Those who know how it works rage against the "currency" those who don't are convinced that the "currency" will be here to stay. The reality is that it's a poorly thought out and executed concept which will eventually pop, the way they always do.
And I'm personally going to be laughing my ass off at all the morons that lose their money. All this is is a hybrid ponzi and pump and dump scam. There is nothing to it, there's no value being produced to justify the valuation and there's no guarantee that anybody is going to be able to spend any of these BTC in the future.
Not true, people in early on with a new stock are taking a disproportionately large risk that the business will go under, which is why they'll usually wind up with more earnings. What's more, early on in the lifecycle of a business the growth rate will be much larger than later on which also leads to greater profit potential when you choose correctly.
With BTC there's no wealth being created, 100% of the proceeds are coming from later people into the system. And to compare it with stocks indicates a complete lack of competence in either BTC or common stocks.
Interesting, so you're saying that even if people don't hoard the "currency" that it will still grind to a halt with everybody losing whatever money they've put into the system?
And, I thought I was pessimistic about the prospects of this working out.
Perhaps, but privacy issues aside, Google's servers provide something of value whereas BTC mining results in nothing of value, just BTC. And so those 982MW/day are just wasted electricity. There is nothing that's gained by anybody other than the people that profit by selling you power.
It's a fake currency because it's not backed by any government and there's no requirement that anybody take it. Whereas even Microsoft points are guaranteed to be taken by MS unless they stop taking them with prior notice. And they'd likely give notice of when they plan to do that if that ever happens; BTC not so much.
As much as folks disparage the USD, the fact of the matter is that I can at least be guaranteed that I can pay my bills with it and pay taxes, which is something that you cannot say about BTC.
Congratulations, you've discovered the moot point.
Bottom line here is that the differences between a Pyramid Scheme and what they're doing with BTC are immaterial. People who get in early can reap large rewards at the expense of people coming in later and since the currency is designed to be deflationary ultimately it will end up being hoarded and subject to high levels of instability.
XP had PAE, but from what I can tell it wasn't a functioning PAE, I've got 4GB of RAM, but the OS isn't capable of addressing all of it, even with PAE. Which makes me wonder about why it has PAE at all.
Sigh, we don't want innovation in form factor. I remember what it was like back before standardization and it was a real bitch to buy hardware sometimes because you'd have to tell the sales people the exact make and model of your computer, otherwise the card might not fit in the slot.
It's bad enough that these days you have so many processor slots and that you can't just look at the package of the processor to know what it's performance is going to be like, throwing new slots and changes to the lay out are just going to make it more of a PITA to put together your own computers and make it more of a PITA to upgrade them if you decide to.
Ultimately, standardization is a good thing in this case, even if it does lead to some suboptimal design choices.
Also word tends to get around when employers are breaking laws. I walked off a previous job because they weren't paying me correctly. I've never worked for an employer that made that many payroll and accounting "mistakes" and they would expect the employee to mention it or they wouldn't fix it.
These days, their reputation is basically dirt, everybody in the field knows that they skim funds from the employees and so they wind up with less talented employees, the ones that couldn't get work at the other firms.
The problem is that many of these jobs are being done overseas by people that can afford to do them for basically nothing. But that the employers use that when deciding how much to pay domestic employees.
I remember checking out Mechanical Turk when it first opened up, and the rates they were offering were abysmal. It would literally have cost me more money to do some of the jobs than I would have gotten by doing nothing.
What's more, there is no guarantee in the US to a decent standard of living, so if you can't get a job, for any reason, you're going to be in real trouble before too long.
Personally, I think that things like this need to be banned now, before things get any more out of hand. The employers are doing quite well for themselves, even as the producers of wealth get less and less for their efforts every year.
Depends what kind of a shop it is. There are closed shops and open shops. IIRC with an open shop, you just have to pay dues, but don't have to join. If you have a closed shop then all employees have to be union.
Before people bitch about that, just because one isn't in the union, does not mean that one is not benefiting from the collective bargaining agreement, typically you're getting pay and benefits based upon that union negotiated piece of paper.
I used to be in the SEIU and no, it's janitors, security and nurses mostly. For the most part the ones in those jobs working for the government are usually under a different union. I know at my mother's college that the security fell under a state workers union. I can't recall which one off the top of my head.
I said they don't have to worry about it in any given quarter. Also, it's a lot more complicated than you make it sound. How much money has the US made off of battery technology and such? It's not an easily answered question.
The focus of this research is on the technology necessary to map and study the brain. So, it accelerates pretty much any brain related research. So, as long as you plan not to get dementia or alzheimers you may well be right, but there's a ton of research left to be done on all sorts of things that's held up by the limited technology for studying brains of living subjects.
I know you're a troll, but on the chance that people are thinking the same thing.
