Well, pollution as in atmospheric O2, not pollution as in SUV exhaust. Atmospheric O2 is not the Earth's "normal" state, its a byproduct of life.
If I remember correctly, Earth's original atmosphere was SO2 based and some photosynthetic creature with a sulfur based metabolism started emitting O2 as a waste product... and so began global climate change 1.0.
U.S. Coast Guard there is no conceiveable reason this agency should not be under control of the pentagon...
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. armed forces from enforcing the law. That is why the National Guard is normally under the command of a State Governor and the Coast Guard is normally under the command of a civilian agency. When under such command they are not considered part of the U.S. armed forces and a Governor can have the state National Guard units enforce the law, for example during natural disasters, riots, etc. Similarly when under civilian command the Coast Guard can enforce maritime law, enforce safety regulations, arrest smugglers, etc.
Am I only one who doesn't think this is all that impressive? A manned ship surviving, yes,...
I knew someone who served on a Fletcher class destroyer in WW2. They survived a typhoon that claimed several other ships. He said the typhoon scared the crew more than combat, and this was a crew that had seen combat from Guadalcanal to Japan. He also said they would spend their last dollar buying a beer for any worker at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, the shipyard that built their ship.
SpaceX is growing without going public. It has received $200M from investors and $800M from contracts, both development and launch. It has won contracts, both government and commercial. I believe they currently have dozens of launch contracts, most of them commercial, representing several billion dollars in potential revenue. SpaceX seems to be growing and successfully competing quite nicely without wall street.
Regarding tourism, that is just a convenient way to make money in the short term. The current expense of tourism is temporary, and that's OK. As technology improves and experience is gained and costs come down it will become available to a wider audience. The commercial tourism efforts are essentially walking down the willingness to pay curve extracting the maximum amount from the participants. $10 million is extracted from those willing to pay $10 million, $1 million is extract from those willing to pay $1 million, etc. What is one day limited to the 1%'ers will one day be available to the 2%'ers, then the 3%'ers, and that is non-linear growth.
Regarding the long term. One major expense is lifting necessities to orbit. However when asteroids can be harvest then water, oxygen, fuel and raw materials for constructions can be sourced "locally". That will represent a huge cost savings. Look at the various projections for lunar bases. There are huge logistics and cost savings if water is available in the shadows of craters. Again, I'm talking decades not years. And the first such base will probably be a government effort. However I think commercial efforts will dominate earth orbit by then. Short of reactors fueled by He3 a lunar presence would most likely be scientific in nature. A telescope on the far side would be amazing. And practical for spotting those pesky city-killer and dinosaur-killer asteroids.
partnership with corporate interests in the lead up to WWII.
No, WW1 plus a punitive peace treaty plus social crisis lead to WW2. Partnering with corporate interests was just a tactic for state control of industry. It was an implementation detail not a cause.
How does private industry justify for investors the expense when a payoff may not even be realized, fortunes lost or it takes another generation to see any profit?
It won't take a generation to see a profit. Consider space tourism, it is currently outrageously expensive but that is OK. The handful of people willing to pay such sums exist. Such willingness to pay is a tried and true factor that supports initially expensive products and services.
Investors won't go for that.
The quarterly focus that you assume is for publicly traded companies. Privately held companies can have longer perspectives.
In fact, the only reason the U.S. even had a space program is because of the funding and taxing power of government.
That is just a phase. A necessary phase, but one that people move beyond. Just as sailing from Europe to North America was once only an activity that governments could afford.
We've been to the moon. We've had one of more humans in space continuously since 2000.
In some number of decades we could have a manned mission to mars, the technology is getting feasible.
In centuries it is feasible that we would have the technology to colonize other rocks in the solar system. We can't do so today but we can research the technology and discover the science that future generations will stand upon.
And as for extinction-level events, life survived; we are here. Who are you to decide what life will survive on this planet millions or billions of years from now?
The one and only known species that is aware of this issue and can have a conversation about it and can do something about it, i.e. not limit itself to this one planet. That's a pretty special species.
That is correct. Evolution is still happening. There were no humans here two million years ago and there won't be any in another two million years. What's the big deal?
To continue with the glass is half full/empty metaphor, you ignore the fact that someday there will be no glass. More mass extinction level events will happen. And the big deal is that it would be a shame to lose the only known intelligent species capable of contemplating and studying the universe in such an event, and lose whatever species may have developed from this intelligent species.
