It won't take a generation to see a profit. Consider space tourism, it is currently outrageously expensive but that is OK. The handful of people willing to pay such sums exist. Such willingness to pay is a tried and true factor that supports initially expensive products and services.

The quarterly focus that you assume is for publicly traded companies. Privately held companies can have longer perspectives.

That is just a phase. A necessary phase, but one that people move beyond. Just as sailing from Europe to North America was once only an activity that governments could afford.

We've been to the moon. We've had one of more humans in space continuously since 2000.

In some number of decades we could have a manned mission to mars, the technology is getting feasible.

In centuries it is feasible that we would have the technology to colonize other rocks in the solar system. We can't do so today but we can research the technology and discover the science that future generations will stand upon.

The one and only known species that is aware of this issue and can have a conversation about it and can do something about it, i.e. not limit itself to this one planet. That's a pretty special species.

To continue with the glass is half full/empty metaphor, you ignore the fact that someday there will be no glass. More mass extinction level events will happen. And the big deal is that it would be a shame to lose the only known intelligent species capable of contemplating and studying the universe in such an event, and lose whatever species may have developed from this intelligent species.

Occupying more than one rock in the solar system greatly increases the species chance of survival. Plus the amount of resources available in asteroids and such dwarfs everything we have acquired from the earth.

The enormous expense involved in manned space flight and habitation is temporary. Yet that expense may well seem paltry if we can get past the bootstrapping phase. I have greater faith in the civilian commercial space industry in this regard than I do with government based projects.

Much of the science and tech of today's planetary missions are the result of military tech and those glory days of NASA manned missions. Those manned lunar missions were preceded by various robotic lunar missions.

The cold war greatly benefited the space program, it funded its tech. That chest thumping got the public behind all that spending on space. NASA and the US space program suffer today because of a lack of interest by the people. Fortunately the civilian commercial space industry seems to be coming along quite nicely.

Well I am a little rusty but I have done it off and on for 30 years, 6502, 68000, 16- and 32-bit x86, PowerPC, ARM and a few odd micro controllers. And CPU architecture is something that I enjoy learning about. So yeah, not the average C programmer. I make no claims that the average C programmer who can read assembly for debugging purposes can beat the compiler. Someone who is knowledgeable about the hardware architecture and has some experience with assembly would be required, although the experience does not necessarily have to be on that architecture. I did pretty good my first time out in PowerPC. It also depends on the code. Not all code can be tuned, or is worth tuning. I also tend to think about the architecture when coding in C/C++, that helps too and is a nice side effect of the assembly experience.

Now, how much experience is enough to beat the compiler. That's hard to say. For someone like me who is a "freak" and actually enjoys assembly, there are probably some recent college grads who can do it. I've also seen people with 30 years of experience who have occasionally written assembly when absolutely required who probably will get beaten by the compiler. I think its one of those things you have to have some inherent interest in. When I work on a new architecture I like to re-write some code in assembly for fun and curiosity on my own time, one such example is some vector/matrix math code going back to a 3d graphics class in college. Again, I admit this is "freaky". :-)

Currency is not **the** middleman, it is **a** middleman.

I'm not arguing against bitcoins. I'm pointing out that it is an asset in various legal jurisdictions and that this has huge implications that are only now coming to light.

No. Goods and services are not only traded using currency. They may be traded using other non-currency assets as well. However trading assets has a capital gain/loss tax implication in the U.S.

A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.

Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.

So if you buy a laptop from Dell and the IRS discovers you paid in bitcoins you may be expected to provide some sort of accounting for the coins used, date acquired, value on that date, etc.

I've been hearing people say "compilers are finally good enough that assembly is obsolete" for about 20 years. Its never been true. Someday maybe. I doubt its a lot harder, however I would agree that it is a lot less necessary. Computers are so overpowered for typical tasks it hardly makes any difference whether one uses C or assembly.

I haven't written any assembly in about 5 years. However every hardware generation or so I compare some assembly code I wrote about 10 years ago to the current compilers. The assembly still wins. I'm not claiming this is typical results. The key to big wins in assembly is not to out micromanage the compiler when it comes to scheduling, rather it is to use knowledge and info that can't be represented in the language nor communicated to the compiler through the language.

FWIW, the reason I haven't written assembly in over 5 years is that I haven't worked on something that is extremely time sensitive in recent years.

