The difference between tulip bulbs and Bitcoin is that using tulip bulbs as currency doesn't offer any advantage over using coins, while using Bitcoins over PayPal or Visa offers the advantage of not having to deal with PayPal or Visa, thus not paying their fees nor being suddenly unable to receive payments at their whim.
In other words, even if current prices were a bubble, that bubble bursting won't end Bitcoin, any more than real estate bubble bursting meant the end real estate market - people still need places to live and an online payment system.
A large proportion of Slashdotters are still at the Stick-it-to-the-man age - anything up to 21-22yo, (maybe 25 if they're particularly immature). Rebelling against, parents, teachers etc. So in their eyes anyone who does have a go at The Man (even if The Man is you and I) is automatically a cyber warrior hero in their eyes.
The Man is not me. The Man is the 1% who are turning the world into a giant Panopticon and looting my pockets. I assure you, I'll hate them every bit as much no matter how old I get, and pity those who don't for suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Dude, investing in Slavers Co stocks is currently probably more viable than putting money in a Cyprus bank.
Sure. But how do I know my bank won't be the next to go belly-up? Every bankruptcy and bailout puts more strain on the remaining systems, making further problems more likely. At some point it'll become a full-blown cascade failure.
It doesn't exactly help that failing countries are forced to implement austerity measures that prevent them from recovering, thus keeping them dependent on support from the rest of the EU while ever more fail - and even healthy economies are burdened with constant belt-tightening as a "preventive" measure, slowing them down and making failure more likely. At this point it's hard to believe that this is genuine stupidity rather than purposeful sabotage.
China is the one that is going to want its trillions in dollar denominated us debt holdings to be worth peanuts.
I don't think China cares either way. It's using US consumption to bootstrap its economy, and will simply switch to serving internal markets when those are large enough. A few trillions dollars lost in debt defaults is a small price for that, especially since it'll handily knock US out of superpower status too.
I would be really curious to see stats on that. I see people claiming it is being hoarded, and others claiming it is being widely used for every day living. I have yet to see anything to back up either extreme.
Well, since the entire transaction history of Bitcoin is open for anyone to browse, it's just a matter of comparing the volume of trades for the amount in existence.
According to http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ the numbers are a total of 10,967,175 BTC in existence and 1,568,786.54 BTC sent in the last 24h. Which doesn't really seem to support the hoarding claims to me.
BTW, this is yet another reason why Bitcoin is so interesting: it's a goldmine of accurate data for economists, precisely because every transaction is immediately visible to everyone. You'd think every ministry of economics would kill to switch their national currencies to a system like this - not necessarily Bitcoin itself, but the system can be easily adapted to fiat currencies, or do things like automatic taxation - where they see very last trade as it's being made, 24/7/365.
So basically, if you have more computing power than the rest of the network combined, you can potentially double-spend coins. This is known, and the check was probably removed simply because that's not a feasible scenario anymore at current network size.
Also, the orphaned transactions wouldn't be wiped away. They'd simply be re-inserted into the next generated block.
You are incorrect on your tax idea there buddy. That is income and you should be reporting it.
Possibly. It could also be that it only becomes income when it's converted into some official currency, items or services. Does anyone know what actually counts as "income" under US tax code - for example, if I grow a flower, is it income? Or does it only become income if I sell it at a later time? And how would you report Bitcoins, anyway, given that the price fluctuates a lot?
Even if it was igniting and had good fusion gain, there are such a huge array of serious engineering issues that they have got no economic answers for that it is never going to work commercially.
But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that those are all miraculously solved within the next month. Can we start using fusion? No, because it's nuclear fusion, and thus still nuclear, and thus still scary. For example, Greenpeace has already declared that they will oppose fusion plants.
Not that you can generate power any other way either, since windmills kill birds and spoil the view, solar plants take up space, geothermal brings up toxins, fossil fuels generate CO2, renewable fuels take up farmland, orbital solar risks exposing living things to microwaves, etc. etc. Everything has consequences and no consequences are acceptable, thus nothing can be done. That's "green" for you.
