So gold clearly has one vitally important use that determines it's value - as money. And when we don't need money any more, we won't need gold and it will become valueless.
But that's beside the point. Did you read the post by causality that set off this thread?
The difference is that representative currency dollars directly represent a specified amount of a tangible asset. They can be redeemed for that amount of that asset at any time. Their value cannot be lower than the value of that tangible asset. They represent wealth, not debt. If all debts were paid off under that system, you'd just have a lot of happy creditors. It's an inherently stable and sustainable system that doesn't require large amounts of built-in debt.
Unless some alchemists find an easy, dirt-cheap way to transmute worthless materials to gold, silver, or whatever the currency represents, then it has a value that can't suddenly disappear the way fiat currencies can (and have, several times throughout history).
This is the idea that I'm attacking, and why I'm talking about situations such as "money going out of circulation". My point is that gold does not have the value that causality implies it has.
I don't expect us to move back to a pure barter system either. Rather, I expect automation will be developed to the point that production becomes free, and only the scarcity of ideas (solvable) and resources (solvable) determines value. You could then, for instance, set up a resource based economy and have trade (not just money, but trade) lose all meaning. That's the only thing that gives me hope for the future: that our current economic systems - capitalism, socialism, communism, etc. - will eventually become just as obsolete as barter, feudalism and mercantilism are.
So you're implying that the only intrinsic value gold has is as currency (I'd say you arguments also make it useful as jewelry, but whatever). That means that the only use of gold is as a medium of exchange, because on it's own it's not actually worth anything. Doesn't that make it representative money?
Ggp post argued that, if all money were to go out of circulation, gold would still be wealth because it has a value of its own. You argue that gold is useful and only useful as money, which to me means that if there is no money circulating, gold is worthless. That supports my contention that ggp is wrong - if the global economy collapses, gold will be just as useless as paper for buying food, shelter or whatever else you need.
Another response to my post said it better: gold has value for exchange because we agree it does. It is currently also valuable as a commodity, but I don't see that lasting.
The dumbing-down of slashdot has left us with supposed geeks who don't know that gold is vital to electronics.
Until we switch to system on a chip, or nanotube-based circuits, or optoelectronics, or whatever EEs come up with. It's important now, but how important will it be in the future.
Wood used to be vital to power generation and construction. Gold will eventually go the way of wood.
Oh, we're trotting out the "you can't eat gold" example again.
No we're not. I'm saying that what people value depends on what situation we're in. A rise in the importance of optoelectronics, for instance, will cause the price of glass to rise and that of gold to drop.
Shells were the ancient version of paper money. They aren't scarce, and have limited utility. If you can't see the great scarcity and utility of gold, then I have some pretty conchs to sell you. I'll give you TWICE the weight of your gold!
I'm not an economist or financial historian so I can't give you history text references, but a quick google search identifies shell money as commodity money, not representative. And I can see gold's scarcity and utility, I just don't believe that this will last. I probably won't live to see the day it loses most of its value, but I wouldn't want to leave my descendants with a system I believe doomed to collapse.
Gold has intrinsic worth - it is highly maleable, conductive, reflective. We've used it in circuity, we've used it on space ships, we put it on our jewelry. There is an application for Gold in just about every facet of the modern world. We just don't use it so much because of its rarity.
In a world of Famine, everyone'll want food, sure. Some people will have their food. They'll want tools to produce more food. Some of those tools could be crafted with the help of Gold.
But none of those applications are necessarily lasting. Circuitry can be replaced by optoelectronics, sunfilters by smart ink (or what are you referring to on space ships?), and jewelry by diamonds or whatever comes into fashion. It's used all over the place in modern society, but that doesn't mean it will be in 100 or 1000 years. And what I'm arguing against is seeing gold as something that will *always* have value.
Your last line doesn't even make sense. Those ancient forms of money were just valued on whatever their most precious resource was at the time, probably food. The shells are to food as coins are to gold.
I was referring to the fact that shells (and beads, what I had originally looked for) are considered an old form of commodity money, so the analogy I was trying to make is that shells were to food as you would like gold be to food. They used to have value, but have now been supplanted by something else.
Now that human education has reached a point where we know what Gold is good for, it will always have value.
You assume we will never find a replacement. We're definitely well on our way to replacing wood: it's no longer an energy source, we use steel and concrete to build, and the strongest holdout is its aesthetic quality in furniture and goods.
Gold will lose most of its value when we find its replacement. You need to regularly update the commodity used for commodity money to work, because otherwise there will come a day when your commodity no longer has any value, and then neither will your currency.
by that logic nothing has intrinsic worth, as the day may come when we no longer require ((insert anything you can imagine)).
