. Sure, you can turn over your private keys, but that won't help when more than 1 key is needed.

So the thugs then need to go out and kidnap someone else and get their private keys as well.

-Renegade (June 18, 2014, 07:35 PM)

Um...how is that a significant problem or challenge with the resources the average national government has at it's disposal?  Arrest one person or sweep up a hundred. Sign an order to waterboard one person (or twenty) - it's all in a day's work for some apparatchik.

-40hz (June 18, 2014, 10:11 PM)

Like I said...

It's certainly not perfect - but it makes the single point of failure a thing of the past, and makes breaking into encrypted data just that much harder.

-Renegade (June 18, 2014, 07:35 PM)

Yes - it can be overcome. But, it's much harder now.

Consider the case where you and I hold the keys required to access some resource. We're not in the same country, or even on the same continent. That certainly complicates the efforts of either government where we live to extract information from us as neither of us alone can unlock it.

This is a significant improvement over the previous single-key system.

Can it be overcome? Absolutely! Is it as easy? No.

Again... Red Queens all over the place here.

Talking about doing things that would make life more difficult for thugs tells me (on some level) that the person saying it still believes there are enforceable rules in effect. Well..I got some bad news for him/her: There aren't.

-40hz (June 18, 2014, 10:11 PM)

You will get exactly 1 argument from me about that.

I don't think there are any enforceable rules. I merely believe that the amount of effort required is now more than it was previously.

It's the exact same thing as replacing the lock on your front door with a lock that is resistent to lock-picking. There is no significant difference in the cryptography case above - in each case, some element is introduced to further complicate/frustrate efforts to "get in".

Will the thugs get in? Maybe. Maybe not. It is entirely dependent on just how determined they are to get in.

Please don't think that I have any faith in government or that I believe in any illusory integrity that some would ascribe to them. I don't.

My comments above were merely to point out that multi-signature cryptography has created the possibility to make accessing resources much more difficult than in the past.

1909

Living Room / 1-stop open source site for Samsung products

« Last post by Renegade on June 18, 2014, 10:21 PM »

I just found out about this:

http://opensource.samsung.com/

It's pretty low-key, but you can get open source code for Samsung products there.

1910

Living Room / Re: Eris & Distributed Autonomous Organisations (ÐAO)

« Last post by Renegade on June 18, 2014, 07:54 PM »

This is likely a bit easier to understand:

http://www.cryptocoi...-proposal/2014/06/18

While the framework for their proposal is outlined in overwhelming detail on their website and Github, it’s incredibly lengthy and a bit difficult for the average user to understand. For that matter, it would be more beneficial to outline their key points in summary in this article.

More at the link.

1911

Living Room / Re: Switzerland-based ProtonMail, yet another secure email service

« Last post by Renegade on June 18, 2014, 07:35 PM »

My problem is that something like this makes it so easy for all the world's intelligence services to be able to target a single nexus for e-mails that actually might have something worth hiding in them. Why not just paint a bullseye on the server farm while they're at it.

Zero access? End to end encryption? Great on a technical level - and in theory.

Unfortunately, here's how signal intelligence tends to work in the real world.
 (see attachment in previous post)
It's a whole different world now. Governments no longer play by the rules or respect the law. Not even their own when it doesn't suit them.

Reminder: this is not a tech challenge we've got here. It's a people problem.

-40hz (June 18, 2014, 06:34 PM)

I'm almost 100% in agreement there. The problem now is that cryptography has advanced yet once again making the $5 wrench quite obsolete.

With multi-signature in Bitcoin, you no longer have that same single point of failure. Sure, you can turn over your private keys, but that won't help when more than 1 key is needed.

So the thugs then need to go out and kidnap someone else and get their private keys as well.

It's certainly not perfect - but it makes the single point of failure a thing of the past, and makes breaking into encrypted data just that much harder.

Red Queen anyone?

It's a whole different world now. Governments no longer play by the rules or respect the law. Not even their own when it doesn't suit them.

Reminder: this is not a tech challenge we've got here. It's a people problem.

-40hz (June 18, 2014, 06:34 PM)

+100%, but let's go a bit further still.

Which reminds me of this:



Or a more artistic version that expresses the idea a bit better:



Or a variation on that (rather large):

Spoiler

Yet again more arguments for decentralised systems that are guaranteed to freak out a lot of people who are very much attached to centralised models (which we know are fragile and catastrophic when they fail). But, y'know... screw logic because tradition.

1912

Living Room / Re: Ignorance is Strength - Censorship just got VERY real

« Last post by Renegade on June 18, 2014, 07:17 PM »

Erm... How can a province of Canada tell a U.S. company what to do?

What about that thing called jurisdiction? Or that other thing called sovereignty?

