Don't confuse, to complex for you to work out in you head as difficult or even reasonably secure.
I think this scales as a sort of >O(n^2) type of problem if you want to be more specific on the kind of complexity. That goes well beyond something simply difficult to work out in your head and indeed serves as the basis for much of the encryption methods used today including how Bitcoin itself works for mining and authenticating payments.
When the number of Bitcoins transferred in and out of a particular address is in the tens of thousands, sneaking a much smaller number into that stack is mostly statistical noise, which is where you can hide your transactions in such a scheme. The longer you wait between sending the money into such an exchange/bank and when you withdraw that money, the more secure you can be assured that it will be hard to trace those coins.
While I haven't done the actual algorithms to figure out the statistical likelihood, I know it can be done. It sure as hell is far more secure than a 10 character password, and likely a 50 character password. The weak point in one of these cleaning houses is not the method of moving bitcoins in and out of the exchange, but the authentication being used by the website or whomever you are using for that kind of "laundering service". That can be attested to the fact that it has been through the exchanges (my own experience included) that you are more likely to lose bitcoins than through even scam artists skimming a few in a ponzi scheme or some other nonsense.
The disposable wallets are something you explicitly need to make though. Some of this can be done by default in the Bitcoin transaction software (aka the "client software" that generates transactions) but it must be explicitly done.
There still is a chain of evidence though that says this particular bitcoin I received came from blocks A, B, C,....,X, Y, Z as a chain of custody going back to when they were originally mined. This is a part of the accounting that makes sure you can't double spend the same Bitcoin.
When you spend Bitcoins, you need to provide evidence that you have those Bitcoins, hence the wallet. You can have multiple public keys that can be unlocked from the same private key (which is what you are talking about in terms of the "disposable wallet), and those are much harder to trace, but in theory you still can trace even those transactions.... once the Bitcoins are spent again.
Lets say the DEA somehow obtains the wallet of Steve's Marijuana Farm that I mentioned. Since they have the actual wallet information (aka all of the private keys, even if it is multiple keys), they can do this step by step analysis for everybody that sent money to Steve and every transaction in between when the Bitcoins were mined to when they arrived in Steve's wallet. In other words, the anonymity of the purchaser is lost here, even though the privacy of the seller can still be maintained until the coins get spent again.
You are simply flat out wrong here then. There is definitely an inherent connection between the disposable wallets and your main wallet, assuming you want to spend the Bitcoins. That is sort of the point of the paper in the main post is that your anonymity is preserved until you spend them. Once that happens, the connection between the disposable wallet and the main wallet is established again. All you are talking about here are those additional public keys that can each be unlocked from one or more private keys you might hold to confirm that you are authorized to spend those Bitcoins.... thus the previous transactions are all linked together. You can't find out who Steve is from all of the Bitcoins that are being sent to an address, but Steve can find a whole lot of information about you.
This is where a DEA (or other law enforcement agency) honeypot could really be a nasty wakeup call for some people.
Perhaps someone can invent a bitcoin anonymity hub..
Some of the early exchanges worked just like that and it was even encouraged. You could transfer in a pile of your bitcoins to the exchange and haul them out a day or two later. Since so many bitcoins were going in and out of the exchanges themselves, tracing even large blocks of bitcoins was quite problematic. Basically you had to start and end at those exchanges.
The problem with exchanges now is the personally identifying information that is linked to accounts. Earlier, the exchanges didn't require anything other than an e-mail address (a throwaway yahoo address worked fine) to set up an account. Certainly an anoymizing hub like you are suggesting could easily be done and trivial to create.
You assume that the United Nations is a world government. It isn't. That is where your mistake is found with this line of reasoning. You go to a judge and jury for criminal offenses because you are living together under a government... presumably a government that everybody involved agreed to follow that lives under such a government (not always a wise assumption).
The notion of going to the UN to start a war is something that seldom happens anyway as a practical matter, so wars happen without the eloquent step of actually declaring a state of war like used to happen commonly prior to World War II. I suppose it gives you more "moral authority" or some other sophistry that is utter bullshit to start a war, but it really is a morally corrupt notion that any body of people has the moral authority to condemn another nation to death other than their own and against that nation's wishes.
You also don't try to impose the rule of law upon a people by in turn being lawless and corrupt yourself, which is exactly what the Obama administration is doing here, not to mention most of the other countries of the world that are involved in Syria right now.
So, you mean if I have a transaction for $576.23 from Bob's Porn emporium, someone can sift through the transactions for $576.23 and figure out that was me?
Well, color me completely un-surprised. I'm not sure I've ever believed it was anonymous -- aren't the signatures of everyone who ever spent it tacked onto it?
It isn't quite that, but it is more. Most people use the same traceable money pool where you can trace multiple transactions and use that to track people down. It isn't just Bob's Porn Emplorium, but also noting that from the same pool of bitcoins a transaction took place to Steve's Marijuana Farm, Sally's Whorehouse, and Chuck's Supermarket in Podunk, Kansas. That same pool of Bitcoins might have also received money from several people who are also all blood relatives.
The point is that each individual bitcoin can be traced from the first work unit where it was "mined" and be followed to every transaction where it was used. Anonymity happens if you change hash values (as individual users can use new public/private pairs to claim individual bitcoins), but it isn't perfect. It still can be traced to show how similar pools of coins are used for related transactions and can be eventually used to identify people.