Exactly. It is worth something to us as long as, and only as long as we want or need it.
in your imaginary worldwide famine, i wonder how much food you'll be able to get with your freshly printed pieces of paper. i think my gold will have a slightly better chance at keeping my friends and family fed.
True, but I think both will get you very little of anything. The only reason I'd take gold in an environment like that is because I think it might regain its worth at some point in the future, and I have enough breathing room to think long term. Otherwise I'd be far more interested in seeds, animals and other basic necessities.
I'm not trying to advocate paper money, as it has just as little intrinsic worth. I'm trying to point out that gold isn't the fix, at least not in the long term.
currency which is intrinsically backed (i.e. coins) are always worth something, especially after whomever was backing the paper versions has faded into obsolescence.
Gold (or whatever you make your coins out of) has no intrinsic worth - the only reason we value it is because it is scarce and pretty. Given a world famine, try using gold to trade for something when all everyone wants is food. The value of that gold is determined by the demand for it, and if there is no demand...
And if you think gold will always be in demand, I'd like to point out the example of using shells as money, or any other ancient form of commodity money.
True. However, it's not the anti-vaxxers who are promoting herd immunity as a reason not to vaccinate, but rather the vaxxers who are lamenting its disappearance due to the actions of anti-vaxxers. You're arguing with the people who side with you.
Except that there are films with a color gamut broader than that of most digital cameras (ignoring >10k studio equipment). It is impossible to emulate such a film in digital, as you simply have not captured the necessary information.
Digital is pretty damn good, but it is far from "virtually infinite".
Consider your cell phone - the towers may broadcast in the kW range, but your phone won't output more than 2 W. Nonetheless, the tower can hear it fine. It's merely a matter of having a sensitive receiver.
This is also another reason why an above post about your net surfing neighbor drowning out your TV reception is hogwash.
CPPM, used in DVD-Audio, has been cracked and implemented as libdvdcpxm, and the sources contain some references to CPRM. I'm not sure if the CPRM code is fully functional, but someone has definitely made the effort and gotten fairly close.
That's only part of it. The iPhone apparently has two different antennas separated by an air gap. If you bridge that gap with your finger, you turn it into one large antenna that's badly matched to either of the original two tasks. This causes additional attenuation, beyond that caused by your hand.
This also ignores the fact that by bridging the antennas, you're connecting the outputs of two power amplifiers. That makes me cringe somewhat.
The self-checkouts here in Belgium are godsent. They don't have a scale, as far as I know, so there's no issues with "Please put the item in the bag". I've usually already found the barcodes on the few items I have before I get to the counter, so I'd dare say I can scan it faster than a cashier. I also scan them in the order that I want to pack them, speeding that up too. The only thing I need help on is if I have coupons.
There's 6 of them at our local supermarket, so even if there is an invasion of people who don't know what barcodes are, usually there are at least one or two either free or occupied by people who know what they are doing.
The only time it might be worth going in the normal line is late in the evening when no one's waiting.
Skyhook is making it out that Google Location spys on you without consent. (My Droid tells me how it works and asks if I'm sure I want to turn it on, and promises the info is anonymous, so that's a blatant lie).
You automatically assume Skyhook is the liar here. Did you make any attempt to verify that it's really anonymous?
I have no idea why this is modded +5. The standard is not about replacing video codecs, it is about a new platform. It's really a replacement of MHEG rather than MPEG.
Because none of the three examples he listed - MPEGII-TS, ISDB-T and DVB-H - are video codecs. All are ways of packaging A/V streams together with program and other types of data for transmission. This is an integral part of any TV distribution platform and will definitely be part of what the BBC is working on.
Please, which ineffable things can religion eff but science cannot? I hear religious people make this statement all the time, but they can never back it up - and when they try, all I get is "well science cannot explain the nature of some specific thing that religions came up and which doesn't appear in real life". Science can't explain the nature of Harry Potter, but that's okay because he doesn't exist.
Science is a wonderfully self-consistent model that, given a set of first assumptions (such as cause and effect, rationality etc) can fairly accurately predict how things will behave. What it can't do is answer any absolute questions, such as why do we exist or why should I get up in the morning. That's why philosophy still exists - there are questions that science cannot answer because they have no meaning in a scientific context, but nonetheless have meaning for humans.
A concrete example would be the questions people pose during an existential crisis. Science will never be able to answer these, as they are aspects of the human psyche and fundamentally irrational.