-Deozaan (June 18, 2014, 12:30 AM)

Bingo!

States regularly overstep any semblance of what their jurisdiction is. For example...

FATCA - This is a massive overstep of jurisdiction by the criminals in Washington D.C. to give themselves more power to reach into people's pockets.

Child prostitution laws - In Canada and a few other countries, you can be tried for child prostitution crimes committed abroad in another country. While child prostitution is beyond sick, the same judicial overreach is disgusting. Why can't the same principle be applied to smoking marijuana abroad in jurisdictions where it is legal? Well, there's nothing stopping the criminals in Ottawa or other crime syndicates in other capital cities from doing the same.

In 2003 my business partner was outside of the country. The government shut down our COMPLETELY LEGAL business because it threatened their interests. We were both punished despite him not even being in the country.

States have no respect for borders. This is just another example of massive overreach.

And this time, it's about states taking the power to censor.

But it makes sense for the bigger bullies to have this first "decision" rendered in Canada. Canada has a certain reputation (deserved or not) and they can use that to then say, "Oh, but the Canadians did it, so it must be Ok, because Canadians are really nice and always say 'sorry.'" Pfft.

1913

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Renegade on June 17, 2014, 10:02 PM »

Nowadays making a plea deal to a lesser offence - or signing away your right to sue - in order to avoid prosecution for a heavily trumped up charge is also becoming the norm.

-40hz (June 17, 2014, 09:47 PM)

^^ THAT!

1914

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Renegade on June 17, 2014, 09:59 PM »

Surveillance technology use is more addictive than crack AFAICT.

One reason why I never participated in any project that involved monitoring people was because I have seen what this technology does to the people who use it.
 (see attachment in previous post)

-40hz (June 14, 2014, 01:31 PM)

Not that I follow any kind of literary critiques on Tolkien, but I've heard Jeff Berwick bring up The Lord of the Rings a few times. He's commented that Tolkien was an anarchist (this is true) and that the trilogy in part is a metaphor for state power.

In a lot of ways that makes sense. The 1 ring:

One ring to rule them all, <--- about power over others
One ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all,
And in the darkness bind them. <--- the downward spiral

I figure that the ring is also an allusion to Glaucon's ring.

Your choice of the 1 ring there as an illustration is poignant. The corrupting influences of power, the ever increasing desire, lust, cravings... and the downward spiral that ensues.

I think General Keith "Golem" Alexander probably understands this. At least from a different perspective. "Utah, my precious!"

1915

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Renegade on June 17, 2014, 09:43 PM »

Very droll: Congressman asks NSA to provide metadata for “lost” IRS e-mails | Ars Technica

-IainB (June 17, 2014, 12:12 PM)

tl;dr - The dog ate my homework.

1916

Living Room / Re: Stuff We Feel Like Bitching About

« Last post by Renegade on June 17, 2014, 09:40 PM »

My blockers:



The first one is Ghostery.

The second is Adblock Plus.

Both of those I got from recommendations here at DC. (I forget who exactly.)

The third is DarkWallet. Included just because.    

1917

Living Room / Ignorance is Strength - Censorship just got VERY real

« Last post by Renegade on June 17, 2014, 09:36 PM »

Those in favour of global censorship are rejoicing over a recent Supreme Court of British Columbia ruling where the court ruled that it has the power to censor the Internet globally:

http://www.michaelge...ntent/view/7159/125/

Global Deletion Orders? B.C. Court Orders Google To Remove Websites From its Worldwide Index

In the aftermath of the European Court of Justice "right to be forgotten" decision, many asked whether a similar ruling could arise in Canada. While a privacy-related ruling has yet to hit Canada, last week the Supreme Court of British Columbia relied in part on the decision in issuing an unprecedented order requiring Google to remove websites from its global index. The ruling in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack is unusual since its reach extends far beyond Canada. Rather than ordering the company to remove certain links from the search results available through Google.ca, the order intentionally targets the entire database, requiring the company to ensure that no one, anywhere in the world, can see the search results. Note that this differs from the European right to be forgotten ruling, which is limited to Europe.

The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country. Yet the B.C. court adopts the view that it can issue an order with global effect. Its reasoning is very weak, concluding that:

the injunction would compel Google to take steps in California or the state in which its search engine is controlled, and would not therefore direct that steps be taken around the world. That the effect of the injunction could reach beyond one state is a separate issue.

More at the link, unless it gets censored.

This sounds like a fantastic argument for Maidsafe, meshnets, and darknets, and going further, Distributed Autonomous Organisations. (I'm very tempted to go on there with an additional concept that would further help foil censorship, but... it would likely upset quite a few people as it is extremely disruptive -- and considering just how disruptive those other concepts are already...)