We don't really understand how lots of things work that we have right here, but I thought that the sun's gravitational field was what kept it contained.
Gravity is just a theory. The combeting explanation, Theory of Intelligent Falling, provides an interesting alternative: simply dedicate the building your fusion reactor is housed in as a temple to your local solar deity, and re-title your electric bill as a sacrifice. I'm sure anthropologists can help recover the proper rituals to make it work; perhaps Egypt would be a good place to start, since they had to power their pyramid-building machines somehow.
Granted, there might be some problems in places like Middle America due to changing cultural mores, but if either the USA or local drug barons would dedicate their victims to the cause, I'm sure that even the most bloodthirsty Aztec god would be more than satisfied. Just imagine it: the entire continent receiving limitless free electricity and all it would take would be for bullet moulds to imprint the text "Victims dedicated to mighty Huitzilopochtli" on their products!
And this is why we must fight gun control: it's a communist plot to throw America into a Dark Age by stopping the human sacrifices that keep the Sun moving. The Founding Fathers knew this, having learned much wisdom from the natives, and did their best to ensure that the Chaos Gods would never hunger. That's the real reason why Bush so desperately wanted to go to war: the sacrifice reserves from World War II were finally running low, so more had to be made ASAP. Al-Qaida, a cover organization of CIA, was activated to manufacture the reason, and succeeded perfectly.
Also, Moon landing was a hoax; in reality, the Japanese got there first. They used the Vernian "cannon" method to send first supplies and then an expedition - the USA later covered these up by claiming the blasts to be atomic bombs dropped by them, which is clearly ridiculous since Hiroshima and Nagasaki are habitable today which would be impossible if they'd been nuked. The Imperial Japanese base on the dark side of the Moon has been collaborating with Saurian overlords for years to spread pacifism, so the world would be left defenseless against the coming communist revolution and alien takeover.
The only question is, what is Hitler's role in all this? Is he hiding in South American jungles, waiting for the coming war to rise once again, or has he already - for example, by receiving plastic surgery and a fake birth certificate and running for US president?
TL;DR Hydrogen pellets don't work, you have to aim your lasers on still beating human hearts to generate fusion power. Also, communist Saurian overlords, Adolf Hitler, and an Imperial Japanese moon base are about to fight over who'll take over the world, but that's details.
Fart is mostly methane, which has one carbon atom per four hydrogen atoms. Actual contents of the universe are 3/4 hydrogen, 1/4 helium, and trace amounts of other materials, including carbon. Thus, it can't be fart residue.
That's solidly in the "big deal" territory when you multiply it by the number of storms. And of course bigger storms cause worse damage.
Well then, let's switch when we have to. There's no real advantage to anticipating the end of fossil fuels.
What do you think will happen once the energy supply can no longer meet the demand? A price spike and complete economic collapse. Industry needs energy, and cannot function without it, so we have to ensure it has it or suffer the consequences.
And I bet I already pay more for alleged fixes to climate-related problems, like the US's huge ethanol subsidy than global warming would ever cost.
Ethanol subsidy is not about climate change, it's about corn lobby flexing its muscles. Actual climate change related charges would be for building more nuclear power or turning Death Valley into a giant solar power station.
Climate would change even if nothing particular was going on, just due to orbital dynamics of Earth around the Sun, volcanoes, and the subtle effects of continental drift.
And... WTF? Completely regardless if there really is an oft-speculated worldwide climate scientist conspiracy falsifying data for great injustice, are you seriously suggesting that continental drift - which tops at about 10 cm annually - could possibly explain any kind of changes in climate in the recorded history, which, at about 6000 years long, means they've moved a whopping 600 meters in all that time?!?
It's not particularly harmful. You hear about the few storms that kill hundreds or thousands of people. You don't hear about the tens of thousands of storms that don't.
And it remains a key problem that we're advocating expensive mitigation efforts for carbon emissions without having a good reason for them.
