In fairness to the Department of Commerce, they actually earn money for the U.S. federal government from taxes that they personally collect. Indeed the U.S. Navy was originally a part of that department and then spun off into its own department, later to merge with the "War Department" to form the "Department of Defense". That is also why the U.S. Coast Guard was a part of that same department until the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (IMHO one of the least effective departments of the U.S. federal government and singularly incapable of doing its job).
That some of those businesses paying taxes to Commerce Department agents may also be engaged in bribes shouldn't be a shock: it is a government agency. Of course there are bribes and influence peddling in the form of other bribes (called "campaign contributions") to the right people.
The big thing under the Commerce Department other than customs agents is the FAA, who also act as the traffic cops of the airspace above America as well as nominally regulate and monitor aircraft manufacturers as well as regulate launching private commercial spacecraft.
BTW, I agree with you on FEMA. The one other even more useless agency is the Selective Service. It is the one agency that purposely spends money on things that are not wanted, and if its services were ever needed would likely be completely replaced by another agency. I swear its continued existence is only due to bureaucratic inertia alone, and if the agency was disbanded it wouldn't even be missed by the people in that agency. I doubt they'd even notice it was disbanded.
Of course the automatic landing system of SFO was also turned off at the time. There was some pundit speculation this might have been the cause of the accident, but of course pilots are also supposedly trained not to rely upon those systems all of the time either. It was a clear day near noon at a big airport that had other systems in place to help land airplanes.
The point of the original article is that there should have been more communication between the pilot and co-pilot on the theory that having two pilots miss something important like the end of the runway and being able to make a proper landing is highly unlikely. Relying on having just one pilot who is an arrogant jerk forcing everybody else in the cockpit to defer to his judgement alone is likely to cause some accidents like this.
I am convinced that Barack Obama could pull out a gun during a State of the Union address and kill somebody live on air before the nation and the whole of Congress assembled and articles of impeachment would still not be drafted. He is completely untouchable.
Note: I am not suggesting that Obama (or any other person holding the office of President of the United States) should be given a blank check to do anything, I'm just suggesting that in this case Obama has such a political following and fanatical supporters that he could literally get away with murder or do anything else he desired as nobody would prosecute. That also isn't good for the American Republic, but America voted him into office and that is who Obama actually is.
Perhaps you missed the part where this form of trading is essentially a closed shop and actually larger than the "economy."
Nope. I don't know how it would be "larger than the actual economy", as it is a part of the national economy... by definition. It will always be smaller than the economy because it is a sub-set of that economy.
That it might be larger than the public trades is true, but that isn't the problem either. Collusion between multiple "dark pools" is a problem where prices are manipulated, and in theory trades between multiple dark pools could essentially bypass the main market entirely even for setting prices.... or at least increasing volatility (instead of the usual reducing volatility effects of dark pools) because there aren't competing "dark pools". I'm not saying that everything is peachy keen and awesome with dark pools, as there certainly can be some major problems. The issue isn't with dark pools in themselves though, as that really is a good thing.
As for the "closed shop" aspect..... I really don't know what you are talking about there. That some of these "dark pool" operators might restrict who can trade within that pool may be true, but if you are complaining go start your own pool and get a seat on the NYSE or other exchange (or at least work with somebody who has a seat on one of those exchanges). It takes some trade volume and money to get the attention of some of these traders, but other than some bureaucratic red tape thanks to our government literally anybody can get onto those exchanges. It isn't nearly as closed as you may suggest. People on Wall Street don't give a damn about your skin color, country of national origin, language you speak, eye color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identifiable trait. For all they care, you can even be a lesbian Klingon. All they care is that you have some money and want to buy or sell stock shares in public companies.
I certainly fail to see how operating a dark pool can possibly "destroy the economy" now or in the future. There are many other things to worry about that actually will damage the economy and perhaps even destroy it.
We blew over a million dollars in the course of about 18 months (surprisingly not that hard to do). It wasn't even anything exotic, just some equipment, rent, and a trip to a computer convention (where I actually landed a contract with enough profit to pay for that trip anyway.... that really wasn't the problem).
If that really wasn't the problem, why on earth did you include it, just to say it wasn't the problem ?!?
It was an "expense", and frankly trips like that were at least addressed as a potential place where money was "needlessly spent". You obviously missed the point that even a well financed start-up can struggle to be successful, which was my main point.
Strangely, it is companies who struggle and pinch every penny that seem to be doing better. They definitely do better when the revenue comes in and they can keep expenses consistently lower than income while well-financed companies seem to struggle with keeping expenses under control.
Release the core game as it was intended on time and add the extras (in game, ports to other platforms, whatever...) later.
This needs to be planned for Kickstarters from, well, before the start. Because you might get more money than anticipated, but not more time.
This is so true. I know some people with a successful Kickstarter campaign begin to get caught up in the hype and promise the Moon and anything else they can think up in order to keep the ball rolling. They really shouldn't get caught up in the hype, other than to be promising minor cosmetic things or as suggested promise that they will be on the development path well after the original release. I completely agree.
I've been involved with several startup companies over the years, and the worst disaster was also the best financed company I was ever part of. We blew over a million dollars in the course of about 18 months (surprisingly not that hard to do). It wasn't even anything exotic, just some equipment, rent, and a trip to a computer convention (where I actually landed a contract with enough profit to pay for that trip anyway.... that really wasn't the problem). There were some huge mistakes made, and lots of finger pointing in the end that was rather pointless but still happened.
My problem with this is, you can't say what the "market" price is when so much of the bidding is in dark pools. You can't look at a 1/8 or smaller sliver and say "that's the market price" - your participation in that market would have changed the price.
That isn't really true. The "market price" is what the big board say it is, thus the "market of last resort". The point of the article in question is that apparently some of the brokerage houses are trying to shave off a few points to pad their profits by selling customer's stock purchases at prices below the actual market price and buying stock at higher than market price (at least what the customers think is selling and buying of those shares). That kind of thing, even with a few cents difference can add up to a whole lot of money and is one of the things that is being investigated......... at least if you did the remarkable thing of actually reading the effing article.
The other problem is that the dark pools are interconnected between each other, thus they don't even go to the public market any more. The ideas of the public market is that when you have exhausted your dark pool and have a whole bunch of customers leaning one way or another, you take those trades to the public market. If there are other "dark pools" and groups of customers who are in a position to react to changes in the market (buying shares when the price drops or selling with the price goes up), everything works exactly as it should.