One of the ways that you can increase anonymity with Bitcoin purchases is by issuing a different hash key for each different kind of transaction. There are other techniques for moving around large numbers of Bitcoins as well including swapping the coins between wallets.
I'll agree that the exchange of Bitcoins for government-backed currencies is particularly problematic as current exchange laws require all sorts of identification for such transactions. On the other hand, you can live "off the grid" and just exchange Bitcoins for stuff like food, shelter, clothing, and other stuff and not bother with pesky details of exchanging into a government currency.
Almost everything mentioned in the article as some sort of deep revelation was acknowledged by the developers and "fans" of Bitcoins on forums within weeks of the original software published by Satoshi was released.... and happened years ago. Talk about stale news. The only real news is that somebody with "credentials" in a "scholarly paper" has made the same claims.... thus it can be included on Wikipedia or some other similar website.
Also, as far as not wanting any other country to intervene in your countries affairs...I suggest that you have this opinion largely because your government isn't trying to kill you and your family.
Are you sure about that? Like I said, my ancestors faced that same threat (interestingly..... by the government I am currently living under) and they made the decision to get out of the way and start a new life elsewhere. Specific legislation was drafted that targeted my ancestors and the people they were with to be exterminated. Mass genocide was encouraged. By moving away, the situation was resolved even though others got to claim the farms, homes, businesses, and other property that rightfully belonged to my ancestors.
No, I sure as hell don't want another government interfering here and if you think I would you don't know a damn thing about either me or my neighbors. It sounds to me like you want to be subject to a foreign nation as a vassal and live in perpetual slavery to that distant foreign power with no real way to complain or even express your feelings about the conditions you live under. That sounds like a horrible way to live, and I really can't comprehend how you can enjoy such a lifestyle.
Again, why in the hell does America, Britain, France, or Russia need to be involved in this matter at all? Indeed I would say that the current fiasco that is happening in Syria is explicitly because of intervention that has already taken place by other governments, including all of those I mention earlier plus other independent sovereign entities as well.
You also have this strange notion that somehow all of the nations are under some sort of world government that passes laws which everybody must follow. I would dare say you need to have a bit of a reality check here, as you are living in a fantasy world that simply doesn't exist. Life can be brutal. There certainly are some ethical standards that would be nice if most people followed, and I find murder, theft, rape, and fraud (to name just a few things) to be not just wrong but worth trying to track down somebody who did that evil thing... or at least make sure that person is never welcome in the society you are in.
You can do that with nations too: If some country is being a real jerk (like North Korea, to give a good example), they can be cut off from trade and scientific cooperation as well as from communications networks in various ways. I completely support doing that to countries who are doing things that my country doesn't agree with.... as determined by the leaders of my government through processes determined by the people in my country.
Again, why do you want to have a foreign government tell you and the people you are a part of how to live your life, what you should believe in regards to God (or lack thereof), the food you should or should not eat, and how to think? That is what comes from war, and why this particular war is utterly stupid. Syria is absolutely no threat to my homeland, my children, or any part of my life and likely never will be as long as my country doesn't go there and mess things up.
The potential market for sequencing is actually quite large, but it's dominated right now by something approaching a monopoly, so the price isn't going to change much until there's a new player on the block.
You are missing my point of a monopsony existing within the marketplace of sequencing right now as well. You even explained why it is a problem right now in your very own post. If anything monopsonies are far worse economically than even monopolies (just look at what Wal-Mart does to its suppliers if you want to see an example of this in the retail market place).
Until that logjam of monopolies and monoponies are broken, there will likely not be any sort of significant price reduction.
Surprisingly, it was the X-Prize foundation who broke that logjam in the space transportation industry... and prices have dropped to between 1/3rd to 1/10th of what it was before the space prize competition happened. Unfortunately the same situation doesn't exist for the genomics sequencing industry right now.
I certainly don't see any reason for America or anybody else for that matter to go to war over this mess. There certainly is no reason to even seek UN approval for going there either, of course why does anybody need "UN approval" for going to war in the first place?
And I have a question for you:
How would you feel if you had family there?
Pissed. But does that mean I need to call in the military of a foreign government which inhabits a completely different continent?
I really fail to see your logic here. My choices, and the choices that my ancestors had in similar circumstances (they also were the target of massive persecution and mass genocide) were either to fight to change the system from within, and if that failed to get the hell out of harm's way by moving somewhere else. If it was a lone idiot who did something horrible like this, I would be demanding that law enforcement officers would step up and... enforce some laws.
Don't get me started on "international law". Countries are sovereign entities who are pretty much free to do anything they please except for internal to themselves laws that may seek to stop such thing. Sometimes other countries may gang up on a country being a real idiot... but usually that is somebody who is a real idiot to other nations and not to themselves or their own citizens/subjects. If this really was all about saving the lives of children or avenging their deaths, we would invade North Korea yesterday, not to mention other places around the world that have far worse stories than what is happening in Syria.
I sure as hell wouldn't want Russia, China, the UK, France, or any other damn country coming into the city where I currently live simply because I disagree with the political policies of my government. My reaction would be to join the government forces, kick out the foreigners, and then once that is settled figure a way to make a protest that sticks or do something to change the government from within. I expect that is precisely what will happen in Syria, where any invasion of that country by foreign governments only gives further legitimacy to Assad and his government. Not only is it not helpful, but it is counter-productive to picking sides in a civil war where the outcome is far from certain or even if the government that will replace the Assad regime will be any better.