Even a storm that kills no one will typically do tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. So, even if we go by the rather sociopathic notion that thousands of dead is no big deal, it would likely still be cheaper to switch to nuclear and renewables ASAP rather delay and keep doing Orleans-level rebuilding at decreasing intervals - especially since we'll have to switch soon anyway, since fossil fuels are running out.
Even if you don't hear about a storm, drought or other climate-related problem, you will still pay for it in your taxes, your utility bills, and your grocery bill.
Which for many of us, won't be. As per my example, if I want to have a server running headless and connect via XDMCP, Wayland doesn't support this.
Who's "us"? For most home users, if they want to run desktop apps on a server, they want those apps to keep running when the desktop is shut down, so they now use Xvnc and WaylandVNC will work just as well.
Just because you don't like DRM, doesn't mean you can justify pirating it.
DRM is an attempt to circumvent the Doctrine of First Sale and thus deprive customers of their legal rights. This also harms anyone who buys used games. Furthermore, Mickey Mouse Protection Acts and the "forever minus a day" excuse for them have already turned copyright into a mockery of the very concept of law. Finally, various copyright institutions regularly use courts for outright blackmail of innocent people. Therefore, there is no moral obligation to respect copyrights, and a case could be made that helping nullify them - for example, by aiding piracy - is.
There, piracy justified, with the kind help of RIAA, MPAA, BSAA, Disney and their ilk.
They've chosen to release their product with DRM.
And this is another thing: the whole concept of copyright law is absurd. It's based on the premise that information is the same as physical objects, say, cars, yet it simultaneously claims power to control what people do with these information-objects after purchase. Sell a man an axe and you have no way to prevent him from chopping firewood for the whole neighborhood for a price, even if this means you'll sell no more axes there, yet if you sell him notes for a song you can sue him if he sings it in public.
The rights of public should not depend on the publisher's whims.
Don't like, it don't buy it.
Don't like piracy, lobby to have copyright law changed into something that's actually worthy of respect. Current one isn't, so it's never going to be respected.
Omniscience and free-will are mutually exclusive as well.
"Free will" is not a well defined term. Attempts to define it usually end up suggesting that there's a truly unpredictable random number generator in human brain, and this acts as one of the inputs into decision making process; however, it is unclear just how this would make you "free" or from what. Determinism? All that means is that you have some kind of reason for making the choice you did, rather than just throwing dice and doing what that tells you. So just what is this "free will" and why is it incompatible with omniscience?
In any case, knowing someone well means you can usually predict what they'll do in any given situation, so it could well be reasonable to conclude that humans don't have free will.
The high cost of living in NYC tells you that each New Yorker actually must have a huge environmental footprint, and that's not even taking into account the subsidies that flow into the city.
Or it could simply be that lots of people compete for the same living space, driving up prices. Which has nothing to do with environmental footprint, but simple supply and demand.
Fun fact: Water vapor makes up 98% of the greenhouse effect.
Another fun fact: warmer air can hold more water vapor. So your fact actually makes things worse, since any increase in carbon dioxide causes far more warming than it otherwise would due to it increasing atmospheric water vapor content too.
According to Christian theology, everyone has sinned, and so only those who accepted Jesus as their king and savior will be granted eternal life in paradise. Those who do not, at best have oblivion and at worst eternal punishment, depending on which version of Christian theology you ask.
Of course, according to Jesus himself, it depends on how you treated other people, not on what position you held on a metaphysical point or whether you attended a magical ritual regularly.
So given those assumptions, perhaps you can see why parents would be deeply concerned as to whether or not their children are showing signs of following Jesus.
I suspect there's also an element of not wanting to risk re-examining their own life and beliefs and perhaps coming to inconvenient conclusions.
I don't have faith that invisible pink unicorns don't exist,
Invisible pink unicorns don't exist because "invisible" and "pink" are mutually exclusive descriptors.
I just haven't seen any evidence to support their existence (and thus I believe that only fools would think they exist).
It is statements like this that support the notion that atheism is a religion. You're assuming that everyone's experience is the same as yours, and that they must be "fools" if they come to different conclusions - not just wrong, not just misinterpreting evidence, but somehow flawed. That is illogical, and shows your relationship to your own believes to be the same as a religious persons to his.