The problem is when you have interlocking dark pools outside of the market, causing the concern you are having. If all of the brokerage houses are ignoring the public market, then the actual market doesn't reflect the true price.
> It also keeps stock brokerage costs down, thus lowering your fees for making an individual transaction.
Do you know how silly that sounds? The CEO of the NYSE had a salary of $140 Million before bonuses in 2011. I have a hard time believing they are working for our best interest. Excuse me while I go vomit.
If you think you can do a better job by providing a cheaper service and help out more people..... then get off your ass and form the company and do it!
Seriously, I don't understand why there are communists who think it is wrong for people to make a profit off of their activities. There isn't anything fancy or special here, and not much stopping you from competing against these companies other than a lack of will and putting a whole lot of effort into this. The New York Stock Exchange started out with a bunch of guys gathered out in a park under the "Buttonwood trees" that happened to be on Wall Street (then the city limits for New York City... literally on the edge of town hence the "wall" of Wall Street was the town fence against the Native Americans who also lived on Manhattan at the time). The only advantage that these particular CEOs have over you is that they started doing this first, and that their companies have been persistent.
I heard a funny story about the 1929 stock market crash, where in the middle of all of the sell orders somebody on the exchange decided to write up an "ask 1" order for 1000 shares of a major company that had been trading at about 50 dollars previously.... sort of as a joke just to see if anybody was that desperate. The shock was when the bid was accepted as there were order in to sell at any price.
Your general explanation here is spot on though. It is one of the ways that traders can make money for themselves if they spot a large gap and can identify a potential trend in the near future. This is also a good thing so far as it does make the markets much more efficient, noting that traders don't hang onto shares of companies like this.... their only motive is just to buy the shares and unload them a short time later. It helps the markets because it can help smooth out the ups and downs of the market and make it possible for trades to actually go through when people want to buy or sell their shares instead of needing to wait.
This isn't really any voodoo here, and it is something stock brokerage companies have been doing for decades or even from the very beginning. If you have two customers where one customer is trying to unload some stock and another is trying to buy the same issue of stock.... why not simply exchange the stock certificates between the two customers without having to go through the big stock exchange?
The point is that these trading companies sometimes have thousands of trades going on all of the time, sometimes with customers having "put" or "stop" orders in place to buy or sell at certain prices. On the whole it really does make the markets much more efficient because the only time you go to the "big boards" is when you have a large number of your customers either all trying to sell or buy a particular stock issue.
This is certainly not something that will "destroy the economy", but rather that it will even help make the "economy" run even better by making sure that those who are either buying or selling shares can get the best possible price among the most number of people who may be interested in either buying or selling that stock. It also keeps stock brokerage costs down, thus lowering your fees for making an individual transaction. In other words, this makes it much easier for "ordinary people" to get involved with the stock market if you really care to do something like that. The New York Stock Exchange was explicitly set up with this kind of arrangement in mind, where people "with a seat" would carry on major transactions on behalf of trading companies, and ordinary people would contract out with those trading companies if you wanted to make occasional trades or buy in low volumes.
That there are problems with brokers and reasons to be concerned about how they are handling your money is something to be concerned about, the mere fact that "dark pools" exist isn't one of those things to panic over. If they didn't exist, all trades would need to happen on the major exchanges and would be a whole lot more expensive with much higher fees. The end result is that it would cause the world economy to collapse if they were outlawed or something else equally stupid. That brokerage houses should be expected to be honest to their customers is what this whole story is about, not the existence of these trading environments.
Perhaps the words "mind blowing" should have been used instead. As for a reference showing it being used above... try to read the context of what was being said rather than trying to be a jackass and a grammar Nazi for a change. Capturing an image of a flying vehicle in the atmosphere of another planet as seen by yet another spacecraft on an unrelated mission really is an incredible accomplishment and something that deserves a little bit of awe rather than trying to smack down the person making the observation and mentioning that accomplishment and image. That sure as hell isn't "dull, boring, or tedious" except trying to respond to a troll... which certainly is.
It should really fill you with a sense of wonder when you think about the Earth's Moon, realizing that it is really a dwarf planet all to itself and in fact one of the largest "natural satellites" in the Solar System... on the same general size as the Galilean moons of Jupiter or even Titan and Triton. Phobos and Deimos really are not much more than captured asteroids. Indeed I think the Moon should be considered as a planet... as much as Pluto, Vesta, and Ceres currently are considered as such by the IAU (the "dwarf" status still makes them planets). As such, when you see the Moon rising in the night sky here on the Earth, you really are looking at another planet that happens to be quite close to us... close enough to even see surface details without a telescope.
That said, Phobos has some interesting properties as a moon. It can only be seen on Mars at latitudes fairly close to the equator as it travels at a comparatively low altitude.... something more akin to the altitude that the International Space Station travels here around the Earth. Even more odd though is that it "rises" in the west and "sets" in the east as its orbital period is less than a day, thus it would also have a "lunar eclipse" every time it completes an orbit. A really interesting phenomena is a transit of Phobos from Mars... essentially an eclipse of the Sun, but Phobos doesn't quite cover the full disc of the sun because it is much smaller. Again, these transits happen every orbit somewhere on Mars.
As you pointed out, Phobos would be seen as something much smaller. If I had to guess, it would be roughly the size of the Sea of Tranquility, in terms of the visual appearance from the surface of Mars compared to what you see in the night sky here on the Earth. It would still be something you would notice in the night sky on Mars and I think if people ever do make the trip to Mars, seeing Phobos would be something people would enjoy watching and taking the time to look at if the opportunity came up.
The video was filmed by a "helicopter drone". Essentially a slightly larger RC helicopter that had a camera mounted underneath.
Actually that helicopter didn't even need to be all that big, considering the miniaturization of cameras. It is stuff that you can literally just purchase over the internet for a relatively modest amount of money. In other words, something a full-time engineer with a little money to burn could easily afford if they cared and have a hobby on the side. That wasn't even really the story here other than the fact it took footage of something else really remarkable.
The advantage of a drone in this case is that a manned helicopter would be prohibited from the range for safety reasons, so the drone was the only way to get something in that camera angle and proximity. SpaceX has several other cameras from many other angles that were taking footage of the launch... all that would be necessary if there was a serious mishap.
As a matter of fact, Elon Musk has started to grumble to his engineers complaining that they haven't destroyed the Grasshopper yet. He doesn't want them to purposely crater the machine, but he does want them to push the envelope a bit as disasters really are a great way to learn about the performance limits of machines like this.