Occupying more than one rock in the solar system greatly increases the species chance of survival. Plus the amount of resources available in asteroids and such dwarfs everything we have acquired from the earth.
The enormous expense involved in manned space flight and habitation is temporary. Yet that expense may well seem paltry if we can get past the bootstrapping phase. I have greater faith in the civilian commercial space industry in this regard than I do with government based projects.
The space program is a lot more productive now than when we were focused on a retarded war with the Russians. Unlike the 60's, we're actually doing basic science and planetary science missions now instead of chest thumping bravado.
Much of the science and tech of today's planetary missions are the result of military tech and those glory days of NASA manned missions. Those manned lunar missions were preceded by various robotic lunar missions.
The cold war greatly benefited the space program, it funded its tech. That chest thumping got the public behind all that spending on space. NASA and the US space program suffer today because of a lack of interest by the people. Fortunately the civilian commercial space industry seems to be coming along quite nicely.
From your description, I think you're better at hand-crafted assembly than most people. I suspect it would take a lot of time and work for me to get that good.
Well I am a little rusty but I have done it off and on for 30 years, 6502, 68000, 16- and 32-bit x86, PowerPC, ARM and a few odd micro controllers. And CPU architecture is something that I enjoy learning about. So yeah, not the average C programmer. I make no claims that the average C programmer who can read assembly for debugging purposes can beat the compiler. Someone who is knowledgeable about the hardware architecture and has some experience with assembly would be required, although the experience does not necessarily have to be on that architecture. I did pretty good my first time out in PowerPC. It also depends on the code. Not all code can be tuned, or is worth tuning. I also tend to think about the architecture when coding in C/C++, that helps too and is a nice side effect of the assembly experience.
Now, how much experience is enough to beat the compiler. That's hard to say. For someone like me who is a "freak" and actually enjoys assembly, there are probably some recent college grads who can do it. I've also seen people with 30 years of experience who have occasionally written assembly when absolutely required who probably will get beaten by the compiler. I think its one of those things you have to have some inherent interest in. When I work on a new architecture I like to re-write some code in assembly for fun and curiosity on my own time, one such example is some vector/matrix math code going back to a 3d graphics class in college. Again, I admit this is "freaky".:-)
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well.
Where is the straw man you are arguing against that said the word "only"?
Currency is not **the** middleman, it is **a** middleman.
I'm not arguing against bitcoins. I'm pointing out that it is an asset in various legal jurisdictions and that this has huge implications that are only now coming to light.
If anything, this demonstrates another example of how bitcoin will never catch on as an actual currency. It's a middleman at best
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services. So I guess dollars will never catch on either.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well. However trading assets has a capital gain/loss tax implication in the U.S.
A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.
Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
So if you buy a laptop from Dell and the IRS discovers you paid in bitcoins you may be expected to provide some sort of accounting for the coins used, date acquired, value on that date, etc.
Assembly is also much less common today because the compilers have improved a whole lot since 1991. It's a lot harder for hand-crafted assembly to beat an optimizing compiler now.
I've been hearing people say "compilers are finally good enough that assembly is obsolete" for about 20 years. Its never been true. Someday maybe. I doubt its a lot harder, however I would agree that it is a lot less necessary. Computers are so overpowered for typical tasks it hardly makes any difference whether one uses C or assembly.
I haven't written any assembly in about 5 years. However every hardware generation or so I compare some assembly code I wrote about 10 years ago to the current compilers. The assembly still wins. I'm not claiming this is typical results. The key to big wins in assembly is not to out micromanage the compiler when it comes to scheduling, rather it is to use knowledge and info that can't be represented in the language nor communicated to the compiler through the language.
FWIW, the reason I haven't written assembly in over 5 years is that I haven't worked on something that is extremely time sensitive in recent years.
Data is sent by satellite in some newer aircraft. Recall the French jet that went down in the South Atlantic. When abnormal events occurred the aircraft sent some text messages to the airline. Full telemetry would be very expensive. However occasional texts for abnormal events, and maybe an occasional gps coordinate, would be reasonable.
That said, black boxes and such telemetry would be of limited to no value in the Ukrainian shoot down case. The black box won't tell us what type of missile destroyed the aircraft and where it was launched from.
Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.
Advertising gets votes, ergo it is a distinction without a difference.
You are missing my point. Expensive media campaigns (ie. money) only persuades the indifferent and the uninterested. If you can convince a person that something matter, get them interested, then the media campaign will not change their mind no matter how much money you throw into it. That is why money is inferior to votes.
Advertising doesn't get all or even most votes but it doesn't have to. It merely has to get enough to tip the election which advertising demonstrably can do. You will not find one person who has been involved with an actual campaign who will tell you money doesn't matter. It's not the end-all-be-all but it matters quite a lot.
Ask someone in an actual campaign if they fear, in he U.S., the NRA or AARP because of their money or because of their motivated voters who are highly likely to show up on election day. These two lobbyists are the most powerful in the country because of their motivated members not because of campaign contribution.
A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.
First off I guarantee you that a well informed voter can sometimes be swayed by advertising. Happens all the time. Second, there are LOTS of disinterested voters out there.
Of course there are. That is why the 1%'ers have more political power than the 99%'ers. My point is that the 99%'s delude themselves if they think the problem is money. The problem is their own indifference.
One of the biggest ways that this indifference manifests is in party loyalty. If you vote for your party rather than candidates, including other party candidates, then you can be ignored. Your party already has your vote so you can be ignored. The other party can not get your vote so you can be ignored. Roughly 2/3's of U.S. voters remove themselves from the game through party loyalty, being part of the loyal base.
I am regularly asked to vote for local officials who I know absolutely nothing about and even when I care I simply have limited time and motivation to learn about them. People demonstrably tend to vote for people they've heard of over those they haven't regardless of their actual positions on issues. That's how incumbents tend to get re-elected. Guess what a really good way to hear about someone is? Advertising!
Actually its a pretty poor way to get informed, the info is highly biased or misleading.
In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.
That's pretty much the exception that proves the rule. You neglected to point out that the incumbent was a high ranking member of congress who had spent relatively little time campaigning in his district. He screwed up. No amount of money will help you if you don't actually pay attention to what matters.
Actually it proves my point. The winner tapped into a groundswell of motivated voters who were really pissed off. It was not simply that the loser didn't spend enough time in his district. If anything is exceptional in this case it was a large number of motivated voters showing up on election day, that is the formula for reform, for the 99%'era to regain control. Because the true currency of politics is votes.
Never underestimate the power of advertising and lobbyists.
Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.
A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.
In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.
As for lobbyists in the U.S, the most powerful are those who deliver motivated voters on election day, not those who merely make campaign contributions.
Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
You didn't botch the math, you botched the accounting. Inventory accounting methods such as FIFO wouldn't apply.
No one said you had to use FIFO. You have to pick the coins you are using somehow, FIFO is one of various options. Personally I would probably use LIFO, spend the newer coins first, hang on to your oldest coins. That way if I hold any for over a year they can be cashed out and taxed at a lower rate, long term capital gains. Hopefully, have to check with an accountant on that.
... likely to drive away people who seek to start Bitcoin based companies.
A business can accept bitcoins for payment and never touch a bitcoin nor ever be at risk for price fluctuations.
Various exchanges provide merchant services where a merchant gives sale info to the exchange, the exchange converts the dollar amount to bitcoins and provides the merchant with the converted amount and a bitcoin payment address (one belonging to the exchange). The customer essentially makes the bitcoin payment to the exchange. When the exchange confirms the payment they credit the merchant's account with the exact amount of dollars that the merchant originally specified regardless of any fluctuation in bitcoin's exchange rate.
A business need never touch a bitcoin. They can continue to price in dollars, do all their accounting in dollars, never have to show a bitcoin on their federal or state taxes, etc.
Its not just about taxing business. Individuals are to be taxed too.
A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.
Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
The security of the stock exchanges is really pretty bad. Low latency access means no firewalls and few application level checks. For the longest time people were sending ethernet raw packets...There is a perverse incentive not to properly secure exchanges because security is slow.
Technically true. However in the quest for low latency there has been a tendency for some to colocate with the exchange. So if an exchange system and a broker system are in the same high physical security room and have a direct connection between them then the risk is mitigated to a degree.
"CPUs are so overpowered for nearly all tasks we can live with less efficient compiler generated code."
