Did we make sure to get blood and saliva samples from the police officers and federal contractors as well?
It was a biased study; police officers and non-police-officers were not equally likely to be selected for the study,
in proportion to their numbers that would normally be driving around the area around that time.
It's ambiguous enough: that it is not safe to make assumptions.
it's designed, from the ground up, to be a currency.
So is world of warcraft gold, designed to be used as a form of money.
That doesn't make warcraft gold or BTC a financial instrument, though.
If you're saying Bitcoin is designed from the ground up to be used as a medium of exchange or money for trade or real-world commerce, then that is possible but an opinion though, not necessarily fact.
I would tend to say; Bitcoin is an ingenious video game, designed to incorporate some technical challenges, and real-world work elements; BTCs are a form of share-able "experience points" or in-game gold awarded to players, in exchange for completion of proofs-of-work, which get harder and harder, requiring more and more ingenuity and technical expertise, as time goes on.
The ultimate objective of the Bitcoin game is to either be a miner and get a large number of BTCs, or conduct other activities with acquaintenaces that have BTCs --- it's an open-ended game.
At least.... the de-facto use in trade, doesn't in itself, make Bitcoin like other financial instruments such as bonds or cheques.
When you receive a financial instrument such as a cheque; you've been given a guarantee from an issuer that it's worth something, in fiat terms, and these US dollars will be available to you.
When you get the private key to a wallet containing a BTC; there is no guarantee that the BTC could be spent, or has any value; it could very well turn out to be $0.
t would be unreasonable to tax them on the present value of their bitcoins. It makes much more sense to ignore bitcoins per se and treat their sale or exchange for other goods or services as regular income, with deductions for bitcoin-related expenses.
It makes sense... a bitcoin is not something you ever actually gain an indisputable claim to: it's an intangible counter you have; that could very easily go to zero or infinity, if the rules of the game change.
Unfortunately.... many times the IRS can be anything but reasonable.
I suspect they will eventually get treated by the government as some kind of asset for tax purposes, at least.
The trouble with ignoring them; is, if the BTC are ignored, then they can be used as a vehicle to avoid or delay tax liabilities and information return reporting that would otherwise occur.
Bitcoins have always fallen under the current tax laws. There haven't been any new tax laws designed for e-currency like BTC.
They are subject to government regulation when used as a medium of trade.
However; at other times, there is a great deal of uncertainty -- for instance, the IRS has yet to issue any guidance, as to : whether bitcoins are classified as non-tangible personal property under the tax code, or as a foreign currency/ cash-equivalent/financial instrument.
The difference could be very important to miners and people holding bitcoins as well: if the former, then mining bitcoins may be a non-taxable event, and tax liability might not be incurred, until bitcoins are exchanged, and a capital gain is realized.
On the other hand --- if classified as a currency/cash-equivalent/financial instrument, there could be immediate taxes due whenever bitcoins are mined,
and also: for tax purposes, requiring anyone holding them, to mark their bitcoins to market at the end of every year, and report the gain or loss based on the change of fair market value of their bitcoins in USD.
No one is going to convert their millions in a slush fund into bitcoins if it'll mean that the value will spike and dip on daily basis. Financial security means confidence in a currencies value.
Well; they can maintain their slush fund in USD; in order to transact in BTC safely, convert only funds required to make a payment into BTC, require a contingent contract, for the time in between agreement and payment; that is, a contract that the buyer (at the buyer's sole option) can cancel, or re-price based on the current exchange rate, if the price of BTC fluctuates too much; between the time the agreement is made, and the time prompt payment can be completed.
I also heard that large numbers of people were going to show up dressed as Julian Assange. Is there any truth to that rumor?
Interesting.... and I suppose it will be a teleconference; with assange speaking remotely with a wireless transmitter,
from inside the walls of a nearby embassy?
I doubt that any of the official russian presences satisfies those constraints.
Perhaps not. It would probably be a simple matter though, for the big ol' government of Russia to finance a private contracter, who would legally buy the property in the US and setup the facility; providing they adhere to regulations and permitting requirements.
I don't see how anyone would need permission to run a non-broadcasting monitoring station on private ground) are impossible or don't exist, just that urban locations and building roofs wont work.
Probably nothing prohibiting them from monitoring a frequency they hold a license to operate on.
There may be applicable FCC or government restrictions against operating receivers on restricted frequencies.
