Im not sure I (or Ben, for that matter) would qualify "being anonymous on the internet" as "Essential Liberty"
Good thing the supreme court has ruled that the ability to speak anonymously is fundamental to freedom of speech, and represents an important protection against tyranny of the majority:
Finally, I am pretty sure Dr. Franklin would agree that anonymous speech is important, given that he published "Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer" anonymously.
Indeed: gold is a stupid form of currency. It stopped being useful when the population exploded, since there is no way we could mine enough gold to keep pace with population growth and the deflationary crisis that would have ensued had we continued to use gold as currency would have been a disaster. It is better to use gold and other precious metals for industrial purposes, creating useful things than minting coins out of it.
Why couldn't they be exchanged for goods and services?
Suppose that you live in the United States and that you run a business here. You are required, by law, to pay your taxes, and the US government does not accept Bitcoin for tax purposes. Therefore, at some point, you must get dollars if you want to continue to legally operate your business, and most business owners are law abiding citizens (or strive to be). If you could not exchange Bitcoin for dollars, you would not accept it for payment, unless you were getting enough customers who paid you in dollars to cover your taxes and other debts, and likewise your employees would need to receive enough dollars to pay their taxes, and the people you buy your supplies from, and so forth.
Sure, you could use Bitcoin to pay for things, but people will need to get fiat currencies at some point. Nobody would be able to go "Bitcoin-only" unless their government was accepting Bitcoin for tax payments, in addition to their banks accepting Bitcoin for loan repayment, courts being willing to deal in Bitcoin, etc. If you could never exchange Bitcoin for another currency, people would be forced to put a quota on the number of Bitcoins they are willing to accept, and then only accept their nation's currency (or a currency that can be exchange for what their government issues) after that.
As far as being otherwise "worthless" - the same is true of US dollars with one critical distinction: the value of bitcoins is set by the market, whereas the value of US dollars is dictated by fiat
Actually, the value of the dollar is also set by the market. Nobody forces shop owners to set specific prices. What really differentiates a fiat currency from Bitcoin is that fiat currencies are backed by a government, and citizens living under that government are compelled by law to obtain the government-issued currency (to pay taxes and settle other debts). Bitcoin's only advantage is the ability to make peer to peer electronic transfers, and if you take the time to look at the research on digital cash you'll see that there are plenty of protocols that accomplish that goal (but which are not deployed) without suffering from Bitcoin's numerous drawbacks.
By contrast, the value of a bitcoin is decided only by the parties to a trade.
Only because they know that if they needed to, they could exchange their Bitcoin tokens for other currencies.
nobody can make more of them without incurring the expense to mine them.
Which is a bad thing, since it makes it encourages deflation and makes it very hard to prevent a deflationary crisis. This makes Bitcoin loans a ludicrously bad idea, since they would be very difficult to pay off, and like it or not credit is a very important part of an economy (this has been the case for centuries).
"sound money" like gold or silver.
Which are stupid to use as currencies, since so much effort must be spent mining the metals, and the metals could be used for better things (industrial uses).
It astonishes me how much people love to rip on bitcoin without understanding really the first thing about its purpose.
It's almost as bad as creating a currency on the premise that decades of work on monetary theory and economics are completely wrong.
The concept of a non centralized electronic form of money could effectively remove the ability of government and banks to tax people through the issue of debt & through inflation. it would remove the central authority and control authorizing and monitoring transactions.
If we ignore the fact that most of the value of a currency is derived from its necessity for paying taxes and settling government debts, then sure, that statement is accurate. Except that in doing so, we are ignoring the very thing that makes money valuable. If Bitcoin could not be exchanged for other currencies, it would be worthless; it's value comes only from the fact that you can ultimately "cash out."
So I am of the opinion that there are some very wealthy and powerful people paying Slashdot to disparage Bitcoin.
