>First, the number of well-paid middle-skill jobs in manufacturing and clerical occupations has decreased substantially since the mid-1980s.
in all these articles/analysis replace the middle-skill jobs in manufacturing with the programming/IT jobs - the middle-skill jobs of today - and you'd hardly find any decline
As it was already mentioned in the threads like this before, the NIF was built using the technology that was available in those years of the past when NIF was planned and started. Flash lamp pumped lasers are bigger, more expensive and much less efficient, i.e. mere few percents efficiency at best vs. tens of percent efficiency of modern laser diode pumped IR lasers. (Even with such improvement though, i still think laser driven fusion is inferior to many other forms of inertial confinement and much less probable to result in system-level break-even. My personal favorite, Sandia Z-machine is on the scale of 15% efficiency of generating X-ray pulse, and schemes like deep plasma focus or polywell by-pass the energy to radiation conversion stage all together and thus avoid related losses.)
> It may in fact not be possible to do better-than-breakeven fusion on a small (relative to a star) scale.
the H-bomb is better-than-breakeven and much smaller than star scale. What you say may be true for Tokamak like confinement schemes whereis H-bomb is inertial confinement, and it works. And it is pretty clear that inertial confinement in several orders of magnitude smaller scale than H-bomb would work too. Look at Sandia Z-machine - an order of magnitude up, and it would get breakeven. Not that anybody really needs it :)
OK, let me be more precise: it may not be possible to do better-than-breakeven fusion on a small scale in a way that makes the resulting energy safely harnessable for useful work.
>Companies spend millions in SuperBowl ads, and nobody can click on that,
not that i dream about clicking it, i'm just surprised that they still hasn't implemented it yet as current TVs are really computers sold/packaged as TVs.
Which makes this even more offensive to pass off as increased costs because of "Obamacare". They were either providing sub-par coverage before or he's lying about increased costs.
" В соответствии со ст. 27 Федерального закона «О Центральном банке Российской Федерации» «официальной денежной единицей (валютой) Российской Федерации является рубль. Введение на территории России других денежных единиц и выпуск денежных суррогатов запрещается». Получившие определенное распространение анонимные платежные системы и криптовалюты, в том числе наиболее известная из них – Биткойн, являются денежными суррогатами и не могут быть использованы гражданами и юридическими лицами.
"
translation:
"According to the title 27 of the Federal Law "On Central Bank of Russian Federation" "the official currency of Russian Federation is rouble. Issue (introduction) of other currencies and currency surrogates on the territory of Russia is prohibited". Anonymous payment systems and cryptocurrencies, including the most popular - Bitcoin, are currency surrogates and can't be used by physical persons and corporations.
"
This determination - bitcoin as a currency surrogate - was made by the "expert group" consisting of high level bureaucrats from the enforcement side, ie. Central Bank, FSB, police (police in Russia is one big vertically integrated structure from local to federal level), Attorney General office.
> "the official currency of Russian Federation is rouble, Issue (introduction) of other currencies and currency surrogates is prohibited
How is that different from any other country? Its a generic law that every other country has, you can't start spreading a new currency in United States as well because "official currency of United States is US Dollar".
We all know what happened to a "Liberty Dollar" in United States [1]:
In 2006 the U.S. Mint issued a press release stating that prosecutors at the Justice Department had determined that using Liberty Dollars as circulating money is a federal crime. The press release also stated that the "Liberty Dollars" are meant to compete with the circulating coinage (currency) of the United States and such competition consequently is a criminal act.[2]
You're ignoring the relevant part that is quite different from how most countries have thus far ruled on bitcoin-
"Anonymous payment systems and cryptocurrencies, including the most popular - Bitcoin, are currency surrogates and can't be used by physical persons and corporations."
I thought you could spread a new currency in the US, but no one has to accept anything other than the official US currency. Which was the reason why things like tokens and bitcoins can exist.
You cannot make your currency resemble official US currency in any way that would confuse a normal citizen. This has been interpreted rather broadly. The Secret Service has shut down a number of private currencies due to this rule, including silver/gold backed paper money and coins, Liberty Dollar, eGold, etc. I think they shut down the guy that was putting a bitcoin sticker on gold coins as well.
The reason they have not shut down Bitcoin is that they do not consider it a currency. It isn't money, it is a commodity at best.
