I have some experience with both cryptography and decentralized systems of this kind. Which doesn't make me an expert. But I know enough to ask questions. I have had grave concerns about the validity of their design since I first read about it on slashdot some years back. It seemed to me the case had not been made that bitcoin was not vulnerable to rapid destruction of value, due to attacks on fundamental flaws in its design.
I haven't analyzed it but I bet a lot of people have. Nobody's published a flaw yet.
OTOH if it was worth as much money as people are saying the NSA would have dedicated their server farms to bitcoin mining a long time ago. Magicking $1 trillion out of thin air would make the US government very happy.
If you wait for it to pop this time you'll miss out. It will never be $2 a coin again. In fact it's going to reach $1000 a coin by the end of the year.
True, but that's the most glaring one. Also, if you can't make it to chapter two without a discrepancy, what hope is there for the rest of it?
Wherever there's a discrepancy they'll just say "Oh, that bit's metaphorical, you have to interpret it as XXXXXX."
You can't win with these people. Ever.
If you want to do something about him it has to be along the lines of publicly saying you'll take him up on the bet _after_ he proves the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Hope that at least some other people will see the huge fail in his logic.
The reason no one takes this idiot up, is because the odds are in the houses favor, and he knows it.
The whole "prove something isn't true" thing...it doesn't work that way.
He can't prove the non-existence of any other mythological deities, the non-existence of the invisible pink unicorn in my garage, or even disprove my chocolate teapot in the heart of the sun theory.
Are supposed to believe everything that can't be disproven?
There's also the matter of the degree of effect. There is huge uncertainty in how global temperature changes as a result of changing concentrations of carbon dioxide. It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.
So.... extra CO2 is OK because the Earth might have some extreme weather up its sleeve to correct for man's emissions?
If anything disrupts the Gulf Stream, eg. extra ice melt at the North Pole, then Europe's climate will become what it ought to be for its latitude, ie. much colder..
Slashdot Mirror
Lame. This is pretty lame even by Slashdot standards.
Not as lame as posting here just to let everybody how you weren't fooled by it (like, duh!)
(and not posting in ROT13 makes your post double-lame...)
Luckily you posted here to save everybody else from the cleverness of the joke.
Did you figure that out all by yourself or did somebody help you?
Dumb, but not quite as dumb as people who come here to say "April 1st".
They can figure out who's carrying a phone by their daily habits (where you go, what time, how long you stay there).
Google claims to be able to do this - see last week's news stories.
Which will be depleted very rapidly anyway - probably about a millisecond after the first time it tries to transmit your location.
(Assuming it tries to transmit your location when it's switched off, which I doubt...)
The Scott Adams method? It might work.
It's a scarce resource. People can't create them easily.
OTOH the value is completely arbitrary, just like a stock price. It can go down as well as up.
So are tulip bulbs...
I have some experience with both cryptography and decentralized systems of this kind. Which doesn't make me an expert. But I know enough to ask questions. I have had grave concerns about the validity of their design since I first read about it on slashdot some years back. It seemed to me the case had not been made that bitcoin was not vulnerable to rapid destruction of value, due to attacks on fundamental flaws in its design.
I haven't analyzed it but I bet a lot of people have. Nobody's published a flaw yet.
OTOH if it was worth as much money as people are saying the NSA would have dedicated their server farms to bitcoin mining a long time ago. Magicking $1 trillion out of thin air would make the US government very happy.
Quote me. A year from now it will be approaching $1000 a coin. It will never be $17 a coin again.
You can keep on saying that, it doesn't make it so.
Magicking 'money' out of thin air *always* leads to a crash. No exceptions. Just wait and see.
All of history.
It's only worth what people are willing to pay for it.
If confidence goes, so does the value.
If you wait for it to pop this time you'll miss out. It will never be $2 a coin again. In fact it's going to reach $1000 a coin by the end of the year.
They said that about the housing market. ...
And that dotcom thing. ...
And the tulips.
Have you seen the wholesale price of tablets in China?
http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=android+tablet
Replace the capacitive screens with something cheaper, buy in bulk, and you're almost at $35.
I really do believe "you get what you paid for,"
If you're a third-worlder then $35 is a lot.
comprehensively disproven.
LOL.
God is god. Don't you know he can do anything in any order he wants to?
Not really. He never mentioned why he exactly wanted it to be encrypted
He doesn't want any evidence when he does something bad/stupid, only when other people do.
How about us all telling him to man up and take responsibility for what he does instead of getting into some geekfest over file systems?
True, but that's the most glaring one. Also, if you can't make it to chapter two without a discrepancy, what hope is there for the rest of it?
Wherever there's a discrepancy they'll just say "Oh, that bit's metaphorical, you have to interpret it as XXXXXX."
You can't win with these people. Ever.
If you want to do something about him it has to be along the lines of publicly saying you'll take him up on the bet _after_ he proves the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Hope that at least some other people will see the huge fail in his logic.
The fact is that the Bible is chock full of metaphor and parable, and understanding what is literal and what is not requires education.
God filled his book with logic traps to trick the people who want to believe in him?
Only a Christian could come up with logic like that to justify all the mistakes and impossibilities in the Bible.
It makes sense - "literal truth! Praise Jehovah!"
It doesn't make sense - "Oh, that's a parable/metaphor. You need to be specially educated to understand that part."
my faith flew apart until I converted to Catholicism some years ago.
You're doing it wrong.
The reason no one takes this idiot up, is because the odds are in the houses favor, and he knows it.
The whole "prove something isn't true" thing...it doesn't work that way.
He can't prove the non-existence of any other mythological deities, the non-existence of the invisible pink unicorn in my garage, or even disprove my chocolate teapot in the heart of the sun theory.
Are supposed to believe everything that can't be disproven?
too warm people scream global warming
we get a cool March, which is the opposite of warming...yada yada yada
Logic 101: Global warming doesn't exclude local cooling.
There's also the matter of the degree of effect. There is huge uncertainty in how global temperature changes as a result of changing concentrations of carbon dioxide. It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.
So.... extra CO2 is OK because the Earth might have some extreme weather up its sleeve to correct for man's emissions?
Question: Isn't "extreme weather" bad/harmful?
They've been predicting this for as long as I can remember, and I'm quite old.
North-West Europe is warmer than it ought to be. The reason is warm water currents coming up from the Equator. It's called the Gulf Stream.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Europe#Gulf_Stream
If anything disrupts the Gulf Stream, eg. extra ice melt at the North Pole, then Europe's climate will become what it ought to be for its latitude, ie. much colder..
Science. It works.