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gnarlyhotep posted:Yep, really. If he is serious about this, he really needs to start watching his show and seeing all the blatantly terrible things about it. It shouldn't be hard to raise up to at least jr. high school production values. I guess it was an improvement today, he didn't keep his nose in the laptop this time, he had a guest (?) do it. I've seen web shows where one of the hosts does keep a laptop open during the show, but it seems to work best when they have a news desk type set rather than a living room type set, so the laptop has a place to sit. Building a new set is probably out of the budget, but he has to do something to make it look like he cares more about the interview than his game of windows solitaire. When you ask people questions you have to look like you are listening to and interested in the answers, if the host doesn't care about the interview, why should the viewers? Starting on time would be a big boost to their image at this point. Occasionally starting less than 5 minutes late is fine, starting every show more than 20 minutes late is inexcusable. There is no excuse. It is not that hard: If you know it takes you an hour to get your poo poo together, start getting your poo poo together an hour before show time. Set a drat alarm clock to remind you to get up and fiddle with the camera and call your mom an hour before showtime. If you get a new piece of equipment or are using a thing on-air for the first time, test it out several hours before the show so you won't have to do it in front of your whole audience. Being in demo mode was hilarious, but there is no reason that should have gone on past the first show. Don't rely on the chat for all your interview questions. Reading the forums should give you a good idea in advance of what sort of questions there will be, write them down so you don't sound like a moron. Or just do a call-in show and let viewers ask their dumb questions themselves, so you don't sound like a moron. No. I don't believe it. There is no way that this is serious. The only way this degree of failure makes sense is if he doesn't care about the show AT ALL. He doesn't care about the show, he doesn't care about his "network", and he doesn't care about bitcoins. Either he is just trying to keep something on the air a few hours a day for the ad revenue, or he is just trying to keep something on the air a few hours a day so he can prove to his investors that he is doing work and it isn't his fault when the business inevitably fails.
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Jun 23, 2011 04:24
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waffle posted:I am surprised they are this ridiculously inept. I mean, Magic the Gathering cards have actual value, how did they not gently caress that one up? ReidRansom posted:And it should come as no surprise to anyone here that they have those even in Japan. As some felow over on the bitcoin forums pointed out, magic the gathering online exchange seems to be operating in gross violation of the Japanese Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which covers everything they're doing, whether they know that or not, and carries stiff criminal and civil penalties. I think these two ideas explain each other. The bitcoin exchanges are hilariously amateurish and shoddy because no professional organization wants to touch BTC with a ten foot pole. The barrier of entry to build a secure, legally compliant exchange is just too high. Anyone who knows WTF looks into BTC and realizes that the volume of trade isn't high enough to support financial professionals (plus the whole thing is bound to blow up). The only people willing to take the plunge are people who have no knowledge of the financial sector, and no idea what they are getting into. They don't know that they don't know enough to run a currency exchange.
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Jun 24, 2011 05:33
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Karanth posted:I wonder how many of these people have been mining long enough for their parents to get a power bill. Or in the event that their electricity is paid through a flat fee rolled into their rent, how long it will be until landlords take notice. I was wondering about that too. You'd expect Mom and Dad to blow up if the power bill suddenly doubled. In a dorm or other place it might be included in rent a sudden increase in electricity is usually a warning sign that one of your tenants has started growing drugs which is bad news for the landlord. Even if you were running an extension cord to the neighbour's house, you'd think he'd notice a big bump and complain to the company who would investigate. Then it hit me: equal monthly payment plans. Many companies will offer an equal payment plan for things like electricity that have wide seasonal variation. That way you pay a little more in low-use months in return for paying less in high-use months. The bill still keeps a running tab of what you are actually using, but the PAY NOW part is the same every month. Once a year they do an assessment and balance the books: if you have paid too much you get a refund, if you have paid too little you get a bill -- usually it is a trivial amount, the most I've ever been hit with was $40. If a miner bought new rigs and cooling solutions soon after his annual assessment, it's possible he could run up hundreds or even thousands of dollars in extra charges before the annual re-assessment. Mom is gonna be pissed.