This particular test only got to 325 feet (the highest one so far), but they want to incrementally move higher and higher... eventually going to several thousand feet. Unfortunately for the SpaceX engineers, those tests will need to happen some place other than central Texas as high altitude tests will interfere with aircraft traffic and could crater into Waco, Texas as an outside potential. They are eventually going to move these tests to New Mexico... at least that seems to be the current plan that I've seen and based upon launch permit applications SpaceX has already made to the FAA.
I've heard it suggested that this technology may even be tested in an upcoming Falcon 9 launch, where an attempt to at least slow down and attempt recovery of the first stage after launch will be made.
Really? Can you name any organization that has accomplished what SpaceX has done other than people who have the motto "Waste anything but time"?
Yes, in the 1960's that motto was plastered on posters and put in giant letters inside manufacturing plants for building the Apollo rockets that went to the Moon. That was nearly the same philosophy that the Russian space program had at the same time (although admittedly a smaller budget). To date, very few organization have put anything into orbit that wasn't a national government... usually of a very large country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In fact, for manned flight it is only sitting members of that exclusive club and SpaceX might be able to join that elite few very soon.
If you are suggesting that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin (or their predecessor companies) built stuff and sent it into orbit, it sure as heck wasn't on their dime nor were their engineers even the only people building those rockets.
Except for the fact that your government (two chambers + head of state) changes completely at this time, whereas only one of our legislative chambers does, and our head of state has the position for life. We have much greater continuity than you do.
In theory it could. In practice it really doesn't. Furthermore, the legislative chambers change every two years... but on a rotating basis (only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for re-election every two years). That is hardly a real government change and is definitely not "changing completely". At worst (or best depending on your view) the "minority" and "majority" leaders swap positions. It isn't even like the "loyal opposition", as the minority leadership still retains some real governance roles.
As for the "head of state" in the UK.... that is an essentially meaningless position that mostly soaks up tax dollars and looks nice in cameras. I suppose it does offer a speed bump in the UK if somebody like Adolph Hitler was to come to power as PM, as the Queen (or King) could simply dissolve Parliament and use Royal prerogatives to protect the British citizens from an abusive government. That is of course assuming that the PM was a tyrant and the monarch was willing to stand up to that tyranny with the popular support of the British people. That would also be a constitutional crisis in the UK where the results of the British monarchy taking actual steps of governance would be completely unpredictable with a high likelihood of backfiring and ending up with the monarch in prison or executed.
The real authority to act, to do things, to cause ships to move in the oceans, to launch a nuclear strike against some random city in the world, to suppress a riot, and to perform other acts of real governance is vested in the Prime Minister. Heck, in the UK the Prime Minister often acts without even consulting the monarch, and even when notification of the monarch happens that is all which happens: the PM informs the monarch about actions and the monarch is helpless to do anything about that action if they disagree except through a strictly advisory role. There is a threat of a Royal veto (or declining assent to legislation), but that hasn't been exercised in over 200 years and is uncertain that under the current situation Parliament would even recognize such a veto. The only time I could possibly imagine the British monarchy exercising such authority is in a most extreme situation where their action would have popular support of the British people but for some reason the Parliament has gone "rogue" and doing things which are hugely unpopular. You would also need to see a popular demonstration at Buckingham Palace in support of the monarchy... essentially the British people rallying in support of their monarch in a very public manner against the elected government.
I suppose there is the other minor issue where the British military swears personal loyalty to the monarch, and the monarch could possibly order the military to act in a manner contrary to the intent and orders of the PM. Again, this would be essentially a coup, and another constitutional crises. The only time that any member of the Royal Family has any real authority is when they bother to get into the military hierarchy... like what Prince Harry is doing by taking on a commission in the military and taking command of actual units. Strangely, even there Prince Harry is acting under orders authorized by the PM, not his grandmother.
Huh? America changes "adminstrations" about every eight years (with the potential to have them change every four.... or more frequently due to "other events"), but that isn't changing governments except in the sense like the British get a new "government" each time they get a new Prime Minister. It is even less so, as often Speakers of the House (the most equivalent of the House of Commons in the USA) survive past individual presidents and have their own rotation of power. Add to that changes in the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court (which is usually how eras are noted in that body) which happen on the range of decades or longer, and then dealing with the "President pro tempore of the Senate" adding more nuances, it definitely isn't every four years and not even close to what happens in a typical parliamentary system much less whole new constitutions.
Countries like Brazil and Turkey, on the other hand, do have a tradition of changing governments on a much more regular basis... usually by military coup that either arrests or even executes the respective president and drastically re-writes the constitution each time. Clearly different governments with even different government philosophies have arisen from each change of government, and most of the "laws" were even rewritten from scratch (for the most part). That is exactly what is happening right now in Egypt.
On the other hand, the change from the Articles of Confederation to the current U.S. Constitution did represent a major and sweeping change of government more akin to what normally happens after a coup.
In terms of the current "regime" in England, it could be best called the form of the government following Oliver Cromwell's republic. That was 1660, thus only 353 years even if you count just England and not the whole UK.
That is still a pretty good run under the current "constitution" which exists in that part of the world. Most other countries have a much shorter period of time, and even America went through a couple major government changes in that same length of time.
In fairness, these guys are still pretty much new to dealing with these issues. None of this is surprising if you were dealing with a new start-up company, of which Ouya and their employees clearly are. I'll admit that they need to work through the issues related to Kickstarter backers as well as anybody else who pre-ordered the game units, but they haven't really had time to sort things out.
You are expecting them to behave like some fictional being (superman, a god, or whatever) when in fact they are just mere mortal people full of weaknesses and the ability to really only concentrate on one issue at a time like the rest of us. If a year from now you are still having problems.... THEN you can start complaining.
Otherwise, this is just somebody sore that they haven't had the device teleported into their home RIGHT NOW by Scotty from the USS Enterprise. Hell, even that would cause a backlog in terms of trying to get all of these units out to everybody that wanted one.
If I used Windows XP, I could always switch operating systems. Not difficult.
The choice is pretty much switching to Linux or "upgrading" to a later version of Windows. Both have problems.... especially if all of your software and files are dependent upon using Windows XP (some software packages are sadly OS specific in this manner).
