asciilifeform: if you can arrange for, say, the entire crop of 'bfl' units to spin their wheels fruitlessly during known time intervals, your own miners (presumably exempt) can be scheduled to run then and precisely then
asciilifeform: time for gedankenexperiment. what payload would be 'useful' in a miner core (vs. the controller, which is normally a standard micro and relatively simple to audit) ?
asciilifeform: urbit already found its chumpatronium golden vein
asciilifeform: or - for added realism - it'll be the 200k btc dpr is coughing up on the impaler machine, rather than derper's coin.
asciilifeform: if i recall, there is no proof, for example, that the ubiquitous 'iron maiden' was used even on one occasion.
asciilifeform: davout: usually they're simply avenging a husband or son
asciilifeform: but afaik no implants - yet
asciilifeform: good example of what, for the lack of a better term, i think of as 'partial differentiation'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: sexual promiscuity... it'll be the norm, stop bitchin << interesting how early 20th c. folks imagined that birth control would be 'a thing' - i.e. that people would actually use it, and promiscuity would have zero impact on how children are brought up
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: private investigators that collect samples from fields << always wondered why they aren't simply shot on sight
asciilifeform: let's go straight to the guild. the proverbial google grunt, who pays 150k usd / yr. to live in auto range of his 200k gig - is he a proper burgher? or peon imposter?
asciilifeform: usg1 - 'idealism', attempt at actual federation of independent states; usg2 - strong federal / centralized, slave states alive; usg3 - slave states zapped, vestiges of state autonomy removed, capitalism; usg4 - the one we know and love.
asciilifeform: see the 'insider trading' prosecutions in usa, for example./
asciilifeform: chetty: example: http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/04/12/bombshell-harry-reid-behind-bundy-cattle-ranch-scandal-according-to-purged-documents-112136
asciilifeform: see earlier example with solar plant contractor
asciilifeform: chetty: the only birth control that works on the 'lumpen' folks is the kind pitched by Captain Aguilera.
asciilifeform: *olympics
asciilifeform: likewise the importance of 'k' value in ecdsa
asciilifeform: people gotta understand the importance of rng on a gizmo that doesn't import - only generates own - keys.
asciilifeform: if usg employs thinking people, they did not write this.
asciilifeform: 'How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?' (mr holmes)
asciilifeform: jobs pop up here ocasionally << for example, for steady hands good with microscope.
asciilifeform: based simply on the examples known to me (e.g. the woman involved with 'obamacare' etc)
asciilifeform: simply picture a correctly designed 'tor'
asciilifeform: say he grows a brain, and starts 'tcpdump'ing. finds that the proxy just connects to another just like it. rsa on both ends.
asciilifeform: what trace? so a chumper finds that he was running a socks5 proxy. big deal.
asciilifeform: pankkake: re: 'mycelium' << the nice thing is that i don't even need to purchase and cut open the unit to piss on it. you can't fit a user-auditable rng in a keychain. simple physical fact.
asciilifeform: can't wait for the mandatory wheelchair ramps on heli-gunships
asciilifeform: "people have problems" which seem to reinforce agency heirarchy << interesting examples abound. consider the u.s. grunts who were disciplined for wearing privately purchased ballistic armour in iraq.
asciilifeform: being as the local stuffed uniforms are the first to 'go free agent' in any imperial collapse, this is sorta basic.
asciilifeform: Encryption Foiled the Cops << example of hierarchy of power in action. the local doughnut eaters don't get access to the manufacturer backdoor. unless it suits the crown for one reason or another.
asciilifeform: incidentally, (as school project!) i once went to the u.s. national library of medicine and had them dig up for me ancient, yellow copies of lysenko's complete works. and read them.
asciilifeform: many other cases of severely brainless are also created artificially - by rescuing 'super' premature infants, for example (at tremendous cost to the taxpayer, even before they enter the welfare system)
asciilifeform: i vaguely recall a documented case where deaf women sued for the right to 'in vitro' select deaf samples from a set of foeti
asciilifeform: ;;google deaf community cochlear implants
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: as i understand, it's a peculiarly sad 'chinese copy' of the usual 'victimhood olympics.'
asciilifeform: 'The fine system is the Institute's latest innovation. Khrzhanovsky decreed it a few months ago, fed up with staffers smuggling cell phones and talking about Facebook. Other finable offenses include tardiness, which costs a whole day's pay, and failure to renew the fake Institute pass. The program has been a hit. Not only has morale improved, a whole new euphemistic vocabulary has sprouted up. ("Google" is now "
asciilifeform: benkay: it is a very simple design based on johnson noise. -- plus, the entire design will be published in excruciating detail.