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Jun 27, 2011 09:07
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frumpykvetchbot posted:This um, server room looks to have all the safety design and forethought that you'd expect from a meth lab. The rats nest of daisy-chained extension cords is a particularly nice touch. It wouldn't be all that hard to go down to IKEA and get some shelving units so you could, you know, expand your sure-bet professional mining operation vertically. And then comes cooling, and power, and administration... Yeah, that is just inexplicable. You can get reasonably sturdy shelves from places like Ikea or walmart pretty drat cheap. Go to thrift stores and you can get somewhat raggedy looking shelves even cheaper. You can secure the shelves to the wall, so someone doesn't trip over your nest of extension cords and take out half your farm in one go. Stacking relatively heavy computer equipment on top of an empty box and a sheet of foam is just asking for things to tip over. Maybe spreading them out like that is supposed to make it easier to keep them cool? I don't know.
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Jun 27, 2011 10:38
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Superrodan posted:Yes, but who buys their bitcoins so they can make real money? They get bitcoins for selling drugs, then use those bitcoins to buy other drugs!
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Jun 28, 2011 07:56
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quote:I have the pleasure of benevolently ruling a small island. I have delegated a fisherman slave to do the fishing for me and the other slaves along with a water collector, coconut collector, trash processor -- and there is me in-charge of building and maintaining shelter. A refugee washes up to shore, he has no skills that have the potential to bring me pleasure and keep my slaves from starving. The other slaves of the community offer to teach him how to fish so they don't starve and so I can have an extra fillet on my plate at dinner. My new slave refuses. Should I rape him with a molten rhubarb or tear off his toenails in order to break him to my bidding? Wait, so as a libertarian he believes that taxation is slavery because laws are ultimately backed up with the threat of violence, and this is wrong. Not that slavery or violence are wrong, the wrong bit is that HE isn't the one with slaves or the ability to threaten violence? 
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Jun 29, 2011 05:07
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ManlyWeevil posted:Hasn't finished processing yet, but here's the latest bruce show with the chat synced and overlayed. Had to overlay Ed and sometimes Atom but... whatever. First 3 minutes we didn't get a live feed so there's no chat recorded from that. You didn't include the part where Bruce chastised the chat for recommending insane people.  I wanted to see that.
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Jun 30, 2011 10:36
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raezr posted:I keep thinking the same thing. Why does he think his show is any better than what people on YouTube do with their webcams? Didn't he say at some point that the grand opening was going to be in July or August? If his "channel" isn't really open yet, then what he is doing now is just goofing around testing the equipment and stuff. He just happens to be doing it live on the air for some reason.
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Jul 2, 2011 02:19
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BTC.spengler posted:http://coinedbits.com/buy.php Wow, fake bitcoins and fake gold coins at the same time. I know the edge is supposed to be 101010 to represent bits, but does anyone else see LOLOLOLOL? 
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Jul 2, 2011 07:11
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Smythe posted:I'm loving mad about coins and I want this thing. They mention it as a "conversation piece" but they don't know the half of it. Dude, it's a gold-plated solid brass coin. 1 ounce of pure Brass. So even if you rub off the gold, it still looks gold! They can only go UP UP UP in value. $5.99 isn't an unreasonable price for a souvenir. It's certainly worth more than a real bitcoin.
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Jul 2, 2011 08:17
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mr. nazi posted:I want to have my bitcake and I also want to eat my bitcake; and his bitcakes and all of your loving bitcakes gimme. It's a currency! It's a speculative investment! Except when it comes to regulation, then it's neither. It is an entity unto itself, and your pathetic meatspace government has no authority over it.
