Not all the devaluation need happen at once because not all the conversion need happen at once. Mr. Nakamoto could just go on a BTC-to-fiat exchange once a month and withdraw enough to live on for a month. Few people would care.

We can. It's called Dwolla. And at the current exchange rate, its 0.25 USD transaction fee isn't that much higher than the 0.0001 BTC transaction fee of Bitcoin.

CD has a ~93 dB theoretical SNR, but noise shaping pushes most of that noise above 16 kHz where the human auditory system isn't so sensitive. In practice, CDs can be mastered with 120 dB of dynamic range in those frequencies where it matters. It appears TigerPlish is referring to a 24-bit processing chain, which reduces the noise that each generation of digital signal processing adds, resulting in a cleaner 20-bit master heading into the 16-bit noise shaper. Monty explains.

Or look at it another way. Imagine a 1-bit format that uses heavy dithering to represent signals using pulse density modulation. How much dynamic range does a 1-bit signal have? If not much, why would Sony have chosen 1-bit PDM at 2.8 MHz for SACD?

That's because level compression in LP mastering works differently from CD. LP uses RCA Victor's New Orthophonic preemphasis curve, which allows bass to go louder than treble, while CD uses no preemphasis.

I listen to NPR's classical station, you insensitive clod! :p But seriously, recordings destined for pop radio are mastered with very little dynamic range because they have to be audible over a motor vehicle engine that allows very little dynamic range.

If Google wants my data in Google+, Google needs to make it less expensive to send my data over the air to Google+. Selling Nexus phones at cost won't help as much as somehow keeping the carriers in Google's, Microsoft's, and Slashdot's home country from gouging.

I saw Lethal Weapon last night, tonight it's Loaded weapon... (I scored today, I'm loaded).

That's a state law. This particular tinfoil hat paranoia is federal law.

What I'd planned to do (which obviously didn't work) was to replace all quotes with end quotes, then replace all quotes preceeded by a space with a start quote. Easy, simple, but...

Then let me rephrase: New features of FAT exist to provide interoperability with devices containing older implementations of FAT. To escape this network effect, one would have to forgo interoperability with these devices. But a lot of these devices that only speak FAT are critical to business operations, such as a digital camera used by an online merchant to prepare product photos for its website or for its eBay store. So how should one continue to do business while forgoing this interoperability?

One problem that the stream-what-you-own services have is that they tend not to support low bitrates. At least Amazon MP3 doesn't. Instead of the server automatically transcoding to, say, 64 kbps Opus when streaming over a metered connection, it offers to stream the music only as high bitrate MP3. I was under the impression that more radio-like services like Pandora and Spotify supported low bitrates from day one. Another problem with stream-what-you-own services is discovery of new music: Pandora's whole reason for existence is to find music similar to what you entered.

So how would one go about breaking the network effect of FAT if, say, existing business-critical devices rely on a particular patented file system?

Yes they are. Often these adverts end with "Ask your doctor if $drug is right for you." And other times, they're Cheech and Chong movies.

Which is a weird thing for someone to say about the UK university system. The RAE / REF count an average one paper per year. That is what counts towards the department's ranking (which determines its funding), and so that's what departments care about when hiring people for tenured positions. Will they have the four top-tier publications required for the top rank in the REF? (or fewer for universities that aren't aiming for the top rank). Someone who published 20 crappy papers will be far less attractive than someone who published four good papers, because they'll both have to nominate their four best papers for the assessment, and so the first person will look really bad in the next assessment.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the ranking of UK universities. The REF replaces the older Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), which happened every four years. The last RAE was 4 years ago, and the current REF is just finishing. Established academics have to submit 4 research outputs since the last RAE / REF. These are usually papers, but can be other things (systems you've built and so on).

The REF is a really big deal in UK universities, because it directly impacts the availability of research grants. The CVs of individual researchers are taken into account, but the REF / RAE score of the department is the biggest factor. If you have 4 papers in top-tier publications (conferences or journals, depending on your field), then it's very easy to get hired in the run up to the REF, because a lot of second tier universities are looking to find people who will bump them up the rankings.

Conversely, if you don't have the 4 publications (or other impressive things), then it's very hard to get a tenured position, but if you're not averaging one good paper a year then there's probably something wrong with you as a researcher: part of the point of publicly funded research is that the results are communicated to the public, and if you're not doing this then you're not keeping up your end of the deal.

It can also generate a lot of legal fees for determining what "revenue" is related to distribution of copies of a particular work.

So must one fall back to CDs for music not available through Amazon or Google?