The WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) interface has evolved over several decades, via failures and successes in the software ecosystem, to a point where it has become a fairly good way of interacting with a computer. Touchscreen/tablet interfaces have also gone through significant evolution and many failed iterations to get to where they are today. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would be able to challenge the collective wisdom of decades in a single generation. Just as most genetic mutations are harmful, so most changes to a mature UI will make things worse. This is not to say that innovation shouldn't happen, but that it's likely to happen in the same way that it has in the past: through slow and incremental changes based upon repeated failures and small successes. Sure there are path dependency problems here, but they aren't going to be solved by dashing off an untested product and expecting everyone to fall in love with it. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Unity is terrible and it should go away.
Yes, at first I thought that they were referring to Uturuncu the Ubuntu variant, made by the Utah Runner's and Canoer's Association. It's a fork of Uturuntu, which was put out by the Utah Runners Association, and which is a subset of Utuntu, a distro made by the State of Utah. This is not to be confused with Utruncu, the Utrecht Cucumber Alliance's distro.
What distribution are we supposed to use now? Ubuntu has given up on its users, and is turning into an interface for the elderly, the disabled and netbook people.
I'd rather have my advanced UI that lets me do whatever I want with my workstation, thank you very much.
REAL Linux usesr code their own custom GUI from scratch. Or if you're lazy there's always Slackware.
You know all those posts on Slashdot that make fun of the legal profession for its ignorance of technology? Unsurprisingly, IT professionals are just as ignorant of law. Of course, it's not a bad thing to discuss laws, and the layman should indeed do so, but anyone who wishes to be taken seriously must take the time to educate himself in these matters.
First: You haven't clearly articulated what liability standard and what type of damages would be covered. Are you positing strict liability or negligence liabilty? Are you saying that software coders should be liable for indirect and consequential damages? These are legal terms of art with specific definitions.
Second: There are problems with causality here. To what degree is a malware exploit "caused" by bad code? What if that code is actually better than all other code ever created, but still vulnerable? What if there was no possible way to protect from that vulnerability while providing adequate functionality? In your example of the salesperson delivering an infected USB drive, there are many unanswered questions. What if the salesperson caused the malware to be on the USB drive while using it for personal use, unauthorized by the company? Is the company still liable? This question has an answer under current law, but what do you think the answer should be under your new law?
Third: This can already be done through private contract rights. It is for this reason that every software EULA or vendor contract explicitly disclaims warranties. The concept here is that the user must get insurance for their risks. If instead we make it mandatory for the vendor to assume liability, what we are really doing is shifting the burden of purchasing insurance from the user to the vendor. Usually, the law tries to shift this burden to the party who has the best ability to prevent damages, in order to minimize costs. One might think that the proper party to insure against this risk is the software vendor, but this is not clear. The vendor clearly has more ability to fix its own software, but it has almost no ability to determine what damages would be cause by badly-coded software. This is because the damages caused by bad software are mostly indirect and consequential damages. The user of the software (and their insurance company) is thus better able to judge the risk that will come from using a particular piece of software, because they know what sensitive or private information they have, and they can judge the consequences of its compromise. Finally, having software vendors function as insurers for their users would necessitate enormous litigation costs, rather than the comparatively smaller costs of carrying insurance for the users. False claims might also be a problem.
Software liability is a worthy topic, but this analysis is not nearly sophisticated enough to merit serious consideration.
There has long been a problem with "rogue states" allowing servers to host content illegal in the "civilized world." Now we think of this in terms of copyright and illegal porn, but in the future the US might be the "rogue state" allowing servers to host criticism of repressive regimes.
Yes. This is like saying "Americans want to spend $20 billion on cold fusion" when what you really mean is "Two American guys want somebody else to spend $20 billion on cold fusion." Too bad the idiotic headline spoils a potentially interesting idea. Assuming we could solve dozens of important logistical problems (e.g. space elevator), something like this might be feasible or even profitable.
If the botnet controllers have any brains, they will immediately sell off any bitcoins they mine to convert them into real money, thus driving down the price on the exchanges. The combined wealth of all people who believe in bitcoin is probably not increasing, as the low-hanging fruit has already been picked and all the enthusiasts have already spent all the money they can afford buying bitcoins. Thus introducing new bitcoins into the system will just dilute their value relative to the combined wealth of the community in dollars (or whatever other actual currency they use).
