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Comment Re:No Decent Solution (Score 3, Interesting) 83

> Nations must have borders or the nation ceases to exist.

I question that basic assumption: All that does is divide people into an "us vs them" mentality.

Why must there even BE _artificial_ human inventions such as borders?

The earth doesn't have borders, only men do.

I want a world where:

* People can freely live and work they may without another man giving them permission
* Personal Rights and Freedoms are respected and placed at a higher value then artificial government granted privileges,
* Governments to acknowledge that they are created BY the people to SERVE the people, not the other way around where people are brainwashed into believing they need artificial government granted privileges.
* Governments are Accountable for their actions
* Governments are Open about their actions

If people, and government which are an extension of people, would spend less time living in FEAR and profiting off making machines to kill other men we wouldn't even need borders.

Eventually a unified world government is more efficient but since that scares the hell out of a lot of people that will never happen until we remove money (corruption) from politics.

Comment Re:Crazy (Score 1) 778

That doesn't make any sense, businesses don't hire people on a whim, they hire people because they have roles that need doing, minimum wage doesn't change that.

Businesses hire people when they have a job that needs doing, provided that it's worth the cost. Not every potential job is worth its cost, and minimum wage artificially raises that cost, with the obvious result that some jobs simply go undone.

There is also the matter of competition which is not subject to the minimum wage—not just under-the-table employment and offshoring, but also automation. With the increased minimum wage, businesses may find that it's now cheaper to employ a machine, where before they would have given the job to a human. Or perhaps they simply increase their existing employees' workloads rather than hiring someone else to handle the "unskilled" jobs.

Even if every business did act like it was insensitive to wages, as you seem to think, that would just mean that the marginal ones are no longer profitable and thus go out of business, further reducing both the supply of goods and the demand for labor.

Comment Re:Crazy (Score 1) 778

The worker is not consenting to work, he is figuratively forced at gunpoint.

Emphasis very much on the "figuratively"—and it's not the employer holding the gun. If the worker does not consent then he is merely left in his original state, and is no worse off than he would be in the absence of the employer. Regardless of any external pressures, whether from nature or the government or other sources, the employer-employee relationship itself is completely consensual. A free market is one where people's natural rights are respected, not one where everyone is guaranteed an equal bargaining position. The fact that the job means more to the worker than it does to the employer does not prevent this from being a free market.

Submission + - Rupert Murdoch's quest to buy TimeWarner, not done yet

Presto Vivace writes: It seems that Murdoch's desire to acquire TimeWarner predates his acquisition of Fox, and continues in spite of TimeWarner's recent refusal of his most recent offer.. The possible deal is important in and of itself, but it also bears upon the succession.

Murdoch’s skill is not just hiring the right people; he has been able to maintain control over them. They have his support as long as they produce results.

His executives are the hired help. There is never any threat to his control. When a Murdoch favourite begins to get more headlines than the chairman, the clock begins ticking for their departure.

But with the Time Warner bid, that balance may change. Chase Carey has put together a deal that, because of Murdoch’s history, is almost irresistible to him. But it’s a deal only Carey can put together.

If he succeeds, the $US160 billion company that will emerge will be an ungainly beast that will depend on Carey making the merger work. He’s indispensable.

Clearly we have not heard the last of this.

Comment Re:Binary prefixes: Use them (Score 1) 272

Preaching to the choir, brother !

What gets me about this whole KiB MiB bullshit is that it is revisionist history based on some pointless ideology. Years ago I recognized:

Any ideology taken to an extreme is usually never a good idea in the long run.

IF the terms had been invented back in the '70s, then fine, we _might_ of adopted it. But in 1998? Fuck off. If there really is _that_ much confusion then either put a 2 or 10 subscript below the K or M to distinguish the base.

i.e.
16 G2B = 16384 K2B = 16,777,216 bytes
299 M10m = 299.792458 Mm = 299,792,458 m.

We use B for Bytes, and b for bits. From context we can tell that base-2 is implied.

Submission + - Can the Multiverse be Tested Scientifically? (discovery.com)

astroengine writes: Physicists aren’t afraid of thinking big, but what happens when you think too big? This philosophical question overlaps with real physics when hypothesizing what lies beyond the boundary of our observable universe. The problem with trying to apply science to something that may or may not exist beyond our physical realm is that it gets a little foggy as to how we could scientifically test it. A leading hypothesis to come from cosmic inflation theory and advanced theoretical studies — centering around the superstring hypothesis — is that of the "multiverse," an idea that scientists have had a hard time in testing. But now, scientists at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada, have, for the first time, created a computer model of colliding universes in the multiverse in an attempt to seek out observational evidence of its existence.

Submission + - Under The Sea: Rokudenashiko, Arrested For Sharing 3D Print Of Genitals (medicaldaily.com)

FilmedInNoir writes: 42-year-old Megumi Igarashi, who works under the pseudonym Rokudenashiko, has come under scrutiny after she shared 3D prints of her vulva to supporters of her vagina boat project. The 42-year-old was accused of a Japanese penal code dating back to 1907, where it is illegal to sell or distribute obscene objects.

Comment Re:But /why/? (Score 2) 152

I don't think anyone can claim that bitcoin cannot have inflation. It has hyperinflation and hyperdeflation in pretty frequent intervals.

Bitcoin has an extremely predictable rate of supply inflation (the kind meant here) which follows an exponential decay curve and will be under 1%/yr. by 2020 or so. There could be some very minor supply deflation after that point due to people losing their keys, but it should never become a major factor.

The price inflation and deflation you allude to is partly due to being a very young high-risk/high-reward venture. If Bitcoin is to reach even a fraction of its potential as a currency, the price per bitcoin must end up several orders of magnitude higher than it is now to match the increased demand, or there simply wouldn't be enough to go around. On the other hand, concerted political opposition could render it useless in most of the major markets. Whether the innovators or the politicians will win in the long run is anyone's guess at this point, thus the risk.

The other part, which is likely to dominate in the long-term if Bitcoin succeeds, is a reflection of normal changes in the demand for money. Central banks usually try to dampen out demand-driven price swings by manipulating the supply of money, but they are in fact an essential part of balancing present and future demand for goods, and suppressing them leads to an economy-wide misallocation of resources.

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