asciilifeform: i don't think it is a mystery, to anyone even remotely connected with the sordid business, what it was that he meant.

asciilifeform: unless mr. 'i want to hire 30 great programmers tomorrow morning' wasn't writing from a psychiatric hospital, the parsimonious hypothesis is that he meant something other than inventors when said 'great programmers.'

asciilifeform: or otherwise 'can you play violin? don't know, i've never tried yet'

asciilifeform: and why would they want to work for you

asciilifeform: anyone wanting to hire 30 inventors needs his head checked

asciilifeform: imagine wanting to hire 30 'great mathematicians' tomorrow morning.

asciilifeform: ^ what definition of 'great programmer' portrays a creature you can even think of 'hire 30 tomorrow morning' of ?

asciilifeform: 'I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said "We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning."'

asciilifeform: and when do we let the great, e.g., bootblacks in ?

asciilifeform: paul graham << what the everliving fuck is a 'great programmer' anyway

asciilifeform: decimation: that cannot communicate by radio, homing pigeon, or narco-couriers with scrolls up their arses ?

asciilifeform: decimation: the planet is also split in half? and the halves end up in two separate universes ?

asciilifeform: (see thread: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=25-12-2014#960128 ) ☝︎

asciilifeform: 'what exactly is the point' << the point is that it isn't an 'arm.' and isn't a closed turd.

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: when you said 'vomit forth blocks' - sorta implied that one must delve into the protocol docs to make use of said vomit.

asciilifeform: so there it must sit.

asciilifeform: because, by definition, there will be no variation in it.

asciilifeform: in other words, everything that is a 'timeless' part of bitcoin - i.e. cannot ever change or hardfork - must be a working part of the client.

asciilifeform: an oscilloscope, maybe. but not tb.

asciilifeform: is it a proper tv ?

asciilifeform: every time you use it.

asciilifeform: if it asks you to set the vertical and horizontal scan frequencies manually, independently...

asciilifeform: say it's 1970 and you just bought a tv set.

asciilifeform: without having to open up the abdomen, insert them, and re-suture in the future.

asciilifeform: but all of the necessary 'hooks' should be there.

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: well in theory, yes. but go and try this exercise with traditional bitcoind.

asciilifeform: or when there's a gap in the usg shortwave jammers

asciilifeform: what if 'incoming' happens every six months, when the mail ships sail in ?

asciilifeform: classical bitcoind behaves very poorly if the assumption of always-on high speed net connection is violated.

asciilifeform: what if 'incoming' happens every four days, when the satellite drifts overhead ?

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: consider the usual apparatus that wants to know that 'it's been paid' without holding any secrets whatsoever.

asciilifeform: customary workarounds like importing a private key and then 'losing' it are idiotic.

asciilifeform: or it is unusable for a large number of extremely ordinary things.

asciilifeform: at the very least, one must be able to determine 'balance' of an arbitrary address.

asciilifeform: yes, this means that the traditional bitcoind does not entirely 'bitcoinate.'

asciilifeform: or crafting of perverse (but relayable) transactions

asciilifeform: including ones that involve arbitrary walks of blockchain data.

asciilifeform: i'd say - entails being usable for any application pertaining to bitcoin whatsoever.

asciilifeform: 'despised by terrorists!'

asciilifeform: let him get with the game.

asciilifeform: just the same as mr. spam, or naggum's stalkers, in that they would regularly insist that 'they're done with' him and the 'pit' he dwelled in - but seemed to structure their entire waking lives around frequenting his haunts and crapping out abuse

asciilifeform: one might say that they 'won.' likely, naggum became wormfood that much sooner than otherwise could have.

asciilifeform: they did their best to destroy the little corner of the net where naggum dwelled.

asciilifeform: it is because he dared to put psychopaths in their place. and so attracted at least half a dozen of these 'orbiters.'

asciilifeform: some folks i've introduced to herr naggum's writings turned their nose, mainly on account of these pieces

asciilifeform: ople react extremely hostilely to any feeling that somebody else tells them what to do and are unable to cope with the helplessness and powerlessness they feel after being told what to do, but this is not anybody else can fix for them.'

asciilifeform: 'it is _never_ politeness and courtesy these lunatics want. (If it were, they would simply prove the superiority of being polite and courteous.) They want _other_ people to be polite and courteous because _they_ do not want to feel humiliated or threatened, but who can tell what makes a deranged lunatic feel humiliated or threatened by just and proper criticism, especially by proxy as the worst of these outcasts do? These pe

asciilifeform: all the while spouting re: how 'they've moved on'

asciilifeform: these people orbit the folks they've latched onto - sometimes - for years.

asciilifeform: expect that he'll be with us for some time. see 'last psychiatrist' re: psychopaths with 'ego wounds'

asciilifeform: 'For us as the Reserve Bank... ...we'll have to figure out how we make money because the way we generate most of our revenue is through forms of seigniorage, people are willing to hold currency free of interest and that's how we make money...' ☟︎