Screw that. Lets get some real cryptids on there. Lets replace George Washington with a picture of bigfoot. Lincoln place can be taken with a picture of the loch ness monster.

I suppose the Drake Equation isn't complete crap. I still believe as a scientific formula it's pretty useless. But if you poke in numbers to what we know, it can give us some ideal what we can expect. An as someone pointed out as the years go by we might be able to fill in the more answers. But one thing is certain no matter what number we can find the answer to the Drake Equation might always be 1.

The Drake equation is crap. There are any number of variables in that can never be known.

L the length of time civilizations release detectable radio signals. Well that can be anything, we will never know the exact answer to that one. For us it could be 100 years. For some other civilization it could be a 1,000. We will never know that.

fi is the fraction of planets that go on to develop life. That will also be another for ever unknown. We only guess at how many plants that will develop intelligent life.

I could go on and on but basically the Drake equation depends completely on numbers that anyone could pull out of their ass. So as a scientific formula its useless.

Government oversight doesn't always stop things from happening and people find ways around the system. What government oversight and regulations do is put boundaries on things and provide fall back and safety nets. And yes it does make people feel better and restore confidence in the system. Which is what modern economies are based on, faith. People don't have faith in the system and it falls apart.

Yes, government over sight did top the Lehman Brothers and Bernard Madoff. Where is Bernard Madoff now? He is currently incarcerated in a federal prison. What about the Lehman Brothers? The are involved in ongoing litigation involving their affairs. So yes, government oversight did stop them. With the regulations the people involved in these affairs have legal means to attempt to recoup their investments.

With out such regulations the people that lost money in Mt. Gox are screwed. They have no legal recourse to get any of their money back. It is gone. An the people that did it will probably get away with it.

First, please learn how to properly format post if you intent to quote people on /. It uses standard html which any idiot can pick up. Use of the quote tags would be very helpful.

I thought by now it would be obvious to even idiots why a currency, even bitcoins, must have some form of regulation in place. Obviously I was wrong. Here I will explain it to you in a simple concept, I will try not to use big words, but if one confuses you I'm sure someone can explain it to you in small terms.

Regulation will help prevent abuse and will provide some form of protection from the events that happened at Mt Gox. You see, if Mt. Gox had been regulated like a bank when this thief happened then the users could have had some kind of insurance in place.

In other words while the theft still could have occurred, the users wouldn't be out all of their money. As it stands all the users of Mt. Gox are pretty much screwed. With out regulation they have no legal recourse.

Regulation would also help prevent the current freefall that bitcoin values are taking now. With proper regulation and insurance the closing of the Mt. Gox would have had barely, if any, real impact on the value.

So here is the deal. For any currency system to be successful in the long run it has to have something backing it. That can be a physical object such as gold or a the rule of law.

So again, regulation is a must and not an option.

I agree. I still like the idea of bitcoins. I still think there might be a future in it once all the bugs have been gotten out of the system. The reason that we still need the exchange-places is because, like it or not, bitcoin are not a legitimate currency. As long as they are not recognized as one you will all ways need someone willing to take the risk of converting bitcoins in to cash.

People wanted bitcoins to be free from any kind of government oversight or interference. Well that is never going to happen. As long as there is anything acting like money you are going to need some kind of oversight to keep things like this from happening. Bitcoins are a great idea if everyone is on the same level and is honest about it. But not all people are honest.

As we have seen the need for exchanges have turned out to be the weak point in the bitcoin system. Until that need is eliminated or is under some kind of regulation, you will always having someone gaming the system and stealing from other people.

Regulation is a must, not an option.

Sounds to me like someone was running a long term con here. Act like a legitimate business for a few years, get people to trust them. Maybe think of them as a bank and a safe place to actually cash, not bitcoins. Then once that trust is built up and you have a nice supply of money sitting in some off shore bank. Vanish like a thief in the night.

Excellent advice HornyWumpus. Some times all you have invested in it is time and time can be more valuable than any kind of monetary game you get out of it. Even if the person that is taking your place is a moron it its probably best just to keep your mouth shut and exit.

If its your last day on the job. Just say, "You're an idiot and so is that moron you hired."

Just remember though, burning bridges isn't always a good thing.

I believe the strangest place I have seen a BSOD was when a gas pump tossed up one on me a few years back. I was so stunned that my brain just shifted into autopilot and started debugging the gas pump error messages before I recovered enough.

I've been here longer than any of you. I've probably got more time on this board than Cmd Taco does. I have another account that and started this one so I could troll. You people liked me better as a troll, so I started using this one.

Here is the deal, I'm not having that beta site rammed up my ass. Once there was a time when /. was the only game in town. Then it was the best game in town. Its not that way any more. Most of us "old" timers come here out of a sense of tradition than anything else, not because we have too.

So in short, you shove that beta site up our ass and most of use will be gone because in our minds /, will finally be dead. Time to let it rest.

With is passing in to "no longer developed/supported" land I wish they would open source winamp. Winamp does so many things wrong right out of the box but once you beat it into shape its really a nice music player.

Yes, music player. It tries to do video too but its so poor at it, it never should have been put in to start with.

Sounds painful, I think I'll walk.

I'm going to toss this out there but I expect the answer to be "no."

Does this solve the issue with using quantum entanglement as a possible means of FTL communications? I'm under the impression that quantum entanglement can't be used for this because the act of looking at the particle would change the state. But this seems to be away around that.

So am I wrong here and why?

That is because you are still booting off spinning rust. Put a SSD in that bitch and watch your boot issues go away. Seriously, with the current state of hardware adding memory or even a faster processor will not significantly speed up your PC. A SSD will.