Fiat currency, contrary to what they say, has value for a very particular reason: the government gives it value. It does this by demanding payment of taxes in the fiat currency. The failure to pay your taxes results in losing your very real assets, like your business, your home and in the worst case, your freedom. It also mandates that the currency is "legal tender" meaning it can't be refused as discharge of debts.
Every other thing it can buy is in relation to how much you want to keep the things the government can take from you. (Or private parties can take from you because you have collateralized debts.) It is this coercion that gives it power to pay for everything else.
The freestaters know this. If they can get you and the government to the point where the government has to accept something other than the government's own money to pay taxes, they know it will then take just a little nudge to push the whole thing over. And they figure that somehow they will come out on top when that happens. Ever the optimists, these guys.
Exactly what they need, a relatively cumbersome way of getting paid compared to all the other methods they're used to using, and being paid with something that may fluctuate wildly in relation to the money they use to pay their rent and buy their merchandise?
Calling it a currency is misleading. To be a currency, something has to be generally accepted as payment for goods, services and debts, at least within some geographic area. Bitcoin is a digital commodity that mostly can't be used to buy or sell anything without first finding a buyer to turn it back into money.
You make it sound like Bitcoin, a small but quickly growing experimental transaction system, has a similar volatility problem to the world's largest fiat currencies. This is clearly not true.
If you bought bitcoins 2 months ago and sold today you would have made 90-140% (depending on what you traded for, 120% for USD) of the invested capital. The could easily lose or gain 50% against most currencies/commodities over the next month. People holding bitcoins have to accept this serious volatility. Merchants need to change their prices rapidly as value rises or falls (there are tools to help with this of course). Users should not hold more than they can comfortably afford to lose suddenly and completely.
Right there. That's the reason why it's not prudent to exchange dollars for bitcoins.
At work, we use them as the boot device and main mass storage device for our embedded systems. We build systems that deal with lots and lots of real time data. You're damn right it makes a difference.
Nothing physical was stolen. What I find alarming is seeds fall out of hoppers in transit, pollen blows across property lines, Monsanto has a product that not only competes with other seed lines, it has the power to literaly take over seed lines especially from smaller operations.
That's not the case for soybeans. Soybeans are a self-pollinating plant. Normally the plant is already pollinated before the flower opens. There can be cross-pollination due to insects, but the prospect of wind-borne pollination is remote.
Grain plants like corn and wheat though, pollinate mainly by wind.
Actually it does work that way, under the uniform commercial code if you buy something that was stolen, from a business that normally sells those good, the seller is liable not the purchaser. I learned that by watching a case being argued in court; a marina traded a boat to a sign company in exchange for services rendered, the marina failed to inform the bank of the sale of the boat to have it removed from their floor-plan loan, the bank then sued the sign company for the boat and lost because the sign company had no reason to believe that a profession boat seller was selling stolen boats.
Likewise why would a farmer assume that an elevator whose business is selling seeds and feed be seller stolen seed?
Monsanto does not claim that Mr. Bowman or anybody else stole the seeds. They claim that Mr. Bowman violated their intellectual property rights by planting their patented seeds without their permission.
Farmers bought seeds from Monsanto, and agreed not to plant them or sell them for seed. They sold them to a grain wholesaler that they assumed would sell them for food. The vast majority of them were sold for food. The grain wholesaler, who did not sign an agreement with Monsanto (why should they?) bought the seed, tossed it in the elevator with all their other soybeans. No violation of the law so far. Mr. Bowman bought the seed. The grain wholesaler did not break any patent law nor break any contractual agreement by selling the seeds to Mr. Bowman. Mr. Bowman, who had not signed any agreement with Monsanto, planted the seeds.
At what point was the law broken, if any? Monsanto claims that Mr. Bowman broke the law by planting seeds. Appeals courts agreed. It appears that somebody on the SCOTUS either disagrees or wants to clarify or underscore the patent law regarding patents on living organisms.
