I think it would be just as foolish to dismiss this outright, considering the " tantalizing hints that there may be something to it" and the developing theories as it would be to start dumping your life savings into Rossi's company.

No, not really. It's the "tantalizing hints that there may be something to it" part which pretty much screams bullshit. Fusion is not exactly subtle; if it's going on, it's not hard to detect, and hasn't been. Furthermore, according to the Wikipedia link, the device was covered up during demonstrations, actively hindering any kind of measurements. Add those together and shave with Occam's razor, and you get "conman".

Also, fusion is not really all that hard to achieve. For example, a fusor is simple enough for a hobbyist project. What's hard is a fusion device with a net energy output; we don't even know if Rossi's device is doing fusion at all, so why would we even begin to assume it's not only doing so but generating more power than it consumes?

So yeah, with the information we have, this seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be dismissed outright.

Compare this with (old copper based) pennies, where the metal value is more than double the face value at 215%.

I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of pennies suddenly screamed out in terror and were melted down to scrap.

Write a robust system that has a sufficiently complex job to do, on time and on budget.

This is true of any imaginable language.

The trick is that you don't put your conclusion before your hypothesis. "Cold fusion" is the conclusion, or the result, of the whole process that would result in your utopian revolutions (again, something that is post conclusion or desired symptoms of the result of this sort of research). When your research begins by you working backwards, that's when the red flags should go up because there is no logical way to work backwards. Sometimes a sci-fi author will imagine something but it takes a very talented scientist/research/inventor/engineer/whatever to go from hypothesis to that end construct -- even then there's often a slight catch or permutation of nonfiction idea.

What this paper appears to do is formalize observations ... which is great (any more transparency is always welcomed). But it's also curious, wouldn't you say? We've been hearing about this for years now and no one can tell me what, exactly, is going on in this solution filled chamber. The critics are rightly asking questions about why the next steps aren't being taken (like getting real world measurements on its power draw versus its power emission). And are suspicious not of the data that is provided by this paper but of the data that aren't provided and would be obviously interesting.

The fear is that Rossi stumbled upon a neat trick that is just not sustainable but he realizes that if he controls the parameters on the experiments, he can make it look like this thing works. Then he rakes in billions and walks away from any involvement in it. It is suspicious because it's being conducted at a university that should be making obvious logical steps forward. Yet we continually only see "demonstrations" like his "public displays" and "observations" like this paper.

My charges are still borderline character assassination/ad hominem and this could very well work. But I've had enough talk of what is "perceived to happen" and I'm afraid that someone has a really neat trick that they've already thoroughly investigated and figured out why it works. And maybe it even fooled them in the beginning. But truly there is no good way to monetize this trick. So they give everyone else only enough information to make them think that it works. Then they capitalize on this public interest and walk away from it just before the reveal.

If not, I apologize but I also wouldn't be buying into this idea until we start with a hypothesis and tests are reproduced around the world and the true reason behind this anomaly is well understood and indeed a good energy answer. It's totally possible he doesn't know yet and his greed is the reason we only get tastes of this device. If that's true, however, we still don't know if it's a good answer to our energy addiction.

I only hope there are enough details in this paper for other researchers around the world to better reproduce and analyze these results. I'm sorry if this is just a matter of an ill-equipped laboratory at Bologna University but with all the interest this has generated, I would be surprised if that was reason.

In conclusion, start with a hypothesis, openly publish your methods and results. Wait for others to reproduce. Your rigor and its results will be your vindication if you fear being attacked for doing research. Just don't start your research by saying, "I'm going to make cold fusion and cheap energy is just ten years away." That's when you're openly attacked for good reason -- that's not science, those are words that you spout to get money.

One pundit called him the "Magic Negro"

Well, isn't that what he was voted into office as? "Hope and change" - if you vote for him, everything will miraculously be fine again, rather than continue crumbling. That it actually worked - twice - tells something about how desperate people are getting.

I recently listened to the excellent History of Rome podcast, and one thing that struck home is the politics of the old Roman Republic. It would be trivial to sort many Roman politicians into left-right.

Because they actually were or because the podcaster had already done so when preparing the cast? After all, every political idea can be fitted into a left-right axis, just like any point on Earth's surface has a latitude. That does not mean it's sufficient information to capture the essence of the idea.

