The alternative appears to be asking the government to employ force on your behalf to continually coerce every provider of so-called "public accommodations" into taking your disability (and every other possible disability) into account, regardless of actual demand, and at a far greater expense than simply providing you with individual assistance as needed or working out some alternative method of providing the service. Perhaps the coercion feels more "dignified" to you, but I find it quite the opposite. There is nothing undignified about asking for help when needed. It seems like you've simply found a way to take for granted as your right (and others' obligation) that others will make accommodation for you without being asked. That makes you more dependent, not less. Finding ways to induce others to help you voluntarily would be a form of self-sufficiency, which would be much more dignified than stooping to force or manipulation.

Fortunately the comment history is preserved. Not 5 posts up you state, and I quote:

"Most Americans don't understand just how restricted speech is in the UK by comparison to the US"

Restriction of free speech pertains to government restriction. We don't care what companies / institutions do. The BBC isn't the government.

So, I guess the gp was correct.

When choosing a servant, you want to interview them to make sure they aren't anywhere as smart as you. At least now in general, maybe in a specific task .. but in general you don't want them overall smarter than you.

In the future, instead of having a job you will own shares in a factory that has robots. In essence you will own a robot .. and the output in terms of productivity will be your salary (or shareholder dividends). For those who do not invest wisely, the government will provide them some minimal amount via taxation of the shareholders. Or maybe the company directly. I don't know. Vote for for what you like.

Since robots will be doing all the work, the cost of stuff will be dirt cheap. Food will be synthetically produced in giant vats, powered by fusion energy.

Ridiculous. You can't agree to anything just by being born; you aren't even sentient at that point. There is no meeting of the minds, no clear agreement. If this so-called "social contract" existed, it would be a contract of adhesion which no human being in history ever explicitly agreed to, and any competent court would throw it out with prejudice after a cursory hearing.

On the contrary, there is no need to adjust the quantity of money to reflect population growth or GDP or anything else. The value of the money will adjust automatically based on supply and demand; it's impossible to have a shortage or surplus, as the units are arbitrary and have no direct use apart from serving as money. Changing the quantity of money in an attempt to regulate the price ruins an extremely useful economic signal regarding the demand for money and the balance between consumption and investment, leading to overconsumption and/or malinvestment.

Bitcoin is inflationary for now—any new currency must be, during the initial distribution phase—but over the long term the supply will be relatively constant and the price thus will be fully determined by the demand for bitcoins. Variations in the price will thus signal changes in the demand for money—to the extent bitcoins are used; the effect is diluted by the presence of other, centrally-managed currencies—which in turn informs the market about which investments are better or worse than average. Assuming a growing economy, any investment which does not outperform the expected price deflation is worse than average: investing in it would reduce the rate of growth. Under forced inflation there is more investment, but some of it is malinvestment, driven by the fact that simply holding the money causes it to lose value (artificially, due to the increased supply), and thus contributes to a lower average return and a poorer economy.

One could argue that the entire universe as we know it is nothing more than "an invention of the human mind", leaving no scope at all for discovery, but that is hardly a useful position to take in this context. Even if you did take that approach, mathematics should still be excluded, because mathematical relationships exist independently of human thought. The ratio of a circle's radius to its circumference is tau, and would remain tau even if no human ever existed to discover that fact.

Invention implies an element of creativity, deliberate choice among the available alternatives. The only choices in math are in the selection of axioms. Mathematical axioms may be invented (under significant constraints necessary to keep the results applicable to the physical universe, though there remains some flexibility), but everything beyond that follows mechanically from the axioms—and is thus discovered. Similarly, once your requirements are known, developing a software algorithm comes down to little more than solving the system of constraints described by the requirements—given the requirements specified in a formal language, this is something that could be solved in principle by a search through the solution space using tools similar to mechanical theorem-provers. Intuition helps in narrowing the search space (at the cost of possibly missing the solution entirely), but it isn't essential given sufficient time and memory. Of course, an actual program includes additional elements such as comments, identifiers and code style which are chosen by the programmer and have no effect on the program's behavior; these creative elements would be invented rather than discovered.

Science, moreover, is not "purely an invention of the human mind" any more than mathematics is. It consists of both discovery and invention. Science is essentially the process of making observations and developing statistically consistent models. There is more flexibility here than in math; models can fit the data to a greater or lesser extent, and the best-fitting model is not always the most useful. A useful approximation can thus be considered an invention; just the same, most of science consists of discovery rather than invention of new models, even more so when the goal is simply to fit a standard statistical model to the available data, pure math combined with discovered observations.

The algorithms have been known for about 30 years, but they've always existed as a solution to the problem Bitcoin was intended to solve, waiting for someone to discover them.

In that case, the correct word is "discoverer". The name Bitcoin was invented, but the fundamental algorithms with which Bitcoin solves the distributed ledger problem have always existed; it just took someone asking the right questions to discover them. You don't invent solutions to math problems, you discover them, and that goes for software algorithms just as much as any other form of math.

Scarcity is a fundamental requirement for any currency. It's either natural due to physical scarcity, as in gold, or artificial, as in bitcoin or US dollars or most other currencies in common use. Any digital currency will have the property of artificial scarcity, because information is not naturally scarce. Ensuring that scarcity is maintained without reliance on a central authority is what the blockchain is all about. The only significant difference in the form of scarcity between bitcoins and dollars is that one is governed by a fixed and unbiased mathematical formula, while the other is dictated by politics and thus unpredictable and subject to corruption.