Intentional, BUT as it turns out, there is already something called "sitegeist." (http://sitegeist.sunlightfoundation.com/) That focuses on PHYSICAL location. My intent was focusing on, as you say, the prevailing viewpoints associated with a website. I am not the first person to use the term that way. See http://www.sitegeist.com.au/.
For the possible harm, there's torts. The patent does have bearing. The rule should be that if your patented gene gets loose (reproduces outside human agency), you have no legal recourse for it turning up wherever it turns up. For instance, if it's a crop gene and it gets cross-pollinated into the field of somebody who didn't buy your seed, that's too bad for you. You put the gene in a condition to be propagated outside of human control and you have no rights regarding the seeds produced on that field. Animals are a little easier to control, but if your genetically modified bull gets into the neighbor's pasture and impregnates all the heifers, that's also too bad for you. You don't own the calves. They belong to the farmer who owns the heifers.
There's no REASON why proportional representation needs to be tempered. You just don't like it for some reason you can't articulate. Why should some people have a lot more political power than other people in a republic?
The Senate we have now is not what the founders designed. Those geniuses designed monstrosity. The Sentate originally composed of members appointed by their Governors. That system was hopelessly corrupt. Senators literally bought their seats from compliant and corrupt Governors. Now that isn't possible. They have to buy votes, which is a lot harder and they consequently believe they have to stay in some kind of touch and at least appear to represent the interests of the people of their states.
Yes, direct election of the President does make the most sense. The electoral college system gives voters in one state as much as 70 times more power PER VOTER than voters in another state.
The problem is dumb patents that do not advance the state of the art and provide no solution to anything. Most software patents are only problem statements and provide no solution to the problem at all, so they are totally worthless except to harass other people who actually invested the time and energy to solve the problem.
If a patent describes something useful in a way that furthers the art, then no-one will have an issue with it.
Every patent application should be accompanied by a working machine. Whether it costs 10 pence, 10 dollars, or 10 billion dollars to make that working machine - that will prove the value of the patent.
That would destroy drug patents as well as software patents.
It should require a demonstration to show practicality. In the case of a drug patent, that would mean a successful clinical trial
In the case of sotware (and yes, I think there should be software patents but not for obvious, workmanlike programs) it would be a working program that implements all the claims of the invention.) and a demonstration that it does what is claimed.
In the case of hardware, it would require a physical implementation of the invention and demonstration that it does what is claimed.
In the case of a gene patent, no such fucking thing unless you built that gene yourself and it isn't known to exist in a living organism in the wild. For example, if you invent a new DNA sequence that will cause bacteria to break down cellulose quickly and convert it into ethanol or methane, that would be an invention. And the modified bacteria could then be an invention, though I have qualms about letting any living thing be patented because if it escapes into the biosphere it becomes impossible to commercially control.
But do they pay for researching and writing stories? Sites break down, from what I've seen, into two major categories: (1) adjunct outlets for newspaper, broadcast and cable news outlets (2) aggregator and commenting sites like (majors like Google or Yahoo, mid-rank like DrudgeReport or HuffPost and minor league like slashdot).
The latter category are parasitic, including slashdot. They feed off news content generated by newspapers, television and radio news and contribute little or nothing to news content, although they do arguably help inform the public. But with each such service having a self-selected audience attuned to their sitegeist, they tend not to expand the horizons of your knowledge like a general news service or a local/regional newspaper is likely to do.
I'm not saying WashPost shouldn't have a web and mobile presence. They probably should, but if they can't build it into their dominant source of cash, they have to devote the bulk of their staff to print journalism.
Of course direct election of the President makes the most sense. But there remains the problem of the Senate.
Breaking up the states and reorganizing them as described in the article would be very impractical because some of the jurisdictions have no geographic ties (as stated in the article.) Also, you'd have to form 50 new state governments and there's a problem of how to settle differences in laws between places that used to be in different states.
