"we would never be able to develop either the instrument..."... to finish the sentence: "or the observation of a point of reference outside of the local effects of the black hole."
Also: the main reason this theory isn't acceptable is because, in line with the standards of meritable academe, it can't pass Karl Popper's standard of falsifiability. Unless Thomas Kuhn's theory of experimental paradigm can be modified to disprove that Popper's falsifiability is required for all experimental conclusions -- perhaps by way of suggesting that an experiment's constraints can be expanded to allow for data outside of the observable universe -- it's not a useful theory and it should by all rights fail to be published. It would be academic suicide to even make a noble effort.
Some nice theories here but I'm sticking with my own pet theory: our observable universe exists entirely inside a black hole, slowly being compressed at the center across time.
Our measurements that don't take this into account see the universe as "expanding" because our cherry-picked points of reference are actually getting closer together.
But since this is all happening simultaneously, even our own instruments and myriad points of reference for myriad "constants" are also being compressed, which means it completely goes over our heads and the ruler we think we're holding is much shorter than it actually is.
Also, being on the inside of an event horizon explains why a universe that's supposed to be lit up with infinite stellar matter is more or less dark. Not the entire actual, "outside" universe is in here, inside this particular black hole, with us.
The smallest, relatively debris-like space rock outside this black hole might astound us with dimensions the size of the local group, and indeed the local group may have formed long after such a space rock was sucked in past this black hole's event horizon. As the matter from the space rock was siphoned into a stream of particles past the event horizon, and entered into proximity with the particles of other objects that had also been sucked in, their relative closeness exerted some weak influence of gravity and they coalesced into various tiny swirls and clouds.
Meanwhile, we cannot detect the singularity at the center of the black hole because of the relative proximity of all observable objects near to it. It would just appear to be a "background force" omnipresent over everything, and we would never be able to develop either an instrument to measure the singularity's exerted force because of a lack of possible reference-points.
This leads to the question "well, since black holes also capture light particles, why isn't all the light of the 'real', 'outside' universe also visible as a sheen all around us at the edges of the visible universe?"
But we don't have any concept of what happens to light after it crosses an event horizon. For all we know, photons are just energetic enough to whip around the event horizon without ever being perceived again (you'd have to be right on the event horizon, with a line of observation orthogonal to the photon's path -- which is always changing due to the centripetal force pointing inward) and only less energetic forms such as hydrogen actually manage to "fall in" (which would explain the otherwise inexplicable background hydrogen.)
Sorry if you haven't encountered this theory before, it's entirely my own creation that I came up with just trying to be controversial while lounging around staring at the sky at night. I'm not nearly mathematically creditable enough (only recently passed Differential Equations and completed my minor in mathematics, and majoring in computer engineering, not astrophysics or related fields,) I don't have the time or the fancy, and most importantly of all I wouldn't want to be the one to have to break it to anybody.
And I'm absolutely sure it would be rejected outright, just because every time I bring it up to anyone they just get stunned and stare off into space. I mainly use it as a psych-out for people who are high or drunk at parties, you know -- to fuck with people.
You could stick to simple pathology (i.e. "a led to b led to c") and say that if only two known people were supposed to have the data (the insemination video, in your example, presumably only to be owned by the egg-bearer and the sperm-donor) and if one of those people is charging illegal dissemination of the data, then it must be the other person who did the deed.
So even if the charged person used darkwebz, deleted the logs of the logs of the LOGGING of logging's log log, and found a free e-mail server that can't be hacked and which has an absentee sysop, and telnetted the mainframe through the satellite uplink, you could still say "yeah, but, it was you."
HOWEVER -- which I think is really what you're getting at -- it could be made to show that it's impossible to prove which of the two originally consenting parties with-drew the line of consent at the dissemination of the data. Charged party B could claim that infuriated party A was actually the culprit, and there would be no way at all whatsoever to prove whodunit.