Switching operating systems isn't always an option. Strange as it may sound, I've seen some situations where it was necessary to sell new copies of Windows 3.1 (running on MS-DOS 6.22). It gets the job done and it is precisely what the customer wants without any more fuss, and the hardware + software works just fine for its intended purpose.
If they are trying to regulate the Bitcoin/U.S. Dollar exchanges, going after the Bitcoin Foundation is by far and away the worst possible move you could make. They don't have a thing to do with any of those exchanges at all and forcing that organization "into compliance" won't have any effect.
Going after Mt. Gox or other exchanges certainly would be something to consider, but even that is likely to be futile. At best all that can really happen is that the major banks or even folks like PayPal will be getting into the game, at which time Bitcoins will be completely legitimized. The current effort is at best an attempt to "uninvent" computer software that is already available to anybody who wants to use it.... and it can't even be stopped with patents or copyrights. Of course in this situation the people who started using Bitcoins as early adopters weren't interested in royalties from "intellectual property" as they knew it was going to be an uphill fight just to get acceptance in the first place.
Of course a problem with the patent process is that the role of the patent application is to provide enough information, and a typical application will provide barely enough information, to demonstrate that it is novel thus meriting patent protection.
Advocates of the patent process claim that the role of the patent application is to document the invention so future generations can have details about the invention. Even if you provide sufficient information in a patent application to document that a particular device or invention is covered under the patent (thus dealing with the needs of a typical court room trial for patent infringement), there is no possible way to use the information to actually create the device in question or even the sub-assembly for which the patent has been granted.
Government in America was designed to be fair, rewritable equitable, and accountable, not effective or efficient.
As a matter of fact, government in America is explicitly designed to be inefficient. It is in the blueprint that is the U.S. Constitution that there will be multiple overlapping authorities having jurisdiction over the planning and operation of the government. If you need to report to multiple supervisors, each of them insisting on different goals and objectives, it is a wonder that anything gets done at all.
And that is just the overlapping authority you can point to in terms of the tension between Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Add in other "dotted line" authority that is common in most government bureaucracies, and then the need to record every action with supervisors signing off on everything with the possibility that a congressional delegation might come by to investigate, you have the current state of the federal government. As you suggest, this is how "efficient" and "well run" government agencies work. For those that are poorly run, you have simply blatant corruption that redirects massive amounts of money for purposes that Congress never intended.
I used to work as a researcher for a group that was under a federal contract. I would dare say that only about 10% (if even that) of the money was actually used for the purpose it was originally handed out for. When I sat through a conference/class about how to report waste and fraud, the examples in the video presented almost described our research group perfectly.... as in we were doing exactly what it is that the training class said we were never supposed to do. The laughs in the meeting were unbearable. Sadly, much of that "overhead" was even built into the contract and expected. The amazing thing was that something even got produced in spite of the fact that all of that money was spent on frivolous and nonsense purposes.
What I find interesting is that every patent discussion always seems to be exalting the huge costs involved in patenting new drugs and why pharmaceutical companies must get some special protection for all of their effort.
All of this discussion seems to miss that there are millions of patents that are filed that have absolutely nothing to do with drug processing or manufacturing... many of which are causing a huge problem because they are overly broad and in some cases likely have outlived their usefulness. Frankly, I think all of the issues about helping the drug industries should be moved over to a completely separate law where the issues about pharmaceutical development can be dealt with separately from other kinds of patents. Trying to paint everything equally is exactly why this issue has blown up in the way it has... not to mention the gross expansion of patented concepts like "business method patents" and software patents.
I seriously doubt that millions of lives will be saved because of Amazon's 1-click shopping patent, and there are thousands if not millions of similar patents that will likely not matter worth a damn in terms of actually helping with the progress of technology and science.
Here is something else as food for thought: The supposed reason for granting patents is that information about the invention being patented is preserved for posterity through the patenting process. Having read more than my share of patent grants and the documentation provided to obtain a patent, there is absolutely nothing in the current process that would preserve any detail of a genuinely novel concept for posterity.... thus even the supposed rationale for why it is happening simply doesn't happen. Yes, somebody who has received a patent may publish details about their invention outside of the patent process that somebody skilled in the technology could recreate the concept, but it certainly isn't required. You can't possibly suggest that patent applications as they currently exist could possibly get that accomplished as well.
At best all they do is suggest that there might have been an invention that did something according to the claims.... but even that isn't true. Far too many patents simply violate the basic laws of physics like FTL communications or perpetual motion machines. Yes, patent examiners try to dismiss those kind of patents, but plenty slip through the cracks and get granted anyway. A patent doesn't even guarantee that the invention even works as promised or is even capable of being made.
Using Bitcoins and related software packages also becomes a political issue. It is fine to call something a public nuisance if it is something that a very small fringe group of citizens are using. It is something else entirely when a major voting block is involved.
In the time it will take for a state government to clear its throat, Bitcion will become a mainstream item where they are going to be attempting to pass laws that arrest elderly grandmothers and pre-teens using the software. That doesn't look good on the 6 o'clock news, and has a tendency of losing elections for politicians who try that kind of stunt. In other words, it doesn't even matter what "the law" says about this software, what matters much more is "public opinion" as to if it is something ordinary people should be using, as that will become the law and tell agencies trying to regulate this stuff to go to hell. It will be state legislators which will be telling these regulatory bodies where to go.... and they have the ability to stick it to them hard if those regulatory agencies don't at least acknowledge public opinion on this matter. That is unfortunately something these kind of regulatory bodies are not used to dealing with, so they may find themselves in early retirement as well.
You can make that argument with just 'bout every one of the professional licensing boards (medical board, bar association, contractor's licensing, etc). The short answer is they don't care what happens, they just want to regulate it. It's basically just a state sponsored guild (not unlike a union).
The question is how do you control something which is uncontrollable shy of putting this into the hands of ordinary police officers who bash their way into random homes (against the 4th Amendment.... but who is counting here) and try to prosecute when they've found Bitcoin running?
My point is that they are trying to regulate a consumer-level technology here that is not owned by anybody nor managed by anybody either. While the Bitcoin Foundation might be able to make a persuasive argument about a major change in protocol, that can't be forced upon the community by the state government either.
Yeah, it is a guild mentality that is prevailing here, but it is like a hoard of farmers in the countryside have decided to take over the business of the guild and have turned out to have an even better product than the guild members. It is something that should turn the guild leaders white with fear, and helplessness about being able to do anything about it. Controlling the foundation won't do a thing.
