If we eventually use Bitcoin in everyday life, say, in the supermarket, how will we deal with prices in fractions of a Bitcoin? What terminology might we use for something priced at 0.00000005 Bitcoins?
You won't need to. They'll just issue a new client that moves the decimal over for convenience.
Last I checked, the laws related to pump and dump scams are not limited to official markets, only to things that can be traded for real currency. If Timothy owns BitCoins, is writing articles that inflate its value, and then makes a profit as a result, then he could be facing jail time.
Under that theory, any advertisement of any product ever is punishable by jail time. Color me dubious.
You'd probably have to prove intent to defraud, not merely the fact that he was advertising something he thought was neat.
As opposed to the US dollar? How many of those new bills does the government send to you when it prints up a new batch? Does it add zeros to your account when it adds zeros to your bank's?
The early adopters of bitcoin have a significant advantage . . . once. Once they spend or sell those coins, their advantage is lost. Contrast that with our current system where the rewards of crony capitalism and government bailouts are never ending.
at this point it's not even worth mining for it. i looked at the exchange rates to real money and by the time you invest in a dual GPU system and pay the electric bills you don't make any profit
Not quite true. The difficulty has indeed shot up quite a bit (and tomorrow the estimated correction is a 50% increase), but for today, a 6870 (~$160) can generate about 0.5 BTC a day in a pool without fees. At current exchange rates of ~$20 per BTC, that's $10 a day, minus electricity costs of about ~$1 a day. Assuming the exchange rate of USD-to-BTC neither increases nor decreases, that's half a month to pay you back for your investment in the card, and $270 a month in profit after.
How many times has the Supreme Court ruled 'XYZ Law' as 'Unconstitutional'?
Not nearly enough.
Government: "Hey, you know that section of the constitution that allows us to break down trade barriers and protectionism between the states? Well, we'd like to interpret it in such a manner that gives us the power to tell any citizen in the country to do anything we want, as long as we make vague assurances that it might, in some way, affect some kind of commerce somewhere." Court: "Sounds good to me!"
So police should be able to stop and search anyone walking on a public sidewalk at any time, and for any (or no) reason? After all, the constitution says nothing about sidewalks either.
The idea that government can take away your constitutionally guaranteed rights through "licenses" is rather worrisome, don't you think?
"Oh, well to live in this state you need a "Home License". Please sign this section here that says you agree to let the police search your home anytime upon request, and write out a "processing" check for $900 or I'm going to have to ask you to move to another state. It's not illegal, it's a license!"
It's downright fortuitous that they have had a 100% compliance rate of passengers turning off electronic devices prior to this evidence, or the burning carcasses of planes would no doubt be littering the US from ocean to ocean. I'm sure all the major airlines will cut their maintenance budgets to fund further studies of this dangerous phenomena, the consequences of which, I think we can all agree, we have been avoiding by sheer luck, what with the thousands of flights a day and zero accidents attributable to it.
So I watched the little video in the article but I don't understand why or how anyone would accept bitcoins as currency. Can anyone explain to me how running an application on your computer to 'make' currency produces anything of value?
It's not so much that you "make" currency, as it is that the system rewards you for utilizing your computer to do the accounting work for the Bitcoin system. Currently, this reward system is in the form of a payout that steadily decreases as time goes on, to be gradually replaced by voluntary transaction fees that people can pay to have their accounting done first.
People make a big deal about the early adopters having a large advantage over later adopters, but really the system of initial currency distribution for Bitcoins is still much better than that of the dollar, where the government prints them all and then spends them all. At least with Bitcoins, the early adopters only have an advantage once (until they spend their coins). The US government can print to its heart's content with no end in sight.
So if Bitcoin is a scam, it's less of a scam than the US dollar (although that might not be saying much).
I assume you meant "than they ever will gain mining bitcoins."
If that's the case, it's hard to say what their expected ROI will be. I know that in my case, I already had a 5850 in my machine (a very good mining GPU) and thus, with a little bit of luck I've 'mined' 150 coins in a month. At the current exchange rate, those coins would we worth ~$1000 dollars if I cashed out now, and I really only paid for electricity. Depending on the hardware they bought, and when they started (the difficulty has really ramped up in the last couple weeks), they could be sitting on a nice payout, assuming they aren't dumb enough to try dumping them all onto the market at once.