Laws like this always, always, always ignore that data which is created has every possible eventuality of becoming shared. They create these artificial boundaries where sharing is supposed to "not happen", but hell these days the data itself can share itself.
Let's say that the happily fluid-swapping couple recorded and stored the video of the conception of tomorrow's tyrannical pirate using software based entirely on Flash. It was a Flash application and it stored the video also as Flash.
Knowing the vulnerabilities of Flash, any weirdo on the internet could have been the one to distribute the video and even to make it look like one or both parties were the ones to blame.
I see it, now. I was trying to figure out what their angle was, but you put it rather plainly.
This law would basically guarantee that there would never be another paparazzi photo of some starlet skinny dipping or sun tanning, ever, ever again.
It doesn't matter that there's no intent to do emotional harm to the subject of the rag photo. They did not give consent and obviously since they are celebrities, and since that means they can make a lot of money from every picture taken of them, they would never in a million years let anyone take a picture of them without their permission. Wow, even at that point, I guess you would not have to show an attempt to directly cause emotional harm -- if it's a celebrity, ANY paparazzi photo or even any fan photo that shows ANYTHING more than bare arms will harm that celeb's income and would be like stealing from them, and theft is emotionally distressing and voila, emotional harm.
Hell, I'm glad the MPAA is fighting against this thing.
I thought it was already well understood that the Celts were a culture that precipitated more or less throughout France and the British Isles, for quite some time. It's perplexing to me that this is news at all, since I can't recall anyone ever saying that the Irish were ever purely Celtic in origin.
Even though the article is about things I don't use, I'm pretty sure this is what was meant by "news for nerds". The only way to be sure to reach that definition consistently is to post Linux news. It doesn't matter if the article has equivalents or analogs that don't involve Linux, or if those analogs are boring. The important thing is that if Slashdot isn't consistently like standing around a water cooler at the top of some D&D Wizard Tower, then it's just not slashdotty.
If politely calling you out on your cop-out erosion of your own argument rather than outright calling you a troll is:
sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "Lalalalala..."
... then you might be a troll. And yes, everyone who's not a troll always, always, always wins a debate against a troll because a troll's not even trying to debate. Back to the original illustration: you gave up. You eroded your own argument instead of ceding the point. Next troll.
it would be far quicker and more efficient to have Kim Jong Obama make all of the decisions unilaterally rather than have the whole country debate policy....
we want fair government, we want transparent government, we want big policy decisions
Um, have you ever heard the term "speak for yourself"? Or the position that using the royal "we" philosophically is not only entirely bullshit and kind of stupid, it's also rude?
More to the point, nothing I said in parent post was political in any way. The government's bureaucratic process can be more efficient without that having any bearing on the power of the executive branch. Sorry if you got those wires tangled but that's not all of "us" with that problem.
Sorry but not everything in the world fits inside your soapbox.
Now, if you were *really* going to be a genius at getting in a snarky comment to make yourself seem intelligent, you'd go back in time to the article where his now-disavowed claims were originally covered, and you'd post all about how you know it's a lie from the outset, rather than boost yourself up in hindsight.
So either AC is making it up, or AC isn't that familiar with VAX and the computer (if it's real) was something even older?
That's sort of crazy, to think that somewhere in our government there might be a machine that's older than anybody working around it, that nobody understands even in terms of what function it's processing or even what inputs and outputs it's dealing with, and that if it broke maybe -- who knows -- an entire agency could collapse or a huge part of the infrastructure could fail, or a nuclear war could start or something.
There are a lot of comments here that this FOIA request is a waste of time and money, all for "fun". But if you think about it, this information shouldn't have to be commanded or browbeaten out of millions of government employees. And if the government is operating the way it *should* be, then the gathering, processing and collating of this data should all be routed through a record so that -- voila -- anytime the government, itself, needs to know what it has on hand then it knows where exactly to look and in one place. This would be very handy if the government, itself, started to wonder if entire groups of machines and protocols needed immediate replacement or not. They could have a specialist go through all of this gathered inventory data and give them a realistic budget and timeline. With the data already on hand, that sort of project would be saved the time and effort it took to compile the data in the first place.
