Nobody is required to use Bitcoin, which is why it is so volatile (its value is based entirely on speculation) and will ultimately fail (as people demand dollars and other currencies more than they demand Bitcoin).
Even with the above reasoning, Bitcoin can still survive if there are enough situations where no currency is de jure standard and Bitcoin has a considerable advantage. Black market for sure, and gray market might be a good candidate for it.
Yours is a bleak perspective though. I tend to believe that realism is not very realistic. Only time can tell...
Although I agree that every kind of scam is replicated many times over in the Bitcoin world, your examples are a little misguided. A ponzi scheme calling itself a ponzi scheme is not actually a ponzi scheme, is it? It's just a basic gambling game with an eccentric name. Also, GLBSE is a weakly regulated stock exchange, which can be called a scammer magnet for sure, but nevertheless cannot be called a scam itself.
Bitcoin is as anonymous as you need it to be. It's neither perfectly anonymous nor perfectly traceable. You can, for instance, create transaction records offline, and then submit it to the network through a mediator, so it can be as anonymous as any method of communication (I2P, postal service, carrier pigeon, etc.). In most practical use cases (where anonymity is required), it would be mostly like an F2F situation. It also provides considerable plausible deniability.
Weed? Give me a break, the biggest political attack on Bitcoin so far is because you *can* buy weed with it.
Buying most of these online might not work for you, but for what it's worth, one of my friends buys beer online with the coins he mines. Belgian Flavours shop accepts Bitcoin AFAIK. You can buy PCs and all kinds of electronics for sure. Not sure how competitive the prices are though, at the worst case you can buy vouchers for more popular sites. Smokes, yes, there are a multitude of shops for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Prices for these sort of products are really competitive.
I think yours is a criticism of my rhetoric, not the content. What I meant is, we are motivated to discern intentionanlity. For us, a falling apple does not indicate intention, whereas a lion seeking prey does. I think our motivation to define life is an extension of this. I'm guessing you don't agree, but that doesn't mean my comment has no semantic value. I could be stating the obvious though.
I also don't agree that this is unrelated to the subject. What do you, yourself, think that we are looking for a clear definition in the first place? And why can't we settle on a satisfactory one? In one hand, declaring that viruses are not living things can be perceived as comical, since they incorporate intentionalty, and in a very physical form. On the other hand, they are no more alive than proteins. Consider also prions. Imagine also a human being in stasis during interstellar travel. We can make up a definition and say none of these inanimate things are living. But this is only about practicalities of Biology. This kind of definitions will not help you understand what you don't already know, it's just a categorization of facts, not even a generalization. Then why bother philosophizing? If you take the other route, which I think is the intended one, then you find out that the transition between structures are seamless. Not only prions, but all proteins incorporate intentionality. Also, smaller molecules, atoms and so on.
...the need to define will...[is] a hopeless endeavor, as we witness in the article, since will is but a bunch of norms.
Way to go, nullify your own argument by providing a definition for what you say cannot be defined.
"Will" is also a word, a body is not just a bunch of organs, and so on. I apologize for the misleading wording though, maybe I should have used "describe" or even "discover" instead of "define" there.
I think a living thing by itself does not reduce local entropy, but arguably might itself have low entropy. For instance, what we do on earth is actually increase the entropy. Again, arguably, it is made possible by living things. In other words, the circumstances produced life in order to increase entropy more efficiently.
Second, I don't see self replication as a proper definition, but a theory. It may be true that in this universe life can only come by through self replication, though I don't believe it. I can imagine a sentient thing evolving in a different manner than self-replication. Plus, for instance, are man-made sentient computers living if they replicate, but not living if not? That would be a useless term.
because the passive aggressive culture we have today needs it in order to feel secure. it loves argumentum ad populum (among others).
Most insightful comment I've seen in ages.
The need to distinguish life from non-life arises from the need to define will, which human society sorely needs in order to find stable footing in the void left by religion. It's a hopeless endeavor, as we witness in the article, since will is but a bunch of norms. There is no rigid barrier between "things that act by themselves" (conventionally animals, God, but not zombies) and "things that are devoid of motive". It ultimately boils down to where the norms of the physical universe (laws of physics) come from. This is a problem posed by materialism. Biology, being materialistic, can never have an opinion on this.
What Biology is actually is doing, is trying to define its boundaries. Re-phrase it like that and all is fine.
The article tells that we are closing to borders of where our scientific method can take us. Philosophy of science needs to resume its work. It's known to produce a more advanced method every few millennia, so we're cool.