I am a graduate student; trust me, I am neither wealthy nor powerful, I am just someone who took the time to learn about modern monetary theory. Bitcoin is not going to topple any governments, it is never going to replace fiat currency and it is probably going to lose a lot of value because of this news.
How dare you speak that kind of blasphemy against web 2.0! Do you not see how using javascript for everything is improving the user experience and making the world a better place?!
Imagine if we had the technology to take one book, and make copies of pages from that book, so that an entire class of students could somehow share the library's copy. It would be like a machine that took a photo of a page, then printed a copy of it. I bet there would be enough demand for such a thing that you could build a Fortune 500 company just producing them...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocopier
The only downside may be that you can't mark up the book while studying.
...and that you cannot photocopy pages of it, and that it may be taken from you if there is a copyright dispute, and that if you need it one day longer than the rental period (e.g. a student who needs an extension on a final project) you will be forced to spend more money.
Libraries have photocopier machines for a reason. You can photocopy parts of textbooks that you need for a course, if the library has only one copy of a book that hundreds of students need. What Amazon is providing is a trap, designed to force students to spend their money on something they will be forbidden to look at after a few months, unless they are willing to pay more. On the whole, students will wind up spending more than they would have if they had just used their libraries' photocopiers, unless the price per sheet is absurdly high.
It is neither illegal nor more expensive for the majority of undergraduate courses. Most courses only cover part of a textbook, and given the tremendous cost of some books (over $200 in some cases), you would need to find a photocopier that charged dollars per page before it became too expensive. Do you think that libraries keep photocopiers around because using those machines is a crime? It is fair use and was once a common thing for students to do.
It is frequently the case that some material is not covered in as much depth in a course as I really need, particularly more advanced or obscure material. For example, I took an undergrad theory of computation course and an undergrad algorithms course, but neither one went into much depth about the Cook-Levin theorem, other than mentioning what it is; I found myself consulting the textbook long after the courses were over when I needed to know more about the result. I also discovered that my graduate computer architecture textbook actually referenced the undergraduate version of the textbook, including sections that were not even covered during the course.
I routinely find myself referencing textbooks from courses that I took years ago. If students cannot afford their books, university libraries should provide copies; students should not be at the mercy of Amazon or any other company.
You left out what may be the worst offender among the TLAs: the Drug Enforcement Administration. The scale of attacks on our rights by the DEA exceeds pretty much any other government agency. The TSA attacks the dignity of America travellers; the DEA routinely sends paramilitary units into homes, rifles drawn, and imprisons or kills the residents. The DEA routinely seizes money and property, and uses the proceeds from those seizures to fund its own operations. The DEA can even declare a substances to be illegal without any congressional approval, and then arrest people for possession of that substance (let me reiterate: the DEA can arrest you for violating laws that the DEA can create without any democratic process).
There is outrage at the TSA's actions by the media, both from left wing and right wing sources, as well as in state legislatures and in congress. Yet we stand by while the DEA is permitted to commit even worse abuses of American rights, and the media is largely silent or even supportive of what the DEA is doing.
We should learn our lesson from the dozen or so times that the US has created a group of people who hate us. We use people as proxies then leave them with a pile of rubble, we push for policies that are favorable to American businesses but which ruin whole countries, we fight wars against countries that never posed a threat, we give weapons to oppressive governments, we throw our support behind tyrants and dictators, etc. We need to stop doing all of the above, then clean up the massive mess that we have made, and then we will return to our position as the country that brings people hope.
As for airport security, can you cite any cases where the TSA's backscatter or groping approach has actually prevented an attack? I seem to recall a test that indicated that the TSA missed the majority of knives and even a large fractions of guns at those checkpoints. I also get the feeling that the bomb sniffing dogs, intelligence analysis, locked cabin doors, and in-the-air security (e.g. tackling people who try to set their shoes on fire) are doing many orders of magnitude more to protect travellers.
