It's also just wrong. From 3G onwards phones authenticate the cell towers. Even with a full stack running you wouldn't be easily able to force a phone to associate to your tower, at least not without jamming all the other towers in your vicinity.

For example, scaling the network up to 2000 transactions per second would result in a Bitcoin node downloading about 1 MB per second. No big deal, until you realize that means each node will need about 2.6 TB of bandwidth each month, and that's just to handle the needs of 10% of the population of the United States, assuming 5 transactions per person per day.

As pointed out by another poster, 2.6 TB of transfer quota per month is trivial even by today's standards: anyone can afford that. And should Bitcoin ever scale to those levels it won't be relying on today's resources, it'll be relying on tomorrow's. So your own example falls apart almost immediately.

Also, rather than just guessing what the US population "needs" why not take a look at existing networks? 2000tps is about a fifth of VISA traffic for the whole world. Of course not every transaction goes via VISA, but it should indicate to you that maybe your numbers are once again a bit sketchy.

You can read an article I wrote a long time ago here: http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability. It goes over the various ways the system scales up. Performance is unintuitive, there's no substitute for just working it out on the back of an envelope. Bear in mind we live in a world where single websites can generate a large fraction of total internet traffic and not go bankrupt.

Oh, "The Left" has it's own peculiarities. But the efforts to turn every one of their own inherent properties into an accusation against their opponents is a hallmark of the Religious Right.

Its a subscription-based MMO. $15 a month. In today's market, that is a recipe for fail.

On the other hand, I only play games that I pay for. I don't want anything for free, and most definitely not a game. Every single F2P game gives me a creepy feeling.

And I figure, since I'm not exceptional in any way, there are probably other people like me, who are happy to pay for a game that provides value. In fact, if the game was good enough, and provided enough value, I'd pay even more than the current price-tag for an AAA game.

I'm not much on MMO's or really, multiplayer anything, but by charging for their work, at least Blizzard has placed Wildstar in the category of games that I will consider playing.

One thing you can always say about the right-wing in America:

It's always about projection.

They have it in their DNA to try to misdirect by blaming others for that which is their most defining property. They think it's some kind of super-secret jujutsu that they can do because some consultant told them to. But it doesn't fool anyone. Look how long they've been trying it.

Smitty makes a big deal about his Christian faith and lives and breathes dishonesty. He thinks that it's OK because he's doing God's work or something. Just look into fhe faces - into the eyes - of the old-line soldiers in the Right to see where this ends up. Go find a photo of Mark Levin and look at the dead, flat eyes. That is not what the grace of God looks like.

Smitty, let go of the corruption before it gets to the point where it will never let go of you.

. You don't need for people not to be able to see to feel private.

No, you need for people to be not seen.

The act of watching, when it is not wanted, is a transgression against the individual. Now, you may say we've moved into a "post-individual" age, where only the collective matters, but I'm pretty sure that's not what people want. There is a basic human dignity that is violated by unwanted surveillance on people who are not suspected of crime. It's why the framers of the US Constitution made a big deal about:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It was a good idea then, and it's a much better idea now. Because when corporations and governments have the power of ubiquitous surveillance, there is no way NOT for it to be abused. Governments and corporations just don't know any better, because they are not human.

The fact that there are so many people who object to being watched should be enough. No means no. I have a right to be unwatched as much as a woman has a right to travel unmolested. If I don't want to be watched, I have a right not to be watched, when I'm in my own home, or even walking down the street.

Ah, but who are the "takers"?

Maybe this will help a little: http://pando.com/2014/02/26/fo...

What you call "out of circulation" could also just as well be called "savings". By forcing savings to be spent via taxes on them, all you actually do is artificially move spending that would have happened in future into the present day.

This is terrible outcome for two reasons. One is that it results in huge liabilities for future spending - we can see this in the various insolvent pension schemes that are looming on the horizon (e.g. CALPERS which will never catch up to where it needs to be by now).

The second is that the so-called "growth" in the economy that results is in reality merely some arbitrary economic activity: the fact that it took place can be measured, hence growth, but whether it was actually useful or increased societies wealth is harder to measure and often explicitly ignored. If by taxing savings you force people to instead put their money into a housing bubble, that then triggers a construction boom, this appears to central bankers/planners to be successful economic growth whereas in reality it's merely a gross misallocation of resources towards investments that wouldn't normally make any kind of economic sense.

You can't have a printing press controlled by humans and not have it be ultimately end up abused for political purposes. Central bankers are not somehow magically immune from bad decision making just because they're unelected and unaccountable: they are explicitly given their mission by politicians and their mission is economic growth at any cost, even if it means sacrificing long term stability for short term gain: exactly the same thing as the politicians mission.

We can easily see this in recent times, with central banks desperately trying to jack their economies via free money in order to try and solve political problems, like recessions or possible Eurozone breakups. Does this really make long term sense? No - running the printing presses at full speed in order to make something, anything, happen is not a sensible economic policy. Nor is doing so to bail out profligate and badly managed countries to achieve the entirely emotional and political goal of keeping them inside the Eurozone. And indeed Draghi resisted the latter for a long time, but eventually the public pressure being heaped on him daily ("Draghi will destroy the euro" etc) got too much and he caved.

This is why Bitcoin has the most sensible economic policy of all. Long term, it's meant to have no inflation and no deflation. It's meant to provide a stable monetary base. And critically, it's independent of any individuals who will inevitably give into temptation to try and shape things through money creation.

There's a difference between surveillance and transparency.

People have a basic, animal need to be left alone sometimes. If there is "omnipresent surveillance", and you can't possibly know who's watching, how can you ever say "no"?

I don't think "decorum" is something that is decided democratically. It is almost imposed on us by the powerful, and that means that it will be beneficial to a few and less so to everyone else.

But again, it's good that smart people like you are talking about this.

These days, if you're not a political dissident, you are not paying attention.

It makes me feel better knowing there are smart, tech-savvy people saying what you're saying.

I get a little disheartened when I hear otherwise informed people say, "It's the internet age. You don't have any privacy, so just get over it". They just don't seem to have any awareness of the role that privacy, agency and basic human liberty have played in getting us to a point where we can have such powerful technology.

If there had been ubiquitous surveillance thirty years ago, we might not even have an Internet as we know it today. And the gains we have made will not protect themselves.

I doubt you're a political dissident or whatever.

Well...

but I'd like to go on record as joining the beta sucks bandwagon

Instead of cursing the darkness, why not light a candle?

http://soylentnews.org/