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In fairness to the Department of Commerce, they actually earn money for the U.S. federal government from taxes that they personally collect. Indeed the U.S. Navy was originally a part of that department and then spun off into its own department, later to merge with the "War Department" to form the "Department of Defense". That is also why the U.S. Coast Guard was a part of that same department until the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (IMHO one of the least effective departments of the U.S. federal government and singularly incapable of doing its job).
That some of those businesses paying taxes to Commerce Department agents may also be engaged in bribes shouldn't be a shock: it is a government agency. Of course there are bribes and influence peddling in the form of other bribes (called "campaign contributions") to the right people.
The big thing under the Commerce Department other than customs agents is the FAA, who also act as the traffic cops of the airspace above America as well as nominally regulate and monitor aircraft manufacturers as well as regulate launching private commercial spacecraft.
BTW, I agree with you on FEMA. The one other even more useless agency is the Selective Service. It is the one agency that purposely spends money on things that are not wanted, and if its services were ever needed would likely be completely replaced by another agency. I swear its continued existence is only due to bureaucratic inertia alone, and if the agency was disbanded it wouldn't even be missed by the people in that agency. I doubt they'd even notice it was disbanded.
Of course the automatic landing system of SFO was also turned off at the time. There was some pundit speculation this might have been the cause of the accident, but of course pilots are also supposedly trained not to rely upon those systems all of the time either. It was a clear day near noon at a big airport that had other systems in place to help land airplanes.
The point of the original article is that there should have been more communication between the pilot and co-pilot on the theory that having two pilots miss something important like the end of the runway and being able to make a proper landing is highly unlikely. Relying on having just one pilot who is an arrogant jerk forcing everybody else in the cockpit to defer to his judgement alone is likely to cause some accidents like this.
I am convinced that Barack Obama could pull out a gun during a State of the Union address and kill somebody live on air before the nation and the whole of Congress assembled and articles of impeachment would still not be drafted. He is completely untouchable.
Note: I am not suggesting that Obama (or any other person holding the office of President of the United States) should be given a blank check to do anything, I'm just suggesting that in this case Obama has such a political following and fanatical supporters that he could literally get away with murder or do anything else he desired as nobody would prosecute. That also isn't good for the American Republic, but America voted him into office and that is who Obama actually is.
Perhaps you missed the part where this form of trading is essentially a closed shop and actually larger than the "economy."
Nope. I don't know how it would be "larger than the actual economy", as it is a part of the national economy... by definition. It will always be smaller than the economy because it is a sub-set of that economy.
That it might be larger than the public trades is true, but that isn't the problem either. Collusion between multiple "dark pools" is a problem where prices are manipulated, and in theory trades between multiple dark pools could essentially bypass the main market entirely even for setting prices.... or at least increasing volatility (instead of the usual reducing volatility effects of dark pools) because there aren't competing "dark pools". I'm not saying that everything is peachy keen and awesome with dark pools, as there certainly can be some major problems. The issue isn't with dark pools in themselves though, as that really is a good thing.
As for the "closed shop" aspect..... I really don't know what you are talking about there. That some of these "dark pool" operators might restrict who can trade within that pool may be true, but if you are complaining go start your own pool and get a seat on the NYSE or other exchange (or at least work with somebody who has a seat on one of those exchanges). It takes some trade volume and money to get the attention of some of these traders, but other than some bureaucratic red tape thanks to our government literally anybody can get onto those exchanges. It isn't nearly as closed as you may suggest. People on Wall Street don't give a damn about your skin color, country of national origin, language you speak, eye color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identifiable trait. For all they care, you can even be a lesbian Klingon. All they care is that you have some money and want to buy or sell stock shares in public companies.
I certainly fail to see how operating a dark pool can possibly "destroy the economy" now or in the future. There are many other things to worry about that actually will damage the economy and perhaps even destroy it.
We blew over a million dollars in the course of about 18 months (surprisingly not that hard to do). It wasn't even anything exotic, just some equipment, rent, and a trip to a computer convention (where I actually landed a contract with enough profit to pay for that trip anyway.... that really wasn't the problem).
If that really wasn't the problem, why on earth did you include it, just to say it wasn't the problem ?!?
It was an "expense", and frankly trips like that were at least addressed as a potential place where money was "needlessly spent". You obviously missed the point that even a well financed start-up can struggle to be successful, which was my main point.
Strangely, it is companies who struggle and pinch every penny that seem to be doing better. They definitely do better when the revenue comes in and they can keep expenses consistently lower than income while well-financed companies seem to struggle with keeping expenses under control.
Release the core game as it was intended on time and add the extras (in game, ports to other platforms, whatever...) later.
This needs to be planned for Kickstarters from, well, before the start. Because you might get more money than anticipated, but not more time.
This is so true. I know some people with a successful Kickstarter campaign begin to get caught up in the hype and promise the Moon and anything else they can think up in order to keep the ball rolling. They really shouldn't get caught up in the hype, other than to be promising minor cosmetic things or as suggested promise that they will be on the development path well after the original release. I completely agree.
I've been involved with several startup companies over the years, and the worst disaster was also the best financed company I was ever part of. We blew over a million dollars in the course of about 18 months (surprisingly not that hard to do). It wasn't even anything exotic, just some equipment, rent, and a trip to a computer convention (where I actually landed a contract with enough profit to pay for that trip anyway.... that really wasn't the problem). There were some huge mistakes made, and lots of finger pointing in the end that was rather pointless but still happened.
My problem with this is, you can't say what the "market" price is when so much of the bidding is in dark pools. You can't look at a 1/8 or smaller sliver and say "that's the market price" - your participation in that market would have changed the price.
That isn't really true. The "market price" is what the big board say it is, thus the "market of last resort". The point of the article in question is that apparently some of the brokerage houses are trying to shave off a few points to pad their profits by selling customer's stock purchases at prices below the actual market price and buying stock at higher than market price (at least what the customers think is selling and buying of those shares). That kind of thing, even with a few cents difference can add up to a whole lot of money and is one of the things that is being investigated..... .... at least if you did the remarkable thing of actually reading the effing article.
The other problem is that the dark pools are interconnected between each other, thus they don't even go to the public market any more. The ideas of the public market is that when you have exhausted your dark pool and have a whole bunch of customers leaning one way or another, you take those trades to the public market. If there are other "dark pools" and groups of customers who are in a position to react to changes in the market (buying shares when the price drops or selling with the price goes up), everything works exactly as it should.
