gnome wrote:I would have preferred a distribution method that doesn't start with most of the money in the hands of people that have produced nothing and provided nothing.
Alas, that is one of the puzzles of Western Civilization. But this case is particularly clear.
And class envy transcends dollar-vested wealth. TerraFlops, the new upper class.
Did you know that more than 80% of the TerraFlops are controled by 20% of the population. We should redistribute them equally.
gnome wrote:I would have preferred a distribution method that doesn't start with most of the money in the hands of people that have produced nothing and provided nothing.
Alas, that is one of the puzzles of Western Civilization. But this case is particularly clear.
And class envy transcends dollar-vested wealth. TerraFlops, the new upper class.
Did you know that more than 80% of the TerraFlops are controled by 20% of the population. We should redistribute them equally.
Pancake bunny. The image is left as an exercise in google search.
Care to explain what point you're making, because this didn't.
gnome wrote:I would have preferred a distribution method that doesn't start with most of the money in the hands of people that have produced nothing and provided nothing.
Alas, that is one of the puzzles of Western Civilization. But this case is particularly clear.
And class envy transcends dollar-vested wealth. TerraFlops, the new upper class.
Did you know that more than 80% of the TerraFlops are controled by 20% of the population. We should redistribute them equally.
Pancake bunny. The image is left as an exercise in google search.
Care to explain what point you're making, because this didn't.
My response was to what Matt said, but both apply to your dithering druthers, and to a lesser extent (probably), mine. All modern currency exhibits the same fundamental arbitrary distribution. Governments tend to cloak it under layers of pseudo-legitimacy, but pseudo is the key word here. It's all vapor; smoke and mirrors. It's either useful or it is not, and that's all that matters. How it gets [or got] to be that way doesn't matter one wit.
Take a look at a very important statement by a presumable very important person. This is from the 'war on drugs' thread. It's topical here too. It regards the shutdown of a ebay-esk website of catering to the sale illegal drugs using bitcoins.
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Two U.S. senators [Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin] said Sunday they will ask federal authorities to crack down on a secretive narcotics market operated on the Internet with anonymous sales and untraceable currency.
They're kind of wrong on the 'untraceable' part but that's not the point. The point is that they aided the legitimization of the new currency. Ironic, huh?
corplinx wrote:You burn coal for imaginary currency.
what method would you prefer for initial distribution? I think they should have made a deal with some of the big distributed computing organizations (like seti or einstein) but that's just me. still, it's working.
and all currency is imaginary.
They couldn't do that as the platform those services run on (BOINC) is both centralized and not very secure. They needed to roll their own decentralized P2P thing.
I think what everyone is missing is that the value in bitcoin isn't the virtual currency itself; its the infrastructure and integrated security mechanism that has worth.
The bitcoins themselves are just tokens that enable anonymous transactions. This isn't a MLM or ponzi scheme; its more like money laundering.
corplinx wrote:You burn coal for imaginary currency.
what method would you prefer for initial distribution? I think they should have made a deal with some of the big distributed computing organizations (like seti or einstein) but that's just me. still, it's working.
and all currency is imaginary.
They couldn't do that as the platform those services run on (BOINC) is both centralized and not very secure. They needed to roll their own decentralized P2P thing.
I think what everyone is missing is that the value in bitcoin isn't the virtual currency itself; its the infrastructure and integrated security mechanism that has worth.
The bitcoins themselves are just tokens that enable anonymous transactions. This isn't a MLM or ponzi scheme; its more like money laundering.
In other words, it's playing in Paypal's sector, only with company scrip.
I have a couple of Famebucks on Taltopia but I've never mistaken them for money.
Likely scenario: It remains a novelty that only a few people or vendors trade in.
But--and here's where I'm grousing... in the highly unlikely event that it somehow takes off and becomes a common medium of exchange... even if it does "stabilize" into something fair and useful, it also has the side effect of transferring large amounts of wealth to the ones that started it, for its growing pains.
corplinx wrote:You burn coal for imaginary currency.