This argument would indeed be weak if people were using bitcoin as a currency, but instead they are holding it as an asset. In order to be a currency something must be able to be traded for goods and services. You cannot trade bitcoins for goods and services, except on a few websites. While a dollar is not backed by the gold standard, it is indeed backed by a worldwide economy which is willing to accept it in exchange for goods and services. Bitcoin has neither intrinsic value nor currency as a medium of exchange. When you buy bitcoins, you are buying the ability to purchase goods and services from those who accept bitcoins, which is a pitifully small number of people. If you are worried about worldwide currency collapse, bitcoin will not help you because the only useful thing you can buy with bitcoins is OTHER CURRENCIES.
This is exactly the problem with BitCoin: you can't actually use it as a currency. You have to liquidate it in order to spend it, meaning that you have to treat it as an asset rather than a currency. However, as an asset it has no intrinsic value because you can't do anything with it except trade it.
I think the main reason for the lack of grand, all-encompassing ideas is that these ideas are almost always scientifically wrong. Look at Marx, Freud, and really the whole history of philosophy: when you try to examine their claims scientifically, they fall apart or evaporate. These days, if someone makes a claim we say "Prove it: where's the data?" If they can't come up with something scientifically substantial, we ignore them. Our willingness to call bullshit may be due to our increased access to information, but it is mad to say that this is a bad thing.
kill yourself. Even taking care of one's basic needs uses a large amount of carbon. If you're not a scientist or engineer who is working on reducing the basic amount of carbon that our society needs to function, then you are part of the problem and are using (or causing the use of) too much carbon no matter what. Even if you personally live in some environmentally harmonious way on 60 acres in the middle of nowhere, overpopulation means that this is not a viable option for everyone on Earth. Also, in order to do that safely (without a personal army) you need the social and military apparatus that keeps you safe from thugs and madmen, and I'd wager that your share of this social benefit produces way more carbon than driving a car.
One of my favorite things about Slashdot is reading analyses of hoax articles by knowledgeable posters. It's fun to see a huckster get eviscerated by someone who knows what he's talking about. I've learned a lot about science this way, so keep the hoax Slashvertisements coming.
Yes, I am using a definition of "cyborg" that is very expansive, but which could be compatible with this article: that is, a person whose ordinary function or survival depends upon technology -- with technology being defined to include tool use. Random House Dictionary defines a cyborg as "a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device." This would fit the article's situation -- but also someone who uses a wheel chair. Merriam-Webster defines "cyborg" as "a bionic human," with bionic defined as "having normal biological capability or performance enhanced by or as if by electronic or electromechanical devices." This is more in line with what people consider a cyborg to be, i.e. having wires coming out of your head. However, the headline uses the term "cybernetic" which is of course way off when describing a prosthetic leg. The summary uses the phrase "mechanically augmented," which could describe anyone who wears shoes. My point was basically that we crossed the line of being "mechanically augmented" millions of years ago, and if that is your definition of a "cybernetic athelete" or "cyborg," then we are all cyborgs. So yes, I was riffing off of the flawed logic of the original summary, but I failed to point that out, so you are right there.
And yes, personally, I lack basic survival skills and would probably die if cut off from the social systems that take care of my basic needs. Modern agribusiness can't survive without banking, and I can't survive without agribusiness, so I depend upon banking for my survival. I am not talking about a hypothetical person who has 20 acres and knowledge of farming -- I am talking about what would happen to me personally if the world financial system completely and irredeemably collapsed tomorrow. In that case, I would most likely die swiftly because my skill set is very uncompetitive regarding basic survival, and there are about 20 million people within a 50 mile radius of me (I live in a large city). But at this point, we are talking about the niceties of hypotheticals.
