*twitch*


Um... are you asking how using four home consumer level desktops, instead of a CGI supercomputing renderring cluster from IBM or Silicon Graphics, will save money?

Holy crap, I just found out that they put chlorine in our water, too, which is at least as toxic as fluoride, and is used to clean and disinfect floors!

When grandma downloads 2,500 songs illegally, the RIAA breaks down her door, she is taken to court, and is fined $250,000. Since grandma obviously doesn't have that kind of cash, she is taken to jail instead, where she is forced to work off her "debt to society" by either picking up litter off the side of the roads, or by breaking rocks with sledgehammers.
Slavery.

Btw, anyone else find it strange that, whether it is an explosion and special effects spectacular, a horror movie, a slapstick comedy, a romantic comedy, a general foreign flick, or a documentary, the price for the movie is exactly the same, both theater ticket and DVD wise? What's with that?

Who makes Bitcoin liquid, and more easily exchangable into other currencies, if not traders?

So what is the point of having a law that does not affect him, anyway, and that he likely isn't even aware of breaking (such as by letting a friend borrow a game/movie, or installing the same software on both the parents' and the kids' computer)? Is it just so that the government can throw its weight around ust in case it wants to? The most dangerous type of law is one that doesn't make sense from a basic moral sense, that gives governments a secret unexpected power. Both, because it gives governments arbitrary powers, and because it makes other laws also questionable.

I would have only out of ignorance. Once I had been pointed out that slaves have the same felings and wants as non-slaves, I.e. not been ignorant any more, I would not have supported slavery no matter how beneficial it is to the economy and non-slaves. I currently support things like gay rights, rights for women to receive equal pay, rights of immigrants and non us citizens, etc, all things that currently still run contrary to US law, and I support them despite the law saying I shouldn't.
To go even further, I promise you I will support the rights of clones, intelligent robots, intelligent human-animal hybrids, human cyborgs, and intelligent aliens, even if the laws passed said they should have no rights because they are not "human." I fully suspect those on your side will be the ones passing those laws, and denying those people rights, just as they were denying the rights of blacks, irish, jews, women, gays, transgendereds, non-christians/muslims, atheists, immigrants, etc. etc. etc.

Based on his statemente in the abortion Thread, Hawker doesn't even understand what is moral, or where morals and rights come from. His idea is that rights come from the government, or from what people feel is right. So trying to discuss this from the point of view of morals is pointless, since, yes, a few hundred years ago, he would've been defending slavery because it was legal = is was moral.

I liked Dark City. That cost a lot to make, and made almost no money in the theaters, but still made money in the end from a lot of people who were shown the movie by die hard fans, who later when out and bought DVDs. It's also readily availble for download on torrents. I own both, a DVD and a downloaded copy.
It's pretty... um... insane I guess? that, when I said that a lot of the "millions of dollars" just goes to extremely overpaid actors, and that in a more competitive movie economy actors would get paid normal wages and movies won't cost millions of dollars, your reply was, "but movies cost millions of dollars!"

As was mentioned, there are fewer movie theaters, so direct sales to them are easier to control through contracts. Theaters that download crap quality movies will suffer. High rez theater qutrality movies aren't available for download.
I am still hoping you can tell me how to copy movies from Hulu. Or explain how TV movies and documentaries can make any money when they are not exclusive.

Actually, no you didn't. I specifically pointed out that paid services provided by the likes of Hulu and Netflix greatly outweigh the annoyance of having to download and manage movies yourself, especially when older movies and DVD extras are very difficult to find, and can easilly replace the revenues movie makers ger from DVD sales. For example, half of Stephen King's movies were network produced, didn't see a movie theater, and were shown to people without them having to pay for a DVD or a theater ticket. And someone else pointed out that having high quality movies and providing a movie going experience greatly outweighs watching crap quality downloaded videos, even if in a theater. Your reply to both those was that "people will torrent movies," completely ignoring that people are already doing that almost completely unimpeeded, to which we can only reply "see above." Actors make millions, which is part of where that millions of dollars to produce comes from. If actors can't be paid that much, they will have to take lower, more sane salaries, will have to work harder (the way stage theater actors do now), and only worthwhile movies will be made (Nicholas Cage would likely be out of a job).