I have the same issue as arisvega, and the reason I don't do exactly as you suggest is that I'm absent minded - I'll drive all the way to the office with my car, bike and girlfriend's key, and walk all the way upstairs only to find I'm holding my mailbox key, so to speak. I've lost half a Sunday before, having realized I forgot my apartment keys at my uncle's place only after an hour's train ride home.
Therefore, for sanity's sake, I keep my 12 keys on me at all times. Losing them would be a disaster, of course, and it's a chunk of metal I'd rather not have to carry, but I have yet to find a better solution.
So where does the money come from to pay that interest?
Easy: it comes from the value created by human work. Here's an exaggerated example:
Baker loans $2 from the bank, owes $3 with interest. Baker buys $1 worth of flour from the farmer, turns it into 3 sandwiches worth a dollar apiece. Baker sells one sandwich to the farmer, repays the loan with the $2 plus a sandwich. End result: loans are paid off with the value of the farmer and baker's work, and everyone profited (they all have a sandwich).
A perfectly functional system, if you stop assuming that only cash has value.
Turing's core insight was that you can get rid of the finite state machine and just have the tape, and a very simple set of universal rules.
Do you mean to say that a true universal turing machine has a fixed state transition table regardless of what the desired program was, and that programming is done solely by setting the initial tape? Having the program contained solely in the tape and manipulated with a fixed universal rule set, and still be able to program anything so to speak, would indeed be amazing.
Did Turing ever specify that simple set of universal rules?
Thanks for the links. I've only scanned them for the moment, but it does look like digital will give better results for the type of shots that I take. If the quality isn't going to be any better, no point in going through the extra hassle associated with film.
Bit of a shame, really. I'm an analog junkie and I'd like to shoot film, but not if it's gonna be a noticeable step backwards.
An interview rather than a scientific article, I admit, but photo.net's a pretty decent site. We could go hunting for the technical specs of the film he mentions...
I've used the 18-55 and on 18 you can see the barrel distortion when taking architectural photography. And for the price of 4 DSLRs you can get a good second-hand film body and a pro-class lens.
Why would you do that, when shooting with a modern digital camera would give superior results?
His point is that it won't - It's a discussion that regularly comes up on photography forums. Color accuracy is generally considered better (with the right film) and I've heard resolution figures of 30 or 40 MP for 35mm film. This does assume you scan the negatives properly with a wet drum scanner, an expensive and complex piece of equipment.
I shoot digital myself, but I'm planning to get a hold of a film body to do some comparisons. I don't have a scanner, nor can I develop, so then it becomes a question of how good is my local photo shop.
Thing is, the client isn't paying for all the work done. The author's happy to give them the code for the stuff developed directly for them, but he'll charge through the nose if they also demand the source code of libraries he's developed in past projects and reused here. These libraries clearly do not fall under "work he was paid to perform" having already been developed before the project started, and give him a competitive advantage which he would lose in this case - it is the reuse of these libraries that allowed him to finish the project so quickly.
Of course you charge them extra if a company demands the code to your custom libraries, because they haven't paid for these yet.
Each tower needs a different frequency band to prevent them from interfering with each other. You could build more towers with narrower frequency bands and fewer users per tower, but how would that be a gain? If you want more bandwidth for users you need a larger chunk of the frequency spectrum.
The only thing more towers helps with is better coverage and signal strength.
Slashdot Mirror
So gold clearly has one vitally important use that determines it's value - as money. And when we don't need money any more, we won't need gold and it will become valueless.
But that's beside the point. Did you read the post by causality that set off this thread?
This is the idea that I'm attacking, and why I'm talking about situations such as "money going out of circulation". My point is that gold does not have the value that causality implies it has.
I don't expect us to move back to a pure barter system either. Rather, I expect automation will be developed to the point that production becomes free, and only the scarcity of ideas (solvable) and resources (solvable) determines value. You could then, for instance, set up a resource based economy and have trade (not just money, but trade) lose all meaning. That's the only thing that gives me hope for the future: that our current economic systems - capitalism, socialism, communism, etc. - will eventually become just as obsolete as barter, feudalism and mercantilism are.
So you're implying that the only intrinsic value gold has is as currency (I'd say you arguments also make it useful as jewelry, but whatever). That means that the only use of gold is as a medium of exchange, because on it's own it's not actually worth anything. Doesn't that make it representative money?
Ggp post argued that, if all money were to go out of circulation, gold would still be wealth because it has a value of its own. You argue that gold is useful and only useful as money, which to me means that if there is no money circulating, gold is worthless. That supports my contention that ggp is wrong - if the global economy collapses, gold will be just as useless as paper for buying food, shelter or whatever else you need.
