A good point. However, gold bugs often assume gold has some value that, say, copper or oil don't, when in fact oil has a great deal more intrinsic value, and copper is at least in the ballpark with gold. They have more intrinsic value than a dollar bill, although less practical value for most purposes as the dollar bill is more quickly/easily convertible for any use, rather than just wiring, etc.
Nope. This is no more true than it is for silver, oil, or any other commodity. There are no guarantees for the value of any commodity, and there's nothing magic about gold vs. anything else in this regard.
The ironic thing is that these are the same people who made Borderlands, the one game that is the complete opposite of what you complain about.
Not really the same people at all, no. The people who made Duke worked for a now defunct company. The people who made Borderlands inherited Duke and didn't do much beyond try to polish it as best they could and ship it. They really didn't alter it beyond making it shippable...
Religion is the only legitimate basis for politics. All laws force some smaller group to do what a larger group thinks is 'moral'.
I challenge you to define the term 'human rights' without reference to either law or morality. There is no such thing.
Religion has never been a legitimate basis for morality. It tends to inhibit people's ability to determine what's actually right and wrong.
But then I realized that it's a public announcement of the preplanned televised event of one's own death. That's a motivation of twisted proportion that I hope to never understand.
Yes, trying to change the world for the better... how horrible would it be if you could understand that?
Western civilization is going down fast; I remember a time when this very scenario was the nightmare end of a slippery slope argument...
Yeah. First they give slaves the right to be treated as people, then they even give women the right to vote, and now they're talking about letting people make their own decisions on life and death issues. How long can western civilization survive if we keep letting more and more people take more and more control over their own lives?
For you, there's no point. For Paypal, the point is to not loose money to JPMorgan Chase (who issues their debit cards) and MasterCard. And, heck, if they can get most merchants to accept an alternative, and it's no less convenient that using my Paypal debit card, why not?
You are misinformed. Says right on the back of my Paypal Mastercard (in really tiny print at the bottom), "This card is issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank..." I'm pretty sure JPMorgan Chase and GE have not secretly merged recently...
I have been the victim of credit card fraud four times in my life, and am out-of-pocket exactly $0.00. The credit card companies work with the customers against fraud for the sake of keeping their business afloat and profitable. Paypal, on the other hand, has no regulatory or business reasons to do this at present - they have a captive audience.
Um, that's exactly what Paypal did when my Paypal debit card was charged fraudulently. Well, technically, I'm out-of-pocket for the cost of the stamp I used to mail the paperwork, but that's a lot less than the nearly $2000.00 in fraudulent charges they refunded as soon as I sent them the statement identifying which charges weren't mine and stating I didn't make them.
I'm not sure if it's required, but that's how it operates in my experience, including with Paypal. I had a bunch of unauthorized charges appear on my Paypal debit card, so I notified them and they refunded me. Granted, I had to file some paperwork, but it wasn't much. Just a signed statement identifying which charges I didn't make and stating that I did not make them. Paperwork received, refunds issued. It was almost scarily easy (scary from the point of view of a merchant accepting one for payment, knowing it's so easy to have the money sucked right back if the buyer isn't on the up and up).
But most banks cannot create or destroy money (unless by destroy you mean remove money from people's hands).
Banks create money by loaning out more than they have.
I put $100 into a checking account at Alice's Bank. You come and borrow $50 for that same bank. I write a check for $90 to the grocery store. The grocery store has $90, you've got $50, and there's still $10 in my account -- total $150 in circulation, all from $100.
We can argue whether this is a good or bad thing, as to whether that $50 is created out of thin air or out of some value that you gave to the bank (collateral, or just your promise to repay), but there's no doubt that fractional reserve banking basically creates money.
And the balance fails to come to $0 in your example, unlike it always does in a real bank, because you failed to sum up all the accounts here properly. Nothing is created or destroyed in any case. Money is an abstraction. The $10 credit in your account is no more or less read than the $50 debit in his from the loan (although from the point of view of the bank, your $10 is a debit and his $50 is a credit).
