asciilifeform: (that 'lance mine.' there's a vietnamese film, of a parade, 1970s, where merry cadets march around with... them. presumably spoils of the old war.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: works better from safe distance << not everybody gets the luxury of a safe distance. some folks have to make do with, e.g. -
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the horror with which nearly every reader (who wrote in) reacted to that piece, is indicative of the true depths of the hole we are in.
asciilifeform: that was sorta the point of the piece (and the whole fscking site...)
asciilifeform: this is sorta like using alley cat as illustration of the biology of felis silverstris
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: somewhat tangentially, i notice that your illustrative examples of the ragged and starving are always grlz.
asciilifeform: lol, in wash. dc. you can see... hobos, with smartPnohes.
asciilifeform: and know quite a few others who feasted likewise.
asciilifeform: as a teenager, i was kept in lavish supply hardware-wise just from what nearby (us) office parks dumped.
asciilifeform: so, missing ingredient is brain (or giving a damn)
asciilifeform: yes, viet cong had to fill bamboo stalks with half-dead batteries to power a radio. but the average shaved ape today is drowning in cheap hardware.
asciilifeform: innocent of the resources to get a spare disk << india? zimbabwe?
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: if you want the license, visit a used book store, buy the question set, memorize, pony up the fee. at no point will you need to use brain.
asciilifeform: but it isn't hard to see how it could have been.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: US amateur radio licensing << there is an exam, multiple choice, concerning basic physics and law (as it pertains to radio in usa). the questions, if i recall, are... published. just like the joke that is u.s. 'citizenship test.'
asciilifeform: perhaps, unless one is trained zoologist.
asciilifeform: one could argue that 'we' ought to still take an interest in these lost souls, if only to prevent them from ending as fuel, stoking chumpatron
asciilifeform: i suppose a definition is unnecessary - folks who have a poor enough grasp of the mechanics, of both varieties, will soon lose interest in btc and fade away
asciilifeform: e.g. does a fellow who read the bitcoind src, satoshi paper, understood mostly - but then pisses away his stash into chumpatrons, 'competence' ?
asciilifeform: would be interesting to define 'bitcoin competence'
asciilifeform: somewhere there lives an answer to this question. but i've a dump truck to move.
asciilifeform: it doesn't rotate freely in its pedestal - only twists. along any axis.
asciilifeform: 'spaceball' is a beautiful thing. not to be confused with trackball
asciilifeform: i've yet to meet one that would take seriously the idea of using a 'spaceball' for control, in place of the nonsensical double mini-joystick (inherited from model cars!)