What exactly is the market for sequencers and people wanting to know their DNA sequence? It doesn't sound exactly like a mass consumer item, except perhaps those who want to spend some time on Jerry Springer's TV show (or other talk shows that do DNA matches between random boyfriends and the babies of unwed mothers). A lack of competition also seems to be a lack of customers. No doubt there are people who are willing to pay for sequencing at the current price (including several government agencies for various purposes) along with a few corporate customers who need DNA analysis for various products as well as genuine R&D that can afford the current price as well.
If the market isn't expanding rapidly with a substantial drop in price, the price is unlikely to drop, hence a substantial flattening of the market price.
No doubt there could be a real genuine market for hospitals and medical clinics to basically sequence every patient including every newborn for real medical diagnosis.... but the price is not really at the point where insurance companies would pay for this and it is not something an ordinary person would be willing to pay for such sequencing either, certainly not for a full genome analysis. The whole heath care system in 1st world countries is hardly a free market, so that really skews things to basically be a limited number of companies that would end up actually paying for this kind of sequencing.... hence another reason for relatively flat prices.
A similar kind of market situation exists with orbital rocket launching companies, where the absence of customers is also causing rocket prices to stagnate. Only a relatively recent increase in new markets for spaceflight has there been any real competition... and government contracts still dominate the landscape.
It's all about natural gas. There are plans to build a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe through Syria and Turkey. Currently, Europe is drawing gas from Russia. A pipeline would diminish Russia's power greatly as they have used it for political gains a few times in the last years. Syria, a strong partner of Russia, opposes this pipeline. Who is the biggest sponsor of the jihadis fighting Assad? Qatar.
If Qatar wants to move their massive army into Syria to force this to happen, I say they are welcome to stir the pot and take the arrows on this one. Keep America out of this fight as the American people really don't give a damn.
But what's really depressing is that none of the media, not western nor elsewhere, is reporting about this. It's all about the children in Syria.
The popular news media is so much in the tank with the Obama administration that they might as well simply form the Department of Information and get paid with federal tax dollars. The concept of responsible journalism has completely been tossed out the window, so it doesn't surprise me that the idea of righteous indignation and using the deaths of these children for an excuse to start World War III. It is pissing me off to see this happening, as war is not the answer to putting those responsible for killing these kids into some sort of punishment regime.
I don't doubt you are correct here either. As is always said about politics, if you don't understand why something is happening, follow the money and it makes sense.
Right. And these companies involved don't want any of the extra business? I don't think it is anything overt such as deliberate bribes or having these companies directly financing rebels or other such nonsense, but they certainly don't seem to mind getting the extra income which results from such wars happening.
It is more of a broad based "support the troops" kind of thing where defense contractors definitely support certain members of Congress when re-election time comes along, and those contractors definitely have their foot in the door for when military service contracts show up. It also doesn't hurt when America goes to war, as the stores are emptied and thus contracts to replace those stores are sent out to a number of contractors.
It has been so long since America has been genuinely at peace that frankly I don't think anybody really remembers what it was like.
It may have been billions of dollars, and certainly the Bush family benefited, but the relationship wasn't really all that strong, nor did Saddam Hussein really think much of America either. It was more "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of stuff and certainly was not the foundation to build a long term relationship.
Besides, a billion here and a billion there, and eventually you might be talking real money. American support for Iraq was not to help them win, only to force the war into a draw. That doesn't sound like something very helpful at all.
It wasn't much earlier that there was the Iran-Contra scandal, which tried to smuggle arms into Iran as well.
On the whole America has been playing one country off of the other for some time, usually to screw over both those countries and America at the same time as a result.
American support for Iraq was tepid at best and acknowledged as just a temporary thing even while it lasted. Iraq was really a long time supporter and backer of the USSR, with Iran being the stalwart American allay in the Cold War. Indeed the Iran-Iraq war was mostly a battle of Soviet equipment and tactics employed by Iraq vs. American equipment and tactics (but being cut off from parts resupply) on the part of Iran. Iran also had a huge manpower advantage, and the war pretty much ended in a stalemate. Saddam Hussein was a huge admirer of Joseph Stalin and even hung portraits of the guy up around his various palaces, with the attitude that if "Uncle Joe could do it, so could I". He also didn't mind looking to Khrushchev for some leadership examples either, including how to stand up to the USA if necessary. The Shah of course was a huge fan of America, and supposedly even had a long-term goal of westernizing to become more of a British style constitutional monarch if possible. The people in Iran weren't interested in taking that much time to transform though.
American involvement in Iraq was mainly to keep that war as a stalemate instead of letting Iraq collapse and be overrun by Iran. Iran was technically winning the war, and no doubt a united Iran + Iraq would have been formidable in terms of conquering other parts of the Middle East. I doubt that such a "United Islamic Republic" would have been so easy to stop as what happened in the Gulf War. There were perhaps legitimate reasons for backing Iraq in the late 1980's and early 1990's even if it meant that the whole war north of the Persian Gulf ended up just bleeding both countries dry.
The more I look back at the American invasion of Iraq though, the more I question if it was the right thing to do. At the time it was going on, I thought it was dangerous to be essentially train the U.S. Army to become very good at becoming an occupying army as opposed to a liberating army as those same tactics and training can be used domestically. That in particular was not even a political discussion at the time in America, something I think is unfortunate. Indeed it still isn't something widely being discussed.
Then the answer, presuming that is what is going on, is to come down on both "sides."
Thus "we" become the side that finally unites Syria...... to start manufacturing bombs and engage in terrorist plots against America for the next century killing hundreds or even thousands of Americans.