And this is why an OS needs 15GB of disk space, a game 40GB, and a word processor around what? 2-3 gig? Meanwhile a C64 runs a full blown flight simulator in 38K...
I am a former Apple II and C64 programmer. Back in the day I was hired to port a PC game to the Apple II. The game was written in C and it's project manager told me the good news, such-and-such company just released a C compiler for the Apple II, that would make my port easy. Despite my youth I was able to maintain a straight face, accept his check, and fired up the LISA assembler once he left.
In more recent years, late 90s, I did some tuning of PowerPC based Mac games. I had the chance to go to Apple to have them help with the performance tuning. I was thrilled at the opportunity since I had just written my first PowerPC assembly code and wanted some more experienced people to give it review. One of the Apple engineers was a MrC (one of the better PowerPC C compilers at the time) evangelist and he basically was off to the side getting more and more pissed off that the compiler couldn't beat the few functions a newbie (with respect to PowerPC, I did have a ton of experience with 6502, 68K and x86 16- and 32-bit) wrote in assembly. He spent most of my visit fiddling with the compiler. Fortunately the other two Apple engineers were much more helpful.
This is the kind of mistake that happens when decisions are made remotely. If the fighter jets all lack pilots, then Mark 1 Eyeball won't be possible.
Drones have cameras that are superior to the Mk1 Eyeball. Plus the remote human operator (loosely the "pilot") receiving the camera feed has 2 Mk 1. Drones may navigate autonomously but it takes a human to make it shoot.
However Intel was able to achieve higher clock rates than PowerPC and maintain a general performance lead.
That's not quite true, IBM makes some very fast PPC's, they have a 5GHz one available. In fact, you can buy 3.2GHz PPC chips in every Wal-Mart. The problem being, that IBM didn't have those 3+GHz PPC's ready when Apple wanted them.
I was referring to the era of PowerPC based Macs and the motivation for Apple's ultimate switch to Intel. Plus the PowerPC is something a little different than the workstation class POWER cpus from IBM.
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Well, pollution as in atmospheric O2, not pollution as in SUV exhaust. Atmospheric O2 is not the Earth's "normal" state, its a byproduct of life.
... and so began global climate change 1.0.
If I remember correctly, Earth's original atmosphere was SO2 based and some photosynthetic creature with a sulfur based metabolism started emitting O2 as a waste product
U.S. Coast Guard there is no conceiveable reason this agency should not be under control of the pentagon ...
The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. armed forces from enforcing the law. That is why the National Guard is normally under the command of a State Governor and the Coast Guard is normally under the command of a civilian agency. When under such command they are not considered part of the U.S. armed forces and a Governor can have the state National Guard units enforce the law, for example during natural disasters, riots, etc. Similarly when under civilian command the Coast Guard can enforce maritime law, enforce safety regulations, arrest smugglers, etc.
Am I only one who doesn't think this is all that impressive? A manned ship surviving, yes, ...
I knew someone who served on a Fletcher class destroyer in WW2. They survived a typhoon that claimed several other ships. He said the typhoon scared the crew more than combat, and this was a crew that had seen combat from Guadalcanal to Japan. He also said they would spend their last dollar buying a beer for any worker at the Bath Iron Works in Maine, the shipyard that built their ship.
SpaceX is growing without going public. It has received $200M from investors and $800M from contracts, both development and launch. It has won contracts, both government and commercial. I believe they currently have dozens of launch contracts, most of them commercial, representing several billion dollars in potential revenue. SpaceX seems to be growing and successfully competing quite nicely without wall street.
Regarding tourism, that is just a convenient way to make money in the short term. The current expense of tourism is temporary, and that's OK. As technology improves and experience is gained and costs come down it will become available to a wider audience. The commercial tourism efforts are essentially walking down the willingness to pay curve extracting the maximum amount from the participants. $10 million is extracted from those willing to pay $10 million, $1 million is extract from those willing to pay $1 million, etc. What is one day limited to the 1%'ers will one day be available to the 2%'ers, then the 3%'ers, and that is non-linear growth.
