Your argument boils down to eliminating arbitrary currency on the basis of it having no intrinsic value. Would you propose we return to a barter system? The only reason currency works is because it has use as a universal exchange medium between arbitrary sets of goods; bartering requires both parties have something the other party wants.

Faith in the buying power of currency is what gives it value, because without it, the exchange of goods would be so unnecessarily difficult as to significantly hinder the exchange of goods and overall economic growth. You seem to have a massive failure in understanding of what people on /. mean when they say "imaginary property", which is "intellectual property". It has nothing to do with assigned value to intrinsically worthless materials (currency).

My kingdom for some mod points...

Pff. You can't just pretty up the outside and expect the insides to work better, n00b. You have to wax your CPU (and modem) to make them slick - decreases friction to make your computer run faster! Also, I heard putting graphite lubricant on your RAM works wonders, but I haven't tried this myself.

Don't you mean 512M, or did you misquote 640K?

</joke>

Posts like this make me wish I had mod points and could repeat-cast them for the same post. +1 True, +1 Informative, +1 Interesting, +1 This makes me want to cry. C++ is an awful language. If you haven't seen this, I think you'll appreciate this rant by Linus Torvalds.

Oh. Right. s/Patent/Trademark/. Be that as it may, you're still asking about the "2. ???" step ;P

Are you really asking this question?

1. Patent phrase "It's on like Donkey Kong"
2. ???
3. Profit

You're asking about Step #2. You must be new here...

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

You have it backwards. The liter was originally defined as 1 kilogram of water at 4C and 760 mm Hg.

A liter is now officially defined as 1 cubic decimeter, which makes the comparison to water only approximate.

Don't forget a credit card mag stripe reader so you can, you know, PAY for the electricity you're dumping into your car. Unless you get free electricity, which is a whole other story.

Around here, we pay $0.10/kWh. Not a whole lot to juice up the car, but definitely not 0.

I wish there was a +1: Irony mod option.

Fully agreed. The comment you replied to was a shortened version of the reply to his blog, which says this. I won't re-type it, but you should look at some of my other replies to people in this thread; you just happened to do the math to support our argument.