The problem is when you have interlocking dark pools outside of the market, causing the concern you are having. If all of the brokerage houses are ignoring the public market, then the actual market doesn't reflect the true price.
> It also keeps stock brokerage costs down, thus lowering your fees for making an individual transaction.
Do you know how silly that sounds? The CEO of the NYSE had a salary of $140 Million before bonuses in 2011. I have a hard time believing they are working for our best interest. Excuse me while I go vomit.
If you think you can do a better job by providing a cheaper service and help out more people..... then get off your ass and form the company and do it !
Seriously, I don't understand why there are communists who think it is wrong for people to make a profit off of their activities. There isn't anything fancy or special here, and not much stopping you from competing against these companies other than a lack of will and putting a whole lot of effort into this. The New York Stock Exchange started out with a bunch of guys gathered out in a park under the "Buttonwood trees" that happened to be on Wall Street (then the city limits for New York City... literally on the edge of town hence the "wall" of Wall Street was the town fence against the Native Americans who also lived on Manhattan at the time). The only advantage that these particular CEOs have over you is that they started doing this first, and that their companies have been persistent.
I heard a funny story about the 1929 stock market crash, where in the middle of all of the sell orders somebody on the exchange decided to write up an "ask 1" order for 1000 shares of a major company that had been trading at about 50 dollars previously.... sort of as a joke just to see if anybody was that desperate. The shock was when the bid was accepted as there were order in to sell at any price.
Your general explanation here is spot on though. It is one of the ways that traders can make money for themselves if they spot a large gap and can identify a potential trend in the near future. This is also a good thing so far as it does make the markets much more efficient, noting that traders don't hang onto shares of companies like this.... their only motive is just to buy the shares and unload them a short time later. It helps the markets because it can help smooth out the ups and downs of the market and make it possible for trades to actually go through when people want to buy or sell their shares instead of needing to wait.
This isn't really any voodoo here, and it is something stock brokerage companies have been doing for decades or even from the very beginning. If you have two customers where one customer is trying to unload some stock and another is trying to buy the same issue of stock.... why not simply exchange the stock certificates between the two customers without having to go through the big stock exchange?
The point is that these trading companies sometimes have thousands of trades going on all of the time, sometimes with customers having "put" or "stop" orders in place to buy or sell at certain prices. On the whole it really does make the markets much more efficient because the only time you go to the "big boards" is when you have a large number of your customers either all trying to sell or buy a particular stock issue.
This is certainly not something that will "destroy the economy", but rather that it will even help make the "economy" run even better by making sure that those who are either buying or selling shares can get the best possible price among the most number of people who may be interested in either buying or selling that stock. It also keeps stock brokerage costs down, thus lowering your fees for making an individual transaction. In other words, this makes it much easier for "ordinary people" to get involved with the stock market if you really care to do something like that. The New York Stock Exchange was explicitly set up with this kind of arrangement in mind, where people "with a seat" would carry on major transactions on behalf of trading companies, and ordinary people would contract out with those trading companies if you wanted to make occasional trades or buy in low volumes.
That there are problems with brokers and reasons to be concerned about how they are handling your money is something to be concerned about, the mere fact that "dark pools" exist isn't one of those things to panic over. If they didn't exist, all trades would need to happen on the major exchanges and would be a whole lot more expensive with much higher fees. The end result is that it would cause the world economy to collapse if they were outlawed or something else equally stupid. That brokerage houses should be expected to be honest to their customers is what this whole story is about, not the existence of these trading environments.
Perhaps the words "mind blowing" should have been used instead. As for a reference showing it being used above... try to read the context of what was being said rather than trying to be a jackass and a grammar Nazi for a change. Capturing an image of a flying vehicle in the atmosphere of another planet as seen by yet another spacecraft on an unrelated mission really is an incredible accomplishment and something that deserves a little bit of awe rather than trying to smack down the person making the observation and mentioning that accomplishment and image. That sure as hell isn't "dull, boring, or tedious" except trying to respond to a troll... which certainly is.
It should really fill you with a sense of wonder when you think about the Earth's Moon, realizing that it is really a dwarf planet all to itself and in fact one of the largest "natural satellites" in the Solar System... on the same general size as the Galilean moons of Jupiter or even Titan and Triton. Phobos and Deimos really are not much more than captured asteroids. Indeed I think the Moon should be considered as a planet... as much as Pluto, Vesta, and Ceres currently are considered as such by the IAU (the "dwarf" status still makes them planets). As such, when you see the Moon rising in the night sky here on the Earth, you really are looking at another planet that happens to be quite close to us... close enough to even see surface details without a telescope.
That said, Phobos has some interesting properties as a moon. It can only be seen on Mars at latitudes fairly close to the equator as it travels at a comparatively low altitude.... something more akin to the altitude that the International Space Station travels here around the Earth. Even more odd though is that it "rises" in the west and "sets" in the east as its orbital period is less than a day, thus it would also have a "lunar eclipse" every time it completes an orbit. A really interesting phenomena is a transit of Phobos from Mars... essentially an eclipse of the Sun, but Phobos doesn't quite cover the full disc of the sun because it is much smaller. Again, these transits happen every orbit somewhere on Mars.
As you pointed out, Phobos would be seen as something much smaller. If I had to guess, it would be roughly the size of the Sea of Tranquility, in terms of the visual appearance from the surface of Mars compared to what you see in the night sky here on the Earth. It would still be something you would notice in the night sky on Mars and I think if people ever do make the trip to Mars, seeing Phobos would be something people would enjoy watching and taking the time to look at if the opportunity came up.
The video was filmed by a "helicopter drone". Essentially a slightly larger RC helicopter that had a camera mounted underneath.
Actually that helicopter didn't even need to be all that big, considering the miniaturization of cameras. It is stuff that you can literally just purchase over the internet for a relatively modest amount of money. In other words, something a full-time engineer with a little money to burn could easily afford if they cared and have a hobby on the side. That wasn't even really the story here other than the fact it took footage of something else really remarkable.
The advantage of a drone in this case is that a manned helicopter would be prohibited from the range for safety reasons, so the drone was the only way to get something in that camera angle and proximity. SpaceX has several other cameras from many other angles that were taking footage of the launch... all that would be necessary if there was a serious mishap.
As a matter of fact, Elon Musk has started to grumble to his engineers complaining that they haven't destroyed the Grasshopper yet. He doesn't want them to purposely crater the machine, but he does want them to push the envelope a bit as disasters really are a great way to learn about the performance limits of machines like this.
