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The terrorists have won, we have become Nazi Germany, and nobody seems to care.

No amigo, there are folks who are profiting from this (ahem - Chertoff)... and they defnitely do care. The problem is the privatization of defense and now, security. The MICIf you follow the money, you will see the root of the problem.

The trouble is that we have here a situation resembling that by which the US defeated the USSR Essentially, the US outspent the USSR, which simply could not keep up. But that was a level playing field, which the US won by being richer and able to throw more money at defence...

I would suggest that a better analogy would be the Maginot Line of WWII fame. Big, impressive theater. Easy to walk around. The next successful terrorist action that involves a commercial passenger get will likely be simple, inexpensive and, in hindsight, obvious.

The Therac-25 had some "Dangerous Programming Mistakes".

I wonder if the nudie scanners have any similar mistakes.

The Therac-25 had some "Dangerous Programming Mistakes".

I wonder if the nudie scanners have any similar mistakes.

And across history...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Grain_supply_to_the_city_of_Rome#Politics_and_the_grain_supply

That's not at all how they work. magnet: URIs (usually) only contain a description of the file to download, not where to find it. The description includes a hash so it can be found on a p2p network.

Why stop there? Why not extend it to other platonic solid puzzles? Archimedean solid puzzles? Don't forget the square one.

You far overestimate what can be done from the MBR. The system is not "compromised" at all at that stage, the second step of the booting process is.

I'm not saying that you can completely hack a machine with the 200 free bytes for custom code in a boot sector.
What I'm saying is that if your code is running first, you can decide what will happen next.
Even if the "big stuff" only happens 7 stages later down the line, you get to chose what happens in the 5 stages in between, if you already control stage number 1.

Even if none of these stage can do great things for you, the same is also true for the legit code. A viral MBR can't do much except redirect the boot process to viral stages. A legit MBR can't do much either. Same for later stages. Except that your code was running first and you get to overwrite the legit code first, before it runs.

What it can actually do is limited. In Linux, e.g., it would need to uncompress and then patch the kernel in memory. This is slow and very, very difficult.

Sorry, no. *You* apparently have no idea.
Uncompressing the kernel is something which happens in a snap second at every boot.
The first 512bytes of a kernel (Linux, Memtest, and a few other) contains already enough code to do it without any problem. You can write the kernel directly on a bootable media (say on a floppy) and it will boot (used to be the case for the Linux kernel, before it became too complex to fit on a floppy. That's still one possible way to load memtest).

Something as small and as simple as GRUB can have already enough functionnality to freely read and (in-place) write any file on a partition. That's already enough functionality to make sure that the content of a few key ".SYS" files in Windows are overwritten with content coming from a few other files in viral origin.
These files can reside on the boot partition (and be subsequently hidden by the hacked file system drivers) or on a separate hidden partition (which could be hidden too, using a hacked disk driver) like overwriting the "System tool" partition that most modern boxes come with out of the factory.
All it takes is that, instead of running the vanilla NTLDR or Winload.exe, the previous viral stage (the one booting from the free sectors) load an alternate Boot loader, one that first overwrites critical .SYS files before booting further.

Again, GRUB is also able to load load and uncompress a kernel, then load and optionally uncompress modules (although this function isn't much used by Linux. ReactOS does use it extensively though), and finally load a ramdisk (which is quasi-instantly decompressed during boot).
A viral stage2 bootloader code could load the kernel, load and inject a special "root-kit" module, load the ram disk and let the whole stuff run.

The Linux kernel has several facilities to all modifying code in-place. Modules are a standard way. Root-kits as modules are a standard attack on Linux. Normally they are hard to do, because once Linux is running, you need privileges to load modules, and the module functionnality might have been disabled at this stage for security reason. Before booting, injecting a root-kit module is just trivially using the facility used to pre-load modules.
Counter measures could be disabling support for boatloader provided modules, or adding a checksum control in the first step of the kernel startup.
Evasion could be putting the root-kit module inside the ram-disk, or using an alternate kernel (with no checksum, or with root-kit build in statically).

