At this point even most ASIC rigs aren't worth it and may never pay for themselves, let alone turn a profit.
When you go into business "going broke and losing your shirt" is one possible and quite valid outcome - and if you're buying rigs with the intention of making a profit, you're unquestionably in business.
This is more about finding reasons to excoriate the TSA, or the Obama administration or whoever your target of choice is than it is about possible outcomes.
I get the word "discovered" here, but... I wouldn't think that gravity is exclusive to planetary bodies. Anything with significant gravity can have a ring system under the right conditions.
True. But the smaller and weaker the gravitational field is, or the more perturbed it is, the lower the chance for a ring system to form let alone remain stable. Not to mention, there's a huge difference between something being theoretically (if extraordinarily remotely) possible and actually observing said thing in the wild.
Yeah, "sex sells" is a big part of it. Less well recognized is the part politics have played - climate change/AGW was politicized by the Left as a weapon against the Right and Corporations long before the science was clear. And once politics becomes involved... well, pretty much everyone's common sense and critical thinking goes out the window.
"Unfortunately, by the very nature of these decoy-answer-making-a-deeper-mystery questions, if you ask them in a forum or on a mailing list, you'll get people spelling out the decoy answer for you with what they imagine to be the patience of someone talking to an idiot."
It seems most BTC proponents are either people who are scammers, traders trying to make a quick buck, or true believers with an extremely poor understanding of economics. Most of the true believer types think that BTC would be great because there would be no taxes to pay on them and taxes are evil!
Not just taxes, but a whole slew of other things... an "extremely poor understanding of economics" greatly underestimates the case. And that's without considering the "gubments are ev1l" tinfoil hat nutters.
Being a Calculator was no more geeky than being a telemarketer. A Calculator was generally a low level drone doing repetitive operations - though they crunched numbers, they weren't mathematicians.
Automation and mechanization have never produced mass unemployment and they have always resulted in great increases of standards of living. Why should it be different this time?
Because automation and mechanization have never eliminated so many classes of jobs or increased the productivity of so many jobs (thus reducing the demand for workers) in such a short time frame. Because automation and mechanization formerly pretty much hit only semi-skilled blue collar work - and now it's gulping down blue and white collar, skilled and semi-skilled with equal voracity.
My small town used to support three full time small printshops - now everyone has a PC and printer. (Both made in China.) Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of travel agents have been replaced by a few thousand running Expedia and the like. Integrated POS system have displaced countless bookkeepers, and Quicken and the like have displaced countless more. The professional draftsman is no more, the engineers now directly on CAD workstations. CNC machines have replaced skilled machinists almost entirely. Amazon replaces hundreds of brick 'n mortar stores with a few hundred warehouse workers. The telephone operator/answering person (quite common in any business of any size until quite recently) has been replaced by automated phone systems...
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. For the past thirty years, globalization and the coming of the microprocessor, the PC, and the 'net have quietly but violently reshaped our economy - taking away jobs and providing few in return. And the process is far from complete.
I would think this is really bad news in disguise for bitcoin, because it discourages the use of bitcoin for commerce both because of the tax issue and because of the reporting requirements. (Who wants to deal with computing a wash sale just to buy a cup of coffee?)
If they'd ruled it was a currency, you'd still have to deal with taxes and a raftload of paperwork (plus a whole slew of specific regulations for currency exchange to boot). You can't have a legitimate medium of exchange *and* be free of taxes and paperwork, they're (if you'll pardon the pun) two sides of the same coin. That's been one of the deep flaws in the thought processes of Bitcoin fanboys all along - the failure the recognize that along with real world legitimacy comes all the other baggage of the real world.
Indeed. For me it was when I first saw someone ask a reasonable question about the apparently poor fit of a (much lauded by the believers) model to reality - and they instantly set on him as a pack attacking him for being a "Denier".
Far better to start with a piece of stock material and remove excess, bit by bit, until you get the fit you require. All the tools and materials are readily available now. Although that doesn't have any "geek" qualities: it's simply old-fashioned manual dexterity and skill.
Which, since I've picked up woodworking, is something I've never grasped - why it isn't considered to have any "geek" qualities. Making something that fits well and looks good is hard, and requires considerable thinking, planning, and skill. Maybe it's because out in the shop there's actual physical effort, sweat, and dust. Maybe it's because there's a real difference between geeks and makers... (Myself, I don't really regard 3D printer operators to be makers anymore than I regard people who pop a pot pie into the microwave to be cooks.)
Donning O2 masks in the event of an unknown fire is what would widely be considered a "bad idea"
Right - that's exactly why every civilized firefighting force in the world send their firefighters into fires wearing air masks if not oxygen masks. You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Pulling all non-essential breakers is step #2 (after turning to the nearest safe airport) in the event of a possible electrical fire, meaning no transponder, no ACARS, no radio.
Yet, the transponders were 'pinging' INMARSAT for hours after the last communication. So you're full of shit.
Nothing is important until the fire is contained, not "clearing the air lanes" when you're in the middle of the ocean (it's a big sky after all), not radioing the destination airport, and certainly not sending out a mayday that will do absolutely nothing to help the situation.
