A friend of mine considered Alpha's refusal to refund and their current silence and failure to produce anything as reason to believe they are seeking to defraud him, so he filed a fraud report with actionfraud.police.uk

FFS, can KnC get any worse?


I wonder what that 'issue' might be?

A multimillion-dollar company almost entirely funded by the goodwill of its customers decides to treat them like idiots and force onto them a unit which does not conform to the original product description (it cannot hash on all scrypt applications, it will only work on particular pools) while repeatedly shouting "nonrefundable!", can't organise themselves a simple order of 'Y' cables without issues arising?

It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic a lesson in abuse of trust.

AFAIK there has been no mention of either of those exchanges intending to place a buy wall because, as you rightly point out, the market is already open and trading.

Bittrex won't allow anybody to transfer in BLOCK bought elsewhere while their 48hour buy wall is open, for obvious reasons.

It is only Bittrex who are functioning as an escrowed ITO, according to the OP of this thread.

This means that you would not be able to buy BLOCK for cheap elsewhere in the hope that you could sell it into the ITO-priced buy-wall if the ITO is cancelled.

So people selling BLOCK at a loss (well, below the 10% margin possible for altcoins) are doing so on markets where there will not be a buy-wall put in place if the ITO fails.

The market is already open on Poloniex. Do you have any reference for your claim that they will put in a buy wall if they added BLOCK simply as another trading market and not as an escrowed ITO?

Every person considering buying BLOCK at the ITO price has to ask themselves, "Why would anyone wait until after the ITO ends and then buy it for a higher price on the open market? Considering that there isn't actually any tech developed for this project yet and there will not be any produced for a considerable amount of time"

I just can't see why people think they are going to be able to flip a quick profit in an ITO that includes a large amount of altcoin payments that will need to be sold in order to return BTC that can be used to fund the project. Especially considering the 10% bonus for those buying with Blocknet altcoins is going to result in a huge dump at ITO price or lower on the bass that is a 10% profit without even needing to sell at a higher-than-ITO price.

It'll be a race to the bottom of that 10% at the very least, in that the winner will be whomever manages to dump out before the market slips lower than that point.

@Synechist

You appear to be responding to this drama with triumphant declarations that fail to actually support your argument in any way.

Your immediate reaction was to claim that "logs can be faked", yet you haven't provided any actual evidence that shows the logs were faked and, what is more, you allude to having logs of a couple of conversations that could 'vouch' for Prometheus, but you're not actually posting them.

Surely if you had actual evidence to either dismiss the allegations or, for that matter, support the credibility of those you are trying to defend, why simply continue to talk about it and not actually show it?

Actually the Clustercoin situation was that the evidence surfaced of shady behaviour by the dev and Bittrex took the decision to freeze the funds that had been raised and buy back the CLSTR that had been sold with it.

KnC's Kurt persistently and dishonestly posts the same lies about Q2/Q3 Titan shipping dates being an estimate, or regurgitating the same bs about how the product description only said shipping would commence in Q2/Q3, yet at the time they were seeking to convince people to buy into their pre-order, they were happily posting confident and definite assertions such as this one from Kurt on 20th March


On the one hand they say that customers were made aware of the full facts of the ordering conditions at the time, yet on the other, in terms of due diligence research that most customers would have done to go further than the simple product description posted on their website, they were eager to make claims about how ALL miners would have been shipped WITHIN the Q2/Q3 timeframe.

So let me get this right, they are claiming that Swedish company law permits them to claim a product will be shipped within a specific timeframe, arrogantly announce that there will be 'No Refunds' for this product, then utterly fail to actually deliver when they said they would or, for that matter, with the product they said it would be, namely, there was no mention of it needing to be limited to specific pools in order to hash efficiently.

Is it that Swedish company law actually allows for a company to screw their customer over so royally, or are KnC simply ignoring the rule of law in terms of the fact that, surely, if the customer is cancelling, not simply on a whim but, because the company has filed to deliver, the 'Non Refundable Product' claimed by KnC is not applicable?

LOL projecting?

Please explain.

@BitChick @BADecker

Do you want to know why you should not consider it harmless to maintain your religious beliefs?

Because they require you to induce 'magical thinking' and 'thought avoidance' in order to ensure that the intellectually honest part of your psyche, your subconscious, does not break it down into its component parts and inform your conscious self of the truth of the delusion.

