money is nothing but an abstract representation of the value of a society. without society, there is no money. any society that is going to have good currency is one that also has good governance
therefore, the very idea of thinking about currency, divorced from good governance, is an absurdity
That's true for fractional reserve currencies. But all sorts of commodities (gold and silver most easily, of course) could be used as money completely divorced from governance - good, bad, or otherwise - because they have intrinsic value. Now, you can't use bitcoins to plate electrical connectors, it's true, but there's nothing inherently better about dollars as a form of currency. To be honest, I don't understand bitcoins well enough to actually change my dollars into bitcoins. But as a store of value dollars (and most other major currencies) are absolutely terrible.
to pursue currency without government is simply a symptom of bad social skills, horrible indoctrination/ terrible education, and or/ mental illness, something in the realm of paranoia
That's just stupid. The reason one would want a commodities backed currency precisely because it maintains its value "without government". The fact that you don't see that doesn't make other people crazy. It makes you shortsighted and historically ignorant.
Do you? It sure would be nice to have a currency that couldn't be stripped of it's value at the whim of a government. Maybe the bitcoin isn't it, but when the government suppresses it hopefully people will start to think about what currencies really are and why governments go to such lengths to suppress competitors.
You don't have to be a crank to see the US government is madly increasing the money supply. What do you suppose is going to happen when the economy starts growing again?
Dollars aren't based on gold or silver either, and unlike bitcoins the decision to create dollars happens through a totally opaque process that has no basis in economic reality. If we had a commodity backed currency I would agree there's no need for bitcoins, but we don't. Dollars are backed by and endlessly increasing supply of debt, which guarantees huge fluctuations of (perceived) value over time.
The funny thing is this crap backfires on the protected classes. When white guys are the only ones you can talk to safely they're going to be the ones with the best lines of communication and thus the ones with better professional networks.
When I was in management, something that will never happen again in this life, the company sent us to training on all the ins and outs of the legal situation in employment law. The two things I took away from that training were 1) as a manager you're personally liable for hostile workplace damages, even if you're operating on the company's behalf in good faith and 2) the people who are offended get to decide what's offensive. So even if no other guy in the world thinks this joke is offensive, if a "reasonable woman" does, you could lose your house. Under the circumstances, how could you blame someone for only hiring white guys?
The problem when we talk about the CIA is we only hear about it when something goes wrong, which might lead to a false impression. How many operations have they successfully concluded without anyone being the wiser?
They've killed a lot of people with drone strikes over the last few years. I want to believe in every case they were careful to make sure the target individual was in fact part of an organization taking up arms against the US and also that they were shooting at the person they intended to shoot at. How true that is really depends on the assets they have on the ground, as there are limits to what you can do with drones and satellites.
If you're going to prosecute the "war on terror" as an actual war, from an organization standpoint this makes sense. However, the whole reason the CIA was given the program to start with was they were supposed to have human intelligence on the ground to identify targets. I'm curious to know if the CIA wasn't very effective in that area, the CIA will still be providing HUMINT, or the military will be expected to do so.
Yes they do. Your GPS receiver automatically turns on when you make a 911 call. No, it doesn't prevent spoofing, but that takes a bit more sophistication.
I want to know how people can call 911 and report something like this without being discovered. Every 911 call is traced immediately, and mobile calls automatically get GPS fixed. Are they using a stolen mobile from a car or something like that?
This wouldn't be nearly as dangerous if we didn't live in a society where a significant portion of our law-enforcement feel like above-the-law gung-ho cowboys looking to shoot now and ask questions later...
That's a gross mischaracterization. There are hundreds of thousands of cops, and they face potentially dangerous situations every day, and bad shoots are rare.
That doesn't mean Apple users buy a new phone every year, just that apple releases one every year. Most people skip a generation unless there's something major they really want (like LTE).
A jet will cover that distance in about three minutes. It would take at least ninety seconds to get a firing solution and launch a missile. There's no way they get permission to shoot anything down in ninety seconds, particularly if the pilot is pretending he wants to defect.
All indications are the new guy is a real nasty piece of work. Worse than his father or grandfather. I doubt he's crazy, though, and the generals will kill him if he gets too far out of line.
The last test was a bona fide nuclear explosion, not a fizzle. Granted, they don't have the capability to deliver nukes on a missile (yet), but Seoul is only thirty five miles from the DMZ. All the Norks need to do is load it on a jet, fly to Seoul, and detonate. There wouldn't be enough time to respond.
I've found just the opposite. We hire mostly EE and physics grads in preference to CS. Computer science programs don't teach people to code, and when you suggest that they should the academics always come back with "We're a university, not a trade school!"
The forced release of records will mean one of three things happens. 1) Doctors won't record information like that, meaning lots of time wasted by people who are manipulating the system for some reason or another or 2) They will record such information, but separately (illegally) on a legal notepad somewhere, so the information gets lost as you change doctors or 3) Instead of writing "Patient is an addict" they'll have some doctor code like "exhibits 4sq asymp req", which effectively encrypts part of your records.
Effectively it's denying people a their right to a trail. At some point the whole thing becomes a variant of Pascal's wager, in that the worst case outcome is so severe it makes sense to plead guilty even if you're innocent.