Yeah, that sounds like a winning strategy to me. How long did it take the UK government to finally put down Irish patriots? And the Irish were pikers compared to the religious zealotry that Muslims have to fight "Christian nations" like America.
Yes, the situation is even more screwed up as there are multiple groups of people who each have their own separate agenda and if it would make sense to start a war on multiple fronts against multiple groups that wouldn't mind having everybody else end up dead.
Armies are designed to kill people and break things into very tiny pieces that are usually unusable afterward. It sounds like Assad's army is doing that job very efficiently.... but does that give a reason for America to get into the mess too?
Yes, there are some people who want Syria to be free of nut jobs including free from foreign occupation or being a vassal of a foreign government. Philosophically I'd like to support that, but at this point I don't know who to back or even if I or my fellow American citizens (I am American) should even step into this mess even if the "righteous goal" is to make Syria a genuinely free and independent nation. I'm not certain that is remotely possible.
I certainly don't trust the current presidential administration in Washington DC to figure this mess out, nor do I think America should go to war over this stuff either. Complaining about the whole thing at the UN is perhaps a good step to take as that debate society is certainly an appropriate forum for such complaints. None the less, that is the extent I think America ought to go.
If Egypt (Syria's historic ally) wants to get involved, I wouldn't mind although they are currently caught up in their own set of problems. I can see the entire Middle East getting involved in this conflict, especially if it starts to involve America and European countries as well in a total mess that would make World War I look like clear cut reasons for starting a war.
I also have no idea what the result of such a war would be with America, as I think America is also on the brink of some internal catastrophies that could make a war in Syria be a disaster domestically as well.
Not going to War every few years is not abdicating that responsibility - it's taking it seriously.
Funding those wars, without authorization, is, of course, major hypocrisy.
I'd agree that not going to war continuously is acting responsibly. Failing to impeach a President who screwed up and declared war, engaged in acts of war without Congressional authorization.... that is is a crime against the American people and failing to live up to their constitutional responsibilities. It also makes Congress a whole bunch of oath breakers.
Ditto with funding a war that was never declared. I agree.
Congress legally abdicated that responsibility back in 2001 and has yet to reclaim it.
Correction, they abdicated that responsibility in 1941, the last time they chose to exercise that authority. Well, perhaps 1947, but that is splitting hairs.
Between that, the FISA court being appointed not by the President but by the Chief Justice, and Congress giving themselves retroactive pay raises and passing ex post facto laws, I'd say that the Constitution of 1787 is pretty much dead right now.
I'm looking at the U.S. government from a standpoint of what part is actually following any part of that constitution?
So seeing pictures of 100s of dead children being gassed by a chemical attack doesn't do anything for you?
Nope. I don't want to see the dead bodies of my own children because somebody wants to "do something about this atrocity". BTW, my kids are now eligible for being drafted by the Selective Service, which is sort of my point on this matter. I don't want to see my kids come home in body bags just to prove a moral point like this and risk starting a world war that could result in billions of people dying if it gets out of hand. Hell, I may likely be one of those billion people getting killed in this fiasco if it isn't dealt with much more carefully than seems to be the case presently. Is that worth getting angry over a hundred people getting killed by what may or may not have even been under the orders of a petty tyrant in an obscure part of the world I will likely never visit myself in my lifetime?
Iraq had chemical weapons because they were used. As for why it took so long to respond to those chemical weapons attacks can be said was stupid, but Iraq certainly didn't hesitate to make them and deploy those weapons.
Of course the whole WMD argument against Iraq was stupid in the first place as it was just a fabrication to justify going to war there. Iraq did try to make some nukes, but that was stopped by Israeli bombers that destroyed the reactor before it could be started and happened a decade before the chemical weapons attacks.
The real point of the Iraq War was simply to clean up the mess that should have been dealt with during the Gulf War, but that the King of Saudi Arabia didn't want to see happen.
We are the only country in world history that acts like this. We waste our national resources on things that are not of vital national interest. Syria doesn't have anything we really want. Even if they did, we are probably better off supporting Assad to undermine the Russians and the Chinese.
Countries have been acting like this since the beginning of countries or even cities. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote about this in his famous book called The Prince, which explains why sometimes the actions of a government, especially that government's military, sometimes seems to be at odds with common sense or at least any sort of moral authority and ethical behavior.
There is not right or wrong, just what is in the best interest of whatever part of the world you happen to be in. Even ideology takes a back seat to geography and "national interests".
It was actually the League of Nations, but who even thinks about that organization any more? Palestine/Judea/Trans-Jordan (the region has been called all of these names from time to time including what covers Tel Aviv and Jerusalem) was a part of the Ottoman Empire, and since they lost World War I in a big way, this former empire's territory was carved out by the victors giving us much of the mess we have today in the Middle East.
But I will admit that the USA never got to that part of the world. In fact, the USA was just a minor player in that whole war and pretty much stuck to just the fields of France.
NSA what? I'm sorry I can't hear you over all this FREEDOM.
This.
It is why this war isn't going to go anywhere, as it simply lacks the support from the American people. I know Obama is banging the drum beat really loud here and wants to use his vast reservoir of political capital to get the American people excited about going to war in Syria.
Hell, even Democrats are getting pissed off about what Obama is doing or the lack thereof. Who really supports this whole war, other than the arms manufacturing companies and perhaps the labor unions that work for those companies?
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Don't confuse, to complex for you to work out in you head as difficult or even reasonably secure.
