Looks like the Joseph Smith's Kirtland Bank three dollar bill all over again. Mixing religious devotion to monetary policy.

I dislike central banking myself, but to invent another unbacked currency to replace another seems a step backwards.

Interesting to see Anonymous supporting bitcoin here. I have a feeling there is a campaign which is subverted trying to push this stuff. Its not backed, and it has severe implications when stolen. The currency of the future has ridiculous flaws out the starting gate. And if Jeff Bezos, a big time oligarchical collectivist is in love with it, I am wary.

If that's true - if its so great, back it.

Bitcoin is deflationary in a world with increasing population. Also BTC has made land grabbers and early adopters rich - it doesnt look like the currency of the future to me.

The other issue is that it cannot be recovered when stolen - this makes the identity theft issue utterly lethal.

If something similar to BTC came about that was convertable to energy or bullion that would be of interest - then the whole digital-only nature of the currency would be alleviated to some degree (a computer/HDD crash can wipe you out is a valid fear).

The other thing that needs to come about is transaction escrow. Some mutually agreed on non-governmental third party should provide escrow for large transactions.

I think that Amazon and others love BTC simply because they dont have to pay a tithe to credit card companies, but credit card companies help us deal with fraud, bad products, identity theft, etc. If you pay your credit cards off in time you get a company that can be helpful in dealing with fraud and identity theft vs nothing.

BTC is like walking around with krugerrands and bearer bonds without security.

I have used Straight Talk for years. They sell BYOP activation kits. It comes with 4 sim card and a CDMA activation code. micro/nano AT&T, micro/nano T-Mobile. I use AT&T Straight Talk.

With the Nexus 5 you take the micro AT&T, and you get unlimited talk, text and data (up to 3GB on 4G, the rest on a throttle) for 45/mo. Its also got LTE as well as HSPA+/HSDPA.

There is a 60/mo plan that allows SMS and calls to international numbers if you need it.

I prepay a year at a time and get this for $495 for 12 months.

I use a rental SIM when traveling to Japan from here ( http://jcrcorp.com/mobile/mobi... ) . Europe I've used Swisscom prepaid.

Anyways, the Nexus 5 D820 seems to go everywhere and work.

I'm not sure why they couldnt just natively EFI boot Surface Pro OS (Win 8.1) on the Macbooks. That seems like a sounder strategy to get converts than throwing away hardware. Apple hardware is the only reason to use Apple these days. (Nice touch pad, nice keyboard, relatively durable, good display).

What's so funny? The fact total outlay is the same or higher, costs are rising and the readyness of the air force is going down with more expense than ever in part due to rising costs, the deleterious effects of inflation and ineffciency. If we the people can't make you honest maybe the chicoms and Putin can remind you.

You are a pawn in a larger game. The total amount being consumed is going up but your fiefdom may be going down. I covered this in the post. Good job trying to defend baseline budgeting with ad hominem and nothing to back it up.

As someone whose spouse works in government and I have friends in the government supplying parts to the Air Force, I have knowledge about budgets. They are NEVER cut. In fact, not getting an increase is getting a cut. Also they ALWAYS burn all the money appropriated, as not doing so will mean that the money will not be available the next budget cycle. The stupid corrupted government may take the money they have a use it stupidly but lets not even claim there is ever a cut.

In fact the government uses baseline budgeting which prevents the ability to ever even cut the total amount - its just moved around from one corrupt thing to another.

I do agree that between radar hunting missiles and missile systems and the ability to completely destroy any country's (beside China or Russia) radar and SAM and AAA capability before flying manned sorties over enemy airspace prevents the need for anything more than a B52 - a radar cross signature of the the empire state building and subsonic - perfectly usable in a modern theater. If the B52 cant fly at FL350 with impunity, you have a lot more work to do or your friends that need burning from the air got a fresh load of portable/hand held SAMs.

