Not necessarily $500 per pill but $500 for the blister pack, maybe 10 maybe 5 maybe 20. $500 for the course of the medication, unless it’s only 1 pill it’s a lot less per pill.
Very true, thanks for all the great info!
Having it strung on poles seems dangerous during winter though. Ice build up is enough to snap the electric lines, how could I be sure the glass fibre line would be up to the task? Besides running it in an expensive metal sheath or tying it to a steel wire of its own? Plus the poles are owned by the provincial government owned Manitoba Hydro so not as easy to get permission to piggy back on their poles...
I would have to look into it and see if there’s any dark fibre I can get access to close by to keep costs downC but burying it would probably be the safer option. Fibre is expensive to fix if a farmer clipped my line with an implement, that kinda thing does happen out here.
No real internet options outside of satellite internet out here for now, but the guys in the know have said to sit and wait. The large providers are working on rural solutions for smaller communities but I’m on a farm/ranch 8 miles from the closest town, 10 miles to the other two small ones. Closest major town is 50km/30 miles away.
The one provider out here has oversold their network to the point many customers complain about slow speeds and connections dropping. If Elon musks starlink ends up being good I’d happily use it, but I’m still having to wait and see right now. My cell phone personal hotspot tethering is all I have as an option. ADSL was good to me back in the 2000’s living at home with the parents but doesn’t have the range from the phone offices to reach me out here. My options are pretty limited and it sucks but the benefits of peace and quiet, large gardens, room for all my vehicles, my forge, shooting practice whenever I want, keeping whatever animal I want, and more. I’ve gone from a building my own watercooled computers and ranking in world guilds on WOW to working on vehicles, doing my own chainmail and scale mail, making my own knives and swords, and spending time with my dog. Most here would agree that it’s a positive change but I still have the techie itch and love having my computers performing exactly as I planned, the overclocking rush, and sailing those seven seas with broadband.
Taking a step back from being online all the time has been better, in many ways, but when I can get high speed again I so am lol.
Not in the USA friend I’m in central Canada. There’s only internet here at my house out in the country using my cell phone and a $700 cell booster. On a waiting list to get internet that supposed to be here sometime in the fall. (Looks outside at the winter snow). Cell service isn’t a guarantee out here. Not enough population to warrant the cost of an expansive network to provide service in areas it might not be used by anyone. Major cities and small towns have service, sure. Small towns all had phone service via telephone lines and banking systems can use that with slower modems(yeah the dial up bank card systems are still in place out here in places.)
I’ve looked into Elon musks star link, but waiting on the competition service in case I can bundle mine and my wife’s cell phones (along with the kids) with the internet to cut down on all the costs. If I can’t, so be it but waiting on the option.
The internet’s origins aren’t mysterious. Historically it’s a toss up between believing the military had it first for systems and remote locations or if the universities had the “real” internet first because non military people could use it. First was connected systems, then message boards, then websites, and so on til here we are. Shady players making bad apps and sites is an issue alright, but like you advise in not tossing money into shit coins, we also advise not tossing your personal info onto shady web services. DTA, Don’t Trust Anyone. My father also worked for 2 different phone companies in his life installing the equipment and repairing it, so I’ve gotten to see the physical hardware the internet in my area was running on, including the fibre. It’s pretty cool up close, gotta admit. But getting dirt cheap fibre optic ran to my house? No providers here will do it cheap. Closest place that will have fibre to tap into and bring my way is 50km ish away if there’s no dark fibre they can use closer to me to run a shorter distance. Even if they could tap into it ran down the nearby main highway that’s still a 12-13km run to me. Not exactly cheap, although I wish I was.
Being able to trade a currency like you suggest is invaluable to good communities. Right now people use cash or favours (IOU’s and the like). Cash and goods are useful in areas without internet(lots of that around me sadly).
The whole angle of “we don’t trust the powers that be so we’ll start our OWN currency! With hookers! And blackjack!” is almost noble, and I understand why you could want that. I find I can’t stand behind a system that has mysterious origins, players who manipulate values similar to the existing bullshit filled market, and currencies that have little applicable use in my neck of the woods. I’m honestly better off trading produce from my garden, wine or a beef than I am trying to trade in digital currency out here.
