Please stop approving Bennet "stories." He's a Roland Junior that everyone loves to hate. You're tech savvy, aren't you? Surely you know this submission is some pretty rank tripe.
If you think governments are benevolent authorities you might not have been paying attention to the 20th century, in which hundreds of millions of people were killed by national governments. What exactly do you imagine is scarier or more dangerous than a state?
I'm not a Libertarian. Maybe that assumption is why you're arguing against positions that I haven't advanced.
There isn't any reason that inspection can't be done without a government and that is what I suggested above. There's no need to wait for injuries to occur. A surety bond (or a similar arrangement with funds in escrow) doesn't require any lawyers or lawsuits. Relying on the government for arbitration is giving it yet another role to which it isn't suited.
Why do you think that it's a good idea to rely on regulatory agencies staffed by people from the very industries they're regulating? If you don't trust Tyson executives now, why do you suddenly trust them once they're federal employees? The best possible system doesn't require trusting anyone.
Regulations can be voluntary in the sense that they're opt-in and still totally enforceable. Here's the first example I could think of. Excuse me if it's a bit rough. In the case of food safety or quality control, corporations could voluntarily purchase surety bonds or a similar type of insurance payable to affected consumers and submit to independent inspections in a publicly auditable way. If it was common practice, there would be a strong incentive for companies to comply--consumers wouldn't buy products that weren't provably safe.
You seem to have read a lot of things into my comment that weren't there and missed what I did write.
First, I don't think that the absence of an independent, trusted governing entity means the absence of regulation. I tried to give examples of regulated systems organized on a peer-to-peer basis. You're conflating independent governing entities and regulation, which isn't surprising since they are usually closely related, but my point was that latter can exist without the former. In fact, current systems of government have shown themselves extremely susceptible to regulatory capture, so the whole thrust of your comment is a bit off, because your nightmare scenario is not far from how things are today.
I completely agree with you that corporations have too much power relative to the individual.
The government itself is outdated. In the Leviathan Hobbes assumes that a commonwealth must be run by a man or a group of men. In our age, decentralized software and protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, TOR, bittorrent and bitcoin have demonstrated that self-interested parties can cooperate in the absence of a trusted mediator, according to rules that they agree upon in advance (with varying degrees of reliability). Ideally the future will see an increasing number of diverse services that can be provided by decentralized, voluntary interactions of individuals, and national governments will become gradually less relevant as their remaining roles shrink.
Are you kidding? The bank isn't the one paying interest! The grocery store doesn't make Frosted Flakes, either. Anyone who's paid on a loan knows exactly where interest comes from.
The bank doesn't create anything at all. It acts as a mediator between willing parties on both sides and then takes as large a cut as it can. If those parties instead cooperate, there's no need for a profit-seeking third party. That's the whole idea behind a credit union. Providing those same services in a wholly automated way through software running on a peer-to-peer network potentially removes the risk of mismanagement and reduces fees to the bare minimum needed to pay for the electricity used in processing (e.g. losses to mining).
Do the things in your vacuum chambers levitate? If not, there should be quite a bit of sound transmitted through the sides (including the bottom) of the chamber...
Re:I think I will stop reading slashdot.......
on
195K Bitcoin Transaction
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
To the average consumer who isn't necessarily aware of being tracked or of the fees paid to payment processors, it probably seems just like a credit card payment. To the person or business on the other end of the transaction, however, the two couldn't be more different. There's no approval process to accept bitcoin, there's no third party to charge processing fees and there are no disputed charges. In a lot of ways, it is more like cash.
Beyond all of that, bitcoin is more interesting as a demonstration of what is possible and an indicator what will soon be possible. It's shown that individuals can cooperate for their own benefit at a global scale, without the need for government intervention. Maybe it's naive to expect that technology can effect substantial change in global politics, but you can't blame people for being excited about the potential to reduce the power of nationalist governments that wage wars and build prisons, and reduce the harm done by stupid, wasteful and corrupt politicians.
The would-be assassin could register all of the several methods and dates they're planning. They simply need to write down the details separately, hash and make a separate one bitcoin donation for each. It's not free, but it's still feasible.
There is at least an interesting question here: after conceding the faults of linguistic presciptivism, what meaningful ways remain of discussing and reasoning about common sense ideas of correct language?
There have never been any checks for pre-existing conditions any time I have switched jobs.
They don't need to check. That isn't how it works. They simply refuse to pay for services after they have been performed, inform you that there was a pre-existing condition and let you figure out a way to pay, or prove that the condition wasn't pre-existing.
I had never heard of Lasership, either, so I looked them up and found this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB38L2Znl34 The deliveryman doesn't even get out of his vehicle. He simply drops the package out of his window and onto the customer's driveway before driving off.
No, it's someone having a bit of a laugh at AlphaWolf_HK's expense by making a new account with a similar name. In particular the the second lower-case L in his user name has been replaced with with an upper-case i. When the same thing happened to Jane Q PubLic, he or she pitched a fit to the admins and got the imposter renamed. (Unfortunately, renaming the fake account meant than a new account could be made with exactly the same name--something that didn't seem to occur to whoever did the renaming.)
Slashdot Mirror
Please stop approving Bennet "stories." He's a Roland Junior that everyone loves to hate. You're tech savvy, aren't you? Surely you know this submission is some pretty rank tripe.
TYVM HAHNY
Other posters have pointed out a 128GB SSD that is compatible with Acer's C720 Chromebook, for a total price under $300.