The windows booting process even *COUNTS* on lots of files and modules being loaded. System .DLL files, SCSI miniport, other boot critical .SYS driver ...
Hacking windows's boot process is as simple as either making sure at a previous stage that the critical .SYS

Obviously anyone here understands that the Protect Act has NOTHING to do with the stupidity that the RIAA is spewing. But let me restate it for those that don't understand. They are using recent events as a False Flag-like excuse. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/False_flag I am not claiming in any way, shape or form that they are responsible for said events. Merely that they are taking advantage of them in this way.

I don't know how such a service could be offered in a decentralised way.

How? By creating a set of standards/protocols.

Imagine several dozens different operators, that all agreed as to what a 'social profile' is and how those different social profiles can communicate with each other.

You export your profile from Facebook. Use a tool that converts that profile into standard profile - perhaps some XML description, with pictures, etc, packed into one container file. All operators are capable of importing that file into their site and generate the profile for you. At any point in time, you can take your profile out and take it elsewhere.

Now all the data that you have in your profile is only accessible to that operator, that you chose based on the fact that you trust them (for some reason). Or you can even host your own profile locally, like you would host an email server on your own box if you chose to. Each time when you connect with a 'friend' on a different operator - you have a box with that other operator's 'privacy policy' that you can 'Agree' to. You can also choose which parts of your profile are visible to that network and which ones aren't.

And of course there is a need for a set of protocols so that people who have their standardized social profiles with different operators could communicate with each other and share stuff.

All those operators can differentiate themselves by providing different features and implement things differently, but would have to agree on the least common denominator of supported features.

Here's a list of FOSS type social networks being developed / in operation now: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Distributed_social_network

How many of them do you think have a chance to become a monopoly? Diaspora maybe? :) If a critical mass of them would agree on some standards, walled garden type social networks would have no reason to exist.

A statue, a memorial or at least a postage stamp

A stamp would be the most visible remembrance, so if the government tries to ignore this issue a statue somewhere in the wild is more likely.

but wait:

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

it was late, it was little* - but the government is not too much to blame here.

*) some other items are a plaque at his birthhouse or this statue at Bletchley Park

A statue, a memorial or at least a postage stamp

A stamp would be the most visible remembrance, so if the government tries to ignore this issue a statue somewhere in the wild is more likely.

but wait:

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

it was late, it was little* - but the government is not too much to blame here.

*) some other items are a plaque at his birthhouse or this statue at Bletchley Park

Congratulations. You just invented trusted computing.

They will make a fortune selling power

First they'll have to make a nuclear plant that turns a profit without public subsidies.

Remember "Safe, clean and too cheap to meter"? That was forty years ago. We still haven't even come close.

Only in your mind. Only when you take into account the legislative cost, and the insurance.

Regardless of which study you follow nuclear is far cheaper than Coal with CCS, Nat Gas Turbines, any Solar method, Offshore Wind, and Biomass.

It's time to get with the program and stop spewing out the Greenpeace propaganda. I too am waiting for power to turn a profit, but I am waiting for the massive wind farms built all over Europe to start making some money. Every successive generation of reactor has proved cheaper than the previous. France isn't building relics of the cold war here, they have a large number of reactors with recent technology including some Gen III+ EPR reactors coming online in the next few years. Some countries are actually still innovating in this area.

They were not asleep. They did not believe in security through obscurity. They trusted the industry.

It has often been said, by Bruce Schneier and others, that security is not a product that can be purchased, installed after the fact and forgotten, but rather an attitude and culture that must be cultivated and maintained. Knowledge and tools are important, but without the right attitudes and culture they will be of limited use. Remember that nobody cares more about your security than you do. If you don't care then nobody else will either, despite what they may tell you.

Where'd you get the CO to do that?

Heck, if you've got a bunch of hydrogen, turn it into ammonia using the Haber-Bosch process, then fertilize switchgrass with the ammonia, then make ethanol from the switchgrass...Yeah, that'd be durn efficient!

