Except what actually happened was she deleted everything BUT troll posts and very likely engaged in sockpuppeting in order to fake her victimhood.

• Where does Java execute?
• Where does javascript execute?

I said they were "supposed" to be the good guys. And they are.

This is why we Americans now have the Fourth Amendment, requiring due process (with various levels of proof) before interfering with someone's life.

Well, but that was a while ago. Now the legal system is using rationales like "hey, your MONEY doesn't have any rights, so we don't need due process to seize it, just suspicion" and also "terrorism", "you are on this list", and the big winner, "I think I'll just shoot you" (and often your dog, even, every once in a while, your cat), plus "we like searching your finances and communications without a warrant, so we do (IRS, NSA, DEA, other TLAs)", etc.

You gotta keep up a little better.

Also, the 4th constrains the federal government. With significant optimism poured on the 14th amendment, plus a judge who hasn't received his most recent bribes, the 4th also constrains state governments. It does not, however, constrain corporations or individuals. That is, of course, if anyone was still paying it serious notice, which is clearly not the case anyway.

This stuff actually depends upon civil law, and there, the rules are *completely* different and not at all what you expect. Or will enjoy. Civil law exists specifically so the system can hammer you in the event that criminal law is not up to the job. Any other usefulness is wholly coincidental.

Nope. From the article, the looters were chanting that they believed Ebola was a scam. They do not believe it exists. So they're not going to bother trying to sterilize the objects stolen or 'purge' the infected. They're going to treat them as if they're going to get better. But they won't, and now the entire neighborhood is vulnerable to the disease.

It's wrong in the sense of "not exactly right", but for these purposes I'd say the mass is practically constant. We're talking over the lifetime of society, not the Solar system. (As a physicist, one thing you learn is the power of approximation -- don't waste too much time on measurements that won't really affect the end result.)

First of all, let's consider the classical (non-relativistic) mass of Earth. I understand it's increasing due to meteorites etc., basically the same process that made Earth in the first place, but much slower nowadays. I think you can see it's not contributing much to world economy.

Of course, my main error was in saying that mass would have much to do with economy in the first place. Energy is of course much more important; the flow of low-entropy radiation from the Sun, and the roughly equal higher-entropy radiation into space. This flow isn't changing very much over the lifetime of a society, either.

Also bear in mind the exponential nature of the so-called economic growth, i.e. doubling every N years. Now if the surface area of Earth (which is what limits both the radiation flux and things like agriculture) were to double every N years, then we could have real economic growth at the same rate. This is why we can basically ignore the _relatively_ small changes in mass and radiation above, as they are dwarfed by any exponential growth over time.

Of course, we keep improving technology to get more usable energy/food from this limited surface area per year. But the physics does exhibit some hard limits.

Bitcoin "mining" stopped when Satoshi's second-in-command moved on to other projects. His last name is Finnish for "ore".

Nowadays, we call it "verifying transactions" as it should have been from the very beginning. It's not about being a greedy gold-digger, it's about maintaining a network to provide a service, and it's a job like any other, with a reasonable pay.

This. Exactly what I think about altcoins, the outsourced R&D division of Bitcoin Inc... in an ideal world. The hard truth is that it takes a hard fork for any real change in the Bitcoin network, and it's hard to see a consensus coming up with all the alternatives.

The real (crypto)?anarchist utopia is about different co-existing currencies, may the best coin win, at least for their 15 blocks of fame. Exchanges are a bottleneck for now, as well as old-money investors who get stuck on certain coins. The REAL future is with Boolberry.. for now :-j

OTOH, the network effect ensures a place for Bitcoin for a good while. It's still the gold standard against which other cryptocurrencies are measured. It may well remain as a reserve/reference currency, as more agile coins take the stage for daily commerce and feel the buzz of technological development.

Bitcoin is like the central cardioid in Mandelbrot Set, spreading love for the hairy fringe of the new mathematical frontier.

Java and so forth is not limited enough. Not even close. And outside of that, there's the whole "ooops, the bug let some code execute" that will plague browser-side executables forever, or as close to it as makes no difference.

This is one of the core (ha) problems with client-side execution in a general purpose machine.

If you want to host a reputable website, then the more you can put active functionality for the user in server-side CGI, the better you can actually take that high road. All this java-loaded stuff on websites is a constant invitation to problems. It's an idea that is only safe in a world without bad guys. And our world is hardly that -- even the ones that are supposed to be the good guys (the government) are bad guys now.

But if you can tell your users "turn off client side execution" and your website will still work, then all they need is a browser that can read HTML, CSS and CGI and follow the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Then if you can get browser manufacturers to quit pretending that HTTPS provides "identity" so the browsers drop the SCARE tactics for self-signed certificates, we can all enjoy the web without nearly as much risk for the surfer or paid blackmail for the site owner.

For all of us who remember how to read and enjoy real web sites, this would just be another (good) day. On the other hand, if you're one of those who doesn't read, likes to type "tl;dr" (and thinks it's funny, instead of sad as heck) and/or one of the video-addicted, you're probably completely screwed. :)