Infomercials are right about buying gold. They're just lying about why you should buy it from them at inflated multiples of scrap value.
Yeah, the world is going to nuke itself, and if you but any gold at all you will be safe and rich.
If you have the gold in scrip certificates, good luck getting it, and if you have it in person, after their apocalypse and the word gets out you have gold, someone else is going to come around and relieve you with something using lead. It's alchemy at last.
Even with current high prices about 20% of gold goes into industrial and medical uses.
Gold is not a great conductor, silver is much better. If you don't know why gold contacts are even used, don't include it in your analysis! You'd have to just lump all the industrial uses together and take their word for it that it is valuable, because you don't even fucking know.
Oh hell, cut the guy a break - I know exactly what he meant, as while yes, silver is a better conductor under many circumstances - but there is a excellent reason why it isn't used for connectors, because it starts being a less good conductor than gold after tarnish sets in.
If you're out in the desert and looking for some water, having a lump of metal to help your still's effectiveness at night could be the difference between life and death. Also, if you see some camels on the horizon, try holding some gold up to the sun to create a reflection; they might sell you some water!
How much stuff have you ever bought from a camel? Most of them just make weird honking noises, and if they are horny, start foaming at the mouth.
It is backed by people investing in it, because they think the current price is lower than its ultimate value.
If someone invests in a bar of gold, how much use do they get out of that ?
Something tells me that Burl Ives is going to show up and start singing "Silver and Gold" from that Rudoph the Red Nosed Reindeer claymation any moment now.....
It's backed by the people using it, just like any other currency. I've never seen anyone properly explain why that wouldn't be good enough for Bitcoin, but it is good enough for gold.
(Yes, I know, gold is used for industrial purposes. However, this does not explain why we must pay $1300 for an ounce of gold that takes about $500 to mine, while mining 10 times the amount we need, and already having stockpiled years worth of production)
Bitcoin is analogous to gold, except like you point out, is intrinsically worthless. And yeah, gold is not a really good investment now, despite what the weird infomercials say. I have some precious metals investments, but Gold is the most volatile and untrustworthy because it's run on panic.
The Harvard MBA opens doors that would be forever closed to you with a Master's degree from State U.
It is a big help to get that first job. From there on out it is up to the individual. I've worked with many shakers and movers that graduated from Obscure U.
Some times I think the Harvard or nothing meme is just something made up for failures to feel good about. They didn't succeed because they didn't go to X school.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
Well he would know...
JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who called it a "fraud"
Ditto
Your point? Agree that it is fraud because these experts call it fraud and avoid it, or invest like you're the third chimp trying to get on the ark, because this is experts in performing fraud talking?
The fraud that is being perpetrated is not Bitcoin but the fiat money cranked out by scammer governments that seem to think they can do anything they want to to the public, including ruin the concept of money itself.
All money since the beginning of money is fiat money. Whether it be gold, jewels, cowrie shells, or Yap stone Rai.
Although, I'd be curious if you had the examples of non-fiat money. If salt was rare, that might be a good choice. Something essential to life that we'll die if we don't have it is needed to be non-fiat. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is pretty common and easy to get these days.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
If anyone should know about perpetrating fraud, it would be Lloyd Blankfeind. And his buddy Jamie Dimon as well.
Is your point that we shouldn't listen to him because he knows something about fraud, or that we should listen to him because he knows something about fraud?
In these days of howaboutism, is some times gets hard to tell!
It happened several times already. But the hype pulls it right back up, and people love it, because on every crash, you buy em because you know the stupid hypers will pull it up again.
Reminds me of the old housing bubble. Amazing that people would sign up to lose everything, but humans do it again and again.
Fancy a chance at surviving a serious head injury, especially if it may take months or years to recover? Don't sign up to being an organ donor
That kid was an ideal candidate for organs. Young, healthy, head injury.
Now given that doctors are human, and suffer from all of the ethical problems that other humans enjoy, it is pretty difficult to argue that they wouldn't
pressure the parents to allow them to be hero's, and save a lot of other people by opening this kid up and harvesting everything they could. I have no doubt with the freshness desired has them harvesting while the donor's heart is still beating.