For my part, I'm interested in bitcoins as a viable currency and not just as some bizarre experiment in cryptographic "stock" to dump when I need some extra spending cash, so I expect I'll be holding onto mine until I can get some actual goods with them.
(Also, I hate the term 'mining'. It's really more like 'accounting', but it's probably too late to change anything.)
Copying is exactly what is occurring when you copy a movie. Using the words "piracy", "stealing", or "taking" with respect to copyright infringement is exactly what is not occurring.
Is it OK, through law
Illegal copying is illegal. That doesn't change the fact that it is copying, and not piracy, theft, rape, murder, or one of any thousand other, separate crimes.
You find a diamond on the street.
Still not the same as copying, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. It's a complete non-sequitur. You might as well say that illegal copying is murder, because if you saw a homeless guy on the street and shot him in the head, that would be bad. Okay, but what does one have to do with the other?
That piece of code that you found in someone's server (web or otherwise) does probably not belong to you either.
Here you assume that someone can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive in the first place. If I hack into someone's server and copy their code, I've trespassed on their very real property (the server). If I bittorrent a movie, however, both me and the multitude of people I received pieces of the file from have agreed to share that configuration of bits, and no trespass has occurred; I've taken nothing from anyone.
Really a simple concept but hard if you have an ethics blind spot.
I find it a very simple concept from my end too, but I don't go around accusing everyone who disagrees with me as being amoral. Making a rational argument is much more effective in the end than demonizing your opponents, even if it's harder.
Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code
So if I, as a software engineer, tell you that so-called "intellectual property" laws should be abolished, what would that do to your world-view?
Don't try to speak for everyone unless you know everyone.
I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing.
You are completely right. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is stealing, no question about it. Copying, however, isn't taking. The original remains. Copying is copying.
Why, just yesterday I was pulled over while driving, and to my surprise a SWAT team in full assault gear shattered the window of my car, dropped a flashbang in the back seat, dragged me to the asphalt, put a boot on my head, and told me my license had expired.
I didn't mind it so much, of course, because I know that sometimes people shoot officers during routine traffic stops. They can't be too careful! I said thanks when they gave me my fix-it ticket, and one of them just grunted and gave me a friendly kick in the ribs. Such jokers!
Yes, but the problem is today you have the guy dealing in kiddy porn who also has a PCP habit.
So everything should always be delivered by SWAT team, kicking in doors, throwing people down stairs, and pointing guns in their faces? "You see, the problem today is, you have the guy with unpaid parking tickets who is ALSO a serial killer who has wired half-the city block with C4, and . .."
Nobody died because the police aren't there to shoot people
Err, the police do shoot innocent people in these kinds of raids. Sometimes because they "slip" ("The SWAT team was justified in this case of sports betting! He might have been a suicide bomber!") . Sometimes because the startled homeowner came out of a room with a baseball bat (thinking he was being robbed). Sometimes, there doesn't appear to be a reason when they gun down a grandpa. And they often get the wrong house.
If you haven't noticed, it is a war out there.
No it's not. Police deaths are declining. Critical Thinking 101: Just because the media hypes it up does not make it true.
Err, only if you refuse because they are Israel. Much like you can refuse to hire a black person, but not because they are black. (For the record, I don't agree with such laws, but whatayagonnado?)
To anyone who works with them, export control laws are somewhere between a minefield and quicksand.
So-called "dual use" items are generally stuck being classified under whatever they were originally classified under first.
A crop duster can be used to spray biological weapons, but it was originally created for commercial purposes and so is regulated by the Dept of Commerce. Likewise, a UAV may be nothing more than a fancy remote-controlled aircraft, but it was originally created for military purposes and therefore falls under the ITAR regulations of the Dept of State.
Actually, I think it would be the people assisting him on the project that would be committing the crime.
If the project was export controlled, anytime they talked to him about it they were potentially making an export of controlled technical data to a foreign person. The blackmail should really have gone in the other direction.:)
(I am unaware of any restriction on receiving said export controlled information; only exporting it to others without state department approval. As a US citizen, I've never been in that situation, of course, so there might be something out there I'm not aware of).
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If we eventually use Bitcoin in everyday life, say, in the supermarket, how will we deal with prices in fractions of a Bitcoin? What terminology might we use for something priced at 0.00000005 Bitcoins?
You won't need to. They'll just issue a new client that moves the decimal over for convenience.
Last I checked, the laws related to pump and dump scams are not limited to official markets, only to things that can be traded for real currency. If Timothy owns BitCoins, is writing articles that inflate its value, and then makes a profit as a result, then he could be facing jail time.