The more complex the subject and the less certain the data, the easier it's to see exactly what you expect to see.

I wouldn't just want a band-aid.

That does not counter my arguments as to why that's exactly what you get.

It's entirely possible to close loopholes like this while making the tax code much less complicated,

Are you a lawyer who's actually read the tax code and has concrete ideas, or are you simply asserting this?

The problem is that if you insist on treating law as a computer program, which following it to the letter in essence is, you'll run into the same problem as actual programs: it'll start simple, but soon the first weird corner cases show up, and you add special-case code to handle them, and then more, and then more, until the whole thing is an utter mess where any chance is likely to have unintended consequences. And you just know that you should just rewrite the thing partially or completely, but of course the process simply repeats if you do.

But for any other serious financial transaction, well, unless you are a mobster or a dope dealer or otherwise involved in something illegal, the real question is WHY DEAL WITH IT.

Define "serious financial transaction". How does it differ from a regular financial transaction?

But in any case, the reasons to use Bitcoin is: you don't need the approval or cooperation of any third parties. You don't need a credit card, PayPal account nor even a bank account. You don't need to pay fees associated with these nor care if a government or a lobby group disapproves of your business. You don't need to worry about chargebacks nor people stealing your card number. You don't need to wait until the next day to have your transaction verified. Your have privacy - no, even if I don't do anything wrong or illegal I still don't want a stalker watching me. And you don't need to worry about things like the recent bank troubles in Cyprus.

Bitcoin is simply superior in over-the-Internet transactions, especially multinational ones.

McDonalds, for over a decade, served their coffee at temperatures hot enough to instantly cause severe burns

Which is the proper service temperature for coffee.

McDonald's customers should be defended from having hazardous material hastily handed to them,

Which includes pretty much everything served at McDonald's.

and medical professionals should be defended from being duty-bound to treat everyone, even if there's no reimbursement for the expense.

Dunno how this fits in with the rest - is it a Slashdot comment equivalent of a rider? In any case, you're wrong - with great power comes great responsibility, no matter how much it might clash with anyone's political ideology.

Still, it's not a difficult problem to solve another way - simply use a single-payer medical system and the doctors get their reimbursement from the government.

The solution is not to expect every single one of the thousands of players to voluntarily adhere to what you consider to be wrong. The solution is not to try to keep on eye on these players and shame or boycott them into playing honorably. The solution is to outlaw the tactic.

And then you get where we are today: with absurdly complex laws that try to split every last hair and control everything in a vain attempt to enumerate badness. And of course it requires a huge bureaucracy to actually enforce all those laws.

The default transaction fee is 0.0001 BTC. 1.2 cents.

The "Main" tab in "Options" menu of the qt client says: "Optional transaction fee per kB that helps make sure your transactions are processed quickly. Most transactions are 1kB. Fee 0.01 recommended."

Also, setting this to 0 in results in both "Debit" and "Net amount" in "Transaction details" be the same thing, and "Transaction fee" to not show up. So I conclude that 0.01 BTC is indeed the default fee.

Learning is surely great in all forms.

Which is why no one should leave school without being able to solve quantum mechanical wave functions. They are, after all, about as useful to an average person as a language they never really learned and thus won't use. And no more of a nightmare being force-fed than languages are to not linquistically oriented.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: it's no shame being bad at math but being bad at languages is due to laziness.

Chinese, for dealing with anyone outside the BPO / ITO / major trade companies: government, state owned and specialists yes.

And this is another thing: it's simply foolish to conduct business on you business partner's native language if it's foreign to you, since it puts you at a disadvantage. Use an interpreter rather than risk the distraction.

Apparently Plutarch already knew this little puzzle called the ship of Theseus problem.

I'm highly confident that some US judges will finally put those those annoying logicians and philosophers to rest and give us the ultimate correct solution.

The ultimate correct solution is that the definition of "ship of Theseus" is not entirely fixed, so neither is the point where it becomes something else. And that means that lawyers are exactly the correct people to decide the matter, seeing how it depends on splitting hairs over semantics.

To my knowledge, no allegations have been made against Judge Wright.

Sure they have: the grandparent just made some.