It would be somewhat more practical to break up the biggest states (California, Texas, New York, Florida) and combine a few of the demographically smallest states while trying to maintain geographic compactness. How about Montana + Idaho, North Dakota + South Dakota + Wyoming, Maine + Vermont + New Hampshire, Connecticut + Rhode Island, Nebraska + Kansas. And the most political fun: Utah+Nevada!
Less drastic fixes for the Senate problem:
1. Abolish the Senate (also getting rid of Congress's built-in institutional memory, which is a big downside)
Here's the result cascading into anything connected with it & the "holy dollar" in publicly held companies (no small wonder Micheal Dell's attempting to BUY BACK the company he started - my guess is, even HE realizes it's a road to eventual ruin, & allows the WORST "virus of the spirt" as I call it, in greed, to take over everything).
* "Welcome to the WORLD, in 2013", folks...
More like welcome to the world of working for a for profit business at any time in history. The Washington Post needs to make money or it goes out of business. There are three ways the mobile platforms model can help with that: (1) They could contribute to the subscriber base (2) they could sell ads (3) They could create buzz about stories and link to stories that sell ads.
To pay 54 people including a CIO and a General Manager, you'd need to be generating a lot of money from the mobile business -- more than $5M per year. Obviously top management at the WP took a look at how much money they could possibly be generating out of their mobile business and concluded that it wasn't generating that much money and didn't have any prospect of generating that much money any time soon, nor a plan to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
Fiat currency, contrary to what they say, has value for a very particular reason: the government gives it value. It does this by demanding payment of taxes in the fiat currency. The failure to pay your taxes results in losing your very real assets, like your business, your home and in the worst case, your freedom. It also mandates that the currency is "legal tender" meaning it can't be refused as discharge of debts.
Every other thing it can buy is in relation to how much you want to keep the things the government can take from you. (Or private parties can take from you because you have collateralized debts.) It is this coercion that gives it power to pay for everything else.
The freestaters know this. If they can get you and the government to the point where the government has to accept something other than the government's own money to pay taxes, they know it will then take just a little nudge to push the whole thing over. And they figure that somehow they will come out on top when that happens. Ever the optimists, these guys.
..so, a pyramid system then?
No. Nobody promises you that the bitcoins will increase in value or that they will magically multiply, or even buy them back from you, ever.
Exactly what they need, a relatively cumbersome way of getting paid compared to all the other methods they're used to using, and being paid with something that may fluctuate wildly in relation to the money they use to pay their rent and buy their merchandise?
Calling it a currency is misleading. To be a currency, something has to be generally accepted as payment for goods, services and debts, at least within some geographic area. Bitcoin is a digital commodity that mostly can't be used to buy or sell anything without first finding a buyer to turn it back into money.
You make it sound like Bitcoin, a small but quickly growing experimental transaction system, has a similar volatility problem to the world's largest fiat currencies. This is clearly not true.
If you bought bitcoins 2 months ago and sold today you would have made 90-140% (depending on what you traded for, 120% for USD) of the invested capital. The could easily lose or gain 50% against most currencies/commodities over the next month. People holding bitcoins have to accept this serious volatility. Merchants need to change their prices rapidly as value rises or falls (there are tools to help with this of course). Users should not hold more than they can comfortably afford to lose suddenly and completely.
Right there. That's the reason why it's not prudent to exchange dollars for bitcoins.
At work, we use them as the boot device and main mass storage device for our embedded systems. We build systems that deal with lots and lots of real time data. You're damn right it makes a difference.
Nothing physical was stolen. What I find alarming is seeds fall out of hoppers in transit, pollen blows across property lines, Monsanto has a product that not only competes with other seed lines, it has the power to literaly take over seed lines especially from smaller operations.
That's not the case for soybeans. Soybeans are a self-pollinating plant. Normally the plant is already pollinated before the flower opens. There can be cross-pollination due to insects, but the prospect of wind-borne pollination is remote. Grain plants like corn and wheat though, pollinate mainly by wind.