Ah, but there's the catch. Firefox does not exactly have a "plug-in interface". A large portion of the browser is implemented in Javascript and extensions can more or less arbitrarily modify this Javascript. It is a very messy extension mechanism, but its power is what make Firefox such a popular browser for extensions. Mozilla is working on a more precisely specified (and therefore more limited) extension mechanism called Jetpack which will be more like Chrome's extensions, but I suspect that some features will still need the full extension mechanism, and, due to the messy way extensions are implemented, arbitrary changes to the browser can break an extension in weird ways.

All of the features touted in this language are things that either already exist, or for any well designed application be a non-issue.

There's more to language design than creating new features. Most languages I've seen introduce few, if any, new or fundamental features, but instead seek different balances in the various tradeoffs involved. Off the top of my head, those tradeoffs include things like raw speed, syntax expressiveness, syntax flexibility, memory consumption, number, breadth and convenience of builtins and number, breadth and convenience of libraries.

Most languages even seek to remove some mundane aspects of architecting a "well-designed application;" it's been a long, long time since most programmers had to manually keep track of their memory consumption or object interaction models for trivial applications, but applications which we would consider trivial today would have required extraordinary amount of programmer effort thirty years ago for such things. Non-issues in a well-designed application eventually become non-issues in any trivial application; even the painstakingly-well-designed application itself may eventually become trivial.

"Advanced primitives" isn't an oxymoron if you evaluate it in the right context; you're missing the implicit "when compared to {other language's primitives}". Granted, it's still a vague term; compared to what? Compared to C primitives? Possibly. Compared to Java primitives? Possibly.

Oz's syntax doesn't look any stranger to me than comparing a C-like syntax with a FORTAN-like syntax, or either of those with a Lisp-like syntax.

If you want a bizarre syntax, see J. Before you knock it, consider its heritage, and figure out which you'd have an easier time entering on your average keyboard.

No, I don't know Oz. I don't know Scala. I don't know Ozma. I just watch a lot of language advocates and designers compete with each other, and learn a thing or two every now and then--and it irritates me when I see people knock langauges and tools because they don't have enough perspective to see that those tools might not be right for them, but might be right for someone else.

In Canada total tax and non-tax revenue for every level of government equals about 38.4% of GDP, compared to the U.S. rate of 28.2%.

A significant portion of this tax differential is due to spending differences between the two countries. While the US is running deficits of about 4% of GDP, Canada has consistently posted a budget surplus of around 1% of GDP. Considered in a revenue-neutral context, the differential is much smaller - Canada's total governmental spending was about 36% of GDP vs. 31% in the US. In addition, caution must be used when comparing taxes across countries, due to the different services each offers. Whereas the Canadian healthcare system is 70% government-funded, the US system is just under 50% government-funded (mostly via Medicare and Medicaid); adding the additional healthcare-spending burden to the above figures to obtain comparable numbers (+3% for Canada, +7% for the US) gives adjusted expenditures of 38–39% of GDP for each of the two nations....

The greatest difference in social programs is in health care. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Government spends as much on health care, 7% of GDP, as the Canadian government does, and total healthcare spending is much higher - 14.6% of GDP in the US vs. 10% in Canada. Canadians, however, receive comparable care to those Americans who receive treatment, and result measures, such as life expectancy and infant mortality are better in Canada.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Taxation

Puking causes a gigantic histamine release, which in turn, causes massive vasodilatation. Then Aleve (Naproxen Sodium) works as an anti-inflammatory, which suppresses histamines.

This is kind of odd. I wonder why the histamine cycling is helping. But I would suspect that is what is happening.

One of the main potential explanation about how migraine work has to do with Vascular spasms. It's rather well known and described in the scientific literature.
Anything which can affect vascular constriction might help fight the migraine.
- Caffeine is a good example (beta-mimetic, cause peripheral blood vessel constriction)
- In fact serotonin might play a role in migraine. It's a vaso-active chemical. And it's targeted by several drugs : the whole family of tryptans, or LSD like mentioned here, or commercial derivate of it (like ergotamines).

