This post shows a distinct lack of knowledge about the subject.

Whether or not reincarnation is real, the idea is that people get reincarnated as people and any sort of living creature that exists. So, there's no need to be enough humans at any given time for the idea to hold, as long as there are enough living things. What's more it's been accepted theory for many centuries that only a very small fraction ones incarnations are as humans, most of the time it's as things like ants and spiders.

Or, that's the theory anyways, reincarnation is really more of a framework than a thing. It's not intended to be the driving force for ones life, just a framework for understanding how to live life in the context of the greater picture. You don't burn down the world because previous generations didn't and you have an obligation to future generations as well.

And how many are there in those other PDF viewers? That's sort of the point, just because one software package is fixing vulnerabilities with that frequency, does not mean that the alternatives are more secure. It just means that there are more vulnerabilities being patched in the first case than in the second case.

I always love when people post this sort of nonsense. Good luck getting a job teaching if you can't do it first, sure it does happen, but portraying that as the status quo is just ignorance.

Teachers not only have to be able to do whatever it is, but they also have to be able to teach other people how to do it. The references I see in this thread are pretty much indicative of, we don't actually want to do it correctly, so we'll disparage the folks trying to make our lives easier by forcing the development of good habits. You see that in pretty much any specialty.

Yeah well, Tirnothy tends to miss things like this.

Interesting, where I live and work it's more or less the opposite. I take it the transit outfit where you live doesn't use grade separation for mass transit.

Because all modern trains are electric? They mostly don't use batteries because they're run off a diesel generator. Obviously, the electrics don't have the generator and just run off wires.

A small amount of deflation is OK, but the problem is that in a deflationary spiral, it just keeps getting worse and worse. The currency keeps getting more and more valuable and as such nobody is willing to spend it because it's going to be more valuable in the future.

An economy in a genuine deflationary spiral is ultimately doomed to grind to a halt leaving people with something that's nominally very valuable, but in practice isn't worth the paper it's printed on as nobody is willing to part with their money to buy something. Normally, you can solve the problem by printing more money, but with BTC, once they hit that maximum total BTC, that's it. They can't add more to the system without further delegitimizing the currency, and if people's money is getting nominally more valuable as time goes on, there's no incentive to spend any of it.

And because nobody is mandated to take BTC, there's no reason for anybody to buy them after it hits a certain value.

And yet your post is completely wrong. The profits to the people in early come from later arrivals and at some point there won't be enough money to keep it going.

And no, it hasn't been proven wrong so many times, it's still just as true now as it was early on. If you don't believe me, look at the production curve and ultimate total.

As far as deflationary spiral, yes, they're divisible 99,999,999 times, but you're dealing with a fixed quantity of bitcoins that are possible. It doesn't matter whether you can divide them once or a hundred trillion times, you still eventually hit a point where there are no new BTC being created.

Posts like this are precisely why BTC supports are not being taken seriously, you clearly have thought very little about the subject to even suggest that things can end well.

But, that isn't standard though. It's mostly just MS, Sony and Nintendo that do that, if I buy a gift card for Starbucks, it's denominated in USD, if I buy one for McDonald's, it's USD. In fact I have a hard time finding any that aren't involved with gaming.

And the aspect which really makes me question the legality is that they use that as a means of doing an end run around typical consumer protections.

Not really, I'm sure it seems that way to the GP.

Economists have just about the worst track record of any major specialty in terms of quality research.

In this case, diversity is far less likely to do with it than the fact that Africa is less than a century out of independence from various European powers. Look what Europe was like until relatively recently. Corruption is still rampant and there isn't a lot of investment that's going on there.

Whether or not it's included is a moot point. If you're using BTC to avoid paying taxes you'd likely be audited and sent to prison for tax evasion. As asinine as it can be, if somebody is receiving free work they're supposed to report that as income on their tax forms, so ultimately, the IRS would have at least one party to prosecute in this case.

All debts have to be denominated in USD in the US, I'm sure most countries have similar rules in place. Which means that it's likely to remain legal forever to take payment in BTC, but you can't refuse to take USD in some form as payment.

And generally, minting and printing are related to the USD coins and paper that people use. Not to the creation or use of non-USD markers for keeping track of financial obligations.

Which is why I'm a bit curious how MS and the others get around skirting the issue by making you buy points and purchasing things with points.

We still don't take BTC because it's a glorified Ponzi scheme. The founders make a crapload of money for very little effort and newbies get less and less as more and more people join. What's more because of the fixed maximum number of BTC that can come into existence, you're going to have a deflationary spiral that you can't escape eventually.

The only people using BTC are people who are too stupid to realize what they're dealing with.

Because it's more than one issue. For years the GOP has been mostly about guns, gays and God, but that doesn't work up here. There's not much social conservativism to be had and the GOP is going way out of it's way to field people that are popular to the far right, but pretty much repellant to everybody else.

In WA, we don't really have the kind of far right that they do in much of the rest of the country, so it tends to chase them into the hands of the liberals. It's been nearly 20 years since the GOP fielded somebody with any hope of winning the state and they're getting worse and worse. Dole had a chance, but he wasn't different enough from Clinton to get votes. He was also the last Presidential candidate to take the state seriously.