Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
NovusBogus wrote:"We reject your economy and substitute our own!"
NovusBogus wrote:a reaction to 20-30 years of bad behavior by 'responsible' Western financial institutions.
Glorious wrote:Why are Americans at the forefront of crypto-currency? It makes no sense.
Derfunk wrote:I think that for the majority of crypto folk, it appeals to the worst in us. "I don't have to do a thing or lift a finger, and I can sell these imaginary X coins for real money."
Glorious wrote:This is all a bear trap!
All I see are cheap coins!
nom nom nom nom nom
just brew it! wrote:Calling blockchain the basis of an alternate economy is putting the cart before the horse. Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are just arbitrary tokens that are supposed to represent a store of value (like fiat currencies). Different day, same old sh*t.
NovusBogus wrote:just brew it! wrote:Calling blockchain the basis of an alternate economy is putting the cart before the horse. Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies are just arbitrary tokens that are supposed to represent a store of value (like fiat currencies). Different day, same old sh*t.
That was its stated purpose, though; the Satoshi whitepaper presents it as a way to make small cash transactions, not a way to store wealth. All the Wall Street shenanigans came about several years later. Again, to be clear, I'm talking about the technical people that did the actual coding work. They didn't like the status quo so they did something about it. If someone doesn't like the BTC status quo, they're more than welcome--and indeed encouraged--to make a better one. This is why engineers and technology companies have amassed so much power in the last few decades; we act when others merely talk.
NovusBogus wrote:All the Wall Street shenanigans came about several years later.
Bitcoin Whitepaper wrote:Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
NovusBogus wrote:They didn't like the status quo so they did something about it. If someone doesn't like the BTC status quo, they're more than welcome--and indeed encouraged--to make a better one.
Bitcoin Whitepaper wrote:These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.
NovusBogus wrote:they're more than welcome--and indeed encouraged--to make a better one.
NovusBogus wrote:This is why engineers and technology companies have amassed so much power in the last few decades; we act when others merely talk.
Glorious wrote:NovusBogus wrote:This is why engineers and technology companies have amassed so much power in the last few decades; we act when others merely talk.
....is this the part where one guy in the audience starts clapping, and then another, and another and then...?
ludi wrote:Speaking as an engineer, and a fairly well-positioned one, I'm stuck trying to figure out where all these powerful engineers are.
Glorious wrote:NovusBogus wrote:All the Wall Street shenanigans came about several years later.
It was released in 2009, -after- the late unpleasantness, and the genesis block actually contains this quote: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" as a terminus post quem.
....is this the part where one guy in the audience starts clapping, and then another, and another and then...?
ludi wrote:Speaking as an engineer, and a fairly well-positioned one, I'm stuck trying to figure out where all these powerful engineers are.
NovusBogus wrote:ludi wrote:Speaking as an engineer, and a fairly well-positioned one, I'm stuck trying to figure out where all these powerful engineers are.
Well let's start with the here and now. You typed that on a keyboard, which was created by engineers and most likely manufactured by mostly-automated equipment which was also created by engineers. Your input went into (I assume, given the nature of this site) a personal computer, which was created by engineers, running a web browser, which was created by engineers, connected to the Internet whose software and hardware were both created by engineers. Every one of these things was a radical new technology that created and destroyed many companies and their associated jobs, shifted geopolitical ley lines, redefined humanoid social structures, and generally made something out of nothing. Take away the engineers and none of that would have happened, it'd just be a bunch of sales guys standing around the coffee pot a neolithic campfire wishing they had something to do.
NovusBogus wrote:I am acutely aware of that, indeed I made reference to it in this very thread. By "Wall Street shenanigans" I was referring to 'BTC as investment' which I am not particularly fond of, having supplanted 'BTC as voluntary anarcho-capitalist experiment' toward which I have a considerably more favorable attitude.
NovusBogus wrote:As for currency vs economy, one begets the other so creating a currency is necessarily creating an economic engine; if nobody uses it it simply means that it has a size of zero.
NovusBogus wrote:Actually this is the part where, having noted the historical wisdom in someone suggesting that those who can CAD or code are far more capable of changing the world than those what whine about how it's all so unfaaiiirr, I go back to making next generation industrial automation while giving zero flips about how 'the audience' feels. After all, our robots and gantries will not write their own move instructions
NovusBogus wrote:Well let's start with the here and now. You typed that on a keyboard, which was created by engineers and most likely manufactured by mostly-automated equipment which was also created by engineers. Your input went into (I assume, given the nature of this site) a personal computer, which was created by engineers, running a web browser, which was created by engineers, connected to the Internet whose software and hardware were both created by engineers. Every one of these things was a radical new technology that created and destroyed many companies and their associated jobs, shifted geopolitical ley lines, redefined humanoid social structures, and generally made something out of nothing. Take away the engineers and none of that would have happened, it'd just be a bunch of sales guys standing around the coffee pot a neolithic campfire wishing they had something to do.
Glorious wrote:And, if I may display my own brand of prejudice, I always kinda figured "engineers" weren't as prone to such self-congratulatory preening.
NovusBogus wrote:Well let's start with the here and now. You typed that on a keyboard, which was created by engineers and most likely manufactured by mostly-automated equipment which was also created by engineers. Your input went into (I assume, given the nature of this site) a personal computer, which was created by engineers, running a web browser, which was created by engineers, connected to the Internet whose software and hardware were both created by engineers. Every one of these things was a radical new technology that created and destroyed many companies and their associated jobs, shifted geopolitical ley lines, redefined humanoid social structures, and generally made something out of nothing. Take away the engineers and none of that would have happened, it'd just be a bunch of sales guys standing around the coffee pot a neolithic campfire wishing they had something to do.
Usacomp2k3 wrote:Glorious wrote:And, if I may display my own brand of prejudice, I always kinda figured "engineers" weren't as prone to such self-congratulatory preening.
Yes we are
ludi wrote:Once in a great while I encounter an engineer in whom the streams of design and sales, or design and management, run harmoniously parallel. Once in an even greater while, that person likes the other type of job and gets promoted into it. The rest of the time, those talents tend to be more orthogonal, and the engineer is best utilized in his native capacity, such as designing nifty new things, and ranting about sales and management on Internet comment boards.
derFunkenstein wrote:(also, not an engineer)
meerkt wrote:
NovusBogus wrote:Obvious pitch is obvious, but I do rather like the message. Millennials in particular would be well served spending a lot less time crying about the officially designated but largely irrelevant moral outrage of the week on social media, and more time learning a valuable skill and doing something useful for a change. Not only will they find that they're taken more seriously, they might also manage to find some of that personal fulfillment that's been so elusive to the under-35 crowd. And that sentiment is exceedingly relevant to cryptocurrency since the whole thing is, fundamentally, a reaction to 20-30 years of bad behavior by 'responsible' Western financial institutions.
"We reject your economy and substitute our own!"