Yet they had time to enter an alternate course into the autopilot which the plane subsequently followed for hours. Again, you're full of shit.
Finally, keep in mind that an airplane is an enclosed tube that doesn't actually let much air into and out of the cabin; it simply doesn't take much smoke or much fire to full the cabin and flight deck with incapacitating amounts of smoke.
Child, I served on submarines. I know how much of a fire it takes to crap up the air to incapacitating levels in a compartment (it's more than you think) - and we didn't exchange *any* air. (Not to mention the 777 is a big aircraft.) You can't have both a fire small enough that it knocks out practically none of the systems and allows the aircraft to fly for hours *and* which is also large enough to knock out the crew. Look at what happened to ValueJet flight 592 if you want to know what happens when an aircraft catches fire.
Altitude changes are pretty trivial to justify in such a situation.
The justify them rather than pulling things out of your ass.
That was on March 18, when they were still looking all over the place for the plane, and it's a scenario that still holds up.
That scenario stopped holding up once we found that the aircraft had maneuvered both vertically (changed altitude) *and* had undergone multiple changes to it's course. It also fails the sniff test as it fails to explain why the pilots didn't follow SOP and don their oxygen masks - which have microphones built into them. The reliance on "aviate, navigate, communicate" is also questionable because the pilots would have known that they needed to notify air traffic controllers both the clear the air lanes ahead of them and to get the destination airport ready to receive them.
Not to mention the idea of a fire that did so little damage, didn't spread (allowing the aircraft to continue to fly for hours), and still almost immediately filled the cockpit and cabin with sufficient noxious gasses to incapacitate the crew and passengers... strains credulity to the breaking point.
Also per Rand Simberg and others, it appears that Space X is going to launch their 54-ton capable heavy launch vehicle THIS year
That's what they said last year. Rand, and other space bloggers, are very unreliable sources as their predictions are generally based on what they hope will happen and less on any form of concrete analysis. They live inside a fishbowl inside an echo chamber inside a reality distortion field.
'He says while golfers may complain it's making the game easier' So they are using lighter clubs to make it easier, then complain they have to move the ball to the fairway?
If you're not a sportsman or familiar with their mindset, the difference between the two forms of 'easier' may not be immediately obvious.
A titanium club makes it 'easier' in the sense that it allows a given golfer to get more out of a given swing regardless of skill level. (And being a piece of equipment, it's at least theoretically available to everyone.) However, hitting from the rough is more difficult than hitting from the fairway and requires a degree of extra skill, so moving the ball to the fairway somewhat reduces the level of skill required and thus the challenge of the game.
It also violates a basic precept behind many sports - absent a rules violation, you take the circumstances as they arise. Specifically in golf, you "play the ball as it lies".
Actually, there's no hard statistics about how many containers are lost each year... and several of the targets have been significantly larger than containers anyhow.
It took 2 years to locate the Air France Flight 447 fuselage underwater
No, not really. It took about eight weeks - scattered across two years because weather, the availability of the required equipment, and bureaucratic issues.
Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 â" even though we humans poured record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during that decade.
Global climate change has long since become a religion - facts and scientific evidence are no longer relevant.
A police state is the one, where, subject to arbitrary criminal suspicion by default, individualsnhave de facto rights that are inferior to the rights for police to act, at every level from municipal to federal.
America isn't even close to being a police state, not matter what you and your tinfoil hat brethren want to think. (Which is not to say there isn't serious problems of course.)
Slashdot Mirror
When you go into business "going broke and losing your shirt" is one possible and quite valid outcome - and if you're buying rigs with the intention of making a profit, you're unquestionably in business.
Of course, because you've failed to answer the question of who pays.
This is more about finding reasons to excoriate the TSA, or the Obama administration or whoever your target of choice is than it is about possible outcomes.
True. But the smaller and weaker the gravitational field is, or the more perturbed it is, the lower the chance for a ring system to form let alone remain stable. Not to mention, there's a huge difference between something being theoretically (if extraordinarily remotely) possible and actually observing said thing in the wild.
Yeah, "sex sells" is a big part of it. Less well recognized is the part politics have played - climate change/AGW was politicized by the Left as a weapon against the Right and Corporations long before the science was clear. And once politics becomes involved... well, pretty much everyone's common sense and critical thinking goes out the window.
"Unfortunately, by the very nature of these decoy-answer-making-a-deeper-mystery questions, if you ask them in a forum or on a mailing list, you'll get people spelling out the decoy answer for you with what they imagine to be the patience of someone talking to an idiot."
Bennett, that's because you are an idiot.
Not just taxes, but a whole slew of other things... an "extremely poor understanding of economics" greatly underestimates the case. And that's without considering the "gubments are ev1l" tinfoil hat nutters.
Did you even read my post? Have you any actual knowledge of the history of automation and mechanization?
Then you're a clueless fuckwit.
Being a Calculator was no more geeky than being a telemarketer. A Calculator was generally a low level drone doing repetitive operations - though they crunched numbers, they weren't mathematicians.
Once you handwave away the need to pay for these things, there's no problem at all.