This particular test only got to 325 feet (the highest one so far), but they want to incrementally move higher and higher... eventually going to several thousand feet. Unfortunately for the SpaceX engineers, those tests will need to happen some place other than central Texas as high altitude tests will interfere with aircraft traffic and could crater into Waco, Texas as an outside potential. They are eventually going to move these tests to New Mexico... at least that seems to be the current plan that I've seen and based upon launch permit applications SpaceX has already made to the FAA.
I've heard it suggested that this technology may even be tested in an upcoming Falcon 9 launch, where an attempt to at least slow down and attempt recovery of the first stage after launch will be made.
Really? Can you name any organization that has accomplished what SpaceX has done other than people who have the motto "Waste anything but time"?
Yes, in the 1960's that motto was plastered on posters and put in giant letters inside manufacturing plants for building the Apollo rockets that went to the Moon. That was nearly the same philosophy that the Russian space program had at the same time (although admittedly a smaller budget). To date, very few organization have put anything into orbit that wasn't a national government... usually of a very large country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In fact, for manned flight it is only sitting members of that exclusive club and SpaceX might be able to join that elite few very soon.
If you are suggesting that Boeing and Lockheed-Martin (or their predecessor companies) built stuff and sent it into orbit, it sure as heck wasn't on their dime nor were their engineers even the only people building those rockets.
Except for the fact that your government (two chambers + head of state) changes completely at this time, whereas only one of our legislative chambers does, and our head of state has the position for life. We have much greater continuity than you do.
In theory it could. In practice it really doesn't. Furthermore, the legislative chambers change every two years... but on a rotating basis (only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for re-election every two years). That is hardly a real government change and is definitely not "changing completely". At worst (or best depending on your view) the "minority" and "majority" leaders swap positions. It isn't even like the "loyal opposition", as the minority leadership still retains some real governance roles.
As for the "head of state" in the UK.... that is an essentially meaningless position that mostly soaks up tax dollars and looks nice in cameras. I suppose it does offer a speed bump in the UK if somebody like Adolph Hitler was to come to power as PM, as the Queen (or King) could simply dissolve Parliament and use Royal prerogatives to protect the British citizens from an abusive government. That is of course assuming that the PM was a tyrant and the monarch was willing to stand up to that tyranny with the popular support of the British people. That would also be a constitutional crisis in the UK where the results of the British monarchy taking actual steps of governance would be completely unpredictable with a high likelihood of backfiring and ending up with the monarch in prison or executed.
The real authority to act, to do things, to cause ships to move in the oceans, to launch a nuclear strike against some random city in the world, to suppress a riot, and to perform other acts of real governance is vested in the Prime Minister. Heck, in the UK the Prime Minister often acts without even consulting the monarch, and even when notification of the monarch happens that is all which happens: the PM informs the monarch about actions and the monarch is helpless to do anything about that action if they disagree except through a strictly advisory role. There is a threat of a Royal veto (or declining assent to legislation), but that hasn't been exercised in over 200 years and is uncertain that under the current situation Parliament would even recognize such a veto. The only time I could possibly imagine the British monarchy exercising such authority is in a most extreme situation where their action would have popular support of the British people but for some reason the Parliament has gone "rogue" and doing things which are hugely unpopular. You would also need to see a popular demonstration at Buckingham Palace in support of the monarchy... essentially the British people rallying in support of their monarch in a very public manner against the elected government.
I suppose there is the other minor issue where the British military swears personal loyalty to the monarch, and the monarch could possibly order the military to act in a manner contrary to the intent and orders of the PM. Again, this would be essentially a coup, and another constitutional crises. The only time that any member of the Royal Family has any real authority is when they bother to get into the military hierarchy... like what Prince Harry is doing by taking on a commission in the military and taking command of actual units. Strangely, even there Prince Harry is acting under orders authorized by the PM, not his grandmother.
Huh? America changes "adminstrations" about every eight years (with the potential to have them change every four.... or more frequently due to "other events"), but that isn't changing governments except in the sense like the British get a new "government" each time they get a new Prime Minister. It is even less so, as often Speakers of the House (the most equivalent of the House of Commons in the USA) survive past individual presidents and have their own rotation of power. Add to that changes in the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court (which is usually how eras are noted in that body) which happen on the range of decades or longer, and then dealing with the "President pro tempore of the Senate" adding more nuances, it definitely isn't every four years and not even close to what happens in a typical parliamentary system much less whole new constitutions.
Countries like Brazil and Turkey, on the other hand, do have a tradition of changing governments on a much more regular basis... usually by military coup that either arrests or even executes the respective president and drastically re-writes the constitution each time. Clearly different governments with even different government philosophies have arisen from each change of government, and most of the "laws" were even rewritten from scratch (for the most part). That is exactly what is happening right now in Egypt.
On the other hand, the change from the Articles of Confederation to the current U.S. Constitution did represent a major and sweeping change of government more akin to what normally happens after a coup.
In terms of the current "regime" in England, it could be best called the form of the government following Oliver Cromwell's republic. That was 1660, thus only 353 years even if you count just England and not the whole UK.
That is still a pretty good run under the current "constitution" which exists in that part of the world. Most other countries have a much shorter period of time, and even America went through a couple major government changes in that same length of time.
In fairness, these guys are still pretty much new to dealing with these issues. None of this is surprising if you were dealing with a new start-up company, of which Ouya and their employees clearly are. I'll admit that they need to work through the issues related to Kickstarter backers as well as anybody else who pre-ordered the game units, but they haven't really had time to sort things out.
You are expecting them to behave like some fictional being (superman, a god, or whatever) when in fact they are just mere mortal people full of weaknesses and the ability to really only concentrate on one issue at a time like the rest of us. If a year from now you are still having problems.... THEN you can start complaining.
Otherwise, this is just somebody sore that they haven't had the device teleported into their home RIGHT NOW by Scotty from the USS Enterprise. Hell, even that would cause a backlog in terms of trying to get all of these units out to everybody that wanted one.
If I used Windows XP, I could always switch operating systems. Not difficult.
The choice is pretty much switching to Linux or "upgrading" to a later version of Windows. Both have problems.... especially if all of your software and files are dependent upon using Windows XP (some software packages are sadly OS specific in this manner).
