Why such a hard step instead of a constant progression?
That's a good question. Maybe because it was simple? Anyway that's what Satoshi came up with and it will have to do. The decision has been criticized for unnecessary turbulence/price volatility which it causes.
Many newer cryptocurrencies such as Monero have opted to smoothly decreasing supply instead.
$ uptime
20:10:21 up 172 days, 5:01, 1 user, load average: 0.35, 0.35, 0.29
"Paper" money will never go away.
Earlier this month [May 2015], the Danish Parliament proposed a law that would allow stores to refuse to accept cash payments in exchange for goods or services. http://fortune.com/2015/05/22/...
"moderate" factions... Yeah right, pull the other one. And please, keep passing the blame.. You wouldn't be you without that.
There's a very good documentary about this called "Return to Homs", which everyone should see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt31...
It shows how secular protests turn into massacre and then to desperate fight for survival. They received no support from outside world, other than from the islamists (who had plenty of weapons and supplies, likely sponsored by such countries as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). You can guess the rest.
Watch it and then come here to say that they had a choice. I think that most western young people can easily relate to people shown in the film. They are not that different from us.
Might want to read up on the council of Nicia.
You probably meant Nikaia (Greek) or Nicaea (Latin).
The only downside to the unicomp keyboards is that the main metal plate inside with the contacts inside is assembled by melting the heads of dozens of plastic "rivets", forming a permanent seal that would need to be ground-off, then be very difficult, or impossible to re-attach. Would be far better if they just screwed it together.
You can replace plastic rivets with nuts and bolts: http://imgur.com/a/QroSL
Also have you tried to wash the keyboard? (disassembled as much as you can or atleast removing keys and springs first). You can put it thru dishwasher, just remember dry it throughly before plugging back in. (putting key sockets facing a fan for a day or maybe using hair dryer). I've washed one model M in a shower and let it dry on the balcony for a week and it works well.
"propaganda and murder" isn't a trait of a people, but tools of ruling elite, including some Byzantine(that is Greek who pretends to be Roman) emperors.
Maybe you slept during the history class? Byzantine as a term was coined by Germans in the 1500s in an attempt to revise history as the Holy Roman Empire wanted to paint itself as successor of Rome. (It seems to have worked suprisingly well) Both "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are terms created after 1453 (the fall of Constantinople).
The Empire now called as "Byzantine" was called Imperium Romanum (Latin) or Basileia Rhomaion (Greek) and it's citizens were called Romans regardless of the language they spoke. It's the very same Roman Empire with uninterrupted line of Emperors from the time of Caesar and not "Greek who pretends to be Roman" as you falsely claim. During the 600s they changed the offical language from Latin to Greek (administration and army) as it was practical to do so since that was the lingua franca in most of the areas controlled by the Empire.
You mean, Georgia, Ukraine and (brewing) Moldova? With functional takeover of a number of ex-USSR countries as well (Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova differ only by daring to stand up to Russia)? And aiding bloody coups elsewhere?
Don't forget Chechenya. That war basically brought Putin into power.
Moscow apartment bombings were executed to get a pretext for invading Chechenya (2nd war). FSB even got caught planting one of the bombs. Guess who was leading the FSB back then? Guess who blamed it all to Chechens?
For Putin, killing thousands of people is nothing. He will do just about anything to stay in power. I don't really think he needs to be paranoid even. With all the crimes he has done, whoever follows might not be easy on him
That does not follow. A large company can accept Bitcoins and convert immediately to their local currency. That does not require faith in a long-term forecast.
Implementing an infrastructure to handle a new payment protocol isn't free. Would you bother to add support for something that isn't going to be around?
The Roman Empire lasted another 200 years after the currency was fully debased to 5% silver in 270 CE. That's pretty fucking good by historical standards, especially since the first 100 years of that were reasonably stable and prosperous.
Roman empire (Imperium Romanum) lasted well into middle ages. It ended with the fall of Constantinople to Ottoman Turks in 1453.
I know Catholics like to rewrite history, but Romans made no such difference. In fact the city of Rome wasn't even capital of the empire after 330 CE when emperor Constantinus named Constantinople as the new capital. Trade in the east meant that's where the money was and the court moved accordingly.
Western parts were administered from Ravenna (Mediolanum) between 330 and 426 as the Rome (the city) fell into relative insignificance before falling to Goths. Rome was reconquered by the Roman Empire during Gothic wars in 535-554 CE.
The very very low transaction costs of cryptocurrency is only true for a very small population of very technically sophisticated persons -- maintaining safe and secure encrypted data backups involves the kind of skillset that companies pay good money for, so doing this as a hobby is not exactly "free" in any practical sense. The rest of us will need to lean on exchanges, and factor in how to pay for insurance against another apparent (IMHO) inside job like MtGox.
No need for encypted data backups. Transactions are all in the blockchain, not on your computer and addresses (and private keys) can be generated offline. It's enough if you just print your private keys on paper and keep those safe. The only way to lose your bitcoins is to lose your private keys.
This also the reason why storing bitcoins on an exchange is a bad idea. If you don't have the private key those bitcoins are not really yours.
kph is routinely used in many metric countries. it's not at all unusual to see it.
Then they do it wrong. Do they also not begin their sentences with capital letters?
I guess we agree that kilometre (or kilometer for the US) is an SI unit. So in the International System of Units:
k = kilo (prefix for one thousand)
m = metre (base unit of length)
h = hour (unit of time)
Thus the correct unit symbol for kilometre(s) per hour is either km/h or kmh^-1. It's really that simple.
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