Because automation and mechanization have never eliminated so many classes of jobs or increased the productivity of so many jobs (thus reducing the demand for workers) in such a short time frame. Because automation and mechanization formerly pretty much hit only semi-skilled blue collar work - and now it's gulping down blue and white collar, skilled and semi-skilled with equal voracity.
My small town used to support three full time small printshops - now everyone has a PC and printer. (Both made in China.) Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of travel agents have been replaced by a few thousand running Expedia and the like. Integrated POS system have displaced countless bookkeepers, and Quicken and the like have displaced countless more. The professional draftsman is no more, the engineers now directly on CAD workstations. CNC machines have replaced skilled machinists almost entirely. Amazon replaces hundreds of brick 'n mortar stores with a few hundred warehouse workers. The telephone operator/answering person (quite common in any business of any size until quite recently) has been replaced by automated phone systems...
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. For the past thirty years, globalization and the coming of the microprocessor, the PC, and the 'net have quietly but violently reshaped our economy - taking away jobs and providing few in return. And the process is far from complete.
No, the ruling specifies "virtual currency" without naming any specific currency, Bitcoin is only used as an example.
Linkage:
IRS press release.
Full text (PDF) of IRS Notice 2014-21 (which includes a FAQ).
If they'd ruled it was a currency, you'd still have to deal with taxes and a raftload of paperwork (plus a whole slew of specific regulations for currency exchange to boot). You can't have a legitimate medium of exchange *and* be free of taxes and paperwork, they're (if you'll pardon the pun) two sides of the same coin. That's been one of the deep flaws in the thought processes of Bitcoin fanboys all along - the failure the recognize that along with real world legitimacy comes all the other baggage of the real world.
Indeed. For me it was when I first saw someone ask a reasonable question about the apparently poor fit of a (much lauded by the believers) model to reality - and they instantly set on him as a pack attacking him for being a "Denier".
Which, since I've picked up woodworking, is something I've never grasped - why it isn't considered to have any "geek" qualities. Making something that fits well and looks good is hard, and requires considerable thinking, planning, and skill. Maybe it's because out in the shop there's actual physical effort, sweat, and dust. Maybe it's because there's a real difference between geeks and makers... (Myself, I don't really regard 3D printer operators to be makers anymore than I regard people who pop a pot pie into the microwave to be cooks.)
Right - that's exactly why every civilized firefighting force in the world send their firefighters into fires wearing air masks if not oxygen masks. You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Yet, the transponders were 'pinging' INMARSAT for hours after the last communication. So you're full of shit.
Yet they had time to enter an alternate course into the autopilot which the plane subsequently followed for hours. Again, you're full of shit.
Child, I served on submarines. I know how much of a fire it takes to crap up the air to incapacitating levels in a compartment (it's more than you think) - and we didn't exchange *any* air. (Not to mention the 777 is a big aircraft.) You can't have both a fire small enough that it knocks out practically none of the systems and allows the aircraft to fly for hours *and* which is also large enough to knock out the crew. Look at what happened to ValueJet flight 592 if you want to know what happens when an aircraft catches fire.
The justify them rather than pulling things out of your ass.
This.
That scenario stopped holding up once we found that the aircraft had maneuvered both vertically (changed altitude) *and* had undergone multiple changes to it's course. It also fails the sniff test as it fails to explain why the pilots didn't follow SOP and don their oxygen masks - which have microphones built into them. The reliance on "aviate, navigate, communicate" is also questionable because the pilots would have known that they needed to notify air traffic controllers both the clear the air lanes ahead of them and to get the destination airport ready to receive them.
Not to mention the idea of a fire that did so little damage, didn't spread (allowing the aircraft to continue to fly for hours), and still almost immediately filled the cockpit and cabin with sufficient noxious gasses to incapacitate the crew and passengers... strains credulity to the breaking point.
You produce a very biased sample and an invalid result.
That's what they said last year. Rand, and other space bloggers, are very unreliable sources as their predictions are generally based on what they hope will happen and less on any form of concrete analysis. They live inside a fishbowl inside an echo chamber inside a reality distortion field.
If you're not a sportsman or familiar with their mindset, the difference between the two forms of 'easier' may not be immediately obvious.
A titanium club makes it 'easier' in the sense that it allows a given golfer to get more out of a given swing regardless of skill level. (And being a piece of equipment, it's at least theoretically available to everyone.) However, hitting from the rough is more difficult than hitting from the fairway and requires a degree of extra skill, so moving the ball to the fairway somewhat reduces the level of skill required and thus the challenge of the game.
It also violates a basic precept behind many sports - absent a rules violation, you take the circumstances as they arise. Specifically in golf, you "play the ball as it lies".
Actually, there's no hard statistics about how many containers are lost each year... and several of the targets have been significantly larger than containers anyhow.
No, not really. It took about eight weeks - scattered across two years because weather, the availability of the required equipment, and bureaucratic issues.
Global climate change has long since become a religion - facts and scientific evidence are no longer relevant.
No, that is not what "police state" means.
Try actually reading the definition rather than making stuff up.
America isn't even close to being a police state, not matter what you and your tinfoil hat brethren want to think. (Which is not to say there isn't serious problems of course.)