RobertKohr

Yep, Permutation City - the human brain was scanned at super high resolution (was able to snapshot the current state of all cells). Then it was able to be run in a simulated world with simulated sensory inputs. And of course multiple copies could be run.

I am really just scratching the surface of what was covered, but it was a great book and I would recommend it for anyone interested in simulated life.

They look like they might be harder to solve then normal mazes. Usually I just follow a wall for a maze. Would that work here?

I don't know, bitcoin is nice as it makes an easy international currency, even for financially isolated countries (aka "axis of evil"). I can see bitcoins being used as well to buy chinese goods/services without having to deal with currency transfer costs.

Also, they might get some business via this, as bitcoin businesses need some sort of arbitration system. Perhaps this could be a court for large scale elicit businesses, though I don't know if they want to tred in those waters.

This was were I was quite surprised as well. Blizzard is always in a fight against cheaters, and it is required since their games are competitive in nature.

Thank you for the chuckle.

I think you might have got to the the main issue.

It is not like there is a cultural pressure to keep the pay for a programmer down, because that would break down quickly if there are a lot of positions not being filled.

I somehow doubt that the value earned by hiring a programmer is much less than elsewhere.

So really that leaves only some other operator that is messing up smooth market operations, and that is the extra costs in hiring.

Your last point is the strongest. Would you hiring a programmer if it was impossible to fire them. If you were a programmer that knew he couldn't be fired, what would your output look like.

Why do you not like this?

What alternatives to skype exist? Something that does voice, and not likely to invade my privacy.

Anyone want to do the summary?

Yippy, the more the goverment tries to control the internet, the more it will go underground, and the more tor will gain in strength.

Can you limit bandwidth with AWS?

Also, why would the spreadsheet be calling these images every hour. Did you have the spreadsheet open? Does google do this call even when no one is viewing the spreadsheet?

You have two separate arguments twisted into one.

1) Getting rid of the war on drugs would be a good thing. As it would save money and not cause as much crime (drug war causes crime).

2) You can spend money on education and training to reduce poverty.

Please keep your arguments separate rather than using one issue as a support for another. That 30K per prisoner could be spent on any number of things, or simply not collected from the public at all.

Personally, I agree with 1. That would be fantastic, and I think that there is a political ball rolling slowly towards that.

The second, well, we do spend a lot on education and training. I am not so sure that it does much more than make education more expensive.