Head under pillows, going to the Apple store to buy more iPads, not questioning the consensus, super-consuming reality we live in. I turned on my facebook today and saw all my friends got new iphones so I went down and got one too! Drone strikes keep us safe, don't ask too many questions, don't rock the boat. Obama or Romney, Apple or Microsoft, Facebook or Google+. What do drone strikes have to do with it?
The price of gasoline cost $0.25 SILVER per gallon a century ago, and it still costs $0.25 SILVER per gallon today. The rise in apparent price is due entirely to local currency fluctuations.
Silver and gasoline are industrial commodities that are both manufactured: both have to be taken from the ground and refined. Both have storage and distribution infrastructures. Not only have all these systems radically changed over the last 100 years, the relative scarcity and demand for silver and gasoline have not remained constant. Your point seems to be that the inherent value of commodities never, ever change with respect to each other, even over a hundred years. That doesn't seem to be true. Just choosing a commodity to be a currency would change it's value a lot.
Because BitCoins are not directly tied to any single currency, and are not manipulated by fiat, and are instead a representative of time and number of users, BitCoins will likely become a far more stable monetary unit than government-issued currencies. When you see the exchange rate graph of BitCoins begin to mirror the price of oil, that day will have come. If you look at the 1M graphs of BitCoins and oil, that mirroring has already begun.
My God, why would you want your currency tied to the inherent value of oil? I hope for your sake that's not true. One exocet later...
Dollars at least have the advantage of being the fiat currency of the most wealthy and powerful national economy on earth, if only being backed by it's national debt. Bitcoins are the fiat currency of some internet geeks and drug addicts, and are only backed by the strength of... the bitcoin market. As long as everyone has "faith in bitcoins", you're good.
Personally I'm less certain that people need to go to these places. Kind of a stunt, right? Because we have such great imaging and 'bots now.
My friend works at JPL, he told me Carl Sagan once gave a talk to the staff there and basically said as much... No we don't need to send people there, but enthusiasm over manned space flight is what pays for all these robotic science missions.
Either way, we need better propulsion systems. If we're sending people, we need better toilets.
Agreed! Titan deserves another mission, Cassini-Huygens has been amazing. On the other hand, they have to follow the money or cease to exist. Mars is big right now so it was probably a marketing decision. The fact is, we should be doing all three missions.
For comparison, the record baseball throw is about 136 meters, set in 1957 by some freak of nature. The record for a female is 90 meters, by Babe Didrikson, who won a gold medal in javelin at the 1932 Olympics, and could have broken that skinny kid in half. Must be operator error, maybe the guy was reading feet instead of meters.
The Van Cliburn Piano Competition? Really? How many people would even be on the fence about something like that. You either own all twelve or you wouldn't watch it if it was free. I mean maybe there was some turfing by all their friends or something. But anyone who would gush about The Van Cliburn Piano Competition very well could be sincere. It's not like it's an air freshener or a stick of RAM or something. The idea is that it's an artistic pinnacle reached by serious young musicians. I think Amazon gets a free pass on this one.
Do you mean "everyone doing their homework together" on facebook? Do you mean actually teaching a class on facebook? Seems kind of inappropriate to me. Maybe your idea is to make it more appropriate by filtering it, but I don't think they want you to. They make money showing you ads, building a dossier on what you click on, etc. So I would suggest that you not use it as a teaching tool. In fact it's kind of unfair if all the students are required to use facebook to participate in this "content". What if they don't want to start out their lives feeding all their personal info to an evil mega-corporation? (Unlikely I know.) There are probably educational sites out there you could have everyone sign up for that have some kind of chat.
(ps - If they're younger than 13 they're not supposed to be on fb.)
They should stomp all over this crap. Here you have an unregulated free-market system in all it's glory. Without some kind of cop pointing a stick at them to do the right thing, of course they don't bother with backups, they don't bother with accountability and they don't honor their debts. They claim they can't figure out what happened. They probably hacked it themselves. Scammers scamming other scammers, take the money and run. Just want to close the site and move on. Ayn Rand would indeed be proud of them.
This fiasco is exactly why we need a stronger regulation in financial markets, not weaker. There's really not much difference between bitcoin exchange and exotic securities markets. You just get a bunch of private people together and start trading something, like tranches of unsecured rubber dog shit. My URDS exchange is a great way to make real US dollars, and buy drugs too!