Now, on top of that, consider the four stated aims of the report:
* Find which departments are thrifty enough to keep machines in service long past their expiration.
-- how would this not serve as valuable information to the government if it's assessed and quantified in a way that's easy to understand and makes sense?
* Learn the technical dependencies that are holding back the effectiveness of public services.
-- again, how would this not be valuable information?
* Reveal security problems raised by departments that refuse to upgrade from unsupported, obsolete systems.
-- again!
* Critique the allocation and utilization of computer resources by the government
-- which doesn't offer as much usefulness as the other three points, really just generalizes the entire thing, but still there it is. How is this not valuable information?
This is exactly the same tack that "quick switch to gold!" enthusiasts take when you soundly beat them with their own arguments: they "dare" you to "short gold" if you "know so much" and are "so confident".
I might have read somewhere that this is typical behaviour for traumatized victims of abuse.
Everyone except the people who don't own or control the mining technology or the launch pads. They'll still continue to slave away just as people who don't own or control the banking world do today.
It sounds like you're eroding your position to stay "right". I'll just take that emboldened "maybe" and let the rest fall into the void. Thank you for p(l)aying.
The Parent is arguing that if everything in your life such as your contracting earnings for work, and your transactions of other sources of income, were also negotiated in Gold, then you'd be in the clear because even if the dollar-evaluation of Gold changes, you're still owed Gold for things like work-hours put in at work or projects completed for clients.
You're clearly arguing with a deluded lunatic.
For their unicorn economy to work, those bosses and those clients would also have to demand that a sufficient amount of their own income is also negotiated in gold, or else they, too, would have to suffer the exchange rate instability.
And that means those sources of income must also demand gold for their goods and services, etc.
Their plan only works if it's basically completely and instantly adopted by the entire population. And eventually you run into a problem: there's no way in hell that you can represent the daily exchange of goods, services, and everything else in let's say the United States of America with gold, while also representing the unexchanged value in all bank accounts in the USA with gold, while also representing the potential for economic growth also in gold.
You could argue that everything can be conducted electronically and that all the gold will actually be stored in Cheyenne Mountain or whatever. You could argue that the system will start with an evaluation of gold that allows the given amount of gold to represent all of the wealth in the united states.
No matter what you argue, you run into the fact that either new discovery is made and mined at a rate equal to or faster then the rate of economic growth, or you face continuous deflation. And that's deflation on a currency that is already so infinitesimalized by how small amount of it there is compared to the sum of gross domestic product plus capital plus banking principal plus wealth, etc. etc.
The evaluation of goods and services in gold would start off infinitesimalized and it would only decrease as time goes by. The people who argue for gold as a currency might as well just argue for any number, any integer whatsoever, to represent all the world's wealth and that everybody in the world simply exchanges increasingly infinitesimal amounts of that.
It's a harebrained scheme and it's not worth arguing with them over it because they never think they're wrong because by the time they're grasping at straws with this gold-based thing, they're already desperate and listening to crackhead late night radio shows looking for answers, or moved onto phase two where they're slowly draining their accounts and watching daytime television and getting sucked in by advertisements meant to fleece the aging population who are losing their faculties.
When people argue for gettin' yer gold coins ready for the crash (during discussions on politics, economics, whatever -- some people bring this up over what to get for breakfast) I like to liken a crisis as a life boat and ask them whether their heavy chest of gold coins is going to get them a spot on a the life boat.
Thanks, A.C., for calling me "Mulder" -- it suggests that my views could be popular instead of quieted up.
But sorry, I can't bite. Frankly, just judging by your tone, it would do me little good to even breach any one of numerous subjects. I'll just take your below-the-surface bubbling of ridicule ready to blow for what it is and leave the island before it blows.
... isn't it more convenient to assume, at the start, that individual people are mostly honest, than mostly dishonest?