Sec. 705, 47 USC 605:
except through authorized channels of transmission or reception,....
(6) on demand of other lawful authority. No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any radio communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person. No person not being entitled thereto shall receive or assist in receiving any interstate or foreign communication by radio and use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto. No person having received any intercepted radio communication or having become acquainted with the contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) knowing that such communication was intercepted, shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) or use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto. [....]
Specifically, we adopt rules that require scanning receivers
to include adequate filtering so that they do not pick up Cellular Service transmissions even when tuned to
frequencies outside those allocated to the Cellular Service. ...
In addition, we amend the rules to require that
scanning receivers be designed so that their tuning control and filtering circuitry are not easily accessible and that any attempts to modify the scanning receiver to receive Cellular Service transmissions will likely
render the scanning receiver inoperable. ...
....
we prohibit the importation and manufacture of scanning receivers and
frequency converter kits capable of receiving and decoding signals from the Cellular Service frequency
bands.
Well you can't expect to get by with just learning about standard deviation. You need to upgrade to enterprise deviation if you're going to get anywhere in business.
Dang... what edition is needed to add the discussion of the Central limit theorem, the Kelly criterion, Baye's law?
Will another upgrade be required to add Probability distribution, the Monty hall paradox, the Birthday paradox, the accuracy paradox, Benford's law, Zipf's law, Regression towards the mean, the law of truly large numbers, Yule-Simpson effect, the Gambler's fallacy, the Prosecutor's fallacy, and the false positives paradox, the friendship (facebook) paradox?
There's a way to hack around this by exploiting a Civil War-era constitutional amendment.....
Seems extreme. Why not just have a policy that all Fax, Email, and Mail, and Telephone communications or recordings thereof are received by a company overseas outside of jurisdiction.
And the overseas company as an independent actor has their own website, and a mechanism for publishing scans or recordings of any warrant received as a matter of public record, on a page linked to in advance.
I call BS. In every jurisdiction I have ever heard of, you are required to provide a physical address when registering a business
You can own an (overseas) "foreign corporation" that is incorporated outside the US; you may have to have a physical address alright, but it's not located in the US.
Good luck serving a domicile located in rural Russia or China.
According to the information I find about Arizona net metering , the power you generate offsets your bill (at retail rates) until your bill is zero; after that you are paid wholesale for any excess
Yes.... my suggestion would be; the greater the amount of power you generate on a given month, the lower your price should be BOTH for power generated, AND power consumed.
Since your solar panels; essentially negate your usage during the peak air conditioning hours: you've offset your usage.
This also enables the power company to get the power from you at low cost (lower retail rate = lower credit), which they can resale for higher cost.
Eventually; they're going to need to assign a different market price, or different credit per net Watt generated
based on time of day, and usage of the grid at that time.
If everyone has solar panels; 100 Watts at midnight may become more valuable than 100 Watts at noon,
because if enough of the population gets panels, "Peak usage" is no longer when conditions are hottest.
The costs of maintaining your electric lines and other equipment; maintaining your transformers, wiring to your house, substations, etc; are bundled with the per-kWH costs.
By the way, they don't do a very good job -- if the electric company were paid a little more money that they were only
allowed to use for infrastructure; they might actually build better power systems that are less likely to go down,
or that have some hardening against Solar EMP risks.
What would be fairer would be to reduce everyone's electric costs by $0.001/kwH; remove
all infrastructure costs from the per-Watt of power price; charge the variable rate only based
on costs created by the variable usage, and charge ALL customers a $5 fixed fee for
maintenance costs of the infrastructure.
No problem with anti-competitive practices, or inferior-by-default programs. Just don't make your system administrator... administer anything else.
Before you diss it, or decide to be heavyhanded and think you need to override Google's choice, because you have to do one more thing.... talk to your security administrator.
The change creates a minor inconvenience for a small number of uses, and greatly reduces a major security risk.
Now if only MS, Google, and FF would all agree to put out security updates for all versions to block the Java browser plugin from running permanently, once and for all.
Sorry... not FCBA; FCRA violations, for fraudulently reporting an amount as credit extended.
With the "$3500 penalty fine"; and non-delivered merchandise; there is not a product or service (no consideration), and no money lent, with no goods exchanged, the consumer is not bound to the contract, therefore, and there is no amount due without adjudication by a court (No amount due).