asciilifeform: !up Dalrymple
asciilifeform: Dalrymple: so long as you don't expect the exchange rate to increase monotonically - sure, buy.
asciilifeform: ;;google theodore dalrymple
asciilifeform: ctified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been
asciilifeform surprised the various chumpatronic engineers who push 'amazing! web based stock trading' crud haven't come out with one yet
asciilifeform: 'unknown number of times' << empty magazine in the end
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: betcha this fellow is american. over here, they'll bring a mostly empty bottle of vodka to the shop, say 'i didn't like it', get money back.
asciilifeform: 'стукач' ~= 'one who knocks' (implication, on the 'right door')
asciilifeform: benkay: different names, depending on the cultural flavour of the particular example
asciilifeform: mthreat: likewise the front of the car compacting.
asciilifeform: as exemplified by the iconic russian iPnohe.
asciilifeform: 'human dishwasher' << one item i keep expecting to see from the chicoms. looks precisely like the mechanical kind, but has a nice little fellow living inside (first eats scraps, then washes, then returns to his compartment. convenient sewer hookup for both!)
asciilifeform: canvas, the oldest of the pump-altcoins.
asciilifeform: and whether you really need your computer to run
asciilifeform: !up mp_a_colonia
asciilifeform: mp_a_colonia: http://ava.md/politics/012473-mircha-popesku-klqch-k-unire-nahoditsya-tol-ko-u-bessarabcev.html << you?!
asciilifeform: mp_a_colonia: what must they be drinking to crap out yet another 'seekoore mail' ssl gizmo ?
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo, mp_a_colonia: where i live, pawn shops are very peculiar places, where nothing is priced remotely close to what any sane person would pay. probably just cash laundries.
asciilifeform: inquisitor? plenty employed already
asciilifeform: !up mp_a_colonia
asciilifeform: mr reptila, with his silverware hat, would make good company for mr spam and his imaginary 'rolex'
asciilifeform: mp_a_colonia!
asciilifeform: scammers sometimes even succeed in breeding an entire class of dedicated chumps.
asciilifeform: and what does one need to smoke to see the pluses of the concept of letting competitors vote on whether you can spend your coin ?
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: your complaint is with the geating on electro-mechanical clocks.
asciilifeform: from the u.s. school of rectothermodynamics: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/massachusetts-high-court-orders-suspect-to-decrypt-his-computers
asciilifeform: dignork: unless i misunderstand - btc protocol as presently implemented cannot do this
asciilifeform: !up mp_on_a_boat
asciilifeform: 'pump.'
asciilifeform: mp_on_a_boat: why'd you snip the end off the cocksnipper tale? it has a proper end.
asciilifeform: when do we get mp_on_atomic_dirigible ?!
asciilifeform: mp_on_a_boat: yours? or chartered
asciilifeform: pankkake: doesn't exist yet, and it already modified my crypto processes >> impatient man can, theoretically, make his own, just based on the description.
asciilifeform: afaik that's just an attempt at a standard format for signing 'buy' & 'sell' proclamations ?
asciilifeform: i described this here when first found the channel, somebody (mp?) said, 'this is being built'
asciilifeform: that quote betrays a staggering lack of comprehension regarding... virtually every aspect of computing.
asciilifeform: idiot anglo empire wants to shoot itself in the head? sure, why not.
asciilifeform: (like sex, most folks can get some for free, but others... must pay. an empty niche here.)
asciilifeform: mycelium machine << it still isn't clear to me - are they actually sampling an sram, or just using atmel's turd which purports to do so internally
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: misread sentence as 'maybe we should run a campaign to rename antennas. ThickAsThieves: balunus'
asciilifeform: as i recall, he applied it as a general principle - christianity being an example of the clusterfuck that happens when 'the slaves win.'
asciilifeform: more complicated. the tree trimmers routinely cut fiber (likewise strung overhead)
asciilifeform: and one of these (electric pump) is built.