Slashdot Mirror
money is nothing but an abstract representation of the value of a society. without society, there is no money. any society that is going to have good currency is one that also has good governance therefore, the very idea of thinking about currency, divorced from good governance, is an absurdity
That's true for fractional reserve currencies. But all sorts of commodities (gold and silver most easily, of course) could be used as money completely divorced from governance - good, bad, or otherwise - because they have intrinsic value. Now, you can't use bitcoins to plate electrical connectors, it's true, but there's nothing inherently better about dollars as a form of currency. To be honest, I don't understand bitcoins well enough to actually change my dollars into bitcoins. But as a store of value dollars (and most other major currencies) are absolutely terrible.
to pursue currency without government is simply a symptom of bad social skills, horrible indoctrination/ terrible education, and or/ mental illness, something in the realm of paranoia
That's just stupid. The reason one would want a commodities backed currency precisely because it maintains its value "without government". The fact that you don't see that doesn't make other people crazy. It makes you shortsighted and historically ignorant.
Do you? It sure would be nice to have a currency that couldn't be stripped of it's value at the whim of a government. Maybe the bitcoin isn't it, but when the government suppresses it hopefully people will start to think about what currencies really are and why governments go to such lengths to suppress competitors.
You don't have to be a crank to see the US government is madly increasing the money supply. What do you suppose is going to happen when the economy starts growing again?
Dollars aren't based on gold or silver either, and unlike bitcoins the decision to create dollars happens through a totally opaque process that has no basis in economic reality. If we had a commodity backed currency I would agree there's no need for bitcoins, but we don't. Dollars are backed by and endlessly increasing supply of debt, which guarantees huge fluctuations of (perceived) value over time.
The big loser would be the DC area and K Street in particular.
Not hardly. K Street will just start telecommuting too.
The funny thing is this crap backfires on the protected classes. When white guys are the only ones you can talk to safely they're going to be the ones with the best lines of communication and thus the ones with better professional networks.
When I was in management, something that will never happen again in this life, the company sent us to training on all the ins and outs of the legal situation in employment law. The two things I took away from that training were 1) as a manager you're personally liable for hostile workplace damages, even if you're operating on the company's behalf in good faith and 2) the people who are offended get to decide what's offensive. So even if no other guy in the world thinks this joke is offensive, if a "reasonable woman" does, you could lose your house. Under the circumstances, how could you blame someone for only hiring white guys?
The problem when we talk about the CIA is we only hear about it when something goes wrong, which might lead to a false impression. How many operations have they successfully concluded without anyone being the wiser?
They've killed a lot of people with drone strikes over the last few years. I want to believe in every case they were careful to make sure the target individual was in fact part of an organization taking up arms against the US and also that they were shooting at the person they intended to shoot at. How true that is really depends on the assets they have on the ground, as there are limits to what you can do with drones and satellites.
If you're going to prosecute the "war on terror" as an actual war, from an organization standpoint this makes sense. However, the whole reason the CIA was given the program to start with was they were supposed to have human intelligence on the ground to identify targets. I'm curious to know if the CIA wasn't very effective in that area, the CIA will still be providing HUMINT, or the military will be expected to do so.
Again, a dozen people in a country of over 300 million. Statistically zero.
Rare as in compared to the number of calls of this nature cops go out on every day your odds of being shot are statistically zero.
And then you go on to discuss singular incidents. You realize the US is a country of over three hundred million people, right?
"Plenty of incidents" isn't evidence.
Yes they do. Your GPS receiver automatically turns on when you make a 911 call. No, it doesn't prevent spoofing, but that takes a bit more sophistication.
I want to know how people can call 911 and report something like this without being discovered. Every 911 call is traced immediately, and mobile calls automatically get GPS fixed. Are they using a stolen mobile from a car or something like that?
That and Brian is white, so that helps...
Not much actual evidence this is the case.
This wouldn't be nearly as dangerous if we didn't live in a society where a significant portion of our law-enforcement feel like above-the-law gung-ho cowboys looking to shoot now and ask questions later...
That's a gross mischaracterization. There are hundreds of thousands of cops, and they face potentially dangerous situations every day, and bad shoots are rare.
I would have skipped the 3GS and the 4S.
That doesn't mean Apple users buy a new phone every year, just that apple releases one every year. Most people skip a generation unless there's something major they really want (like LTE).
A jet will cover that distance in about three minutes. It would take at least ninety seconds to get a firing solution and launch a missile. There's no way they get permission to shoot anything down in ninety seconds, particularly if the pilot is pretending he wants to defect.
Right, but he hasn't waited twenty turns since the sinking of the Cheonan.
All indications are the new guy is a real nasty piece of work. Worse than his father or grandfather. I doubt he's crazy, though, and the generals will kill him if he gets too far out of line.
The last test was a bona fide nuclear explosion, not a fizzle. Granted, they don't have the capability to deliver nukes on a missile (yet), but Seoul is only thirty five miles from the DMZ. All the Norks need to do is load it on a jet, fly to Seoul, and detonate. There wouldn't be enough time to respond.
I've found just the opposite. We hire mostly EE and physics grads in preference to CS. Computer science programs don't teach people to code, and when you suggest that they should the academics always come back with "We're a university, not a trade school!"
Yep. That's the reason.
The forced release of records will mean one of three things happens. 1) Doctors won't record information like that, meaning lots of time wasted by people who are manipulating the system for some reason or another or 2) They will record such information, but separately (illegally) on a legal notepad somewhere, so the information gets lost as you change doctors or 3) Instead of writing "Patient is an addict" they'll have some doctor code like "exhibits 4sq asymp req", which effectively encrypts part of your records.
That would never actually be put into writing, even if it's true.
Effectively it's denying people a their right to a trail. At some point the whole thing becomes a variant of Pascal's wager, in that the worst case outcome is so severe it makes sense to plead guilty even if you're innocent.