Sure. For instance, I assume at the start that John McAfee is mostly honest. That's why my assumption is perhaps John hadn't thought of a potentially dishonest Apple in this situation.
But overall, how can anybody pursue info security without a strong tendency to assume dishonesty on behalf of nearly every party?
At least with Apple there is the possibility that they are not my enemy.
But that's also true, as well. Given the numerous lies against John McAfee and attempts on his life, I wouldn't call it necessarily "fatigue" if he were to hedge his bets with a potential non-threat.
Right-o. And, I personally helped develop the digital platform this artificial telepathic network will be reliant upon, and I actually did name it "SATAN" in version 0.9.310: it's an acronym that stands for:
Strategic And Tactical Assistance Network.
And so far it's been highly successful in over 1,270 simulations (each of which takes a few days to complete.)
The platform side of the project has a budget that stands at officially zero dollars (U.S.) though I am allowed to get whatever food and drinks I want from the cafeteria and vending machines for free. (I've put on a little weight!)
If we're successful, the SATAN network will make it so that no soldier is ever alone, or even "left behind": SATAN will ensure that even soldiers who are lying incapacitated on the battlefield can commandeer inbound ordinance assets even if they have been abandoned by their squadron. Meanwhile, they will be able to coordinate their own Drone-Assisted Rescue Mission without relying on intermediary response.
Just because John wouldn't show up for your Annual Tinfoil Hat Convention doesn't mean you should just lash out in anger and dismiss the entire field. There are still people in Tinfoil Hat land who need leaders like you to press ahead, even if John can't be one of them.
I thank yourself and the other commenter here pointing out the obvious; I should have considered that the device would not have to cross the blood-giving vessels around the brain in order to function.
But this does leave some serious health questions:
* how are you ever going to design an object that does not impede blood flow, as a stent-form or otherwise
* what amazing, exotic elements is this thing shrouded in, that will both keep the tissues from responding to it and also keep from puncturing the tissue walls
If all you think the Cold War is about is nuclear weapons brinkmanship, you're totally coddled as to (or better, per) the Cold War.
There are things that came to fruition just prior to and during WW2 that haven't even brushed the public foremind, yet. And even the nuke race aspect has been escalating for the last seven years, which puts your De Lorean reference way out in right field.
I'd have to agree based on many historic examples.
The current issue with Apple is my favorite example at the time. There's no way of knowing whether Apple has already given some agencies backdoors or not; if they have, pretending to "fight" with the agencies on a backdoor gives consumers and shareholders the illusion that's more desirable.
And also, let's take into consideration that Apple is well-known for abusing the leverage of "planned obsolescence". Their devices are apt to be updated with a completely necessary platform revision that renders old-enough models absolutely incapable of maintaining any decent level of performance.
Given that Apple is a known abuser of planned obsolescence, let's think about the current stand-off in similar terms:
* Apple could, after much "fighting" for the audience of consumers and shareholders, be "forced" to give-in to the agencies' demands and produce a backdoor.
* But Apple is smart, and courageous. So they promise consumers and shareholders that the currently release backdoor is only going to be useful on all previous and existing models of Apple devices; the next iteration of Apple devices will utilize a different standard, function, or giant integer that renders the backdoor moot.
* Voila: every person who owns every past model of Apple devices will gladly get rid of their old "junk" and get the brand-newest Apple device. If they don't do so gladly, maybe it's because standards of practice at their workplace simply force them to do so in order to maintain corporate integrity.
McAfee has sided with Apple a bit too strongly and a bit too readily at the present time, for my tastes. And that taste is one that prefers my computer gurus and infosec wizards to be consistent, unwavering and to never miss a single detail.
Now, McAfee's a busy guy. Maybe he hasn't had the time to consider that Apple could be co-conspiring with the FBI and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
"we would never be able to develop either the instrument..." ... to finish the sentence: "or the observation of a point of reference outside of the local effects of the black hole."