Regarding the long term. One major expense is lifting necessities to orbit. However when asteroids can be harvest then water, oxygen, fuel and raw materials for constructions can be sourced "locally". That will represent a huge cost savings. Look at the various projections for lunar bases. There are huge logistics and cost savings if water is available in the shadows of craters. Again, I'm talking decades not years. And the first such base will probably be a government effort. However I think commercial efforts will dominate earth orbit by then. Short of reactors fueled by He3 a lunar presence would most likely be scientific in nature. A telescope on the far side would be amazing. And practical for spotting those pesky city-killer and dinosaur-killer asteroids.
Communism works incredibly well but only in very small groups where pooled resources are necessary for survival.
In other words extended family situations where there is a strong emotional bond between individuals who actually know each other to a degree.
partnership with corporate interests in the lead up to WWII.
No, WW1 plus a punitive peace treaty plus social crisis lead to WW2. Partnering with corporate interests was just a tactic for state control of industry. It was an implementation detail not a cause.
How does private industry justify for investors the expense when a payoff may not even be realized, fortunes lost or it takes another generation to see any profit?
It won't take a generation to see a profit. Consider space tourism, it is currently outrageously expensive but that is OK. The handful of people willing to pay such sums exist. Such willingness to pay is a tried and true factor that supports initially expensive products and services.
Investors won't go for that.
The quarterly focus that you assume is for publicly traded companies. Privately held companies can have longer perspectives.
In fact, the only reason the U.S. even had a space program is because of the funding and taxing power of government.
That is just a phase. A necessary phase, but one that people move beyond. Just as sailing from Europe to North America was once only an activity that governments could afford.
We've been to the moon. We've had one of more humans in space continuously since 2000.
In some number of decades we could have a manned mission to mars, the technology is getting feasible.
In centuries it is feasible that we would have the technology to colonize other rocks in the solar system. We can't do so today but we can research the technology and discover the science that future generations will stand upon.
And as for extinction-level events, life survived; we are here. Who are you to decide what life will survive on this planet millions or billions of years from now?
The one and only known species that is aware of this issue and can have a conversation about it and can do something about it, i.e. not limit itself to this one planet. That's a pretty special species.
That is correct. Evolution is still happening. There were no humans here two million years ago and there won't be any in another two million years. What's the big deal?
To continue with the glass is half full/empty metaphor, you ignore the fact that someday there will be no glass. More mass extinction level events will happen. And the big deal is that it would be a shame to lose the only known intelligent species capable of contemplating and studying the universe in such an event, and lose whatever species may have developed from this intelligent species.
Occupying more than one rock in the solar system greatly increases the species chance of survival. Plus the amount of resources available in asteroids and such dwarfs everything we have acquired from the earth.
The enormous expense involved in manned space flight and habitation is temporary. Yet that expense may well seem paltry if we can get past the bootstrapping phase. I have greater faith in the civilian commercial space industry in this regard than I do with government based projects.
The space program is a lot more productive now than when we were focused on a retarded war with the Russians. Unlike the 60's, we're actually doing basic science and planetary science missions now instead of chest thumping bravado.
Much of the science and tech of today's planetary missions are the result of military tech and those glory days of NASA manned missions. Those manned lunar missions were preceded by various robotic lunar missions.
The cold war greatly benefited the space program, it funded its tech. That chest thumping got the public behind all that spending on space. NASA and the US space program suffer today because of a lack of interest by the people. Fortunately the civilian commercial space industry seems to be coming along quite nicely.
From your description, I think you're better at hand-crafted assembly than most people. I suspect it would take a lot of time and work for me to get that good.
Well I am a little rusty but I have done it off and on for 30 years, 6502, 68000, 16- and 32-bit x86, PowerPC, ARM and a few odd micro controllers. And CPU architecture is something that I enjoy learning about. So yeah, not the average C programmer. I make no claims that the average C programmer who can read assembly for debugging purposes can beat the compiler. Someone who is knowledgeable about the hardware architecture and has some experience with assembly would be required, although the experience does not necessarily have to be on that architecture. I did pretty good my first time out in PowerPC. It also depends on the code. Not all code can be tuned, or is worth tuning. I also tend to think about the architecture when coding in C/C++, that helps too and is a nice side effect of the assembly experience.