Cool. I'll get some bitcoins and use then to buy magi items for a World of Warcraft character.
Then I'd be using imaginary currency to buy imaginary things for imaginary people in an imaginary place.
and when you're done playing games you can sell your bitcoin stock, hopefully at a profit, buy a fishing rod, and relax a different way.
True. Turning real money into imaginary money is easy. Turning imaginary money into real money...THAT'S the impressive trick.
Nah, it's easy
Step 1) Make MMO_____
Step 2) Sell imaginary money for real money
Step 3) Viola, making real money from imaginary money
Step 4) Profit
Well, that's how it used to be, but the MMO game industry is so oversaturated it isn't even funny anymore. Also, imaginary money has a bad habit of producing negative results when you multiply it.
gnome wrote:Likely scenario: It remains a novelty that only a few people or vendors trade in.
But--and here's where I'm grousing... in the highly unlikely event that it somehow takes off and becomes a common medium of exchange... even if it does "stabilize" into something fair and useful, it also has the side effect of transferring large amounts of wealth to the ones that started it, for its growing pains.
Gresham's Law is immutable.
If it becomes successful, people will simply hoard bitcoins and then end up trading something less 'valuable' instead. At some point the market will collapse when enough people just dump their hoarded bitcoins and buy into the next big thing.
There is nothing 'magic' about bitcoin as the general idea is pretty easy to implement; especially these days.
Mentat wrote:
Nah, it's easy
Step 1) Make MMO_____
Step 2) Sell imaginary money for real money
Step 3) Viola, making real money from imaginary money
Step 4) Profit
Well, that's how it used to be, but the MMO game industry is so oversaturated it isn't even funny anymore. Also, imaginary money has a bad habit of producing negative results when you multiply it.
I knew a guy that worked for Sony Online that almost went to jail for selling cloned Mana stones for the EverQuest MMO via Ebay.
Sony eventually just fired him and let it go as the lawyers couldn't figure out how to prove what he did was illegal.
corplinx wrote:You burn coal for imaginary currency.
Cool. I'll get some bitcoins and use then to buy magi items for a World of Warcraft character.
Then I'd be using imaginary currency to buy imaginary things for imaginary people in an imaginary place.
and when you're done playing games you can sell your bitcoin stock, hopefully at a profit, buy a fishing rod, and relax a different way.
True. Turning real money into imaginary money is easy. Turning imaginary money into real money...THAT'S the impressive trick.
Nah, it's easy
Step 1) Make MMO_____
Step 2) Sell imaginary money for real money
Step 3) Viola, making real money from imaginary money
Step 4) Profit
Well, that's how it used to be, but the MMO game industry is so oversaturated it isn't even funny anymore. Also, imaginary money has a bad habit of producing negative results when you multiply it.
Yeah, step 1 is the hard part. Sort of like "How to make a million dollars and naever pay taxes: Step 1-Make a million dollars..."
It's hard, but it ain't *that* hard. True, it takes quite a bit of effort but a small team could crank out a junky one in decent time. It's like all other games but you just have a server and client. Hell, there are single player games set up as server-client (freeCiv anybody?). Now, making one with the purty little 3d models running amok may require effort, but that's just the nature of making and rendering 3d models for art, not mmos in general.
Mentat wrote:It's hard, but it ain't *that* hard. True, it takes quite a bit of effort but a small team could crank out a junky one in decent time. It's like all other games but you just have a server and client. Hell, there are single player games set up as server-client (freeCiv anybody?). Now, making one with the purty little 3d models running amok may require effort, but that's just the nature of making and rendering 3d models for art, not mmos in general.
Sony Online just had a pretty substantial layoff (before the break-ins).
WoW makes billions, but beyond that cash cow its a brutal market.
EvilYeti wrote:
Sony Online just had a pretty substantial layoff (before the break-ins).
Surprising since DC Universe Online seems pretty popular. Even I was playing it prior to the break-ins and I generally HATE MMOs. Admittedly, haven't gone back since the attacks, though.
