If I had to guess it is a quasi-legal thing. People probably want some type of assurance that their message had been delivered.

I worked in a US Bank and we were still sending out telegrams in 2002. The telegram served kind of the same function as certified mail. We could confirm that the message had been received on the other end. We were conducting "urgent" business (generally business that needed a turnaround time of 1 to 3 business day) with older cliental (e-mail was not assured).

You got me on the date thing – I am showing my age.

On to your point, I would agree that we need librarians and archivist. However you are off point. The topic at hand is about lending libraries and the most efficient way to lend out books, music, movies, etc. Almost everything you point out is in the domain of research, archive, and other special collection libraries. These libraries tend not to lend stuff out. Does it matter if a library or a historical society holds these archives? I can't think of one.

Then I would suggest, and I do in fact encourage, reform of the copyright laws.

Clinging to yesterday's 19th century inefficient technology with some ill-defined nostalgia for the past is probably not the best way to ensure liberty in the 20th century. As a case in point, my library immediately deletes all borrowing history the moment a book is returned or the e-book lending period expires. Not exactly on point to what you are saying, but pointing out the type of things we should be doing. That being said, even if all libraries go DRM, there is nothing stopping you from walking into a bookstore and buying a hardback with a $20 bill.

Libraries do carry books for "financial reasons", in the sense that library space is a cost and libraries don't have unlimited money. They do try to get the most bang out of their buck to server their "customers". Libraries routinely cull their collections. Most libraries have book sales where they get rid of their excess inventory, making room for new books.

That being said, most libraries tend to take a long and deep view. What was trendy yesterday and obscure today is the stuff of historical research tomorrow. This is particularly true for research and archival libraries. That being said, digital storage of media is getting cheaper and better every day.

Not exactly true and kind of misses the point.

You say not everybody can afford Kindles? The point was to close down all of the libraries, and used the money saved to buy everybody a Kindle or some other type of e-book. If e-books and libraries were equivalent than society would win. E-books and libraries are not equivalent yet, at least the book lending portion. However, my local library does allow me to check out e-books and audiobooks via the internet so we are getting close.

Taxes could be cut, libraries could be redeployed to something more useful - like coffee shops that could be used for networking. I say the last bit half in jest. If you are interested in networking, community meetings, etc. then we should figure out the best way to delivery that. Maybe generic community centers could do better? Other people have mentioned internet access and tech support. Maybe free city wide wifi would be a better choice?

I love libraries, but let's not try to justify their existence with a bunch of ad hoc ad ons in ex post facto rationalization of logic.

That is true. But some linguists believe that Uralic and Altaic have common roots. The debate goes forward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

IIRC there was a joke in the first Michael Bay's Transforms movie along those lines.

I think part of the reason is that it sounds kind of like Japanese and Finnish and Japanese are kind of in the same language group. Not saying there are kissing cousins like the romance languages, but as languages go they seem to be orphans which share a common great grandparent.

It is not about the NSA, it is about Windows XP. Windows XP (the pirated version) dominates the market. Microsoft has withdrawn support, which leaves China in a bit of a pickle. I am sure this will all go away if Microsoft would just start supporting XP again or China bought a couple of million of Windows 8 licenses.

Here is an analogy. I don't consider Klingon, Esperanto, or Latin to be real, living languages. They fill all of the requirements of being a language but people can't live their daily lives using these language and they don't think in these languages. Books may be translated into these languages, but few books are written in these languages. Native speakers are rare. Latin may be an edge case.

Yes, you can do a lot of things with BitCoins. But form the posts that I see on Slashdot, these retailors are immediately converting the BitCoins to the local currency. That suggests to me that the BitCoin economy is a mile wide and an inch deep.

As for BitCoin, I am not rooting it to fail but I think it will. From a technically aspect, it has many virtues as a currency. However, anything that acts like money is money. In good times, many things can act like money but in bad times the amount of money can contract rapidly. Hence monetary policy. BitCoins lacks that flexibly. I personally feel there is going to be a crisis and the whole thing will collapse. Now, on the flip side, hard money types will tell you this inflexibility is a virtue.