My point is that if I have to "fashion something for protection from the materials available," I am already a cyborg because I depend on technology for survival. I could not survive if I were unable to use any items besides my naked body. It is literally impossible for a human to survive in freezing temperatures without clothing or tools of any kind -- try it if you don't believe me. Equally so, if I were unable to use any tools I would literally starve to death (I could imagine a possible world in which I were surrounded by enough wild fruit trees to sustain myself, but this is an imaginary situation, especially considering the current population). I could run to my place of employment from my home, but my employment consists exclusively of using tools to complete tasks. Really what we are talking about is tool use, and the distinction between tool use and cyborg enhancements is fuzzy at best. I also never claimed that I needed a smartphone for survival -- that claim was made (in a literal sense) as to warm clothing and social systems only, and I stand by it.
Few of us, these days, can survive without mechanical augmentation. Every day, I wear shoes, drive a car, use a smartphone, and wear a coat so that I don't freeze to death. In the case of warm clothing, I literally could not survive without these mechanical augmentations. I also literally depend upon complex social systems such as the banking system for my survival. I appreciate the fact that this individual has had a part of his body replaced, rather than simply adding external functionality such as shoes, but it is basically a variation on the same thing.
To me, the salient point has always been that we are doomed to a tiny fraction of possible experience. In that sense, the poem is inapposite here since it does not speak to the relative merits of one path over the other. The point is not that one path is superior to another, but that we always lose something by making any choice. Here is an interpretation of the poem by XKCD: http://xkcd.com/584/
Yes, he states that "we grow by a factor of ten every hundred years," but that has only been true for the recent past and the trend is slowing. His points about thermodynamics seem obviously true, but the main thrust of the article depends upon assumptions about human choices that are unrealistic. Basically, he is playing to the crowd that believes that geeks are doomed because everyone is stupid and we are the only enlightened ones. I happen to believe that nobody should be trusted outside her field of expertise. Making a point about thermodynamics does not entitle us to leap to conclusions about economic policy and eugenics.
This is not an appropriate example for two main reasons.
1) You seem to assume that all the money added to the debt is discretionary spending (i.e. mink coats and graphics cards), rather than fixed living expenses, and that the couple can stop adding debt without any adverse consequences. If this were the case, then stopping the spending would fix the problem. However, your example would also admit of a more complex (and more likely) situation. Let me offer a backstory, as you have not provided one: the family had two wage earners, the husband and wife, and two children. The husband loses his job because of the recession. Suddenly, they cannot afford their mortgage and their living expenses. They have to borrow to pay their bills, which means they are bankrupt -- unless they take some action to either increase their revenue or cut their expenses. They have decided to move to a more affordable house, and the husband is looking for a job, but both goals will take months to complete. In their current state, they cannot afford paying their mortgage or feeding their children, so they borrow to finance the cost. Then one day the wife says she is going to stop giving the husband money for food until they have paid down their debt. The husband objects that their children will starve, they will get thrown out of their house, and their credit will be ruined. The wife makes the arguments you outline above. The husband responds that it is necessary for them to borrow to pay for their fixed costs of living until they can reduce them and increase revenue. The wife responds that, because the husband has lost his job due to the recession, his children deserve to starve and his credit deserves to be ruined. What the wife has failed to realize is that there are times when borrowing to finance a period of transition is reasonable and a good idea.
2) You do not consider the possibility of raising revenue. Individuals and families do not raise revenue the same way the government does. Individuals raise revenue by working/trading, while governments raise revenue by taxation. In a family, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to raise revenue. For a government, revenue can be raised nearly instantly through taxation. This is the main reason why your example is inapposite: for a family, spending cuts are often the only realistic way to deal with debt, but for a government, revenue increases are also an option. In my example above, the family has a reasonable expectation of a revenue increase in the near future (the husband getting a job), so it makes sense to borrow rather than let one's children starve and one's credit be destroyed. Any rational family would want to raise revenue in addition to cutting spending if this was a possibility.
