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Comment: Boston Marathon bombings likely used pressure coo (Score 0) 182

by starworks5 (#43465639) Attached to: Did Tech Websites Exploit the Boston Marathon Bombing?

The Chicago Tribune reports

Current and former counter-terrorism officials said that the Boston bombs were built using pressure cookers as the superstructure, black powder or gunpowder as the explosive and ball bearings as additional shrapnel. The officials said that instructions on how to design such bombs are available on the Internet.

http://slashdot.org/submission/2606257/boston-marathon-bombings-likely-used-pressure-cooker-plans-found-on-the-internet

+ - Boston Marathon bombings likely used pressure cooker plans found on the internet->

Submitted by starworks5
starworks5 writes "The Chicago Tribune reports

Current and former counter-terrorism officials said that the Boston bombs were built using pressure cookers as the superstructure, black powder or gunpowder as the explosive and ball bearings as additional shrapnel. The officials said that instructions on how to design such bombs are available on the Internet.

"

Link to Original Source

+ - OkCupid and MetArt Now Take Bitcoin->

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes "OkCupid, the best way to meet singles online (in my experience), and MetArt, the aspirational, high-fashion label of porn, have both adopted bitcoin for premium subscription services. Venture Beat is hurting its head over the development, rejecting the idea as nonsensical. "Bitcoin users are probably the last people who would be into online dating — but don’t tell that to OkCupid," a VB blogger seemed to grab out of thin air. Now listen, I do consider myself an outsider, a dweller in the margins of society, and I have explained the concept of bitcoin to an unbeknownst internet date or two. Yet I disagree with the idea that the ordinary bitcoin player would have no interest in online dating. I personally know a handful that are interested and have online dating profiles.

OkCupid daters might largely be unknowledgeable of bitcoin, or how to use it, but I can only see the sites' provision of the new payment method as an integral milestone in the currency's mainstream proliferation."

Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Kissinger (Score 1) 199

Yes yes, freedom from the evils of productivity and the joys of having to work for the big communist State (and of-course your actual private property gets taken first and if you disagree you get slaughtered). Surplus value, ha? How about actual added value by people doing the work necessary?

freedom from is just as important as freedom to, and if it were a true communist state instead of soviet state capitalism, every person would get a more equitable portion of their output. Instead value gets siphoned off to the top, where the laws of diminishing returns, and the non productive consumption are worst, and at the very least gets 'lost in transaction' on the way there. If you indeed believe in added value through work, then you should believe in maximizing total factor productivity, by redistributing capital to the poorest people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax

How do you benefit from oil that is still in the ground? However you do benefit from oil that is extracted and then you benefit from it being refined and shipped to you, and all of this is done by investing the capital necessary first. Nobody did this before investment of capital became possible.

The question ought to be, will I benefit more from the oil if i use it now, or if I wait for efficiency improvements later? If I use too much oil (or any natural resource), what are the negative externalities, and would it be better to wait until they can be properly mitigated? (again total factor productivity) If you replace the words "oil in still in the ground" with "trees in the ground", its clear that investment capital in the capitalism sense of it, isn't necessary to utilize resources whatsoever.

As to talking about socialism as a strategy for evolution, well, then hundreds of millions of people who disagreed with the socialists just weren't 'evolved enough' and had to be robbed and slaughtered, I guess they didn't evolve enough of the slave gene necessary to comply with the orders barked at them at the gun point.

What about the those native american socialists, who just weren't "evolved enough" and were robbed and slaughtered, because they didn't use their 'private property', in a way which we considered worthy of ownership. In fact Mises claimed that they didn't own it, because they didn't transform it enough with their labor, and completely discounts any notion of conservation. his own deduction claims that you can't conserve things for 'second comers', because it would invalidate the notion of private property, though he proves by iterating over every type of ownership except for the instance where no ownership exists. A good example of this is his comparison of a bear, and how it should be treated just like any other inanimate thing, but ignores what happens when the bear is hungry, which breaks his concept of self ownership.

I'll tell you what to do with your ideas and links, but what does it matter? You are not literally going to print all that nonsense onto a big stack of cardboard and shove up one of your orifices, where it belongs.

Ah yes the classic conservative answer to every problem, send it to the amygdala where it ges assessed emotionally, and then react without even processing the information, like the possibility that your not an expert on the subject.

Comment: Re:Good riddance (Score 1) 539

by starworks5 (#43394367) Attached to: Margaret Thatcher Dies At 87

I'm not sure thats a good thing, because people use hayek to pin scientific credence to their philosophies, despite the fact that many of his ideas has been disproven.

For example: the economic calculation problem.

a distributed network is only more efficient than a centralized system under certain parameters, sort of reminiscent of how technology went from mainframes to PC's and now back to the cloud. Because information technology is now cheaper than what it used to be, a planned economy is actually more efficient than laissez faire, because a central planning has more foresight into resource planning, especially when a person considers externalities aren't really free.

