The phrase is "hoist by their own petard". A petard is a type of bomb, and the phrase refers to what happens when the bomb goes off prematurely (the user is "hoist" skywards, ie, blown up in the literal sense).

Sorry to disappoint you, but that's not actually illegal. The Outer Space Treaty specifically prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space, not nuclear power plants. Many satellites and space probes are, in fact, nuclear powered (using atomic batteries instead of fission reactors, due to the latter being too massive to conveniently lift into orbit).

It works, all you have to do is run Bitcoin-Qt with the -gen command line option. It just doesn't work well. It uses only your CPU, which is ludicrously inefficient. Assuming you have a very fast CPU, it is likely to take nearly a century of constant mining to find a block this way (unless you're unlucky, in which case it might take several centuries). The only reason this option still exists at all is because the Satoshi client is required to have all the functionality required to run the network (including mining), so that other developers can see how it works.

We sure are. We invented a new technology, and it works. As a government agent, I believe it's your job to keep the general public safe if our inventions should happen to fall into the wrong hands. But it doesn't seem like you're actually doing your job. All you're doing is standing around complaining about the problem that you're in charge of fixing. Does your boss know about this?

You know why it's successful? Because people can buy these computers, and electricity to run them, and pay scientists' salaries. You know how they do that? With money.

You have no clue why the importance of a secure and functional financial system in a modern society is relevant to a discussion on the merits of devoting resources to said financial system instead of other projects those resources could potentially be used for? Wow. And you're allegedly an SEC agent? You really ought to turn in your badge. Tell them it's because you suck at getting clues.

I'm saying it won't be done if it can't be paid for. What, do you actually think all those labs and microscopes and doctors just fall for free from the sky or something?

Yes. Important research that has to be paid for with currency of some kind or another, just like everything else of benefit to society. Money makes the world go 'round. You, of all people, should understand that.

What are you smoking? Something that makes spheres look flat, obviously. That line actually doesn't go anywhere near Mecca. It just misses the east coast of Brazil. It's the northernmost point of the Pentagon that points towards Mecca.

Leave him alone. He's only an SEC agent, after all. It's not his job to understand the need for security in financial systems... oh, wait.

Well, installing libcurl would probably be a good start (especially as the README says it's required). On Ubuntu run:(or use your favourite package manager to install libcurl4-gnutls-dev)

It's not totally nonsense, as it's a perfectly valid comparison if you're talking about the risk of a 51% attack posed by an entity with access to a bunch of supercomputers (spoiler alert: none at all ).

The increase in the value of money happens not because investors are deliberately trying to bring about that effect, but simply as a natural consequence of them trying to increase their own wealth by investing (the invisible hand strikes again). Companies invest in means of increasing their own production, to sell more goods. As best as I can tell, what jerye is trying to prove is that because the same supply of money is buying the same supply of goods, there is no increase in value to be had anywhere, and therefore investing is pointless. But increasing the supply of goods while the supply of money remains the same increases the value of money (because each unit of currency can buy more goods), and that's why investing can produce a net increase in value (not that it always does; I initially got sidetracked by that point).

Wrong. If you invest 10 in something that increases the value of the currency (ie, something that makes goods cheaper, such as a more efficient manufacturing process), then that 10 (in nominal terms) is suddenly worth more than 10 in real terms, eg, if the value of the currency doubles, it is worth 20 in real terms. Let us postulate two alternate universes, Alternate Universe A, in which your investment increased the value of the currency, and Alternate Universe B, in which you didn't make that investment, and so the currency did not increase in value. $10 from Alternate Universe A are certainly not the same as $10 from Alternate Universe B if dollars from A are worth more than dollars from B. I honestly can't help you if can't figure that out.

Greed doesn't mean money. Greed means finding things that make you happy, and trying to obtain them. It is greedy to contribute to Wikipedia for the pleasure of proving people wrong on the Internet. It is greedy to contribute to open-source projects for the fame of having your name appear on the credits. It also looks pretty good on your resumé, improving your job prospects. Double greedy!

It does matter when you label them the exact same thing. If t=0 and t=T, they're all zero. t=0 means t is zero. It doesn't mean anything else. t=T means T is the same thing as t, which is also zero.

But you can't use x to refer both to "what you invest" and "what you would have if you didn't invest", if x increases in value if you invest and does not increase in value if you don't. They're two different quantities.

Not if the real value of the currency increases. In that case, the 8 you get by investing can be used to buy 16 goods (because the currency increased in value as a result of the investment), as opposed to the 10 you get by not investing which can only buy 10 goods (because, by not investing, the currency did not increase in value). 16 goods are better than 10, last time I checked.

Hold it. If y is twice the value of x, then, by definition, y is not less than x (assuming positive values of x and y).

Impossible. x is 1 output, remember? How, then, can it be greater than 2 output? Oh, right, because you assumed that y < x when the opposite is the case.

Those aren't 2 periods. Those are just three ways of writing the number zero. 0 is zero, t is zero, and T is zero.

Uh, yeah. "Saving" 10 for a zero period of time is better than "investing" 10 and instantly receiving 8. Not exactly what I would call a good investment, though. Or a good savings, plan, for that matter. "Saving" and "investing" is generally something that you do for a non-zero period of time (at least, that's the way I do it). What was this supposed to prove, exactly?

No I'm not. If I have information that nobody else has, I am more profitable using that information to make better investment decisions than everybody else. Everyone else is losing money by lacking this information, so it is more profitable for them to try to acquire this information, assuming it is not too expensive (the cost of information is the main reason (and if you assume everyone acts rationally, the only reason) for the market being a game of imperfect information in the first place). Either way, it is most certainly not profitable to do nothing.

This model also neglects the changing value of money. Suppose a company invests in more efficient manufacturing technology, and can produce twice as many goods as a result. Since the money supply is constant, the same amount of money is now buying twice as many goods, or in other words, each unit of currency is worth twice as much in terms of goods. So even if the company has not gained any money in nominal terms by its investment, in real terms, it has doubled its wealth (along with the wealth of everyone else using the currency).

Whoops, I missed this. This is the fatal flaw in the model. In any real economy, not all participants have access to the same information. People with access to good information can profit at the expense of those who don't, by buying undervalued investments and selling overvalued ones. I don't see how that's "conflating away the issue" or "irrational", that's just common sense. (It also allows one to put an exact price on the act of acquiring good information, but that's another story.)

Nope. That would just put CPUs at a disadvantage compared to an ASIC with a single core and the largest cache that will fit on the die. You can't win.