Switching operating systems isn't always an option. Strange as it may sound, I've seen some situations where it was necessary to sell new copies of Windows 3.1 (running on MS-DOS 6.22). It gets the job done and it is precisely what the customer wants without any more fuss, and the hardware + software works just fine for its intended purpose.
If they are trying to regulate the Bitcoin/U.S. Dollar exchanges, going after the Bitcoin Foundation is by far and away the worst possible move you could make. They don't have a thing to do with any of those exchanges at all and forcing that organization "into compliance" won't have any effect.
Going after Mt. Gox or other exchanges certainly would be something to consider, but even that is likely to be futile. At best all that can really happen is that the major banks or even folks like PayPal will be getting into the game, at which time Bitcoins will be completely legitimized. The current effort is at best an attempt to "uninvent" computer software that is already available to anybody who wants to use it.... and it can't even be stopped with patents or copyrights. Of course in this situation the people who started using Bitcoins as early adopters weren't interested in royalties from "intellectual property" as they knew it was going to be an uphill fight just to get acceptance in the first place.
Of course a problem with the patent process is that the role of the patent application is to provide enough information, and a typical application will provide barely enough information, to demonstrate that it is novel thus meriting patent protection.
Advocates of the patent process claim that the role of the patent application is to document the invention so future generations can have details about the invention. Even if you provide sufficient information in a patent application to document that a particular device or invention is covered under the patent (thus dealing with the needs of a typical court room trial for patent infringement), there is no possible way to use the information to actually create the device in question or even the sub-assembly for which the patent has been granted.
Government in America was designed to be fair, rewritable equitable, and accountable, not effective or efficient.
As a matter of fact, government in America is explicitly designed to be inefficient. It is in the blueprint that is the U.S. Constitution that there will be multiple overlapping authorities having jurisdiction over the planning and operation of the government. If you need to report to multiple supervisors, each of them insisting on different goals and objectives, it is a wonder that anything gets done at all.
And that is just the overlapping authority you can point to in terms of the tension between Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Add in other "dotted line" authority that is common in most government bureaucracies, and then the need to record every action with supervisors signing off on everything with the possibility that a congressional delegation might come by to investigate, you have the current state of the federal government. As you suggest, this is how "efficient" and "well run" government agencies work. For those that are poorly run, you have simply blatant corruption that redirects massive amounts of money for purposes that Congress never intended.
I used to work as a researcher for a group that was under a federal contract. I would dare say that only about 10% (if even that) of the money was actually used for the purpose it was originally handed out for. When I sat through a conference/class about how to report waste and fraud, the examples in the video presented almost described our research group perfectly.... as in we were doing exactly what it is that the training class said we were never supposed to do. The laughs in the meeting were unbearable. Sadly, much of that "overhead" was even built into the contract and expected. The amazing thing was that something even got produced in spite of the fact that all of that money was spent on frivolous and nonsense purposes.
What I find interesting is that every patent discussion always seems to be exalting the huge costs involved in patenting new drugs and why pharmaceutical companies must get some special protection for all of their effort.
All of this discussion seems to miss that there are millions of patents that are filed that have absolutely nothing to do with drug processing or manufacturing... many of which are causing a huge problem because they are overly broad and in some cases likely have outlived their usefulness. Frankly, I think all of the issues about helping the drug industries should be moved over to a completely separate law where the issues about pharmaceutical development can be dealt with separately from other kinds of patents. Trying to paint everything equally is exactly why this issue has blown up in the way it has... not to mention the gross expansion of patented concepts like "business method patents" and software patents.
I seriously doubt that millions of lives will be saved because of Amazon's 1-click shopping patent, and there are thousands if not millions of similar patents that will likely not matter worth a damn in terms of actually helping with the progress of technology and science.
Here is something else as food for thought: The supposed reason for granting patents is that information about the invention being patented is preserved for posterity through the patenting process. Having read more than my share of patent grants and the documentation provided to obtain a patent, there is absolutely nothing in the current process that would preserve any detail of a genuinely novel concept for posterity.... thus even the supposed rationale for why it is happening simply doesn't happen. Yes, somebody who has received a patent may publish details about their invention outside of the patent process that somebody skilled in the technology could recreate the concept, but it certainly isn't required. You can't possibly suggest that patent applications as they currently exist could possibly get that accomplished as well.
At best all they do is suggest that there might have been an invention that did something according to the claims.... but even that isn't true. Far too many patents simply violate the basic laws of physics like FTL communications or perpetual motion machines. Yes, patent examiners try to dismiss those kind of patents, but plenty slip through the cracks and get granted anyway. A patent doesn't even guarantee that the invention even works as promised or is even capable of being made.
Using Bitcoins and related software packages also becomes a political issue. It is fine to call something a public nuisance if it is something that a very small fringe group of citizens are using. It is something else entirely when a major voting block is involved.
In the time it will take for a state government to clear its throat, Bitcion will become a mainstream item where they are going to be attempting to pass laws that arrest elderly grandmothers and pre-teens using the software. That doesn't look good on the 6 o'clock news, and has a tendency of losing elections for politicians who try that kind of stunt. In other words, it doesn't even matter what "the law" says about this software, what matters much more is "public opinion" as to if it is something ordinary people should be using, as that will become the law and tell agencies trying to regulate this stuff to go to hell. It will be state legislators which will be telling these regulatory bodies where to go.... and they have the ability to stick it to them hard if those regulatory agencies don't at least acknowledge public opinion on this matter. That is unfortunately something these kind of regulatory bodies are not used to dealing with, so they may find themselves in early retirement as well.
You can make that argument with just 'bout every one of the professional licensing boards (medical board, bar association, contractor's licensing, etc). The short answer is they don't care what happens, they just want to regulate it. It's basically just a state sponsored guild (not unlike a union).
The question is how do you control something which is uncontrollable shy of putting this into the hands of ordinary police officers who bash their way into random homes (against the 4th Amendment.... but who is counting here) and try to prosecute when they've found Bitcoin running?
My point is that they are trying to regulate a consumer-level technology here that is not owned by anybody nor managed by anybody either. While the Bitcoin Foundation might be able to make a persuasive argument about a major change in protocol, that can't be forced upon the community by the state government either.
Yeah, it is a guild mentality that is prevailing here, but it is like a hoard of farmers in the countryside have decided to take over the business of the guild and have turned out to have an even better product than the guild members. It is something that should turn the guild leaders white with fear, and helplessness about being able to do anything about it. Controlling the foundation won't do a thing.