asciilifeform: 'agents, they are here' << 'we had no doubts that the dacha [place of n. s. khruschev's forced retirement] was festooned with microphones, but as to where the receiving devices and tape reels were emplaced - no one had any idea. somehow this did not interest us... ... i must say that the apparatus worked in a rather mediocre way, and the eavesdropping was conducted so shabbily, especially in the latter years of
asciilifeform: next phase is to convince folks to voluntarily move into labour camp, etc. to get Free! internet/food/whatever
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: example of this machine: http://www.notanon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/gentoo_libretto.jpg << the circular object underneath 'intel' sticker is the mouse. two buttons on the back of lid.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: (you mentioned wanting a traditional wm specifically for miniature computers, which i found odd)
asciilifeform: re: russian 'arm' cpu hype << same sad story as 'elbrus' company. the latter started out as a somewhat original superscalar design, ended up a cheap pentium clone. they succumbed to the temptation of the ussr starting in '70s - clone common cpu, run l33t w4r3z.
asciilifeform: examples of felis - 'savannah cat' (domesticus + african serval)
asciilifeform: afaik every hybrid that's ever been attempted in earnest - worked.
asciilifeform: i always found it interesting how much functionality one... loses by rolling a 'general purpose' computer into a product. not even concerning security and the like.
asciilifeform: build the radiation dome, fill with breathable air, impale the capital controls idiots, etc
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'operating systems' and 'compilers' (traditionally considered the gnarliest subjects in the department, outside of the required maths) were already optional and barely attended.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: '...bright young men that hadnt gone though the compiler and complexity modules of their CS programme' << i actually watched the beginnings of this change at my uni. various things were made optional, and the audiences became 'pocket sized'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: '...know better than to get involved with the armed retinue of a lord...' << see interesting example - the private army of gazprom (said to contain own tank corps, aviation, etc.) - nobody fucks with it, scarcely anyone even mentions it.
asciilifeform: i think that was meant to imply mr. thiel
asciilifeform: http://faraday.fie.umich.mx/~rrusiles/Fie/Horizontal/Hopcroft_Introduction_to_Automata_Theory_Languages_and_Computation.pdf
asciilifeform: punkman: a good refresher text on discrete maths / computability /etc. is hopcroft & ullman
asciilifeform: i especially liked the 'obsolete' chapter on mechanical computers
asciilifeform: punkman: 'All the Mathematics You Missed' (Garrity) if impatient/american
asciilifeform: who the hell has impi on a 'human' box ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu is one of those weirdos who actually turns his computer on and off ?!
asciilifeform: what computer-based product, on the shelf today, can be guaranteed manufacturable 50 years hence?
asciilifeform: us dod realized that computer would remain 'a thing' - wanted hard specced formats.
asciilifeform: all of this took place in the long-gone era when usg insisted on full blueprints, chip masks (!) etc. to ensure longevity of a complete design
asciilifeform: decimation: such countries typically add public vpn companies to ban list
asciilifeform: at some point you have to ask, what problem are you actually solving by building pocket computer
asciilifeform: an empty '2u' rack case is 300 usd or so
asciilifeform: which plays havoc with real-time anything. and with any attempt at hand optimization
asciilifeform: there are countless other examples. visit a university laboratory.
asciilifeform: the 'heirloom computer' is old, old hat.
asciilifeform: the 'computer industry' loves the crapfest, though. ('employment!' see http://www.loper-os.org/?p=388 etc)
asciilifeform: everybody can get behind the impalement of author of 'heartbleed' but problem goes deeper.
asciilifeform started crackpot career by reading at&t unix as described in 'lions book' and setting out to 'take out mistakes' - then noticed that result is... empty space
asciilifeform: and some mistakes (the need for a compiler) aren't so easy to take out.
asciilifeform: one dump truck.
asciilifeform: ThickAsThieves: was it you who turned down working F.MPIF on account of living in usa ?
asciilifeform awaits the epic rampage of a future mr. heap.
asciilifeform: somehow, 'hypertalk' was well-liked by serious users. why? theory: it lured a bunch of folks who were 'on the right side of the camel's hump' to begin with - into learning elementary programming
asciilifeform: the most elegant example of the agony of 'plain language' is: attempts at computer programming systems which purported to use such.
asciilifeform: which was interesting, because 'tools of crafsman' are normally exempted from auction by creditors
asciilifeform: no, just example of somebody who actually relied on a micro airplane for a living
asciilifeform: lol at expecting anyone to have sympathy for the folks who lost their heads from cables.csv (assuming any)
asciilifeform: example:
asciilifeform: ms on the other hand is... usg department of compyooting.
asciilifeform: xscale was their attempt at the true microcontroller market
asciilifeform: idea is, intel fears for its life, because x86 (and all the compatibility kludges that enable 20 years of crapola to run) is doomed.
asciilifeform: (intel never once in its entire life published anything but a mockery of 'open source.' see their 'open' bios, for example.)