Organs can not be harvested unless dead. Otherwise the surgery team would be murderers. They are not.
A patient have to be declared dead before anything related to organ donation will begin. Properly dead: brain dead.
The family of donors doesn't get to pay for the donation. That is conspiracy theory crazy.
You are correct about the patient having to be declared brain dead. The question is does the heart stopping beating equal brain death.
This is not terribly surprising, that doctors are in a hurry to remove body parts. given that a lot of people want a lot of body parts, and ther fresher the better, so tear 'em up.
But that this is some sort of conspiracy theory for kooks? Perhaps not.
I've actually wanted to post my call sign on sites like/. at various times through the years, but declined to do so because it's a single lookup on fcc.gov to find my personal details.
Yeah, me too. Don't want to offend the politically correct on both sides, so I don't post it.
Around 1999-2002... in this post-columbine, post-9/11 world of fear weâ(TM)ve found ourselves in.
But also, as society has grown and the avenues for impersonating strangers have multiplied as more and more people move around a lot rather than live in the same area for generations, there is more to worrt about. And people are bad at estimating risk and blow things out of proportion as it suits them.
I had to chuckle at the last part, because you are right about the bad risk assessment - where many people have no problem getting jiggy with their shemale midget scat porn, all logged somewhere, but are too fearful to post their home number on their house or mailbox, because "privacy very important to me, and you never know when someone is going to randomly decide to kill everyone in our town with a 345 in their address!"
Anyhow, if our addresses need to be a state secret, we're living in the wrong place. Or need some sort of anti-paranoia meds.
You have been modded funny, but it's actually quite interesting. At what point did we freak out about someone knowing our name, address and phone number? This used to be a public record.
Yup, As a Ham, I have my name, address license level and other information on me on many publicly accessible databases. It's been that way since radio Amateurs existed.
But today, we are starting to see a few idiots demanding the have their identity kept as a secret. They are told to get a different hobby/avocation. Might as well demand to not have license plates on their cars. Whackers.
...who's going to have the money to buy the stuff that these robots make? What will happen to our consumerism and advertising driven economies then? Will/. be able to survive? Is this how the robot apocalypse will be, i.e. an economic depression rather than Skynet and killer androids?
The eternal question. In the past, automation allowed the displaced to shift into new jobs. Whether that will be the case in this upcoming situation is not clear, since the goal is not to make things cheaper or better, but to eliminate jobs.
This situation is not going to be stopped, but there seems to be precious little intelligent discussion on what will happen. There are many people who through lack of ambition, or mental makeup, are not capable of moving up to a higher-tier career. What do we do with them. Some of the possibilities are distinctly unpleasant. A person who is performing at their peak that can be replaced by a robot best worth is the components of their bodies.
Some folks might be able to make the shift up when faced with termination, but even then they will be in competition with many people vying for fewer jobs.
The folks who use the automation to eliminate jobs and increase profits are not necessarily going to realize those profits, as the menial capability robots are going to decrease the potential customer base. As the automation works it's way up the food chain, there will be a tipping point. How many useless humans can be supported in a system which goal is to eliminate their means of supporting themselves?
There are some rather obvious limits to the ability of the Government to support these now useless people, especially given the also obvious shrinking tax base. That situation is a positive feedback loop.
Unfortunately, our soundbite world won't allow for much more than one liner "solutions" to a very complex situation.
Watch - in someone's answer, the results of this will somehow be jobs for more people. I've never seen any projected job but foe someone keeping the robots working. Somehow a Restaurant with 20 employees will be replaced by a manager and a person that fixes the robots as needed. I'm curious what the other 18 are going to do.
I mean this is happening whether we like it or not. But it's happening with no planning.
"The report says that 39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations."
Doesn't that mean that automation will shift fairly easily into those folks new Jerbs?
So what you're saying is that you've diddled a horse.
Ermagherd! I spit my coffee!
Remember that if you put words in my mouth, I can do the same to you.
Cute, and of course.I'm not certain where that little bit of Rosarch level response came from. We had a horse, and he was certainly a beautiful animal, but can't say engaging in sex with him ever remotely crossed my mind. YMMV
Now here you're making the classic mistake making assumptions that just aren't true. In order to build a resistance to anything requires habitual use. As I said, codeine sales are tracked so habitual use is something that is easy to detect. Now I use the drug for effective pain control in irregular intervals, I might use 10 doses in 3 months... if that.