Another response to my post said it better: gold has value for exchange because we agree it does. It is currently also valuable as a commodity, but I don't see that lasting.
Until we switch to system on a chip, or nanotube-based circuits, or optoelectronics, or whatever EEs come up with. It's important now, but how important will it be in the future.
Wood used to be vital to power generation and construction. Gold will eventually go the way of wood.
No we're not. I'm saying that what people value depends on what situation we're in. A rise in the importance of optoelectronics, for instance, will cause the price of glass to rise and that of gold to drop.
I'm not an economist or financial historian so I can't give you history text references, but a quick google search identifies shell money as commodity money, not representative. And I can see gold's scarcity and utility, I just don't believe that this will last. I probably won't live to see the day it loses most of its value, but I wouldn't want to leave my descendants with a system I believe doomed to collapse.
But none of those applications are necessarily lasting. Circuitry can be replaced by optoelectronics, sunfilters by smart ink (or what are you referring to on space ships?), and jewelry by diamonds or whatever comes into fashion. It's used all over the place in modern society, but that doesn't mean it will be in 100 or 1000 years. And what I'm arguing against is seeing gold as something that will *always* have value.
I was referring to the fact that shells (and beads, what I had originally looked for) are considered an old form of commodity money, so the analogy I was trying to make is that shells were to food as you would like gold be to food. They used to have value, but have now been supplanted by something else.
You assume we will never find a replacement. We're definitely well on our way to replacing wood: it's no longer an energy source, we use steel and concrete to build, and the strongest holdout is its aesthetic quality in furniture and goods.
Gold will lose most of its value when we find its replacement. You need to regularly update the commodity used for commodity money to work, because otherwise there will come a day when your commodity no longer has any value, and then neither will your currency.
Exactly. It is worth something to us as long as, and only as long as we want or need it.
True, but I think both will get you very little of anything. The only reason I'd take gold in an environment like that is because I think it might regain its worth at some point in the future, and I have enough breathing room to think long term. Otherwise I'd be far more interested in seeds, animals and other basic necessities.
I'm not trying to advocate paper money, as it has just as little intrinsic worth. I'm trying to point out that gold isn't the fix, at least not in the long term.
Come again?
Gold (or whatever you make your coins out of) has no intrinsic worth - the only reason we value it is because it is scarce and pretty. Given a world famine, try using gold to trade for something when all everyone wants is food. The value of that gold is determined by the demand for it, and if there is no demand...
And if you think gold will always be in demand, I'd like to point out the example of using shells as money, or any other ancient form of commodity money.
True. However, it's not the anti-vaxxers who are promoting herd immunity as a reason not to vaccinate, but rather the vaxxers who are lamenting its disappearance due to the actions of anti-vaxxers. You're arguing with the people who side with you.
Except that there are films with a color gamut broader than that of most digital cameras (ignoring >10k studio equipment). It is impossible to emulate such a film in digital, as you simply have not captured the necessary information.
Digital is pretty damn good, but it is far from "virtually infinite".
Consider your cell phone - the towers may broadcast in the kW range, but your phone won't output more than 2 W. Nonetheless, the tower can hear it fine. It's merely a matter of having a sensitive receiver.
This is also another reason why an above post about your net surfing neighbor drowning out your TV reception is hogwash.
CPPM, used in DVD-Audio, has been cracked and implemented as libdvdcpxm, and the sources contain some references to CPRM. I'm not sure if the CPRM code is fully functional, but someone has definitely made the effort and gotten fairly close.
- Jw
That's only part of it. The iPhone apparently has two different antennas separated by an air gap. If you bridge that gap with your finger, you turn it into one large antenna that's badly matched to either of the original two tasks. This causes additional attenuation, beyond that caused by your hand.
This also ignores the fact that by bridging the antennas, you're connecting the outputs of two power amplifiers. That makes me cringe somewhat.
The self-checkouts here in Belgium are godsent. They don't have a scale, as far as I know, so there's no issues with "Please put the item in the bag". I've usually already found the barcodes on the few items I have before I get to the counter, so I'd dare say I can scan it faster than a cashier. I also scan them in the order that I want to pack them, speeding that up too. The only thing I need help on is if I have coupons.
There's 6 of them at our local supermarket, so even if there is an invasion of people who don't know what barcodes are, usually there are at least one or two either free or occupied by people who know what they are doing.
The only time it might be worth going in the normal line is late in the evening when no one's waiting.