Nyarlathotep wrote:
Surprising since DC Universe Online seems pretty popular. Even I was playing it prior to the break-ins and I generally HATE MMOs. Admittedly, haven't gone back since the attacks, though.
It's not enough to save SOE. They have been hemorrhaging cash for years due to WoW stealing their fan base. Clunkers like Star Wars Galaxies haven't helped matters.
I should write them--I've solved the problem of "everyone wants to be a jedi"... have free and paid accounts, and the Jedi classes are only available to paid accounts. Not to be a bastard, but as opposed to having no free accounts at all, this will increase the population of normals without too much fuss.
gnome wrote:I should write them--I've solved the problem of "everyone wants to be a jedi"... have free and paid accounts, and the Jedi classes are only available to paid accounts. Not to be a bastard, but as opposed to having no free accounts at all, this will increase the population of normals without too much fuss.
That's a good idea; might have saved Star Wars Galaxies. Turns out actually "earning" the Jedi class wasn't very popular.
Biggest problem with allowing 'free' users is you end up with lots of griefers.
I suggested to SOE senior management in 1999 that they should make EQ free and then just sell gold/items/real estate. They weren't interested.
They seem to have adopted the idea in part, EQ2 now has an Extended server that has both free and subscription memberships. I'm actually quite enjoying the "Silver" level--One time $10. I get access to a good portion of the game, can unlock more of it with one-time payments, and don't have to feel like I'm wasting money if I'm not using it.
Last edited by gnome on Tue Jun 07, 2011 5:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
gnome wrote:Griefers haven't been a problem that I've noticed, for free users on EQ2X. I'm not sure what their model is for prevent it but it works pretty well.
They aren't popular enough to attract the wrath of anonymous.
I remember when beanie babies were worth $20 too. But at least they could be given to the dog as a chew toy after people realized they were actually worthless.
WildCat wrote:I remember when beanie babies were worth $20 too. But at least they could be given to the dog as a chew toy after people realized they were actually worthless.
Just like baseball cards, rare stamps, old coins and every other collectable. Worthless. I suppose you could consider bitcoins collectables, so, there ya go.
Leaders of the open-source virtual currency project known as Bitcoin say they have no way to verify one user's claim that hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of digital coins were plucked from his computer earlier this week.
Rumors of the heist have been swirling since Monday, when a Bitcoin user named Allinvain claimed 25,000 Bitcoins, technically valued at close to $500,000, had mysteriously been transferred to an unknown user's account. Allinvain speculated the thieves made off with the windfall after using malware to compromise his Windows-based computer.
"I just woke up to see a very large chunk of my bitcoin balance gone," the user wrote. "I feel like killing myself now."
More than 300 posts later, it's still not clear if the claims are part of an elaborate hoax. Because Bitcoin is built on a peer-to-peer foundation that completely bypasses any sort of centralized database, it's impossible for even the architects of the digital currency to verify if a theft took place.
Okay, so the U.S. has a visa waiver program that allows certain folks to travel here for business purposes without a visa. But even if you don't need a visa, you better have a Visa...or at least a Mastercard.
In a blog first spotted by GeekWire, someone going by the name of Doctor Nefario - founder of the Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange - says he was sent back to China by Customs and Border Protection agents at Seattle airport earlier this month.
According to GeekWire, Nefario was planning to work with entrepreneurs Mike Koss and Peter Vessenes at their StartPad offices in Seattle and had already paid them in Bitcoins for office space.
However, at the airport, agents were concerned that Nefario planned to spend two months in the US with only $600 in cash and no credit card. In a session that lasted between five and six hours, Nefario then tried to explain Bitcoin and how it would fund the trip.
Says the blog: ""Although I was cash poor I had more than enough bitcoin to cover all the costs of my trip and stay, I was going to be meeting with bitoption later that morning in Seattle, he had $1500 of cash to exchange."
The agents were apparently unconvinced though and Nefario was put on a plane back to China, where he was questioned for another three hours about why he had been sent back.