You can complain all you like about "unfairly" enriched early adopters, but I for one would much rather have that than unfair enrichment based on one's political connections. When bitcoins come into existence they're distributed by a scrupulously fair lottery with proportional odds to people doing useful work for the network. When dollars are produced they benefit first with the authority to order them, and then those who decide how they're distributed, then finally the banks and government contractors and employees who get a chance to spend them before prices adjust to the increased supply; at each stage there is plenty of scope for self-enrichment through manipulation of the flow of new money.

Anyway, if you really want to trade traditional currencies online (as credit—the closest you're likely to get to trading the actual currencies), the reference client and server for Ripple are open source under the ISC License. Such a system can't be completely distributed, of course, since it's tied to external centralized currencies, so it's no substitute for Bitcoin; Ripple solves a different, and easier, problem by dealing in loans rather than assets, leaving it up to the users to decide how much credit to extend.

This may not work out in our favor over the long term. How soon before they start overtly regulating content?

This Net Neutrality "gift" may turn out to be a trojan horse. There must have be some other way to ensure the net stays neutral without classifying it as a utility subject to government meddling.

I must be getting old when 6-digit UIDs are long time slashdotters. I for one welcome our newbie overlords.

Yeh I love how people think wisdom and advice is important, when actually it's actions. Words are a dime a dozen. Study hard and avoid crazy partners that keep you down? Uh, yeah I knew that. Care about your fellow human and don't rob & steal? Ya think? I think you are right, just record some daily activities showing what you were like -- stuff showing you doing things that a good person would be doing (charity, reading a book etc.). Most lectured advice stuff might end up being fake anyway, and downright inapplicable or wrong. Try to put them on a path where they have financial security and good mentors. Finally, the solution should be based on the individual, of which there is no average. So what works for one may not work for the other, you can only hope to find the path of highest success probability.

Whose fault is that? Don't get mad that someone is wants the job.

Why yes duh of course I am super interested in making my fellow Americans suffer economic hardship, what else could my intent be. WTF? Just because I have a better understanding of economics than you doesn't mean I somehow care less about people.

Second, you are saying society gets to pick who gets a job and who doesn't? When you force a minimum wage for jobs it means the jobs that are open for people willing to work for less are closed while the more experienced elites still get to work for their 200k salary. I understand the intent behind it, but wages shouldn't be decided based on what you think a person "deserves" as their salary. If that were the case we should be forcing our corporations into paying our veterans ten times what a top engineer makes.

The best thing for an economy is a reduced production cost. This means that low wages can buy more, and also that shares in a company would pay high dividends. I mean, if you owned a robot that works in a factory (equivalent of owning shares in that factory) wouldn't you be better off if that factory made more money? Notice how with automation the economy has not collapsed? We have more automation than ever before in history yet we also have a large amount of jobs and can afford a lot of things. Even the government gets its cut from it and distributes it as welfare. In the 1950s many people could not afford a tv and a fridge. Yet today nearly everyone can, plus a smartphone and a computer. Low production costs = increased supply and increased affordability.

At which point would you agree there is a shortage? When the salary is $200k but the price of housing has doubled because everyone is making 200k and wants to live in the same location?

Way to spread false information. I suppose it's good in a way. Last thing we need is people who can't be bothered to verify stuff somebody tells them moving to the bay area.

Fact is, $60K is the $30K equivalent in the bay area with 45 minute rush hour commute (Caltrain or drive) to Mountain View (without roommates to share rent). Allocate $1.2K for rent in San Jose and 30% extra for all other expenses. Yeah its tough to live on that but I really want to see what you can do with $30K in Atlanta. With 120K you can be comfortable in the bay area.

Obviously you can keep increasing the salary until you'll find an American able or willing to do the job. But then that means your risk capital expenditure increases. Just about everything you put money into comes with a risk. If you own a business, there is only so much money you are able to gamble. The more risky something is, the reward potential must go up exponentially for someone to invest in it. What am I getting at, if the cost of entry to making a startup or company is high, less such companies will exist -- why would VC's dump money into it. Overall result ---> less products and innovation in the market, higher prices to consumer. So if the prices of everything goes up, how does it help the engineers with their higher salaries?

Fact is that the more engineers in the world we have, the cheaper goods we will get. I mean, what if Apple was the only company able to afford engineers? What if Samsung and non-American companies were barred from selling cell phones? Smartphones would cost an insane amount -- few people would be able to afford it.
If less people have smartphones other areas of the economy would be affected too.

And btw, why aren't there americans willing to work for $60K? I mean really, if you have an CS degree + student loan why would you choose to work at McDonald's for $20K? Now I agree that $20K is not a living wage, but $60K .. come on .. even with student loan burden of $800 a month, it's still better than $20K at McDonalds or living on welfare. The monthly payment on a $30,000 student loan (which is slightly above the average 2014 graduate's debt) is approximately $300 (assuming 6.8% interest and a 10-year repayment plan).

So basically I am supposed to believe that computer science graduates rather sit at home or work an unlivable wage at McDonalds than take a job for $60K, which more than easily covers their student debt cost?

Now for engineers, $80K is an unlivable wage? What's the livable wage for a particular degree, that you would agree there is a shortage at?

I guarantee that whatever you force wages to rise to, it will not be enough --- because the price of everything will rise correspondingly plus extra.