Also: the main reason this theory isn't acceptable is because, in line with the standards of meritable academe, it can't pass Karl Popper's standard of falsifiability. Unless Thomas Kuhn's theory of experimental paradigm can be modified to disprove that Popper's falsifiability is required for all experimental conclusions -- perhaps by way of suggesting that an experiment's constraints can be expanded to allow for data outside of the observable universe -- it's not a useful theory and it should by all rights fail to be published. It would be academic suicide to even make a noble effort.
Some nice theories here but I'm sticking with my own pet theory: our observable universe exists entirely inside a black hole, slowly being compressed at the center across time.
Our measurements that don't take this into account see the universe as "expanding" because our cherry-picked points of reference are actually getting closer together.
But since this is all happening simultaneously, even our own instruments and myriad points of reference for myriad "constants" are also being compressed, which means it completely goes over our heads and the ruler we think we're holding is much shorter than it actually is.
Also, being on the inside of an event horizon explains why a universe that's supposed to be lit up with infinite stellar matter is more or less dark. Not the entire actual, "outside" universe is in here, inside this particular black hole, with us.
The smallest, relatively debris-like space rock outside this black hole might astound us with dimensions the size of the local group, and indeed the local group may have formed long after such a space rock was sucked in past this black hole's event horizon. As the matter from the space rock was siphoned into a stream of particles past the event horizon, and entered into proximity with the particles of other objects that had also been sucked in, their relative closeness exerted some weak influence of gravity and they coalesced into various tiny swirls and clouds.
Meanwhile, we cannot detect the singularity at the center of the black hole because of the relative proximity of all observable objects near to it. It would just appear to be a "background force" omnipresent over everything, and we would never be able to develop either an instrument to measure the singularity's exerted force because of a lack of possible reference-points.
This leads to the question "well, since black holes also capture light particles, why isn't all the light of the 'real', 'outside' universe also visible as a sheen all around us at the edges of the visible universe?"
But we don't have any concept of what happens to light after it crosses an event horizon. For all we know, photons are just energetic enough to whip around the event horizon without ever being perceived again (you'd have to be right on the event horizon, with a line of observation orthogonal to the photon's path -- which is always changing due to the centripetal force pointing inward) and only less energetic forms such as hydrogen actually manage to "fall in" (which would explain the otherwise inexplicable background hydrogen.)
Sorry if you haven't encountered this theory before, it's entirely my own creation that I came up with just trying to be controversial while lounging around staring at the sky at night. I'm not nearly mathematically creditable enough (only recently passed Differential Equations and completed my minor in mathematics, and majoring in computer engineering, not astrophysics or related fields,) I don't have the time or the fancy, and most importantly of all I wouldn't want to be the one to have to break it to anybody.
And I'm absolutely sure it would be rejected outright, just because every time I bring it up to anyone they just get stunned and stare off into space. I mainly use it as a psych-out for people who are high or drunk at parties, you know -- to fuck with people.
Hmm. Interesting point.
You could stick to simple pathology (i.e. "a led to b led to c") and say that if only two known people were supposed to have the data (the insemination video, in your example, presumably only to be owned by the egg-bearer and the sperm-donor) and if one of those people is charging illegal dissemination of the data, then it must be the other person who did the deed.
So even if the charged person used darkwebz, deleted the logs of the logs of the LOGGING of logging's log log, and found a free e-mail server that can't be hacked and which has an absentee sysop, and telnetted the mainframe through the satellite uplink, you could still say "yeah, but, it was you."
HOWEVER -- which I think is really what you're getting at -- it could be made to show that it's impossible to prove which of the two originally consenting parties with-drew the line of consent at the dissemination of the data. Charged party B could claim that infuriated party A was actually the culprit, and there would be no way at all whatsoever to prove whodunit.
Laws like this always, always, always ignore that data which is created has every possible eventuality of becoming shared. They create these artificial boundaries where sharing is supposed to "not happen", but hell these days the data itself can share itself.