Unfortunately, travelling by plane is fundamental to modern life for a lot of people. It used to be that a business trip across the continent meant a few days travelling (e.g. by train); now it is basically expected that someone will only be travelling for a few hours to do work thousands of miles away. Boycotting planes for personal travel is fine, if you don't mind restricting your vacations somewhat, but for people who need to travel as part of their job, such a boycott is not feasible.
Right now, the TSA gets away with its attacks on our rights, freedoms, and dignity because flying is a necessity for a large number of people. What needs to be recognized is that these scans and gropings are not voluntary for many travellers: many people are faced with a choice between flying and not advancing their careers, or even between flying and losing their jobs. The fact that the TSA has the authority to forbid people from flying if they demand dignity and respect is what is outrageous here.
We only have a finite amount of money available to spend on the military. Maintaining nuclear weapons is a very expensive process, and when your nuclear arsenal could destroy the entire world multiple times over the question becomes, "Could that money be better spent on conventional weapons, ships, airplanes, etc.?" The majority of military engagements that the US expects to fight over the next few decades are going to be non-nuclear, and we will need plenty of money for guns, ammunition, fuel, vehicles, armor, and all the coordination and planning that a modern military operation involves.
I would read that statement as saying that looking forward, military intelligence analysts believe that the United States is going to be engaged in military operations that call for conventional weapons, guided missiles, drone attacks, and so forth, and that we are spending money maintaining more nuclear weapons than we actually need to remain secure.
You also don't have an explicit right to take a train or drive a car. How would you like to lose your ability to travel freely by those modes of transportation too?
The theory is that they can convince people to stop exercising their rights by groping them or hitting them with a backscatter machine if they choose to exercise their rights. That was the purpose of the security theater all along: to wear people down and make them weary of trying to defend their rights against the government onslaught.
Slashdot Mirror
Im not sure I (or Ben, for that matter) would qualify "being anonymous on the internet" as "Essential Liberty"
Good thing the supreme court has ruled that the ability to speak anonymously is fundamental to freedom of speech, and represents an important protection against tyranny of the majority:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntyre_v._Ohio_Elections_Commission
The courts have ruled that this extends to online communication:
Finally, I am pretty sure Dr. Franklin would agree that anonymous speech is important, given that he published "Abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer" anonymously.
Why are the prison control systems connected to the Internet? Who thought that was a good idea?
DOS is still being used in some places...
I believe this was first noticed in 1993.
Indeed: gold is a stupid form of currency. It stopped being useful when the population exploded, since there is no way we could mine enough gold to keep pace with population growth and the deflationary crisis that would have ensued had we continued to use gold as currency would have been a disaster. It is better to use gold and other precious metals for industrial purposes, creating useful things than minting coins out of it.
Why couldn't they be exchanged for goods and services?
Suppose that you live in the United States and that you run a business here. You are required, by law, to pay your taxes, and the US government does not accept Bitcoin for tax purposes. Therefore, at some point, you must get dollars if you want to continue to legally operate your business, and most business owners are law abiding citizens (or strive to be). If you could not exchange Bitcoin for dollars, you would not accept it for payment, unless you were getting enough customers who paid you in dollars to cover your taxes and other debts, and likewise your employees would need to receive enough dollars to pay their taxes, and the people you buy your supplies from, and so forth.
Sure, you could use Bitcoin to pay for things, but people will need to get fiat currencies at some point. Nobody would be able to go "Bitcoin-only" unless their government was accepting Bitcoin for tax payments, in addition to their banks accepting Bitcoin for loan repayment, courts being willing to deal in Bitcoin, etc. If you could never exchange Bitcoin for another currency, people would be forced to put a quota on the number of Bitcoins they are willing to accept, and then only accept their nation's currency (or a currency that can be exchange for what their government issues) after that.