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Jul 2, 2011 21:53
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Jerusalem posted:Okay, and if I understand this all correctly - the ONLY benefit that buying these things with Bitcoins instead of grown-up's money is that the Government doesn't produce the money, right? Like the entire basis of using this currency is knowingly an ideological one as opposed to a practically beneficial one, right? And as a gently caress you to Paypal. Lots of people hate Paypal for very good reasons. If bitcoins worked the way they are supposed to, you could transfer value to another person without involving a corrupt, money grubbing big corporation. But it will only work that way if bitcoins have more use than immediately being converted back to dollars. On the internet commerce tends to be tricky, because your options are either giving your credit card information to potentially sketchy websites or using an established intermediary like paypal. If bitcoin worked it would have all the same advantages (and downfalls) as using cash, but on the internet. That would be useful, but it is still a pipe dream at this point. The Bible posted:Oh, this is a great idea, obscure his age so potential investors won't be aware that they are dealing with a 17 year old. With such moral bastions as Atlas at the wheel, I have nothing but confidence in the future of bitcoin. It is incredibly shady. In most districts legal minors aren't able to enter into binding contracts (except for very specific things like food). If someone invests in one of his schemes and he fucks it up and loses all their money, the courts may not enforce the contract because he is a minor -- despite the fact that he is actively concealing the fact that he is a minor. Hopefully this will one day lead to a glorious episode of Judge Judy.
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Jul 7, 2011 10:14
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SlothfulCobra posted:That is essentially hoe currency works. Except instead of being backed by the a federal government or an irrational lust for precious metals, bitcoins are backed by the dumb schmuck who invented them and the hope that nobody tries to smash the whole thing into oblivion. No, that might be how currency trading works, but it is not how currency works. Currency works buy trading money for things (usually things with tangible value like food, clothing, shelter, heat, transportation, etc.) not just money for money. In theory bitcoins work like that too, but very few merchants are willing to exchange bitcoins for things with inherent tangible value. Mostly what people use bitcoins for is trading bitcoins to USD and back again, over and over.
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Jul 9, 2011 07:26
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FuriousxGeorge posted:Christ, the guy spends the entire thread attacking someone trying to give him good free advice I don't think he was able to comprehend that someone would give good free advice. The whole time he keeps thinking she must want something: want a job, want to join the team, want to discourage potential buisness competitors, or even want to destroy bitcoin. It is inconceivable to him that someone would write such long posts without wanting anything in return. I don't know what would happen if he ever came to SA and found Ask/Tell, The Goon Doctor, DIY, or any of the many other subforums where people routinely give their best advice away free -- expecting absolutely nothing in return. Not to mention Let's Play or the various creative subforums where people spend many hours entertaining each other for free, just because they enjoy doing it. All those guys must have some alternative motive, right?
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Jul 10, 2011 12:46
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Rudager posted:He's saying if government didn't force people to help other people through forcibly obtained taxes (that's where he gets his slavery line from), people would actually end up helping more out of only the kindness of his heart. "Deserving" people probably would get more from private charity than they do from government, because institutional charity has to treat everyone the same. The difference between deserving and undeserving mainly being how good you are at spinning your tale of woe, of course. People with disagreeable personalities and ugly bodies wouldn't get any charity at all, they'd just be run out of town by private security forces. Better charity for fewer people.
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Jul 12, 2011 05:34
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Jalumibnkrayal posted:Am I watching "Michelle" of "The Michelle Show"? What is this show about?! If "The Bitcoin Show" is about bitcoins, "The Michelle Show" must be about Michelles.
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Jul 12, 2011 20:49
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Furious Mittens posted:And while we are busting on Vegetta, let us not forget that Bruce has a very similar business plan with the entire OnlyOneTv concept. His jumping into a crowded marketspace, where he could very easily have produced content and piggybacked on another free-streaming or video website until he had a user base and some stream of revenue and was able to put together a small team to run the website operations. I think maybe he did. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/onlyonetv-com Either he is rebroadcasting his stream on ustream, or his stream is just a redirect from ustream. He knows that his whole "television network" can be replicated on the same technology that runs chickcam.
