Posts by Mage

Re: They are full of it.

"high cost base and low margin"

Wut?

There is a x2 to x10 markup of cables and components.

Re: What goes up

Crazy USA mostly doesn't use IBAN.

I've written a check/Cheque in years. Yesterday was first time in over 10 years I even saw one.

Only advantage of Bitcoin is anonymity. It's too slow and ANY truly distributed to public cryptocurrency can't scale to a fraction of the transactions needed. The only workable level is bulk batch transactions between banks, but what does that do that IBAN doesn't do today?

Most German eBay sellers use IBAN in preference to PayPal.

It lets people put money in your account but not take it out. From 2008 it's the preferred method for 3rd parties to make lodgements to Ulster Bank customers.

Was Bitcoin actually designed as an elaborate ponzi scheme?

Re: So yeah, how's that cloud thing working for ya?

Pinterest is mostly other people's content. So a "hack" gives hackers email, name and password.

Problem is people using same password for everything. A little address book at the least.

Also anything important never stored with phone/tablet/PC.

Re: A fool and his money are soon parted...

That's why all successful (for the early adopters) Ponzi schemes work. Anglo Irish Bank. Quinn was a sucker! Though he had been a serial speculator making bad choices after getting money from the Gravel pit and later for a while from the Insurance.

Usually a secret cartel of early adopters trigger the crash as they get out.

Re: Charles Ponzi

Famous, but not at all the first:

We learnt about the South Sea Bubble at school:

…peaking in 1720 before collapsing to little above its original flotation price; the economic bubble became known as the South Sea Bubble. The Bubble Act 1720, which forbade the creation of joint-stock companies without royal charter, was promoted by the South Sea company itself before its collapse.

Also

Little Dorrit (1855 - 1857) identifies such schemes.

The Way We Live Now (1875) identifies such schemes.

So obviously much older. It wouldn't surprise me if the Ancient Romans did it 2000 years ago.

Gold coins from about 500BC (or earlier) became Electrum. The proportion of silver (and sometimes copper) was gradually increased. Pure gold is too soft for a coin anyway. The idea of gold as a standard survived in west till 20th C. Modern Fiat Currency using paper money was established in the 11th C. in China. It's really only a problem if the Government gets corrupt and stupid, because printing too much is self defeating (Hungary & Germany in the past, South America and Zimbabwe today).

Bitcoin seems designed to aid money laundering and pyramid selling. The mechanism to create coins is in the private control of rich people that can afford the mining computers and have cheap electricity.

Little Dorrit is a novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in serial form between 1855 and 1857. It satirises the shortcomings of both government and society, including the institution of debtors' prisons, where debtors were imprisoned, unable to work, until they repaid their debts. The prison in this case is the Marshalsea, where Dickens's own father had been imprisoned. Dickens is also critical of the lack of a social safety net, the treatment and safety of industrial workers, as well the bureaucracy of the British Treasury, in the form of his fictional "Circumlocution Office".

The Way We Live Now is a satirical novel by Anthony Trollope, published in London in 1875 after first appearing in serialised form. It is one of the last significant Victorian novels to have been published in monthly parts.

Comprising 100 chapters, The Way We Live Now was Trollope's longest novel, and is particularly rich in sub-plot. It was inspired by the financial scandals of the early 1870s; Trollope had just returned to England from abroad, and was appalled by the greed and dishonesty those scandals exposed. This novel was his rebuke. It dramatised how such greed and dishonesty pervaded the commercial, political, moral, and intellectual life of that era.

Re: Twat

Least of the problems with YouTube.

SMTP server for sending from multiple domains

Many ISPs only let you use THEIR SMTP.

I have very many domains I pay for.

I have many email addresses, some are @<current isp>, some @<my 1990s ISP>, some @<my own domains>, also gmail, yahoo etc.

They are technically spoofed, simply text in the email client configuration. However anyone using the From: or Reply-To: results in mail that eventually ends up at a server somewhere. Some of these forward to other email accounts & delete. Finally my email client uses POP3 from a much smaller number of email accounts. All of the email gets back to me no matter which spoofed address I used as they are all "real" somewhere, though I might not be doing IMAP, SMTP or POP3 with some of the domains at all ever (the hosting of the domain is forwarding to some-place I have IMAP or POP3 pickup).

Other than useless web mail, using many of my domains directly would be impossible on many ISPs as they only allow SMTP outgoing to their own server. I have a huge list of ISP SMTP in my client for when I visit friends / relatives.

I used to travel a lot. Then I had a VPN server in the attic and logged on to it before doing any email or browsing.

You don't want to use Library or public or College Internet ever for email. We set up the VPN clients to use port 80 to get round University port blocking :) The Router mapped it from port 80 to the port used by the attic server.

Re: how would that work exactly?

It's not simple and involves the person that wants to send proving who they are and why they want to communicate.

You need private / public key asymmetric encryption.

It's not possible on the SMTP / POP or IMAP model.

Some systems do have embryonic versions of such a system.

Disadvandage is the sender would know you really exist. Advantage is that done properly with a micropayment to establish trust, spam would be gone. Troublesome senders can be revoked.

You don't expect me to publish a complete description with working code? Unfortunately the present system is hardly different to 1980s (email became established before web sites) or posts and telegraphs. "Spam" started when Telegraphic terminals moved outside post offices in the UK.

Re: imdb reviews

Amazon bought IMDB and Goodreads. Good USA consumer protection regulation?

Also a good movie or book can get bad reviews because it's marketed wrong, or expectations are wrong. Rubbish can be successful to a mass market. You need to know the biases of the reviewer, which is possible with a regular critic in paper or TV, but impossible with anonymous internet reviews, that might be sock-puppets / bots.

Amazon manages to remove real reviews and leave fake ones on books. Go figure.

Re: the remaining 26 are the republic of Ireland.

No, Ireland can mean either the entire island or the 26 counties. "Republic of Ireland" isn't official.

It's not the same as Taiwan.

Nor does Ireland the Country have a claim over the six counties since the Good Friday Agreement. It now can only be decided by referendum in N.I.

It's only Éire in Irish.