Seriously? You think that that a transaction that authenticates the identity of the payee through physical contact and sends the transaction over a private network is less safe that one that operates with dubious authentication over an untrusted network? Why don't you think that over while I count my blessings that you don't do this for a living.
Ha. I'll count my blessing that you don't do this for a living, either. You've just completely misdescribed the security involved in the debit card in question. Sadly, that second option that you rightfully regard as dubious is, despite being not terribly secure, much more secure than the first. The second system tries to authenticate that the person who owns the account wants this transaction by using an unsecure network get confirmation. The first system makes no attempt to authenticate this at all. Not sure what you're on about with the emphasized "physical", since deducting funds from a debit card does not, in fact, require that the owner of the account, nor the card they were issued, be present. Certainly precisely zero is done to authenticate the identity of the payee beyond "does the payee have a working account number I can charge". Nothing is done to attempt to authenticate that the owner of that account is the payee or wants the charge to be made.
You can transfer tiny fractions of a bitcoin, so the number of bitcoins in existance isn't that important for liquidity. It's not like a stock.
Right. The important number is the number of bitcoin traders. Stable markets are relatively stable because they have a large number of buyers and sellers. Liquidity isn't a problem when there's always lots of people looking to buy. When there's relatively few people in the market, it's easy for someone trying to sell to quickly chew through all the buy offers at or near the current rate. If they still want to sell more, price begins dropping precipitously as they can now only sell to people who put in relatively low buy offers, since they've exhausted everyone who wanted to buy near the market rate. Taken far enough, you can complete exhaust all the open buy offers, at which point your liquidity hits zero -- you can't sell if no one is buying. The problem is the size of the market...
The second hardware becomes a limitation, software will back off, trim down, and optimize. While the factors behind it are too numerous to fully detail in a post, the key idea here is that waste and bloat can often be the consequences of a tradeoff for functionaity, stability, speed, and development time to the net benefit of the consumer.
the only spider in the world that spends its entire life underwater
it leaves its underwater web home to visit the surface
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm more impressed that it is able to die when it leaves the water and then re-animate itself when it comes back.
Zombie Spiders!
Yes, that's certainly a more plausible interpretation than that it merely visits the surface without leaving the water.
Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.
*sigh* I remain one of the few fans of Oscar, it appears...
...it's all just a mishmash of unrelated bull meant to blame the victim for complaining too much.
When it's perfectly clear that the "victim" has not, in fact, in any way at all whatsoever been harmed by the actions, it's perfectly reasonable to blame the "victim" for complaining as if they're actually a victim of something worth complaining about.
I don't dispute they are legally aggrieved. I just don't believe there really is such thing as a victimless crime, regardless of what laws say. As a matter of law, they are indeed victims, but this just highlights how far divorced the laws in this area have separated from reality.
I get enough pun threads on Reddit. I come to slashdot because there's usually some semblance of intelligence.
I always find the use of puns highest amongst groups of people who are generally well above average intelligence. It sounds like you come to slashdot for the opposite... which is perfectly understandable, all things considered.
[0002] A heliostat solar energy system generally includes a number of heliostats configured to reflect light into a receiver. The resulting heat can then be converted into power. Use of heliostats as a source of solar energy often requires receiver temperatures of nearly 1000.degree. C., which in turn requires sunlight to be reflected from the heliostats into the receiver at high concentrations.
SUMMARY
[...]
By using a camera scheme to control the orientation of individual heliostat mirrors, a closed-loop heliostat control system can be provided that ensures that sunlight is reflected from each heliostat into the desired receiving location. Given the available speed of image processing, errors in the heliostat reflection can be controlled on a real-time, or near-real time basis. Such a system allows concentrated sunlight to enter the receivers for a large fraction of the day in order to provide sufficiently high temperatures for the creation of solar power.
Slashdot Mirror
A good point. However, gold bugs often assume gold has some value that, say, copper or oil don't, when in fact oil has a great deal more intrinsic value, and copper is at least in the ballpark with gold. They have more intrinsic value than a dollar bill, although less practical value for most purposes as the dollar bill is more quickly/easily convertible for any use, rather than just wiring, etc.
Well, he didn't, it got stolen before he could cash out.