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Jul 14, 2011 15:15
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waffle posted:I think bitcoins are going to go out with a whimper, not a bang. There will never be a moment where the true believers decide "welp, this is dead" and sell off all their bitcoins--as a result, it'll never see the selling pressure required for it to crash. At least, if there is a selling pressure, there are enough true believers that would buy the bitcoins at a "bargain", I think, to keep it from crashing. Yeah, it lived for years as a hobby for nerds/libertarians. The 10,000 for 2 pizzas trade was 8 months ago. http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=137.0 If the late adopters bail out those guys may keep doing it for fun. There are guys who bought in (and miners who didn't sell) at $20. They believed the value would go up up up. If they sell lower they have to admit to themselves that they were wrong and the naysayers were right. Nobody wants to admit they did something foolish. Better to hold them and hope the value goes up someday. Your wallet may be just a file on a USB drive, it takes less thought to hold forever than to cash out. You can forget the whole thing ever happened. Finally, once the value stabilizes they are still useful as online barter tokens. It doesn't matter if the value stabilizes at $20, $5, or $1. They are hard to counterfeit. They are difficult for the government to seize, and there is little incentive for law enforcement to try to seize them since they have no real world value. There is little to no service charge involved in trading them (just cashing out). The limitations that make them unsuitable for mainstream use as currency don't really matter for niche use as online barter tokens. Bitcoins can keep rolling along for years. The biggest long-term threat is probably that some clever guy will come up with a much better cryptocurrency/online barter token. Now that bitcoins had a moment in the sun everyone has a better idea what the problems and limitations are in the real world. Eventually someone will come up with something similar that is slightly more useful, or just plain cooler, and a bunch of guys that like the idea of bitcoins will jump ship in favor of the new thing.
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Jul 14, 2011 16:01
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fishmech posted:Not really, the feds and cops seize computers all the time. And it doesn't matter if it has real world value, if they raid some guy for selling drugs online they'll seize all the "money" involved anyway. They seize computers. The wallet can exist separately from the computer though. It is just a text file, you can keep a copy of it online. Keeping your only copy of your wallet on a single PC would be dumb, you could lose everything to a hardware failure. The government hasn't seized the bitcoins themselves until they open the wallet file and send the coins to a government wallet. In the US there are laws that allow police departments to seize and keep the stuff connected to drug crime. They can sell the seized assets and add the money to their own budgets. The department profits from from the seizures, which is a huge incentive to seize stuff. Bitcoins have little real world value. Yeah, that drug dealer probably bought his socks with drug money too, but used socks have little value so there isn't much incentive for police departments to seize his dirty socks. Can you imagine auctioning off a wallet.txt file at a police auction? Or the police going to Magic the Gathering Online eXchange to cash out their bitcoins? Or even using the bitcoins to order a bunch of slim jims for the break room? If they know about bitcoins they will seize the bitcoins themselves just because it is what they do, but the bitcoins probably won't be a high priority target.
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Jul 14, 2011 17:46
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theflyingorc posted:There's way too much involved for it to be that simple. We can watch them all day. Nobody trolls that well. Nobody. He claimed that he thought it would get to $1000 within a year. If they had 25,000 BTC and it got to even $100 within a year it would have paid for all their OnlyOneTV expenses. Like Vegatta he does seem to think that if he has a good idea staff and viewers will just appear with no effort. Someone in the group did make the effort to get paying sponsors, and he does a good job of mentioning those sponsors all the time, so there is at least a little understanding of marketing. The website is reasonably well done and they have some nice logos and graphics. Unfortunately the shows are objectively terrible, never start on time, and have worse production values than things put out by a high school A/V club. On air talent is expected to work for free "for the publicity" which only works as long as they are generating publicity. A couple hundred guys in chat and a few thousand views on Youtube just isn't an impressive amount of publicity. All of those flaws would be fine if he had settled on trying to be a youtube superstar while filming out of his apartment. The "reality show" aspect where he leaves the cameras on all day would actually be more interesting in his apartment, because the studio has really dull decor. The studio is the weirdest part, the most suspicious part, because it is completely unnecessary. It is an obvious ploy to seem more professional, and given the degree of professionalism in the actual shows it does seem like there could be a scam going on. Either as the pump part of a pump and dump, or to scam potential investors because they can tell everyone how they are renting a "studio" for their new "television network".