Private funding tends to be pretty short sighted. If there isn't an immediately obvious application for it, and a way of making a buck on it, chances are it won't be done. Government money doesn't mean that you can research things of no significance, it just means that you don't have to be able to turn it profitable by itself. And a ton of research out there is useless by itself, but when combined with other studies and research projects makes for some very useful things.
The government should be a major source of funding for research, the government doesn't have to worry about being profitable in any given quarter, so long as the research leads to prosperity that's all well and good.
As the AC asked, the solution to many potential projects is less funding? In what way does that make any sense at all?
What's more you wouldn't be typing that without US government money for things like the internet and laptops would probably not exist either as battery research was primarily driven by space exploration related needs.
When all is said and done this sort of "thinking" is what's threatening the US, get the government out of it and hope your cause is sufficiently sexy to attract philanthropists.
With 30/5 service available, I'm not sure why Google is even bothering. Around here the best we can get is 7m/896k service and I'd gladly pay for something faster but that's the best that Centurylink can do. And that's just under double what was available 13 years ago when I got my first broadband service.
The point I'm making is that $13 an hour is substantially less than what one needs to survive in any reasonable way around here, but I would have been more than happy to accept a position for that, but there were no jobs that were even being offered that required less than 3 years of experience. None at all, and it didn't matter what price one was asking to be paid, there just weren't any jobs being offered. And that was during the mid noughties when things were chugging along relatively fine. Security practically pays more than that around here.
$13 an hour was still more than what I ended up making at other jobs I was able to get hired at during that period of time. So, there's clearly not something that's adding up, you may well be right that companies are publishing fraudulent employment advertisements, which is another serious issue that needs to be addressed.
It's a crime that people can't just expect to be paid a living wage if they're willing to do the work.
Do you have a reading problem? I was specifically talking about entry level positions. How exactly do you propose that I, or anybody else, get an entry level position when all of them require 3-5 years of experience? Certifications can be had fairly easily, but actual work experience relevant is a lot more difficult to come by when nobody is hiring people without work experience.
Seriously, I'm curious about how you think that I'm self entitled when I make no assertions about salary demands. I would have been more than happy to settle for $13.50 an hour, but I couldn't even apply because the applications required a massive amount of experience compared with what the jobs really required.
And yes, this is the fault of the H-1B visas, they can demand ridiculous amounts of education for the entry level jobs because they don't have to fill higher level positions, they can just avoid promoting people.
On the other hand, I'm guessing that you're an incompetent jackass if you think that it's possible to prove oneself when nobody will hire you. I'm sure it's probably possible. I highly doubt that references from non-IT workers really count much and maintaining one server for a few hours a year probably isn't going to count much either.
I used to want to get a job in IT, but all the entry level positions required 5 years or more of experience on top of the certifications, and that was just for jobs where they were having you read a support script.
I'm sure once you're in it's a lot easier, but I don't recall seeing a single opening back then where I could apply, not a single one. Ultimately, I gave up and got work in a different sector where it wasn't quite as bad, but entry level does not mean 5 years of experience, it means at most 1 year.
It also depends a great deal on the field of study and how well one can contribute. I'm looking to go back to school to pursue a masters and ultimately Ph.D. in teaching and curriculum, and there's still a huge amount of research that needs doing in that area. I wouldn't expect for us to have that subject area nailed down at all in the next 50 years. Sure, there's been tremendous advancement in the field over the last hundred years, but we're nowhere near where we're likely to get with that.
Literature is a bit different. I'm not really sure what use that doctorate is, I'm sure there is utility, I just don't personally know what it is. And while there are always new books being published and presumably there's still a lot to learn about how to write a novel, poetry and such, it doesn't have the kind of obvious applicability that some other fields do.
But, before one decides to pursue a Ph.D, they should be honest about whether or not this is a growing field and whether or not they can contribute enough to be competitive in that field. Getting a Ph.D. just for ones own improvement is certainly valid, but one should be aware of the costs associated with entering a field that isn't growing.
Because the power to create currency needs to be held by the government that controls the regulatory and tax structure. That's something that the Europeans are finding out the hard way. The reason being that if you have multiple nations using the same currency, but without a single tax and regulatory structure to cover it, you wind up with situations like this where somebody gets in trouble and everybody else has to help fix it.
I'm not really sure why Europeans have such a hard time with this. I don't personally like having to constantly subsidize the rural states, but they use the same currency and are in the same economic block as us, so we ultimately have to pay for their inability to fund their own lifestyles. It sucks, but that's how that ultimately works.
Slashdot Mirror
Those who know how it works rage against the "currency" those who don't are convinced that the "currency" will be here to stay. The reality is that it's a poorly thought out and executed concept which will eventually pop, the way they always do.
