But to be honest, there are a couple reasons to do a cryptocurrency - it is faster than wiring money. But the main advantage is secrecy, which is why it is so popular among criminals, people that think the government is out to get them, and spies.

Obviously the government wants people to trade currency, just not secretly.

1) The government has no desire to do help people trade currency.

2) Only children under 10 would in fact believe that the government could not track the cryptocurrency they themselves created, even if it were open sourced.

3) There would be a market for it in foreign countries. The US government could pay spies, rebels etc. with said cryptocurrency, secure in the knowledge that the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, ISIL, and Boku-Haram could not track the Fedcoin. Of course, those people would not try to track it, they would simply kill anyone found with it. (Too be honest, China would just lock them up, and Russia would probably trade them to the US in exchange for the right to sell oil).

Children under 10 have rather small amounts of money, so the market is on the small side.

There is no credible market for a FedCoin, and frankly I think the guy that thought this up is about as smart as someone that thinks that "Wouldn't it be nice if China would tell us all of North Korea's military secrets? Has anyone asked? Let's go ask them RIGHT AWAY!!!"

Any Robot that is smart enough to put us out of work will be smart enough to join a union and WANT a car, house, TV, Houses.

You basically suffer from paranoia, not logic.

But let's assume you are right. Let's assume that somehow, we (people) are smart enough to

1. Design and build robots that can do 50% of our current jobs

2. Keep ahead of the curve, upgrading all our robots faster than we upgrade our new jobs.

3. But still keep the robots from becoming self aware enough to demand luxuries, good working conditions, etc. etc. etc.

4. and keep it cheaper than a human Because at first making it smart enough to beat a human will be expensive, but almost immediately it will become more expensive to keep it stupid enough no to demand rights.

Even then, it STILL WON'T HAPPEN. Because humans have both ethics and hate technology. There are morons out there right now getting measles because they don't trust vaccines. We certainly won't trust robots that are intentionally kept stupid. We would instead assume they are just PRETENDING to be stupid and plotting a robot rebellion.

Watch any movie. That's how humans think.

Or do you not understand the concept of "Artificial Intelligence"?

Any robot smart enough to truly put 50% of the human population out of work is smart enough to JOIN A UNION.

If the machines are not smart enough to join a union, then they will not be smart enough to put us out of work. If they are smart enough to join a union, we won't be building enough of them to put 50% of us out of work.

Yeah, we might build a few of them to do certain specific jobs like emergency nuclear generator shut off Robot. But not many.

I am sick and tired of Luddites that claim robots will steal all the jobs.

Jobs are not a limited resource. Jobs are dependent on things we need to get done.

Once upon the time 100% of jobs were focused on getting food. Hunting and gathering became full time work when population was high. Once farming came around, it freed up some people to do other things. They did not suddenly become lazy do-nothing people. Instead they took up lower priority tasks, and turned them into full time jobs.

Things like clothing manufacturing, which used to be done in your spare time, turned into full industries. New products like shoes, alcohol, luxuries etc. were created.

The question is, are there still things we need to do, but have not been able to afford? The answer to that is YES. We have education, science, space exploration, green technologies, and a host of other things that we has decided would be nice, but we simply don't have the manpower to do.

We will not run out of jobs, instead we will do things that we can not even imagine today. Anymore than a hunter/gatherer could imagine someone would be paid to sell food at a basketball game.

They are not robots, they are people capable of learning social skills, just as they can learn math, art, and other human knowledge.

The question is do we know how to teach them?

I don't know a lot, but I am willing to bet that autistic people are as different from each other as they differ from us. The whole thing is a spectrum, what works with one won't necessary work with others.

I think you original idea is correct. No particular accreditation will satisfy you. You need to talk to the specific teacher/aid and hear what they have to say, what they know, and what is their guiding principle. If they impress you go with them. If not, ignore them.

If the odds are 1 in 175 million, then a $2 breaks even when the after tax, instant profit exceeds $350 million. In this particular jackpot was $564 million. Instant payment of $381 million. Now, taxes (and the chance of splitting it with others) makes this not a real investment, but it got pretty darn close.