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Jul 14, 2011 21:59
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So has Atlas ever expressed his plans for after high school? Aside from his long term fascist dreams. I think he plans to be independently wealthy by then. One of his great ideas won't have hidden pitfalls (read: bloody obvious pitfalls) and he will get rich overnight. You might think if it was that easy everyone would do it, but you'd be forgetting that Atlas is a superior human being. He is one of those "men of the mind" from his favorite novel. Due to his obvious and innate superiority he is certain to create a foolproof business plan that will quickly make him rich without requiring any particular education or expertise, and it certainly won't require any physical labour or sustained effort. All he needs is bitcoins and faith in the free market.
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Jul 16, 2011 05:27
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SATANIC DETERGENT posted:I've always wondered, what is the best way to deal with "if they ban X only criminals will have X"? That's always bothered me, but I can't figure out something wrong with it. I hate guns and violence, and I'd like to learn how to respond to that argument. If they ban child molesting only criminals will get to gently caress children?
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Jul 16, 2011 06:24
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kissekatt posted:Not surprisingly, he is being home schooled. Is he? My impression was that is an advocate of home schooling, not a practitioner. He is in favor of home schooling because he doesn't enjoy public school.
I have never been more depressed than through my years of being told to sit, do busy work and taught to learn what is only taught for eight hours a day. Then when I had time THAT WAS TO BE ONLY MINE, more needless work was assigned. My time was monopolized by people that did not deserve it. This isn't education. It's indoctrination. It is preparation for emotional slavery." They didn't put up with my bullshit. They made me do homework.  lexan posted:Tea party libertarians are a different breed, they're the ones that are usually conservative Christians. Tea party libertarians don't seem to be libertarians at all, just conservatives who think the Republican party doesn't go far enough. Classically libertarians are supposed to be fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Maximum liberty in all things. They shouldn't give a drat about restricting gay marriage (or regulating marriage at all) because who you live with is not the government's business. The war on drugs should be ended immediately, and even the most destructive drugs like meth should be decriminalized, because if you choose to ruin your own life with drugs that is your business (just don't expect anyone to help). Of course people should be free to form gated communities where drugs, gayness, being Hispanic, women not wearing burqas, or anything else is against the HOA rules so that they never have to see it, but the government should have no part in legislating morality. The government should make laws regulating violence, property crime, and contract enforcement, but has no role in social issues.
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Jul 16, 2011 21:40
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Chaos Motor posted:^^ Ignorant assertions are still not arguments. How do you expect to change my mind if you simply and repeatedly assert I'm wrong? It wouldn't change your mind, would it? But first, show me a libertarian society if you're going to claim that incentives do not exist in one. Oh wait, you can't. ^^ Sure we can, we can show you hundreds of libertarian societies: tribes. Most of them don't exist any more because tribes are inevitably destroyed or absorbed by civilizations, but otherwise they can function successfully for thousands of years with no taxes and little or no government.
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Jul 16, 2011 23:33
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Rabid Koala posted:It's really not that hard to get past their newbie filter. Just make five low content posts in the Newbie forum, and you're cleared to go once you've been online for the allotted number of hours. For free?!? I assure you, my low content posts are worth at least 14 cents.
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Jul 17, 2011 10:13
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archangelwar posted:Haha, this is so true. Same with Social Contract. They always come back with some horrible website definition and intiate Plan: Strawman. I think their main problem with the social contract is that it isn't a physical contract. Like if there was a private gated community that had all the same rules, services, and fees of a municipal government but was administered by the Home Owners Association instead of city council, they wouldn't have a problem with that because you signed the contract before you moved in. They would happily pay high fees for private security, private fire departments, private garbage collection, groundskeepers, a private school, a private clinic, a community center, some dweeb with a clipboard who goes around issuing warnings and fines for bylaw violations, etc., because all those people are protecting their property values. Unlike those lazy fatcats in municipal governments who do the same things for you against your will. I doubt that they really want to opt out and return to a state of nature, even if there was a place they could do that. They just look around at our modern very large, complex, mobile, and diverse societies and think "I never agreed to this." They feel small, powerless and insignificant. They feel alienated. It's perfectly normal to feel that way sometimes, because monkey brains weren't really designed for dealing with this many people, or to have people continuously moving in and out of your group. City life literally makes us all a little crazy. They can't blame "society" as a whole for being incomprehensible, so they blame "government". If government was smaller, less powerful, then things would be better.
