Here's take. Money is like any good with a price. Limited in supply. Money has advantages over goods. For example, you don't pay sales taxes when exchaning it with other currency, or financial asset. Governments regulate this. So they can make any private currency an asset regulated and taxed by them.

Conclusion to be viable: that it gains international credibility where no sinlge country or collusion of counties can challenge it's viability. Today, that's not the case. Thus, it's just a scarce good (limited supply, with certain properties) at the mercy of dominating economies.

Additionaly, money supply is a tool that goverments or economies need to influence the economy. Since there are strong habits and regulations (for example, it's very hard to reduce salaries under negative inflation, for many legal and cultural reasons) an economic shock under a hard currency (inability to expand or reduce supply in the short/mid term) can trigger a destructive vicious cycle. Like a depression that ruins most of the economy. The economic system is then unable to break that implosion, and the outcome is horrible.

Thus, bitcoins are today a good with some privileges (eg. Not a "good") that may disappear suddenly, and with risks due to that inability to do exactly what we usually don't goverments doing (printing and destroying). Yet, that inability is a double edged sword. And while bitcoins may overcome the influence of governments regulating it, that's very unlikely if you look at what is the GDP of the top 10 countries vs rest is.

So this economist is right. Competing bitcoins is just creating similar assets, and to compete they need to have a tangible (practical superiority) and some strong network effect. For an example of superiority, think of the case of a government that invents a computer that can mine bitcoins at 1000000000 the rate of the rest of the world....then maybe with another cryptocurrency maybe that's not possible. Im am not very familiar with bitcoins, so I use it as an example of weaknesses that might happen.

But all in all, bitcoins are just a virtual scarce good, by definition making supply ever more "costly". But ultimately is like saying you'll trade the Monalisa, and that you can divide that painting in infinitely smaller parts and use it as medium of exchange and value reserve and universaly adopted....besides regulations and law, this is just a scarce good with limited supply. All the variation is mostly demand and the thing that changes is the price per patch of the painting. Which again, has the disadvantage of not being able to provide a stable economy with low inflation and full use or resources, because you don't control supply, and thus, you don't control inflation/deflation.

For me, radio has always been about automated music selection, and I have been frustrated with having to listen to what this real person thought. So Pandora is radio, perfected.

Both can do well. But Pandora needs to grow rapidly globally

Yes. But more importantly, I read 20 years ago the main reason bread was more popular....they still haven't discovered tomato...as it was a Mexican invention. They first thought it was ornamental. Not sure who did the first tomato pasta dish dough :-)

Ther are 6 billion people of which 0.3 live in the USA. Imagine the sheer number of bad translations from English to the 30 or so widely spoken languages. None of the make the software bad, just a tad annoying.

I work in marketing and find it more challenging than finding a good programmer. Everyone in their profession thinks that others are a commodity because one is so special and unique. My learning so far has been that if you are really talented, you never think like you have just done. You need a great marketing person, and a great team. If you can become a Fortune 500, the least of your worries will be the marketing dues. I'd recommend this: hire somebody that can educate you, and has the personally to be able to handle your ego. You'll thank that person later on.

Remember that IBM's turnaround in the 90's came from somebody that manufactured cookies, not technology.

I met a guy who was a friend of an ex girldfriend. They went to the same university. Both had Grants for being the best in their class. He was doing his masters in political science in a university that is extremely quantitative oriented (it's a school of economics). The university is as though as it gets. Most people never get in, and many quit. Now this person smoke every day, and without reserve. And still he finished first, and was lovesdby classmates and teachers alike. He's still doing great. I didn't believe it at first (and Was extremely anti-anything but water) at that time. So I though, maybe things are a bit complicated. Then I had my housemate, and she told me of the story of one roomate in germany. He started smoking, started to have problems at work. Was firef. Then did the idiotic idea of going to amsterdam and brught things back. He went to jail. I have no idea how that story continued.

I've seen best of class and people go to jail and lose jobs, weed or not. And that made me ask some questions.

I've reached this conclusion a few year ago. People always ask me how the people from Brasil, Argentina, Mexico or the USA differ. They are all the same, although values do vary, this is basically unrelated to political system and more related to the justice and tolerance of their society. I'd live in any regime where there's empathy, good will and tolerance. I found a lot of that In Mexico, and if you read happiness surveys you'll see that factored in.