I think this scales as a sort of >O(n^2) type of problem if you want to be more specific on the kind of complexity. That goes well beyond something simply difficult to work out in your head and indeed serves as the basis for much of the encryption methods used today including how Bitcoin itself works for mining and authenticating payments.
When the number of Bitcoins transferred in and out of a particular address is in the tens of thousands, sneaking a much smaller number into that stack is mostly statistical noise, which is where you can hide your transactions in such a scheme. The longer you wait between sending the money into such an exchange/bank and when you withdraw that money, the more secure you can be assured that it will be hard to trace those coins.
While I haven't done the actual algorithms to figure out the statistical likelihood, I know it can be done. It sure as hell is far more secure than a 10 character password, and likely a 50 character password. The weak point in one of these cleaning houses is not the method of moving bitcoins in and out of the exchange, but the authentication being used by the website or whomever you are using for that kind of "laundering service". That can be attested to the fact that it has been through the exchanges (my own experience included) that you are more likely to lose bitcoins than through even scam artists skimming a few in a ponzi scheme or some other nonsense.
The disposable wallets are something you explicitly need to make though. Some of this can be done by default in the Bitcoin transaction software (aka the "client software" that generates transactions) but it must be explicitly done.
There still is a chain of evidence though that says this particular bitcoin I received came from blocks A, B, C,.... ,X, Y, Z as a chain of custody going back to when they were originally mined. This is a part of the accounting that makes sure you can't double spend the same Bitcoin.
When you spend Bitcoins, you need to provide evidence that you have those Bitcoins, hence the wallet. You can have multiple public keys that can be unlocked from the same private key (which is what you are talking about in terms of the "disposable wallet), and those are much harder to trace, but in theory you still can trace even those transactions.... once the Bitcoins are spent again.
Lets say the DEA somehow obtains the wallet of Steve's Marijuana Farm that I mentioned. Since they have the actual wallet information (aka all of the private keys, even if it is multiple keys), they can do this step by step analysis for everybody that sent money to Steve and every transaction in between when the Bitcoins were mined to when they arrived in Steve's wallet. In other words, the anonymity of the purchaser is lost here, even though the privacy of the seller can still be maintained until the coins get spent again.
You are simply flat out wrong here then. There is definitely an inherent connection between the disposable wallets and your main wallet, assuming you want to spend the Bitcoins. That is sort of the point of the paper in the main post is that your anonymity is preserved until you spend them. Once that happens, the connection between the disposable wallet and the main wallet is established again. All you are talking about here are those additional public keys that can each be unlocked from one or more private keys you might hold to confirm that you are authorized to spend those Bitcoins.... thus the previous transactions are all linked together. You can't find out who Steve is from all of the Bitcoins that are being sent to an address, but Steve can find a whole lot of information about you.
This is where a DEA (or other law enforcement agency) honeypot could really be a nasty wakeup call for some people.
Perhaps someone can invent a bitcoin anonymity hub..
Some of the early exchanges worked just like that and it was even encouraged. You could transfer in a pile of your bitcoins to the exchange and haul them out a day or two later. Since so many bitcoins were going in and out of the exchanges themselves, tracing even large blocks of bitcoins was quite problematic. Basically you had to start and end at those exchanges.
The problem with exchanges now is the personally identifying information that is linked to accounts. Earlier, the exchanges didn't require anything other than an e-mail address (a throwaway yahoo address worked fine) to set up an account. Certainly an anoymizing hub like you are suggesting could easily be done and trivial to create.
You assume that the United Nations is a world government. It isn't. That is where your mistake is found with this line of reasoning. You go to a judge and jury for criminal offenses because you are living together under a government... presumably a government that everybody involved agreed to follow that lives under such a government (not always a wise assumption).
The notion of going to the UN to start a war is something that seldom happens anyway as a practical matter, so wars happen without the eloquent step of actually declaring a state of war like used to happen commonly prior to World War II. I suppose it gives you more "moral authority" or some other sophistry that is utter bullshit to start a war, but it really is a morally corrupt notion that any body of people has the moral authority to condemn another nation to death other than their own and against that nation's wishes.
You also don't try to impose the rule of law upon a people by in turn being lawless and corrupt yourself, which is exactly what the Obama administration is doing here, not to mention most of the other countries of the world that are involved in Syria right now.
So, you mean if I have a transaction for $576.23 from Bob's Porn emporium, someone can sift through the transactions for $576.23 and figure out that was me?
Well, color me completely un-surprised. I'm not sure I've ever believed it was anonymous -- aren't the signatures of everyone who ever spent it tacked onto it?
It isn't quite that, but it is more. Most people use the same traceable money pool where you can trace multiple transactions and use that to track people down. It isn't just Bob's Porn Emplorium, but also noting that from the same pool of bitcoins a transaction took place to Steve's Marijuana Farm, Sally's Whorehouse, and Chuck's Supermarket in Podunk, Kansas. That same pool of Bitcoins might have also received money from several people who are also all blood relatives.
The point is that each individual bitcoin can be traced from the first work unit where it was "mined" and be followed to every transaction where it was used. Anonymity happens if you change hash values (as individual users can use new public/private pairs to claim individual bitcoins), but it isn't perfect. It still can be traced to show how similar pools of coins are used for related transactions and can be eventually used to identify people.
One of the ways that you can increase anonymity with Bitcoin purchases is by issuing a different hash key for each different kind of transaction. There are other techniques for moving around large numbers of Bitcoins as well including swapping the coins between wallets.