Had to search this thread pretty far to find mention of Cordwainer Smith. The short stories. I like his novel "Norstrilia", but it's an acquired taste. Think I'll break out some C'Mell tonight.
There are lots of easy ways forward for him, but he seems to be even more butthurt than the people complaining to his host. All he was asked to do was respond to them. Fine. We don't need to crowdsource that. Don't handle any complaints, just send them all the same three paragraphs and be done. Add some text to the site somewhere to discourage this in the future. We don't need to hold this guy's weiner for him, if he wants to be in business he knows what to do.
The fact is, the site owner has a reasonably cool idea but can't be bothered with managing it. Just seems like a convenient opportunity to play the victim. Nothing to see here.
Canticle: Doesn't the protagonist just die a pointless death about 1/3 of the way in? He's on his way somewhere and gets shot by a stray arrow, just because. Or maybe the point is that life sucks. I wouldn't know if it has a happy ending. I liked "The Lineman". Miller really likes his characters to suffer.
But "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester is worse. Talk about punishing some poor sod beyond the limits of sanity. Once again it may be unicorns and lollipops in the end, but there's no motivation to read that far. Apparently "repeatedly voted in polls the "Best Science Fiction Novel of All Time'" by people who like pain.
Philip K. Dick manages to stay classy while being all post-apocalyptic.
The US shot one down immediately afterward, with an anti-ballistic missile fired from a warship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-193 They also have the X-37B with shark-mounted laser beams. If they wanted it gone it would probably take a day or two at the most.
Slashdot Mirror
No problem, the best thing about wikipedia is all the arguing and drama. This is truly awesome.
Cremated, ocean, etc.
...Speculating...could be...
And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
Head under pillows, going to the Apple store to buy more iPads, not questioning the consensus, super-consuming reality we live in. I turned on my facebook today and saw all my friends got new iphones so I went down and got one too! Drone strikes keep us safe, don't ask too many questions, don't rock the boat. Obama or Romney, Apple or Microsoft, Facebook or Google+. What do drone strikes have to do with it?
--------------
Posted from a 17" macbook pro.
I can see how bitcoins fit into this, I can see how kickstarter fits in too. Nibiru, obviously. Raspberry Pi... I need more to work with here.
The price of gasoline cost $0.25 SILVER per gallon a century ago, and it still costs $0.25 SILVER per gallon today. The rise in apparent price is due entirely to local currency fluctuations.
Silver and gasoline are industrial commodities that are both manufactured: both have to be taken from the ground and refined. Both have storage and distribution infrastructures. Not only have all these systems radically changed over the last 100 years, the relative scarcity and demand for silver and gasoline have not remained constant. Your point seems to be that the inherent value of commodities never, ever change with respect to each other, even over a hundred years. That doesn't seem to be true. Just choosing a commodity to be a currency would change it's value a lot.
Because BitCoins are not directly tied to any single currency, and are not manipulated by fiat, and are instead a representative of time and number of users, BitCoins will likely become a far more stable monetary unit than government-issued currencies. When you see the exchange rate graph of BitCoins begin to mirror the price of oil, that day will have come. If you look at the 1M graphs of BitCoins and oil, that mirroring has already begun.
My God, why would you want your currency tied to the inherent value of oil? I hope for your sake that's not true. One exocet later...
Dollars at least have the advantage of being the fiat currency of the most wealthy and powerful national economy on earth, if only being backed by it's national debt. Bitcoins are the fiat currency of some internet geeks and drug addicts, and are only backed by the strength of... the bitcoin market. As long as everyone has "faith in bitcoins", you're good.
"Sharpen my axe; I'm here to sever heads."
Don't want an extended psych evaluation? Don't threaten people on the internet.
Personally I'm less certain that people need to go to these places. Kind of a stunt, right? Because we have such great imaging and 'bots now.
My friend works at JPL, he told me Carl Sagan once gave a talk to the staff there and basically said as much... No we don't need to send people there, but enthusiasm over manned space flight is what pays for all these robotic science missions.
Either way, we need better propulsion systems. If we're sending people, we need better toilets.