asciilifeform: ;;rate mats 1 temporary voice
asciilifeform: benkay: i once worked with laboratory (-80C) units that didn't. a pump moved the cold air to reservoir when you turned the handle. room air pumped in, door opens. reverse when close hadle.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDvikAG7cD8#t=15 << 4-cycle petrol engine built from that fridge's compressor.
asciilifeform: e.g. my father was once employed to reverse-engineer movie projectors
asciilifeform remembers 'fucked company'
asciilifeform: mp has bank now?!
asciilifeform: japan jumped the gap - why? because they had the 'natural resource'
asciilifeform: industrial civilization doesn't get birthed from coffee shop (as discussed in one of mp's essays?)
asciilifeform: was crap << complicated. if you want sovereignty - gotta crank out the hardware, best as you can.
asciilifeform: (western hardware was difficult to get - trade embargoed, had to go through shill companies)
asciilifeform: decimation: start with the soviet mistake (circa mid-70s) of scrapping their own (interesting! e.g. trinary!) comp. research and deciding to copy western archs - e.g. pdp
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: consider benkay's point. if i have to wrap sample pcbs in benjamins to get them through customs, this ought to be considered a cost of doing business in Ar
asciilifeform: afaik folks get housed on company dime at drilling platform
asciilifeform: welfare folks 'pay' by having to live in specially designated concentration camps
asciilifeform: there's a reason, for example, why e.g. a spammer will 'work 16 hours a day to make money while he sleeps'
asciilifeform: d co-authors continue. Academic science is only one such market; other familiar examples include rock music, professional sports, and national politics. '
asciilifeform: 'One of various ways of organizing work that economists have identified, a tournament market "offers participants the chance of winning a big prize--an independent research career, tenure, a named chair, scientific renown, awards--through competition," writes Richard Freeman and co-authors. Tournament markets amplify "small differences in productivity into large differences in recognition and reward," Freeman an
asciilifeform carried a fat oscilloscope and ominous-looking crate with sample boards through u.s, german, romanian customs; nobody blinked an eye
asciilifeform: 'Avarus, Inc. (we, us, our) was incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware on September 20, 2010. The Company was originally organized as a blank check shell Company to investigate and acquire a target company or business seeking the perceived advantages of being a publicly held corporation.' << lol!
asciilifeform: burn a registered company and walk away and start a new one << interesting historical degenerate case: russia during lenin's 'NEP' - 20s - folks would close a firm immediately prior to tax day, open new one the day after with same assets
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: with 30k usd profit, it is not too adventurous a guess that polimedia does not house mpex ?
asciilifeform: coke market in the us would be like meth market << nope. bioreactor (aside from somebody having to jump the hurdle and produce the transgenic critter in the first place) is a considerably more cerebral undertaking than grignard reaction in a garage.
asciilifeform: e.g. impotence
asciilifeform: btc folks who expect to 'can have problems' from daring to demonetize the dollar should contemplate gedankenexperiment - what'd happen to a nation that 'demonetizes'... cocaine. (that is, establishes dirt-cheap production & distribution.) if your starfish doesn't quiver at the thought of the 'problems you can have' then...
asciilifeform: rectumprint.
asciilifeform: as described, for example, here - http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/anatomy-of-a-fusion-press-release
asciilifeform: easy target. but understand that u.s. academia is divided into pissant fiefdoms entirely like the climate chumpatron
asciilifeform: the next stage of pipeline for the ivy kids (employment, either directly in .gov, or the many quasi-private arms of the ussa hydra) follows the same formula.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they make it virtually impossible for a kid to flunk
asciilifeform: (as outlined in mp's essay on the subclasses)
asciilifeform: even more fun than the traditional compiler infector.
asciilifeform: think: variation on the ken thompson theme.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo dredging up VAXen also seemed improbable just a few years ago.
asciilifeform: old hardware - suddenly worth something. at least temporarily.
asciilifeform: the notion that 'microbe will eventually adapt to anything' is a bit simplistic.
asciilifeform: 'microsoft research' has nothing to do with the company's product pipeline
asciilifeform: chetty: mp is rather like a surgeon - if surgeon could cry, he could not work - somethinglikethat
asciilifeform: civilized man has to overcome his OD on coke, or reddit, or whatever, to make the jump.