This means you are living a life of persistent neurological stress, with raised levels of cortisol causing a dysfunctional stress-response as it can never resolve the dichotomy between what you wish reality to be, versus what your brain knows reality to be.

It is an abusive relationship, between you and your theism. The theism causes stress levels to rise when you encounter conflicting positions about your reality, and when you cannot conjure up a sufficient resolution to the conflict, you double-down and immerse yourself more into your theist narrative by seeking ways to wrap it around you tighter, adding layers of explanations as to why your mythical deity might permit so much horror and abuse in our lives if he is so powerful, you dream up excuses for him, to explain away the lack of intervention in natural disasters or personal suffering, all the while looking for ways to pretend to yourself that the good in your life is a reward from him and the bad is simply him testing you, you know, because he loves you so.

It is disturbingly akin to the type of relationship that develops between a parent and the child they routinely abuse. The child seeks to excuse the behaviour of their parent, seeks to be able to find ways to get the parent to love them and approve of them, the child blames themselves for when the parent gets mad and hurts them and the child is elated and grateful to the parent when there are moment of fleeting reward from them.

You keep citing 'science' to support your position when, the truth is, your sources are utter crap. That's not science its pseudoscience reverse-engineered to support the end position of the theist delusion. It is mangled data and shonky interpretations designed to ensure that A+B=Bible.

Stop quoting 'facts' as facts, they are not. You are so terribly, terribly, wrong it isn't even funny. You have been, and are being, brainwashed and conditioned to readily accept the worst examples of theist 'scientific data' solely on the basis that they worked back from where they wanted to get to and ignored and discarded all the data that didn't fit their requirements.

You boldly assert things as true which are absolutely absurd. You make grand statements about your God's behaviour and intentions, as if these things are facts when they are simply what you have been told to believe.

Tell me, what's the difference between your God and Harry Potter? What aspects of your God exists outside of your imagination?

Not quite sure of the relevance of that post.

'Sin' being temptation is still something that is a 'crime against god'.

Giving in to 'temptation' is a pretty fucking wide remit, ranging from the temptation to give a loved one a kiss on the cheek to, well, some pretty horrific things. So 'temptation' isn't really the problem here, it is what one is driven to do by it that is the 'crime against god' and, as I said, if it isn't a harmful act, then all we're worrying about is offending the poor dear's delicate sensibilities. You know how 'He' hates to think of people doing 'icky' things!

Funny, though, how God always seems to support what prejudices and hatred people carry within them. I never hear of a Fungelical Christian saying, "You know what, I disagree with God, he says I should love gay people equally, but I hate them and I think what they do is wrong", no, the Fungelical God always hates Teh Gayz and the 'icky' things they do with as much passion as the Fungelical human being does.

How queer.

And this is where your insistence that atheism is the polar opposite of theism fails because, infact, it is the rejection of theism, a lack of belief, not the belief towards the opposite.

What you are basing your 'polar opposite' argument on would be Theism v Anti-Theism.

An opposite 'belief' would be a belief based on the same principles as those constructing the theist assertion when, as I keep having to point out to you, atheism is the rejection of the theist assertion on the principle that it is baseless.

An opposite 'belief' would be the belief that there was no God and that belief would have to be the sole factor in the assertion in order to make it the polar opposite of theist belief.

Rejecting an assertion on the basis it is poorly constructed is not the same as rejecting it on the grounds of opposing it.

Ok, I am starting to think I was mistaken about your willingness to consider you may be wrong, judging by your, badly misinformed, statements regarding geology, you are simply regurgitating the garbage and lies from "Answers in Genesis" types of 'sources', because now you are just spouting theological assertions that are based on, well, theological beliefs, you know, made-up-stuff(tm).


BitChick, if you are a bad person and you commit harm against other people, actual people not imaginary deities, then taking responsibility for your dysfunctional behaviour and addressing it, is important. 'Sin', however, is simply defined by human beings as an act which an omnipotent deity disapproves of, to various degrees. It isn't a real thing, it is a made-up 'crime against god'.

If you do not believe that mythical deities are real, yet you live your life as a decent human being, flawed as we all are to differing degrees, but the choices you make are generally not intended to harm anyone and you spend your life basically being as fair and reasonable to all as you can, why would your God condemn such a person for not believing when intellectual honesty demonstrates that the theist assertion cannot be maintained as a belief without losing ones intellectual integrity.

