The peer review system is not dependent on academic publishers. Reviewers and editors are volunteers under the current system, and would continue to do their voluntary work without the publishing industry.
"Magic" is an apt description of most pro-Bitcoin arguments.
they then get converted back to USD
Which may or may not be anything remotely near what you put in in the first place, due to the high volatility and utter lack of any guarantee about convertibility. I guess a system run on "magic" would have these properties.
Unlike bank transfer, the whole process only take a few minutes
Credit card transactions take seconds.
it cost nothing
False.
is anonymous
This was repeatedly shown to be false.
just like cash in your wallet.
Except that Bitcoin cannot be used for secure offline payments, the way cash can. Oh, what, you think that digital cash is always online? Think again:
When I first read the Bitcoin paper, I was shocked by the lack of background research it presented. No mention of Chaum's work at all. No mention of previously developed or deployed digital cash systems. This seems to be the MO of the Bitcoin community: lack of background research. Why should we take you people seriously if you have not even bothered to read papers that can be found in minutes just by reading overview articles on Wikipedia?
Therefore during the 21st century, USD will become a toy currency popular among old peoples and irrelevant to everyone else
Not even remotely accurate. Unless you think the US government is going to stop demanding tax payments made in USD, the overwhelming majority of American adults will require USD. The added overhead of Bitcoin, the added risk and volatility will keep it an obscure anarchist toy compared to USD.
Now we just need to cut the journal publishers out of the system entirely, since they provide no useful or necessary service. Academic publishers are parasites that exploit the volunteer labor of scientists; we no longer require their services to spread articles around the world. We have the Internet, let's just use it and stop clinging to obsolete ideas like copyright.
Ultimately, the *only* thing backing a currency is the confidence of those who use it.
Nonsense. The value of the USD is determined by supply and demand, like everything else. Demand does not come from "confidence," it comes from law: lax law, debt law, tort law, etc. When the government tells you, "Pay your taxes, or you go to prison," you suddenly have a need for the currency accepted for tax payments -- and in the US, that would be USD. Likewise with loans, damages awarded by courts, etc. The only "confidence" to speak of is confidence in the government's ability to enforce its laws.
Ironically, part of the demand for Bitcoin is demand for other currencies. I would argue that without the ability to exchange Bitcoin for fiat currencies, Bitcoin would have no value at all.
Now, the reason I keep a lot of my money in Bitcoin is because it is a superior currency
Superior but only as long as it can be converted to other currencies. You know your quip about taxes? Taxes are the primary economic reason you'll never see Bitcoin replace national currencies. Until governments accept Bitcoin tax payments, it will be a toy currency, popular among anarchists and irrelevant elsewhere.
A solution to this would be if everyone just stopped going to theaters and stopped buying movies for about 6-12 months, it would bankrupt all these corps and there wouldn't be a lobby to try to criminalize this stuff
Then they'll just lobby to make boycotting their businesses illegal.
Except that the DMCA says nothing about contracts, and even if your contract expires or is canceled you cannot just bring your phone to some random store to get it unlocked (only stores run by your carrier, and only as long as they feel like providing you that service), nor can I legally tell you how to or provide you with the tools needed to unlock your phone. How is that not privileged treatment for the cell carrier?
...and AT&T is the only company that is legally allowed to do that. If I unlocked your phone, it would be a crime. If I told you how to do it, that would be a crime too. No matter how you slice it, AT&T and the other carriers are getting a special, privileged position in the market because of this law (which is what the petition is all about).
That you can have a carrier unlock your phone for you hardly solves the problem: now you live in a world where only carriers are allowed to provide that service of unlocking phones for people, and where it is illegal to even give someone instructions on how to do it themselves. You still have the government giving cell carriers a privileged position in the market, which is where the problem lies here.
Or we could not have the government come in and say, "Sell phones as loss leaders, and we'll make sure your strategy works!" Why do you think the carriers should get such privileged treatment from the government?