I'll agree that the exchange of Bitcoins for government-backed currencies is particularly problematic as current exchange laws require all sorts of identification for such transactions. On the other hand, you can live "off the grid" and just exchange Bitcoins for stuff like food, shelter, clothing, and other stuff and not bother with pesky details of exchanging into a government currency.
Almost everything mentioned in the article as some sort of deep revelation was acknowledged by the developers and "fans" of Bitcoins on forums within weeks of the original software published by Satoshi was released.... and happened years ago. Talk about stale news. The only real news is that somebody with "credentials" in a "scholarly paper" has made the same claims.... thus it can be included on Wikipedia or some other similar website.
Also, as far as not wanting any other country to intervene in your countries affairs...I suggest that you have this opinion largely because your government isn't trying to kill you and your family.
Are you sure about that? Like I said, my ancestors faced that same threat (interestingly..... by the government I am currently living under) and they made the decision to get out of the way and start a new life elsewhere. Specific legislation was drafted that targeted my ancestors and the people they were with to be exterminated. Mass genocide was encouraged. By moving away, the situation was resolved even though others got to claim the farms, homes, businesses, and other property that rightfully belonged to my ancestors.
No, I sure as hell don't want another government interfering here and if you think I would you don't know a damn thing about either me or my neighbors. It sounds to me like you want to be subject to a foreign nation as a vassal and live in perpetual slavery to that distant foreign power with no real way to complain or even express your feelings about the conditions you live under. That sounds like a horrible way to live, and I really can't comprehend how you can enjoy such a lifestyle.
Again, why in the hell does America, Britain, France, or Russia need to be involved in this matter at all? Indeed I would say that the current fiasco that is happening in Syria is explicitly because of intervention that has already taken place by other governments, including all of those I mention earlier plus other independent sovereign entities as well.
You also have this strange notion that somehow all of the nations are under some sort of world government that passes laws which everybody must follow. I would dare say you need to have a bit of a reality check here, as you are living in a fantasy world that simply doesn't exist. Life can be brutal. There certainly are some ethical standards that would be nice if most people followed, and I find murder, theft, rape, and fraud (to name just a few things) to be not just wrong but worth trying to track down somebody who did that evil thing... or at least make sure that person is never welcome in the society you are in.
You can do that with nations too: If some country is being a real jerk (like North Korea, to give a good example), they can be cut off from trade and scientific cooperation as well as from communications networks in various ways. I completely support doing that to countries who are doing things that my country doesn't agree with.... as determined by the leaders of my government through processes determined by the people in my country.
Again, why do you want to have a foreign government tell you and the people you are a part of how to live your life, what you should believe in regards to God (or lack thereof), the food you should or should not eat, and how to think? That is what comes from war, and why this particular war is utterly stupid. Syria is absolutely no threat to my homeland, my children, or any part of my life and likely never will be as long as my country doesn't go there and mess things up.
The potential market for sequencing is actually quite large, but it's dominated right now by something approaching a monopoly, so the price isn't going to change much until there's a new player on the block.
You are missing my point of a monopsony existing within the marketplace of sequencing right now as well. You even explained why it is a problem right now in your very own post. If anything monopsonies are far worse economically than even monopolies (just look at what Wal-Mart does to its suppliers if you want to see an example of this in the retail market place).
Until that logjam of monopolies and monoponies are broken, there will likely not be any sort of significant price reduction.
Surprisingly, it was the X-Prize foundation who broke that logjam in the space transportation industry... and prices have dropped to between 1/3rd to 1/10th of what it was before the space prize competition happened. Unfortunately the same situation doesn't exist for the genomics sequencing industry right now.
I certainly don't see any reason for America or anybody else for that matter to go to war over this mess. There certainly is no reason to even seek UN approval for going there either, of course why does anybody need "UN approval" for going to war in the first place?
And I have a question for you:
How would you feel if you had family there?
Pissed. But does that mean I need to call in the military of a foreign government which inhabits a completely different continent?
I really fail to see your logic here. My choices, and the choices that my ancestors had in similar circumstances (they also were the target of massive persecution and mass genocide) were either to fight to change the system from within, and if that failed to get the hell out of harm's way by moving somewhere else. If it was a lone idiot who did something horrible like this, I would be demanding that law enforcement officers would step up and... enforce some laws.
Don't get me started on "international law". Countries are sovereign entities who are pretty much free to do anything they please except for internal to themselves laws that may seek to stop such thing. Sometimes other countries may gang up on a country being a real idiot... but usually that is somebody who is a real idiot to other nations and not to themselves or their own citizens/subjects. If this really was all about saving the lives of children or avenging their deaths, we would invade North Korea yesterday, not to mention other places around the world that have far worse stories than what is happening in Syria.
I sure as hell wouldn't want Russia, China, the UK, France, or any other damn country coming into the city where I currently live simply because I disagree with the political policies of my government. My reaction would be to join the government forces, kick out the foreigners, and then once that is settled figure a way to make a protest that sticks or do something to change the government from within. I expect that is precisely what will happen in Syria, where any invasion of that country by foreign governments only gives further legitimacy to Assad and his government. Not only is it not helpful, but it is counter-productive to picking sides in a civil war where the outcome is far from certain or even if the government that will replace the Assad regime will be any better.
