Did you shoot me in the head by accident?  Or are you some kind of mentally challenged person that I was stupid enough to hand my shotgun?  Watch the straw burn, isn't it pretty.

If a four year old finds his dad's pistol, already loaded, and shoots his brother in the head, he wasn't agressing him.  It's tragic, and a terrible breech of adult responsibility; but no, it's not aggression.


Burn, baby burn.  Straw makes such a pretty glow.


You've been treading this line again, as of late.  Don't forget our prior conversations on this topic.  I will only suffer your breeches of civil speech for so long.


And you may be able to predict some outcomes, but you are not a prophet.  If I disagree with your rules that say that I can't have fertilizer because I might make a bomb, you lose the argument.  If there can be any dissent, you lose.  The real world isn't so black and white as your strawmen.

You are not wrong.  I, for one, have never harmed any living thing with thousands of fired rounds, excluding plantlife and the occasional earthworm in my target background.


You avoided the question completely.  Where does a civil society draw the line?  Is it arbitrary, or is there some kind of natural principle that defines the differences between a weapon such as a shotgun and a home defense system that involves lethal & automatic traps, such as a miltary grade anti-personnel mine?  If you say that bombs that are made for that purpose are prohibited, such as the above mine; what about materials that hold the potential to make make-shift bombs?   Can such things be reasonablely regulated?  Would doing so actually prevent bombmakers from obtaining said materials?  Has the prohibition on handguns in the UK actually prevented criminals in the UK from obtaining them?  Has it prevented criminals from committing violent crimes, or have those same criminals just switched to other weapons such as blugeons and knives?  Would a prohibition on (nitrogen based) fertilizer in the UK prevent car bombs, or just lead to their construction from other available materials?  Should high school chemistry (where anyone paying enough attention can learn how to make a bomb from many common materials) be prohibited?  Would it help?

I'm not a programmer, so I can't help on the specifics, but there generally isn't any reason to identify the node.  My understanding is that nodes operate on an announce then pull-request kind of model.  Your client simply would never announce transactions or blocks being available via it, and would only request data that concerns itself.


What I'm asking is are you trying to make a light client with a full blockchain that doesn't participate, a headers only blockchain, or no blockchain that keeps only blocks that concern itself?  The three models operate entirely differently.

Only if you do something that is intended to result in deaths.  Intent matters.  It may, or may not, be predictable.  But if the person doing the action of opting out does not do it with the intent of causing harm, and does not agree with your opinion that people will be killed as a direct consequence, it's not aggression.

Oh, I wasn't.  I didn't really know what the topic was, other than legitimate consumer products that have the potential to be used as ingredients in a bomb.  I was just noting that it came to mind.

But the extreme case of the privately owned nuke obscures a valid concern for any civil society.  Namely, where do we, collectively, draw the line between a weapon that can be 'borne' a la the 2nd Amendment and a weapon (or hazardous device/material whether or not it is already intended to be a weapon by design) of such great destructive power that the mere ownership of one constitutes a threat to those around you?

I have my own answer to this, but I'm curious, among the following list of items, which should be regulated or completely prohibited from civilian ownership?  Which do you believe already are or are not prohibited in the US?

a shotgun shorter than 16 inches

Automatic pistol

detachable handgun silencer

A rifle with a permantly afixed silencer, too long to hide on one's person.

a concealed pistol.

a military grade anti-personnel mine.

a hand grenade.

a rocket launcher and ammo.

a rifle capable of lethal power at distances over three miles.

a fully automatic machine gun.

explosives

a tank

a hand crank 'gatling' type gun, whether or not it's modern or an antique.

 

Opting out is never aggression, no matter what risks that creates for others.  You have a strange concept of the term.

This reminded me of an article I read once, had to search for it...

"Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly civilized society, people interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the firearm, as crazy as it may sound to some.

When I carry my gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act. "

- Author Unknown

I don't understand what you are trying to do here.  There are a couple of levels of "lightweight" nodes that have been detailed on this forum that are compatible with the Bitcoin network.  Which are you shooting for?  What is the use case that you are aiming to satisfy?

It would work as long as the bus was sitting still when a pedestrian tried to scan it.  It takes a couple seconds for the scanner to lock on.  A moving bus, no way.  A stationary billboard or poster works great.  I've lately found them on the backs of resturant ketchup bottles and magazine ads.

I didn't say that central banks were selling gold, I said that they were an example of a different type of gold buyer than most commodities, as a support for the concept that gold doesn't act quite like other commodites.  Fund managers, and similar investment vehicles, are most likely who is selling gold right now.

You just keep telling yourself that it's all a flash in the pan, AyeYo, and that MoonShadow doesn't know jack.


http://whiskeyandgunpowder.com/the-attack-on-accidental-americans/

"The IRS is making a worldwide push to squeeze money from Americans living abroad and from anyone who holds dual citizenship, whether they know it or not. It doesn’t matter if the “duals” want U.S. status, have never set foot on U.S. soil or never conducted business with an American. It doesn’t matter if those targeted owe a single cent to the IRS. Unlike almost every other nation in the world, the United States requires citizens living abroad to file tax forms on the money they do not owe as well as to report foreign bank accounts or holdings such as stocks or RSSPs. The possible penalty for not reporting is $10,000 per “disclosed asset” per year.

Thus, Americans and dual citizens living in Canada (or elsewhere) who do not disclose their local checking account — now labeled by the IRS as “an illegal offshore account” — are liable for fines that stretch back 10 years and might amount to $100,000. A family, like the Knolls, in which there are two American parents and two dual-citizen children, might be collectively liable for $400,000.