The person's dead or behind bars, so blaming him won't stop the next massacre, since it will be committed by a different person, nor can we lock everyone up pre-emptively. On the other hand, blaming guns collectively and locking them up (banning them) will stop the next would-be shooter from having anything to shoot with, thus making a succesful massacre a lot harder to pull off.
That - prevention - is the motive behind blaming guns (or video games, for that matter): it's not about who's name should cursed, it's about how to stop these constant mass shootings from happening. The reason the gun control opponents try to shift the focus on moral culpability is to avoid coming right out and saying that they value their right to own guns over schoolkids getting shot. And when put into spot, they try to shift the blame on other culprits - suich as video games - instead.
Not that any of this matters. At some body count there will be disarmament. The questions are: how many people die getting there, what will the political fallout be, and how will the culture shift once the average American is forced to give up his fantasy of living in a frontier?
Slashdot Mirror
The difference between tulip bulbs and Bitcoin is that using tulip bulbs as currency doesn't offer any advantage over using coins, while using Bitcoins over PayPal or Visa offers the advantage of not having to deal with PayPal or Visa, thus not paying their fees nor being suddenly unable to receive payments at their whim.
In other words, even if current prices were a bubble, that bubble bursting won't end Bitcoin, any more than real estate bubble bursting meant the end real estate market - people still need places to live and an online payment system.
The Man is not me. The Man is the 1% who are turning the world into a giant Panopticon and looting my pockets. I assure you, I'll hate them every bit as much no matter how old I get, and pity those who don't for suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Probably never, since it'd make your site slow as hell and mining is already moving to custom hardware.
Sure. But how do I know my bank won't be the next to go belly-up? Every bankruptcy and bailout puts more strain on the remaining systems, making further problems more likely. At some point it'll become a full-blown cascade failure.
It doesn't exactly help that failing countries are forced to implement austerity measures that prevent them from recovering, thus keeping them dependent on support from the rest of the EU while ever more fail - and even healthy economies are burdened with constant belt-tightening as a "preventive" measure, slowing them down and making failure more likely. At this point it's hard to believe that this is genuine stupidity rather than purposeful sabotage.
I don't think China cares either way. It's using US consumption to bootstrap its economy, and will simply switch to serving internal markets when those are large enough. A few trillions dollars lost in debt defaults is a small price for that, especially since it'll handily knock US out of superpower status too.
Well, since the entire transaction history of Bitcoin is open for anyone to browse, it's just a matter of comparing the volume of trades for the amount in existence.
According to http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ the numbers are a total of 10,967,175 BTC in existence and 1,568,786.54 BTC sent in the last 24h. Which doesn't really seem to support the hoarding claims to me.
BTW, this is yet another reason why Bitcoin is so interesting: it's a goldmine of accurate data for economists, precisely because every transaction is immediately visible to everyone. You'd think every ministry of economics would kill to switch their national currencies to a system like this - not necessarily Bitcoin itself, but the system can be easily adapted to fiat currencies, or do things like automatic taxation - where they see very last trade as it's being made, 24/7/365.
So basically, if you have more computing power than the rest of the network combined, you can potentially double-spend coins. This is known, and the check was probably removed simply because that's not a feasible scenario anymore at current network size.
Also, the orphaned transactions wouldn't be wiped away. They'd simply be re-inserted into the next generated block.
Possibly. It could also be that it only becomes income when it's converted into some official currency, items or services. Does anyone know what actually counts as "income" under US tax code - for example, if I grow a flower, is it income? Or does it only become income if I sell it at a later time? And how would you report Bitcoins, anyway, given that the price fluctuates a lot?
As opposed to Wall Street stock exchange computers, which run on hellfire and are cooled by the blood of the innocent.
380 yottawats ought to be enough for anybody.
But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that those are all miraculously solved within the next month. Can we start using fusion? No, because it's nuclear fusion, and thus still nuclear, and thus still scary. For example, Greenpeace has already declared that they will oppose fusion plants.