What exactly is the market for sequencers and people wanting to know their DNA sequence? It doesn't sound exactly like a mass consumer item, except perhaps those who want to spend some time on Jerry Springer's TV show (or other talk shows that do DNA matches between random boyfriends and the babies of unwed mothers). A lack of competition also seems to be a lack of customers. No doubt there are people who are willing to pay for sequencing at the current price (including several government agencies for various purposes) along with a few corporate customers who need DNA analysis for various products as well as genuine R&D that can afford the current price as well.
If the market isn't expanding rapidly with a substantial drop in price, the price is unlikely to drop, hence a substantial flattening of the market price.
No doubt there could be a real genuine market for hospitals and medical clinics to basically sequence every patient including every newborn for real medical diagnosis.... but the price is not really at the point where insurance companies would pay for this and it is not something an ordinary person would be willing to pay for such sequencing either, certainly not for a full genome analysis. The whole heath care system in 1st world countries is hardly a free market, so that really skews things to basically be a limited number of companies that would end up actually paying for this kind of sequencing.... hence another reason for relatively flat prices.
A similar kind of market situation exists with orbital rocket launching companies, where the absence of customers is also causing rocket prices to stagnate. Only a relatively recent increase in new markets for spaceflight has there been any real competition... and government contracts still dominate the landscape.
It's all about natural gas. There are plans to build a gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe through Syria and Turkey. Currently, Europe is drawing gas from Russia. A pipeline would diminish Russia's power greatly as they have used it for political gains a few times in the last years. Syria, a strong partner of Russia, opposes this pipeline. Who is the biggest sponsor of the jihadis fighting Assad? Qatar.
If Qatar wants to move their massive army into Syria to force this to happen, I say they are welcome to stir the pot and take the arrows on this one. Keep America out of this fight as the American people really don't give a damn.
But what's really depressing is that none of the media, not western nor elsewhere, is reporting about this. It's all about the children in Syria.
The popular news media is so much in the tank with the Obama administration that they might as well simply form the Department of Information and get paid with federal tax dollars. The concept of responsible journalism has completely been tossed out the window, so it doesn't surprise me that the idea of righteous indignation and using the deaths of these children for an excuse to start World War III. It is pissing me off to see this happening, as war is not the answer to putting those responsible for killing these kids into some sort of punishment regime.
I don't doubt you are correct here either. As is always said about politics, if you don't understand why something is happening, follow the money and it makes sense.
Right. And these companies involved don't want any of the extra business? I don't think it is anything overt such as deliberate bribes or having these companies directly financing rebels or other such nonsense, but they certainly don't seem to mind getting the extra income which results from such wars happening.
It is more of a broad based "support the troops" kind of thing where defense contractors definitely support certain members of Congress when re-election time comes along, and those contractors definitely have their foot in the door for when military service contracts show up. It also doesn't hurt when America goes to war, as the stores are emptied and thus contracts to replace those stores are sent out to a number of contractors.
It has been so long since America has been genuinely at peace that frankly I don't think anybody really remembers what it was like.
It may have been billions of dollars, and certainly the Bush family benefited, but the relationship wasn't really all that strong, nor did Saddam Hussein really think much of America either. It was more "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of stuff and certainly was not the foundation to build a long term relationship.
Besides, a billion here and a billion there, and eventually you might be talking real money. American support for Iraq was not to help them win, only to force the war into a draw. That doesn't sound like something very helpful at all.
It wasn't much earlier that there was the Iran-Contra scandal, which tried to smuggle arms into Iran as well.
On the whole America has been playing one country off of the other for some time, usually to screw over both those countries and America at the same time as a result.
American support for Iraq was tepid at best and acknowledged as just a temporary thing even while it lasted. Iraq was really a long time supporter and backer of the USSR, with Iran being the stalwart American allay in the Cold War. Indeed the Iran-Iraq war was mostly a battle of Soviet equipment and tactics employed by Iraq vs. American equipment and tactics (but being cut off from parts resupply) on the part of Iran. Iran also had a huge manpower advantage, and the war pretty much ended in a stalemate. Saddam Hussein was a huge admirer of Joseph Stalin and even hung portraits of the guy up around his various palaces, with the attitude that if "Uncle Joe could do it, so could I". He also didn't mind looking to Khrushchev for some leadership examples either, including how to stand up to the USA if necessary. The Shah of course was a huge fan of America, and supposedly even had a long-term goal of westernizing to become more of a British style constitutional monarch if possible. The people in Iran weren't interested in taking that much time to transform though.
American involvement in Iraq was mainly to keep that war as a stalemate instead of letting Iraq collapse and be overrun by Iran. Iran was technically winning the war, and no doubt a united Iran + Iraq would have been formidable in terms of conquering other parts of the Middle East. I doubt that such a "United Islamic Republic" would have been so easy to stop as what happened in the Gulf War. There were perhaps legitimate reasons for backing Iraq in the late 1980's and early 1990's even if it meant that the whole war north of the Persian Gulf ended up just bleeding both countries dry.
The more I look back at the American invasion of Iraq though, the more I question if it was the right thing to do. At the time it was going on, I thought it was dangerous to be essentially train the U.S. Army to become very good at becoming an occupying army as opposed to a liberating army as those same tactics and training can be used domestically. That in particular was not even a political discussion at the time in America, something I think is unfortunate. Indeed it still isn't something widely being discussed.
Then the answer, presuming that is what is going on, is to come down on both "sides."
Thus "we" become the side that finally unites Syria...... to start manufacturing bombs and engage in terrorist plots against America for the next century killing hundreds or even thousands of Americans.