I too would be interested in know if there are legitimate BitCoin banks out there. I suspect not for 2 ½ reasons.

First, I don't think anybody is audacious enough to do that. At the very least it implies one has a solid back office. It also implies that one has a government issued charter (with the regulation, fees, and oversight that goes with that). If a loan goes south, how do I collect? These are not unsolvable issues. I suspect that some of the ponzi sachems out there that promised a fat return or interest rates pretended to have some type of fractional reserve going.

Second, you can break banking down into 2 parts. One is the “cash handling” aspect. I have a negative opinion on BitCoin but this it does well. The second part, the fractional banking part, is to allocate capital by transmuting short term deposits into long term loans. I have a hard time imagining anybody needing a long term loan in BitCoins. Because the price is volatile, we would need to find a business that needed a big upfront loan in BitCoins for capital and was expecting to do business in BitCoins for the future.

Which takes me to my ½ reason. BitCoin users tend to be hard money types who hate loans. While I look aghast at the amount of leverage in the current system, I do think some lending (or to be more precise, some time aspect of investment) is necessary. I personally don't think BitCoin will be a real currency until we start seeing loans being made.

And when you are done with that, look up "hobby income" on the IRS website.After all we need to distinguish between the casual WoW player and the professional gold miner.

If you are a US citizen, and you have income as defined by the IRS, they have jurisdiction.

You need to strike the first two since they are both pegged currencies, Tuvalu to the Australian dollar and Barbados to the US dollar. That is, their value is derived from the underlying currencies.

And what makes a currency a currency is not how many people hold them or the might of the military. What really matters is I can live my daily life using that currency. Can I buy a loaf of bread or pay my rent? When I do any mental accounting, to I think in BitCoins, dollars, or cigarettes?

But we don't have to declare anything - it is already illegal. You can't trade in illegal goods. Period. If a good is illegal on one side of the trade, it does not matter what is on the other side. The government does not have to create a list of thing where it is. A criminal can’t say –"ha – but I used blue whales while trading cocaine – and blue whales are not on the probation list of tradable goods – ergo I can sell all the cocaine that I want".

Money is generally defined as
        Medium of exchange
        Store of value
        Unit of account
Anything that can be used as money is money. As such, money is flexible. If you think tulips, receipts (bank drafts, post-dated checks, warehouse receipts, tobacco , tulips, Dot Com stocks, cows, garbage pail kids, are money , it is. If you change your mind it does away. Currency tends to be "harder" – harder to create and destroy and tend to be tightly controled by a central bank. Read up on Money Supply and the difference between M0, M1, M2, etc. The further you go out the less something is like currency.

Technically no. Private currency has a long and rich history. However, since 1880 it has be on the decline. I can't think of any major currencies that are not backed by a government today.

Yes, but you don't always get what you want. Money (and thus currency) is supposed to be a low risk / low reward asset. Currency has low risk (see inflation) and has either 0% reward or more commonly a negative rate of return. (if not from inflation, then convince charges to hold and transfer funds. A advantage of BitCoin is that they will reduce the charges.) See countries with high inflation rates. Venezuela is my current favorite example. Argentina comes in a close second. FYI, the human brain from an organic aspect can handle inflation better than deflation.

Mostly yes. It must be a unit exchange, barter, ability to pay taxes and loans, etc. If not it tends to gimp the money, leading to inefficiencies, eroding its value. For examples, you can look at some communist countries that have issued dual currency, one that is convertible into foreign currencies and one that is not. Food stamps that can only be used to buy food and the resulting black market in baby formula.

Fireworks businesses, gun businesses, casino owners are all legal business – mind you heavily regulated.

Marijuana is illegal under federal laws even if it legal under state. A bank dealing with a marijuana dispensary runs the risk of violating laws on money laundering, which can be very bad for banks. So banks simply won't deal with them.

A place to start: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...