Bitcoin is backed by the stakeholders - those who have invested money into mining and bitcoins. These people are citizens of a variety of countries, many of which offer legal rights for investments. The United States, being the very capitalist nation that it is, has many laws that protect its citizen's property. These citizens will be petitioning the government constantly through every legal avenue possible to insure their bitcoin holdings are not made illegal on a political whim. In Canada for example, the Canada Revenue Agency (Canadian IRS) are going to be passing out rules for reporting the income. It's capital gains once sold on the market, and in Canada that tax rate is quite high, however it is a legal avenue to cash out bitcoins.

There is an emerging marketplace for bitcoins, Baidu probably being the largest name to enter this market at the moment. This list may seem trivial now, but there is enough momentum now that it will likely take off. All it needs is the blessing of a major US political party - and to do that just keep sending them BTC donations. They aren't going to make their own hoard of money illegal.

Well he wrote that comment using language very reminiscent of Communist propaganda.

Is it really now? Why do the Full Disclosure mailing list messages periodically end up in my spam folder? I clearly have hundreds of them in my inbox, yet a percentage of them end up in spam.

I think the spam filtering effectiveness comes down to one basic reason: Spamhaus

le sigh

From TFA:

"Gedik says that while this experiment was done using bismuth selenide crystals, a basic topological insulator, “what we have done is not specific to topological insulators. It should also be realizable in other materials as well, such as graphene.” "

Yeah I don't understand that either, any MEMs device I've dealt with, like a DLP chip had strong warnings about electro static charge. I imagine an EMP wouldn't be much better.

The jobs just moved over seas - it's as simple as that. The final assembly step of smartphone devices are usually done by hand because really it is just a menial job, probably like most of the jobs when Kodak was at its peak employment.

Instead of Kodak doing the r&d work and assembly now companies like Apple do the product r&d and Foxconn does the assembly - employing more than 500k people with goals to reach over 1 million.

So there are lots of jobs globally, just not here.

What's even more fucked up is that to make this realistic we need models of babies, children, disabled, sick and elderly in game. Then add weapons like napalm and sarin gas.

Like sure I'd love to design a great asymmetric warfare scenario that punishes the player for deliberately murdering non-combatants however I'm also introducing the means to allow someone to carry out fantasies of murdering non-combatants. It's just a matter of modding the code a bit and it could be a realistic game called War Criminals where you commit war crimes as vengeance for the attacks your enemies did on your people.

The Red Cross should really just stay out of this completely. It's straight up mainstream entertainment, just like movies and music.

And ever since then you now do colon cleanses after you eat seeds?

It takes quite a bit of time and liquid helium just to cool any cryostat not to mention a full body MRI. The larger the thermal mass the more time and helium you'll need. The ideal is to pre-cool with liquid nitrogen, then do a helium fill but even so - you still have probably 100+ kg of rf coils and magnets. I imagine manufacturers of the MRI units also design them to only go through a limited number of cool down / warm up phases considering you have in-vacuum assemblies at low temperatures. So eventually after x number of warm up / cool downs a superconducting coil may no longer be superconducting and a quench will occur. That's a costly repair and serious down time. This isn't my primary field of work but I'm familiar with similar technologies and these are typically the issues I've heard about.

If you have any sources about the number of machines and usage feel free to share I'd be curious to know.

Try Start Communications, they'll lease the Rogers line and provide you with 150/10 Mbit service and 400 GB for $90/month.

I don't like their website design, I find it annoying to navigate. :P

http://solaptop.com/en/products/laptops/

        System

                CPU: Intel Atom D2500 1.86 GHz Duo Core, Intel 945GSE + ICH7M
                HDD: Seagate 2.5” SATA HDD 320GB
                RAM: Kingston 2-4GB DDRIII SDRAM (Options Available)
                Graphics: 1080p HD Vide, Built-In Intel GMA3600 Graphics
                Battery Operating Time: 8 - 10 hours

        I/O

                Display: 13.3" LCD, WXGA, 1366 x 768
                Camera: 3MP
                Audio: Realtek ALC661 HD Audio, Built-in 2 Speakers | Internal mic + 1/8” input
                3 USB2.0, Headphone jack, HDMI, LAN(10/100), Card reader (SD/MS/MMC)

        Wireless

                Modem: 3G/4G World/multimode LTE
                GPS: gpsOne Gen8A
                WiFi: MIMO 802.11b/gn (2.4/5GHz)
                Bluetooth: Integrated Digital Core BT4.0

Yes it was exactly what Aaron Schwartz did, except with a computer hidden in a closet automatically retrieving every document on the system.

You can probably walk into any major university, find the library and do a scholar.google.com search for a very large percentage of all peer reviewed published research. Then print it off (or save to USB key), and leave, without paying anything.

The library itself might be worth looking at as well, I'd check out the scientific review collections that people hand picked and placed together to provide a coherent, broad overview on a particular subject. I probably should go more often myself.

Sure it's not convenient but it is there available to the public. If you can't do it yourself maybe getting in contact with someone who has access would help. I can login to an old university account and get journal access still.

I think the man deserves a break already. So what if he wasn't been charitable like this all his life, he's doing good shit now. Just get over it.

They can't force anyone into any sort of treatment without a huge legal circus. Just look at the Jehovah Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions even if they will obviously die without one. The closest we get to this right now is vaccinations and even then, people who refuse to have their children get them generally don't receive the vaccination - but it doesn't mean everyone else has to accept their decision and have their children in the same school.

I'm quite confident that genetic analysis will only reveal a link to some generic mental disorder, but environmental factors plus nurturing during childhood are the real reasons for violent personality types. However this will always be a topic of speculation if we as a society refuse to explore certain topics because of our fear of the unknown and the political fallout.

It's like not even trying to cure diseases related to aging because humans have always had a finite existence and must die at some point. How can we tolerate watching loved ones go through a system that inevitably has them frail and in pain, carted around in a wheel chair so they can die high as fuck on morphine without even being in their own home?