Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds, written in 1841 by Charles Mackay. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds ) Classify this one under "Those Who Fail to Learn from History Are Doomed to Repeat It".

Summary is spot on: Obviously, patents exist "so that companies can concentrate on true development which benefits all their users". An individual with a patent? Yeah, right...

You should offer to edit it for him then, because this article is otherwise excellent. I admit I've only read about 30% of it so far, but I'll be reading the rest soon.

I have to admit, seeing their setup, the first thing I thought they would do is make somebody jump, and take the shot while they're at the apex of the jump.

I guess I missed the happy, joyous part then. I watched the first hour and 20-some-odd minutes of this hearing, and if I had taken a drink every time they said "child pornography", I would be in the hospital now.

Sorry, that should be 1532, the numbers have changed since they first announced they were doing this. I guess they miscounted initially. Now they're up to 1331 spent and 202 unused, depending on who's numbers you're reading.

...1512 to go. Watching this from my armchair on the west coast of North America, I can't help but feel extremely nervous about all this.

Geez, again in the same set of comments? I mined 0.05 BTC with a Radeon HD 7870 over the last 30 days in the off hours when I'm not using it to play games/watch videos on this machine. My monthly electricity bill since I started mining has increased by around $6 USD/month. 0.05 BTC is exchangeable for $18 USD as I type this. I agree that the revenue vs. electricity vs. difficulty level is getting closer and closer to parity for those mining with GPUs on home computers, but we're still not there. When, based on my own math and experience, it becomes unprofitable for me to be mining as I currently am, I will stop.

Yes, sorry for the lack of clarity in my post. I have been mining with a worker in a BTCGuild pool, using a cgminer client, and powering it with a Radeon HD 7870 card.

Who me? I dunno about that. I suppose you could be right, but my point was that people were saying that the mining wasn't worth the processing power and electricity a few months ago, over 3 years into the introduction of Bitcoin, and I found that to be completely false in my personal experience. I'm still mining now, and the value proposition is getting to be more questionable. I'm only mining about $0.05 BTC a month, or around $17 USD at current rates, for my $6 in electricity and wear-and-tear on my computer equipment. But the inflammatory statement that it "seems pretty stupid" is what gets me. As long as I can use those BTC to buy stuff that adds up to more in dollars than I seem to be spending to mine it, I'll keep going. Sure, at some point mining probably won't make sense, but it's not as if you can't simply go on an exchange and trade you inflating-to-no-value dollars for (maybe by then) stable BTC. Then again, I keep $160 trillion dollars in Zimbabwe bills pinned to the wall above my computer monitor as a constant reminder of the fictitious nature of artificial money...

I don't know about right now, but a few months ago people were saying it was stupid too, but I bought a new $200 video card for my machine and decided to try mining. It took me about a month, and a $6 increase in my monthly electricity bill to mine one bitcoin. I just exchanged that bitcoin for $350 yesterday, so...I don't feel particularly stupid right now. Otherwise, the small handful of bitcoins I acquired the first month that bitcoin started are still in my wallet, so this "all your bitcoins are belong to us" statement is pure FUD. Sure, if the Feds are going to torture the Dread Pirate Roberts for weeks to get him to cough up his wallet password, things like that are bound to happen, but all the other garbage people keep spouting about Bitcoin is silly, IMHO.

Just wait, it gets worse. Have you seen the backwards moderation elsewhere below in these comments? On topic: Watch this video on How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood if you don't fully understand Bitcoin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE

Damn, I wish I had mod points, and that you could be modded higher than 5. I don't get the people heaping piles of praise on Ardour further down in this thread. I don't think any of those people have spent any time working in a studio, or even any serious multitracking at home. To the story submitter, if you don't have a lot of time to invest in learning software, you might want to look elsewhere first before investing time in Ardour...at least for now. It is a somewhat promising start, but it has a long way to go still.

I just got over a nasty case of shingles, was completely out of commission for a couple weeks. It was every bit as terrible as you might have heard. I wouldn't wish that kind of agonizing pain on my worst enemy. If the court wants to convince these kids to get the shot, send them to me, and I'll tell them all about it and send pictures.

A point to consider: How many hours was perishable food left in all these abandoned carts before being put back on the shelf? I'd steer clear of buying anything perishable from a store accepting EBTs for a while, at least.