Not correct. You could use a B-29 SuperFortress for this role these days. It could be anything. max speed could be 200 kts. The point is that modern air combat and ordinance delivery by first-world combatants is largely done after the total and complete destruction of SAM, Radar, AAA and a knowledge of about how many Stinger-style hand held SAMs exist in the theater. The B-52 is a cheap, existing heavy lift platform that has a good operational history and low incident rate and is reasonably efficient in terms of mileage. It also has the most flexibility in ordinance available today, it can literally deliver anything in the arsenal - maybe not the BLU-82, but I think even the MOAB will go in there. The point is that yes it has a radar cross-signature of the empire state, but with an operational capability at FL35 and a ceiling at FL50, this thing is good enough to cart ordinance to whatever tird world nation is being burnt from the air this week. As the Valkyrie XB-70 and the corresponding interceptor the MiG 25 foxbat has shown that using insane speed as a mechanism for ordinance delivery is ineffective. In fact, the more interesting thing about the B1B is originally it was much faster but they slowed it down and gave it ground-hugging avionics to evade radar to deliver. However, this strategy is no longer effective either. For "real war" ICBMs can destroy everything down to radioactive dust, and for any other target without ICBM a crushing salvo of radar killing missiles and strikes will be deployed and the radar and SAM capability will be completely destroyed before any manned sorties are flown. As we saw with the B-2 spirit, speed is no longer needed - stealth was and the B-2 has been rendered useless by the latest generation of Russian radar technology.

UX losers are making cave-man interfaces everywhere.

Here is what the future holds where a Texas Instruments Speak-and-Spell would be ultra high tech.

http://i68.photobucket.com/alb...

-1 For Mozilla's new Museum of Tolerance behavior and for its horrible new Look and Feel. UX people are horrific. http://i68.photobucket.com/alb...

I had this strange dream where I lived in a country that valued freedom and liberty. Then I woke up to this dystopian nightmare police state that serves the interests of landlords, banking cabals and oligarchical collectivists. It was a nice dream.

The idea that all contracts are somehow sacred is BS - you cant ask people to pay for things then renege on critical details. Its more or less fraud in legalese.

Bring these cases to a jury. Any BS trickery in legalese should be shot down.

Banning AirBnB is generally BS, there are a few cases where the rental leads to an issue and those should be handled case by case. To ban the activity which is an activity in the private home of consenting adults is a joke.

Funny, didn't we hear arguments about what consenting adults can do with each other in private from these same folks on another issue?

True. Maxtor infected seagate, and their reliability is generally horrific.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

25% of seagate drives die within 3 years. Its utterly horrific.

Without Start8 and ModernMix or Classic Shell or whatever , Windows 8.x is not useable.

I gladly have for the first time ever used a pay-for program to fix how bad default Windows shell is. I was annoyed classic start was gone from windows 7 but I got used to it.

Windows 8 is a special kind of strange. Microsoft should learn to SKIN to whatever the old version looked like to keep people from having to retrain. The metro apps stink without modern mix.

Microsoft's new CEO should put a stop to this loser behavior. under the hood, the OS isnt half bad.

Things are getting worse and worse in SF, SiVal/Peninsula and bay area in general.

The public schools are terrible, the cost of living is outrageous even with the high salaries, all families are dual income so most of the kids are latch-key, and my kids - we have to work overtime to protect them from how bad the kids are in general. There are a ton of richie rich kids who have money and they do bad things, drugs, etc. Cupertino, supposedly a great school district, polled kids and found that 75% had tried illegal drugs by 12th grade.

Also most of the universities here have non-California kids in ever increasing numbers. That means the land of milk and honey is not producing high end high school graduates.

I have a plan to relocate out of here within 18 months now. I refuse to say where because I can only hope that others wont follow and bring the pain and suffering and horribly low standard of living with them yet again.

And I've recently been to japan and switzerland. The public transportations STINKs here, the quality of life is far lower than either of those two places and in they have better primary/grade schools in both those places.

This is not living here. There is also little room for a family lifestyle. And the facebook pop has caused a lot of places to be one-percenter-only. All houses under 2 million are horrible, shabby and full of asbestos and mold. Built in the 1950s/60s to a very low standard.

Roads are fairly in poor repair despite there being no winter. Certain areas are crime ridden but the houses are 700K+. Schools - even greatschools-10 schools and blue ribbon schools - are a joke. They are a shadow of schools Ive seen in other places.

Please, never come here thinking you will be better off. Coming here is just like playing the lottery. Dont even think being smart will make you wealthy enough to get a real life here. you have to be either very lucky , or smart and lucky. Nobody earns their way to the top. Also there is a big time old boys club mentality. Inferior people will be much farther than you even if you work 80 hours a week and bleed for work.

The bay area is no longer about technology anymore. its about big gigantic pan national business and the monetization of the internet.

Google has the best, smartest, most driven brightest people in the world working day and night to not cure cancer, or invent new things (they bought a thermostat company for 3billion) but to Shovel Ads in Your Face. Thats it. Same with F-book

Hardly noble.

Welcome to SillyCON Valley.