"The fundamental theories on which the modern science of political economy is based are these:
That under primitive conditions men lived and live by barter"
The basic premise, that barter was (and is) by which 'primitive' (whatever that is) live, has been thoroughly debunked by contemporary anthropologists of money. David Graeber's 'Debt: The first 5000 years" is a must read for anyone interested in the topic of theory of money from the anthroological (i.e., empirical) perspective:
This is the typical comment where preconceptions are so strong that they ignore, and even go literally against, the evidence at hand. In this case, the news is precisely about the Indian regulator standing against the wealthy lobbyist (who happens to be an American company, by the way). Talking about how corrupt countries are, or how corrupt they are perceived to be, I wonder if the same result would take place in the US.
Legally? Going by whose laws? The legitimate owners of all that wealth are the indigenous inhabitants of the territory it was extracted from by invaders. According to indigenous law, it is definitively NOT legally owned by Spain.
Me too. It would be cleaner, unpolluted, less bloody, and the native cultures would probably be blossoming and making interesting stuff by combining their knowledge with outside influences. Too bad most of them were exterminated and dispossessed (the galleon being just one instance of that dispossession), and too bad they continue to be institutionally and structurally marginalised, decimated, and dispossessed.
Empire which was revoked due to being an illegitimate and genocidal regime. Your argument suggests they should be allowed to re-steal now what they would have stolen back then.
Everyone should remember that the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos while reading this article. Even the title is propagandistic in style "...can fly safely over U.S. skies"
The tone is admittedly aggressive, but his feet are way more in the ground than those of the authors of the article. What those guys are doing is essentially illegal.
How is that distinction relevant? I want my data not to be with NSA as much as I want it not to be with hackers or marketers. In some ways, even moreso.
That's just being consistent with the reality of the Bitcoin market. BTC-e, whatever its structure, is one of the main Bitcoin exchanges, and as such it is necessary that it is represented in the index, else the index would present a distorted picture of the real market.
This is clearly not the place to ask this question about mining. This is a thread about a software development on a whole different side of Bitcoin. If you are genuinely curious about the theme of your question, and not just interested in derailing threads, you are very welcome to educate yourself at bitcointalk, the main Bitcoin forum. There have been thousands -if not millions- of man hours in thinking, development, research and debate about the topics you enquire about. Head there and find the answers, and if still in doubt don't be afraid to ask (on an appropriate thread).
Every single Bitcoin news thread here at Hacker News is hijacked by some for of another of negativity. Every single one, top comment is always negative. The day Paypal announced its first approaches to Bitcoin, the top comment was about how someone was resented with Bitpay for some unrelated reason.
Although especially noticeable with Bitcoin, it is in general a prominent flaw of HN, the top comment is always something negative. Maybe its because users here feel thay are smarter by trashing stuff and dont want to be caught liking the wrong stuff, so they upvote whatever negative comment is gaining momentum.
Parent in this case, by the way, is wrong. Blockchain.info is a remarkably well designed and implemented site, if not fully consistent with Bitcoin's spirit, pretty close to it.