Posts by Black Road Dude

Fork off!!!

If this did happen I'd fork all my repos to a new host and delete my account. M$ is a disease we all need to avoid. You can't buy a reputation back. No matter how much you fake it. A lying cheating scumbag company like M$ will never change.

Different strokes...

I agree bitcoin may not be the correct place for identity as it only allows a small amount of extra data stored in the blockchain.

But as the article states there are different types of identity.

The backbone of Bitcoin is the public private key pair.

Something can be signed by your private key and anyone can check that you really did sign it with your public key.

There are uses cases this could help with in identity such as providing data provided is genuine and yours. Such as a utility bill, passport driving licence etc.

Now if we used something like the storj network (or ideally the maidsafe network although that is not ready) which allows files to be added, and shared on the decentralised network.

For instance if the issuer of a utility bill made its corporate public key known. And signed a transaction containing a file containing your utility bill (perhaps a pdf) and sent it on the blockchain to your known public key.

When you are trying to prove your address or bill amount etc to a different third party they can verify that you are the owner of your public key by sending a code encrypted with your public key that only you could decide and prove. And they could verify that the source of the file was I'm fact the utility company so the data is genuine it's then proven. This could be applied in a very similar way to driving licence, passport, house deeds, pay slips.

Things to consider would be making the files private and sharable if necessary to the entity you are trying to identify yourself to. But this is achievable on the maidsafe network and potentially with some work.on the storj network.

Scalability is key

I think the persistence problem has already been solved.

Containers mean it's simple to scale an application be it the front end or the back end and the database element is no different. If you are using a clustered DB its easy to kill of a node or two and still have a fully replicated version of the db on the other nodes. Whole server instances can be ephemeral as long as your DB cluster is large enough.

The bit that does not fit the container paradigm are standalone dbs as by their very nature cannot be easily destroyed meaning they do become pets again. Examples to use rather than traditional state storage techs such as mysql are mongo, Cassandra, rabbitmq, hadoop, hdfs or kafka if your still needing rdbms try crate.

I'm not saying this works for every use case but I'm yet to find one that it could not help with or make simpler to deploy (even if it means more setup and config on your build/ci boxes to get there)

Also is anyone thinking about testing here. That's the real reason I started using docker in the first place. Being able to spin up an entire application stack including database network and configuration and run tests against that (where the testes images are the exact ones that would be deployed) on every build was a bit of a pipe dream before docker. (For us anyway)

Obviously it's just a tool and people can use it in a million different ways but for us its been an enabler to more tested code, configuration management and continuous delivery.

Its about testing and scaling.

Docker which is what this article is really about helps with scalability but does demand you architect your systems differently so they can be multiple independent services.

Docker also means we can automate integration testing which is what makes the whole thing mean anything. The micro service architecture on its own has some value but until people understand the value it can bring to testing its just going to look like SOA all over again.

No line free options?

Are we not getting to a point where we could just buy a gift gaff unlimited sim card and run TV and Internet access from there for home use? That's what I really wanted the answer to be! But it wasn't even mentioned as an option.

Who needs windows?

So a company had a monopoly on the entire market. A captive market that was really happy with windows and was just looking for a small evolution maybe a pretty skin on the next version, maybe crash less, maybe hog less memory, maybe more secure. And managed even with no real competition to balls things up repeatedly and attempt to push features on the users, push mobile UI's onto desktop PCs even when they had no real mobile market is just unbelievable. You literary could not make it up. Im personally glad as its been sub par software all along in my opinion. And the free yes read that again FREE alternatives are now so much better who needs windows. ??

Bitcoin to the rescue!

In this case bitcoin is actually the answer.

what about Googles own private internet

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/google-is-building-a-private-internet-thats-far-better-and-greener-than-the-internet/1266

What's the point of net neutrality when you can do this? What's neutral about googles private network only for Google data?

10% Volatility a problem?

I agree that a 10% change in the value of Bitcoin seems pretty large. This is mostly due to the fact its a reasonably new currency compared to any fiat version. I think we need to think about exactly what the benefits for the merchant might be in the refund scenario. Obviously this is relative to the cost of the transaction but for the coffee refund scenario a £2 cup of coffee paid for in bitcoin would cost less than a penny in fees where as if it was paid for via a credit/debit card it would cost the merchant (again this depends on the size of the retailer as the larger retailers can get better deals) anywhere in the region of 8p - 17p plus the monthly charges for renting the chip and pin machine and accessing the service. An additional charge would be a business bank account which has a monthly charge. Which is why lots of small retailers who sell relatively low value merchandise cant afford to offer digital payments at all and instead use cash. (which has its own costs such as collection by a security vehicle and again a business bank account.) So it is quite possible that 10-20% of the initial (non-bitcoin) transaction cost would be for the sole purpose of paying the banks for their service.

So if I bought a £2 coffee with bitcoin the merchant would have potentially already gained 10% profits (by avoiding the bank transaction "TAX") so would/should be willing to take the refund risk.

Also the (non-bitcoin) refund its self would have its own transaction fee doubling the already very high cost to the merchant.

Ive seen paypal mentioned but their fees are just as bad if not even worse at 20p + 3.4% per transaction.

This obviously does not cover every scenario as higher value purchases would have significantly lower transaction fees and therefore overall transaction fee percentages.