A culture of trust when the basis is anonymity seems to me to be very difficult. Ner-do-Wells like drug dealers and hitmen and human traffickers can work with such systems because its generally accepted in such situations that not only do you not need to know each other’s names that any issue with be instantly met with violence, usually deadly. And if your name becomes known, or details about you, everyone close to you is at risk as well. Not saying this is GOOD but as far as effective, well they continue this because it is.
Being online and anonymous makes trust hard. Most of us have been burned in real life multiple times and even trusting people we know well is a stretch. With tens, hundred of thousands or millions of “dollars” on the line, that trust gets harder and harder to give. With fiat currency and physical bank locations, we have ways to track down who wronged us. Our current currency system has its flaws but it’s accountability seems miles ahead. I dunno how to make crypto close, the same or better to be honest. Brick and mortar buildings like the banks for people to go to and do secure trusted transactions? Faces for the Karen’s to yell at when something goes wrong? Government backed wallets that have some level of force behind them should anyone mess with them? I don’t know. People thought MTGox was trustable due to the strength of the well known name and they got burned.
I remember when it seemed bitcoin was gonna make it and being accepted at gas pumps at some locations, and some bitcoin atms. But as you described they encountered problems and it’s kind of just disappeared. Had my big into crypto buddy touting that at the time but then never mentioned it when the problems crept up and they didn’t go widespread. I do think blockchain is interesting tech and can have good uses, in small doses. Airplane maintenance logs for example, being stored for all airports to see and update is one area it seems it could be great at.
But for currency, it seems lacklustre. Perhaps for the super savvy it can be a good money maker, but I can only say perhaps. I’ve only known a couple people in real life to delve into crypto and one lost his investment when the guy he worked with ran off with his second investment after returning the first to gain his confidence and the other makes grandiose claims of having “so much money” but never improves his real life situation with any of it over claims of needing it where it is to use for more trading or leverage or yadda yadda and always wanted me to give him just $10000 and I could expect so much returns. Yeah never gave him a red cent for him to lose.
I go to wsbets.win and look in on the apes and honestly hope for the best for them. Never met a single one of em, but hope they get some money out of the crooked system they’re playing against. I just want a fair playing field.
Been enjoying this discourse, it’s great finding someone “on the other side” and having it be civil and informative rather than the usual internet “kys you’re just on the other side of the sprectrum reeeee!” so for that, thanks! A few things, printing off crypto I also saw as ripe for fraud. If I print off the same bitcoin qr code/address/whatever for redemption by someone else, and print two of them and give them to two different people, the first one to redeem gets paid and the second guy gets screwed. Rather small amount of this happening I’m sure but it is a possibility to watch out for. Yes copying only the needed file for backup is all ya need, I was still lost in the memory of when my drives failed and I was able to simply slap the old drive with OS and data partitions back in my computer and fire it up like nothing happened. When that’s the case, yeah I strongly push a cloned drive for immediate recovery and progression to hard drive recovery tools to regain anything lost since the last backup. Having multiple drives with the same wallet or wallets on them can be hard to manage to make sure they’re all updated, keeping it simple like having two drives and copying to both is fairly easy.
People being lazy is a bad thing but when you want wide spread adoption, having it be hard and needing to be clever doesn’t get you adopted as fast or at all in some cases. These mindless sheep are easily mislead but still drive heavy dangerous cars because they made it easy to do so. Power steering, power brakes, automatic transmission, electric starter vs hand crank, power windows, all done to make life easier and as a result cars are quite popular. Older models that require manual shifting and that aforementioned hand crank are still around but far less popular. For a currency to be really useful you need it accepted everywhere. Bitcoin being like Discover charge isn’t a good thing.
Computers were once hard to use. I’m lucky and got to start using one when I was 4, but looking around now it’s the techies, gamers and those who need them who use computers. Everyone seems to think a cell phone is superior and while they’re wrong, popular opinion doesn’t require facts just a feeling of superiority. Unless digital currency is as easy as tapping your debit card or credit card and accepted everywhere across a country like fiat cash is, it will remain a niche.