And I'm personally going to be laughing my ass off at all the morons that lose their money. All this is is a hybrid ponzi and pump and dump scam. There is nothing to it, there's no value being produced to justify the valuation and there's no guarantee that anybody is going to be able to spend any of these BTC in the future.
Not true, people in early on with a new stock are taking a disproportionately large risk that the business will go under, which is why they'll usually wind up with more earnings. What's more, early on in the lifecycle of a business the growth rate will be much larger than later on which also leads to greater profit potential when you choose correctly.
With BTC there's no wealth being created, 100% of the proceeds are coming from later people into the system. And to compare it with stocks indicates a complete lack of competence in either BTC or common stocks.
And what happens when there are no more BTC to be mined?
Like I said, the mining produces nothing of value and all this energy is wasted.
Interesting, so you're saying that even if people don't hoard the "currency" that it will still grind to a halt with everybody losing whatever money they've put into the system?
And, I thought I was pessimistic about the prospects of this working out.
Perhaps, but privacy issues aside, Google's servers provide something of value whereas BTC mining results in nothing of value, just BTC. And so those 982MW/day are just wasted electricity. There is nothing that's gained by anybody other than the people that profit by selling you power.
It's a fake currency because it's not backed by any government and there's no requirement that anybody take it. Whereas even Microsoft points are guaranteed to be taken by MS unless they stop taking them with prior notice. And they'd likely give notice of when they plan to do that if that ever happens; BTC not so much.
As much as folks disparage the USD, the fact of the matter is that I can at least be guaranteed that I can pay my bills with it and pay taxes, which is something that you cannot say about BTC.
Congratulations, you've discovered the moot point.
Bottom line here is that the differences between a Pyramid Scheme and what they're doing with BTC are immaterial. People who get in early can reap large rewards at the expense of people coming in later and since the currency is designed to be deflationary ultimately it will end up being hoarded and subject to high levels of instability.
That's the oddest typo I've ever seen. Was it supposed to be Mac_is_the_best, Linux_is_the_best or BSD_is_the_best? Because it's clearly not MS.
XP had PAE, but from what I can tell it wasn't a functioning PAE, I've got 4GB of RAM, but the OS isn't capable of addressing all of it, even with PAE. Which makes me wonder about why it has PAE at all.
Sigh, we don't want innovation in form factor. I remember what it was like back before standardization and it was a real bitch to buy hardware sometimes because you'd have to tell the sales people the exact make and model of your computer, otherwise the card might not fit in the slot.
It's bad enough that these days you have so many processor slots and that you can't just look at the package of the processor to know what it's performance is going to be like, throwing new slots and changes to the lay out are just going to make it more of a PITA to put together your own computers and make it more of a PITA to upgrade them if you decide to.
Ultimately, standardization is a good thing in this case, even if it does lead to some suboptimal design choices.
Also word tends to get around when employers are breaking laws. I walked off a previous job because they weren't paying me correctly. I've never worked for an employer that made that many payroll and accounting "mistakes" and they would expect the employee to mention it or they wouldn't fix it.
These days, their reputation is basically dirt, everybody in the field knows that they skim funds from the employees and so they wind up with less talented employees, the ones that couldn't get work at the other firms.
The problem is that many of these jobs are being done overseas by people that can afford to do them for basically nothing. But that the employers use that when deciding how much to pay domestic employees.
I remember checking out Mechanical Turk when it first opened up, and the rates they were offering were abysmal. It would literally have cost me more money to do some of the jobs than I would have gotten by doing nothing.
What's more, there is no guarantee in the US to a decent standard of living, so if you can't get a job, for any reason, you're going to be in real trouble before too long.
Personally, I think that things like this need to be banned now, before things get any more out of hand. The employers are doing quite well for themselves, even as the producers of wealth get less and less for their efforts every year.
Depends what kind of a shop it is. There are closed shops and open shops. IIRC with an open shop, you just have to pay dues, but don't have to join. If you have a closed shop then all employees have to be union.
Before people bitch about that, just because one isn't in the union, does not mean that one is not benefiting from the collective bargaining agreement, typically you're getting pay and benefits based upon that union negotiated piece of paper.
I used to be in the SEIU and no, it's janitors, security and nurses mostly. For the most part the ones in those jobs working for the government are usually under a different union. I know at my mother's college that the security fell under a state workers union. I can't recall which one off the top of my head.
LOL, so we should probably just stop funding research altogether as we aren't going to be funding any actual science.
Then again, I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic with your comment.
You're an idiot.
I said they don't have to worry about it in any given quarter. Also, it's a lot more complicated than you make it sound. How much money has the US made off of battery technology and such? It's not an easily answered question.
What are you on about?
