And these are very good arguments why such a metric should not be taken as an end-all be-all. Isn't that generally the case with metrics and benchmarks?

For example, you might use a benchmark to gauge the relative performance between two video cards. I test Card A and it gets 700. I test Card B and it gets a 680. However, in running a specific game that I like, Card B gets slightly faster framerates. Meanwhile, some other guy wants to use the video cards to mine Bitcoin, and maybe these specific benchmarks test entirely the wrong thing, and Card C, which scores 300 on the benchmark, is the best choice. Is the benchmark therefore useless?

No, not necessarily. if the benchmark is supposed to test general game performance, and generally faster benchmark tests correlate with faster game performance, then it helps shoppers figure out what to buy. If you want to shop based on a specific game or a specific use, then you use a different benchmark.

> That's why Bitcoin needs regulation

Regulation doesn't stop scams, it merely makes them more creative. Let's regulate 'till only lawyers can own a business? Scams could be not prevented but undone, by total transparency and traceability, which is easier to implement than you think ("the books have no trace of transactions involving you and this thing? then you don't own it").

But, unfortunately, transparency would expose powerful people and their tricks, so the powerful people allow STASI-like spying and your children groped at the airport, so you rebel and seek comfort in privacy. Checkmate, you lose.

I am against BTC regulation because every time you earn something real or money, from bitcoin or whatever, you should put it in the tax form else you're being dishonest. BTC, like virtual game goodies, fall in this category IMHO.

Maybe these fliers were honest, and Comcast just believes the investing in an ISP is a money-losing venture. It would explain some things.

I guess the only sensible response is to sell your stock in Comcast. They view their own business as a money-pit and a disaster waiting to happen.

Can you explain in more detail?

I'm not an expert here, but I think the idea is to come up with a single quantifying number that represents the idea that very fast compression has limited utility if it doesn't save much space, and very high compression has limited utility if it takes an extremely long time.

Like, if you're trying to compress a given file, and one algorithm compressed the file by 0.00001% in 14 seconds, another compressed the file 15% in 20 seconds, and the third compressed it 15.1% in 29 hours, then the middle algorithm is probably going to be the most useful one. So why can't you create some kind of rating system to give you at least a vague quantifiable score of that concept? I understand that it might not be perfect-- different algorithms might score differently on different sized files, different types of files, etc. But then again, computer benchmarks generally don't give you a perfect assessment of performance. It just provides a method for estimating performance.

But maybe you have something in mind that I'm not seeing.

I hope you realize that you just gave us more evidence, consisting of yet another astounding "coincidence" on top of all the others.

I hope you realize just how remarkably similar your writing is to that of khayman80, and how the timings of your replies so neatly coincide and cooperate.

Regulations? Licenses? Hmm. As it happens, we already have pertinent "regulations".

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 10:

Does it really qualify as a currency yet? I don't know. How do we define what makes a currency?

And don't misunderstand me. I'm not trying to claim that bitcoins aren't worth anything. But Garbage Pail Kids trading cards are probably still worth something. There may be someone in the world who would accept them as payment for goods and services. Does that make them a currency?

Does a currency need to be backed by some kind of country? Is there an expectation of stability of price? Do you need an area of economic activity where the currency is ubiquitously accepted as a form of payment? Maybe you know the answers to these questions. I don't. There are probably a lot of people in Congress who don't.

The laws should be identical to the extent possible, between different forms of currency.

So, your average C-Store should be required by law to accept Japanese Yen or the Sudanese Pound?

That aside, doesn't the Federal Government get to decide what's money and what's not? Didn't think it was the business of State governments to be regulating money....

Though I don't remember Apple being explicit about it, it seems that their OS updates support the past 3 models. iOS7 was released when the iPhone 5s had not yet been released, and supported the iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, and iPhone 5. You can still buy an iPhone 4s, so I would expect that iOS8 will support it, but will not support the iPhone 4 anymore.

So you will probably be able to upgrade your current phone, though it'll probably be a bit slow and will lack some features. That's just an educated guess, though.

Yes.

And please note, in case you don't understand how comparisons work, that you don't compare things that are identically the same. They're the same, so it doesn't make sense to compare them. You also don't compare things that are so similar that people have a hard time understanding the differences. In those cases, it's much more meaningful to contrast them.

The only time it really makes sense to compare things is if they're significantly different and yet have similarities. Coffee and amphetamine are very different, and yet both are addictive stimulants that lots of people use in order to be productive. That makes for an interesting comparison.

You, sir, are an abusive moron who is obviously not intelligent enough to realize that the Mars rovers are spinoffs from Apollo. Were it not for Apollo there would be no Hubble, no Martian robots, no ISS, none of the space exploration done today. Obviously unlike you, I remember Sputnik. We can thank the Russians for Apollo.

Now crawl back to 4chan where flamebait like yours is welcome. Where in the hell are the moderators?

I agree, more investigation is warranted.

Wait... people are still buying Blackberry devices?