No country, big or small, is going to issue or back anonymous, untraceable digital currency. You might think they have. But it will be backdoored. Bet your boots.

The only untraceable cash the US is going to issue and distribute will be pallet loads of $100 bills. "Oops, it seems we've misplaced several billion dollars in 'small' bills. Oh well, chalk it up to a rounding error. At least it was only billions."

Have you researched the estate tax at all?

There are several credits against the tentative tax, the most important of which is a "unified credit" which can be thought of as providing for an "exemption equivalent" or exempted value with respect to the sum of the taxable estate and the taxable gifts during lifetime. For a person dying during 2006, 2007, or 2008, the "applicable exclusion amount" is $2,000,000, so if the sum of the taxable estate plus the "adjusted taxable gifts" made during lifetime equals $2,000,000 or less, there is no federal estate tax to pay. According to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the applicable exclusion increased to $3,500,000 in 2009, the estate tax was repealed for estates of decedents dying in 2010, but then the Act "sunsets" in 2011 and the estate tax was to reappear with an applicable exclusion amount of only $1,000,000. However, On December 16, 2010, Congress passed the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2010. The 2010 Act changed, among other things, the rate structure for estates of decedents dying after December 31, 2009, subject to certain exceptions. It also served to reunify the estate tax credit (aka exemption equivalent) with the federal gift tax credit (aka exemption equivalent). The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.

Let's look at that again. The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.

I remember seeing an aircraft of some sort in the daytime with a trail of fire coming out of the back of it. It was too far up to see if or what kind of wings it had. Didn't seem to be a rocket. Moved slow like a passenger jet. Never did figure out what it might have been. Was on the Northwest coast of USA.

Point taken about looting. Also, a distinction needs to be made between a duplication technique that actually reproduces a functioning item through molecular deposition of different elements, and what on the other hand is basically simply a plastic model.

The first possibility seems pretty far off in the future. Probably not for giant laboratories with force tunneling microscopes and inert atmosphere or vacuum facilities. But for the home? The economies of having the space for the equipment, buying the equipment, and getting feedstocks of pure elements is going to probably be accessible only to the super-rich for a long time to come. Not to mention the need for tech support, probably in the way of a dedicated position for an employee. A private size model with attendant equipment and storage is still going to be size of an entire large room, at least.

And why would most people bother when they can take advantage of the economy of scale and low prices of traditional industries, and the often low-waged labor used to produce it?

You'd only bother, likely, if you were trying to produce something that was illegal or banned from possession by the general populace. Which, given the ever intrusive nature of government will probably become more of an issue as time goes on. Again, however, why would you build up something like, say, a personal sidearm atom by atom, when it can be so easily created with a lathe and traditional metal working tools?

Lastly, the items most likely to be produced in the home would be commonplace modern banalities like toasters, smartphones, and toothbrushes. Not exactly a treasure trove for future garbage miners.

The "Diamond Age" vision of a replicator in every home with subscription to a "Feed" of raw materials is just not going to happen anytime soon. I could see a hacker collective maintaining one, but as soon as they run afoul of law enforcement, boom, single point of failure.

If/when civilization collapses, we're going to need examples of past technology. Everything from the butter churn on up. What if you were trying to recreate a movie projector and found that only the casing was preserved, with no internal workings? I understand the health issue for the public, but they should mothball one of those intact.

One function of museums is to be a repository of knowledge, art, and technology, for future generations. It's not the only function, but I would argue that it's the most important function. It's not just a display that you look at for entertainment.

Cory Doctorow has a book, Makers, from 2009 (available for DRM free download http://craphound.com/makers/download/ ) that talks about distributed open source museum spaces. Three years later the Smithsonian announces they're going to offer a part of the collection for worldwide printing.>

That's great. It will serve the surface educational mission of museums. Multimedia exhibition. But if you're at a post sea-rise far inland Argentinian coast trying to figure out how to make a steam engine, how are you going to make use of a rotting polymer copy?

They did this for a while. Maybe still? About 10-12 years ago. I forget what the market-speak trade name for it was. But they sampled at 1 Ghz. The trade magazines were divided in their opinions, and it must have died a fine death in the marketplace since no one here has referenced it This was definitely a recording format. .

I think we have to differentiate between mobile and home/studio listening. Considering the average playback hardware, for listening, 16/44 is fine for the 99.999 percent of listeners. For mobile listening 192kbps MP3 will exceed the needs of most. I prefer 320 kbps because it makes percussion sound better.

Most people listen in a car, bus, at work, on the job, etc. Low noise floor and dynamic range are moot. the reproduction amplifiers in cheap phone/pods aren't up to the task anyway, much less the average headphone/earbud.

I hesitate to use the term "audiophile" because of its pejorative connotation, but for people with above average sensitivity in hearing and training in sound artifacts, I think high resolution files are a good thing. Not only for private listening, but for a possible future when we regain a public domain and the remixing/sampling world takes off again.

For an analogy, think of DVD compilations of old TV shows that were encoded from tapes of television broadcasts. They look...ok...but when they go back to the original masters and re-release them there is an appreciable difference. Strangely though, consumer television/video playback formats are increasing in resolution, while common audio formats have been regressing.

Methinks you don't spend a lot of time on a bus. I have. I have rarely - no, make that never - heard an important cell phone call on the bus.

They usually go along the lines of:
"Aw damn, no you didn't."
"...and then she.... And then she did, again!"
"I'm so sick of your shit. Listen to me. (louder) Listen to me!"

It's always just inane crap. They're just trying to amuse themselves. Obnoxiously. It's amusing only to themselves.

I took a look at the site and it sounds like they are hammering on the copy/paste functionality. Well, and the Sarbanes/Oxley and ISO compliance.

But seriously, Collaborative Terminal? Sounds like a pit of snakes. I'm sure it's very lovely in person.

I constantly have people come to me asking for a "calculator".

"What about that thousand dollar calculator you have sitting on your desk?", I ask.

They stare in confusion.

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office win for the win

Worse than shadow profiles, there is a publicly viewable profile with my full name on it in Facebook. No idea how it got there. It has *no* information in it. Nada.

While I would prefer it was not there, the process to remove it is ridiculous.

You have to give them:
Full Name
Address
Phone Number
email address
And a scan of your government I.D.!!!!

Why the hell would I give them all that information to remove a profile that has no information associated with it? So, there it stands, mockingly.

"Ha, ha, what are you going to do about it?", they say. If I actually go through their process to remove it, who's to say the next time they create this fake profile they won't populate it with all the information they collected to remove the blank one?

Even if Congress writes privacy laws to cover this kind of data collection, misrepresentation, use of likeness, etc. it will be chock full of loopholes and exemptions specifically written in by - you guessed it - Facebook! As well as advertisers, big Pharma/Retailers, and any number of big pocket, lobby rich corps.

This points to the distinction between "life" and "alive". Is roast beef life? No. It was once life.

So, is a virus life?

Is a bacterium or spore floating in space at super-low temperature alive? What if it has had 10 percent of genetic information damaged by cosmic radiation?

Doesn't it cut both ways? With the major govs sinkholing all digital communications, shouldn't private citizens therefore securely encrypt their messages as well?

Which is the answer, opacity or transparency? Who gets the upper hand? Government, law enforcement, and emergency services (all paid for by citizens), or the freedom loving citizens themselves?

The arguments on both sides have valid points, but what solution fosters the values of a society that we can salute to?

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Gimmee Liberty