FCRA statutory damages are a maximum of $1000 in statutory damages for each violation that has occured, plus punitive damages, plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs, for willful noncompliance; for negligence, actual damages plus attorney's fees.
You don't "accidentally forget" to feed an animal in your care for days on end.
Sure you do... if you're a really really busy, really really bad irresponsible forgetful animal owner, and you have the animal caged up somewhere unusual, that you would only visit specifically to feed the animal.
can't just she go to court for harassment and get rich?
She should seek statutory damages under the FDCP / FCBA (Fair credit billing act),
and unauthorized charges;
for the fraudulent report of a $3500 debt for products/services known by the retailer as not delivered.
These properties are all near major roads in urban areas that can supply sufficient power and run fiber without much drama, but the fact is they don't need bullet-proof power or network service to stream bulk data; when a local cache drops out clients can be temporarily served by more distant servers.
Bulk caches like that don't need and can't really use an auto center worth of floor space though....
They need perhaps 2 48U racks. With each of the major CDNs cache boxes taking approximately 6 to 8U of space.
The application is too small; and I don't think anyone will pay them much for doing that.
There's plenty of caching already available at service providers' facilities.
End user's traffic still has to go all the way to their provider's facility, before going out to edge cache devicenodes...
It's unlikely that Sears will offer residential ISPs such a great deal, that the ISPs close down their server rooms and move everything into Sears' auto centers.
Slashdot Mirror
Did we make sure to get blood and saliva samples from the police officers and federal contractors as well?
It was a biased study; police officers and non-police-officers were not equally likely to be selected for the study, in proportion to their numbers that would normally be driving around the area around that time.
It's ambiguous enough: that it is not safe to make assumptions.
it's designed, from the ground up, to be a currency.
So is world of warcraft gold, designed to be used as a form of money.
That doesn't make warcraft gold or BTC a financial instrument, though.
If you're saying Bitcoin is designed from the ground up to be used as a medium of exchange or money for trade or real-world commerce, then that is possible but an opinion though, not necessarily fact.
I would tend to say; Bitcoin is an ingenious video game, designed to incorporate some technical challenges, and real-world work elements; BTCs are a form of share-able "experience points" or in-game gold awarded to players, in exchange for completion of proofs-of-work, which get harder and harder, requiring more and more ingenuity and technical expertise, as time goes on.
The ultimate objective of the Bitcoin game is to either be a miner and get a large number of BTCs, or conduct other activities with acquaintenaces that have BTCs --- it's an open-ended game.
At least.... the de-facto use in trade, doesn't in itself, make Bitcoin like other financial instruments such as bonds or cheques. When you receive a financial instrument such as a cheque; you've been given a guarantee from an issuer that it's worth something, in fiat terms, and these US dollars will be available to you.
When you get the private key to a wallet containing a BTC; there is no guarantee that the BTC could be spent, or has any value; it could very well turn out to be $0.
t would be unreasonable to tax them on the present value of their bitcoins. It makes much more sense to ignore bitcoins per se and treat their sale or exchange for other goods or services as regular income, with deductions for bitcoin-related expenses.
It makes sense... a bitcoin is not something you ever actually gain an indisputable claim to: it's an intangible counter you have; that could very easily go to zero or infinity, if the rules of the game change.
Unfortunately.... many times the IRS can be anything but reasonable.
I suspect they will eventually get treated by the government as some kind of asset for tax purposes, at least.
The trouble with ignoring them; is, if the BTC are ignored, then they can be used as a vehicle to avoid or delay tax liabilities and information return reporting that would otherwise occur.
Bitcoins have always fallen under the current tax laws. There haven't been any new tax laws designed for e-currency like BTC.
They are subject to government regulation when used as a medium of trade.
However; at other times, there is a great deal of uncertainty -- for instance, the IRS has yet to issue any guidance, as to : whether bitcoins are classified as non-tangible personal property under the tax code, or as a foreign currency/ cash-equivalent/financial instrument.
The difference could be very important to miners and people holding bitcoins as well: if the former, then mining bitcoins may be a non-taxable event, and tax liability might not be incurred, until bitcoins are exchanged, and a capital gain is realized.
On the other hand --- if classified as a currency/cash-equivalent/financial instrument, there could be immediate taxes due whenever bitcoins are mined, and also: for tax purposes, requiring anyone holding them, to mark their bitcoins to market at the end of every year, and report the gain or loss based on the change of fair market value of their bitcoins in USD.