And more people wanting to install truly free software on their computers, making them aware of the problem.
That's a good point. Free software, at least at the essential tools level, are already as good or better than their proprietary counterparts. Free movies are getting better as well. Depends on taste, but I don't see any downsides to free music too. Literature is a bit different, maybe in the future a donation based economy might work but it doesn't look doable right now at least. On the other hand, most of the things I read now are free (blogs, wikis, etc.) so I guess we're getting there. I guess in the end we can totally make do with content created by voluntary payments (support if you like it, pay if you have money). Micropayment systems will enable more in the near future too (not sure how good flattr performs at this), and Bitcoin donations help preserve the privacy of content creators (which is pretty much essential if we are to guarantee the safety of dissidents we support, even in art form).
I don't think copyrights themselves are helpful to the humanity as a whole, however I'm not so much against giving content creators the right to define the extent of usage either. The content wouldn't exist if they didn't create them (yeah, it's not as simple as that really, but let's assume that). If it could really work without copyrights, let's give the content creators the choice. (Though, in my opinion, these new regulations are not about giving the content creators the choice, but giving the State more means to intervene with our business; the ultimate use case will not even be about copyrights. I don't see much consequential difference between regulations against content piracy and regulations against illegal content (e.g. CP).)
I admit to downloading and watching copyrighted content, but as a consumer I always donate if there is a channel to do so. I don't own a TV, I don't care to going to a DVD store (it's like buying cigarettes, I need to smoke now, who knows what I would want when I go all the way to the corner store; and besides they close at 7), and I don't know any "legal" streaming providers that serve content to my region. Even if they did, I'm not sure I would want to pay what they ask in advance (not sure though, depends on the amount and what I know about the content). Best option for me is paying if I like it to support the endeavor, or if a prior capital is necessary, become a micro-producer and contribute beforehand to support developing a project that I approve. There are a myriad of problems with this model, from trust issues (in the case of donations in advance) to the decreased incentive to pay, but it's already taking off. If it ever becomes a tradition, which by itself solves a lot of these problems, it might one day become a norm too.
there hasnt been any case of domestic terrorism in the u.s. since 2001
ter-ror-ism: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes
Take another look.
So, if you threaten to punch me because I'm a racist, you become a terrorist? Nice perversion of language.
Think about it. Terrorism never had a concrete definition, but it clearly was used to distinguish between direct use of violence to coerce and using "terror" to attain that goal. Terror distinctly meant a violent action of the kind that incites irrational fear. There is a need for such a term because of its tactical difference to other types of attacks, and mainly its unreasonable cost-effectiveness.
If the [...] al-Qaeda made statements that they were ceasing operations, denied involvement in any subsequent actions and assisted authorities in apprehending still active terrorists the US Government would be hard pressed to convince anyone that a state of war still exists. Will the terrorists do that? Probably not but the ball in in their court.
A pretty ridiculous claim, don't you think? At this point, I can claim to be al-Qaeda and post spam that challenge US government, in effect restrict a whole country indefinitely. Your illusion that this is a real war convinced you that al-Qaeda is an organization equivalent in legitimacy to the USA.
I'm not from US, but here we have ethnic and religious "terrorism" going on for decades, through different groups, including al-Qaeda. Those are just fucking names so that you can vaguely identify what's going on. It's not like asking FSF to close its doors, but asking for the Free Software Movement to cease operation. Who is going to decide that they are dead?
There isn't an obvious reason for "big companies" to create a Bitcoin clone. Why create a currency you can't control? If it succeeds, they would use it instead of creating a new one. Though if it is lacking a functionality that is desired, then forking might make sense.
Also think about this. You will create a brand new pure currency which is totally decentralized and only has value because of its functionality as a currency and nothing else. Wouldn't it be crazy to expect it to be able to compete with established State currencies with hundreds of years history, backed by the finance giants of the world and endless wars, protected by immense police power?
Bitcoin might fail, or succeed, but both would be gradual. If ever, it would take decades for it to compete with established currencies.
Actually, it is the miners that literally make the network.
In what way? Nodes make the network, most of which aren't miners, and they do a lot of important things like maintaining the ledger and preventing many sorts of attacks.
Back in my home country, a good 20 years ago, when we got payed in our own currency, we switched most of it to gold, USD and DM, almost daily. I live in Europe now, but have much more money so EUR volatility too becomes important and I still need to diversify, though not constantly. Maybe it's because I'm a maths guy, but I don't see the difference in volatility coefficient as a fundamental problem. Your local currency may lose value too, but usually more slowly.