Except it is the law. Liberty dollars were intentionally similar in design with US currency— any random joe would confuse them. Literature from their maker encouraged (with indirect language) people to pass them off as US dollars and they were priced to make it profitable to do so (E.g. $8 in melt value silver, sold to you for $15 with a "$20" stamped on the front). (See: http://truthalliance.net/Portals/0/Archive/images/news/2012/... plus there are a whole _additional_ set of laws covering the minting of coins of precious metal in the US which aren't relevant for Bitcoin discussions).
The counterfeiting charges in the Liberty dollar case basically went uncontested.
> Whoever, except as authorized by law, makes or utters or passes, or attempts to utter or pass, any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
The creator of the currency was convincted for violating this section of code, among others. This is completely separate from imitating US dollars or counterfeiting. I can find no indication that imitation of official US currency was the primary or only justification for his conviction. Every source I can find indicates that simply competing with official US currency is a crime.
> any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals,
And you think this is applicable to Bitcoin because?
In any case, I was going to chide you to read the ruling, but it seems to have vanished offline. It was previously online. Fascinating stuff.
Here were the actual charges (from the BVNH wikipedia article):
Von NotHaus was charged under counterfeiting laws with one count of conspiracy to possess and sell coins in resemblance and similitude of coins of a denomination higher than five cents, and silver coins in resemblance of genuine coins of the United States in denominations of five dollars and greater, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 485, 18 U.S.C. § 486, and 18 U.S.C. § 371; one count of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341 and 18 U.S.C. § 2; one count of selling, and possessing with intent to defraud, coins of resemblance and similitude of United States coins in denominations of five cents and higher, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 485 and 18 U.S.C. § 2; and one count of uttering, passing, and attempting to utter and pass, silver coins in resemblance of genuine U.S. coins in denominations of five dollars or greater, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 486 and 18 U.S.C. § 2.
You need to be somewhat careful with non-court sources on this, people on NotHaus' side have been making a strenuous effort to cast this as persecution of alternative currencies, and they've had some help from some inept law enforcement people who— as usual— don't understand the law. If you go and actually read the indictment and conviction you'll see that it wasn't really at all.
I never said anything about Bitcoin. I responded to the comment which said "I thought you could spread a new currency in the US, but no one has to accept anything other than the official US currency."
And yes, I read about his convictions. 18 U.S.C. § 486 is the section I pasted in my previous comment.
the difference is that Eric Holder hasn't yet made a determination that Bitcoin is a currency and thus violates the law (like they did to Liberty Dollar, etc...)
How do other foreign currencies compare to bitcoin with respect to this paragraph? Surely that doesn't mean it's correspondingly illegal to trade RUB for USD within russia, but i'm not sure what the salient difference is
sounds like she was punished for a disruptive innovation - "backdating of stock options exercise". Backdating of grant is cheating at the expense of shareholders whereis backdating of exercise - at the expense of IRS :)
I'm not sure what's the point of exercise backdating anyway - once the option is granted, the base price is fixed (and thus the base from which the tax is calculated), and all you can do is to change the resulting stock price, but the result of exercising at date X and holding to date Y and just exercising on date Y seem identical to me - you still have a stock priced at the spot price of date Y. Maybe some tax law details matter here - which would reinforce my point that it's too complex for its own good.
there are differences. For example, the profit from the grant date to the date of exercise is ordinary income - taxed at your bracket rate, while any profit coming from holding for longer than 1 year after exercise is at long-term capital gain - 15%.
the risk isn't the same. Instead of capital gain a capital loss may happen - for example when you own stock, like, in particular, after exercise. Whereis in case of stock options there is no risk of loss before exercise. The stock options may be worth 0 - that is the lowest possible outcome, and you wouldn't be charged a dime if the options are underwater. Just like bonus - company pays to you when things are great, yet you don't pay to company when the things aren't. Thus the same ordinary income tax treatment for stock options exercise profit as for bonus.
"In my reference checking, at least a dozen investors told me that they made far more money when the numbers disappointed than when the company outperformed, because they trusted Michelle when she said that things were not worse than they appeared and bought on the dips."
anybody sees any wrong here? Beside private hush-hush, there seems to be the same pattern - like with backdating of options - of optimizing interests of some selected "closer than arm reach" group at the expense of general shareholder population of that company.
in all these articles/analysis replace the middle-skill jobs in manufacturing with the programming/IT jobs - the middle-skill jobs of today - and you'd hardly find any decline