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Comment Arch + Various (Score 5, Interesting) 357

I just started building my own a few months ago and I'm pretty happy with the following:

Arch linux - has my favourite package manager (pacman + yaourt)
Xmonad window manager - tiling wm that doesn't get in the way, with some minor configurations
Stalonetray - has a clock (trayclock), sound (pnmixer), battery indicator (qbat), dropbox, etc.
ranger - vi-like file browser which is simple to use, runs in a terminal (urxvt), and I keep a regular filebrowser (nautilus) around just in case something needs me to drag-and-drop something.

non-visual things:
udiskie - automount usb drives and things

It's a very simple setup, though there are more things than what is mentioned here, and I love it. :)

A list of programs which I am currently using and why is here: https://github.com/MattWoelk/configuration-files/blob/master/home/matt/programs.txt Enjoy!

Comment Tradeoff (Score 4, Insightful) 188

Looks like a cool concept, though it looks like it takes much more human contact than regular shipping containers do (when being folded). This could be a problem, as a lot of the bigger shipping yards are automated and/or move containers around using large machines.

We'll have to see if the increase in human contact is worth the space saved when shipping empty containers around.

Comment Re:In other words (Score 1) 517

this is like "collector items", not currency. A very scare "resource", if you can call it that.

Having a finite amount of currency is important, because it means that money will not be able to be printed! Therefore, nobody can mess around with how much things are worth, and where money exists (like a government). Just as there is a finite amount of gold in the world, there will be a finite amount of bitcoins. You can divide them ever-smaller though, which will give us a nice steady inflation. The current software divides them into cents, but we can go as far as we need in the future.

the purpose of currency is not to hoard it - it is to spend it for goods/services.

This currency is not being made to be hoarded (and not being hoarded when it is being made), which is proven by the fact that people are selling goods and services (and others buying them) for bitcoins.

FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China. What is this backed by?

Bitcoins are being backed by the price of the electricity that it takes to generate bitcoins. Soon, (maybe even right now, I'm not too sure) the price of generating a bitcoin in electricity will the same as the value of a coin. So unless computers get a very sudden leap in efficiency, the system will work just fine.

Anyway, another fad "currency". Might as well collect "ISK in eveonline" or "gold nuggets in WoW" - same thing.

Parity with USD is not a fad, it shows that popularity is growing. This parity is a result of market demand, not from someone randomly saying that it is worth that much. I encourage everyone to do their own research about the nature of bitcoins, and of currency in general.

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