If you are a merchant that wants to accept Bitcoin and don't want to be affected by volatility, you can use an intermediary system that converts Bitcoin to USD on the fly, at the time of sale. That's does with the problem once and for all.
Or otherwise, if you also want to accumulate Bitcoin, you could sell a percentage of your Bitcoin earnings daily (this kind of automation is pretty easy with Bitcoin obviously, and I suspect there are services that do this already). Say, your expected profit is 10%, so you only keep 10% of your earnings as Bitcoin.
Although, eventually the volatility will settle. It's not a specific problem about Bitcoin; any 'free' currency does have to overcome this obstacle.
b) why would you want to keep that much money as a virtual currency?
Hopefully, because he hadn't sold it yet. If I'd mined that many bitcoins, I'd have sold at least by the time it bubbled up to ~30 $/BTC.
You can never be sure when to sell... It's a different kind of wisdom. I would say that I would have sold @ 30$ if I hadn't been there and hadn't decided not to...:-)
Why -1 Flamebait? I'm telling something that can be verified easily, and the poster is deliberately spreading false information. It would take less than a couple of minutes to check the validity of both accounts. The outrage is that false information gets +5 Insightful, since it matches the political view of the majority here.
Alas, there's no honour left in mods, I'm out of Slashdot for good now...
They spent more on those machines, and on the electricity to run them, than they ever will 'mining' bitcoins.
Link? Or are you making this up on the fly and still getting +5 Insightful?
I'd be surprised if the investment hasn't paid itself off on the second month. It's not that mining is such a good idea (IMO it's not supposed to be very profitable, and I expect it to get less profitable soon) but the value has risen so much that I purchased a 3 year dedicated hosting service with the coins I mined with my crappy old video card in two months (and kept for a few months more).
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody is required to use Bitcoin, which is why it is so volatile (its value is based entirely on speculation) and will ultimately fail (as people demand dollars and other currencies more than they demand Bitcoin).
Even with the above reasoning, Bitcoin can still survive if there are enough situations where no currency is de jure standard and Bitcoin has a considerable advantage. Black market for sure, and gray market might be a good candidate for it.
Yours is a bleak perspective though. I tend to believe that realism is not very realistic. Only time can tell...
Just about every known financial scam was replicated in the tiny Bitcoin world ... ... fake stock exchanges to Ponzi schemes.
Although I agree that every kind of scam is replicated many times over in the Bitcoin world, your examples are a little misguided. A ponzi scheme calling itself a ponzi scheme is not actually a ponzi scheme, is it? It's just a basic gambling game with an eccentric name. Also, GLBSE is a weakly regulated stock exchange, which can be called a scammer magnet for sure, but nevertheless cannot be called a scam itself.
Bitcoin is as anonymous as you need it to be. It's neither perfectly anonymous nor perfectly traceable. You can, for instance, create transaction records offline, and then submit it to the network through a mediator, so it can be as anonymous as any method of communication (I2P, postal service, carrier pigeon, etc.). In most practical use cases (where anonymity is required), it would be mostly like an F2F situation. It also provides considerable plausible deniability.
Weed? Give me a break, the biggest political attack on Bitcoin so far is because you *can* buy weed with it.
Buying most of these online might not work for you, but for what it's worth, one of my friends buys beer online with the coins he mines. Belgian Flavours shop accepts Bitcoin AFAIK. You can buy PCs and all kinds of electronics for sure. Not sure how competitive the prices are though, at the worst case you can buy vouchers for more popular sites. Smokes, yes, there are a multitude of shops for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Prices for these sort of products are really competitive.
Thank you, your attention is much appreciated. I will consider this as a wake up call.
A lion reduces its own entropy by increasing that of antelopes.
Exactly. I guess that's what GP had meant by local entropy. Apologies.
I think yours is a criticism of my rhetoric, not the content. What I meant is, we are motivated to discern intentionanlity. For us, a falling apple does not indicate intention, whereas a lion seeking prey does. I think our motivation to define life is an extension of this. I'm guessing you don't agree, but that doesn't mean my comment has no semantic value. I could be stating the obvious though.