Yeah, sounds like the levels my wife takes. It works well for that.
However what I don't want are people taking an effective and safe product off the shelves because they're hand-wringing over a non-issue whilst ignoring the much larger issue of a more dangerous and addictive substance.
Not certain where you figured I ever said that. I want an alternative. I want a painkiller that is effective but doesn't have the side effects. And yes, Opiates have side effects. My wife tells me all about them. Me, if I take enough to be effective, I break into a sweat, the room turns sideways and sometimes I puke. That's based on some post operative effects. I'm in real trouble ahead, as all my old hockey injuries are returning to haunt me, and I can't take opiates.
And I agree that more simple painkillers like codeine and vicodin should not be classified with heroin. You're fighting with the wrong person about that. I wonder how many people have turned to heroin after being shut off from their prescription painkillers. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a lot.
No, you're a person who heard "drugs" and says "are bad MMMM-kay". Its reactionaries like you who are doing more damage with knee-jerk reactions without understanding the subject.
Speaking of putting words in people's mouths...
At least I never thought about diddling a horse! Dayum man, that's gross. 8^)
Slashdot Mirror
In the end, Bitcoin is another funny money vehicle that will probably bubble and collapse just like the other bubbles of pretend money do.
Like gold for example...
I don't know for certain, but I would guess that as much money has been lost on gold as has been made with it.
So many people play the old "Buy high, sell low" game.
Infomercials are right about buying gold. They're just lying about why you should buy it from them at inflated multiples of scrap value.
Yeah, the world is going to nuke itself, and if you but any gold at all you will be safe and rich.
If you have the gold in scrip certificates, good luck getting it, and if you have it in person, after their apocalypse and the word gets out you have gold, someone else is going to come around and relieve you with something using lead. It's alchemy at last.
Or point out that one fraud calling something else a fraud is a good example of a pot calling a kettle black...
Yup - its howaboutism at it's finest.
Even with current high prices about 20% of gold goes into industrial and medical uses.
Gold is not a great conductor, silver is much better. If you don't know why gold contacts are even used, don't include it in your analysis! You'd have to just lump all the industrial uses together and take their word for it that it is valuable, because you don't even fucking know.
Oh hell, cut the guy a break - I know exactly what he meant, as while yes, silver is a better conductor under many circumstances - but there is a excellent reason why it isn't used for connectors, because it starts being a less good conductor than gold after tarnish sets in.
If you're out in the desert and looking for some water, having a lump of metal to help your still's effectiveness at night could be the difference between life and death. Also, if you see some camels on the horizon, try holding some gold up to the sun to create a reflection; they might sell you some water!
How much stuff have you ever bought from a camel? Most of them just make weird honking noises, and if they are horny, start foaming at the mouth.
It is backed by people investing in it, because they think the current price is lower than its ultimate value.
If someone invests in a bar of gold, how much use do they get out of that ?
Something tells me that Burl Ives is going to show up and start singing "Silver and Gold" from that Rudoph the Red Nosed Reindeer claymation any moment now.....
It's backed by the people using it, just like any other currency. I've never seen anyone properly explain why that wouldn't be good enough for Bitcoin, but it is good enough for gold.
(Yes, I know, gold is used for industrial purposes. However, this does not explain why we must pay $1300 for an ounce of gold that takes about $500 to mine, while mining 10 times the amount we need, and already having stockpiled years worth of production)
Bitcoin is analogous to gold, except like you point out, is intrinsically worthless. And yeah, gold is not a really good investment now, despite what the weird infomercials say. I have some precious metals investments, but Gold is the most volatile and untrustworthy because it's run on panic.
We should listen to him, but always while keeping in mind that he's only trying to help himself, not us.
Never trust anyone with your money that doesn't lose when you lose.
The Harvard MBA opens doors that would be forever closed to you with a Master's degree from State U.
It is a big help to get that first job. From there on out it is up to the individual. I've worked with many shakers and movers that graduated from Obscure U.