Comment: Re:Kissinger (Score 1) 199

the Bolsheviks ran on a platform of freedom, freedom from the capitalists in fact, and debt slavery from private property owners. "competitive free markets" typically lead to extracting all surplus value, which is why property rights were used to justify slavery in america, and why the environment has gone to shit.

look up positive and negative liberty and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty#Freedom_as_a_triadic_relation

this if you would like a genuine discussion of marx

http://www.youtube.com/user/brendanmcooney

Also realize that socialism is a strategy in evolution, one that we have used for a long time in fact, and backed up by plenty of mathematics and computer proof. In fact according to agent based economic computation, we would benefit from more socialism than we have now, and from having a more planned economy as well.

Comment: Re:Please, please! (Score 1) 199

You think thats a feature in communist countries only? Try saudi arabia or thailand, you know, our capitalist allies. Heck you could even make the case of Julian Assange. The difference is that we have a media machine, and the illusion of choice in our democracy, so that real opposition isn't a threat to the status quo.

Comment: Re:Please, please! (Score 1) 199

Would you call primitive jungle cannibals morally reprehensible, or would you instead try to compare them to the aztecs, or pre-agrarian Mesopotamians who struggled to survive.

The point being is that if you want to compare communism to capitalism, you have to compare them to something more analagous, like perhaps early industrial america for example. Remember how we used to have slavery, used to give disease innoculated blankets to native americans, and used to use perform medical experiments on poor blacks? It ultimately required millions of deaths to figure our way out of that problem, just as russians and communists had high mortality rates trying to free themselves, by revolting from what was an oppressive capitalist regime. I would argue that american neocolonialism also led to millions of deaths, through its support of repressive regimes abroad and overthrow of democratically elected governments, the fact that there was a wall street coup to overthrow FDR is quite scary.

Given the fact that peak resources are coming down the road, and robots are already worth around $3.00 an hour wage, and the way that our government behaves itself, I am expecting either a socialist or fascist revolution. But either way I am not too enthusiastic about gun control, given that the FBI helped plan assasinations of the OWS leaders, and the way that conservatives have allowed all our other rights and powers to erode. I do certainly agree with my fellow liberals with their premise, that people are bloody idiots who kill others and themselves for little good reason, and that society often drives them to these desperate ends as well. But with our debt and energy crunch, it might not be too unreasonable to expect that debt slavery will come again, as politicians bend over backwards for those claims of future productivity.

Comment: Re:Ironic (Score 1) 437

by starworks5 (#42999573) Attached to: World's First Bitcoin ATM

I was wondering what you all thought about the energy theory of value, contrasted with labor or subjective theory of value, and the concept of having a currency based on the "joule standard". I feel as if it could more accurately describe both labor costs, scarcity in commodities, and environmental externalities. Additionally It would be possible to use this as the basis of agent based economic modeling, including a full economic analysis of labor, commodities, and natural capital, or at least a beginning framework for which to define object relations.

Subjective value theory tries to place "worth" on an item, and the corresponding labor that goes with it, can reduces the price through variable labor costs. What Marxists say is that labor is traded for other labor, and you shouldn't get to dictate what labor is worth, but how much labor a particular item costs. In terms of labor theory of value labor is not a "worth" it is a cost, and your products have to meet the socially necessary labor time, the average amount of time it takes to produce a good, in order to cost the average amount in society.

In this view all capital is the product of labor, and the use of capital in labor increases its value, so that the doctor does get paid more than the farmer. However a doctors amortized fixed capital costs (in labor time) aren't nearly as high as the incremental costs of labor, but by using subjective value theory you can distort them.
This distortion essentially creates labor inefficiencies when making costs artificially low, It reduces the incentive of a higher capital intensive (fixed cost) to lower labor intensive (incremental cost) operation. Conversely in artificially high values by spending time automating things, which take less comparably less labor time. Thus reducing the incentives for less skilled people to become more skilled, and in effect disproportionally rewarding the persons with access to capital, who have automated more 'valuable' tasks.

This does not mean that subjective value theory is useless, labor value theory doesn't do a good job of valuing scarce commodities, but its not like either of them value natural capital or natural labor. Which is why I believe in energy value theory, and think that currency should be based on the "joule standard", as its the only one that can describe all three.

I foresee the economy transitioning to democratized capital and distributed production which will end the temporary and artificial scarcity. However real scarcity of real estate, ecological resources, energy, and minerals will be a increasingly big problem, and all of this can be thought of as a function of energy, including the energy inputs that produce labor. Energy theory of value can be used to measure all the inputs required for a given set of outputs, and can allow us to measure the externalized costs not otherwise accounted for.

Q: What is the difference between a duck? A: One leg is both the same.

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