Next time, you can try either masturbating until climax (I assume you are not in any kind of a mood for actual sex while having these headaches!)

Sex is also well known and described in the literature as a way to fight migraine. Probably due to the massive cocktail of monoamine chemicals released into the brain during sexual activities.

Puking causes a gigantic histamine release, which in turn, causes massive vasodilatation. Then Aleve (Naproxen Sodium) works as an anti-inflammatory, which suppresses histamines.

This is kind of odd. I wonder why the histamine cycling is helping. But I would suspect that is what is happening.

One of the main potential explanation about how migraine work has to do with Vascular spasms. It's rather well known and described in the scientific literature.
Anything which can affect vascular constriction might help fight the migraine.
- Caffeine is a good example (beta-mimetic, cause peripheral blood vessel constriction)
- In fact serotonin might play a role in migraine. It's a vaso-active chemical. And it's targeted by several drugs : the whole family of tryptans, or LSD like mentioned here, or commercial derivate of it (like ergotamines).

Next time, you can try either masturbating until climax (I assume you are not in any kind of a mood for actual sex while having these headaches!)

Sex is also well known and described in the literature as a way to fight migraine. Probably due to the massive cocktail of monoamine chemicals released into the brain during sexual activities.

The same works in Windows and OSX (and probably other OSes). It's an old thing called mouse keys.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mouse_keys

What if one make it a phased array antenna instead?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/File:Satellite_phone.jpg

if that can reach sats, one should not need a big square to reach much shorter distances.

carrying packages with bombs in them in Afghanistan

Child soldiers in Sri Lanka, in Iraq, and in Israel/Palestine.

I looked for, but did not immediately find, references to children (or women) serving as bomb carriers (or proxy bombers) in Vietnam, though I recall hearing of such specifically in the Israel conflict (women wired with remote-detonated vests).

[...] I'm a U.S. citizen [...]

Timothy McVeigh agrees.

In reality though, if the price of freedom to fly w/o getting groped is a 0.000001% chance I may die instead of a 0.0000001% chance, I'm willing to take the risk.

Hell, I still drive to work every day, and that's far more likely to kill me.

Wikipedia/media is a webservice with their servers in one room.

Ha ha ha.Their infrastructure is pretty complex, and even if physically it's not that huge, it's a lot of work. I'd say their infrastructure is way more advanced than whatever, say, Elseview or Kluwer has got facing the public.

Academic publishing are several actors all around the globe, which actively maintains their libraries and publishes physical copies once a month.

Actors, yes, actors they surely are. Supposedly there should be economy of scale, right? Then guess my astonishment when I inquired how much would it cost to print a small-circulation journal. I can tell you one thing: academic publishers are either swimming in money, or they are so wasteful with their spending that they must be warming their buildings in winter by burning US dollar bills. Because their business-critical costs (servers & IT, printing/distribution, office) would be covered by 1/5th of what people pay them. Easily, at that.

Check out this double pendulum.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VmTiyTut6A

Seems chaotic, right? But its not.

You know, words have meanings, and flatly denying them does not change it, it just makes you look like an idiot.
Chaos Theory
Double Pendulum
Perhaps you meant it's not "random" or "non-deterministic" -- they're different words with different meaning -- but it most certainly is chaotic.

Check out this double pendulum.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VmTiyTut6A

Seems chaotic, right? But its not.

You know, words have meanings, and flatly denying them does not change it, it just makes you look like an idiot.
Chaos Theory
Double Pendulum
Perhaps you meant it's not "random" or "non-deterministic" -- they're different words with different meaning -- but it most certainly is chaotic.

Made me think of Core War: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Core_War

Tho i guess that is much closer to learning assembly.

Another option could be Lego Mindstorm: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms

Made me think of Core War: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Core_War

Tho i guess that is much closer to learning assembly.