1918

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 09:07 PM »

My guess is that if the message is real, any discrepancies with proper Latin grammar, etc., can be relatively safely attributed to the difficulty in creating an English sentence to properly fit.

-Renegade (June 16, 2014, 08:22 PM)

Certainly. But also remember that these people are cryptographers. I don't think getting it to work using a real Latin sentence would have been much of a challenge for them.

-40hz (June 16, 2014, 08:48 PM)

I'm not so sure about that. While it may very well be possible to do, there's the aesthetic aspect. But, I really don't know. This is all just conjecture and speculation. I know that often in writing I have to settle for something that is suboptimal for one reason or another. Just because I can set and achieve a goal doesn't mean that the goal will work out. There are times when I am forced to go for a second rate solution. I'm pretty sure that most people have had that happen where they had to settle for second best for one reason or another.

1919

Living Room / Re: Interesting Academic Blog: Overcoming Bias

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 08:50 PM »

Interesting. I read through a few posts.

The first one was this:

http://www.overcomin...king-as-respect.html

Sigh... He identifies a pet peeve of mine. A relatively minor one, but an annoying one. Skipping the rant...

I had a slightly different take on reading some of his stuff -- what puts me off was the feeling that, regardless of the validity of his observations and analysis -- embracing some of this stuff seems like it would turn you into a real jerk.  Kind of like reading a book that tells you how to manipulate others and befriend people with political connections that will benefit you.

Regardless, i always appreciate reading a thoughtful unique perspective on things.

-mouser (June 15, 2014, 11:51 AM)

Going way off on another topic, but related to my highlight above, (FAIR WARNING - THE LINK HERE **WILL** OFFEND MANY PEOPLE) Christopher Cantwell's blog has much of that in it, and in a far more blatant way. He's NOT subtle. While much of what he has to say is well reasoned, it, well, I suppose that you really need to read for yourself to see what's up there. Most people would be repulsed by what he has to say, but such is the nature of the knee jerk reaction.

I would be curious to know what Robin Hanson would have to say about Christopher Cantwell. Just how far could Robin push his ability to overcome his own bias there?

1920

Living Room / Re: TrueCrypt is Now Abandonware?!

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 08:22 PM »

Well, I'm not an expert in Latin by any stretch. And I've probably forgotten far more that I remember. But the way that sentence is constructed seems more like a transliteration using a robo-translator. So while the words map out to the same words in English, it's not the way I'd suspect a Roman - or somebody who is well acquainted with the Latin language - would have said it. I personally would have thought the sentence would have started with something like "Si vis" (if you want to), which is a fairly common construct.

-40hz (June 16, 2014, 01:32 PM)

Point taken there.

Now go ahead and try to encode that in an English sentence as purported to have been done above with the same meaning.

My guess is that if the message is real, any discrepancies with proper Latin grammar, etc., can be relatively safely attributed to the difficulty in creating an English sentence to properly fit.

But, who knows?

It is certainly interesting, and could very well be real. Or a simple coincidence. e.g. When you listen to any language backwards, at some point you will hear "messages". This happens in all languages. If you played with my "Satanic Music Detector", you will have heard this many times. One of my favourites that I found was in a Slayer song where they sing "666" but backwards it sounds like "kiss kiss kiss".

It would be interesting to know a bit more about whether the same sort of phenomena happens for the first letter/sound/phonem e in a word across a sentence.

1921

Living Room / Re: Stuff We Feel Like Bitching About

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 08:12 PM »

^I've pretty much given up granting the benefit of doubt to websites any more. My script and ad blockers are switched on and remain on. Later, if I decide I like the site and I am being treated with a modicum respect by it, I will then (and only then) disable blocking on it. There was a time when I would only block as needed. Now I do the opposite - block by default and unblock only where justified. Sad really. But I have limited patience with most of the nonsense up on the web.

So it goes.

-40hz (June 16, 2014, 09:15 AM)

You and StoicJoker are far more tolerant than I am. My default for a while now has been to block everything.

I even block on sites that I really and truly appreciate - they use Google services. Sorry, but that doesn't fly. I am not interested in being tracked and I do believe that the tracking companies, e.g. Google, are acting in good faith with their EULAs.

Trying to filter in the good stuff is simply too much of a burden now. I can't be bothered anymore.

For years and years I didn't filter anything out. I didn't use ad blockers or anything. I figured I'd play fair, etc. etc.

However...

I was on the phone with a client when I managed it inadvertently touch off one of these things and it starts playing the Orbits gum commercial (yeah the one that sounds like a freakin porno) in a window I wasn't even viewing. I'm on speakerphone and the PC speaker is sitting right behind the phone ... So there is no deniability to be had. And I can't find the %&^$# thing to kill it. Fortunately the client had a sense of humor.