Except that you did not take out a loan to buy your phone. You bought it at the price the carrier offered. The law says you cannot unlock the phone regardless of your contract, even when your contract expires, even if you pay the carrier the extra fee to cancel the contract, even if the carrier goes out of business. Stop trying to pretend that people are being offered a fair deal here; a fair deal is one in which you can buy something and do whatever you want with it.
You're free to unlock it as soon as you fulfill that contract
You must have missed the news: that changed. Now you are not free to do so, because distributing the tools or knowledge needed to do that is a DMCA violation. It's OK, I'm sure being trapped in a freezer since 2011 was rough for you.
You can get Internet access of amateur radio if you want, there are plenty of people doing digital stuff. Here's the problem: you cannot do any commercial. That means that you cannot even browse Google, since it would transmit advertisements over an amateur band. A secondary issue is that everyone has to be licensed to transmit on amateur bands, and so most people would never be able to use it. Also problematic is the callsign requirement, which would make it much harder to use things like Tor. There are also regulations that make cryptography useless on amateur bands.
The problems with citizen-run communications are mostly regulatory. There are technical issues, but they pale in comparison to the regulations standing in our way.
For the next two years you bitch and moan because you can't unlock the phone and switch carriers.
Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed the technical problem with unlocking the phone. When last I checked, it was a legal problem, which is the point of the petition.
See, we "bitch and moan" because we bought a phone, and then the government told us we are not allowed to do what we want with the phone. Then people like you come in and say, "Well the carrier gave you a discount because of X, Y, Z" and we think to ourselves, "Yes, we bought it at the price the carrier offered to us. So what?"
You know, in market systems, when someone sells something at a given price and you buy it at that price, you are generally free to do whatever you want with it afterwards. If you do not want a market system, then stop pretending to have one and just create a government-run cell network like other countries have.
Create a new amateur license class, that allows individuals to run 4g networks; encourage cooperatives, meshes, and other citizen-run communications systems. Give the spectrum the carriers have to the people and let us manage our communications without relying on monopolies.
If a person who runs a hosting company is not even familiar with a major programming language that is widely used for web development, his credibility is seriously questionable. It is the equivalent of a car dealership whose owner has never heard of Ferrari.
EMV (chip-n-pin) cards have used them for many years
These are usually used in conjunction with an online payment processor, which changes the security model in fundamental ways. The security goal of these cards is to prevent unauthorized use of legitimate credentials; the legitimate user of those credentials is not the adversary. With double-spending, the legitimate user of the card is the adversary.
breaking the hardware? Doesn't happen
Faking the hardware can happen and Bitcoin will only stop it if you are online. What are you going to do to stop someone from producing a card that looks just like the "real thing" but which does not actually stop them from double spending? If you are going to introduce a central authority that issues these cards, why would you even bother with Bitcoin? You can get a more secure digital cash protocol that uses a central authority to issue the currency units, which actually supports secure offline transactions (regardless of the hardware someone uses).
We already have anonymous, hard-to-control ways to give people money: we can hand them money. That is why the US government requires large cash transactions to be automatically reported. There is no reason the same could not be done with Bitcoin: sure, you might get away with some illegal Bitcoin transactions, but by using Bitcoin you are basically putting a giant neon sign on your forehead that says, "I am trying to avoid mainstream ways of paying for things!"
Bitcoin cannot support secure offline payments. That makes it all the more difficult to hide the fact that you are using Bitcoin, unlike using paper money.
At the exchange rate of Bitcoin, a government could simply buy all the currency in the system and ruin it for everyone. It would take a couple hundred million dollars, which is barely blip on the radar compared to the budget of a typical industrialized nation. You would not need to buy all the currency, either; just buying a significant fraction of it would destabilize prices and drive people away.
The demand for Bitcoin is predicated on the existence of exchanges that allow Bitcoin to be traded for fiat currencies. Those exchanges are easy targets for a government wishing to ban Bitcoin within its borders. There is no reason to think that this situation will ever change: people still need to pay their taxes and spend money offline, and Bitcoin does not allow them to do either of those things.