Another option could be Lego Mindstorm: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms

I changed my mind when I read James Lovelock's prognosis. I wish there was a realistic alternative but there's not, unless we go back to pre-industrial level of consumption and I can't see any politician doing that. It’s all very well for the Germans to say they will not build any nuclear reactors, but they'll end up buying power from either uranium powered French generators or coal powered Polish ones. Sorry folks I wish it weren’t but its realpolitik ! https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/James_Lovelock#Nuclear_power

You mean http://www.citizendium.org/ ?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Citizendum

Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!

I don't even know what a gym is.

Gym is short for gymnasium. It's a German word, describing an academically focused secondary school, similar to the old British grammar schools, or US prep schools. Hope that helps.

>

I am just being a devil's advocate here, I can argue the flip side of this really easily, in fact its like fishing in a barrel. Someone has to offer up a counterpoint or there is no debate.

Actually, your "counterpoint" is quite specious. You say:

First you have to consider this: American Cops dealing with the American Public. The American public can be horrible. Have you been out after dark here? It depends on where you go, you could be taking your very life in your hands. I can imagine that some things a cop sees and deals with, nobody would want to see or know about. There are some very bad people out there.

By your logic, since Americans can be horrible and the police see that horribleness in all its glory and (perish the thought) there are very bad people out there, the police are now justified in acting the same way. Fish in a barrel indeed.

Secondly, media can be taken out of context and with a volatile position as a police officer, its natural for cops to be concerned about image. Too much concern for image might impede a cop from doing their job as they are trained. Face it, what human being on planet Earth right now wants to end up on youtube being ridiculed?

Sigh. Yes, media can be taken out of context. However, these are public servants in public places performing public duties. The courts have ruled again and again that there is no expectation of privacy *for anyone* in public places. Being in the public eye (and not always in a positive way) is part of being a police officer. Deal with it or get another job. It's not as if cops didn't know this *before* they became cops.

Thirdly, our municipalities don't have magic money trees and when someone sues a cop for a billion dollars, they don't sigh and go out back and pick some more. Sensationalizing these events by magnifying them through mass media that is controlled by the whim of the public leads to crazy legal battles in strained courts.

Okay, so no recordings of corrupt and/or brutal police officers so we can save money on lawsuits? Those same municipalities could save lots of money on lawswuits by monitoring their police and firing/disciplining/prosecuting the bad apples harshly.

And fourth, people are becoming increasingly disgruntled due to stress levels of the economy. Exciting them with videos of a bad cop will cause hatred for cops, making their jobs more dangerous and even deadly.

That's so true. We should get rid of police blotters and negative press about government and corporations and anything else that might "excite" the rabble. In fact, a 6PM curfew would reduce crime significantly. Also, we should implement an internal passport system to make sure that folks who have no business in the drug dealing and hooking areas can be easily turned away. In fact, there's really no reason why anyone *needs* to go any more than a few miles from their home. As such, we should set up police checkpoints at major intersections, highway entrances & exits, etc. I don't know why we didn't think of this before. Thanks!

Fifth, with the discovery of flash crimes, they fear that these events will rise as criminals become more adept at exploiting technology. Imagine these tactics being used by terrorists, or a revolting illegal immigrant movement?

What? You've been listening to too much Rush. As for that "revolting illegal immigrant movement," I humbly offer this.

Newer reactor designs (so-called Generation IV designs, specifically the fast reactors in there) are being designed with the issue of waste in mind, and already offer significant improvements in both reduction of waste for the amount of power generated and reduction of the half-life of the spent fuel. One of the promising concepts is the ability to make a single initial fuel load that reacts over a long period and cannot be removed from the reactor, so all the elements that are useful for weapons are only a middle step in the reaction chain and cannot be extracted for military purposes even if you wanted to. This lets the fuel go much farther down the chain, producing less power as the reactor ages but ending up with waste with order[s] of magnitude shorter half-lives.