But, really, do you believe that IP laws are stopping movie downloading in any way?

Why? What's the point! You totally ignored ideas about subscription-based service (like made-for-tv movies on Cable, or criterion Collection on Hulu), ignored or tossed aside the point about movie theaters relying on contracts instead of IP and mostly selling the movie-goingexperience than the movies, ignored the part about how economy trends towards services and away from goods, so it's very plausable that even if movies are freely copies, people will pay to have someone else store and organize movies for them...
Why don't you come up with a business model that will allow movies without IP yourself? We all have. It's your turn now.

Micro black holes pop up all over the place on their own, anyway. When too small, they fizzle out within a few nanoseconds on their own. LHC black holes are no different, and are no threat. There's no way we can make a stable one with our current tech.

Hawker: Stop comparing IP laws with slavery. They are not the same thing.

It's so predictably sad...

I would almost suggest going with mark Levin instead. He's more plain libertarian, and at least nowhere nearly as cooky or controversian as Alex. Though if you are looking for an audience of fanatics, you can't beat Alex or Rush.

My only major concern is that doing this may make some businesses decide not to use Bitcoin because it may become "controversial," and businesses tend to avoid political and religious issues. It's still a sound idea though...

They do sell legal hommade brownies on silk road. Only $2.50. Haven't ordered any yet.

I think it would help if you set up a table with one column showing Bitcoin's strengths, the other weaknesses, put it public where people can give suggestions to add to the list, then rank them in order of importance, and have the group come up with ideas on how to address the issues. Your video was a good start, but it sort of just throws those thoughts out there without an easy way to see or organize them. If you want to take charge and help with that (and on this trolly forum we need all the help we can get), why not post a read-only copy of such a table in public somewhere (Google Docs?), start a thread where people can post comments, and screen those based on what you think is important.

For the record, I completely agree with you that very low fees and faster transactions don't compare to the convenience of whipping out and swiping plastic. Especially when it's still such a pain to refill your Bitcoin account. Also, most benefits of Bitcoin seem to be geared towards merchants, but most people out there are consumers, and customers are always right (even when they use 2.5% fee credit cards). BUT, I also don't think getting people angry or scared is necessarily the right answer. Sadly, most people out there just don't give a shit no matter what. Just look at the number of people who vote.

Hopefully, a more organized brainstorm of ideas will help bring out even better things to concentrate on, and you seem to be trusted enough, or at least well known enough, to be able to attract enough people to yourself and lead this thing.

Who knows more about a subject, someone who is interested in it and uses it as a hobby, or someone who's livelyhood and business depends on it? Wouldn't someone maintaining a chunk of the ocean to keep fish and whales for sale know way more about the environment and how to keep it working right than pretty much anyone else? Or are you worried about whale and fish populations exploding to the detriment of other species?

What kind of a navy does Monaco, Haiti, Cuba, or Sealand, or any other small nation in the world ha... never mind. Every powerful nation will always invade and take control of any small nation without an army, because it's always preferable to spend your own money to fight a war than to increase your money through trade. Am I right?
Seriously, how can you ask this without taking the time to think about it? Maybe it would help if you thought of real life examples of what you propose would happen before you post your ideas?

Just my way of saying that you can't even bring yourself to try to imagine being in that situation, or any that have been proposed. Every time someone brings up an example of how else things might work, or asks you to imagine yourself in a different world and think through the situation yourself, you, for whatever reason, can't or won't, instead just avoiding even the thought of it and resorting to replies of "that's not the way things are in the real world," or, "it needs government to work, period" without explanation, or diverting the conversation to strawmen and insults. I'm really thinking there's something wrong with you