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Comment: Re:Is the gold rush over? (Score 1) 768

by Afecks (#36440348) Attached to: Ask Amir Taaki About Bitcoin

That was the point...BitCoin is great for people who got in early and mined a lot. But for everyone else, adopting it means essentially giving those early adopters stuff for free.

If you buy $20 worth of BTC and then buy $20 worth of stuff with BTC, how exactly are you losing anything? You're not. This is just one of several myths surrounding Bitcoin. Another is that it has no intrinsic value. First of all, nothing has intrinsic value. If everyone decided gold was worthless tomorrow, it would be. What these people mean to argue is that BTC isn't a commodity. You can't do anything with it except use it as a medium of exchange. This too is a false. It's a proof-of-work system and can be used as a replacement for CAPTCHA's. Maybe I'm showing my age here but I remember HashCash and how that was supposed to stop email spam forever. Obviously, that didn't happen but Bitcoin has the same usage that HashCash did/does have. It's useful as a commodity. You can argue that it's overvalued compared to how much is actually used as a commodity but so is gold. How much gold do we really need to turn into audio connectors, food decorations, teeth, etc? I doubt it's enough to justify gold being somewhere around $50 a gram.

Comment: Re:Main problem is revenue (Score 1) 243

by Afecks (#32906368) Attached to: Don't Stop File-Sharing, Says Former Pink Floyd Manager

If music, movies, software and books are freely distributed they pretty much have zero value. There will be some very talented folks that are also independently wealthy (or have gotten rich from when their music had value) that can afford to work for nothing. The rest of the world is going to do something that pays the rent and the grocery bill.

I find it hilarious that some people think that without copyright laws nobody would want to support artists when the very fact that copyright laws exist is a demonstration that people want to support artists! If you think it's not then that means you think that the majority of people don't really want to support artists but they do want the government to hold a gun to their heads and force them to do it. Huh? What?

Comment: Re:Filed Under the NYT's "Fashion & Style?" (Score 1) 631

by Afecks (#25753535) Attached to: Mind Control Delusions and the Web

Christians believe that the creator of the Universe impregnated a woman whom subsequently gave birth to Himself in human form for the purpose of giving Himself as a blood sacrificed so that He could forgive us for sins that we were born with. In other words, God killed himself to appease himself. Moreover, if you refuse to believe this you will suffer an eternity of torture or simply be destroyed.

What Christians actually believe is batshit crazy, immoral and corrupt. I think we're being charitable by just calling it an "invisible man in the sky".

Windows

The Advantages of Upgrading From Vista To XP 765

Posted by kdawson
from the open-and-shut-case dept.
An anonymous reader passes us a blog posting, which may be just a bit tongue-in-cheek, about the pros and cons of upgrading from Vista to XP. "...there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft have really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly."

'Predecessor' Neurons to Human Brain Discovered 218

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the going-grey-early dept.
Yale researchers claim to have found the very first neurons in what eventually becomes the human brain. Developed before most anything else, these neurons are in place just 31 days after fertilization. From the article: "We hypothesize that these predecessor neurons may be a transient population involved in determining the number of functional radial units including the human specific regions of the cerebral cortex mediating higher cognitive functions," Rakic said. "As a next step it is essential to determine their neural stem cell lineage, pattern of gene expression, developmental role and eventual fate."

The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

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