Since the significant point mentioned was "the presence of a CPU" and not "the presence of Microsoft".... your point would be what?

For penny-ante criminal activity, yeah, BTC might make it easier for perpetrator and harder for the cops if he uses his head and a little common sense.

But for the bigger stuff and full blown fraud? (I.E. anything that's going to bring the full weight down on your head.) I don't think BTC will change things much unless you're willing to never, ever touch the hidden or ill gotten money that you've somehow managed to never have in your name in traceable records in the first place. Once it's traceable, I suspect it doesn't matter much if it disappears as traceable USD and re-appears as a Tesla bought with (theoretically untraceable) BTC... You're going to have some explaining to do, and it's going to be very hard to create reasonable doubt.

But as always, the "if you can't do the time" rules applies unless you're 110% certain you'll never slip up. Because all it takes sometimes is once.

This. It's the the thing that the "it scales back slightly the decentralized and fee-less nature of Bitcoin, which are important features to many of its supporters" crowd doesn't grasp. (One of the many things about how the real world works that many BTC fanboys don't grasp.)

What sort of "rebels" would have the training an ability to set up and operate a crew served weapon?

Rebels that had that training before they became rebels? (And who could then give guys that didn't have the training the bare minimum they need to know.) That's a serious answer by the way, folks don't lose their knowledge just because they turn their coats. And on top of that, low level missile systems designed to be used in active combat (like the BUK) are generally not designed to operated by rocket scientists in the first place. They're simplified and designed to operate quickly with minimal controls.

I take it you've never studied forensic accounting, or met a forensic accountant? (I have both, as it's a specialty my wife (an accountant) was looking at going into.) It's actually very hard to make funds "disappear" unless they never "appeared" in the first place. The only way to hide illicit income is to never visibly spend it and never take traceable possession of it. You might be able to hide a big pile of wealth - but you will leave traces that you moved it. Paying someone under the table? Same problem. Etc... etc...

Or, to put it another way, like so many here on Slashdot, you seem to suffer from the delusion that you know better than the actual professionals. You don't. Forensic accounting and accountants have been around a long time, and they've seen everything you describe. Using bitcoin the Mob might be able to get away with these things for a while, but knowing what I do (and what you seemingly don't) I wouldn't even try.

Is your only point to pick at the example or do you really disagree with the thesis?

I didn't pick at the example - I completely demolished your theory by demonstrating that your cheap and plentiful could not possibly exist. But you're to thickheaded to realize this.
 

Making your basket nuclear but still needing another 10 support baskets that limit its speed and supply its eggs with yoke defeats the purpose of having it nuclear!

Wrong again moron. The purpose of going nuclear wasn't to increase cruise speed, but to increase dash speed (I.E. at flight quarters), and to reduce the volume required for ship's propulsion to make greater volume available for aircraft fuel, munitions, spares, food, etc... (And as a bonus, they've discovered they can also carry about three days worth of fuel for the escort group - greatly improving the overall operational flexibility.)
 
Or, to put it another way, your cheap and simple is actually much more complicated and expensive than you think because you now need an enlarged logistics train to fuel the carrier. It's much more constrained in operations both because the lower dash speed limits the top weight of aircraft that can be launched and because it must be resupplied (with fuel, ammo, food, spares, etc...) more often.
 

What part of this is complicated?

It's very fucking complicated - and you have the understanding roughly equivalent to a five year old who goes "oooh, sun hot daddy!" and mistakenly believes he thus grasps the intricacies of the fusion reactions that produce that heat.

The reality is whatever fancy device you own that has any kind of transistor in it, much less a CPU-- a phone, a tablet, a TV-- you're having to fuss with it. Constantly.

Horseshit. My printer has a CPU in it, and in three years I've never had to do anything but turn in on. (I rely on the auto off feature.) Ditto for the CPU's in my and my wife's cars. Or in our GPSr's (a handheld and two dashboard navigation systems). Or in our washer and dryer. Or in our home entertainment system (TV, Tivo, HDMI switch, Roku, Blu-Ray player). Or in our microwave. Or... we pretty much haven't had to "mess with" any of the dozens of the CPU's in our possession. (And most of what little "messing with" we've had to do has been with the phone and desktop, and the "messing with" has been minimal... hit "update" and walk away for bit.) I don't know what planet you live on, but here on Earth in 2014, consumer grade devices don't generally require user intervention.

Anyone with an IQ above room temperature has long known that if Bitcoin was accepted as a medium of exchange it would be treated like any other and subject to the appropriate taxes and has no problems with being so.

You do realize those rights at that point in time applied only to white male land owners, right?

I should point out native americans are still largely unemployed, stuck in reservations on land white American's didn't want. One of their few rays of hope being the ubiquitous Indian Casino where they are exacting their revenge. Still they are second class citizens.

Blacks were still being massively discriminated against until the Civil Rights act which was around 180 years later. They are still second class citizens.

The poor, they are still second class citizens.

Women are the one group doing pretty well for themselves though they are still underrepresnted in government.

Look around the room at a State of the Union address. The room is still overwhelming full of affluent white men.

As for the founding fathers brilliant ideas on governence, it exploded in a bloody civil war in 80 years.

You need look no further than where the U.S. congress, courts and presidency are today. They are a smoldering ruin. They have never been the great institutions Americans are brainwashed in to thinking they are. Are they better than totalitarian dictatorships, sure. Are they models the rest of the world can aspire too, no, not really.

American governement is the best government money can buy.

Try reading Zinn's A People's History of the United States. It will disillusion you of the comic book U.S. History taught in U.S. school where the founding fathers are all saints and geniuses.

They were mostly self serving and profiteering. Its fitting Andrew Jackson is on the $20 dollar bill because he was infamous for profiteering off the battles he won, mostly by seizing the lands he took and splitting it up between himself and his friends.

The point of putting it in a URL shortener is that Slashdot limits the number of characters you can put in a signature. Sorry if the news article has lots of Javascript; I run NoScript and AdBlockPlus, so I don't see any of it.

Of course it is, and the misogyny was obviously there. But studying home economics isn't the same as being a homemaker, either.

And when I was in high school, it was periodically suggested that I should try out for basketball, because I was one of the taller kids in the class. (It wasn't suggested by anybody who'd seen my klutzy attempts to actually dribble a basketball, but playing defense mainly meant getting in other people's way and then handing off the ball to somebody faster, which I could sometimes manage.)