Personally I can't wait to hear from the Kazakhstani Prince and the $20 million dollars he's having trouble moving ....

That's an interesting thought. Aereo goes from being a self-described game-changer to a Trojan horse for other content streaming concern. I can't see entrenched cablecos being happy about that either. Maybe someone on their side has figured that out?

Well maybe your richy rich multi millionaire bulbs last a long ass time

Ever heard of "moving"? I don't own two houses, I've lived two different places in the past decade.


but the normal $2-5 per bulbs are garbage. I have to replace at least one every 6 months out of aprox 15 bulbs installed in my apt.
[...]I like the energy savings, and lower heat, but old ass bulbs are far more reliable.

FIrst, I buy the Home Depot discount bulk packs, in the 4 bulbs for $10 range. So yeah, comparing apples to apples here

Second, you have to replace ONE out of fifteen, every six months? Do you remember having incandescents at all? You have to replace all of them every six months (except maybe that one lonely attic light that you only use a total of 10 hours of per year), and the highest use ones, you could expect to replace every 2-3 months. People actually used to keep a six-pack of replacement bulbs around to deal with one or three dying at the worst possible time. Today? do people actually keep spare CFLs around? I don't, seems like a waste of space for how often I need one.

We apparently don't define "reliable" the same way.


The balast generally goes and then the bulb is toast. Sometimes they go grey first in the tube, but most are heavily yellowed from heat damage.

Ballasts go because of poor quality power, nothing more and nothing less (or putting a non-dimmable one on a dimmer circuit - same thing, just self-inflicted poor power quality). As for heat damage, Yes Virginia, some fixtures designed for burn-to-the-touch incandescents don't make suitable fixtures for CFLs. Specifically, if it has a heat shield on the base and a completely enclosing shade, yeah, you'll cook your CFLs nicely.

Indeed. In which case, the "majority of the public" is wrong.

Good point. I suppose in Pennsylvania this could be perceived as a problem, but in New York or Illinois draft eligiblity would just be the dead's civic duty, right alongside voting and jury participation.

Don't disenfranchise our patriotic dead!

You can't fix politics, until you fix the people voting for the politicians. We get exactly what we deserve as an electorate. However, there are signs on the wall (CANTOR), that given enough crap, voters will out vote incumbents even as they spend millions to hold onto a seat. I see more potential in the (R) side right now in outing politicians who deserve it. However, I don't see ANY such on the (D) side. There is no (D) grassroots with any power, including OWS (noisy, but otherwise ineffective) threatening Harry, Nancy, or any of the others who need to go as much as Cantor did.

But I actually blame the liberal mentality for this, because they like abusive power of Government butting into everyone's business and telling everyone how to live, rather than leaving us the hell alone. Liberal fixation on people like Sarah Palin (who doesn't hold an elected office), because she talks funny, while accepting Sheila Jackson Lee (a complete loon) is a prime example of duplicity that is amazing.

It is short sighted indeed. It is way more expensive to replace good workers than it is to retain them. But they don't teach this in Business school any longer.

That is not how money laundering looks like. Here is what Money Laundering Looks like

Illegal gained money is given to a Legitmate enterprise (Gambling) and is returned as "profit" or whatever from the enterprise. In a very simple case, mob money is put into a slot machine, and 98% of it is returned when the jackpot is hit. The gains, now washed (legitimate) are taxed and are clean for use elsewhere (deposit into a bank). Where if you just stuck the gains in the bank would trigger all sorts of investigations. This is part of the reason why deposits of $10,000 or more in banks are automatically reported to treasury, for an audit of the money trail.

The trick in money laundering is to hide the input (initial gains being laundered) well enough that it doesn't trigger the reporting requirement of transactions of 10K or more. A series of 5000 "high risk" transactions where you lose most of the time, but win big occasionally, is typically how money is laundered. The inputs are not traceable, and the earnings become legitimate.

The goal is always to hide the initial input, obfuscate the long trail of transactions and end up with legitimate money on the back end. The transaction you describe is used to obfuscate the buyer and seller from each other, and the authorities, not the transaction. Money laundering still has to occur with the seller, as the bitcoin to currency exchange still has dirty money written all over it.

No, that is not a show stopper for Bitcoin. It is what is going to drive Bitcoin to full currency status faster, where people trade money for the more usable Bitcoin.

Here is the issue, anything that makes something less utilitarian and causes restrictions will fall into disfavor eventually. Laws and Restrictions and fees and taxes all have the unintended consequence of driving economy deeper under the table. There is a whole class of people who now work off the books, bartering and trading and whatnot, and they don't pay taxes on anything they earn, simply because the government cannot track their activities. They work very hard at staying under the radar, dealing in CASH and trades, and as a result, have a better income than someone that is legitimate.

If I earn 2000 under the table, it is worth 3000-4000 in legitimate earnings that people pay taxes on. And as more people realize how much the government seizes in taxes, even on the "poor", this will start happening more and more. Bitcoin(and similar), has the ability to really change this equation faster than it is happening now.

The more they squeeze their fists, the more people will slip through their fingers (paraphrase of Princes Leia)

The problem is, it is going to be really hard for the Government to trace money laundering with Bitcoin, if the people take a few simple steps.

1) Use unique wallet for each transaction
2) Use a washing service every time one acquires new coins in a normal transaction.
3) ???
4) Profit

The government is going to try to regulate "coin washing", but since it is a decentralized currency, with no government boarders, it is going to be really hard to pull off well.

You're right. But the problem is, loyalty is a two way street. If an employer doesn't value existing employees to pay them what the market rate is, or even reasonably close, deserve to lose them to people willing to pay for it all. If my boss hired someone to do what I do, with less skill and experience than me, for more than I make, while being unwilling to even negotiate with me on a raise .... see ya boos!

I blame (D) and (R) who are so stuck on bringing home bacon, that they screw the people they clam they serve while getting all sorts of re-election donations for the very people they should be de-funding.

How is that for what to blame?

Most drones, like most tactical manned aircraft, don't have intercontinental range. Any kind of overseas presence has to include ground basing.

Even aircraft with intercontinental range have trouble with responsiveness (kind of hard to react immediately to a strike call when it'll take you 20 hours to get to the operation area).

Sorry, nice idea, but as long as America takes an interest in the rest of the world, we'll have to take posession of small parts of it to enforce our interests. Kthxbuhbye.

What if looking at more clothes and stuff is interesting?

Your complaint boils down to "What's wrong with these people? They're completely unlike ME!"

Yeah, I'm not nuts about rampant consumerism, and shopping is not entertainment to me, but I acknowledge that I'm not typical.