-Stoic Joker (June 10, 2014, 10:00 PM)

Same basic deal - one too many sites blaring deafening audio unexpectedly.

My sense of humour there turned into something along the lines of throwing out the bath water then crucifying the baby upside down in a flaming acid bath while chanting dark verses to raise Great Old Ones and laughing maniacally. Because blaring audio at 2 AM when everyone else is asleep is about as funny.

I may stop blocking at some point in the future. And I will likely now (in light of the above posts) unblock a few more things for a few more sites... but not much.

1922

Living Room / Eris & Distributed Autonomous Organisations (ÐAO)

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 07:58 PM »

What would you give to be looking over the shoulders of Oppenheimer & his buddies in the early 1940's?

You now have that same opportunity, because software for Distributed Autonomous Organisations is about to go nuclear.

https://eris.projectdouglas.org/

This is a response to a $100,000 bounty set out here:

http://www.reddit.co...e_platform_that_can/

Here are a few quotes from the Eris page:

A. OBJECTIVES: WHAT A ÐAO IS

A ÐAO is an algorithmically-governed programme that, in using trustless decentralised computing, can serve as a way to formalise multilateral relationships or transactions outside of traditional legal architecture (see the essay Formalising and Securing Relationships on Public Networks by Nick Szabo to learn more on the subject).

B. PRIMARY USE-CASE

At Project Ðouglas, it is our belief that the proliferation of ÐAOs in user-friendly applications has the potential to allow the public to claim back control over their data and over their privacy on the internet. Current free-to-use internet services, from search to e-mail to social networking, are dependent on advertising revenue to fund their operations. As a result, companies offering these services must - to paraphrase Satoshi Nakamoto - ‘hassle their users for considerably more information than they would otherwise need.’ This necessity has skewed the internet toward a more centralized infrastructure and usability system than it was intended.

Where Bitcoin was designed to solve this problem in relation to point-of-sale and banking transactions, Project Ðouglas is working on solving this issue for internet-based communications, social networking and community governance -- bearing in mind that for free internet services such as e-mail, social networking, search and "open data," intrusion into users' private lives and the accumulation and centralisation of vast quantities of personal information in centralised silos is not some minor and ancillary nuisance -- this is a design imperative for everything that Project Ðouglas is engaged in. As such, Eris is not another web service; Eris is significantly different because it has been designed and implemented specifically to not use servers.

E. DECENTRALISE ALL THE THINGS

It is our firm intention to eventually decentralise entirely the Association’s representative function, and indeed the Association itself, once the AÐAO or the Community’s ability to manage it is sufficiently advanced. To this end we will incorporate code into the AÐAO to procure the release of the AÐAO from the Association’s ownership and control in the event that the users elect a Basic Terms Modification to that effect. We will also ensure that the Association legally binds itself to release any residual control it might have over the AÐAO upon the exercise of Waterbucket (specifically, by way of a declaration of trust constituted in a deed, the material content of which will be made public (the Trust)).

Take over Earth

The project will run off of the Ethereum platform for Turing completeness.

Whether or not this particular project does go nuclear is beside the point - the arms race for DAOs has begun. Traditional institutions would be wise to closely monitor the developments here, because this is going to make many of them obsolete very quickly.

tl;dr - Software just got very, very real.

1923

Developer's Corner / Digital River now taking Bitcoin

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 07:26 PM »

If you sell software, DR is now accepting Bitcoin!

http://www.coindesk....coin-payment-option/

Commerce-as-a-service solutions provider Digital River – a company that processed more than $30bn in online transactions in 2013, has announced that it has added bitcoin as a payment option for its online merchants.

The offering is now available to merchants using the Minnesota-based company’s SWREG solution for small and mid-sized businesses.

Notably, Digital River said it is seeking to allow customers who use the product to take advantage of the savings bitcoin can bring to international transactions, indicating it now sees bitcoin as one of a number of competing options for such transactions.

The company stated:

“Bitcoin will now be available along with other international payment options, such as credit and debit cards, wire transfers, bank transfers and third-party wallets.”

I can't find it on their site, but for me, I think it might be useful to switch over to DR as they have an excellent system specifically designed for software developers. I've used it in the past, and it's very good.

1924

Living Room / Re: Patents given away? Elon Musk blazing a different sort of trail.

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 07:57 AM »

And that positive direction resulting in commercial success.  You don't have to be cut-throat to succeed.

-wraith808 (June 15, 2014, 12:11 PM)

^ That! 

1925

General Software Discussion / Re: Tizen OS declared 'dead in the water'

« Last post by Renegade on June 16, 2014, 07:55 AM »

Keep your eyes on whitegoods. Those are coming out soon.