asciilifeform: 'Whether because of its historical traditions or for some other reason, the idea of self-government, of equality before the law and of personal freedom--and the responsibility that goes with these--are almost completely incomprehensible to the Russian people...To the majority of the people the very word 'freedom' is synonymous with 'disorder' or the opportunity to indulge with impunity in some kind of antisocial
asciilifeform: to the folks who didn't get dinged, he stood for... order. the empire having its shit together in some form. etc
asciilifeform: problem, as seen in soviet example, is that you eventually run out of 'class enemies' and the meat grinder is still standing, well-oiled. then you have korolev doing time
asciilifeform: e.g. we don't know the ideal temperature for a living planet, but we can be pretty sure it isn't 10K
asciilifeform: of course, unphased by this. We know now that their strategy of psychological war turned out to be a correct one... To establish the injustice, the 'meanness' of the enemy in a moralistic war is every bit as important as winning a pitched battle in a hot war.'
asciilifeform: moral justice the legions ought to forsake the lands for which they had paid with their blood. Not only is the transference of conceptions of morality to the evaluation of historical events a phony method, but, if we recall, the moralists - the defeated European nations and the Americans, enemies of the USSR - that is to say, non-impartial moralists - their condemnations sound hollow indeed. The offenders, are,
asciilifeform: 'the Western blok... preferred to view the Eastern European nations as victims of Soviet aggression, ignoring the simple and manly fact (that would have been instantly understood by a Roman) that Soviet legions, without anyone's help, took possession of Eastern Europe via force of arms, answering aggression with aggression. And the Roman would an absurdity - he could not comprehend, in the name of what so-called
asciilifeform: these are 'compatible' with regulation cat.
asciilifeform: but hell only knows, he had other reasons to waste away than the idiots and their blather. dumped his girl shortly before found dead, too (her blog is linked somewhere in there)
asciilifeform: hah, he was despised by half of c.l.l. for 'self-important prick'
asciilifeform: the latter (smbx) keyboards were castratos compared to knight's
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: as i eventually found out - device in its simplest form (simply deny write) - is commercially available (if expensive, for reasons of golden toilet.)
asciilifeform: good gift for folks contemplating but not yet escaped from microshit.
asciilifeform: for those who don't - many (traditional spindle) drives still have wp jumpers. bring it out to a toggle.
asciilifeform: gotta implement the mass storage command stack on both ends - a bit of a bitch
asciilifeform: soviet import?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: imponade.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it isn't. that's a 2-layer composite photo
asciilifeform: decimation: you must really think about this to understand the implications. a single-address space machine must... actually work. every time - because it can in no sense be rebooted.
asciilifeform: (they should offer a pay service! i bet chumps would flood in)
asciilifeform: re: c64, obligatory jack tramiel: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/technology/jack-tramiel-a-pioneer-in-computers-dies-at-83.html
asciilifeform: (not compatible with massive c64 cult install base)
asciilifeform: sank the company, too
asciilifeform: amiga << nothing like c64. almost a real computer.
asciilifeform: i still remember the shock of encountering widgets that resembled actual comp but weren't programmable.
asciilifeform: we did get an actual computer - 'iskra' - shortly before bailing
asciilifeform: so far my favourite taleb is that link mp posted earlier
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: key stored in what: employee badge.
asciilifeform: before the telco 'network extender' gizmos were sold (incidentally, a scam - the telco still charges for minutes despite using the chump's own local wired bandwidth!) mitm-ing was demonstrated using 'software defined radio' (inexpensive board, does exactly what is printed on the crate)
asciilifeform: used to be that it took actual sweat to source 'miniature tower' radio components
asciilifeform finds u.s. uni professors hotlinking to images on his site; tempted to replace with goatse
asciilifeform: i suspect that: when they tape out a dud asic, they simply... take preorders longer.
asciilifeform: 'The new, thicker copper layer did resolve the heat build up from the current flow. Temp has been reduced by 20C with the new boards.' (from jborkl, quoting bfl co. lamenting its troubles.)
asciilifeform: (variation on the famous puzzle-joke where mathematicians were given piles of sticks to sort. they puttered around with algorithms - and then janitor comes, and simply stands the sticks up on table, picking them off longest first...)
asciilifeform: on top of this, the tracks, vias, components - occupy space
asciilifeform: some proggys even try to place components
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: gentoo is a source-only distro, where you get to twiddle compiler flags, wait a week for newly-provisioned machine to compile the universe, and - most annoyingly - suffer in the innermost circle of 'dependency hell' where you have to tear up the entire world to build xxxx
asciilifeform: decimation: carlyle, evola, ..., ..., limonov, moldy... if one were to spit out all the folks who complained about kinglessness, freenode will boot you for flooding
asciilifeform: what are they to do - sue the nice folks who put the thermite limpet in the turbine the night before?