Under that theory, any advertisement of any product ever is punishable by jail time. Color me dubious.
You'd probably have to prove intent to defraud, not merely the fact that he was advertising something he thought was neat.
As opposed to the US dollar? How many of those new bills does the government send to you when it prints up a new batch? Does it add zeros to your account when it adds zeros to your bank's?
The early adopters of bitcoin have a significant advantage . . . once. Once they spend or sell those coins, their advantage is lost. Contrast that with our current system where the rewards of crony capitalism and government bailouts are never ending.
at this point it's not even worth mining for it. i looked at the exchange rates to real money and by the time you invest in a dual GPU system and pay the electric bills you don't make any profit
Not quite true. The difficulty has indeed shot up quite a bit (and tomorrow the estimated correction is a 50% increase), but for today, a 6870 (~$160) can generate about 0.5 BTC a day in a pool without fees. At current exchange rates of ~$20 per BTC, that's $10 a day, minus electricity costs of about ~$1 a day. Assuming the exchange rate of USD-to-BTC neither increases nor decreases, that's half a month to pay you back for your investment in the card, and $270 a month in profit after.
How many times has the Supreme Court ruled 'XYZ Law' as 'Unconstitutional'?
Not nearly enough.
Government: "Hey, you know that section of the constitution that allows us to break down trade barriers and protectionism between the states? Well, we'd like to interpret it in such a manner that gives us the power to tell any citizen in the country to do anything we want, as long as we make vague assurances that it might, in some way, affect some kind of commerce somewhere."
Court: "Sounds good to me!"
Desert vs. desserts.
It's worse than that. Alcohol is considered a "factor" if there is a bottle found anywhere in an involved car, opened or not.
So police should be able to stop and search anyone walking on a public sidewalk at any time, and for any (or no) reason? After all, the constitution says nothing about sidewalks either.
The idea that government can take away your constitutionally guaranteed rights through "licenses" is rather worrisome, don't you think?
"Oh, well to live in this state you need a "Home License". Please sign this section here that says you agree to let the police search your home anytime upon request, and write out a "processing" check for $900 or I'm going to have to ask you to move to another state. It's not illegal, it's a license!"
It's downright fortuitous that they have had a 100% compliance rate of passengers turning off electronic devices prior to this evidence, or the burning carcasses of planes would no doubt be littering the US from ocean to ocean. I'm sure all the major airlines will cut their maintenance budgets to fund further studies of this dangerous phenomena, the consequences of which, I think we can all agree, we have been avoiding by sheer luck, what with the thousands of flights a day and zero accidents attributable to it.
So I watched the little video in the article but I don't understand why or how anyone would accept bitcoins as currency. Can anyone explain to me how running an application on your computer to 'make' currency produces anything of value?
It's not so much that you "make" currency, as it is that the system rewards you for utilizing your computer to do the accounting work for the Bitcoin system. Currently, this reward system is in the form of a payout that steadily decreases as time goes on, to be gradually replaced by voluntary transaction fees that people can pay to have their accounting done first.
People make a big deal about the early adopters having a large advantage over later adopters, but really the system of initial currency distribution for Bitcoins is still much better than that of the dollar, where the government prints them all and then spends them all. At least with Bitcoins, the early adopters only have an advantage once (until they spend their coins). The US government can print to its heart's content with no end in sight.
So if Bitcoin is a scam, it's less of a scam than the US dollar (although that might not be saying much).
I assume you meant "than they ever will gain mining bitcoins."
If that's the case, it's hard to say what their expected ROI will be. I know that in my case, I already had a 5850 in my machine (a very good mining GPU) and thus, with a little bit of luck I've 'mined' 150 coins in a month. At the current exchange rate, those coins would we worth ~$1000 dollars if I cashed out now, and I really only paid for electricity. Depending on the hardware they bought, and when they started (the difficulty has really ramped up in the last couple weeks), they could be sitting on a nice payout, assuming they aren't dumb enough to try dumping them all onto the market at once.
For my part, I'm interested in bitcoins as a viable currency and not just as some bizarre experiment in cryptographic "stock" to dump when I need some extra spending cash, so I expect I'll be holding onto mine until I can get some actual goods with them.
(Also, I hate the term 'mining'. It's really more like 'accounting', but it's probably too late to change anything.)