Yeah, that sounds like a winning strategy to me. How long did it take the UK government to finally put down Irish patriots? And the Irish were pikers compared to the religious zealotry that Muslims have to fight "Christian nations" like America.
Yes, the situation is even more screwed up as there are multiple groups of people who each have their own separate agenda and if it would make sense to start a war on multiple fronts against multiple groups that wouldn't mind having everybody else end up dead.
Armies are designed to kill people and break things into very tiny pieces that are usually unusable afterward. It sounds like Assad's army is doing that job very efficiently.... but does that give a reason for America to get into the mess too?
Yes, there are some people who want Syria to be free of nut jobs including free from foreign occupation or being a vassal of a foreign government. Philosophically I'd like to support that, but at this point I don't know who to back or even if I or my fellow American citizens (I am American) should even step into this mess even if the "righteous goal" is to make Syria a genuinely free and independent nation. I'm not certain that is remotely possible.
I certainly don't trust the current presidential administration in Washington DC to figure this mess out, nor do I think America should go to war over this stuff either. Complaining about the whole thing at the UN is perhaps a good step to take as that debate society is certainly an appropriate forum for such complaints. None the less, that is the extent I think America ought to go.
If Egypt (Syria's historic ally) wants to get involved, I wouldn't mind although they are currently caught up in their own set of problems. I can see the entire Middle East getting involved in this conflict, especially if it starts to involve America and European countries as well in a total mess that would make World War I look like clear cut reasons for starting a war.
I also have no idea what the result of such a war would be with America, as I think America is also on the brink of some internal catastrophies that could make a war in Syria be a disaster domestically as well.
Not going to War every few years is not abdicating that responsibility - it's taking it seriously.
Funding those wars, without authorization, is, of course, major hypocrisy.
I'd agree that not going to war continuously is acting responsibly. Failing to impeach a President who screwed up and declared war, engaged in acts of war without Congressional authorization.... that is is a crime against the American people and failing to live up to their constitutional responsibilities. It also makes Congress a whole bunch of oath breakers.
Ditto with funding a war that was never declared. I agree.
Congress legally abdicated that responsibility back in 2001 and has yet to reclaim it.
Correction, they abdicated that responsibility in 1941, the last time they chose to exercise that authority. Well, perhaps 1947, but that is splitting hairs.
Between that, the FISA court being appointed not by the President but by the Chief Justice, and Congress giving themselves retroactive pay raises and passing ex post facto laws, I'd say that the Constitution of 1787 is pretty much dead right now.
I'm looking at the U.S. government from a standpoint of what part is actually following any part of that constitution?
So seeing pictures of 100s of dead children being gassed by a chemical attack doesn't do anything for you?
Nope. I don't want to see the dead bodies of my own children because somebody wants to "do something about this atrocity". BTW, my kids are now eligible for being drafted by the Selective Service, which is sort of my point on this matter. I don't want to see my kids come home in body bags just to prove a moral point like this and risk starting a world war that could result in billions of people dying if it gets out of hand. Hell, I may likely be one of those billion people getting killed in this fiasco if it isn't dealt with much more carefully than seems to be the case presently. Is that worth getting angry over a hundred people getting killed by what may or may not have even been under the orders of a petty tyrant in an obscure part of the world I will likely never visit myself in my lifetime?
Iraq had chemical weapons because they were used. As for why it took so long to respond to those chemical weapons attacks can be said was stupid, but Iraq certainly didn't hesitate to make them and deploy those weapons.
Of course the whole WMD argument against Iraq was stupid in the first place as it was just a fabrication to justify going to war there. Iraq did try to make some nukes, but that was stopped by Israeli bombers that destroyed the reactor before it could be started and happened a decade before the chemical weapons attacks.
The real point of the Iraq War was simply to clean up the mess that should have been dealt with during the Gulf War, but that the King of Saudi Arabia didn't want to see happen.
We are the only country in world history that acts like this. We waste our national resources on things that are not of vital national interest. Syria doesn't have anything we really want. Even if they did, we are probably better off supporting Assad to undermine the Russians and the Chinese.
Countries have been acting like this since the beginning of countries or even cities. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote about this in his famous book called The Prince, which explains why sometimes the actions of a government, especially that government's military, sometimes seems to be at odds with common sense or at least any sort of moral authority and ethical behavior.
There is not right or wrong, just what is in the best interest of whatever part of the world you happen to be in. Even ideology takes a back seat to geography and "national interests".
The question being where the rebels would have got the weapon from?
Benghazi, Lybia. September 10th, 2012.
It was actually the League of Nations, but who even thinks about that organization any more? Palestine/Judea/Trans-Jordan (the region has been called all of these names from time to time including what covers Tel Aviv and Jerusalem) was a part of the Ottoman Empire, and since they lost World War I in a big way, this former empire's territory was carved out by the victors giving us much of the mess we have today in the Middle East.
But I will admit that the USA never got to that part of the world. In fact, the USA was just a minor player in that whole war and pretty much stuck to just the fields of France.
NSA what? I'm sorry I can't hear you over all this FREEDOM.
This.
It is why this war isn't going to go anywhere, as it simply lacks the support from the American people. I know Obama is banging the drum beat really loud here and wants to use his vast reservoir of political capital to get the American people excited about going to war in Syria.
Hell, even Democrats are getting pissed off about what Obama is doing or the lack thereof. Who really supports this whole war, other than the arms manufacturing companies and perhaps the labor unions that work for those companies?