To be fair to the GP, the output of any human is predictable and explainable if we accept determinism. The only way the Lovelace Test can be valid is if we accept that people have souls (or some other attribute not subject to physical law) that in some way affect natural brain function, and find a way to reproduce that artificially.

Indeed, the whole idea of "unpredictable, unexplainable output" seems contradictory. When people do not behave somewhat predictably, when we cannot explain their actions, we typically label them as crazy. Intelligent actions are not inexplicable after analysis, even if they appear to be in the moment. The only way to satisfy that condition is to generate random output, which is the opposite of intelligence.

Fortunately we have laws that define those pieces of paper as legal tender, which differentiates them from little bits of hash solutions and things that people define in internet forums.

Yes actually, I do expect there to be some sympathy. Because everyone bitches when the NSA does it.

I don't disagree with you, but the hypocrisy of "but that's the job of the NSA" that I hear when someone points this out is maddening.

This was clearly wrong, they targeted another country's corporation, and one that has a huge impact on the Internet, worldwide.

And one which was doing business in their country. Like it or not, Google in India is subject to India's laws.

How many corporations and people in foreign countries have been targeted by the NSA? How many people think that is wrong?

There are an alarming number of people who basically say it's OK when the NSA does it, because that's their mandate.

It's only fair that you either get to protest when every and any country pulls something like this, or not at all.

Oh, I agree, and I disagree with the practice in general. But, as I said, it's appalling just how many Americans keep saying "it's fine when we do it, it's wrong when you do it".

I'm just reminding people of the apparent double standard which gets applied here and in the news.

Me, I think for a country to decide that their laws/desires trumps the rights of people in other countries, you lose some credibility when someone does the exact same thing to you.

How many people have children? OK, I will give you that one- you could claim that all life is 'programmed' to reproduce.

How many people sing in the shower?

How many people doodle?

Except the IRS has declared that bitcoin is property, not currency.

Q-1: How is virtual currency treated for federal tax purposes?
A-1: For federal tax purposes, virtual currency is treated as property. General tax
principles applicable to property transactions apply to transactions using virtual
currency.

and

http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroo...

The money laundering statute applies to the below:

(4) the term âoefinancial transactionâ means
(A) a transaction which in any way or degree affects interstate or foreign commerce involving
(i) the movement of funds by wire or other means or
(ii) one or more monetary instruments, or
(iii) the transfer of title to any real property, vehicle, vessel, or aircraft, or
(B) a transaction involving the use of a financial institution...
http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...

Note that "real property," is real estate, not any personal property whatsoever, and the term "monetary instrument" is likewise defined by the FDIC:

Monetary instruments.
(1) Monetary instruments include:
(i) Currency;
(ii) Traveler's checks in any form;
(iii) All negotiable instruments (including personal checks, business checks, official bank checks, cashier's checks, third-party checks, promissory notes (as that term is defined in the Uniform Commercial Code), and money orders) that are either in bearer form, endorsed without restriction, made out to a fictitious payee (for the purposes of Sec. 1010.340), or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery;
(iv) Incomplete instruments (including personal checks, business checks, official bank checks, cashier's checks, third-party checks, promissory notes (as that term is defined in the Uniform Commercial Code), and money orders) signed but with the payee's name omitted; and
(v) Securities or stock in bearer form or otherwise in such form that title thereto passes upon delivery.
http://www.fdic.gov/regulation...

So yes, there are very different regulations depending on whether bitcoin is or is not currency. Absent legislation specifically addressing "virtual currency," the courts will have to hash out this disagreement, which is what will happen here, I'm sure, but I think it's regrettable that someone can be punished for law that isn't yet decided. If I drive 55, should I be punished for skirting speeding laws? Are racetracks circumventing legislation against street racing? The problem with calling this money laundering isn't that this guy is punished (if he's guilty of running the Silk Road); it's that it opens up a whole other class of individuals for prosecution just because they were using bitcoin to conduct transactions -- namely everyone who conducts transactions in bitcoin.

In certain legal crimes, intent matters. If you kill someone, then they have to prove you intended to harm the person. But in other crimes - it does not matter at all. For example, your intent does not matter at all if you are charged with reckless endangerment. Your belief that intent matters here is false. We don't care if you accidentally gave us the wrong password or intentionally did it.

There is that kind of need, however, for Adidas to sell a whole shitload of super-cool-awesome-double-plusgood soccer balls every couple of years at inflated prices.

I see what you did there. ;-)

"I have no dog in this fight, but please, let me be annoyed at your for trying to take an unqualified paid shill's opinion out of the discussion"

So SSL is nothing more than an honor system?

This is nothing new.

And, let's face it, I bet the NSA et al have demanded more private keys be handed over to them than you'll ever know about. Where's your outrage over that?

The five eyes all use each other to spy on their own (and others) citizens, and share the information among themselves. Where's your outrage over that?

I see this as a symptom of a greater problem, but no different from what a bunch of other countries are already doing.