I also don't agree that this is unrelated to the subject. What do you, yourself, think that we are looking for a clear definition in the first place? And why can't we settle on a satisfactory one? In one hand, declaring that viruses are not living things can be perceived as comical, since they incorporate intentionalty, and in a very physical form. On the other hand, they are no more alive than proteins. Consider also prions. Imagine also a human being in stasis during interstellar travel. We can make up a definition and say none of these inanimate things are living. But this is only about practicalities of Biology. This kind of definitions will not help you understand what you don't already know, it's just a categorization of facts, not even a generalization. Then why bother philosophizing? If you take the other route, which I think is the intended one, then you find out that the transition between structures are seamless. Not only prions, but all proteins incorporate intentionality. Also, smaller molecules, atoms and so on.
...the need to define will...[is] a hopeless endeavor, as we witness in the article, since will is but a bunch of norms.
Way to go, nullify your own argument by providing a definition for what you say cannot be defined.
"Will" is also a word, a body is not just a bunch of organs, and so on. I apologize for the misleading wording though, maybe I should have used "describe" or even "discover" instead of "define" there.
I think a living thing by itself does not reduce local entropy, but arguably might itself have low entropy. For instance, what we do on earth is actually increase the entropy. Again, arguably, it is made possible by living things. In other words, the circumstances produced life in order to increase entropy more efficiently.
Second, I don't see self replication as a proper definition, but a theory. It may be true that in this universe life can only come by through self replication, though I don't believe it. I can imagine a sentient thing evolving in a different manner than self-replication. Plus, for instance, are man-made sentient computers living if they replicate, but not living if not? That would be a useless term.
because the passive aggressive culture we have today needs it in order to feel secure. it loves argumentum ad populum (among others).
Most insightful comment I've seen in ages.
The need to distinguish life from non-life arises from the need to define will, which human society sorely needs in order to find stable footing in the void left by religion. It's a hopeless endeavor, as we witness in the article, since will is but a bunch of norms. There is no rigid barrier between "things that act by themselves" (conventionally animals, God, but not zombies) and "things that are devoid of motive". It ultimately boils down to where the norms of the physical universe (laws of physics) come from. This is a problem posed by materialism. Biology, being materialistic, can never have an opinion on this.
What Biology is actually is doing, is trying to define its boundaries. Re-phrase it like that and all is fine.
"Internet" != "Interactive Web"
And the title is a joke on that precise fact.
The article tells that we are closing to borders of where our scientific method can take us. Philosophy of science needs to resume its work. It's known to produce a more advanced method every few millennia, so we're cool.
And more people wanting to install truly free software on their computers, making them aware of the problem.
That's a good point. Free software, at least at the essential tools level, are already as good or better than their proprietary counterparts. Free movies are getting better as well. Depends on taste, but I don't see any downsides to free music too. Literature is a bit different, maybe in the future a donation based economy might work but it doesn't look doable right now at least. On the other hand, most of the things I read now are free (blogs, wikis, etc.) so I guess we're getting there. I guess in the end we can totally make do with content created by voluntary payments (support if you like it, pay if you have money). Micropayment systems will enable more in the near future too (not sure how good flattr performs at this), and Bitcoin donations help preserve the privacy of content creators (which is pretty much essential if we are to guarantee the safety of dissidents we support, even in art form).
I don't think copyrights themselves are helpful to the humanity as a whole, however I'm not so much against giving content creators the right to define the extent of usage either. The content wouldn't exist if they didn't create them (yeah, it's not as simple as that really, but let's assume that). If it could really work without copyrights, let's give the content creators the choice. (Though, in my opinion, these new regulations are not about giving the content creators the choice, but giving the State more means to intervene with our business; the ultimate use case will not even be about copyrights. I don't see much consequential difference between regulations against content piracy and regulations against illegal content (e.g. CP).)
I admit to downloading and watching copyrighted content, but as a consumer I always donate if there is a channel to do so. I don't own a TV, I don't care to going to a DVD store (it's like buying cigarettes, I need to smoke now, who knows what I would want when I go all the way to the corner store; and besides they close at 7), and I don't know any "legal" streaming providers that serve content to my region. Even if they did, I'm not sure I would want to pay what they ask in advance (not sure though, depends on the amount and what I know about the content). Best option for me is paying if I like it to support the endeavor, or if a prior capital is necessary, become a micro-producer and contribute beforehand to support developing a project that I approve. There are a myriad of problems with this model, from trust issues (in the case of donations in advance) to the decreased incentive to pay, but it's already taking off. If it ever becomes a tradition, which by itself solves a lot of these problems, it might one day become a norm too.
there hasnt been any case of domestic terrorism in the u.s. since 2001
ter-ror-ism: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes
Take another look.