Firstly, if the algorithms are flawed and they are the regulator, that means to most of us that the regulator is flawed. Same as current fiat grant you, but we’ve had thousands of years and trillions of transactions with fiat and it’s flaws are mostly understood. Explaining fraud and theft to someone is rather easy. Explaining proof of work crypto to someone who’s a complete newbie is much harder.
A government prohibiting the use and trade of an item is dealt with by the ruled over people getting mad enough to demand change or remove and replace those leaders. Revolutions have happened for less.
People using proof of work coins to heat their home and not care is their choice, perhaps the coins they mine will be valuable, perhaps not. I guess it’s like buying quarter lotto tickets. You don’t care if you win, you do it for the fun and if you win, bonus. But as far as heaters go, it’s the worst solution. Tying up that many resources for the heat output is like buying a national park to make a single box of tooth picks. A simple space heater is cheap, effective and shuts off when desired temp is reached, the miner is 24/7. The electricity to power the mining rig comes from somewhere be it coal plants, hydroelectric nuclear or solar, all of which have costs nevermind the copper and steel lines to connect everything. I’ve had to use electric heaters in my old house even with a gas furnace for main heat, I would have needed 4 or more mining rigs to keep my water from freezing rather than one easy to replace space heater. But at least they get some use out their mining rig I guess. Until summer when it becomes excess load on their A/C.
No one forcing us to use shit coins, this is true. I’m not using any. But how do you know which is a shit coin and which is the next bit coin? Average Joe doesn’t have time to sit on his phone or computer 24/7 researching and looking for scams.
Printing off your bitcoins for backup is an okay backup, but it completely erases the point of them in the first place, being a digital means of exchange. Cloning the hard drive for a backup is agreed the best option, that’s why when my drives failed I didn’t lose anything but a few recent files, I still had my old pre-upgrade drives and had backups of all the important things. It’s still like pulling teeth to get smaller businesses to even do that’s much for critical files sadly, speaking from experience. Hard drive recovery utilities are awesome but not failure proof, total agreement with you when it comes to backups.
But printing off a wallet and cloning a hard drive is another step average people aren’t willing to do. I get the impression you’re tech savvy, as an I but the average consumer is not. Most people want a computer to be like a fridge or a toaster. Plug it in, it works. Use whenever I want. Make my toast. Chill my milk. Load those memes. It’s not so much the coins fault as it is the coins flaw the time it requires more work to use properly. People are LAZY. Devices and services that aid them to be lazier do well. More intensified use of something falls to niche markets.
Government banning things doesn’t tend to work out well either. Alcohol prohibition failed miserably. The war on drugs is a joke and weed is legal here and in several us states as well as other countries. China has banned crypto currency. But the black market always thrives. Plutonium is banned because of its use for nuclear weapons and reactors, and because of the sheeples fear of such things they’re okay with the that’s. But for the previous examples, they keep drinking, smoking and mining crypto. Laws are only a barrier when enforced and most only stop honest criminals.
I don’t see crypto in current form changing form the better. Too useful for the traders and “supreme intellectuals” who see it as a way to remove government control from their lives, as they use it on government installed internet infrastructure. Too many people able to swindle and Ponzi scheme and cheat others for their own end to make its current incarnation perfect. You basically have to start from scratch, only now you have the albatross around your neck of all this mess that’s come before.
Sorry but I feel you missed a few things with this reply. First you say the algorithm is the regulation, but then you go on to talk about how the shit coins have flawed algorithms. You also address the long wait times and cost per transaction, thank you for your honesty and genuine intellectual approach to them. These are huge issues that require fixing for as you say this beta version.
Gold and silver could drop to zero as a currency but they haven’t totally lost value. My electronics can still be plated in the gold for corrosion resistance. My water blocks in my computer can be silver coated for thermal transfer. My gold can be turned into ear rings and bracelets and traded for a cow. My silver can burn melted and made into silver bullets in case my mother in law gets a little werewolfy. In their natural as is state, they have a use. And therefore a value. Crypto does not. It replaces a different currency, adds the value of ease of online and therefor global transactions, and some claim true anonymity. But the bitcoins only value is as a currency. It’s worth X USD. Convertible to your fiat of choice as well, but taking it out of wherever tends to require a fee. If you can even get it out.