Some times I think the Harvard or nothing meme is just something made up for failures to feel good about. They didn't succeed because they didn't go to X school.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
Well he would know...
JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who called it a "fraud"
Ditto
Your point? Agree that it is fraud because these experts call it fraud and avoid it, or invest like you're the third chimp trying to get on the ark, because this is experts in performing fraud talking?
The fraud that is being perpetrated is not Bitcoin but the fiat money cranked out by scammer governments that seem to think they can do anything they want to to the public, including ruin the concept of money itself.
All money since the beginning of money is fiat money. Whether it be gold, jewels, cowrie shells, or Yap stone Rai.
Although, I'd be curious if you had the examples of non-fiat money. If salt was rare, that might be a good choice. Something essential to life that we'll die if we don't have it is needed to be non-fiat. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is pretty common and easy to get these days.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told Bloomberg that the currency serves as "a vehicle for perpetrating fraud."
If anyone should know about perpetrating fraud, it would be Lloyd Blankfeind. And his buddy Jamie Dimon as well.
Is your point that we shouldn't listen to him because he knows something about fraud, or that we should listen to him because he knows something about fraud?
In these days of howaboutism, is some times gets hard to tell!
It happened several times already. But the hype pulls it right back up, and people love it, because on every crash, you buy em because you know the stupid hypers will pull it up again.
Reminds me of the old housing bubble. Amazing that people would sign up to lose everything, but humans do it again and again.
That is why exchanges are continually embezzling your coins and getting hacked.
In the end, Bitcoin is another funny money vehicle that will probably bubble and collapse just like the other bubbles of pretend money do.
So the USA destroyed 12 of its own satellites?
In 21st Century Soviet America, it only makes sense that we did.
Fancy a chance at surviving a serious head injury, especially if it may take months or years to recover? Don't sign up to being an organ donor
That kid was an ideal candidate for organs. Young, healthy, head injury.
Now given that doctors are human, and suffer from all of the ethical problems that other humans enjoy, it is pretty difficult to argue that they wouldn't
pressure the parents to allow them to be hero's, and save a lot of other people by opening this kid up and harvesting everything they could. I have no doubt with the freshness desired has them harvesting while the donor's heart is still beating.
Organs can not be harvested unless dead. Otherwise the surgery team would be murderers. They are not. A patient have to be declared dead before anything related to organ donation will begin. Properly dead: brain dead.
The family of donors doesn't get to pay for the donation. That is conspiracy theory crazy.
Well, take it up with these people: http://www.lifenews.com/2013/0... http://ahrp.org/us-organ-harve...
You are correct about the patient having to be declared brain dead. The question is does the heart stopping beating equal brain death. This is not terribly surprising, that doctors are in a hurry to remove body parts. given that a lot of people want a lot of body parts, and ther fresher the better, so tear 'em up.
But that this is some sort of conspiracy theory for kooks? Perhaps not.
Ahem, that is 2 time Stanley Cup winner Phil Kessel.
Buy Kessel as many hotdogs as he wants.
This is fun - I suspect most Slashdotters have no idea what the heck we're talking about.
Same here.
I've actually wanted to post my call sign on sites like /. at various times through the years, but declined to do so because it's a single lookup on fcc.gov to find my personal details.
Yeah, me too. Don't want to offend the politically correct on both sides, so I don't post it.
Around 1999-2002... in this post-columbine, post-9/11 world of fear weâ(TM)ve found ourselves in.
But also, as society has grown and the avenues for impersonating strangers have multiplied as more and more people move around a lot rather than live in the same area for generations, there is more to worrt about. And people are bad at estimating risk and blow things out of proportion as it suits them.
I had to chuckle at the last part, because you are right about the bad risk assessment - where many people have no problem getting jiggy with their shemale midget scat porn, all logged somewhere, but are too fearful to post their home number on their house or mailbox, because "privacy very important to me, and you never know when someone is going to randomly decide to kill everyone in our town with a 345 in their address!" Anyhow, if our addresses need to be a state secret, we're living in the wrong place. Or need some sort of anti-paranoia meds.
Yikes, a phone book would cost millions!
You have been modded funny, but it's actually quite interesting. At what point did we freak out about someone knowing our name, address and phone number? This used to be a public record.
