Except the continued viability and value of bitcoin is based entirely on user trust, because there is nothing of inherent value behind it (which could be a somewhat uncommon lump of metal, a considered to be valuable rock, or the promise and legal protection of a powerful group of people who run a country).

And this entire Mt. Gox kerfluffle has seriously eroded the general public's trust of bitcoin, even as it was just starting to catch on.

This may not kill the currency, but it's not going to do it any favors either.

So... your proposed replacement for money is an outlandish system of universal volunteering which barely even works in theory let alone practice?

The request was that you be less ridiculous, not as utterly absurdly ridiculous as possible.

I'm reminded of the Gizmodo redesign. The new site was terrible for readability, destroyed the comment system, and the regular commenters all screamed to high heaven about it.

Gizmodo said they were listening and implementing fixes for the issues, but it would take time, give them two months. Two months passed, nothing changed. Anyone who broached the subject was either outright banned, or shouted down and personally insulted by the editors. The lack of fixes was justified by saying "page impressions are higher than ever", so that must mean the redesign was great. But meanwhile, the long time core of commenters all slowly dribbled away from the site.

That giant pile of bullshit made me leave Gizmodo and never go back. I'm hoping Slashdot doesn't do the same thing with this redesign.

...basically what I'm saying to you, Slashdot, is don't try to fix things based on the complaints and then decide you've gotten close enough and push ahead anyway. If you can't actually get the new features to work correctly without breaking the beloved functionality of the site, then ABANDON THE UPDATE. You're better off losing the work you've put into the redesign than losing the core of your userbase.

Well, the USSR was also an authoritarian state whose leaders remained in power through a combination of fear and enforced ignorance among the population, so it shouldn't be too surprising that another state run in much the same way follows a similar trend. Especially since North Korea is like the USSR on steroids in that respect.

Due process, for one. And the fact that guilt is rarely obvious enough to justify a lightning quick death.

I'll take "never", for that one. Outside of diseased minds and idiot trolls, no one actually thinks that's a legitimate possibility let alone likely outcome.

Or trickle down economics "Reagonomics".

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

...because politicians don't run businesses, they run a branch of government, and governments ARE NOT and SHOULD NOT BE businesslike.

Also, a "supermajority of the people in the U.S." don't want the Affordable Care Act, eh? I think you need to take a trip back to reality, where facts are king, and simply inventing "facts" like you're doing is generally frowned upon.

The real idiots are the ones who lump together all levels and branches of government for no rational reason other than they're forms of government.

That makes about as much sense as saying "What do you really expect from the EU, given the way the Chinese government tramples on human rights. Just be glad they didn't ship you off to a concentration camp."

A synergistic reaction that causes a fantastic high and (usually) a painful death soon after.

When you say "One defense was that state-based exchanges were performing a lot better than the federal healthcare.gov website servicing 36 states." and then follow it up with "But Oregon's website problems have forced the state to rely on paper applications to sign up participants." are you actually trying to use one state-run exchange's technical failure to undermine the other states whose exchanges are working just fine?

I ask, because if that IS what you did (and it does appear you did) you need to take a remedial course on logic.

It's more "Cody Wilson" than "Bitcoin". The guy is a shameless attention whore who claims odd political beliefs but is actually doing the things he's doing for the payday.

That is how one of the original iPods had their firmware dumped after all, it was played out through the little piezo click speaker at some absurdly low data rate.

No, really, I'm not kidding, there is no possible additional feature or "exclusive" game or service that could make me EVER buy something like this.

Do not want with a fierce burning passion.