This is not saying that nuclear waste can ever be "safe", and it's anyone's guess as to current countries even lasting the centuries that the waste is still dangerous, but at least these can burn what is currently considered waste and reduce it even farther. Also keep in mind that nuclear power is less than 70 years old, plants last 30-odd years, and take 10 years to be built in the first place (nowadays). Likening the the release cycle to software, well, you could consider current reactor designs to be Windows 98. People are still learning, and it will only get better and safer.

betelgeuse is in orion's armpit, so it's only going to blow his arm off

luckily for orion the star that's going to blow isn't the one at the tip of his dick:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Orion_constelation_PP3_map_PL.jpg

oh wait... M42 already IS a nebula. he's already blown his interstellar load

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nebulae/m42.html

cosmic spooge

apparently orion gets too easily sexually excited when he's hunting

wait, i'm sorry, it's not his dick, it's his SWORD

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Orionurania.jpg

riiiight

that's what the ancients were thinking?

riiight

betelgeuse is in orion's armpit, so it's only going to blow his arm off

luckily for orion the star that's going to blow isn't the one at the tip of his dick:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Orion_constelation_PP3_map_PL.jpg

oh wait... M42 already IS a nebula. he's already blown his interstellar load

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nebulae/m42.html

cosmic spooge

apparently orion gets too easily sexually excited when he's hunting

wait, i'm sorry, it's not his dick, it's his SWORD

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Orionurania.jpg

riiiight

that's what the ancients were thinking?

riiight

Aren't "US ISPs" and "Big Content" sort of... one and the same?

How about making cigarettes illegal instead?

Cigarettes are already illegal (for anyone under ~19).

Because part of fair use is that it doesn't damage the value of the original product. Wikipedia using the image does nothing to hurt sales or the original, using the image as part of the branding of your album, even a non-profit, for charity album, is confusing to the consumer and could very conceivably hurt sales of the original (people who know what the cover looks like grabbing the wrong one).

While I would personally say what he did to the image was transformative, the courts have seen things differently in the past. Anyone remember the Obama Change poster? The transformation in that case was much more dramatic than in this one and they still ended up settling out of court.

Actually, they often do, when the insurance rates for a particular specialty become prohibitively high. And fewer people go into that particular specialty too. As an example, there was a significant shortage of ob/gyns until various states passed tort reform (which limits damages and in the process reduces insurance premiums): https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Obstetrics_and_gynaecology#Recent_shortage_in_US

English public schools are and always have been full of faggotry.

Not sure whether you chose that word by accident - but "Fagging" (same root) was common in english public schools and it had nothing to do with homosexuality.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fagging

1. Birth Control is far more commonly used now then in the previous generation. Perhaps there are less unwanted kids and more planned children who are better cared for so they don't become criminals.

Actually access to abortion, not just birth control, has been singled out _in the US_ as the main cause (and not just correlation) in the drop of violence in the last 20 or so years. The causation has been determined thanks to the delay between access to abortion in a community and the time it takes for the unwanted kids to grow up into criminals. Choice quote: "Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime". More

A lot of weed is pretty bad, but as long as you're only using it yourself, eh... not a huge issue, but clearly you should cop a fine for it.

Why? Is abusing a drug not punishment enough in itself?

But deliberately growing warehouses full of weed, for the express purposes of selling it is pretty bad since it's usually tied to organized crime.

This is because it's illegal. Make it legal, tax the bejesus out of it, and route some of the money into curing addicts. Works for alcohol, which is a drug about as abusable and unhealthy as cocaine.

I agree with what I think is your basic idea: small-scale copyright infringement should be explicitly legit. But comparing this to legal and moral issues surrounding drugs (which you seem to misunderstand anyway) is missing the point entirely.

In 2007, they were saying intel would have 80-core CPU's in 2011.

It's 2011 now, where can I buy one?

Intel showed a working 80 core research processor in 2007. Maybe that's what you heard about? It was used by researchers in the fields of distributed and parallel computing to develop new programming and compiler optimizations and operating system enhancements.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Teraflops_Research_Chip

Intel has since released a second generation research processor for distributed computing and cloud research called SCC, formerly know as Rock Creek. It is also available to universities and researchers but not a consumer product.