Data is sent by satellite in some newer aircraft. Recall the French jet that went down in the South Atlantic. When abnormal events occurred the aircraft sent some text messages to the airline. Full telemetry would be very expensive. However occasional texts for abnormal events, and maybe an occasional gps coordinate, would be reasonable.

That said, black boxes and such telemetry would be of limited to no value in the Ukrainian shoot down case. The black box won't tell us what type of missile destroyed the aircraft and where it was launched from.

You are missing my point. Expensive media campaigns (ie. money) only persuades the indifferent and the uninterested. If you can convince a person that something matter, get them interested, then the media campaign will not change their mind no matter how much money you throw into it. That is why money is inferior to votes.

Ask someone in an actual campaign if they fear, in he U.S., the NRA or AARP because of their money or because of their motivated voters who are highly likely to show up on election day. These two lobbyists are the most powerful in the country because of their motivated members not because of campaign contribution.

Of course there are. That is why the 1%'ers have more political power than the 99%'ers. My point is that the 99%'s delude themselves if they think the problem is money. The problem is their own indifference.

One of the biggest ways that this indifference manifests is in party loyalty. If you vote for your party rather than candidates, including other party candidates, then you can be ignored. Your party already has your vote so you can be ignored. The other party can not get your vote so you can be ignored. Roughly 2/3's of U.S. voters remove themselves from the game through party loyalty, being part of the loyal base.

Actually its a pretty poor way to get informed, the info is highly biased or misleading.

That's pretty much the exception that proves the rule. You neglected to point out that the incumbent was a high ranking member of congress who had spent relatively little time campaigning in his district. He screwed up. No amount of money will help you if you don't actually pay attention to what matters.

Actually it proves my point. The winner tapped into a groundswell of motivated voters who were really pissed off. It was not simply that the loser didn't spend enough time in his district. If anything is exceptional in this case it was a large number of motivated voters showing up on election day, that is the formula for reform, for the 99%'era to regain control. Because the true currency of politics is votes.

Advertising (i.e. money) has limited power, the true power, the true currency of politics is votes.

A motivated and well informed voter is not swayed by advertising. Only the indifferent or disinterested are swayed by advertising.

In the U.S. recently an upstart college professor spent $100,000 in an election and defeated a power incumbent who spent $5,000,000. The professor had motivated voters, the incumbent had money.

As for lobbyists in the U.S, the most powerful are those who deliver motivated voters on election day, not those who merely make campaign contributions.

No one said you had to use FIFO. You have to pick the coins you are using somehow, FIFO is one of various options. Personally I would probably use LIFO, spend the newer coins first, hang on to your oldest coins. That way if I hold any for over a year they can be cashed out and taxed at a lower rate, long term capital gains. Hopefully, have to check with an accountant on that.

A business can accept bitcoins for payment and never touch a bitcoin nor ever be at risk for price fluctuations.

Various exchanges provide merchant services where a merchant gives sale info to the exchange, the exchange converts the dollar amount to bitcoins and provides the merchant with the converted amount and a bitcoin payment address (one belonging to the exchange). The customer essentially makes the bitcoin payment to the exchange. When the exchange confirms the payment they credit the merchant's account with the exact amount of dollars that the merchant originally specified regardless of any fluctuation in bitcoin's exchange rate.

A business need never touch a bitcoin. They can continue to price in dollars, do all their accounting in dollars, never have to show a bitcoin on their federal or state taxes, etc.

Its not just about taxing business. Individuals are to be taxed too.

A recent IRS advisory said virtual currency is to be treated as an assent not a currency. So lets say you receive some bitcoins. At some future date you spend these bitcoins. Since these bitcoins are an asset you have to account for their gain or loss in value for the days that you held them and declare a loss or gain on your taxes. In short spending bitcoins has the paperwork overhead of selling stocks, its not like spending dollars at all.

Ex. You buy one coin at $500 and another at $600. Coins are priced at $800 at the time of a future purchase. You buy something for $1,200, 1.5 coins. Using FIFO (first in first out) your basis for the outgoing 1.5 coins is $500 + $300 = $800, and the basis for the returning 0.5 coins is still $300. You experienced a gain of $400 on the 1.5 coins at the time of the sale and that $400 would seem to be taxable income. Apologies if I botched the math, hopefully the point gets across.