For now, anyway. Give it a few more years.
away from what is actually occurring
Copying is exactly what is occurring when you copy a movie. Using the words "piracy", "stealing", or "taking" with respect to copyright infringement is exactly what is not occurring.
Is it OK, through law
Illegal copying is illegal. That doesn't change the fact that it is copying, and not piracy, theft, rape, murder, or one of any thousand other, separate crimes.
You find a diamond on the street.
Still not the same as copying, so I'm not sure where you're going with this. It's a complete non-sequitur. You might as well say that illegal copying is murder, because if you saw a homeless guy on the street and shot him in the head, that would be bad. Okay, but what does one have to do with the other?
That piece of code that you found in someone's server (web or otherwise) does probably not belong to you either.
Here you assume that someone can own a configuration of bits on a hard drive in the first place. If I hack into someone's server and copy their code, I've trespassed on their very real property (the server). If I bittorrent a movie, however, both me and the multitude of people I received pieces of the file from have agreed to share that configuration of bits, and no trespass has occurred; I've taken nothing from anyone.
Really a simple concept but hard if you have an ethics blind spot.
I find it a very simple concept from my end too, but I don't go around accusing everyone who disagrees with me as being amoral. Making a rational argument is much more effective in the end than demonizing your opponents, even if it's harder.
Obviously if you think it's justified to take another person's work without paying for what that person wants for it, you've never written a line of code
So if I, as a software engineer, tell you that so-called "intellectual property" laws should be abolished, what would that do to your world-view?
Don't try to speak for everyone unless you know everyone.
I don't care what you call it, it is morally wrong and it is illegal.
Illegal, yes. Morally wrong, though? I didn't realize I'd be sent straight to hell for my use of blockquotes . . .
I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing.
You are completely right. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is stealing, no question about it. Copying, however, isn't taking. The original remains. Copying is copying.
What "standard" is there for comparing a sequel game to its original? I was unaware that the IEEE had published something on this matter.
I was trying to determine why "we [emphasis mine] should just accept that". Certainly, I find the second one to be much better than the first.
Why, just yesterday I was pulled over while driving, and to my surprise a SWAT team in full assault gear shattered the window of my car, dropped a flashbang in the back seat, dragged me to the asphalt, put a boot on my head, and told me my license had expired.
I didn't mind it so much, of course, because I know that sometimes people shoot officers during routine traffic stops. They can't be too careful! I said thanks when they gave me my fix-it ticket, and one of them just grunted and gave me a friendly kick in the ribs. Such jokers!
Yes, but the problem is today you have the guy dealing in kiddy porn who also has a PCP habit.
."
So everything should always be delivered by SWAT team, kicking in doors, throwing people down stairs, and pointing guns in their faces? "You see, the problem today is, you have the guy with unpaid parking tickets who is ALSO a serial killer who has wired half-the city block with C4, and . .
Nobody died because the police aren't there to shoot people
Err, the police do shoot innocent people in these kinds of raids. Sometimes because they "slip" ("The SWAT team was justified in this case of sports betting! He might have been a suicide bomber!") . Sometimes because the startled homeowner came out of a room with a baseball bat (thinking he was being robbed). Sometimes, there doesn't appear to be a reason when they gun down a grandpa. And they often get the wrong house.
If you haven't noticed, it is a war out there.
No it's not. Police deaths are declining. Critical Thinking 101: Just because the media hypes it up does not make it true.
By what standard are you making this determination?
Err, only if you refuse because they are Israel. Much like you can refuse to hire a black person, but not because they are black. (For the record, I don't agree with such laws, but whatayagonnado?)
To anyone who works with them, export control laws are somewhere between a minefield and quicksand.
So-called "dual use" items are generally stuck being classified under whatever they were originally classified under first.
A crop duster can be used to spray biological weapons, but it was originally created for commercial purposes and so is regulated by the Dept of Commerce. Likewise, a UAV may be nothing more than a fancy remote-controlled aircraft, but it was originally created for military purposes and therefore falls under the ITAR regulations of the Dept of State.
Actually, I think it would be the people assisting him on the project that would be committing the crime.
:)
If the project was export controlled, anytime they talked to him about it they were potentially making an export of controlled technical data to a foreign person. The blackmail should really have gone in the other direction.
(I am unaware of any restriction on receiving said export controlled information; only exporting it to others without state department approval. As a US citizen, I've never been in that situation, of course, so there might be something out there I'm not aware of).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-boycott