Yup, As a Ham, I have my name, address license level and other information on me on many publicly accessible databases. It's been that way since radio Amateurs existed.
But today, we are starting to see a few idiots demanding the have their identity kept as a secret. They are told to get a different hobby/avocation. Might as well demand to not have license plates on their cars. Whackers.
Show me the actual evidence.
You're the one making claims....
I am making a negative claim, the claim that there isn't evidence of what you assert.
Seriously, you even attempt to make an argument that I have to prove a negative? You don't prove negatives. You prove positives.
Thanks for playing, anyhow.
...who's going to have the money to buy the stuff that these robots make? What will happen to our consumerism and advertising driven economies then? Will /. be able to survive? Is this how the robot apocalypse will be, i.e. an economic depression rather than Skynet and killer androids?
The eternal question. In the past, automation allowed the displaced to shift into new jobs. Whether that will be the case in this upcoming situation is not clear, since the goal is not to make things cheaper or better, but to eliminate jobs.
This situation is not going to be stopped, but there seems to be precious little intelligent discussion on what will happen. There are many people who through lack of ambition, or mental makeup, are not capable of moving up to a higher-tier career. What do we do with them. Some of the possibilities are distinctly unpleasant. A person who is performing at their peak that can be replaced by a robot best worth is the components of their bodies.
Some folks might be able to make the shift up when faced with termination, but even then they will be in competition with many people vying for fewer jobs.
The folks who use the automation to eliminate jobs and increase profits are not necessarily going to realize those profits, as the menial capability robots are going to decrease the potential customer base. As the automation works it's way up the food chain, there will be a tipping point. How many useless humans can be supported in a system which goal is to eliminate their means of supporting themselves?
There are some rather obvious limits to the ability of the Government to support these now useless people, especially given the also obvious shrinking tax base. That situation is a positive feedback loop.
Unfortunately, our soundbite world won't allow for much more than one liner "solutions" to a very complex situation.
Watch - in someone's answer, the results of this will somehow be jobs for more people. I've never seen any projected job but foe someone keeping the robots working. Somehow a Restaurant with 20 employees will be replaced by a manager and a person that fixes the robots as needed. I'm curious what the other 18 are going to do.
I mean this is happening whether we like it or not. But it's happening with no planning.
Doesn't that mean that automation will shift fairly easily into those folks new Jerbs?
Not to worry folks, we'll all be bosses.
The actual amount was eleventy million million.
I talked to Chef's father, and said it was more like tree fiddy.
So what you're saying is that you've diddled a horse.
Ermagherd! I spit my coffee!
Remember that if you put words in my mouth, I can do the same to you.
Cute, and of course.I'm not certain where that little bit of Rosarch level response came from. We had a horse, and he was certainly a beautiful animal, but can't say engaging in sex with him ever remotely crossed my mind. YMMV
Now here you're making the classic mistake making assumptions that just aren't true. In order to build a resistance to anything requires habitual use. As I said, codeine sales are tracked so habitual use is something that is easy to detect. Now I use the drug for effective pain control in irregular intervals, I might use 10 doses in 3 months... if that.
Yeah, sounds like the levels my wife takes. It works well for that.
However what I don't want are people taking an effective and safe product off the shelves because they're hand-wringing over a non-issue whilst ignoring the much larger issue of a more dangerous and addictive substance.
Not certain where you figured I ever said that. I want an alternative. I want a painkiller that is effective but doesn't have the side effects. And yes, Opiates have side effects. My wife tells me all about them. Me, if I take enough to be effective, I break into a sweat, the room turns sideways and sometimes I puke. That's based on some post operative effects. I'm in real trouble ahead, as all my old hockey injuries are returning to haunt me, and I can't take opiates.
And I agree that more simple painkillers like codeine and vicodin should not be classified with heroin. You're fighting with the wrong person about that. I wonder how many people have turned to heroin after being shut off from their prescription painkillers. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a lot.
No, you're a person who heard "drugs" and says "are bad MMMM-kay". Its reactionaries like you who are doing more damage with knee-jerk reactions without understanding the subject.
Speaking of putting words in people's mouths...
At least I never thought about diddling a horse! Dayum man, that's gross. 8^)