Steam is doing great, and vendors selling games through Steam are very happy with it. EA copied Valve with it's own system, and they're doing great guns too.

WTF are you smoking?

That's... that's just... My God.

I'll be in my bunk.

Yes, 'the system' allowed him to earn that money. It prints the money and maintains a relatively stable currency in a volatile world market, going so far as to maintain the largest military ever to preserve the nation and influence events in its favour. It built the Internet. It built the roads that move the goods that form the backbone of the economy. It structures and staffs a justice system to make contracts enforceable and reduce corruption. 'The system' is responsible for building and maintaining the circumstances under which Saverin could make billions. And really, 'the system' is nothing more than a bunch of people getting by on far less than Saverin, who don't have the option to emigrate to Singapore to reduce their taxes.

Every billionaire's fortune stands on the tax dollars of those who went before. I don't think handing over 1.4% of it to keep the game going is that fucking onerous a demand.

Yeah, I mean he earned that money fair and square, starting with inventing computers and setting up the Internet and creating the legal system to enforce the partnership agreement, and under which he sued to avoid stock dilution. Then he created the school systems that educated the programmers that actually built Facebook. Oh, and he created the worldwide computer market so that PCs would be inexpensive enough to put one in every home, creating the conditions under which computerized social networking could occur. And don't forget how he legislated the 40 hour work week so that people would have time to dick around on the Internet. Oh, and it was really helpful how he maintained a standing army so that the country where they were building Facebook didn't face an invasion.

No, it's a more complex way of saying that "dine and dash" isn't allowed just because you've got tax lawyers.

Urban Airship went PostgreSQL to MongoDB to Cassandra to PostgreSQL. http://wiki.postgresql.org/images/7/7f/Adam-lowry-postgresopen2011.pdf

It's a good presentation because they're in love with none of them and are moving for specific reasons each time, handling different issues. It's not coders chasing the new hotness.

It's not kudos for bitcoin even if the design itself is proven perfect, because bitcoins are useless without practical implementations and real markets, and if those real-world applications continually fail for external reasons, the bitcoin economy will never take off.

Put a little differently, it doesn't matter how perfect bitcoin is on paper. If it can't be made to work in real life, it's useless. And if the computing infrastructure on which bitcoin transactions occur is fundamentally un-securable, then it can't be made to work in real life. It's like deploying an uncrackable ATM in a crime-ridden neighbourhood. It doesn't matter that you can't break into the ATM if you just have to wait for someone to withdraw cash and then rob them.

Given the frequency with which the stories are about the pratfalls of the bitcoin community that repeatedly damage its credibility as a replacement currency, I'd guess zero.

Zombie Steve Jobs still gets to skullfuck Foxconn employees to death, right? That's what made Apple what it is today!

This comment is (uncharacteristically for /.) brilliant.