If your pages are not connected via links to any extern sites, then by definitionem, they are not part of the World Wide Web.
For sufficiently flexible definitions, everything is true.
Because: 1. new sites are created every day initially having no links to them. 2. websites can be and are created that have no external links in them.
Big fire at Monsanto, and the world starves because no seed grows?
They don't produce all their seed in one spot you know, nor are they the only seed company out there.
They're trying awfully hard to be.
Actually it does work that way, under the uniform commercial code if you buy something that was stolen, from a business that normally sells those good, the seller is liable not the purchaser. I learned that by watching a case being argued in court; a marina traded a boat to a sign company in exchange for services rendered, the marina failed to inform the bank of the sale of the boat to have it removed from their floor-plan loan, the bank then sued the sign company for the boat and lost because the sign company had no reason to believe that a profession boat seller was selling stolen boats. Likewise why would a farmer assume that an elevator whose business is selling seeds and feed be seller stolen seed?
Nothing was stolen. Next!
But these seeds were never stolen.
Monsanto does not claim that Mr. Bowman or anybody else stole the seeds. They claim that Mr. Bowman violated their intellectual property rights by planting their patented seeds without their permission.
Farmers bought seeds from Monsanto, and agreed not to plant them or sell them for seed. They sold them to a grain wholesaler that they assumed would sell them for food. The vast majority of them were sold for food. The grain wholesaler, who did not sign an agreement with Monsanto (why should they?) bought the seed, tossed it in the elevator with all their other soybeans. No violation of the law so far. Mr. Bowman bought the seed. The grain wholesaler did not break any patent law nor break any contractual agreement by selling the seeds to Mr. Bowman. Mr. Bowman, who had not signed any agreement with Monsanto, planted the seeds.
At what point was the law broken, if any? Monsanto claims that Mr. Bowman broke the law by planting seeds. Appeals courts agreed. It appears that somebody on the SCOTUS either disagrees or wants to clarify or underscore the patent law regarding patents on living organisms.
If it can be proven, this is breaking the lae in two ways. First, it's illegal age discrimination. Second, it's immigration fraud.
You mean, after the people took control of the Senate, right?
Intentional, BUT as it turns out, there is already something called "sitegeist." (http://sitegeist.sunlightfoundation.com/) That focuses on PHYSICAL location. My intent was focusing on, as you say, the prevailing viewpoints associated with a website. I am not the first person to use the term that way. See http://www.sitegeist.com.au/.
For the possible harm, there's torts. The patent does have bearing. The rule should be that if your patented gene gets loose (reproduces outside human agency), you have no legal recourse for it turning up wherever it turns up. For instance, if it's a crop gene and it gets cross-pollinated into the field of somebody who didn't buy your seed, that's too bad for you. You put the gene in a condition to be propagated outside of human control and you have no rights regarding the seeds produced on that field. Animals are a little easier to control, but if your genetically modified bull gets into the neighbor's pasture and impregnates all the heifers, that's also too bad for you. You don't own the calves. They belong to the farmer who owns the heifers.
The problem is real. The solution is a cluster fuck.
Yeah, but they were wrong.
There's no REASON why proportional representation needs to be tempered. You just don't like it for some reason you can't articulate. Why should some people have a lot more political power than other people in a republic?
The Senate we have now is not what the founders designed. Those geniuses designed monstrosity. The Sentate originally composed of members appointed by their Governors. That system was hopelessly corrupt. Senators literally bought their seats from compliant and corrupt Governors. Now that isn't possible. They have to buy votes, which is a lot harder and they consequently believe they have to stay in some kind of touch and at least appear to represent the interests of the people of their states.
Yes, direct election of the President does make the most sense. The electoral college system gives voters in one state as much as 70 times more power PER VOTER than voters in another state.