Skyhook is making it out that Google Location spys on you without consent. (My Droid tells me how it works and asks if I'm sure I want to turn it on, and promises the info is anonymous, so that's a blatant lie).
You automatically assume Skyhook is the liar here. Did you make any attempt to verify that it's really anonymous?
I have no idea why this is modded +5. The standard is not about replacing video codecs, it is about a new platform. It's really a replacement of MHEG rather than MPEG.
Because none of the three examples he listed - MPEGII-TS, ISDB-T and DVB-H - are video codecs. All are ways of packaging A/V streams together with program and other types of data for transmission. This is an integral part of any TV distribution platform and will definitely be part of what the BBC is working on.
Science is a wonderfully self-consistent model that, given a set of first assumptions (such as cause and effect, rationality etc) can fairly accurately predict how things will behave. What it can't do is answer any absolute questions, such as why do we exist or why should I get up in the morning. That's why philosophy still exists - there are questions that science cannot answer because they have no meaning in a scientific context, but nonetheless have meaning for humans.
A concrete example would be the questions people pose during an existential crisis. Science will never be able to answer these, as they are aspects of the human psyche and fundamentally irrational.
I have the same issue as arisvega, and the reason I don't do exactly as you suggest is that I'm absent minded - I'll drive all the way to the office with my car, bike and girlfriend's key, and walk all the way upstairs only to find I'm holding my mailbox key, so to speak. I've lost half a Sunday before, having realized I forgot my apartment keys at my uncle's place only after an hour's train ride home.
Therefore, for sanity's sake, I keep my 12 keys on me at all times. Losing them would be a disaster, of course, and it's a chunk of metal I'd rather not have to carry, but I have yet to find a better solution.
So where does the money come from to pay that interest?
Easy: it comes from the value created by human work. Here's an exaggerated example:
Baker loans $2 from the bank, owes $3 with interest.
Baker buys $1 worth of flour from the farmer, turns it into 3 sandwiches worth a dollar apiece.
Baker sells one sandwich to the farmer, repays the loan with the $2 plus a sandwich.
End result: loans are paid off with the value of the farmer and baker's work, and everyone profited (they all have a sandwich).
A perfectly functional system, if you stop assuming that only cash has value.
Turing's core insight was that you can get rid of the finite state machine and just have the tape, and a very simple set of universal rules.
Do you mean to say that a true universal turing machine has a fixed state transition table regardless of what the desired program was, and that programming is done solely by setting the initial tape? Having the program contained solely in the tape and manipulated with a fixed universal rule set, and still be able to program anything so to speak, would indeed be amazing.
Did Turing ever specify that simple set of universal rules?
Thanks for the links. I've only scanned them for the moment, but it does look like digital will give better results for the type of shots that I take. If the quality isn't going to be any better, no point in going through the extra hassle associated with film.
Bit of a shame, really. I'm an analog junkie and I'd like to shoot film, but not if it's gonna be a noticeable step backwards.
My numbers come from here: http://photo.net/learn/film/interviews/robert-caldarone
An interview rather than a scientific article, I admit, but photo.net's a pretty decent site. We could go hunting for the technical specs of the film he mentions...
I've used the 18-55 and on 18 you can see the barrel distortion when taking architectural photography. And for the price of 4 DSLRs you can get a good second-hand film body and a pro-class lens.
Can't argue about the scanners, however.
His point is that it won't - It's a discussion that regularly comes up on photography forums. Color accuracy is generally considered better (with the right film) and I've heard resolution figures of 30 or 40 MP for 35mm film. This does assume you scan the negatives properly with a wet drum scanner, an expensive and complex piece of equipment.
I shoot digital myself, but I'm planning to get a hold of a film body to do some comparisons. I don't have a scanner, nor can I develop, so then it becomes a question of how good is my local photo shop.
Thing is, the client isn't paying for all the work done. The author's happy to give them the code for the stuff developed directly for them, but he'll charge through the nose if they also demand the source code of libraries he's developed in past projects and reused here. These libraries clearly do not fall under "work he was paid to perform" having already been developed before the project started, and give him a competitive advantage which he would lose in this case - it is the reuse of these libraries that allowed him to finish the project so quickly.
Of course you charge them extra if a company demands the code to your custom libraries, because they haven't paid for these yet.
Each tower needs a different frequency band to prevent them from interfering with each other. You could build more towers with narrower frequency bands and fewer users per tower, but how would that be a gain? If you want more bandwidth for users you need a larger chunk of the frequency spectrum.
The only thing more towers helps with is better coverage and signal strength.