If you invest, you don't have to worry about this. If you are an honest trader, based on information and strategy, not algorithms, you would. For an investor, you are doing a low number of trades and each trade is going to have a huge % of movement which is miles larger than the margin of a HFT. In other words, not only Las Vegas "tax" is extremely larger for random events (say roulette double zero or 1/16 tax rate) but you also can't leverage your knowledge of why something will work/not work. Example: there's a post of OnLive bankruptcy. Suppose it traded, but you knew it'd fail due to lag. That gives you better odds that roulette....only if your judgment is sound, complete and can wait long enough.

There are reason to to sell within the month:
- You found shares of a company that seems even more attractive
- An event makes you consider closing the position. Say they won the lawsuit you assessed they'd won and the verdict just happened. Or that a company makes an offer.
- Some other fund or company decided to add a position that has affected the price though increased demand. And you think the stock is now overvalued (or the inverse if the fund got rid of a position).
- You want cash to buy a house that you just found that is an amazing deal.
- You decide you'd like to reduce your risk by reducing all your investments in assets (or maybe only the high betas).
- Another 200 reasons

What I do find unacceptable is buying and selling the same symbol within seconds. Much less placing fake quotes.

For the same reason why you pay taxes, or why you pay twice for mobile plan than in many other countries. An exchange with no HFT would need to be disconnected from mayor exchanges, and would be a useless exchange. And saving in taxes by moving to another country accomplishes nothing if you want to sell to the largest market in the world.

I have a TV and only use Netflix (streaming and DVD). My 3 years old kid loves Stephen Hawking's Into The Universe, Ocean Documentaries, a few cartoons that actually deal with important stuff (not to be afraid of dark, sharing, etc.). I watch 2 to 3 movies a week. But the iPad gets most of his attention. He loves SolarWalk, his favorite...you can explore the galaxy and solar system. He asks me a lot of questions. Loves to draw black holes, the sun, and the different planets. Yet, most of the time, he's at school, drawing, playing with water, "cooking".

What I think you describe has to do with the average content, which is....pretty average and will make anyone dumb. Even just watching normal TV will kill your productivity by the sheer amount of ads.

I think you can't Palme the TV. Or the tablet. Or the books. You need to blame people content choices. And about balance or moderation.

But it can stream, just not wirelessly unless you use AppleTV which is $100 and add some clutter, but also a lot of functionality. you'd know if you had one. I really couldn't care as I use a projector to watch movies, so having AppleTV and a blu ray player are obvious requirements. Same with my other TV that only has Roku and which streams perfectly. I actually like the TV and stb as separate components, just like I like the blu ray not bundled with the TV. I haven't heard of anyone being crazy due to what you comment.

For you it may be impportant. For me AirPlay works just right, and having tried DLNA....I despise it,

My 3 years old prefers the iPad as well. He doesn't know about marketing. My wife never really cared about phones, the simplest Nokia was the best. I gave her an iPhone 4 and she said ...meh. Now she never leaves without it. People that want to save a buck where it makes no sense avoid Apple mobile products but end up paying more. Just the resell value of an Apple product makes it a better deal. You can use it for 3 years and get 40% back at the end. The iPhone 4 sells used for about $250 or more and is well beyond 2 years old. What's the resell value of the equivalent Andoid device?

iPhone 2G, lasts me 12 hours full use or 4 days stand by (2 days average) - still use it btw with new battery
iPhone 4 lasted me (now my wife) about 8 to 9 hours and a day and a half of light use
iPhone 4S with most battery hungry functions (eg. GPS, notifications) lasts me 6 hours of constant use, or 22 to 26 hours of light use

Now the 4S is in the brink of being unacceptable. It's still convenient and the extra speed is very appreciated. But I always need a power outlet nearby when traveling, and I cannot count on it lasting a full day. It just can't if used for browsing and apps for a couple of hours.

Now, I love the iPad 2 battery life. Puts it in the Awesome Stuff list. I am guaranteed it'll last a day. If they could have kept the 2G life and not up CPU I'd have been more interested in the iPhone 5.