Agreed! Titan deserves another mission, Cassini-Huygens has been amazing. On the other hand, they have to follow the money or cease to exist. Mars is big right now so it was probably a marketing decision. The fact is, we should be doing all three missions.
Well it looks like the record golf ball throw is 170 yards, I guess you're right. Apparently Nokia makes golf balls too.
For comparison, the record baseball throw is about 136 meters, set in 1957 by some freak of nature. The record for a female is 90 meters, by Babe Didrikson, who won a gold medal in javelin at the 1932 Olympics, and could have broken that skinny kid in half. Must be operator error, maybe the guy was reading feet instead of meters.
Because in an emergency can't roll joints with a Kindle.
The Van Cliburn Piano Competition? Really? How many people would even be on the fence about something like that. You either own all twelve or you wouldn't watch it if it was free. I mean maybe there was some turfing by all their friends or something. But anyone who would gush about The Van Cliburn Piano Competition very well could be sincere. It's not like it's an air freshener or a stick of RAM or something. The idea is that it's an artistic pinnacle reached by serious young musicians. I think Amazon gets a free pass on this one.
Moodle no good. No Mafia Wars or Farmville. It doesn't have a "timeline". You can't "like" anything. No great content. ;o(
Class groups and study session events.
Do you mean "everyone doing their homework together" on facebook? Do you mean actually teaching a class on facebook? Seems kind of inappropriate to me. Maybe your idea is to make it more appropriate by filtering it, but I don't think they want you to. They make money showing you ads, building a dossier on what you click on, etc. So I would suggest that you not use it as a teaching tool. In fact it's kind of unfair if all the students are required to use facebook to participate in this "content". What if they don't want to start out their lives feeding all their personal info to an evil mega-corporation? (Unlikely I know.) There are probably educational sites out there you could have everyone sign up for that have some kind of chat.
(ps - If they're younger than 13 they're not supposed to be on fb.)
Prefers flamethrower (ibid.).
They should stomp all over this crap. Here you have an unregulated free-market system in all it's glory. Without some kind of cop pointing a stick at them to do the right thing, of course they don't bother with backups, they don't bother with accountability and they don't honor their debts. They claim they can't figure out what happened. They probably hacked it themselves. Scammers scamming other scammers, take the money and run. Just want to close the site and move on. Ayn Rand would indeed be proud of them.
This fiasco is exactly why we need a stronger regulation in financial markets, not weaker. There's really not much difference between bitcoin exchange and exotic securities markets. You just get a bunch of private people together and start trading something, like tranches of unsecured rubber dog shit. My URDS exchange is a great way to make real US dollars, and buy drugs too!
I never thought this would happen.
Thread over. Also, best doggerel.
Had to search this thread pretty far to find mention of Cordwainer Smith. The short stories. I like his novel "Norstrilia", but it's an acquired taste. Think I'll break out some C'Mell tonight.
There are lots of easy ways forward for him, but he seems to be even more butthurt than the people complaining to his host. All he was asked to do was respond to them. Fine. We don't need to crowdsource that. Don't handle any complaints, just send them all the same three paragraphs and be done. Add some text to the site somewhere to discourage this in the future. We don't need to hold this guy's weiner for him, if he wants to be in business he knows what to do.
The fact is, the site owner has a reasonably cool idea but can't be bothered with managing it. Just seems like a convenient opportunity to play the victim. Nothing to see here.
Canticle: Doesn't the protagonist just die a pointless death about 1/3 of the way in? He's on his way somewhere and gets shot by a stray arrow, just because. Or maybe the point is that life sucks. I wouldn't know if it has a happy ending. I liked "The Lineman". Miller really likes his characters to suffer.
But "The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester is worse. Talk about punishing some poor sod beyond the limits of sanity. Once again it may be unicorns and lollipops in the end, but there's no motivation to read that far. Apparently "repeatedly voted in polls the "Best Science Fiction Novel of All Time'" by people who like pain.
Philip K. Dick manages to stay classy while being all post-apocalyptic.
Multiple ballots are put in mult, iple bal... you lost me.
The US shot one down immediately afterward, with an anti-ballistic missile fired from a warship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-193 They also have the X-37B with shark-mounted laser beams. If they wanted it gone it would probably take a day or two at the most.
Cory Doctorow already sounds like he's x2.