I was referring to a post that I wish to be viewable only by a certain subset of my contacts which includes a particular individual or individuals -- this was not clear from my initial post. Obviously, if I just want to send my friend a private email I can do that. The whole purpose of Google+ circles is to enable fine control over who sees your posts, but I just don't think that it will scale well. Perhaps a more useful example would involve forgetting that someone with whom you do not want to share a particular post is a member of the circle to which you post. The concept of circles as a privacy tool depends upon our capacity to manage them properly, which I don't think is reasonably possible. This will lead not only to wasted time, but to unintended sharing through a false sense of privacy that depends on the user's imperfect brain. If I want to post "My boss is a ********" and not have my boss see it, I have to choose a circle without my boss -- "Friends," for example. This is fairly easy, but I also have to click "disable reshare" so that nobody in my friends circle will thoughtlessly reshare the post with a circle that includes my boss. If I forget to check that box, I could get in a lot of trouble. On Facebook or Twitter, I simply wouldn't post such a comment, but Google+ encourages more recklessness without providing robust safeguards. If that's intentional, it's a pretty clever way to get people to share even more private information than Facebook or Twitter can see.
I am immensely interested in BitCoin in terms of group psychology and markets. It is useless as a currency, but it is a completely fascinating make-believe market in which people are losing real dollars.
Okay, but I still don't understand how or why bitcoin will achieve this goal, and whether it has any chance of succeeding. It is a fine thing to want to do good for the world, but good intention is not sufficient to effect a good result. So much for general objections.
Now, on to specifics. Credit card companies are not in charge of currency: they provide consumer credit, which is a service that uses currency. If they were using bitcoins, credit cards would function exactly the same as they do now. A better analogy would be US dollars vs. bitcoin, which compares currency with currency. However, most people do not hate US dollars: in fact, they want as many US dollars as they can get. As for step 2, here are all of the things I like about cash, and whether or not they apply to bitcoin:
1) I can use it to purchase goods and services easily, anywhere and from anyone. No 2) It has a stable value. No 3) It smells good. No
That's it! Those are the only things I like about cash. I know that other people may care about other things, but that's really all I care about. When I can go to the cash-only Italian restaurant on the corner and pay in bitcoins, call me.
Slashdot Mirror
The WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) interface has evolved over several decades, via failures and successes in the software ecosystem, to a point where it has become a fairly good way of interacting with a computer. Touchscreen/tablet interfaces have also gone through significant evolution and many failed iterations to get to where they are today. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would be able to challenge the collective wisdom of decades in a single generation. Just as most genetic mutations are harmful, so most changes to a mature UI will make things worse. This is not to say that innovation shouldn't happen, but that it's likely to happen in the same way that it has in the past: through slow and incremental changes based upon repeated failures and small successes. Sure there are path dependency problems here, but they aren't going to be solved by dashing off an untested product and expecting everyone to fall in love with it. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Unity is terrible and it should go away.
Yes, at first I thought that they were referring to Uturuncu the Ubuntu variant, made by the Utah Runner's and Canoer's Association. It's a fork of Uturuntu, which was put out by the Utah Runners Association, and which is a subset of Utuntu, a distro made by the State of Utah. This is not to be confused with Utruncu, the Utrecht Cucumber Alliance's distro.
What distribution are we supposed to use now?
Ubuntu has given up on its users, and is turning into an interface for the elderly, the disabled and netbook people.
I'd rather have my advanced UI that lets me do whatever I want with my workstation, thank you very much.
REAL Linux usesr code their own custom GUI from scratch. Or if you're lazy there's always Slackware.
You know all those posts on Slashdot that make fun of the legal profession for its ignorance of technology? Unsurprisingly, IT professionals are just as ignorant of law. Of course, it's not a bad thing to discuss laws, and the layman should indeed do so, but anyone who wishes to be taken seriously must take the time to educate himself in these matters.
First: You haven't clearly articulated what liability standard and what type of damages would be covered. Are you positing strict liability or negligence liabilty? Are you saying that software coders should be liable for indirect and consequential damages? These are legal terms of art with specific definitions.
Second: There are problems with causality here. To what degree is a malware exploit "caused" by bad code? What if that code is actually better than all other code ever created, but still vulnerable? What if there was no possible way to protect from that vulnerability while providing adequate functionality? In your example of the salesperson delivering an infected USB drive, there are many unanswered questions. What if the salesperson caused the malware to be on the USB drive while using it for personal use, unauthorized by the company? Is the company still liable? This question has an answer under current law, but what do you think the answer should be under your new law?
