Morons will need to pay someone else to handle their security just like they do now. And those of us who are competent enough to handle our own shit can save the fees by handling our own shit. Its that simple. The average Jackoff doesnt need to care about mining, just like he doesnt need to know how central banks create interest bearing garbage out of thin air and call it money, all he knows is that the grocery store wants a certain kind of money and his online drug dealer wants something else. He'll take whatever steps he needs to get the money of the kind his supplier of whatever goods wants and thats the end of it.

I don't think that's entirely true.  If you're a vendor on SR or BMR aren't there escrow mechanisms to prevent a "take the money and run"?

I'm trying to revolutionize the world, of course (like any self-respecting scientist). And this is the part I'd like to keep secret for a while longer, though I'd say google could probably tell you why if you search around the topic a bit. And my masterplan requires me to generate CO from H2 and CO2; reduction of O2, CO2 or H2O with C is not an option.

It was odd. I watched the entire debate and I didn't think that Romney "won". To me, he came across as a bully and he kept insisting on things that simply couldn't be true.

I think Obama was definitely trying to play it safe and be conservative and not risk any major blunder that Romney could capitalize on. As a result, he didn't really appear as strong as he could have. Maybe that's what everyone else was picking up on.

Or maybe their expectations for Romney were just insanely low.

My current policy is to release IPs only in these cases:
- Police send me convincing evidence that someone is guilty. I then release IPs to the police only. (This has happened.)
- A court with jurisdiction over the forum sends me a subpoena that isn't obviously unjust. (This has not happened.)
- A scammer is absolutely proven to be guilty and stops reasonably negotiating with his victims.
- Someone is repeatedly evading bans.

The accused person in the GLBSE case wasn't absolutely proven to be guilty, and wasn't even given a chance to respond to the allegations. Nefario never went to the police as far as I know.

I'm not sure whether I should release IPs at all, really. I'd like to see a discussion about the morality of this. Releasing IPs enables people to act violently toward the accused person, either in person or through police. Is it really right to commit violence against someone just because he did something non-violently over the Internet? I'm not sure. Services should ideally be set up so that scamming is impossible and as a result no one is ever tempted toward violence.

Of all the companies expected to deliver by year end it's BFL with both the first expected delivery date and by far the largest quantity of units to deliver(minimum 3x). It's also BFL that is least likely to meet their time table given their past record. Maybe that means someone else ships right around the same time as BFL, and maybe that means a smaller manufacturer gives their customers a huge advantage by beating BFL's delayed delivery. Such customers would quickly meet ROI with a relatively small number of ASICs out in the wild.

Land Value Tax is interesting but it definitely has issues of its own. The whole land ownership thing has a lot of depth and subtleties that many people don't even consider because they're used to the perspective they're in (consider nomadic people for example.) I think there may never actually be a good answer.

Agreed that open borders is insane.  I believe it is an eventual inevitability that the world will no longer have countries, but it is something that must be "eased" into.  If you let a bunch of 3rd-world people into America all at the same time, it would very quickly turn it into a close-to-3rd-world country.  No one wants that.

Also agree on the sales tax.  Because the poor population is forced to spend a higher percentage of their income in order to survive, whereas the rich can save, the poor would pay a higher effective tax rate than the rich.  That said, deductions are ridiculous all across the board.  No one should be able to deduct anything.  Everyone should pay the same income tax %, regardless of how much they make and how many children they have.  And no one should receive tax credits or welfare of any kind.  That's what families and charities are for.  JMO.

On the other points:
- Student loans do increase tuition by artificially increasing demand. Banning them would certainly reduce tuition rates as attendance falls. Whether that is good or bad is debatable.
- No tariffs WOULD be good for the economy, at the expense of some lost jobs where other countries can produce items more efficiently than the US.  Whether that is good or bad for the people overall is debatable.  Fewer people with jobs, but goods are cheaper, so fewer people need jobs?
- Legalizing aliens is just stupid.  Yes, let's reward people who break the law - that'll solve our border problems real quick!
- Privatized prisons would be interesting... certainly, they could do it more efficiently than the government if nothing else!  Of course, in my opinion, prisoners don't deserve anything more than a 5x5 cell with a drain in the middle and a bowl of mush twice a day.  My prison would be incredibly cheap to operate.  It's probably a good thing I don't operate one, because it just rubs me the wrong way when prisoners have big screen TV's and Playstation 3's and good hot meals to eat, when many people who actually work for a living can't claim the same.

Hopping is bad because it screws over the people who stay on a single pool.
If you don't like the reward calculation, switch to a pool that uses a different one. I use BTCGuild, and every share is paid out exactly the same amount.

To me it's an expensive hassle to obtain BTC and through most paths I have to deal with entities who I don't trust (potentially including the likes of Dwolla, the various Bitcoin exchanges, my banks, and my government who is almost certainly logging all of my financial activity.)  To top it off, I am concerned that it will become even more difficult to obtain BTC going forward so the supply I hold currently exceeds the 'face value' in my mind.  That is why I have little or no interest in spending BTC when there are options.

Am I a bad person for failing to support the nascent economy?  Probably.  OTOH, I've not yet been ripped off either.  I consider the USD<->BTC hassles which currently exist to be something of a blessing insofar as it gives the solution an excuse to fail at the exchange level.  Perhaps the solution would not be so rife with bad apples absent the roadblocks to use which are currently in place.  I actually don't really believe that in a major way because the roadblocks are not that significant and the failures have been mostly associated with user error (aka, ignorance, greed, false mapping, etc) in my opinion.  But it makes a good story at least.

I live on a border state and yes they do commit the majority of crimes.

From the outside Obama seems to have been a rather kick ass president.
People are always gonna be pissed of with whoever's in power.
We all expect our leaders to look after us specifically, who cares about the rest of the population.
Besides being blamed for the wall street crash what else stands against everyone revoting for him?

It may be opposition propaganda, but it does seem like Romney will say anything to get elected.
And he seems to think he's smarter than the entire country:
You want to see my tax returns? You'll have to elect me first.

as I stated I love the optimism I would hope to get roi at 5-6 months (again not a exact number) with a sc single at 40x

didn't read any replies yet but in response to the OP, bitcoin transactions are just as difficult to determine if it's legal or illegally gained money as cash.  One has serial numbers, one has sort of a tracking history I guess.  So really, they'd be more inclined to block it just because they don't like bitcoin than because of money laundering issues.  Although, the accounting/auditing side of money laundering is a big problem in bitcoin since most people don't report anything in it, lol.

The BFL Pre-order thread has confirmed ~48TH/s. This is another 32Th/s, and 300 Avalons is another 18TH/s. That's a minimum of 100TH/s by the time they all ship. Prolly closer to 150TH/s. That's still not even a 10x difficulty increase. I suspect it will be quite a long time before we get to 45million difficulty numbers.

Part of this is recorded numbers, part of this is speculation, so should be taken with a grain of salt.