The focus of this research is on the technology necessary to map and study the brain. So, it accelerates pretty much any brain related research. So, as long as you plan not to get dementia or alzheimers you may well be right, but there's a ton of research left to be done on all sorts of things that's held up by the limited technology for studying brains of living subjects.
I know you're a troll, but on the chance that people are thinking the same thing.
Private funding tends to be pretty short sighted. If there isn't an immediately obvious application for it, and a way of making a buck on it, chances are it won't be done. Government money doesn't mean that you can research things of no significance, it just means that you don't have to be able to turn it profitable by itself. And a ton of research out there is useless by itself, but when combined with other studies and research projects makes for some very useful things.
The government should be a major source of funding for research, the government doesn't have to worry about being profitable in any given quarter, so long as the research leads to prosperity that's all well and good.
As the AC asked, the solution to many potential projects is less funding? In what way does that make any sense at all?
What's more you wouldn't be typing that without US government money for things like the internet and laptops would probably not exist either as battery research was primarily driven by space exploration related needs.
When all is said and done this sort of "thinking" is what's threatening the US, get the government out of it and hope your cause is sufficiently sexy to attract philanthropists.
With 30/5 service available, I'm not sure why Google is even bothering. Around here the best we can get is 7m/896k service and I'd gladly pay for something faster but that's the best that Centurylink can do. And that's just under double what was available 13 years ago when I got my first broadband service.
The point I'm making is that $13 an hour is substantially less than what one needs to survive in any reasonable way around here, but I would have been more than happy to accept a position for that, but there were no jobs that were even being offered that required less than 3 years of experience. None at all, and it didn't matter what price one was asking to be paid, there just weren't any jobs being offered. And that was during the mid noughties when things were chugging along relatively fine. Security practically pays more than that around here.
$13 an hour was still more than what I ended up making at other jobs I was able to get hired at during that period of time. So, there's clearly not something that's adding up, you may well be right that companies are publishing fraudulent employment advertisements, which is another serious issue that needs to be addressed.
It's a crime that people can't just expect to be paid a living wage if they're willing to do the work.
Do you have a reading problem? I was specifically talking about entry level positions. How exactly do you propose that I, or anybody else, get an entry level position when all of them require 3-5 years of experience? Certifications can be had fairly easily, but actual work experience relevant is a lot more difficult to come by when nobody is hiring people without work experience.
Seriously, I'm curious about how you think that I'm self entitled when I make no assertions about salary demands. I would have been more than happy to settle for $13.50 an hour, but I couldn't even apply because the applications required a massive amount of experience compared with what the jobs really required.
And yes, this is the fault of the H-1B visas, they can demand ridiculous amounts of education for the entry level jobs because they don't have to fill higher level positions, they can just avoid promoting people.
On the other hand, I'm guessing that you're an incompetent jackass if you think that it's possible to prove oneself when nobody will hire you. I'm sure it's probably possible. I highly doubt that references from non-IT workers really count much and maintaining one server for a few hours a year probably isn't going to count much either.
I used to want to get a job in IT, but all the entry level positions required 5 years or more of experience on top of the certifications, and that was just for jobs where they were having you read a support script.
I'm sure once you're in it's a lot easier, but I don't recall seeing a single opening back then where I could apply, not a single one. Ultimately, I gave up and got work in a different sector where it wasn't quite as bad, but entry level does not mean 5 years of experience, it means at most 1 year.
It also depends a great deal on the field of study and how well one can contribute. I'm looking to go back to school to pursue a masters and ultimately Ph.D. in teaching and curriculum, and there's still a huge amount of research that needs doing in that area. I wouldn't expect for us to have that subject area nailed down at all in the next 50 years. Sure, there's been tremendous advancement in the field over the last hundred years, but we're nowhere near where we're likely to get with that.
Literature is a bit different. I'm not really sure what use that doctorate is, I'm sure there is utility, I just don't personally know what it is. And while there are always new books being published and presumably there's still a lot to learn about how to write a novel, poetry and such, it doesn't have the kind of obvious applicability that some other fields do.
But, before one decides to pursue a Ph.D, they should be honest about whether or not this is a growing field and whether or not they can contribute enough to be competitive in that field. Getting a Ph.D. just for ones own improvement is certainly valid, but one should be aware of the costs associated with entering a field that isn't growing.
Because the power to create currency needs to be held by the government that controls the regulatory and tax structure. That's something that the Europeans are finding out the hard way. The reason being that if you have multiple nations using the same currency, but without a single tax and regulatory structure to cover it, you wind up with situations like this where somebody gets in trouble and everybody else has to help fix it.
I'm not really sure why Europeans have such a hard time with this. I don't personally like having to constantly subsidize the rural states, but they use the same currency and are in the same economic block as us, so we ultimately have to pay for their inability to fund their own lifestyles. It sucks, but that's how that ultimately works.