So, if you threaten to punch me because I'm a racist, you become a terrorist? Nice perversion of language.
Think about it. Terrorism never had a concrete definition, but it clearly was used to distinguish between direct use of violence to coerce and using "terror" to attain that goal. Terror distinctly meant a violent action of the kind that incites irrational fear. There is a need for such a term because of its tactical difference to other types of attacks, and mainly its unreasonable cost-effectiveness.
If the [...] al-Qaeda made statements that they were ceasing operations, denied involvement in any subsequent actions and assisted authorities in apprehending still active terrorists the US Government would be hard pressed to convince anyone that a state of war still exists. Will the terrorists do that? Probably not but the ball in in their court.
A pretty ridiculous claim, don't you think? At this point, I can claim to be al-Qaeda and post spam that challenge US government, in effect restrict a whole country indefinitely. Your illusion that this is a real war convinced you that al-Qaeda is an organization equivalent in legitimacy to the USA.
I'm not from US, but here we have ethnic and religious "terrorism" going on for decades, through different groups, including al-Qaeda. Those are just fucking names so that you can vaguely identify what's going on. It's not like asking FSF to close its doors, but asking for the Free Software Movement to cease operation. Who is going to decide that they are dead?
everyone who used it got fucked
... by 17 year old potheads...
There isn't an obvious reason for "big companies" to create a Bitcoin clone. Why create a currency you can't control? If it succeeds, they would use it instead of creating a new one. Though if it is lacking a functionality that is desired, then forking might make sense.
Also think about this. You will create a brand new pure currency which is totally decentralized and only has value because of its functionality as a currency and nothing else. Wouldn't it be crazy to expect it to be able to compete with established State currencies with hundreds of years history, backed by the finance giants of the world and endless wars, protected by immense police power?
Bitcoin might fail, or succeed, but both would be gradual. If ever, it would take decades for it to compete with established currencies.
Only in Soviet Slashdot, you are a troll for saying what you think is right.
Actually, it is the miners that literally make the network.
In what way? Nodes make the network, most of which aren't miners, and they do a lot of important things like maintaining the ledger and preventing many sorts of attacks.
That's not the point. Addresses can be harvested by law enforcement. I don't personally think it's very dangerous, but still a concern.
Back in my home country, a good 20 years ago, when we got payed in our own currency, we switched most of it to gold, USD and DM, almost daily. I live in Europe now, but have much more money so EUR volatility too becomes important and I still need to diversify, though not constantly. Maybe it's because I'm a maths guy, but I don't see the difference in volatility coefficient as a fundamental problem. Your local currency may lose value too, but usually more slowly.
If you are a merchant that wants to accept Bitcoin and don't want to be affected by volatility, you can use an intermediary system that converts Bitcoin to USD on the fly, at the time of sale. That's does with the problem once and for all.
Or otherwise, if you also want to accumulate Bitcoin, you could sell a percentage of your Bitcoin earnings daily (this kind of automation is pretty easy with Bitcoin obviously, and I suspect there are services that do this already). Say, your expected profit is 10%, so you only keep 10% of your earnings as Bitcoin.
Although, eventually the volatility will settle. It's not a specific problem about Bitcoin; any 'free' currency does have to overcome this obstacle.
No, all of them are evil. That's the whole point.
b) why would you want to keep that much money as a virtual currency?
Hopefully, because he hadn't sold it yet. If I'd mined that many bitcoins, I'd have sold at least by the time it bubbled up to ~30 $/BTC.
You can never be sure when to sell... It's a different kind of wisdom. I would say that I would have sold @ 30$ if I hadn't been there and hadn't decided not to... :-)
Why -1 Flamebait? I'm telling something that can be verified easily, and the poster is deliberately spreading false information. It would take less than a couple of minutes to check the validity of both accounts. The outrage is that false information gets +5 Insightful, since it matches the political view of the majority here.
Alas, there's no honour left in mods, I'm out of Slashdot for good now...
They spent more on those machines, and on the electricity to run them, than they ever will 'mining' bitcoins.
Link? Or are you making this up on the fly and still getting +5 Insightful?
I'd be surprised if the investment hasn't paid itself off on the second month. It's not that mining is such a good idea (IMO it's not supposed to be very profitable, and I expect it to get less profitable soon) but the value has risen so much that I purchased a 3 year dedicated hosting service with the coins I mined with my crappy old video card in two months (and kept for a few months more).
This is unfair. At least this dude made a testable prediction. For that, I applaud him. I wish more religious people were like him.