A business (Mega) whose profits will be mainly generated by exploiting copyright infringements will be accepting a currency that's mainly used for illegal activities such as buying drugs, money laundering...a perfect match!
Before anyone comments: I`m well aware that both Mega as well as Bitcoin CAN be used for non questionable purposes. Their main usage as of today are some sort of illegal or at least questionable activities.
I`m still surprised how much love Kim Schmitz receives from liberal minded HN fellows - unaware that he is gladly taking your believes as a thin cover-up to conduct at least questionable business.
Mega as well as Bitcoin have both a very liberal philosophical foundation by strengthening personal property rights. Bitcoin helps preserving and moving wealth without government intervention and Mega helps preserving and moving data without government intervention. In times of increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional democratic processes, this is the right thing to do. Note that legal and morally right is not always the same. This is a basic premise your our TV tells you every day (e.g. Jack Bauer illegally torturing suspects or Robin Hood stealing from the rich). I believe that both Bitcoin and Mega make the world a better place.
This comment seems to make the assumption that something being illegal makes it wrong.
You can buy soft and hard drugs in your local supermarket, just a very small subset of them. Caffeine is used by almost everybody and it qualifies as a soft drug. Alchohol is used by the majority of the population and it is a hard drug. Tobacco is a soft drug in terms of psychological effects and a hard one in terms of it's physical impact. If the law is so irrational as to categorise many other soft and hard drugs as a danger, why should people not side-step it? What is the benefit of jumping off an intellectual cliff just because the majority of people are doing so?
Copyright infringement is based on similarly irrational laws. They are for the benefit of the few and harm society as a whole. Culture has traditionally been free to share. This brings the benefit of giving people access to materials which inspire thoughts and feelings that they might not otherwise come across. This, in turn, provides a greater probability of innovative and novel ideas coming about, which benefit everybody. Intellectual property has been described by many people as an oxymoron.
In my opinion, the questionable activities are not of those who use bitcoin to buy illicit substances or use Mega or Torrents to access cultural artifacts but of the governments who subscribe to the notion that these activities are negative and that violence must be used against those who participate.
In my opinion we have seen quiete a positive development on FB in regards to the control and usability of the privacy options recenttly, most likely triggered through the appearence of Google+.
Most, if not all the people I know, have long restricted their profile to a minimum visibility level for non-fiends and non real friends.
At the moment I do not see the privacy problem as big as it used to be 12 months ago.
A lot of people in my network had restricted their profiles as well. However, due to some change (I guess around two weeks ago), most of those profiles are somewhat open again, and I can access information that was blocked before. I really dislike having to lock down my profile again everytime Facebook changes this stuff.
Although some parts of the posts are a bit too stereo typed for my me, I really like the general approach. Its an interesting clash of opinions / cultures, catchy to read. I hope to hear more from you guys!
Sorry, but non of the analysis in regard to sport statistics is relying on the IPad. The trend towards excessive sport statistics and individual player analysis is not now. Look for example at proffessional soccer teams.
I expect that all major baseball teams have been doing this for years, the only change happening now is that with the Ipad bringing a good user experience to non tech affine persons, this information is also actively getting used by players.
All in all, I strongly dislike the head line of this article, as it is in my opinion, missleading.
Players having instant access to up to the minute stats in a format they can easily understand (while holding it in their hands) is going to affect the game. Is it excessive? I dunno. It is pretty cool.
Think the real value comes from combining the quantitative with the qualitative. Players can examine stats and then observe how they came to be via video and graphical visualization.
My bet is, that the tablet sales will be good in terms of absolute numbers, but not as high the industry had wished.
I still do not see the too many compelling usecases when comparing a tablet with a smartphone + netbook/ultra leight weight laptop.
Hence the hugh success of the Ipad is in my opinion not much a result of its advanced features or even its slick design but rather its clever position as a must have status symbol.
I'm inclined to think so too, and my own iPad has mostly been relegated to super-Kindle status. Ironically, "ultra" notebooks like the new Macbook Air destroy 90% of the appeal of a tablet for me. Three pounds and eleven inches is not a burden to port around when it's that capable.
the iPad sees record adoption among mobile field forces. big pharma is going nuts over it, placing orders of 10.000+ ipads at once. it has no moving parts, it is idiot proof. if it breaks, the rep can go into a best buy, buy a new one, log+sync, done - everything works as before, including the apps. with iOS5 and OTA upgrades this will be even easier.
the pain of fielding 10000 hp tablet pcs globally suddenly goes away. for a cheaper device, that is lighter, faster, sturdier, with great battery life. with a stable, consistent OS environment below it. no more OS images, driver fuckups, etc etc etc.
the iPad will destroy headcounts in enterprise IT just like Exchange did in the realm of secretaries.
Really? How long have you worked in enterprise IT?
We been dealing with mobile users for decades and it's a small percentage of our staff/budget that actually deals with in-field devices and issues. iPads and smart phones are nice, but the sales force and folks at remote sites find themselves more productive with a laptop that has a keyboard and the ability to run "true applications".
As for HP, it hasn't been the HP of lore in decades.
some years by now actually. what is a "true application"? siebel? sap crm? both dead dead dead.
combining crm and clm on the ipad rocks the world of the sales reps out there. no more paper. digital signatures on a slim device.
i saw the hordes of IT needed to manage the windows tablets out there, maintaining windows SMS servers or some 3rd party solutions, then also patching and updating all that other "true apps". noticed that apple solved that through the app store, once and for all?
servers are getting killed by SaaS, notebooks by the iPad. SAP has fielded 17000 iPads internally...
Aren't you describing a niche here? Sure tablets are going to be great with some uses in business, travelling salesman, in meetings/presentations etc. But surely the vast majority of office employees sit behind a desk, making a cheaper more powerfull desktop computer the standard choice?
I have a phone, a desktop, a MacBook air (I.e. A better netbook), and an iPad. I use the iPad far more than any of the other devices when I'm not coding.
Finally the only right move to do. If you look at greece's huge debt, it was clear that - even in booming economic times - they could have never managed to pay it all back.
Yes the greece default rating, will bring some pressure to the (mostly europrean) banks, but I'm sure the world will not stop moving, it might actually be the first step out of the euro crisis.
Before anyone comments: I`m well aware that both Mega as well as Bitcoin CAN be used for non questionable purposes. Their main usage as of today are some sort of illegal or at least questionable activities.
I`m still surprised how much love Kim Schmitz receives from liberal minded HN fellows - unaware that he is gladly taking your believes as a thin cover-up to conduct at least questionable business.