Third: This can already be done through private contract rights. It is for this reason that every software EULA or vendor contract explicitly disclaims warranties. The concept here is that the user must get insurance for their risks. If instead we make it mandatory for the vendor to assume liability, what we are really doing is shifting the burden of purchasing insurance from the user to the vendor. Usually, the law tries to shift this burden to the party who has the best ability to prevent damages, in order to minimize costs. One might think that the proper party to insure against this risk is the software vendor, but this is not clear. The vendor clearly has more ability to fix its own software, but it has almost no ability to determine what damages would be cause by badly-coded software. This is because the damages caused by bad software are mostly indirect and consequential damages. The user of the software (and their insurance company) is thus better able to judge the risk that will come from using a particular piece of software, because they know what sensitive or private information they have, and they can judge the consequences of its compromise. Finally, having software vendors function as insurers for their users would necessitate enormous litigation costs, rather than the comparatively smaller costs of carrying insurance for the users. False claims might also be a problem.
Software liability is a worthy topic, but this analysis is not nearly sophisticated enough to merit serious consideration.
There has long been a problem with "rogue states" allowing servers to host content illegal in the "civilized world." Now we think of this in terms of copyright and illegal porn, but in the future the US might be the "rogue state" allowing servers to host criticism of repressive regimes.
Yes. This is like saying "Americans want to spend $20 billion on cold fusion" when what you really mean is "Two American guys want somebody else to spend $20 billion on cold fusion." Too bad the idiotic headline spoils a potentially interesting idea. Assuming we could solve dozens of important logistical problems (e.g. space elevator), something like this might be feasible or even profitable.
If the botnet controllers have any brains, they will immediately sell off any bitcoins they mine to convert them into real money, thus driving down the price on the exchanges. The combined wealth of all people who believe in bitcoin is probably not increasing, as the low-hanging fruit has already been picked and all the enthusiasts have already spent all the money they can afford buying bitcoins. Thus introducing new bitcoins into the system will just dilute their value relative to the combined wealth of the community in dollars (or whatever other actual currency they use).
This argument would indeed be weak if people were using bitcoin as a currency, but instead they are holding it as an asset. In order to be a currency something must be able to be traded for goods and services. You cannot trade bitcoins for goods and services, except on a few websites. While a dollar is not backed by the gold standard, it is indeed backed by a worldwide economy which is willing to accept it in exchange for goods and services. Bitcoin has neither intrinsic value nor currency as a medium of exchange. When you buy bitcoins, you are buying the ability to purchase goods and services from those who accept bitcoins, which is a pitifully small number of people. If you are worried about worldwide currency collapse, bitcoin will not help you because the only useful thing you can buy with bitcoins is OTHER CURRENCIES.
This is exactly the problem with BitCoin: you can't actually use it as a currency. You have to liquidate it in order to spend it, meaning that you have to treat it as an asset rather than a currency. However, as an asset it has no intrinsic value because you can't do anything with it except trade it.
I think the main reason for the lack of grand, all-encompassing ideas is that these ideas are almost always scientifically wrong. Look at Marx, Freud, and really the whole history of philosophy: when you try to examine their claims scientifically, they fall apart or evaporate. These days, if someone makes a claim we say "Prove it: where's the data?" If they can't come up with something scientifically substantial, we ignore them. Our willingness to call bullshit may be due to our increased access to information, but it is mad to say that this is a bad thing.
kill yourself. Even taking care of one's basic needs uses a large amount of carbon. If you're not a scientist or engineer who is working on reducing the basic amount of carbon that our society needs to function, then you are part of the problem and are using (or causing the use of) too much carbon no matter what. Even if you personally live in some environmentally harmonious way on 60 acres in the middle of nowhere, overpopulation means that this is not a viable option for everyone on Earth. Also, in order to do that safely (without a personal army) you need the social and military apparatus that keeps you safe from thugs and madmen, and I'd wager that your share of this social benefit produces way more carbon than driving a car.
One of my favorite things about Slashdot is reading analyses of hoax articles by knowledgeable posters. It's fun to see a huckster get eviscerated by someone who knows what he's talking about. I've learned a lot about science this way, so keep the hoax Slashvertisements coming.