Why would a God require the loss of intellectual integrity in order to maintain, instead, theist 'faith'?


Soul? Pics or it didn't happen.

Seriously, there is as much proof to support the existence of a 'soul' as there is an omnipotent deity.


Proof?

Or are you inciting the 'special pleading' fallacy? In that, not only do you *know* this to be true, well, simply because you say it is, but also that your precious deity must not be held up to the same standards of enquiry and analysis as, well, all that we know actually does exist in reality.

You are the one declaring atheism to be both an assertion that there is no God AND also a belief:


You hold atheism to be asserting "There is no God" without any proof to demonstrate the absence of said deity, leading you to then state that atheism is, therefore, just as much a belief as theism.

I demonstrate that, no, atheism does not require the assertion "There is no God", it merely needs to employ the factual counter to the theist assertion, "There is no evidence to support the claimed existence of God"

No.Evidence.Of.The.Absence.Of.God.Needed.

Then please accept my apologies for assuming you to be a theist although, to be honest, you do debate like one when you keep ignoring the fact that the atheist assertion is not a belief because it doesn't need to offer the polar opposite of the theist position, it simply needs to dismiss the theist assertion on the basis of what is know about the the theist assertion, namely, that it is as baseless as a belief in any mythical character.

Oh come on, please, surely you are yanking my chain, nobody could be this determinedly dense and still operate a computer keyboard!

Ok, one last time, let me walk you through it step by step:

1. You say that the atheist assertion is false because it would require evidence against the existence of a God - This I explicitly attribute to you because this is what you state as your position in the debate, yes?

2. I respond that we, the atheists, do not need evidence to prove the non-existence of God because the theist assertion is grossly flawed and lacking any evidence or objectively reasoning. - This is my response to your position, I did not attribute it to you, I responded with it to your argument that atheism was just as unfounded as theism, are you still with me here?

It is akin to asserting the existence of [insert fanciful mythological creature here] by way of "Because I say it exists then it does", and having no evidence to support any aspect of this claim. Would you then require those who reject said claim of the existence of [insert fanciful mythological creature here], to have to come up with actual evidence to prove that said creature didn't exist?

OR,

Would you accept that it is reasonable to reject the assertion on the grounds that it is based on an arbitrary declaration and is lacking any evidence to support it?

I look forward to your answer to this question.

Not necessarily 'crazy', you are, after all, only the result of your theist conditioning. Your delusions are real to you, yet the reason they feel so real is because you have been trained to only perceive that which supports the theist perspective and to readily accept any article or prose that also serves to support your conditioning or those that attempt to rubbish objectively-reasoned arguments that run counter to it. It is an insidious state of mind, indeed.

Like most middle-aged atheists I, too, was once afflicted with theist conditioning and I spent decades trying to figure out why none of it ever seemed to fit properly or make sense. I even once roundly declared that, surely, no atheist could ever truly believe that there was literally nothing waiting for us when we die, I felt that it would drive a person insane to live without the belief that their sentience would continue on after their physical form expired.

I sat on the fence of agnosticism for many a year until, eventually, I could no longer ignore the fact that, like deities and demons, there was no evidence for the existence of what we call the human 'soul' either.

Then everything made sense.

I didn't exist before I existed in this life and that doesn't appear to have been a problem, so there's little reason to believe that not existing anymore after I die will be a bother either. At least I got to exist. That's pretty damn cool.

After you die? Nothing will matter, whether you were a decent person or a monster, nothing will matter to you anymore, only those who are left behind in the ripples of your actions.

How about, instead, the person to thank for making the right choices and keeping you safe, was you all along?

How about, instead, the cause of misery and suffering in this world isn't a mythical force we call 'Evil' but, rather, simply the toxic dysfunction we reap and sow through our delusional and disordered psychologies resulting from the normalisation of harmful sociofamilial environments we are raised in?
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/key_concepts/toxic_stress_response/

The brains of adults who have experienced sustained periods of toxic stress during childhood nurture are physically different from those who have been raised in an emotionally healthy and positive sociofamilial environment. Put simply, messed-up children tend to become messed-up adults, many of whom like to cite, "It didn't do me any harm" as they fail to be able to see the harm it actually did do while they go about repeating it and inflicting it on their children.

Come on, you're smart enough to be clearly considering both of our words, why go ruining it now by ignoring the reality of life living amongst 7 billion other individuals on this planet: "Good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but for a good person to do bad things, that takes religion."