Let's say that the happily fluid-swapping couple recorded and stored the video of the conception of tomorrow's tyrannical pirate using software based entirely on Flash. It was a Flash application and it stored the video also as Flash.
Knowing the vulnerabilities of Flash, any weirdo on the internet could have been the one to distribute the video and even to make it look like one or both parties were the ones to blame.
I see it, now. I was trying to figure out what their angle was, but you put it rather plainly.
This law would basically guarantee that there would never be another paparazzi photo of some starlet skinny dipping or sun tanning, ever, ever again.
It doesn't matter that there's no intent to do emotional harm to the subject of the rag photo. They did not give consent and obviously since they are celebrities, and since that means they can make a lot of money from every picture taken of them, they would never in a million years let anyone take a picture of them without their permission. Wow, even at that point, I guess you would not have to show an attempt to directly cause emotional harm -- if it's a celebrity, ANY paparazzi photo or even any fan photo that shows ANYTHING more than bare arms will harm that celeb's income and would be like stealing from them, and theft is emotionally distressing and voila, emotional harm.
Hell, I'm glad the MPAA is fighting against this thing.
I thought it was already well understood that the Celts were a culture that precipitated more or less throughout France and the British Isles, for quite some time. It's perplexing to me that this is news at all, since I can't recall anyone ever saying that the Irish were ever purely Celtic in origin.
Even though the article is about things I don't use, I'm pretty sure this is what was meant by "news for nerds". The only way to be sure to reach that definition consistently is to post Linux news. It doesn't matter if the article has equivalents or analogs that don't involve Linux, or if those analogs are boring. The important thing is that if Slashdot isn't consistently like standing around a water cooler at the top of some D&D Wizard Tower, then it's just not slashdotty.
If politely calling you out on your cop-out erosion of your own argument rather than outright calling you a troll is:
sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "Lalalalala..."
... then you might be a troll. And yes, everyone who's not a troll always, always, always wins a debate against a troll because a troll's not even trying to debate. Back to the original illustration: you gave up. You eroded your own argument instead of ceding the point. Next troll.
it would be far quicker and more efficient to have Kim Jong Obama make all of the decisions unilaterally rather than have the whole country debate policy. ...
we want fair government, we want transparent government, we want big policy decisions
Um, have you ever heard the term "speak for yourself"? Or the position that using the royal "we" philosophically is not only entirely bullshit and kind of stupid, it's also rude?
More to the point, nothing I said in parent post was political in any way. The government's bureaucratic process can be more efficient without that having any bearing on the power of the executive branch. Sorry if you got those wires tangled but that's not all of "us" with that problem.
Sorry but not everything in the world fits inside your soapbox.
Now, if you were *really* going to be a genius at getting in a snarky comment to make yourself seem intelligent, you'd go back in time to the article where his now-disavowed claims were originally covered, and you'd post all about how you know it's a lie from the outset, rather than boost yourself up in hindsight.
So either AC is making it up, or AC isn't that familiar with VAX and the computer (if it's real) was something even older?
That's sort of crazy, to think that somewhere in our government there might be a machine that's older than anybody working around it, that nobody understands even in terms of what function it's processing or even what inputs and outputs it's dealing with, and that if it broke maybe -- who knows -- an entire agency could collapse or a huge part of the infrastructure could fail, or a nuclear war could start or something.
Pretty weird even if it is speculative fiction.
There are a lot of comments here that this FOIA request is a waste of time and money, all for "fun". But if you think about it, this information shouldn't have to be commanded or browbeaten out of millions of government employees. And if the government is operating the way it *should* be, then the gathering, processing and collating of this data should all be routed through a record so that -- voila -- anytime the government, itself, needs to know what it has on hand then it knows where exactly to look and in one place. This would be very handy if the government, itself, started to wonder if entire groups of machines and protocols needed immediate replacement or not. They could have a specialist go through all of this gathered inventory data and give them a realistic budget and timeline. With the data already on hand, that sort of project would be saved the time and effort it took to compile the data in the first place.