If you think governments are benevolent authorities you might not have been paying attention to the 20th century, in which hundreds of millions of people were killed by national governments. What exactly do you imagine is scarier or more dangerous than a state?
I'm not a Libertarian. Maybe that assumption is why you're arguing against positions that I haven't advanced.
There isn't any reason that inspection can't be done without a government and that is what I suggested above. There's no need to wait for injuries to occur. A surety bond (or a similar arrangement with funds in escrow) doesn't require any lawyers or lawsuits. Relying on the government for arbitration is giving it yet another role to which it isn't suited.
Why do you think that it's a good idea to rely on regulatory agencies staffed by people from the very industries they're regulating? If you don't trust Tyson executives now, why do you suddenly trust them once they're federal employees? The best possible system doesn't require trusting anyone.
Regulations can be voluntary in the sense that they're opt-in and still totally enforceable. Here's the first example I could think of. Excuse me if it's a bit rough. In the case of food safety or quality control, corporations could voluntarily purchase surety bonds or a similar type of insurance payable to affected consumers and submit to independent inspections in a publicly auditable way. If it was common practice, there would be a strong incentive for companies to comply--consumers wouldn't buy products that weren't provably safe.
You seem to have read a lot of things into my comment that weren't there and missed what I did write.
First, I don't think that the absence of an independent, trusted governing entity means the absence of regulation. I tried to give examples of regulated systems organized on a peer-to-peer basis. You're conflating independent governing entities and regulation, which isn't surprising since they are usually closely related, but my point was that latter can exist without the former. In fact, current systems of government have shown themselves extremely susceptible to regulatory capture, so the whole thrust of your comment is a bit off, because your nightmare scenario is not far from how things are today.
I completely agree with you that corporations have too much power relative to the individual.
I am not a Luddite
You might want to check again, because that's exactly the position you're advocating.
The Luddites were 19th-century English textile artisans who protested against newly developed labour-saving machinery from 1811 to 1817.
The government itself is outdated. In the Leviathan Hobbes assumes that a commonwealth must be run by a man or a group of men. In our age, decentralized software and protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, TOR, bittorrent and bitcoin have demonstrated that self-interested parties can cooperate in the absence of a trusted mediator, according to rules that they agree upon in advance (with varying degrees of reliability). Ideally the future will see an increasing number of diverse services that can be provided by decentralized, voluntary interactions of individuals, and national governments will become gradually less relevant as their remaining roles shrink.
Are you seriously suggesting that the journals are taking any financial risks at all?
But where do you think interest comes from?
Are you kidding? The bank isn't the one paying interest! The grocery store doesn't make Frosted Flakes, either. Anyone who's paid on a loan knows exactly where interest comes from.
The bank doesn't create anything at all. It acts as a mediator between willing parties on both sides and then takes as large a cut as it can. If those parties instead cooperate, there's no need for a profit-seeking third party. That's the whole idea behind a credit union. Providing those same services in a wholly automated way through software running on a peer-to-peer network potentially removes the risk of mismanagement and reduces fees to the bare minimum needed to pay for the electricity used in processing (e.g. losses to mining).
Do the things in your vacuum chambers levitate? If not, there should be quite a bit of sound transmitted through the sides (including the bottom) of the chamber...
It must be nice to be so naive and/or deluded.
To the average consumer who isn't necessarily aware of being tracked or of the fees paid to payment processors, it probably seems just like a credit card payment. To the person or business on the other end of the transaction, however, the two couldn't be more different. There's no approval process to accept bitcoin, there's no third party to charge processing fees and there are no disputed charges. In a lot of ways, it is more like cash.
Beyond all of that, bitcoin is more interesting as a demonstration of what is possible and an indicator what will soon be possible. It's shown that individuals can cooperate for their own benefit at a global scale, without the need for government intervention. Maybe it's naive to expect that technology can effect substantial change in global politics, but you can't blame people for being excited about the potential to reduce the power of nationalist governments that wage wars and build prisons, and reduce the harm done by stupid, wasteful and corrupt politicians.
People have been proclaiming the end of Slashdot for years, but commercial spam taking hold is the fourth horseman of this particular apocalypse.
That's a genuinely interesting solution, although not a technological one.
The would-be assassin could register all of the several methods and dates they're planning. They simply need to write down the details separately, hash and make a separate one bitcoin donation for each. It's not free, but it's still feasible.
Have you ever seen the inside of a book?
The bottom 10% would only include her feet and ankles.
They say it has a self-destruct button, but no ejector seat...
There is at least an interesting question here: after conceding the faults of linguistic presciptivism, what meaningful ways remain of discussing and reasoning about common sense ideas of correct language?
There have never been any checks for pre-existing conditions any time I have switched jobs.
They don't need to check. That isn't how it works. They simply refuse to pay for services after they have been performed, inform you that there was a pre-existing condition and let you figure out a way to pay, or prove that the condition wasn't pre-existing.
I had never heard of Lasership, either, so I looked them up and found this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB38L2Znl34
The deliveryman doesn't even get out of his vehicle. He simply drops the package out of his window and onto the customer's driveway before driving off.
I say avoision.
No, it's someone having a bit of a laugh at AlphaWolf_HK's expense by making a new account with a similar name. In particular the the second lower-case L in his user name has been replaced with with an upper-case i. When the same thing happened to Jane Q PubLic, he or she pitched a fit to the admins and got the imposter renamed. (Unfortunately, renaming the fake account meant than a new account could be made with exactly the same name--something that didn't seem to occur to whoever did the renaming.)
That was hard. I loved that dog.