Nor, in fact, would he be able to cash out at that price point. Attempting to sell that much BTC would collapse the price.
...gold is a tangible guaranteed value...
Nope. This is no more true than it is for silver, oil, or any other commodity. There are no guarantees for the value of any commodity, and there's nothing magic about gold vs. anything else in this regard.
The ironic thing is that these are the same people who made Borderlands, the one game that is the complete opposite of what you complain about.
Not really the same people at all, no. The people who made Duke worked for a now defunct company. The people who made Borderlands inherited Duke and didn't do much beyond try to polish it as best they could and ship it. They really didn't alter it beyond making it shippable...
Religion is the only legitimate basis for politics. All laws force some smaller group to do what a larger group thinks is 'moral'. I challenge you to define the term 'human rights' without reference to either law or morality. There is no such thing.
Religion has never been a legitimate basis for morality. It tends to inhibit people's ability to determine what's actually right and wrong.
But then I realized that it's a public announcement of the preplanned televised event of one's own death. That's a motivation of twisted proportion that I hope to never understand.
Yes, trying to change the world for the better... how horrible would it be if you could understand that?
Western civilization is going down fast; I remember a time when this very scenario was the nightmare end of a slippery slope argument...
Yeah. First they give slaves the right to be treated as people, then they even give women the right to vote, and now they're talking about letting people make their own decisions on life and death issues. How long can western civilization survive if we keep letting more and more people take more and more control over their own lives?
For you, there's no point. For Paypal, the point is to not loose money to JPMorgan Chase (who issues their debit cards) and MasterCard. And, heck, if they can get most merchants to accept an alternative, and it's no less convenient that using my Paypal debit card, why not?
You are misinformed. Says right on the back of my Paypal Mastercard (in really tiny print at the bottom), "This card is issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank..." I'm pretty sure JPMorgan Chase and GE have not secretly merged recently...
I have been the victim of credit card fraud four times in my life, and am out-of-pocket exactly $0.00. The credit card companies work with the customers against fraud for the sake of keeping their business afloat and profitable. Paypal, on the other hand, has no regulatory or business reasons to do this at present - they have a captive audience.
Um, that's exactly what Paypal did when my Paypal debit card was charged fraudulently. Well, technically, I'm out-of-pocket for the cost of the stamp I used to mail the paperwork, but that's a lot less than the nearly $2000.00 in fraudulent charges they refunded as soon as I sent them the statement identifying which charges weren't mine and stating I didn't make them.
I'm not sure if it's required, but that's how it operates in my experience, including with Paypal. I had a bunch of unauthorized charges appear on my Paypal debit card, so I notified them and they refunded me. Granted, I had to file some paperwork, but it wasn't much. Just a signed statement identifying which charges I didn't make and stating that I did not make them. Paperwork received, refunds issued. It was almost scarily easy (scary from the point of view of a merchant accepting one for payment, knowing it's so easy to have the money sucked right back if the buyer isn't on the up and up).
Argh, obviously that should say "no more or less real".
Banks create money by loaning out more than they have.
I put $100 into a checking account at Alice's Bank. You come and borrow $50 for that same bank. I write a check for $90 to the grocery store. The grocery store has $90, you've got $50, and there's still $10 in my account -- total $150 in circulation, all from $100.
We can argue whether this is a good or bad thing, as to whether that $50 is created out of thin air or out of some value that you gave to the bank (collateral, or just your promise to repay), but there's no doubt that fractional reserve banking basically creates money.
And the balance fails to come to $0 in your example, unlike it always does in a real bank, because you failed to sum up all the accounts here properly. Nothing is created or destroyed in any case. Money is an abstraction. The $10 credit in your account is no more or less read than the $50 debit in his from the loan (although from the point of view of the bank, your $10 is a debit and his $50 is a credit).
Seriously? You think that that a transaction that authenticates the identity of the payee through physical contact and sends the transaction over a private network is less safe that one that operates with dubious authentication over an untrusted network? Why don't you think that over while I count my blessings that you don't do this for a living.