:-)
Now, how much experience is enough to beat the compiler. That's hard to say. For someone like me who is a "freak" and actually enjoys assembly, there are probably some recent college grads who can do it. I've also seen people with 30 years of experience who have occasionally written assembly when absolutely required who probably will get beaten by the compiler. I think its one of those things you have to have some inherent interest in. When I work on a new architecture I like to re-write some code in assembly for fun and curiosity on my own time, one such example is some vector/matrix math code going back to a 3d graphics class in college. Again, I admit this is "freaky".
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well.
Where is the straw man you are arguing against that said the word "only"?
Currency is not **the** middleman, it is **a** middleman.
I'm not arguing against bitcoins. I'm pointing out that it is an asset in various legal jurisdictions and that this has huge implications that are only now coming to light.
If anything, this demonstrates another example of how bitcoin will never catch on as an actual currency. It's a middleman at best
"Actual" currency is just the middleman to trading goods and services. So I guess dollars will never catch on either.
No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well. However trading assets has a capital gain/loss tax implication in the U.S.
A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.
Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
So if you buy a laptop from Dell and the IRS discovers you paid in bitcoins you may be expected to provide some sort of accounting for the coins used, date acquired, value on that date, etc.
Assembly is also much less common today because the compilers have improved a whole lot since 1991. It's a lot harder for hand-crafted assembly to beat an optimizing compiler now.
I've been hearing people say "compilers are finally good enough that assembly is obsolete" for about 20 years. Its never been true. Someday maybe. I doubt its a lot harder, however I would agree that it is a lot less necessary. Computers are so overpowered for typical tasks it hardly makes any difference whether one uses C or assembly.
I haven't written any assembly in about 5 years. However every hardware generation or so I compare some assembly code I wrote about 10 years ago to the current compilers. The assembly still wins. I'm not claiming this is typical results. The key to big wins in assembly is not to out micromanage the compiler when it comes to scheduling, rather it is to use knowledge and info that can't be represented in the language nor communicated to the compiler through the language.
FWIW, the reason I haven't written assembly in over 5 years is that I haven't worked on something that is extremely time sensitive in recent years.
Data is sent by satellite in some newer aircraft. Recall the French jet that went down in the South Atlantic. When abnormal events occurred the aircraft sent some text messages to the airline. Full telemetry would be very expensive. However occasional texts for abnormal events, and maybe an occasional gps coordinate, would be reasonable.
That said, black boxes and such telemetry would be of limited to no value in the Ukrainian shoot down case. The black box won't tell us what type of missile destroyed the aircraft and where it was launched from.
Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.
Advertising gets votes, ergo it is a distinction without a difference.
You are missing my point. Expensive media campaigns (ie. money) only persuades the indifferent and the uninterested. If you can convince a person that something matter, get them interested, then the media campaign will not change their mind no matter how much money you throw into it. That is why money is inferior to votes.
Advertising doesn't get all or even most votes but it doesn't have to. It merely has to get enough to tip the election which advertising demonstrably can do. You will not find one person who has been involved with an actual campaign who will tell you money doesn't matter. It's not the end-all-be-all but it matters quite a lot.
Ask someone in an actual campaign if they fear, in he U.S., the NRA or AARP because of their money or because of their motivated voters who are highly likely to show up on election day. These two lobbyists are the most powerful in the country because of their motivated members not because of campaign contribution.
A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.
First off I guarantee you that a well informed voter can sometimes be swayed by advertising. Happens all the time. Second, there are LOTS of disinterested voters out there.
Of course there are. That is why the 1%'ers have more political power than the 99%'ers. My point is that the 99%'s delude themselves if they think the problem is money. The problem is their own indifference.
One of the biggest ways that this indifference manifests is in party loyalty. If you vote for your party rather than candidates, including other party candidates, then you can be ignored. Your party already has your vote so you can be ignored. The other party can not get your vote so you can be ignored. Roughly 2/3's of U.S. voters remove themselves from the game through party loyalty, being part of the loyal base.
I am regularly asked to vote for local officials who I know absolutely nothing about and even when I care I simply have limited time and motivation to learn about them. People demonstrably tend to vote for people they've heard of over those they haven't regardless of their actual positions on issues. That's how incumbents tend to get re-elected. Guess what a really good way to hear about someone is? Advertising!
Actually its a pretty poor way to get informed, the info is highly biased or misleading.
In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.
That's pretty much the exception that proves the rule. You neglected to point out that the incumbent was a high ranking member of congress who had spent relatively little time campaigning in his district. He screwed up. No amount of money will help you if you don't actually pay attention to what matters.
