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Comment Re:1 BTC = Between $20,000.00 and $500,000.00 (Score 1) 371

What's the barrier to entry of creating a new credit card, VISA2, VISA3, etc? Merchants accept bitcoin because they trust it... and because merchants accept it people pay a premium for it. A new alt-currency has neither, and with no benefit over bitcoin will have a hard time establishing trust. Maybe a few currencies, LTC, NMC may survive just as we have Discover, AMEX and Mastercard, but as things gel over time, the barrier to entry will be there already is a currency out there that people trust a lot more. Not to mention the security of the huge collection of miners preventing a double spend attack (which new alt currencies will not have).

Comment Re:Where is all of this money coming from? (Score 1) 371

"Once they own all the Bitcoins, or a significant portion of them, the currency starts to lose all value, because nobody can afford it, and they stop trading them."

Is that like the Yogi Berra quote, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."?

Seriously, if the government threw $21 Billion into buying bitcoin right now, you think the price would go down? And since bitcoins can be infinitesimally split, whats to stop people from trading in partial bitcoins. Why do people trade in single bitcoins today but not 0.1 bitcoins tomorrow?

Besides, how would they justify it? What politician would rally behind something like this?

Comment Re:Interesting (Score 2) 70

Imagine not investing in bitcoin 3 years ago. How would you feel about that today?

Sorry, but the whole argument that it is unwise to purchase things in bitcoin is missing the point. It was and unwise to not invest a portion of your savings into bitcoin, and this may still be true. I know, "Heresy! Bitcoin is not real! It will never succeed" and all that. The contrarian viewpoint would see this sentiment as an indicator to its future growth. Of course, do your own DD and decide whether you think Bitcoin can really succeed as money, but also view the loud braying of the naysayers as further reason to invest if you have not done so already.

Comment This is getting ridiculous (Score 1) 776

Why is everyone so concerned about climate change now? What about eons ago when life formed? Talk about a radical change to earth's climate, it absolutely got smothered in life and its byproducts everywhere. Yet, no one even mentions that anymore. We should work on cleaning up the effect to the climate due to life *first*, then we can talk about this comparatively small after-effect from technology after that.

Imagine a rocky planet, with just clean water, minerals, rock, sand, dust. If we work together we can make it happen!

Comment Re:24h clock (Score 2, Interesting) 309

Totally agree with this, for two reasons.

First, the English system is better than metric because a lot of it is based on fractions. Half a pint, a quarter of an inch. It is much easier for the human eye to split something into halves than tenths. Which makes it much easier to figure out what 1/16 of an inch is compared to 0.1 cm. Now, instead of converting to metric, what we should have done is convert to base 16 numbering system.

Second, the English system is more future proof then the metric every was. You can't convert 1 mm to cm exactly in floating point, so there are all these rounding errors with the base-10 that the metric system is inseparably linked to. In hexadecimal, it would be .166666 (repeating) cm! What a horrible system in the age of computers!

Comment Re:Gimmick (Score 0) 219

What people seem to be missing is that getting a concave device out of a persons pocket would be much harder than one that is flat, since the edges on the concave side would drag and bunch up the fabric, skin and fat when trying to pull it out. Unless of course, you flip it so the concave side is on the outside of the pocket, but then it really wouldn't fit well. This is just a poorly designed gimmick.

Comment Re:Call Me A Luddite (Score 1) 674

It used to be true that carrier pigeon's were treated well. As technology increased, their homes were made to be better protected against predators, their food became healthier, and more plentiful, and they lived very well. Then one day they were no longer useful, being replaced by more efficient means of communication.

There is a line, beyond which a life form can no longer compete with technology out there. Until that line is crossed, technology will support the existence of that life form to achieve its maximum efficiency. When it is crossed, however, things change very quickly. If AI ever gets smarter than people, we are in real trouble.

Comment Re:Robots to kill moon jellyfish (Score 1) 149

Well, until the trend of oceans sinking up the carbon dioxide ends, it will become more and more acidic, killing all the marine life. Then, after it begins to heat up, much of the life will have already gone extinct. Just like when someone cooks your dinner, and then cools it down before it gets to your plate, it that doesn't reverse the process of cooking it.

Here is another link describing what AC is talking about! http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20413-warmer-oceans-release-co2-faster-than-thought.html

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