Not that you can generate power any other way either, since windmills kill birds and spoil the view, solar plants take up space, geothermal brings up toxins, fossil fuels generate CO2, renewable fuels take up farmland, orbital solar risks exposing living things to microwaves, etc. etc. Everything has consequences and no consequences are acceptable, thus nothing can be done. That's "green" for you.
Gravity is just a theory. The combeting explanation, Theory of Intelligent Falling, provides an interesting alternative: simply dedicate the building your fusion reactor is housed in as a temple to your local solar deity, and re-title your electric bill as a sacrifice. I'm sure anthropologists can help recover the proper rituals to make it work; perhaps Egypt would be a good place to start, since they had to power their pyramid-building machines somehow.
Granted, there might be some problems in places like Middle America due to changing cultural mores, but if either the USA or local drug barons would dedicate their victims to the cause, I'm sure that even the most bloodthirsty Aztec god would be more than satisfied. Just imagine it: the entire continent receiving limitless free electricity and all it would take would be for bullet moulds to imprint the text "Victims dedicated to mighty Huitzilopochtli" on their products!
And this is why we must fight gun control: it's a communist plot to throw America into a Dark Age by stopping the human sacrifices that keep the Sun moving. The Founding Fathers knew this, having learned much wisdom from the natives, and did their best to ensure that the Chaos Gods would never hunger. That's the real reason why Bush so desperately wanted to go to war: the sacrifice reserves from World War II were finally running low, so more had to be made ASAP. Al-Qaida, a cover organization of CIA, was activated to manufacture the reason, and succeeded perfectly.
Also, Moon landing was a hoax; in reality, the Japanese got there first. They used the Vernian "cannon" method to send first supplies and then an expedition - the USA later covered these up by claiming the blasts to be atomic bombs dropped by them, which is clearly ridiculous since Hiroshima and Nagasaki are habitable today which would be impossible if they'd been nuked. The Imperial Japanese base on the dark side of the Moon has been collaborating with Saurian overlords for years to spread pacifism, so the world would be left defenseless against the coming communist revolution and alien takeover.
The only question is, what is Hitler's role in all this? Is he hiding in South American jungles, waiting for the coming war to rise once again, or has he already - for example, by receiving plastic surgery and a fake birth certificate and running for US president?
TL;DR Hydrogen pellets don't work, you have to aim your lasers on still beating human hearts to generate fusion power. Also, communist Saurian overlords, Adolf Hitler, and an Imperial Japanese moon base are about to fight over who'll take over the world, but that's details.
Fart is mostly methane, which has one carbon atom per four hydrogen atoms. Actual contents of the universe are 3/4 hydrogen, 1/4 helium, and trace amounts of other materials, including carbon. Thus, it can't be fart residue.
That's solidly in the "big deal" territory when you multiply it by the number of storms. And of course bigger storms cause worse damage.
What do you think will happen once the energy supply can no longer meet the demand? A price spike and complete economic collapse. Industry needs energy, and cannot function without it, so we have to ensure it has it or suffer the consequences.
Ethanol subsidy is not about climate change, it's about corn lobby flexing its muscles. Actual climate change related charges would be for building more nuclear power or turning Death Valley into a giant solar power station.
And... WTF? Completely regardless if there really is an oft-speculated worldwide climate scientist conspiracy falsifying data for great injustice, are you seriously suggesting that continental drift - which tops at about 10 cm annually - could possibly explain any kind of changes in climate in the recorded history, which, at about 6000 years long, means they've moved a whopping 600 meters in all that time?!?
Seriously, WTF?
Even a storm that kills no one will typically do tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. So, even if we go by the rather sociopathic notion that thousands of dead is no big deal, it would likely still be cheaper to switch to nuclear and renewables ASAP rather delay and keep doing Orleans-level rebuilding at decreasing intervals - especially since we'll have to switch soon anyway, since fossil fuels are running out.
Even if you don't hear about a storm, drought or other climate-related problem, you will still pay for it in your taxes, your utility bills, and your grocery bill.