Actually it proves my point. The winner tapped into a groundswell of motivated voters who were really pissed off. It was not simply that the loser didn't spend enough time in his district. If anything is exceptional in this case it was a large number of motivated voters showing up on election day, that is the formula for reform, for the 99%'era to regain control. Because the true currency of politics is votes.
Never underestimate the power of advertising and lobbyists.
Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.
A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.
In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.
As for lobbyists in the U.S, the most powerful are those who deliver motivated voters on election day, not those who merely make campaign contributions.
Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
You didn't botch the math, you botched the accounting. Inventory accounting methods such as FIFO wouldn't apply.
No one said you had to use FIFO. You have to pick the coins you are using somehow, FIFO is one of various options. Personally I would probably use LIFO, spend the newer coins first, hang on to your oldest coins. That way if I hold any for over a year they can be cashed out and taxed at a lower rate, long term capital gains. Hopefully, have to check with an accountant on that.
... likely to drive away people who seek to start Bitcoin based companies.
A business can accept bitcoins for payment and never touch a bitcoin nor ever be at risk for price fluctuations.
Various exchanges provide merchant services where a merchant gives sale info to the exchange, the exchange converts the dollar amount to bitcoins and provides the merchant with the converted amount and a bitcoin payment address (one belonging to the exchange). The customer essentially makes the bitcoin payment to the exchange. When the exchange confirms the payment they credit the merchant's account with the exact amount of dollars that the merchant originally specified regardless of any fluctuation in bitcoin's exchange rate.
A business need never touch a bitcoin. They can continue to price in dollars, do all their accounting in dollars, never have to show a bitcoin on their federal or state taxes, etc.
Its not just about taxing business. Individuals are to be taxed too.
A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.
Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.
The security of the stock exchanges is really pretty bad. Low latency access means no firewalls and few application level checks. For the longest time people were sending ethernet raw packets...There is a perverse incentive not to properly secure exchanges because security is slow.
Technically true. However in the quest for low latency there has been a tendency for some to colocate with the exchange. So if an exchange system and a broker system are in the same high physical security room and have a direct connection between them then the risk is mitigated to a degree.
"CPUs are so overpowered for nearly all tasks we can live with less efficient compiler generated code."
And this is why an OS needs 15GB of disk space, a game 40GB, and a word processor around what? 2-3 gig? Meanwhile a C64 runs a full blown flight simulator in 38K...
I am a former Apple II and C64 programmer. Back in the day I was hired to port a PC game to the Apple II. The game was written in C and it's project manager told me the good news, such-and-such company just released a C compiler for the Apple II, that would make my port easy. Despite my youth I was able to maintain a straight face, accept his check, and fired up the LISA assembler once he left.
In more recent years, late 90s, I did some tuning of PowerPC based Mac games. I had the chance to go to Apple to have them help with the performance tuning. I was thrilled at the opportunity since I had just written my first PowerPC assembly code and wanted some more experienced people to give it review. One of the Apple engineers was a MrC (one of the better PowerPC C compilers at the time) evangelist and he basically was off to the side getting more and more pissed off that the compiler couldn't beat the few functions a newbie (with respect to PowerPC, I did have a ton of experience with 6502, 68K and x86 16- and 32-bit) wrote in assembly. He spent most of my visit fiddling with the compiler. Fortunately the other two Apple engineers were much more helpful.
This is the kind of mistake that happens when decisions are made remotely. If the fighter jets all lack pilots, then Mark 1 Eyeball won't be possible.
Drones have cameras that are superior to the Mk1 Eyeball. Plus the remote human operator (loosely the "pilot") receiving the camera feed has 2 Mk 1. Drones may navigate autonomously but it takes a human to make it shoot.
However Intel was able to achieve higher clock rates than PowerPC and maintain a general performance lead.
That's not quite true, IBM makes some very fast PPC's, they have a 5GHz one available. In fact, you can buy 3.2GHz PPC chips in every Wal-Mart. The problem being, that IBM didn't have those 3+GHz PPC's ready when Apple wanted them.
I was referring to the era of PowerPC based Macs and the motivation for Apple's ultimate switch to Intel. Plus the PowerPC is something a little different than the workstation class POWER cpus from IBM.