I have friends trading coins on online markets, I’ve stayed out of that. Not going to say their experience is the same as everyone’s but I honestly got tired of listening to the bragging over some huge deals and the bitching over the losses, the pump and dumps, whale watching, movements at 3am, you name it. Plus all these coins are only increased in value when people buy them with either fiat currency from one nation or other, or with a different coin that was either purchased with again fiat or mined at great cost of electricity which is still having its bill paid in fiat. Very few self sustaining power plant based crypto mining facilities out there.
As for the “run off” part I’m referring to people who create then push a shit coin, get early adopters and people to invest, claiming high value and future speculation, then when they have enough money soaked, drain the value through their chosen method and leave everyone else holding the bag full of worthless shit coins. These situations do nothing to remove the Ponzi scheme look for a lot of crypto’s. Mark Cuban famously lost millions in crypto not that long ago, and there’s many other such cases but this is a comment not an essay and i don’t want this to be too long to ever read.
Lastly storing your crypto offline on a wallet on a hard drive in your physical possession. Great. Kinda like hoarding physical gold and silver, in your house. Except the precious metals may decay a few protons but still be there for 10000 years. I’ve had hard drives fail. Two within a month of each other(never buying Seagate again because of it, personal choice due to it pissing me off that much. Was my main computer running 2 drives, both purchased the same day.) People have accidentally lost their drives with their wallet, drive internals fail, solder joints crack, etc. It’s much less secure than a home vault or even a wall safe hidden behind grannies portrait.
To most of us, crypto simply feels like online stocks, with extra steps, and a few more headaches. Sure bank notes have serial numbers but 99% of us never care. An old farmer can give me 5 $20, i give 4 to a pot dealer, who spends one at 7/11, and each time even though the bill is traceable no one records the serial number or even cares. As long as it’s not a fake bill, it’s handed over and transaction done.
Indeed regulation can work both ways as we’ve all seen in the real world. But crypto regulated by its algorithms means is still regulated outside the control of the general user. Making up your own currency only works if other people find it useful to use. Most of us aren’t buying, trading or even using shit coins people make. There’s plenty of claims of usefulness and anonymity for various coins but as time goes on these get proven wrong. Gold was used because it had value other than just currency. Same with silver. Bartering works because the objects or service bartered has intrinsic value in and of themselves. The paper currency most of us use is fucked with by governments and shadow cabals, but it has the security of being useful anywhere in the country it’s issued, and generally slower change in purchasing power. Crypto can be worth a lot or at least something and be worthless when you wake up the next day. We’ve tarred and feathered and beheaded politicians and rulers in the past. Someone you’ve never met online who created a shit coin and ran off with the useful money is much harder to bring to that, ahem, special justice.
The problem with independent money is when things go south there’s no one to go to. I’m well aware of the corruption and lack of trust in the banks and the SEC but if you can bring proof forward shit can get done. If someone rips you off in bitcoin, you’re just SOL. There’s no regulator to report the bad exchange to. There’s no government to force an exchange to follow rules. MtGOX disappears overnight and thousands of people are out their coins and there’s nothing they can do about it. Traditionally speaking it’s only the threat of force that keeps people in line. Play by the agreed rules or we come take everything and throw you in prison. We need to make the “elites” follow this same ruleset if we really to be bound by it, and with that cash still works. Having an unregulated currency system fails for me because I know people are greedy assholes and take advantage wherever they can.
Reading through your reply I get the impression that crypto is really no better than made up money at Disney Land or Canadian Tire. They give you their own currency for use in their location only, it’s POSSIBLE to use it elsewhere if a vendor allows it, but not always possible or easy.