Just have a friend hit you in the back of the head with a baseball bat.
...They can design a helium fuel tank to not rupture in an explosive manner at highway speeds in a car...
The main problem in designing a non-explosive helium fuel tank is figuring out how to use helium as fuel.
Tee hee.
Yes, I am using a definition of "cyborg" that is very expansive, but which could be compatible with this article: that is, a person whose ordinary function or survival depends upon technology -- with technology being defined to include tool use. Random House Dictionary defines a cyborg as "a person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device." This would fit the article's situation -- but also someone who uses a wheel chair. Merriam-Webster defines "cyborg" as "a bionic human," with bionic defined as "having normal biological capability or performance enhanced by or as if by electronic or electromechanical devices." This is more in line with what people consider a cyborg to be, i.e. having wires coming out of your head. However, the headline uses the term "cybernetic" which is of course way off when describing a prosthetic leg. The summary uses the phrase "mechanically augmented," which could describe anyone who wears shoes. My point was basically that we crossed the line of being "mechanically augmented" millions of years ago, and if that is your definition of a "cybernetic athelete" or "cyborg," then we are all cyborgs. So yes, I was riffing off of the flawed logic of the original summary, but I failed to point that out, so you are right there.
And yes, personally, I lack basic survival skills and would probably die if cut off from the social systems that take care of my basic needs. Modern agribusiness can't survive without banking, and I can't survive without agribusiness, so I depend upon banking for my survival. I am not talking about a hypothetical person who has 20 acres and knowledge of farming -- I am talking about what would happen to me personally if the world financial system completely and irredeemably collapsed tomorrow. In that case, I would most likely die swiftly because my skill set is very uncompetitive regarding basic survival, and there are about 20 million people within a 50 mile radius of me (I live in a large city). But at this point, we are talking about the niceties of hypotheticals.
My point is that if I have to "fashion something for protection from the materials available," I am already a cyborg because I depend on technology for survival. I could not survive if I were unable to use any items besides my naked body. It is literally impossible for a human to survive in freezing temperatures without clothing or tools of any kind -- try it if you don't believe me. Equally so, if I were unable to use any tools I would literally starve to death (I could imagine a possible world in which I were surrounded by enough wild fruit trees to sustain myself, but this is an imaginary situation, especially considering the current population). I could run to my place of employment from my home, but my employment consists exclusively of using tools to complete tasks. Really what we are talking about is tool use, and the distinction between tool use and cyborg enhancements is fuzzy at best. I also never claimed that I needed a smartphone for survival -- that claim was made (in a literal sense) as to warm clothing and social systems only, and I stand by it.
Few of us, these days, can survive without mechanical augmentation. Every day, I wear shoes, drive a car, use a smartphone, and wear a coat so that I don't freeze to death. In the case of warm clothing, I literally could not survive without these mechanical augmentations. I also literally depend upon complex social systems such as the banking system for my survival. I appreciate the fact that this individual has had a part of his body replaced, rather than simply adding external functionality such as shoes, but it is basically a variation on the same thing.
To me, the salient point has always been that we are doomed to a tiny fraction of possible experience. In that sense, the poem is inapposite here since it does not speak to the relative merits of one path over the other. The point is not that one path is superior to another, but that we always lose something by making any choice. Here is an interpretation of the poem by XKCD: http://xkcd.com/584/
Yes, he states that "we grow by a factor of ten every hundred years," but that has only been true for the recent past and the trend is slowing. His points about thermodynamics seem obviously true, but the main thrust of the article depends upon assumptions about human choices that are unrealistic. Basically, he is playing to the crowd that believes that geeks are doomed because everyone is stupid and we are the only enlightened ones. I happen to believe that nobody should be trusted outside her field of expertise. Making a point about thermodynamics does not entitle us to leap to conclusions about economic policy and eugenics.
This is not an appropriate example for two main reasons.