Now, on top of that, consider the four stated aims of the report:
* Find which departments are thrifty enough to keep machines in service long past their expiration.
-- how would this not serve as valuable information to the government if it's assessed and quantified in a way that's easy to understand and makes sense?
* Learn the technical dependencies that are holding back the effectiveness of public services.
-- again, how would this not be valuable information?
* Reveal security problems raised by departments that refuse to upgrade from unsupported, obsolete systems.
-- again!
* Critique the allocation and utilization of computer resources by the government
-- which doesn't offer as much usefulness as the other three points, really just generalizes the entire thing, but still there it is. How is this not valuable information?
This is exactly the same tack that "quick switch to gold!" enthusiasts take when you soundly beat them with their own arguments: they "dare" you to "short gold" if you "know so much" and are "so confident".
I might have read somewhere that this is typical behaviour for traumatized victims of abuse.
Everyone except the people who don't own or control the mining technology or the launch pads. They'll still continue to slave away just as people who don't own or control the banking world do today.
It sounds like you're eroding your position to stay "right". I'll just take that emboldened "maybe" and let the rest fall into the void. Thank you for p(l)aying.
Don't, don't, just don't.
The Parent is arguing that if everything in your life such as your contracting earnings for work, and your transactions of other sources of income, were also negotiated in Gold, then you'd be in the clear because even if the dollar-evaluation of Gold changes, you're still owed Gold for things like work-hours put in at work or projects completed for clients.
You're clearly arguing with a deluded lunatic.
For their unicorn economy to work, those bosses and those clients would also have to demand that a sufficient amount of their own income is also negotiated in gold, or else they, too, would have to suffer the exchange rate instability.
And that means those sources of income must also demand gold for their goods and services, etc.
Their plan only works if it's basically completely and instantly adopted by the entire population. And eventually you run into a problem: there's no way in hell that you can represent the daily exchange of goods, services, and everything else in let's say the United States of America with gold, while also representing the unexchanged value in all bank accounts in the USA with gold, while also representing the potential for economic growth also in gold.
You could argue that everything can be conducted electronically and that all the gold will actually be stored in Cheyenne Mountain or whatever. You could argue that the system will start with an evaluation of gold that allows the given amount of gold to represent all of the wealth in the united states.
No matter what you argue, you run into the fact that either new discovery is made and mined at a rate equal to or faster then the rate of economic growth, or you face continuous deflation. And that's deflation on a currency that is already so infinitesimalized by how small amount of it there is compared to the sum of gross domestic product plus capital plus banking principal plus wealth, etc. etc.
The evaluation of goods and services in gold would start off infinitesimalized and it would only decrease as time goes by. The people who argue for gold as a currency might as well just argue for any number, any integer whatsoever, to represent all the world's wealth and that everybody in the world simply exchanges increasingly infinitesimal amounts of that.
It's a harebrained scheme and it's not worth arguing with them over it because they never think they're wrong because by the time they're grasping at straws with this gold-based thing, they're already desperate and listening to crackhead late night radio shows looking for answers, or moved onto phase two where they're slowly draining their accounts and watching daytime television and getting sucked in by advertisements meant to fleece the aging population who are losing their faculties.
Actually it kind of does.
When people argue for gettin' yer gold coins ready for the crash (during discussions on politics, economics, whatever -- some people bring this up over what to get for breakfast) I like to liken a crisis as a life boat and ask them whether their heavy chest of gold coins is going to get them a spot on a the life boat.
Heh.
Thanks, A.C., for calling me "Mulder" -- it suggests that my views could be popular instead of quieted up.
But sorry, I can't bite. Frankly, just judging by your tone, it would do me little good to even breach any one of numerous subjects. I'll just take your below-the-surface bubbling of ridicule ready to blow for what it is and leave the island before it blows.
... isn't it more convenient to assume, at the start, that individual people are mostly honest, than mostly dishonest?