As far as being otherwise "worthless" - the same is true of US dollars with one critical distinction: the value of bitcoins is set by the market, whereas the value of US dollars is dictated by fiat
Actually, the value of the dollar is also set by the market. Nobody forces shop owners to set specific prices. What really differentiates a fiat currency from Bitcoin is that fiat currencies are backed by a government, and citizens living under that government are compelled by law to obtain the government-issued currency (to pay taxes and settle other debts). Bitcoin's only advantage is the ability to make peer to peer electronic transfers, and if you take the time to look at the research on digital cash you'll see that there are plenty of protocols that accomplish that goal (but which are not deployed) without suffering from Bitcoin's numerous drawbacks.
By contrast, the value of a bitcoin is decided only by the parties to a trade.
Only because they know that if they needed to, they could exchange their Bitcoin tokens for other currencies.
nobody can make more of them without incurring the expense to mine them.
Which is a bad thing, since it makes it encourages deflation and makes it very hard to prevent a deflationary crisis. This makes Bitcoin loans a ludicrously bad idea, since they would be very difficult to pay off, and like it or not credit is a very important part of an economy (this has been the case for centuries).
"sound money" like gold or silver.
Which are stupid to use as currencies, since so much effort must be spent mining the metals, and the metals could be used for better things (industrial uses).
It astonishes me how much people love to rip on bitcoin without understanding really the first thing about its purpose.
It's almost as bad as creating a currency on the premise that decades of work on monetary theory and economics are completely wrong.
Satoshi and the other devs had absolutely nothing to gain in Bitcoin. If you think they are using it to generate cash you are probably incorrect.
Hm...funny how so many of the early adopters cashed out their Bitcoins and got a huge pay day.
Nobody can pay their bills or taxes with Bitcoin, its value is entirely dependent on the ability to exchange Bitcoin for other currencies.
The concept of a non centralized electronic form of money could effectively remove the ability of government and banks to tax people through the issue of debt & through inflation. it would remove the central authority and control authorizing and monitoring transactions.
If we ignore the fact that most of the value of a currency is derived from its necessity for paying taxes and settling government debts, then sure, that statement is accurate. Except that in doing so, we are ignoring the very thing that makes money valuable. If Bitcoin could not be exchanged for other currencies, it would be worthless; it's value comes only from the fact that you can ultimately "cash out."
So I am of the opinion that there are some very wealthy and powerful people paying Slashdot to disparage Bitcoin.
I am a graduate student; trust me, I am neither wealthy nor powerful, I am just someone who took the time to learn about modern monetary theory. Bitcoin is not going to topple any governments, it is never going to replace fiat currency and it is probably going to lose a lot of value because of this news.
How dare you speak that kind of blasphemy against web 2.0! Do you not see how using javascript for everything is improving the user experience and making the world a better place?!
Imagine if we had the technology to take one book, and make copies of pages from that book, so that an entire class of students could somehow share the library's copy. It would be like a machine that took a photo of a page, then printed a copy of it. I bet there would be enough demand for such a thing that you could build a Fortune 500 company just producing them... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocopier
The only downside may be that you can't mark up the book while studying.
Libraries have photocopier machines for a reason. You can photocopy parts of textbooks that you need for a course, if the library has only one copy of a book that hundreds of students need. What Amazon is providing is a trap, designed to force students to spend their money on something they will be forbidden to look at after a few months, unless they are willing to pay more. On the whole, students will wind up spending more than they would have if they had just used their libraries' photocopiers, unless the price per sheet is absurdly high.
It is neither illegal nor more expensive for the majority of undergraduate courses. Most courses only cover part of a textbook, and given the tremendous cost of some books (over $200 in some cases), you would need to find a photocopier that charged dollars per page before it became too expensive. Do you think that libraries keep photocopiers around because using those machines is a crime? It is fair use and was once a common thing for students to do.
there is no reason that you can't re-rent the book for the minimum 30 days again in the future
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_print_books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photocopier
I have yet to find a library that does not have at least one of those machines.