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Jul 18, 2011 00:08
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Herpus posted:Wait what, who is damaging property? For technoanarchistlibertarians feelings are property. Hurting their feelings = damaging their property.
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Jul 18, 2011 07:15
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Herpus posted:So I'm special? I know what happened, you better sit down. It isn't a virus. You have an alternate personality. That is a troubling mental disorder by itself, but yours is worse. Your alternate personality is a techno-anarchist libertarian Bitcoin enthusiast. Sorry dude, your alternate personality is a douche. If it is any consolation, he's pretty mad and  about someone sneaking in and deleting his mining program.
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Jul 18, 2011 07:43
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ClosedBSD posted:He holds himself and his terrible ideas in such high regard but has zero empathy for anyone else or contempt for any thought process that isn't objectivism. Not himself, just his ideals. I'm pretty sure that at least occasionally he realizes that isn't living up to his ideals and possibly never will. But instead of taking those moments of clarity and thinking "I guess everyone needs help sometimes, like when they are a teenager or have mental health issues, and maybe that is okay." he thinks, "I'm a filthy parasite and I should just kill myself." Like many teenagers he hasn't developed a middle ground yet, so his choices are either Randian Superman or worthless parasite. Obviously no one wants to be a worthless parasite, so he tries to be a Randian Superman. He inevitably fails because it is impossible for a real live person to be a Randian Superman.It hasn't yet occurred to him that the fault may not be in himself, but in his personal version of Objectivism. That true Objectivism (like Marxist Communism) may be impossible in a world filled with real people. Petty people. Flawed people. He is so young that he doesn't realize that any plan that starts with "everyone starts behaving rationally" as the first step is doomed.
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Jul 18, 2011 14:10
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TheStampede posted:Ha ha, what? About what page did this happen on? This thread moves so fast it’s hard to keep up with all the almost nonstop comedy gold. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThNpfl4wQww Crazy or just youthful enthusiasm? You decide.
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Jul 18, 2011 14:13
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Devian666 posted:I'll bet on the south winning if their bitcoins are backed by cotton. Isn't cotton used to print fiat currency?
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Jul 19, 2011 05:46
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Hammerite posted:It seems like a great many of the bitcoin true believers, when they feel they have to offer a defense of bitcoin for whatever reason, go straight to posting about how the protocol is technically sound/secure/can't be hacked, and whatever else. (Being charitable, this is by all accounts true enough of bitcoin itself, as distinct from institutions like the Magic the Gathering trading card and financial fraud emporium which someone interested in using bitcoin would be hard-pressed to avoid.) Yeah, they seem to have gotten caught up in the idea that the most important part of a currency is that it is difficult to counterfeit to prevent fraud, and limited in amount to prevent inflation. In the offline world there are nearly infinite things that are difficult to counterfeit and limited in number. Dallasite (a type of volcanic breccia) is the club stone for the local lapidary club because it was first found nearby and has only been found in bc. Like bitcoins the supply is limited, and like bitoins it has no central authority. Early adopters can find it just laying around on the beaches, similar to early btc miners just running the mining program on their regular pc when they weren't using it. Like bitcoins, it isn't worth very much. Dallasite may be rare, but breccias in general are common and inexpensive. Bitcoins may be limited in number, but there is nothing stopping people from using the open source software to start competing cryptocurrenies. The technology doesn't create a currency, it creates a software toy. The community is what makes it valuable as an online barter token, and the bitcoin community is terrible. The exchanges are terrible. The merchants are terrible. In the long-term the deflationary aspect which encourages hoarding is terrible. Worthless things that are limited in number are still worthless.
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Jul 19, 2011 22:33
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:"Volcanic Breccia" is an oxymoron, dallasite is a jasper. drat it, I guess the stupid website lied to me, and wikipedia doesn't mention it at all. Well, the point still stands, jaspers are also common and inexpensive.