But if the jackpot got to say $800 million, buying a ticket becomes a mathematically good bet.

But there are other things going on. Honestly, if you hit the jackpot for anything over 20 million, it won't make that much of a difference. It will radically change your life in pretty much the same way. Most likely you will gain somewhere between six months to one year of happiness, a year or so of realizing that things are going poorly and then the rest of you life with a CRAPLOAD of depression and anger about how everything went to hell.

Why? Because if you gain something too quickly and easily, you neither value it nor do you know how to maintain and keep it.

Chances are very high you will want to help out a few people you know that really need it, which will cause a bunch of people that don't really need it to come begging for help. If you turn them down, suddenly your friends turn on you. If you don't turn them down, suddenly you are broke.

Your leisure activities will dramatically change and your friends won't be able to afford to go with you unless you pay for them. Which turns the relationship from friends to hanger-ons. It's hard enough to keep family from disintegrating, let alone your friendships.

Honestly, my advice to anyone that wins is to REFUSE TO TELL ANYONE YOU WON. At most, tell them you won a smaller amount. Don't sign anything giving up your privacy, instead keep it a secret from EVERYONE you are not married to. Set up a Trust that will anonymously help people you think truly need it, and do NOT take credit for it.

You can't 'bring your friends' along for the lifestyle, but you can occasionally show them a fantastic time.

The point is that this was a thread about alcohol, not a thread about Mormonism. Many religions have rules against alcohol. Bringing up a quote from his specific religion was totally in-appropriate. It was off topic, obnoxious and rude.

So i responded in kind - bringing up pretty much the worst incident about Mormonism to make a point, that it is NOT appropriate to push your religion into a discussion that had nothing to do with it.

And I knew the whole story. My leaving it out was part of the sarcasm, that you clearly missed.

I understand that Mormons have a religious requirement to preach. But there is a time and place for that. You never saw Huntsman or Romney do it while they were campaigning. Why? Because it would have been inappropriate. Similarly it was INAPPROPRIATE to do it here on Slashdot. If you want to be evangelical, go door to door in a residential are, or find a website that encourages that kind of behavior.

We don't encourage it. This is a tech website, not a forum for anyone to preach at us.

You have some serious issues. If I were you, I would look into talking to someone about them.

For the record:

I have the super taster gene. Like many such people, alcohol tastes extremely bitter and I have never liked it. When I did go out with friends, I usually bought one drink to be sociable, but never finished the dreadful thing.

But wait, it gets worse. Before I turned 30, I had contracted a disease that damaged my kidney. As such my doctor advised me to not drink alcohol again. So I don't.

So when you say I need alcohol to survive I laugh. Repeatedly.

I gave no excuses. I described the world accurately. You on the other hand feel the need to preach. Anonymously.

But seriously, while I agree they exist (I am in fact one of them), we are a small percentage of the population.

I learned how to do 90% of the work in a week, but the other 10% you never finishing learning how to do. Of course, that last 10% is the difference between a professional/expert and a rank amateur.

I think this is due to the mental capacity of human beings. If the job is so complex you can't learn how to do most of the work quickly, then we split the job into two or more sub-jobs.

The same guy that plants the food no longer transports it or cooks it. Why? Because those jobs have gotten so complex.

But back to the main point, the simpler stuff may not get the applause, but it is still a large part of the work. Just because someone doesn't think that declaring the variable counts as relevant to the program, it doesn't mean it shouldn't 'count'.

At heart, people really only give 3 reviews.

1) Bad

2) Meh

3) Good.

Yeah, some times you get "worst" and "best", but those really don't matter, except in unusual circumstances. They don't matter, as the average will deal with those situations.

You get 65 out of a hundred only when you compile a huge number of reviews.

Then you can get helpful stats. Simply take the average. If the average of 20 people is a scored of 2.7, out of 3, that becomes a 90 out of 100. At 1.5, the score is 50. etc. etc.