It is frequently the case that some material is not covered in as much depth in a course as I really need, particularly more advanced or obscure material. For example, I took an undergrad theory of computation course and an undergrad algorithms course, but neither one went into much depth about the Cook-Levin theorem, other than mentioning what it is; I found myself consulting the textbook long after the courses were over when I needed to know more about the result. I also discovered that my graduate computer architecture textbook actually referenced the undergraduate version of the textbook, including sections that were not even covered during the course.
I routinely find myself referencing textbooks from courses that I took years ago. If students cannot afford their books, university libraries should provide copies; students should not be at the mercy of Amazon or any other company.
Typical users still don't know how to use bittorrent.
You left out what may be the worst offender among the TLAs: the Drug Enforcement Administration. The scale of attacks on our rights by the DEA exceeds pretty much any other government agency. The TSA attacks the dignity of America travellers; the DEA routinely sends paramilitary units into homes, rifles drawn, and imprisons or kills the residents. The DEA routinely seizes money and property, and uses the proceeds from those seizures to fund its own operations. The DEA can even declare a substances to be illegal without any congressional approval, and then arrest people for possession of that substance (let me reiterate: the DEA can arrest you for violating laws that the DEA can create without any democratic process).
There is outrage at the TSA's actions by the media, both from left wing and right wing sources, as well as in state legislatures and in congress. Yet we stand by while the DEA is permitted to commit even worse abuses of American rights, and the media is largely silent or even supportive of what the DEA is doing.
We should learn our lesson from the dozen or so times that the US has created a group of people who hate us. We use people as proxies then leave them with a pile of rubble, we push for policies that are favorable to American businesses but which ruin whole countries, we fight wars against countries that never posed a threat, we give weapons to oppressive governments, we throw our support behind tyrants and dictators, etc. We need to stop doing all of the above, then clean up the massive mess that we have made, and then we will return to our position as the country that brings people hope.
As for airport security, can you cite any cases where the TSA's backscatter or groping approach has actually prevented an attack? I seem to recall a test that indicated that the TSA missed the majority of knives and even a large fractions of guns at those checkpoints. I also get the feeling that the bomb sniffing dogs, intelligence analysis, locked cabin doors, and in-the-air security (e.g. tackling people who try to set their shoes on fire) are doing many orders of magnitude more to protect travellers.
boycotted air travel
Unfortunately, travelling by plane is fundamental to modern life for a lot of people. It used to be that a business trip across the continent meant a few days travelling (e.g. by train); now it is basically expected that someone will only be travelling for a few hours to do work thousands of miles away. Boycotting planes for personal travel is fine, if you don't mind restricting your vacations somewhat, but for people who need to travel as part of their job, such a boycott is not feasible.
Right now, the TSA gets away with its attacks on our rights, freedoms, and dignity because flying is a necessity for a large number of people. What needs to be recognized is that these scans and gropings are not voluntary for many travellers: many people are faced with a choice between flying and not advancing their careers, or even between flying and losing their jobs. The fact that the TSA has the authority to forbid people from flying if they demand dignity and respect is what is outrageous here.
We only have a finite amount of money available to spend on the military. Maintaining nuclear weapons is a very expensive process, and when your nuclear arsenal could destroy the entire world multiple times over the question becomes, "Could that money be better spent on conventional weapons, ships, airplanes, etc.?" The majority of military engagements that the US expects to fight over the next few decades are going to be non-nuclear, and we will need plenty of money for guns, ammunition, fuel, vehicles, armor, and all the coordination and planning that a modern military operation involves.
I would read that statement as saying that looking forward, military intelligence analysts believe that the United States is going to be engaged in military operations that call for conventional weapons, guided missiles, drone attacks, and so forth, and that we are spending money maintaining more nuclear weapons than we actually need to remain secure.
You also don't have an explicit right to take a train or drive a car. How would you like to lose your ability to travel freely by those modes of transportation too?
The theory is that they can convince people to stop exercising their rights by groping them or hitting them with a backscatter machine if they choose to exercise their rights. That was the purpose of the security theater all along: to wear people down and make them weary of trying to defend their rights against the government onslaught.