That didn't happen - the tesla was paid for with dollars by Bitpay (who received bitcoins), Overstock uses Coinbase to get their money in dollars and the Tiger Direct website is down as of writing. IOW, none of the retailers took any bitcoins from shoppers, they take dollars from exchanges. None of the shoppers paid any retailer any bitcoins, rather they paid bitcoins to an exchange. For "retailer accepts bitcoin" I expect them to actually take the purchasers bitcoins and convert the btc to dollars, not ask for it to be converted before purchase

Regardless of whether the retailer actually accepted bitcoins or not (they don't), retailers also accept part payment in coupons, or store vouchers, etc. None of which are money or currency.

The most accurate definition of money is "common item of barter", which btc also isn't.

No, it isn't.

People steal lots of things - groceries, clothing, cars - that doesn't make those things "money" though.

Better than most players != better than the best players. GP is quite correct - it is easy to throw a bunch of electro-mechanical components together that will best even the very best "sportsman" of all time, but it is well-nigh impossible (provably so) to put together an AI that will better a Go champion (e-sport).

So, for traditional sports we already have the ability to beat the very best humans while for E-sports (Go, Starcraft, etc) it's still very much a human-dominated activity, with good reason.

So, just like my family vacations?

That's because it's an entirely man-made book.

The pure-C api is what makes it portable - I dare you to use a C++ written lib*.so at runtime from sbcl, guile, pyNewLanguage, Perl or whatever the the hell is the language of the day.

I said "progressive income tax tables applies". If you want to know what that means see wikipedia. In brief, it means that only money in a certain bracket gets taxed at the rate for that bracket. It's clear from your other postings in this thread that you didn't know that. In any rate, my workings were given above, as you asked.

What are you talking about? 35%? Really? I shop online all the time in the $30 range and pay less than $1 for services. In any case, the fees for paying with bitcoin via an exchange is a great deal more than the fees for most other payment methods. When exactly are BTC payments cheaper? Can you point this out to me?

I live in South Africa, progressive income tax tables applies. All-in-all, I pay close on to 40% in personal income tax leaving me with 60% to spend.

So, I earn R100, the govt keeps R40. Of the R60 left, I spend R40 on goods and services (not fuel) which includes VAT@14%, which leaves the govt with R40 + (0.14 * R60 = R8.4) = R48.4

This does not even include the fact that I pay property tax separately and that there is a fuel levy (another tax) on each litre I buy. Recently, there is yet another tax that charges me R0.35/km I drive on National Roads (currently I drive about 60km/day on N1/N3).

When I bothered to actually add it up a few years ago (minus the new road taxes), I found that the state gets close to 62% of my salary. In return I get roads, non-functional police departments, broken court systems and corrupt civil servants.

You need the computer but you can wait for the bitcoins

If by "YOU choose where you'll be" you mean "you unwittingly go to hell because you worshipped the wrong god". Anyway, how the hell do you know that you're worshipping the right one? Odds are good that you'll be there in hell with me.

I wasn't attempting to claim it was, only that an education system in which most of it's graduates can be trusted to be logical is better than one in which a significant percentage should never have graduated at all.

I'll take quantity over quality any day; your priorities may be different.

That doesn't mean that they believe in creationism - from the same link: 42% of South Africans "accepted the theory of evolution as scientifically founded". Not bad for a backwards country where 90% of the people believe in the voodoo of witchdoctors.

To further put things in perspective, note that only 41.7% (wikipedia link) of the South African population has completed high school, but 42% accept the theory of evolution, while in the first world country of the USofA you have 85% of the population who have completed high-school but only 60% accept the theory of evolution. This points to a failing in the latter's educational system and a success in the former's.

IOW, even third-world countries are doing better than the USA when it comes to biology classes, even voodoo believing, uneducated, poor and mostly superstitious folk from Africa have accepted evolution - why is the USA still so behind?

South Africa perhaps? Creationism is not in any of our science classes. However, there are politicians trying to change this as we speak (or write, as the case may be) :(