I think the idea is that you can move the threshold on when to implement in Fortran/C(++) since you only have a '1x-5x slowdown' for most common application compare to the 20x-5000x slowdown with R/Python/Matlab/..
which is not particularly more heavy than your average bicycle. They are mostly used by elderly ladies and heavy-set women, so the Tesla marketing aspect is not huge.
I owned the predecessor to that about 10 years ago (it was also a Raleigh, although the battery was on the downtube, not the luggage rack). It was very heavy, but ride-able, although not up hills.
The electric part of it only lasted about an hour, and it took all night to charge. Old school lead-acid thing, very temperamental. The battery was removable, though, so you could leave the bike outside and just bring that in to charge - and you could also ride the bike without carrying it with you everywhere.
Also, it only doubled your input power, IIRC, so you always had to peddle (although it more than made up for itself, weight-wise, on long climbs.)
That's just glib. People use lots of bitcoins on silk road every day with no interest in speculation. Bitcoins are a real currency with value backed by the interest in silk road products.
If you can only look at bitcoins from the viewpoint of turning a quick buck, then you are not able to see a substantial part of the elephant.
"People use lots of bitcoins on silk road every day with no interest in speculation. Bitcoins are a real currency with value backed by the interest in silk road products."
The existence of some people who use bitcoins as they are intended does not change that goldbugs, speculators, and others are legitimately affecting the currency as capitalism not only allows for, but ENCOURAGES. This is not glib. This is reality.
> Bitcoins are a real currency with value backed by the interest in silk road products.
If a few big countries legalized drugs, perhaps that would make bitcoins less valuable/interesting, causing a bust? Probably not realistic in the short term, but interesting to consider.
Bitcoins are a real currency with value backed by the interest in silk road products.
Why isn't one bitcoin fixed to dollar or euro by some conversion factor? That would remove the question of the value of a bitcoin. There are lot of currencies that are permanently fixed to an other.
The novel thing is the theory that you can cryptographically make anonymous transactions unique. It doesn't imply being a separate currency. Or am I missing something?
Who would enforce the restriction that 1 BTC == 1 USD? The fact that bitcoin is decentralized means that the value of the currency pretty much has to float.
My guess is that bitcoins are mainly used for college students' and drug hobbyists' $50 purchases of LSD and the like on silk road and not for big transactions.
Silk Road is famous, but it doesn't mean that illegal activities are the main economic activities in bitcoin.
The number of accounts is currently at about 22000, and the largest number of people online at any given time is 126 – a stable community, but much smaller than those who see Silk Road as being the single shadowy force keeping up the Bitcoin economy behind the scenes imagine. -- http://bitcoinmagazine.net/the-silk-road-report/
The problem is that CCs and PayPal is much easier to use and it is much safer than Bitcoins.
If you never use bitcoin, you wouldn't realize how convenient it is in some situation. For example, when I brought an album, I just sent some coins to the address and then it was a done deal. I don't have to enter my credit card information or enter my username/password.
If you aren't convinced about bitcoin but you have time, you should experiment and find if there's any usecases for bitcoin rather than just dismissing it outright.
Let also note that the security pressure by criminals have lead lot of bitcoin sites to adopt 2 factor authentication. Some figured out that they don't need their wallet online at all and can get away with just using the blockchain to process payment. This meant even if the server were to get hacked, there's no bitcoin to steal. The bitcoin team themsleves are also working on adding multi-signature transactions.
Also, I'd argue that BitCoin is very simple to use. Put in an address, type in the amount of money, and wait. Sure, transactions can take a while, but it's not very complex.
Given the amount of people who are victims of scams and frauds within the mainstream banking system, and the habit of paypal to freeze people's accounts and hold their money on a frighteningly regular basis, I am not sure that bitcoin is any worse from a safety point of view.
Of course paypal account feezes and scams do occur on paypal and traditional banking systems. However what is the percentage?
Every few months a bitcoin site gets lots of attention and boom they get hacked. Usually it is because the site is run by a teen or a college student wanting to make a quick a buck.
Hmm, I guess those statistics are from the SR forums, a separate site. The actual SR web site doesn't give out such statistics. You could perhaps estimate the usage by listings & reviews.
True, but the average programmer typically has to show up for work at least 40 hours a week, while "passive income" like selling off-the-shelf WordPress themes doesn't take up your whole week. It can also be done by people who don't have particularly extensive programming skills.