Until someone creates a new encryption system which isn't susceptible to MITM attacks, this will always be the case. And governments will always unashamedly insist on spying on their people, and anybody else they can find.

So how much money or jail time for Fraud and Impersonation? Oh right, it's ok when a government does it. And you can't complain to Uncle Sam as that would disrupt your business in that country.

And, really, if the US is saying it's their right to tap into anything they want to ... how is it different when India does it?

India already forced BlackBerry to allow them to access BBM and the like.

Uncle Sam is causing as much disruption to US businesses abroad as anything, because people are realizing that American companies are effectively just extensions of the US spy apparatus -- because the PATRIOT act means they can demand whatever data they have, and you more or less have to assume they're doing it and being prevented from telling you.

Which means Indians are already being spied on by (at least) their own government AND the USA.

Do you expect there to be sympathy for an American company when a foreign government taps into them? Because I hear an awful lot of people saying they think it's perfectly OK when the US does it to foreigners.

Listening to an investment banker on the floor screaming "dont taze me bro" would pretty much make every single person on the planet smile at the same time. It would cause world peace and make cold fusion work.

Sounds like an awesome idea for a Kick Starter campaign.

Surely it would do almost as well as potato salad.

Doing the same to the people in charge of the NSA would also be awesome.

When you talk about "we" have to leave the earth, I assume you are talking about a handful of lucky few. We're not going to save the billions of sick and dirt poor bastards, right ?

That is one of the many reasons I'm skeptical.

Because I can't imagine most people are going to lift a finger to help build the escape module for a bunch of rich assholes. :-P

I was merely listing the reasons why "we" might seriously be considering leaving Earth. I do not actually expect it to happen.

He said ice sheet. So we're supposed to ignore what he actually said and assume he meant something completely different? Um, no.

"I am not well read in this department" - wait a minute, you can give exact cites for research papers on sea ice, but don't even have a *general* conception of what percentage of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining versus what is losing? Something tells me you're just grabbing cites you've never even read from denier websites.

Let me help you out with ice sheet. Pretty much all of the East Antarctic ice sheet is gaining, while pretty much the only area losing is the Antarctic peninsula and surrounding areas in West Antarctica. Now, they're losing *mass* a lot faster per unit area than the east is gaining mass, but in terms of area, the overwhelming majority of Antarctica is gaining ice. Because it almost never gets above freezing there, even in a warming world.

The 2010 paper was evaluating the failed CMIP5 predictions

If you'd actually read the paper, which you clearly haven't, you'd know that they themselves did the CMIP5 runs, it's not CMIP5 runs that had been done earlier. Do you even have a clue what CMIP5 stands for? Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5. As in, "there were four freaking phases that came before this one". CMIP5 is comprised of all of the latest models from all over the world. They didn't even start planning CMIP5 unitl September 2008. Your notion that this is some sort of review of old climate predictions just shows how terrible your understanding is of what you're talking about and how you don't actually read the papers that you cite, that you're just simply grabbing them from whatever denialist trash websites you read.

First, that's a paper from 2010. How was a paper from 2010 supposed to be "predicting" anything about what scientists in the past thought?

Secondly, and more importantly, I had been responding to Archangel Michael, who was talking about the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet, not Antarctic sea ice. So your link about pack ice is totally irrelevant.

But hey, let's switch topics totally and talk about sea ice, since you seem to want to. Here's how the IPCC sums up all papers on the modelling of antarctic sea ice, including this one:

Whereas sea ice extent in the Arctic has decreased, sea ice extent in the Antarctic has very likely increased. Sea ice extent across the Southern Hemisphere over the year as a whole increased by 1.3– 1.67% per decade from 1979–2012 with the largest increase in the Ross Sea during the autumn, while sea ice extent decreased in the Amundsen-Bellingshausen Sea. The observed upward trend in Antarctic sea ice extent is found to be inconsistent with internal variability based on the residuals from a linear trend fitted to the observations, though this approach could underestimate multi-decadal variability. The CMIP5 simulations on average simulate a decrease in Antarctic sea ice extent , though Turner et al. (2013) find that approximately 10% of CMIP5 simulations exhibit an increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice extent larger than observed over the 1979-2005 period. However, Antarctic sea ice extent variability appears on average to be too large in the CMIP5 models . Overall, the shortness of the observed record and differences in simulated and observed variability preclude an assessment of whether or not the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent is inconsistent with internal variability. Based on Figure 10.16b and (Meehl et al., 2007b), the trend of Antarctic sea ice loss in simulations due to changes in forcing is weak (relative to the Arctic) and the internal variability is high, and thus the time necessary for detection is longer than in the Arctic.

Weak trend, short observed record, and high internal variability in the simulations. Which shouldn't be surprising, sea ice is a lot harder to model than ice sheet thickness, which really only has three main parameters - snowfall, melt/sublimation, and outflow, and the short observed record is due to how few people historically have navigated antarctic waters vs. arctic.

But again, to reiterate the primary point: the conversation you jumped into was about ice sheet thickness, not sea ice.