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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
One of the joys of being a contractor is the complete lack of shame at leaving at 5pm, and being happy when asked to work later (aka get more money).
As a salaried worker I was easily pulled into working late hours as it was the status quo. In essence when you are salaried, you are owned, and will be frequently asked to work late, work weekends, and work from home at night. As a contractor, you will still get asked, but only when the reward for the company is worth the cost. As a salaried worker, the only cost for the extra time is your happiness, which isn't worth as much to them as you think.
The best jobs are ones where there is no expectation of hours though. This is where you have a significant stake in the outcome, such as an early employee or as an independent project. Where you are no longer getting paid for your time, but only for results.
Beyond the one fuzzy source that has been repeated my numerous media outlets, is there any evidence that this is actually going on? Any blogs where people are ranting about a specific company doing this?
It seems like a lot of people are up in arms about something that may not actually be a problem.
After a lot of experimenting on a wiki hosting service I run (editthis.info), I found that putting ads way at the bottom of content, and just putting one ad tended to work better than any other location. You have read all that you will read, and you don't mind being distracted to go off and see what an ad will lead you to (my guess).
There is a set of knowledge in the world. It is vast, but much of it has already been contributed to wikipedia. The knowledge of the world continues to grow, but I don't think at the rate that it is contributed to wikipedia.
With difficulty in making significant contributions dropping off, you would expect to see a drop off of new users (they really don't get rewarded enough for their efforts). Back in the day, you could contribute something meaningful that you know to wikipedia. Most likely now, someone has already put it in.
I am surprised they haven't also added a pay per article feature. I am very non-committal about subscriptions, but might fork over a buck to read one article.
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.