asciilifeform: the bureaucrats simply bent under the weight of the seemingly inevitable
asciilifeform: decimation: u.s. software industry was essentially exempted from ordinary consumer liability by statute some time in the '80s
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: try using 'clitoral mouse' on the old toshibas, for example
asciilifeform: didn't know a thing about computers
asciilifeform: for some years, it was a new york (?) serial con man, who bought and sold corpses of old companies
asciilifeform: due for a really good ai << np-complete. good luck.
asciilifeform: used, wasn't particularly impressed
asciilifeform: ;;google mozart decomposing
asciilifeform experienced drowned computers one and only time - on 2nd floor of a gigantic office park. no prizes for guessing how
asciilifeform: 'But maybe "computer" is the wrong word. It's actually an iron box with a padlock. Also known as a computer whose security model is simple enough to understand and whose operating system is known completely enough to trust.'
asciilifeform: jborkl: 'tcpdump', 'wireshark', etc
asciilifeform: beauty is, you can now do experiment (vs gedankenexperiment) yourself, just need ~$100 and local computer junk shop
asciilifeform: a fine example, actually, of solving wrong engineering problem
asciilifeform: 'My Navrozov moment, of course, was when I approached one of the two - Sacco, I think - and attempted to have an intellectual discussion of this realization. The story is basically the same as Navrozov's, so it would be boring to repeat, but basically I came away with the feeling that I'd told someone his Sicilian grandmother liked to get drunk and fuck her own goats.'
asciilifeform: 'At some point during this period, however, I realized that the entire problem was a complete and utter pseudo-problem. ... So I am very confident that neither of these techniques, neither mine nor Sacco and Vanzetti's, has ever been used in practice. There is no need for them, there has never been any need for them, and there will never be any need for them. And this was quite obvious in 1993.'
asciilifeform: 'Sacco and Vanzetti came up with an entirely different solution to the slow-MMU problem, one which if I do say so myself was less imaginative than mine, but both more general and more practical. They published theirs in a real conference, received much acclaim for it, and I believe patented it, started a so-called company and eventually sold it to Microsoft.'
asciilifeform: more examples - anything to do with wavelets
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: something big about to go down << mp did mention preparing some new thing
asciilifeform: anyone who buys a berth on mp's 'we piss on patents' atomic battleship should give 'cyranose' a thought.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: i suggested it as 'coin' simply as thought experiment in generalizing the 'use-value' of btc. that is, material that cannot be confused with anything else (Hg, for instance, on top of being rather common, can be substituted with 'gallinstan' alloy. but you can't raise melting point of Ga by mixing in impurities - only lower it)
asciilifeform: btw this kind of thing is a schoolbook example of what 'xxxx can also have problems' means.
asciilifeform poor with good tools. not impossible.
asciilifeform: anyone who remembers school chemistry will understand that impurities lower melting point
asciilifeform: if you have two electrodes, put a current through it, while surrounded by electromagnet, it will move x cm up the ring in response to Y amps...
asciilifeform: ideal container would probably be a toroid, half-empty
asciilifeform: of course, resistor could be trivially exposed with frequency sweep / bode plot (skin effect on Ga blob != impedence of ordinary resistor)
asciilifeform: but in that case the ampoule could not be full. you must be able to tilt it, to expose electrode (perhaps a scammer simply placed a resistor there)
asciilifeform: (incidentally ampoule could include electrodes for testing conductivity
asciilifeform: so plenty of simple tests, once you pick a suitable container.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you can find me a eutectic solder that melts anywhere near 30C (but not liquid at room temp like Hg) i'll buy it right now.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: see kodak/silver relationship for example.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: in principle, it would make a pretty good 'low tech testable' precious metal. simply determine melting point.
asciilifeform: pgrewr: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9831727/Iran-unveils-finger-amputating-machine-for-use-on-thieves.html << adapt for your application
asciilifeform: announcement << i'll take the shot. mp to sell warehouses in Ar for btc.
asciilifeform: for a turdmeister, wielding the banhammer isn't really satisfying unless he imagines that he's adding heretics to an all-important 'index librorum prohibitorum'
asciilifeform: ;;google the camel has two humps
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: film lasts a good while, easy to copy and compare via low tech means
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: just gotta bring back antifuse. it doesnt really get much simpler than antifuse.
asciilifeform: one basic function in such a gadget is that it ought to be able to compare itself, via direct electrical wiring, to another one purporting to be identical.