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User: Vintermann

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  1. Re:You don't get it on Bitcoin To Be Regulated Under US Money Laundering Laws · · Score: 1

    Genius! Why haven't anybody thought of that before? They can just buy goods and services for each other using a ledger with their own toy currency, and dodge income tax completely!

    (Uh, no, Icam. This does not work. Don't try, or the IRS will explain it to you.)

  2. Re:They don't get it on Bitcoin To Be Regulated Under US Money Laundering Laws · · Score: 2

    Has it occurred to you that government might restrict what you can pay with? Try making up your own paper currency to avoid taxes, see how far that gets you. Bitcoin's cryptographic tricks provide no protection against this.

  3. Re:They don't get it on Bitcoin To Be Regulated Under US Money Laundering Laws · · Score: 1

    If murder is outlawed, only outlaws will murder! Prohibition doesn't work!

  4. Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation.. on Declassified LBJ Tapes Accuse Richard Nixon of Treason · · Score: 2

    Sure, in general, consequences can never be predicted. You can always conjure up bogeymen of what would and would not have happened, and pretend that the disaster in Cambodia was an entirely unpredictable consequence of "bombing it into the stone age". Therefore we should defend our leaders no matter what.

    Is that what you're suggesting? Sounds like it.

    I say give truth a chance, and quit defending people who cover up (even for their political opponents!) for "our own good".

  5. Re:The question on Intrade Shutdown Hurts Academics · · Score: 1

    > (i.e. the police busting into your house with a SWAT team and shooting your dog)

    This is Ireland we're talking about, they may have their own dysfunctions but this isn't a common one.

    All this is just pointless hyperbole. Your basic question is: does a state have the right to regulate economic activity? and just about everyone except "libertarians" agree that they do. The money you make and how you make it is the government's business. If you're engaging in not for profit activity you get quite a bit more slack, but if you've come up with a novel way to make money, it's the government's business to ensure that you're not harming society with it (and yes, "agreements between consenting adults" can still be harmful as there's really no such thing as an agreement between just two persons). Capitalism being what it is, if there's a profitable way to do harmful stuff, lots and lots of people will be doing that harmful stuff very soon.

    So that isn't an interesting question for the most of us. The question is what's happened to Intrade, and why they're suddenly in trouble. I personally think gambling of the Intrade variety should be tolerated with tight regulation, and I had the impression that Ireland was pretty tolerant about gambling. But I also know that they managed to piss off US regulators somehow, and those people have long arms and lots of discretion to harass.

  6. Re:That's nice, but.. on Texas Rangers Use Internet To Breathe New Life Into Cold Case Homicides · · Score: 1

    > But - the case was tried, judged, and execution carried out, all within the guidelines of existing law. I don't believe an innocent man died in this case. It does happen, but not this time.

    Complete non-seq. I know the story you speak of, and it wasn't so that people believed he was innocent and sought out evidence to support it. The reason we've heard of the case at all was the egregious "evidence" of a cocky, pseudoscience-peddling arson investigator, and this was the basis for the whole case (there was no reason to suspect the guy otherwise). If you think the arson investigator needed further training or should be replaced, then by definition this was a gross miscarriage of justice, even if you for some voodoo intuition believe he was guilty. Even if he WAS guilty it would have been miscarriage of justice if the conviction was based on bogus evidence, which it plainly was.

  7. Re:Regardless of what you think of smartphones... on Sergey Brin Says Using a Smartphone Is 'Emasculating' · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They do plan to sell it as prescription glasses.

  8. Re:Is this news? on DoJ Admits Aaron Swartz's Prosecution Was Political · · Score: 1

    Aaron Swartz was many things, but as it happens gay was not one of them. TarenSK was his girlfriend.

    But who would expect insightful commentary from someone who hasn't noticed even that?

  9. Re:Mod summary off-topic. on We Aren't the World: Why Americans Make Bad Study Subjects · · Score: 1

    Rather, it accuses the field of anthropology of focusing too heavily on a single (though changing) culture throughout its history.

    What - the - hell? You've got it completely backwards. It's economists, psychologists, sociologists and political scientists who have focused too heavily on a single (though changing) culture. This economist thinks this is a novel discovery, apparently unaware of the field of comparative cultural anthropology, and the people in it who have been shouting in the desert for ages.

  10. Re:What? on We Aren't the World: Why Americans Make Bad Study Subjects · · Score: 1

    Yeah, this guy has gained attention because he's an economist who has been doing very, very crude anthropology.

    It's as if he hasn't thought about the meta-situation at all. The game purportedly studies a situation where people can cooperate or not, but the wider situation is that of a weird white guy going around offering money. Good cultural anthropologists worry a lot about factors that constrain and twist their interpretations of what they observe. They also worry about the effects their interaction has on the culture they're observing. This is the economist/anthropogist version of this xkcd, and it definitively is on the unethical side, too.