Serious cryptography researchers in the 80s and 90s showed the world how to make digital cash systems that do not suffer from any of the above problems. We should be talking about how to deploy those systems, rather than continuing to go astray with Bitcoin.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing holding value in the US dollar is ignorance
The peer review system is not dependent on academic publishers. Reviewers and editors are volunteers under the current system, and would continue to do their voluntary work without the publishing industry.
You buy bitcoins with your USD
Ah, the transaction costs we all love.
magically send them over the Interwebs
"Magic" is an apt description of most pro-Bitcoin arguments.
they then get converted back to USD
Which may or may not be anything remotely near what you put in in the first place, due to the high volatility and utter lack of any guarantee about convertibility. I guess a system run on "magic" would have these properties.
Unlike bank transfer, the whole process only take a few minutes
Credit card transactions take seconds.
it cost nothing
False.
is anonymous
This was repeatedly shown to be false.
just like cash in your wallet.
Except that Bitcoin cannot be used for secure offline payments, the way cash can. Oh, what, you think that digital cash is always online? Think again:
http://blog.koehntopp.de/uploads/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf
When I first read the Bitcoin paper, I was shocked by the lack of background research it presented. No mention of Chaum's work at all. No mention of previously developed or deployed digital cash systems. This seems to be the MO of the Bitcoin community: lack of background research. Why should we take you people seriously if you have not even bothered to read papers that can be found in minutes just by reading overview articles on Wikipedia?
Therefore during the 21st century, USD will become a toy currency popular among old peoples and irrelevant to everyone else
Not even remotely accurate. Unless you think the US government is going to stop demanding tax payments made in USD, the overwhelming majority of American adults will require USD. The added overhead of Bitcoin, the added risk and volatility will keep it an obscure anarchist toy compared to USD.
Now we just need to cut the journal publishers out of the system entirely, since they provide no useful or necessary service. Academic publishers are parasites that exploit the volunteer labor of scientists; we no longer require their services to spread articles around the world. We have the Internet, let's just use it and stop clinging to obsolete ideas like copyright.
Ultimately, the *only* thing backing a currency is the confidence of those who use it.
Nonsense. The value of the USD is determined by supply and demand, like everything else. Demand does not come from "confidence," it comes from law: lax law, debt law, tort law, etc. When the government tells you, "Pay your taxes, or you go to prison," you suddenly have a need for the currency accepted for tax payments -- and in the US, that would be USD. Likewise with loans, damages awarded by courts, etc. The only "confidence" to speak of is confidence in the government's ability to enforce its laws.
Ironically, part of the demand for Bitcoin is demand for other currencies. I would argue that without the ability to exchange Bitcoin for fiat currencies, Bitcoin would have no value at all.
Now, the reason I keep a lot of my money in Bitcoin is because it is a superior currency
Superior but only as long as it can be converted to other currencies. You know your quip about taxes? Taxes are the primary economic reason you'll never see Bitcoin replace national currencies. Until governments accept Bitcoin tax payments, it will be a toy currency, popular among anarchists and irrelevant elsewhere.
Bitcoins can be converted to other real world currencies ya know?
Without which Bitcoin would have no value at all. Which is why I would quit if someone told me I was going to be paid with Bitcoin.
Like, say, the entire military industrial complex?
A solution to this would be if everyone just stopped going to theaters and stopped buying movies for about 6-12 months, it would bankrupt all these corps and there wouldn't be a lobby to try to criminalize this stuff
Then they'll just lobby to make boycotting their businesses illegal.
Except that the DMCA says nothing about contracts, and even if your contract expires or is canceled you cannot just bring your phone to some random store to get it unlocked (only stores run by your carrier, and only as long as they feel like providing you that service), nor can I legally tell you how to or provide you with the tools needed to unlock your phone. How is that not privileged treatment for the cell carrier?
...and AT&T is the only company that is legally allowed to do that. If I unlocked your phone, it would be a crime. If I told you how to do it, that would be a crime too. No matter how you slice it, AT&T and the other carriers are getting a special, privileged position in the market because of this law (which is what the petition is all about).