1) You seem to assume that all the money added to the debt is discretionary spending (i.e. mink coats and graphics cards), rather than fixed living expenses, and that the couple can stop adding debt without any adverse consequences. If this were the case, then stopping the spending would fix the problem. However, your example would also admit of a more complex (and more likely) situation. Let me offer a backstory, as you have not provided one: the family had two wage earners, the husband and wife, and two children. The husband loses his job because of the recession. Suddenly, they cannot afford their mortgage and their living expenses. They have to borrow to pay their bills, which means they are bankrupt -- unless they take some action to either increase their revenue or cut their expenses. They have decided to move to a more affordable house, and the husband is looking for a job, but both goals will take months to complete. In their current state, they cannot afford paying their mortgage or feeding their children, so they borrow to finance the cost. Then one day the wife says she is going to stop giving the husband money for food until they have paid down their debt. The husband objects that their children will starve, they will get thrown out of their house, and their credit will be ruined. The wife makes the arguments you outline above. The husband responds that it is necessary for them to borrow to pay for their fixed costs of living until they can reduce them and increase revenue. The wife responds that, because the husband has lost his job due to the recession, his children deserve to starve and his credit deserves to be ruined. What the wife has failed to realize is that there are times when borrowing to finance a period of transition is reasonable and a good idea.
2) You do not consider the possibility of raising revenue. Individuals and families do not raise revenue the same way the government does. Individuals raise revenue by working/trading, while governments raise revenue by taxation. In a family, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to raise revenue. For a government, revenue can be raised nearly instantly through taxation. This is the main reason why your example is inapposite: for a family, spending cuts are often the only realistic way to deal with debt, but for a government, revenue increases are also an option. In my example above, the family has a reasonable expectation of a revenue increase in the near future (the husband getting a job), so it makes sense to borrow rather than let one's children starve and one's credit be destroyed. Any rational family would want to raise revenue in addition to cutting spending if this was a possibility.
I was referring to a post that I wish to be viewable only by a certain subset of my contacts which includes a particular individual or individuals -- this was not clear from my initial post. Obviously, if I just want to send my friend a private email I can do that. The whole purpose of Google+ circles is to enable fine control over who sees your posts, but I just don't think that it will scale well. Perhaps a more useful example would involve forgetting that someone with whom you do not want to share a particular post is a member of the circle to which you post. The concept of circles as a privacy tool depends upon our capacity to manage them properly, which I don't think is reasonably possible. This will lead not only to wasted time, but to unintended sharing through a false sense of privacy that depends on the user's imperfect brain. If I want to post "My boss is a ********" and not have my boss see it, I have to choose a circle without my boss -- "Friends," for example. This is fairly easy, but I also have to click "disable reshare" so that nobody in my friends circle will thoughtlessly reshare the post with a circle that includes my boss. If I forget to check that box, I could get in a lot of trouble. On Facebook or Twitter, I simply wouldn't post such a comment, but Google+ encourages more recklessness without providing robust safeguards. If that's intentional, it's a pretty clever way to get people to share even more private information than Facebook or Twitter can see.
If you want some arguments for growth, Becker and Posner discussed this a while ago. Becker came out more strongly for population growth.
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/05/does-the-earth-have-room-for-10-billion-people-posner.html
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/05/yes-the-earth-will-have-ample-resources-for-10-billion-people-becker.html
My school's slogan for spirit week was "dinosaurs are a social construct." It's true!
I am immensely interested in BitCoin in terms of group psychology and markets. It is useless as a currency, but it is a completely fascinating make-believe market in which people are losing real dollars.
Okay, but I still don't understand how or why bitcoin will achieve this goal, and whether it has any chance of succeeding. It is a fine thing to want to do good for the world, but good intention is not sufficient to effect a good result. So much for general objections.
Now, on to specifics. Credit card companies are not in charge of currency: they provide consumer credit, which is a service that uses currency. If they were using bitcoins, credit cards would function exactly the same as they do now. A better analogy would be US dollars vs. bitcoin, which compares currency with currency. However, most people do not hate US dollars: in fact, they want as many US dollars as they can get. As for step 2, here are all of the things I like about cash, and whether or not they apply to bitcoin:
1) I can use it to purchase goods and services easily, anywhere and from anyone. No
2) It has a stable value. No
3) It smells good. No
That's it! Those are the only things I like about cash. I know that other people may care about other things, but that's really all I care about. When I can go to the cash-only Italian restaurant on the corner and pay in bitcoins, call me.