Ha. I'll count my blessing that you don't do this for a living, either. You've just completely misdescribed the security involved in the debit card in question. Sadly, that second option that you rightfully regard as dubious is, despite being not terribly secure, much more secure than the first. The second system tries to authenticate that the person who owns the account wants this transaction by using an unsecure network get confirmation. The first system makes no attempt to authenticate this at all. Not sure what you're on about with the emphasized "physical", since deducting funds from a debit card does not, in fact, require that the owner of the account, nor the card they were issued, be present. Certainly precisely zero is done to authenticate the identity of the payee beyond "does the payee have a working account number I can charge". Nothing is done to attempt to authenticate that the owner of that account is the payee or wants the charge to be made.
You can transfer tiny fractions of a bitcoin, so the number of bitcoins in existance isn't that important for liquidity. It's not like a stock.
Right. The important number is the number of bitcoin traders. Stable markets are relatively stable because they have a large number of buyers and sellers. Liquidity isn't a problem when there's always lots of people looking to buy. When there's relatively few people in the market, it's easy for someone trying to sell to quickly chew through all the buy offers at or near the current rate. If they still want to sell more, price begins dropping precipitously as they can now only sell to people who put in relatively low buy offers, since they've exhausted everyone who wanted to buy near the market rate. Taken far enough, you can complete exhaust all the open buy offers, at which point your liquidity hits zero -- you can't sell if no one is buying. The problem is the size of the market...
The second hardware becomes a limitation, software will back off, trim down, and optimize. While the factors behind it are too numerous to fully detail in a post, the key idea here is that waste and bloat can often be the consequences of a tradeoff for functionaity, stability, speed, and development time to the net benefit of the consumer.
lol -- meanwhile back in the real world...
the only spider in the world that spends its entire life underwater
it leaves its underwater web home to visit the surface
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm more impressed that it is able to die when it leaves the water and then re-animate itself when it comes back. Zombie Spiders!
Yes, that's certainly a more plausible interpretation than that it merely visits the surface without leaving the water.
Nature is not, properly speaking, intelligent. Just more intelligent than most creationists...
Stallone's had a couple of gems. First Blood was great. Rocky was great. Copland wasn't bad. It seems to me there was another one, too; I was hoping for something a little different.
*sigh* I remain one of the few fans of Oscar, it appears...
A lawyer is (arguably) a person, not a story, so you really shouldn't expect one to have a moral.
...it's all just a mishmash of unrelated bull meant to blame the victim for complaining too much.
When it's perfectly clear that the "victim" has not, in fact, in any way at all whatsoever been harmed by the actions, it's perfectly reasonable to blame the "victim" for complaining as if they're actually a victim of something worth complaining about.
I don't dispute they are legally aggrieved. I just don't believe there really is such thing as a victimless crime, regardless of what laws say. As a matter of law, they are indeed victims, but this just highlights how far divorced the laws in this area have separated from reality.
I get enough pun threads on Reddit. I come to slashdot because there's usually some semblance of intelligence.
I always find the use of puns highest amongst groups of people who are generally well above average intelligence. It sounds like you come to slashdot for the opposite... which is perfectly understandable, all things considered.
Well, I hope they get it added soon... I need to make a backstep.
BACKGROUND
[0002] A heliostat solar energy system generally includes a number of heliostats configured to reflect light into a receiver. The resulting heat can then be converted into power. Use of heliostats as a source of solar energy often requires receiver temperatures of nearly 1000.degree. C., which in turn requires sunlight to be reflected from the heliostats into the receiver at high concentrations.
SUMMARY
[...]
By using a camera scheme to control the orientation of individual heliostat mirrors, a closed-loop heliostat control system can be provided that ensures that sunlight is reflected from each heliostat into the desired receiving location. Given the available speed of image processing, errors in the heliostat reflection can be controlled on a real-time, or near-real time basis. Such a system allows concentrated sunlight to enter the receivers for a large fraction of the day in order to provide sufficiently high temperatures for the creation of solar power.
They're dropping support for anybody who can't/won't buy multi hundred dollar hardware/software 'upgrades' every two years...
Calling BS on that one. My six year old desktop is running the latest version of Firefox right now just fine.