  11. Heroes on Tech Leaders Create Most Lucrative Science Prize In History · · Score: 1

    Is science driven forward primarily by individual heroes? They talk about inspiration, but how inspiring can it be when the difference between nr. 12 and nr. 11 is 3 million dollars?

  12. Re:What problem does online course fix? on The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses · · Score: 1

    Well, the problem that I didn't have the opportunity to take an abstract algebra course back in college, because there wasn't one available there.

    Also the problem that I couldn't take a Scala course, because there wasn't one available anywhere back then.

    I have free time, but not the opportunity to become a student again (much as I would enjoy to).

    From my perspective, MOOCs solve plenty of problems.

  13. Re:Some People Just Aren't Cut Out For College on The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses · · Score: 1

    Self-motivation is a bit of a paradoxical concept. If you can motivate yourself to anything, what's motivating you to give yourself motivation?

    The idea that you are in charge, in control of your life, is obviously a very beneficial belief to those who hold it. Pity the evidence for it doesn't hold up under closer examination.

  14. Re:fix the students on The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses · · Score: 2

    We discourage the students who aren't cut out for secondary school from enrolling in the first place.

    Then you'd better have a damn accurate way of identifying them, otherwise you're seriously harming some people. Usually, someone in authority telling you that you can't succeed guarantees that you won't.

  15. Re:How do you teach motivation? on The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses · · Score: 2

    When I really want to learn something, I'm plenty motivated.

    Well, duh. That's what motivation means.

  16. Re:fix the students on The Two Big Problems With Online College Courses · · Score: 1

    How do you propose to teach motivation to someone who doesn't have it?

    Go ahead and explain it to me. I'll try to be generous about any assumptions you may take.

  17. Re:Short answer. on Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors? · · Score: 1

    He was approached by Disney to turn one of his books into a movie - paid him cash-money up front, too. Well, he's thinking 1-2 years... Still haven't seen the movie.

    This isn't unusual in Hollywood, and it isn't necessarily dysfunctional - especially not when the author gets paid. Disney's current hit, Wreck-it Ralph, wasn't always a nostalgic look at arcade games. The first version of the script was made in the late 80s.

  18. Re:Wrong Premise, Approach from a Different Angle on Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors? · · Score: 1

    Incorrectly claiming the invention of the crank radio

    Well, he did invent one kind of crank radio, the one where you get publicity for your crank "inventions".

    That this guy is so obviously not what he pretends to be highlights another problem with the patent system. It's not just that non-practicing entities buy up patents and use them for barratry. Usually, the "little guy" crazy inventor types who love patents are more crazy than they are inventors.

  19. Re:Of course it protects the small investor on Do Patent Laws Really Protect Small Inventors? · · Score: 1

    There are very few good poster children for ripped-off inventors.

  20. Re:Android iPhones on Brazilians Can Now Buy an "iPhone" Loaded With Android · · Score: 1

    Maybe you're a bit quick in lumping this phone in with "these Android iPhones"? looking at it, I think it looks a lot more like an Android phone than an iPhone.

    It has bottom buttons, app drawer, and a little green waving Android robot...

  21. Re:This is what trademarks are for on Brazilians Can Now Buy an "iPhone" Loaded With Android · · Score: 2

    Kodak did pretty well.

  22. Re:Schadenfreude on Brazilians Can Now Buy an "iPhone" Loaded With Android · · Score: 2

    It's running Gingerbread in a near-third world country. It has features useful for Brazil (it's dual sim). It's probably a bit on the expensive side, but it's not necessarily underspecced just because it's running gingerbread. Getting the software to support all the hardware reliably is probably the main challenge for this Brazilian company (as it is for my Norwegian one, still waitting for my LTE tab updates, grr)

  23. Re:Looks legit on Brazilians Can Now Buy an "iPhone" Loaded With Android · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apple the record company settled with Apple computers for $80000 and a promise that they wouldn't enter each other's respective business domains. The record company got angry when the computer company did just that in 2003 with iTunes.

  24. Re:Looks legit on Brazilians Can Now Buy an "iPhone" Loaded With Android · · Score: 2

    Apple's use of the naming scheme started with the iMac in 1998, though I'm pretty use the iPrefix was used by others before that... and it's kind of hard to call something a naming scheme when there's only one example.

  25. Re:Monoculture, here we come (again) on Opera Picks Up Webkit Engine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since Opera's engines were closed source anyway, I don't see the diversity they provided as terribly valuable. If they open source the stuff they're abandoning now (as they definitively should), that will be far more valuable.