Disclaimer: I am an Intel employee but the statements and opinions here are my own based on the referenced link(s).

Simple solution - track all BTC expenditures as "income". It's not income until it's redeemed for a good or service. Similar with stocks. You don't get taxed on your holdings, just when you sell. If trading BTC for another virtual currency - game or otherwise, then it really isn't income either since it has no tangible value.

I could give you $100 trillion and it wouldn't be worth the paper it's printed on.

Link of above claim: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-June/066437.html

I mean, Ray Kurzweil believes in "alkalinized water" and dismisses just adding sodium bicarbonate, because the HNO3- molecule won't work as well as the HO- molecule... which entirely disregards that HNO3- interacts with H2O to make H2NO3 and HO-. http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html

Sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) has a molecular formula of NaHCO3. There is no nitrogen in it, and it seems you merely need to s/N/C in your quote. Somewhat ironically given your particular typo, HNO3 is nitric acid, which is a very strong acid (pKa =~ -1.4, which implies that it will completely dissociate in water) and is most certainly not alkaline. Furthermore, note that HNO3 would have no charge as written, and NO3- (nitrate) would have a - charge for the polyatomic ion. However, your typo and the subject molecules are interesting from a biochemistry perspective.

Bicarbonate (HCO3-) is a weak acid/base and is amphiprotic and amphoteric. Many biological organisms, humans included, use bicarbonate as a buffer molecule to maintain blood pH within the very narrow pH band required for the organism's survival.

The rule of thumb for buffer solutions is that they are most effective within pH +/- 1 of the pKa of the relevant moiety. Of course, in biological systems, the buffer isn't "static" and the organism expends energy to maintain homeostasis. Here's an example of the blood pH bicarbonate buffer using the Hendersen-Hasselbach equation. You can see the blood pH (7.4) is outside the +/- 1 pH of the pKa of bicarbonate (~6.1), and therefore the dissociation ratio is 20:1. Obviously, this buffer solution wouldn't work well if the organism didn't constantly rebalance it.

Your body uses the lungs to maintain the buffer, and this is why your blood can become more alkaline if you hyperventilate (respiratory alkalosis).

Haha, how's that for an off-topic tangent?

I mean, Ray Kurzweil believes in "alkalinized water" and dismisses just adding sodium bicarbonate, because the HNO3- molecule won't work as well as the HO- molecule... which entirely disregards that HNO3- interacts with H2O to make H2NO3 and HO-. http://glowing-health.com/alkaline-water/ray-kurzweil-alkaine-water.html

Sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) has a molecular formula of NaHCO3. There is no nitrogen in it, and it seems you merely need to s/N/C in your quote. Somewhat ironically given your particular typo, HNO3 is nitric acid, which is a very strong acid (pKa =~ -1.4, which implies that it will completely dissociate in water) and is most certainly not alkaline. Furthermore, note that HNO3 would have no charge as written, and NO3- (nitrate) would have a - charge for the polyatomic ion. However, your typo and the subject molecules are interesting from a biochemistry perspective.

Bicarbonate (HCO3-) is a weak acid/base and is amphiprotic and amphoteric. Many biological organisms, humans included, use bicarbonate as a buffer molecule to maintain blood pH within the very narrow pH band required for the organism's survival.

The rule of thumb for buffer solutions is that they are most effective within pH +/- 1 of the pKa of the relevant moiety. Of course, in biological systems, the buffer isn't "static" and the organism expends energy to maintain homeostasis. Here's an example of the blood pH bicarbonate buffer using the Hendersen-Hasselbach equation. You can see the blood pH (7.4) is outside the +/- 1 pH of the pKa of bicarbonate (~6.1), and therefore the dissociation ratio is 20:1. Obviously, this buffer solution wouldn't work well if the organism didn't constantly rebalance it.

Your body uses the lungs to maintain the buffer, and this is why your blood can become more alkaline if you hyperventilate (respiratory alkalosis).

Haha, how's that for an off-topic tangent?