Yes it is. The intrinsic value of food is that you can eat it; the intrinsic value of art objects is that you like them. All "intrinsic" value refers to is the use you can make of something without exchanging it for something else. If you were the only person in the world, and you appreciated the appearance of gold, than gold would be intrinsically valuable to you.
I will accept this. How then is it not the case that "if you were the only person in the world, and you appreciated bitcoin, then bitcoin would be intrinsically valuable to you."
The logical implication is sound, I just don't think the premise holds. If you were the only person in the world, a bitcoin would just be a random-looking sequence of numbers and letters, which really would be worthless.
Nor does glass or plastic-coated aluminium. There are lots of shiny things that people don't want in their jewelry. If diamond were as common and cheap as glass, we'd probably see just as much diamond jewelry as glass. They're not massively "better" at being shiney. Even artificial gems are worth less in than natural ones even if they have fewer defects!
Neither of those things were around or refined enough like gold was when gold became the traditional metal for jewelry. Gold has a large first-mover advantage here that is being propped up by human psychology.
>> "Especially for common workflow tasks like switching from an app to 1Password and back to the app."
> Use the task switcher, which is now much faster than before?
This was actually one of the "Wow! They've thought about the little things" moments on iOS7. I was copying a phone number or an address from another app, and with the new task switcher I didn't even have to launch the other app since the information I was looking for was already visible from the switcher.
No HTML allowed - ok - I just don't buy the explanation. A better way to sell it would be "A 100% secure Markdown clone you can use on the web with no questions asked, no HTML injection possible because no HTML is possible."
When I see a Markdown clone I expect to see some new features: modularity and extendability, a well-defined grammar or translation process (if that's even possible without sacrificing usability, simplicity, or performance), perhaps being exceptionally fast. And I keep looking, because the world needs a better Markdown. Unfortunately, a feature removed from Markdown and a few others slapped on top of it is not enough to make me try it. So I wish you good luck with your project and hope that it evolves beyond that.
And ThinkPads used to have a fingerprint sensor, many years ago. It's not that the technology itself is very cutting edge, or even claimed to be. (Of course, marketing claims anything to be cutting-edge. Apple's marketing doubly so.)
In the light of recent knowledge, it makes me wonder whether IBM had NSA backdoors, too.
Select ThinkPad models still do have integrated fingerprint sensors. Windows 8.1 offers improved native biometrics as well, whereas the previous Windows versions require third-party drivers for compatibility.
My previous work computer was a Thinkpad (2011 model) with a fingerprint swipe-scanner, but it was flaky, wasn't baked into the OS, and didn't have any killer apps that supported it.
If, for example, Lenovo released something like 1Password but tied into the FP scanner for auth, that would've been really good… but that would require work to ensure it was secure and that particular sensor's flakiness would've killed the execution anyway.
I'm guessing it was there for military/secured installations where some bespoke software would interface with the scanner for a customer-specific purpose.
They don't even say fingerprints are not uploaded:
According to the press release, "fingerprint information [...] is never stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud." But nowhere do they claim it doesn't ever leave the phone. It looks like this leaves Apple the option to upload the data to "trusted partners".
If I had the money to fight the lawsuit, I'd be right there.
Also, I formally let them know I disagreed with the psychometric testing.
Double also... I used to apologise to new hires for the psychometric testing, and tell them "this is not how the real-world works, this is a micro-community"
Fight the smart battles - and know the parameters of your influence ie don't be labelled as public enemy no.1 by dis-agreeing visibly.
Personally i think hr's role in selectin should simply be one of co-ordination and documentation, nothing more. Selection should be done by the team that needs them, with even the managers of the team playing a supporting role ie team decides not even the project manager. That requires a strong CTO/CIO type person and supporting CEO etc.
But, more importantly, by allowing HR to label you as a dis-ruptor and someone who threatens their own influence, it will be tough for you in the long run
For me, the text on that article felt way too big when viewed in a full screen browser on a 1280x800 display. Frankly, it's about as bad as if the font-size were 12px or 13px.
Resizing the browser window to only take half of the screen width makes it better on my eyes (it appears to be 17px). Still, after that, I felt the need to go to developer console and change line-height to 1.4.
I chuckled a bit when, after these adjustments, I arrived at the sentence:
> The fact you’ve read to this paragraph is proof that there is something to my argument.
I'm on a 13" Macbook Pro, and lying on a couch, so my viewing distance may be a bit closer than if I were sitting on a desk. I'm 33 years old, with relatively ok eyesight (no glasses), and totally buy your other arguments (I'm a fan of Bringhurst myself).
It's just that anything more than 18px on a laptop display just feels too big.
Mixed tabs and spaces, inconsistent indentation, two empty lines in a row, sometimes "if (...)" and sometimes "if(...)".