I do have a reputation for locking topics that I started that run amok - but if you can entertain me then "let the show begin".

To make it really easy to understand just think of tossing a coin.

If I tossed the coin and it came up "heads" 10 times in a row you might think that there could be something wrong with the coin (i.e. perhaps it has been weighted on one side) and if you didn't think that it was a weighted coin then maybe you now think it is best to "bet it will land on tails".

But if in the next 90 times it landed on "tails" now what are you going to think (presumably you would have changed your bet to "heads" for the same reason as above and now lost a lot) ?

And if in the next 1000 times it landed on "heads" now what are you going to think (presumably you would have decided that it is now "always most likely to land on heads" or perhaps you would have already gone broke) ?

And if in the next 10M times it was basically 50% heads and tails then those "runs" that seemed to mean something actually mean nothing at all (it's just the way that things can happen).

Gamblers fail to grasp this fundamental property of randomness and always tend to think that one event somehow is more likely to have a specific outcome because of previous events.

A fair coin *always* has a 50/50 chance of heads or tails no matter how many times it came up heads or tails in a row before.

It is actually part of our genetic make up to not think rationally about randomness as randomness is generally not very useful for our survival (we usually do better if we "guess right" based upon patterns we follow).

Huh?

(am guessing you haven't seen the Deadly Dilemma about taking off your helmet in space vs. letting it fill up with water)

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A0LEV1mOlfpU2fEAmAZXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEzajVydWsxBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDVklQNTg0XzEEc2VjA3Ny?qid=20080714181707AAe8p2T

I think the "discussion" about capitalism should probably belong in another topic.

And I do think that creative-commons is a great example of progress in the right direction.

In regards to "branding" there are plenty of obvious fake coffee shops in China whose store names are a lot like those of famous western chains. From my perspective the key thing is "the coffee" (and the free WiFi) so assuming they have good coffee and decent WiFi I don't really care if they are "the genuine article".

But this "non-system" has been working in countries such as China for many, many years.

Maybe time to "re-think" your idea of the system?

Not according to the laws of math (i.e. a random number generator could produce a number < X for years without being flawed).

Again the "difficulty adjustment" is used to "try and fix" this sort of problem (in terms of adjusting based upon the history).

I haven't studied the stats but I think you need to take into account the "difficulty adjustments" also (i.e. before an increase in difficulty I'd expect the average time to have become less than 10 minutes and of course the opposite for a difficulty decrease).

Sometimes the blocks can take more than one hour to solve (so we aren't just talking about those getting solved quicker).

The average is 10 minutes but there can be quite a bit of variance.

I think you need to "reverse" your statement. If someone doesn't want anyone to copy their work then simply don't publish it.

No two countries are ever going to have the "same laws" in regards to any "intellectual property" therefore it simply doesn't work in the modern world (for example the US seems to now extend copyright *forever* whereas most other countries limit it).

Hollywood has managed to survive and "thrive" in the digital age by just changing their model (so they make all their profits in the first week).

If they can work it out then I think others can also.

Unfortunately I had to move ciyam.org (and would not recommend anyone to use bitronictech.net for VPS hosting).

The new IP address for ciyam.org is: 212.71.247.214

It is now being hosted on a Linode (in the UK) which I think should be much more reliable (also the RapidSSL cert had expired but I fixed that today after moving over to Linode).

If anyone else is facing the same sort of clusterfuck problem with their VPS that I had (server constantly going down, emails being IP rejected due to spammers using their service and no reminders to renew essential items such as SSL certs) you should check out this: https://www.linode.com/docs/migrate-to-linode/disk-images/migrating-a-server-to-your-linode

Don't let yourself get "trapped" by a shitty service (you can escape them without their help at all).

Actually all the evidence about Hollywood shows that they are making more money than *ever before* (and most of the new films make that money within their first week now). There is a good TED Talk about this specific thing (I suggest watching it).

Also if you look at the film Interstellar it was not only a great film but involved some incredible R&D with the some of the key special effects being actually based upon correctly modelled physics.

The film will have been "pirated" all over the place already but they have already made their profits (so it really isn't relevant to their "bottom line").

Basically Hollywood has "solved" the problem with the idea of getting people to go to cinemas in particular (and wanting to see the "new release" there).

So although they keep "crying poor" they have worked out how to re-invent themselves in the 21st century (maybe big Pharma needs some lessons).

You can map multiple names to a single IP address - but an IP address can only map to one name.

So the IP addresses don't need to be unique but the names do.

As effectively copyright and patent have never applied to China by your reasoning no-one would have any pirate software here because it would have already been protected.

Hmm... seems not to be the case.

Not really sure what you are getting at as Bitcoin's UI is pretty "plain Jane" compared to many advanced open source applications (maybe you just need to familiarise yourself more with what is available).

The original idea of patent was perhaps like that - these days patents are used by large corporations to prevent anyone else from even entering their markets.

Applications are not patented (although some algorithms are) and there are plenty of nice shiny UI open source applications.

As for security - I guess that you don't think Bitcoin is secure (better hope whatever online wallet you use doesn't disappear and take all your funds with it).

I think you might need to look a bit harder.

Not only are there entire open source operating systems but every single kind of application you can think of.

Let's start by taking a look at "open source" software.

According to the general theory that companies need to protect their "intellectual property" (a term I despise) the open source movement should have died almost as soon as it started (being simply some sort of "hippy dream").

Yet it not only has flourished but made things like Bitcoin possible (there could be no such thing as Bitcoin without open source).

That is what is often "claimed" but I've actually seen very little real evidence to back up said claims (but I've seen plenty of evidence to show that patents are being used to stifle innovation by companies that own them yet don't actual "use" them for anything except to prevent others from using a technology that they don't want to succeed).


Reverse engineering was how we got PC clones - but funnily enough IBM didn't go out of business did they?