Do you genuinely believe that atheists cannot live a decent and constructive life?

Do you genuinely believe that, if you did not have your God you would choose to live a dysfunctional and destructive life? If so, don't let me change your mind.


Don't fall into the trap of 'Scientists say . . .' Understand the the Scientific Method is there for all to employ. Don't accept a fact because of the authority of someone, accept it because it is a well-reasoned position with objectively supporting evidence that can be tested by anybody.

Example:
You know I am right about lightning being electricity, but you know that because you understand the testing that can be done to prove it to be so. You don't have to test it yourself but you could if you wanted to. That's science.

Theism tells you to believe because theism tells you to believe. The Bible is holy because God says it is Holy and God is real because The Bible says so. That is called circular-logic.

Who do you want your reality to be shaped by, the guy who explains to you not to go walking out on the hill in the lightning storm because of the risk that your body may cause a lightning charge to go to ground through it, or the man in the silly hat who tells you it'll be fine because he's mumbling magic words to an invisible deity while holding his hands in a special symbol to keep you safe?

You don't need a deity to make the right choices in life, you've already proved that to yourself.

No. There isn't. When real scientists perform real scientific experiments they have to be peer reviewed to check the veracity of what is being claimed. No theist claim towards "I can haz Jesus exsperiment!" has ever survived critical analysis or peer review.

Theism-based 'science' isn't science. It's a mix of error, delusion and, often, outright lies painted to convince those desperate to have their fragile 'spirit' soothed that your 'science' is just as good as real science. It isn't, otherwise it could survive the Scientific Method of enquiry.


Listen to yourself, "If [X] isn't true, why are people willing to kill and die for what it means?"

So, again, I ask you, on what basis does a multitude of people believing something is true actually serve to prove anything about whether it is true?

Answer: It doesn't

That is called, "Argumentum ad populum"

Example:
Up until very recently in human history, pretty much EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET, believed that lightning was some sort of supernatural force. Having actually studied it properly, by way of objective experiment, testing and measurement, we know that lightning is electricity.

So, just because billions of people for thousands and thousands of years all believed the same thing, did it convey any validity to what they believed? No.

The reason why people are willing to kill and die over their religious belief is because of the nature of the belief, namely, their entire identity, their sense-of-self, is rooted in the premise that they are playing a part in some cosmic narrative playing out beneath the gaze of a deity who will reward/punish them as they progress. So, depending on how desperate they are to please this deity and, thus, validate themselves as not being just an individual within a biological species, you will witness them being all-too-eager to commit atrocity and horrors upon other members of our species for not being 'like them', for not thinking 'like them' and for not believing 'like them'.

You can cite Communism all you want, but Communism is about power and control over the people, Dictatorships are about power and control over the people, Theocracies are about power and control over the people.

Atheism is not. Atheism is the rejection of theist assertion of the existence of a God because the assertion is baseless and lacks any evidence whatsoever to support it.



You think I haven't? I have read it and countless other 'Holy' books and stories in considerably more detail and with much greater thought than most who slavishly worship them.

Riiiiiight, so objective research supported by multiple sources of evidence derived from observation, experimentation and measurement can't be trusted, but "The word of God", which is derived from arbitrary declarations by various human beings over the years as to what 'He' is and wants of us and, more importantly, what he disapproves of like an uptight Christian Conservative, is solid evidential referencing?

Wow.

Just.Wow.

:head-desk:
:head-desk:
:head-floor:

I'm having trouble reconciling your appeal to ignorance (amongst the many other logical fallacies you employ) with this post of yours:

Do you understand that the Scientific Method of enquiry means that anybody can recreate the experiments and check the results for themselves? That is the whole point of Scientific Theory, which is NOT the same as "Hey I have a theory as to why  . . ."

So in this thread you close your eyes and block your ears to rational argument and plead for your case on the basis that you can't wrap your head around the scientific facts, so you choose 'facts' which have been asserted by authority, namely, religion. But in the other thread you, quite rightly, point out that it is not possible to prove a fact by general consensus and that, just because billions of people believe in something it does not make it true, you know, like your God.

Your lack of ability to understand evolution is hindered by your unwillingness to practice critical thinking outside the narrow confines of your appeal-to-authority (where what/who you consider to be an authority (The Bible/Preachers) says so) mythology.

Double-standards much?