Who's "us"? For most home users, if they want to run desktop apps on a server, they want those apps to keep running when the desktop is shut down, so they now use Xvnc and WaylandVNC will work just as well.
DRM is an attempt to circumvent the Doctrine of First Sale and thus deprive customers of their legal rights. This also harms anyone who buys used games. Furthermore, Mickey Mouse Protection Acts and the "forever minus a day" excuse for them have already turned copyright into a mockery of the very concept of law. Finally, various copyright institutions regularly use courts for outright blackmail of innocent people. Therefore, there is no moral obligation to respect copyrights, and a case could be made that helping nullify them - for example, by aiding piracy - is.
There, piracy justified, with the kind help of RIAA, MPAA, BSAA, Disney and their ilk.
And this is another thing: the whole concept of copyright law is absurd. It's based on the premise that information is the same as physical objects, say, cars, yet it simultaneously claims power to control what people do with these information-objects after purchase. Sell a man an axe and you have no way to prevent him from chopping firewood for the whole neighborhood for a price, even if this means you'll sell no more axes there, yet if you sell him notes for a song you can sue him if he sings it in public.
The rights of public should not depend on the publisher's whims.
Don't like piracy, lobby to have copyright law changed into something that's actually worthy of respect. Current one isn't, so it's never going to be respected.
"Free will" is not a well defined term. Attempts to define it usually end up suggesting that there's a truly unpredictable random number generator in human brain, and this acts as one of the inputs into decision making process; however, it is unclear just how this would make you "free" or from what. Determinism? All that means is that you have some kind of reason for making the choice you did, rather than just throwing dice and doing what that tells you. So just what is this "free will" and why is it incompatible with omniscience?
In any case, knowing someone well means you can usually predict what they'll do in any given situation, so it could well be reasonable to conclude that humans don't have free will.
Or it could simply be that lots of people compete for the same living space, driving up prices. Which has nothing to do with environmental footprint, but simple supply and demand.
Another fun fact: warmer air can hold more water vapor. So your fact actually makes things worse, since any increase in carbon dioxide causes far more warming than it otherwise would due to it increasing atmospheric water vapor content too.
Of course, according to Jesus himself, it depends on how you treated other people, not on what position you held on a metaphysical point or whether you attended a magical ritual regularly.
A cynical person might almost think that most Christian theology is an attempt to explain away all the Bible's condemnations against oppressing the poor, the weak and the ostracised and worshipping money and power. How else could you possibly go from "Sodom's sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door." to "it was teh gay!"?
I suspect there's also an element of not wanting to risk re-examining their own life and beliefs and perhaps coming to inconvenient conclusions.
Invisible pink unicorns don't exist because "invisible" and "pink" are mutually exclusive descriptors.
It is statements like this that support the notion that atheism is a religion. You're assuming that everyone's experience is the same as yours, and that they must be "fools" if they come to different conclusions - not just wrong, not just misinterpreting evidence, but somehow flawed. That is illogical, and shows your relationship to your own believes to be the same as a religious persons to his.
Everything is worth what it's bought and sold for, so nothing has intrinsic (economic) value.
Gold has some intrinsic properties that might be valuable to some, but that is extrinsic value, deriving and dependent from their value judgement.
The person's dead or behind bars, so blaming him won't stop the next massacre, since it will be committed by a different person, nor can we lock everyone up pre-emptively. On the other hand, blaming guns collectively and locking them up (banning them) will stop the next would-be shooter from having anything to shoot with, thus making a succesful massacre a lot harder to pull off.
That - prevention - is the motive behind blaming guns (or video games, for that matter): it's not about who's name should cursed, it's about how to stop these constant mass shootings from happening. The reason the gun control opponents try to shift the focus on moral culpability is to avoid coming right out and saying that they value their right to own guns over schoolkids getting shot. And when put into spot, they try to shift the blame on other culprits - suich as video games - instead.
Not that any of this matters. At some body count there will be disarmament. The questions are: how many people die getting there, what will the political fallout be, and how will the culture shift once the average American is forced to give up his fantasy of living in a frontier?