Approximately 7 million Americans live abroad. According to the IRS, they received upward of 400,000 tax returns from expatriates last year — a compliance rate of approximately 6%. Presumably, the compliance of dual-citizen children is far lower. Customs and Immigration is now sharing information with the IRS and, should any of 94% expats or their accidentally American offspring set foot on U.S. soil, they are vulnerable to arrest."

Well, I don't disagree.  It's just a matter of degree.  There are much bigger issues to be delt with than the minimum wage.  And unions in bed with governments, which isn't all of them btw, will continue to lose influence as the governments that they depend upon continue to lose authority.  Thus, if you wish to make them your pet issues, feel free.  But they are both issues that will lose relevence in their own time.

Gold, and somewhat for silver, acts a bit differently than other commodities because of it's history as base money.  Obviously, some investors want to hold gold for reasons of capital preservation; but the largest gold holders (central banks, soverign wealth funds, etc) do so mostly as a liquid investment.  Intended to be sold in times of fiscal stress on other fronts.  For an example, mutual funds have to have some cash to buffer the many trades in and out of the fund on a daily basis; but some of the largest funds will also have a small percentage of the fund in physical gold.  They do this should there be a 'run' on the fund by spooked investors, but the managers don't want to sell equities assets in order to pay out to the panicing retirees heading for the exit.  Holding some small amount of gold allows the fund managers of actively managed funds the option of selling the fund's gold without being forced to sell the fund's equity assets into a falling market.  I think that this is what we have been seeing for the past two days with both gold & silver dropping so much.  I don't think that gold bugs are selling, nor individuals who hold gold as a personal 'insurance' against fiscal policy uncertainty.  This also implies that such fund managers don't believe that the drop in the stock market is more than a panic, otherwise some of them would be selling equities into the market and buying the gold sold by others, and thus there would be a tempered balance.

Ending minimum wage laws or unions is unneccessary.  Minimum wage laws really don't have a huge effect upon employment, except for the lowest skilled labor pool.  And unions are a valid use of the right to assemble and engage in contract.  What might need to change is the laws that compel individuals (who own companies) to engage in contracts that they do not wish to participate in.  Corporations, however, are not people; and thus have no rights, only legal privilages.  If the governments that establish limited liability corporations as 'legal entities' independent of their investors wish to impose rules such as required recongnition of collective bargining representatives; then those are the rules.

War is a natural state of mankind, regardless.  It's a peaceful civil society that requires effort on the part of people.  If you don't consider the riots happening in Europe a form of war, you will.  That said, I'm not advocating eugenics.  I'm just pointing out that there is a third option of simply letting things take their course.  That is the most likely possibility in any event.  Sometimes these things just have to follow through.  And if we are heading towards a Hobbesian limit (I don't know that we are, I don't know that we're not) would rather risk death in conflict, or simply watch your children starve?  If you're not continueously educating yourself and your children, your complacency is going to be your undoing one way or another.  At a minimum, learn how to grow a garden.  You don't need a job for that, just a backyard.

I don't need it to justify my beliefs.  I posted it so that others, including yourself, might benefit a little by a small breakdown in your cognative dissonance.  If you believe that you can just leave the US and renounce your citizenship and then you will be left alone, you are deluding yourself.  That might happen, but the US government meddles in the affairs of foreign citizens who have never set foot on US soil.  What on Earth makes you think that you would be immune whether or not there is a legal justification for it?  The only way for you to be certain that they will never come to tax you in a foreign land, is to never have anything worth the trip.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/help-im-on-the-irs-hit-list/article2171697/

"Brian and his wife are from the States. He took out Canadian citizenship years ago. They’ve lived and worked in Canada for decades. They have no U.S. income or assets. They are 100-per-cent tax compliant – in Canada.

“Forget about it,” I advised. “What could they possibly do to you?”

We’re about to find out.

I’m on the IRS hit list, too. I came here at 13, and I’ve been a citizen since 1979. I don’t have a U.S. passport or any U.S. earnings. But the IRS wants to confiscate a large chunk of my retirement savings. Many of my friends are in the same fix. They send me e-mails saying things like, “Have you filled out the FBAR [Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts] yet?” The amnesty deadline has come and gone, and we still have no idea what to do.

“It’s not the back taxes that will kill you,” Brian told me. “It’s the penalties.” It turns out the IRS can fine you for every unreported bank account, mutual fund and RRSP – at a rate of $10,000 per offence per year. It can also confiscate as much as 25 per cent of the maximum amount you’ve held in each account. This is so absurd it can’t possibly be true. But it is. "

This is off topic.

That said, what info that I can find is light on details.  What I can find doesn't fill me with confidence.

If fees are destroyed, how are miners encentivized to mine?

And why destroy them?  This isn't clear.

What is the point?

Be thankful that you're not a mod, then.  Whenever someone clicks, "Report to Moderator" I get a copy of this crap in my email.

Oh, good God!  Not the "the war pulled us out of the depression" BS again!  You learned this economic "theory" in public school, didn't you?  War doesn't improve economies any more than a rock throwing vandal improves the GDP when a glazer has to fix the baker's shop window.  The US pulled out of the depression because, 1) the busybodies in Washington were too preoccupied with war issues to worry about "regulating" industry to death and 2) we bombed our biggest industrial competitors back 10 years or more all across Europe & Japan.