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Jul 19, 2011 22:49
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Shasta Orange Soda posted:Atlas has complained several times about how the public school system has robbed him of his intellectual freedom and how the injustices of homework are killing our country or whatever, so why does everyone keep saying he's homeschooled? He is an advocate of homeschooling, and apparently goons think that on this one topic he wouldn't give an opinion on something he knows nothing about.  He thinks that schools inherently promote conformity and weakness of the mind, stifling creativity and innovation (typical stuff for a kid that doesn't enjoy school). Public schools and mandatory education should be abolished, and parents should be allowed/responsible to educate their children as they see fit, be that private schools (the free market will take care of everything) or preferably home schooling. This lead to someone posting an article about "unschooling" and the boy who was happy he didn't learn to read until he was 10, and some people seem to have gotten the idea that Atlas is that boy. He's not. Atlas is the boy who is mad about homework.
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Jul 20, 2011 11:07
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Beowulfs_Ghost posted:To be fair, they do promote conformity. That, and the terrible drop out rates and test scores in the US aren't really anything to be proud of. Yes, in order to get any teaching done in a class of 25-30 (or more) kids per teacher it is necesary for everyone to sit down and shut up. Especially since there are always a few kids who don't want to be there and think life should be an endless summer vacation. And there are a few high energy or ADHD kids (usually boys) who genuinely have trouble sitting still for hours at a time and might learn more if they were allowed to run around and do their own thing a bit more, but the distraction they cause would mean that the other 25 kids would learn less, so they get thrown under the bus. Which is unfortunate if you happen to be one of those kids. None of which really supports Atlas's conclusion that mandatory education and public schools should be abolished, because every child would be better off staying at home receiving whatever education the parents see fit.
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Jul 20, 2011 20:26
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socialsecurity posted:I've been browsing the bitcoin forums and the train of thought of the "free market" seems to be if I sell a bunch of pizza made with rotten virus filled ingredients that kills you 10 minutes after eating it there would be no need for regulation as the "free market would correct itself" by people no longer using my service. I've seen them use similar situations tons of times, the issue is what about all those people who died? I guess they assume that everytime something bad like that would happen it would be other people who died. I guess they should have done their due diligence and inspected your kitchen themselves rather than expecting to suck at the government health inspector's teat forever.  It may be unreasonable to expect every customer to inspect every business they patronise personally, and many businesses wouldn't want an endless parade of lookie loos "inspecting" their stuff, in some cases that would even make the products less safe. Don't worry, the free market will devise a solution. Subscribe to an inspection service: they inspect businesses all over town and publish reviews for their subscribers -- businesses either let inspectors from the most popular service inspect regularly, or they risk losing all the customers that use that service. Like "consumer reports" on steroids. What, you can't afford to hire private inspectors? Don't worry, there will also be services paid for by the businesses themselves, like the Better Business Bureau. Businesses will pay for this service to inspect them. As long as they pass, and everyone who bothers to pay for this service probably will pass, they get a nice certificate to stick in their window and a listing in the public directory of the inspection service. This will probably end up being more expensive for most people than the current system, but you'll be able to sleep soundly knowing you are not a parasite. (Every other service currently provided by government would work the same way.)
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Jul 22, 2011 03:38
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cremnob posted:I guess it wasn't a conspiracy by AMD. I kind of like the idea of Bitcoins as a videocard ARG gone awry.
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Jul 22, 2011 11:59
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A toaster with pubic hair scampering around on your kitchen counter is unsanitary.
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Jul 24, 2011 01:54
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A guy sold off 300,000 bitcoins at once causing a temporary price crash on Saturday. Another guy missed "the deal of the century" because he didn't keep enough fiat cash in his Mt.Gox account to buy up cheap bitcoins, and couldn't deposit more until Monday. They don't show it, but presumably the price recovered somewhat between Saturday and Monday morning, so by the time he made his mtgox deposit he'd already missed the chance for cheap bitcoins. The moral of the story: Keep all your disposable income in the safe and reliable magic the gathering online exchange, so that you won't miss out.
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Jul 24, 2011 21:45
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RedTeam posted:A burrito-backed currency is something I would certainly get behind. Very Misleading.
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Jul 26, 2011 22:39
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