Sure. For instance, I assume at the start that John McAfee is mostly honest. That's why my assumption is perhaps John hadn't thought of a potentially dishonest Apple in this situation.
But overall, how can anybody pursue info security without a strong tendency to assume dishonesty on behalf of nearly every party?
At least with Apple there is the possibility that they are not my enemy.
But that's also true, as well. Given the numerous lies against John McAfee and attempts on his life, I wouldn't call it necessarily "fatigue" if he were to hedge his bets with a potential non-threat.
Right-o. And, I personally helped develop the digital platform this artificial telepathic network will be reliant upon, and I actually did name it "SATAN" in version 0.9.310: it's an acronym that stands for:
Strategic
And
Tactical
Assistance
Network.
And so far it's been highly successful in over 1,270 simulations (each of which takes a few days to complete.)
The platform side of the project has a budget that stands at officially zero dollars (U.S.) though I am allowed to get whatever food and drinks I want from the cafeteria and vending machines for free. (I've put on a little weight!)
If we're successful, the SATAN network will make it so that no soldier is ever alone, or even "left behind": SATAN will ensure that even soldiers who are lying incapacitated on the battlefield can commandeer inbound ordinance assets even if they have been abandoned by their squadron. Meanwhile, they will be able to coordinate their own Drone-Assisted Rescue Mission without relying on intermediary response.
It's a brave new world!
Just because John wouldn't show up for your Annual Tinfoil Hat Convention doesn't mean you should just lash out in anger and dismiss the entire field. There are still people in Tinfoil Hat land who need leaders like you to press ahead, even if John can't be one of them.
I should have assumed so much.
I thank yourself and the other commenter here pointing out the obvious; I should have considered that the device would not have to cross the blood-giving vessels around the brain in order to function.
But this does leave some serious health questions:
* how are you ever going to design an object that does not impede blood flow, as a stent-form or otherwise
* what amazing, exotic elements is this thing shrouded in, that will both keep the tissues from responding to it and also keep from puncturing the tissue walls
If all you think the Cold War is about is nuclear weapons brinkmanship, you're totally coddled as to (or better, per) the Cold War.
There are things that came to fruition just prior to and during WW2 that haven't even brushed the public foremind, yet. And even the nuke race aspect has been escalating for the last seven years, which puts your De Lorean reference way out in right field.
I'd have to agree based on many historic examples.
The current issue with Apple is my favorite example at the time. There's no way of knowing whether Apple has already given some agencies backdoors or not; if they have, pretending to "fight" with the agencies on a backdoor gives consumers and shareholders the illusion that's more desirable.
And also, let's take into consideration that Apple is well-known for abusing the leverage of "planned obsolescence". Their devices are apt to be updated with a completely necessary platform revision that renders old-enough models absolutely incapable of maintaining any decent level of performance.
Given that Apple is a known abuser of planned obsolescence, let's think about the current stand-off in similar terms:
* Apple could, after much "fighting" for the audience of consumers and shareholders, be "forced" to give-in to the agencies' demands and produce a backdoor.
* But Apple is smart, and courageous. So they promise consumers and shareholders that the currently release backdoor is only going to be useful on all previous and existing models of Apple devices; the next iteration of Apple devices will utilize a different standard, function, or giant integer that renders the backdoor moot.
* Voila: every person who owns every past model of Apple devices will gladly get rid of their old "junk" and get the brand-newest Apple device. If they don't do so gladly, maybe it's because standards of practice at their workplace simply force them to do so in order to maintain corporate integrity.
McAfee has sided with Apple a bit too strongly and a bit too readily at the present time, for my tastes. And that taste is one that prefers my computer gurus and infosec wizards to be consistent, unwavering and to never miss a single detail.
Now, McAfee's a busy guy. Maybe he hasn't had the time to consider that Apple could be co-conspiring with the FBI and so on.
That's pretty ambitious, but like many other 90's-like brain drains it has very little real science supporting it.