No one is going to convert their millions in a slush fund into bitcoins if it'll mean that the value will spike and dip on daily basis. Financial security means confidence in a currencies value.
Well; they can maintain their slush fund in USD; in order to transact in BTC safely, convert only funds required to make a payment into BTC, require a contingent contract, for the time in between agreement and payment; that is, a contract that the buyer (at the buyer's sole option) can cancel, or re-price based on the current exchange rate, if the price of BTC fluctuates too much; between the time the agreement is made, and the time prompt payment can be completed.
This case did not involve the specified people, nor did it involve a state. Therefore it cannot originate in the supreme court.
They should have named the government of a state that had permitted/provided the facilities that surveillance was conducted in.
I also heard that large numbers of people were going to show up dressed as Julian Assange. Is there any truth to that rumor?
Interesting.... and I suppose it will be a teleconference; with assange speaking remotely with a wireless transmitter, from inside the walls of a nearby embassy?
He wouldn't be arrested, they don't have to do that in America anymore - they "detain" you.
Well; the moment he stepped on US soil, authorities would likely detain him for questioning/hold him as a witness for a few days.
The NSA, FBI, etc, would have plenty of time to get the warrants applied for and sorted out, to hold him in custody for a longer period.
I doubt that any of the official russian presences satisfies those constraints.
Perhaps not. It would probably be a simple matter though, for the big ol' government of Russia to finance a private contracter, who would legally buy the property in the US and setup the facility; providing they adhere to regulations and permitting requirements.
I don't see how anyone would need permission to run a non-broadcasting monitoring station on private ground) are impossible or don't exist, just that urban locations and building roofs wont work.
Probably nothing prohibiting them from monitoring a frequency they hold a license to operate on.
There may be applicable FCC or government restrictions against operating receivers on restricted frequencies.
Sec. 705, 47 USC 605:
except through authorized channels of transmission or reception,....
(6) on demand of other lawful authority. No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any radio communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person. No person not being entitled thereto shall receive or assist in receiving any interstate or foreign communication by radio and use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto. No person having received any intercepted radio communication or having become acquainted with the contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) knowing that such communication was intercepted, shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) or use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto. [....]
Report and order FCC 99-58
Well you can't expect to get by with just learning about standard deviation. You need to upgrade to enterprise deviation if you're going to get anywhere in business.
Dang... what edition is needed to add the discussion of the Central limit theorem, the Kelly criterion, Baye's law?
Will another upgrade be required to add Probability distribution, the Monty hall paradox, the Birthday paradox, the accuracy paradox, Benford's law, Zipf's law, Regression towards the mean, the law of truly large numbers, Yule-Simpson effect, the Gambler's fallacy, the Prosecutor's fallacy, and the false positives paradox, the friendship (facebook) paradox?
He writes and sells books - http://www.amazon.com/Step-Step-Introduction-Statistics-Business/dp/1446208214
The price seems insanely high for a 400 page 10x7 paperback book on basic statistics...
There's a way to hack around this by exploiting a Civil War-era constitutional amendment. ....
Seems extreme. Why not just have a policy that all Fax, Email, and Mail, and Telephone communications or recordings thereof are received by a company overseas outside of jurisdiction.
And the overseas company as an independent actor has their own website, and a mechanism for publishing scans or recordings of any warrant received as a matter of public record, on a page linked to in advance.
I call BS. In every jurisdiction I have ever heard of, you are required to provide a physical address when registering a business
You can own an (overseas) "foreign corporation" that is incorporated outside the US; you may have to have a physical address alright, but it's not located in the US.
Good luck serving a domicile located in rural Russia or China.
According to the information I find about Arizona net metering , the power you generate offsets your bill (at retail rates) until your bill is zero; after that you are paid wholesale for any excess
Yes.... my suggestion would be; the greater the amount of power you generate on a given month, the lower your price should be BOTH for power generated, AND power consumed.
Since your solar panels; essentially negate your usage during the peak air conditioning hours: you've offset your usage.
This also enables the power company to get the power from you at low cost (lower retail rate = lower credit), which they can resale for higher cost.
Eventually; they're going to need to assign a different market price, or different credit per net Watt generated based on time of day, and usage of the grid at that time.
If everyone has solar panels; 100 Watts at midnight may become more valuable than 100 Watts at noon, because if enough of the population gets panels, "Peak usage" is no longer when conditions are hottest.
