People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.
I got an answer to one of my questions about e-gold’s safety. It
turns out the actual gold is held by a trust which
insulates it from any corporate liability. My main concern with the whole
concept had been that the company would go bankrupt and use the gold to pay
creditors, but now I’m reassured that there is no such danger.
I was also please to see that there is a provision by which trustees can be
removed if they are compromised by government action. Very thoughtful!
Lately I’ve been leaving Radio running on my PowerMac G4 at home, and
accessing it remotely from work via my cable modem. This morning I was
reminded of a disadvantage of this approach. Sometimes my cable modem
assigns me a new IP address, so I have to check my router’s status page
every morning. If I forget to do this (like today, for example) I won’t know
the new address and therefore won’t be able to access Radio!
It turns out there is a Tip Jar type service for people with e-gold accounts–it’s called Two-Cents-Worth. I’ve seen it used on the e-gold mailing list, but not really anywhere else.
The way it works is people can put a link like this one in their email, web page, etc.: http://two-cents-worth.com/?474846&EG. Someone who wants to make a donation follows the link, and can donate some amount of gold–the default is two centigrams, or .02 grams. So the name of the service is actually a little misleading, since that’s worth about 20 cents.
I’m watching the men’s figure skating event tonight, and there’s something I’ve been wondering about. All the Russian skaters whose homes have been mentioned turn out to live in the US. In fact, the guy skating now lives right here in Southern California. It seems silly to call people Russian skaters if they only maintain Russian citizenship to be on the Russian team in the Olympics.
What’s more, the American skaters often (usually?) have Russian coaches. This leads me to ask, why bother with silly national distinctions? Is it supposed to appeal to national pride? Personally, I’m going to feel more “national pride” towards a “Russian” from Lake Arrowhead (which I’ve visited many times) than towards an American from Michigan (which I’ve never visited).
PayPal’s IPO Woes Continue. The online payment company is facing new troubles in the form of a lawsuit and an order from the state of Louisiana to stop doing business there. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]
Louisiana is saying that PayPal is an unlicensed bank. Of course PayPal is not a bank, and that’s the whole point of the state’s action. Real banks see PayPal as competition, and are trying to use the government as a club to squash it.
I don’t personally have any sympathy for PayPal, which deserves to go out of business for they way they treat their customers. If the banks had any sense they would just wait for PayPal to fail naturally and then buy up what’s left in a year or two.
News.Com: EU OKs law for higher tax on Net sales. The law, applying to online sales of software and computer games, as well as to some radio and TV services, helps close a loophole that let Europeans avoid paying value added tax on products and services bought from non-EU Internet sites. [Tomalak’s Realm]
If I were a US company affected by this law I would simply continue making my software available for download (which the EU can’t stop). If any EU thugs complained I’d point out that my ancestors came to this country to get away from thugs like them, and it would be pretty silly of me to voluntarily subject myself to them now.
Audiovox Thera 1xRTT Pocket PC Phone exposed [PDABuzz.com]
“Thera” is a strange name for a product. It’s the volcano in the Aegean which blew up around 3500 years ago. Some archaeologists believe that it destroyed the Minoan civilization and started the Atlantis legend. So why would anybody want to name a product for something like that?
Child soldiers banned by UN law. A UN treaty comes into force banning children being drafted into
combat, in an effort to reduce the estimated 300,000 currently
fighting. [BBC News: world]
It’s worth pointing out that the child pictured in the article is holding his rifle in a safe direction with his finger off the trigger, thus demonstrating greater responsibility and education than most adult Hollywood actors.
Languages in the palm of your hand. A pocket-size translator could take the place of all your foreign
language phrasebooks when you go on holiday. [BBC News: sci/tech]
bq. Instead of thumbing through a dictionary, you just say a phrase in English, the device translates it and then repeats out loud in the foreign language in a robotic voice.
This sounds like the universal translator from Star Trek, and in fact it’s even called that. There’s one obvious weakness, though–if it can translate from English to the foreign language, what happens when the person you’re talking to answers? Is he supposed to have his own UT?
Greens Force Strategic Mine Out of Business. The world’s largest lanthanide mine in the Mojave Desert between Barstow, California and Las Vegas, Nevada was regulated out of business by twenty-nine local, state and federal agencies and by elected and appointed government officials.
The People’s Republic of China becomes the principal source of these strategic minerals. [Sierra Times]
The area where this mine was located is a barren wasteland.