The problem is dumb patents that do not advance the state of the art and provide no solution to anything. Most software patents are only problem statements and provide no solution to the problem at all, so they are totally worthless except to harass other people who actually invested the time and energy to solve the problem. If a patent describes something useful in a way that furthers the art, then no-one will have an issue with it. Every patent application should be accompanied by a working machine. Whether it costs 10 pence, 10 dollars, or 10 billion dollars to make that working machine - that will prove the value of the patent.
That would destroy drug patents as well as software patents.
It should require a demonstration to show practicality. In the case of a drug patent, that would mean a successful clinical trial
In the case of sotware (and yes, I think there should be software patents but not for obvious, workmanlike programs) it would be a working program that implements all the claims of the invention.) and a demonstration that it does what is claimed.
In the case of hardware, it would require a physical implementation of the invention and demonstration that it does what is claimed.
In the case of a gene patent, no such fucking thing unless you built that gene yourself and it isn't known to exist in a living organism in the wild. For example, if you invent a new DNA sequence that will cause bacteria to break down cellulose quickly and convert it into ethanol or methane, that would be an invention. And the modified bacteria could then be an invention, though I have qualms about letting any living thing be patented because if it escapes into the biosphere it becomes impossible to commercially control.
The skill of being a politician involves being able to compartmentalize issues and think about more than one in the same month.
But do they pay for researching and writing stories? Sites break down, from what I've seen, into two major categories: (1) adjunct outlets for newspaper, broadcast and cable news outlets (2) aggregator and commenting sites like (majors like Google or Yahoo, mid-rank like DrudgeReport or HuffPost and minor league like slashdot).
The latter category are parasitic, including slashdot. They feed off news content generated by newspapers, television and radio news and contribute little or nothing to news content, although they do arguably help inform the public. But with each such service having a self-selected audience attuned to their sitegeist, they tend not to expand the horizons of your knowledge like a general news service or a local/regional newspaper is likely to do.
I'm not saying WashPost shouldn't have a web and mobile presence. They probably should, but if they can't build it into their dominant source of cash, they have to devote the bulk of their staff to print journalism.
Of course direct election of the President makes the most sense. But there remains the problem of the Senate.
Breaking up the states and reorganizing them as described in the article would be very impractical because some of the jurisdictions have no geographic ties (as stated in the article.) Also, you'd have to form 50 new state governments and there's a problem of how to settle differences in laws between places that used to be in different states.
It would be somewhat more practical to break up the biggest states (California, Texas, New York, Florida) and combine a few of the demographically smallest states while trying to maintain geographic compactness. How about Montana + Idaho, North Dakota + South Dakota + Wyoming, Maine + Vermont + New Hampshire, Connecticut + Rhode Island, Nebraska + Kansas. And the most political fun: Utah+Nevada!
Can anyone explain this from FB's Income Statement (you can read it on Yahoo! finance):
Income before tax = $494 M
Income taxes = $441M
Income after tax = $53M
Is it a big assumption that mobile will do better than newspapers in the future? News on paper exists today only because of inertia.
Yes, it's BIG assumption. Making money on news delivery is hard.
Historical models for making money on news delivery:
Methods of news delivery that remain unproven as money-makers:
Here's the result cascading into anything connected with it & the "holy dollar" in publicly held companies (no small wonder Micheal Dell's attempting to BUY BACK the company he started - my guess is, even HE realizes it's a road to eventual ruin, & allows the WORST "virus of the spirt" as I call it, in greed, to take over everything).
* "Welcome to the WORLD, in 2013", folks...
More like welcome to the world of working for a for profit business at any time in history. The Washington Post needs to make money or it goes out of business. There are three ways the mobile platforms model can help with that: (1) They could contribute to the subscriber base (2) they could sell ads (3) They could create buzz about stories and link to stories that sell ads.
To pay 54 people including a CIO and a General Manager, you'd need to be generating a lot of money from the mobile business -- more than $5M per year. Obviously top management at the WP took a look at how much money they could possibly be generating out of their mobile business and concluded that it wasn't generating that much money and didn't have any prospect of generating that much money any time soon, nor a plan to do so.