If your install is big enough that you go negative(spin the meter backwards), you get paid.
I read my local utility's terms. With a net meter -- you don't get paid with more generation than usage; you get a credit against future usage.
And it appears there would be some fees that the credit would not be applicable to.
shifts costs to the utility? What costs?
The costs of maintaining your electric lines and other equipment; maintaining your transformers, wiring to your house, substations, etc; are bundled with the per-kWH costs.
By the way, they don't do a very good job -- if the electric company were paid a little more money that they were only allowed to use for infrastructure; they might actually build better power systems that are less likely to go down, or that have some hardening against Solar EMP risks.
What would be fairer would be to reduce everyone's electric costs by $0.001/kwH; remove all infrastructure costs from the per-Watt of power price; charge the variable rate only based on costs created by the variable usage, and charge ALL customers a $5 fixed fee for maintenance costs of the infrastructure.
Technically, Adobe Reader is the first-party program and Chrome is the third-party program for reading PDFs.
Any document viewer outside the web browser; whether implemented as an executable program or a plugin module, is 3rd party software.
Chrome has an internal PDF viewer; and then there are 3rd party choices such as Foxit, Sumatra, or Adobe.
Personally I least-prefer Adobe's PDF reader, even though it used to be one of the most popular ones.
how can a document renderer, basically a postscript web browser with ALL THE FUNCTIONS REMOVED, be bigger than an virtual computer in your computer?
Ah.... what you are missing is clear now. You missed the point that a PDF viewer is a virtual computer in your computer.
Among other things.... PDFs can contain scripts and various executable bits. What do you think the major source of security issues in PDF is?
No problem with anti-competitive practices, or inferior-by-default programs. Just don't make your system administrator ... administer anything else.
Before you diss it, or decide to be heavyhanded and think you need to override Google's choice, because you have to do one more thing.... talk to your security administrator.
The change creates a minor inconvenience for a small number of uses, and greatly reduces a major security risk.
Now if only MS, Google, and FF would all agree to put out security updates for all versions to block the Java browser plugin from running permanently, once and for all.
Sorry... not FCBA; FCRA violations, for fraudulently reporting an amount as credit extended.
With the "$3500 penalty fine"; and non-delivered merchandise; there is not a product or service (no consideration), and no money lent, with no goods exchanged, the consumer is not bound to the contract, therefore, and there is no amount due without adjudication by a court (No amount due).
FCRA statutory damages are a maximum of $1000 in statutory damages for each violation that has occured, plus punitive damages, plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs, for willful noncompliance; for negligence, actual damages plus attorney's fees.
Isn't there a legitimate mechanism to be used when Kleargear, a company that tries too hard to be geeky, is alleged to lie to credit agencies?
Yes there is. It's called a CRA dispute.
If the creditor fraudulently "validates the debt", then sue for the FCBA violations.
They already are. They're removing all comments from their facebook page.
This is one of the reasons Facebook sucks. Companies can remove "unflattering" comments from their page, and leave only the likes and flattering ones.
It erodes trust.... You can't look at a company's FB page, and see it as anything but marketing.
You don't "accidentally forget" to feed an animal in your care for days on end.
Sure you do... if you're a really really busy, really really bad irresponsible forgetful animal owner, and you have the animal caged up somewhere unusual, that you would only visit specifically to feed the animal.
can't just she go to court for harassment and get rich?
She should seek statutory damages under the FDCP / FCBA (Fair credit billing act), and unauthorized charges; for the fraudulent report of a $3500 debt for products/services known by the retailer as not delivered.
These properties are all near major roads in urban areas that can supply sufficient power and run fiber without much drama, but the fact is they don't need bullet-proof power or network service to stream bulk data; when a local cache drops out clients can be temporarily served by more distant servers.
Bulk caches like that don't need and can't really use an auto center worth of floor space though....
They need perhaps 2 48U racks. With each of the major CDNs cache boxes taking approximately 6 to 8U of space.
The application is too small; and I don't think anyone will pay them much for doing that.
There's plenty of caching already available at service providers' facilities.
End user's traffic still has to go all the way to their provider's facility, before going out to edge cache devicenodes...
It's unlikely that Sears will offer residential ISPs such a great deal, that the ISPs close down their server rooms and move everything into Sears' auto centers.