That you can have a carrier unlock your phone for you hardly solves the problem: now you live in a world where only carriers are allowed to provide that service of unlocking phones for people, and where it is illegal to even give someone instructions on how to do it themselves. You still have the government giving cell carriers a privileged position in the market, which is where the problem lies here.
Or we could not have the government come in and say, "Sell phones as loss leaders, and we'll make sure your strategy works!" Why do you think the carriers should get such privileged treatment from the government?
Except that you did not take out a loan to buy your phone. You bought it at the price the carrier offered. The law says you cannot unlock the phone regardless of your contract, even when your contract expires, even if you pay the carrier the extra fee to cancel the contract, even if the carrier goes out of business. Stop trying to pretend that people are being offered a fair deal here; a fair deal is one in which you can buy something and do whatever you want with it.
You're free to unlock it as soon as you fulfill that contract
You must have missed the news: that changed. Now you are not free to do so, because distributing the tools or knowledge needed to do that is a DMCA violation. It's OK, I'm sure being trapped in a freezer since 2011 was rough for you.
can't you already do TTY over amateur radio?
You can get Internet access of amateur radio if you want, there are plenty of people doing digital stuff. Here's the problem: you cannot do any commercial. That means that you cannot even browse Google, since it would transmit advertisements over an amateur band. A secondary issue is that everyone has to be licensed to transmit on amateur bands, and so most people would never be able to use it. Also problematic is the callsign requirement, which would make it much harder to use things like Tor. There are also regulations that make cryptography useless on amateur bands.
The problems with citizen-run communications are mostly regulatory. There are technical issues, but they pale in comparison to the regulations standing in our way.
For the next two years you bitch and moan because you can't unlock the phone and switch carriers.
Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed the technical problem with unlocking the phone. When last I checked, it was a legal problem, which is the point of the petition.
See, we "bitch and moan" because we bought a phone, and then the government told us we are not allowed to do what we want with the phone. Then people like you come in and say, "Well the carrier gave you a discount because of X, Y, Z" and we think to ourselves, "Yes, we bought it at the price the carrier offered to us. So what?"
You know, in market systems, when someone sells something at a given price and you buy it at that price, you are generally free to do whatever you want with it afterwards. If you do not want a market system, then stop pretending to have one and just create a government-run cell network like other countries have.
What we have now is this:
Create a new amateur license class, that allows individuals to run 4g networks; encourage cooperatives, meshes, and other citizen-run communications systems. Give the spectrum the carriers have to the people and let us manage our communications without relying on monopolies.
Why is the government protecting a business model that is based on selling equipment at a loss?
So what exactly is gonna differentiate this from a mid-level to high-end gaming rig?
The lock-down, the retention of control over your system by Sony, etc.
not be snatched away as if it's their right to tell us what we can use our own hardware for
Do you even have to ask?
If a person who runs a hosting company is not even familiar with a major programming language that is widely used for web development, his credibility is seriously questionable. It is the equivalent of a car dealership whose owner has never heard of Ferrari.
You just need to obtain confidence that your counterparty is not double spending in some manner
Which is not secure, at least not under the definition of security that is commonly used in digital cash.
For example, your counterparty may have some secure hardware that is capable of remote attestation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
EMV (chip-n-pin) cards have used them for many years
These are usually used in conjunction with an online payment processor, which changes the security model in fundamental ways. The security goal of these cards is to prevent unauthorized use of legitimate credentials; the legitimate user of those credentials is not the adversary. With double-spending, the legitimate user of the card is the adversary.
breaking the hardware? Doesn't happen
Faking the hardware can happen and Bitcoin will only stop it if you are online. What are you going to do to stop someone from producing a card that looks just like the "real thing" but which does not actually stop them from double spending? If you are going to introduce a central authority that issues these cards, why would you even bother with Bitcoin? You can get a more secure digital cash protocol that uses a central authority to issue the currency units, which actually supports secure offline transactions (regardless of the hardware someone uses).
We can't continue having commercial entities controlling the money flow.
They never have. Long before some anarchist fringe elements in the crypto world dreamed of Bitcoin, people were using this technology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_money