In the future a blockchain based currency might work for some, but as a one size fits all solution it falls down. It’s dependent on power, network connection, and people using it. The Amish, mennonites and hudderites are successful in North America and aren’t going away anytime soon. They don’t use this stuff but gladly take cash or will trade with you if your goods are worth it. Bartering is older than cash and will outlive it. You have chickens, I have wine. I can trade my wine for some of your chickens. I need a truck frame powdercoated, I can take a few bottles of wine and $50 to the nearby colony and get it done. On a global scale, it’s not as pleasant but trading a ship load of grain for a ship load of oil happens, the numbers on the screen honestly don’t matter. You’re not counting out bills anymore for large purchases, it’s just numbers on the spreadsheet saying it’s good to go. For small communities, cash works great and bartering can work even better. Crypto currency is a first world problem, solving it is a headache most don’t want to undertake. A supposedly secure system that you went to great lengths to explain why it’s not, developed and introduced by a hidden mystery figure, the “benefit” of a set number of coins only to have tons of shit coins and “satoshis” come later meaning it’s not truly limited, just for now it’s limited. Too many downsides and mysteries for me to sink my money into. Those who got rich, congrats. But it feels very tuplip-y to some of us.
It’s the ADHD instant gratification. I have friends who use it and won’t stop, they enjoy the rabbit hole of clicking and going though several with no real thinking or attachment.
Shit free-will, either I’ve been reading too much of your posts or you’ve been interacting with too many of us near-normals.... Your prose seems a bit more refined and easier for even a normie to understand with minimal internal repeating and restructuring. Don’t take this as an insult or anything, I just don’t want you to lose your touch. Your style was weird but damnit it was unique, special and an interesting read.
Invest in canning equipment. Jars, lids, rings, canner(hot water bath does most things, need a pressure canner for meats and low acid veggies), tongs, and some canning books for recipes. Canned potatoes, beats, pickles, carrots, relish, salsa, peaches, apple sauce, apple pie filling(great for pies or just heat it up and eat it on ice cream), rhubarb, chutney, saskatoons and tomatoes so far. They’ll keep for 2 years, and with a garden each year you replenish as you go. The jars are an investment, new lids you need new ones all the time or else have to use the old glass lids and rubber rings. You’ll also need coarse salt, pickling vinegar, sugar and lots of potable water. You can also make and can beef stew and chilli with a pressure canner, lots of videos on YouTube for recipes and tutorials.
Additional reading, look into Gauss guns and rail guns. Capacitors are your friend for emps and rail guns. https://m.imgur.com/gallery/GrAiE Above link is to a home built 27000 joule rail gun, with short clips of shot targets. Enjoy.
It was after it we built that the troubles came up. A collision with HMS Hawk left it troubled with a permanent 5 degree list, and they were blamed for it because even though boat rules, military is still priority over civilian. Other issues as well, but when you take damage your yard monkies can’t fix and hide? Time for some book cooking, some name swapping and an “oops”.
So are you thinking they used the “tragedy” as the plot to be rid of them, or was it a happy happenstance that they were onboard and they took the chance and used it to off them?
Wasn’t it insured for too small amount to cover everything though? Don’t get me wrong, I’m 99% positive they swapped Olympic and titanic cause of the previous damage to Olympic, the other ship was simply in the wrong place to take on the passengers, and no captain instantly slips into his dress uniform when woken up due to an iceberg collision. Still, it jogs the noggin why the insurance wasn’t enough to cover the loss.
These would be the same people who type a math problem into google instead of punching it into the calculators on their phone. The average person can’t tell you how their tv works, how a tradesman could possibly get a wall to be square while framing, or how an open differential on their car works. On the other end of the scale we have the people who 3d print their own parts, machine and lathe precision equipment, grow and can their own food and write books on various subjects. Smart people always have and always will make things work.
As for how the computer did it, all I needs to do is be a super fast at looking up a value on a table and plugging it into the waiting equation to give the necessary answer and if really advanced, move the controls to a predetermined angle to achieve desired change. All the calculations would have been done before hand, and double checked because people don’t trust new tech as far as they can throw it, it’s not like the computer needed to be some Star Trek system that monitors everything, comes up with equations to computer on its own via voice command.
In 1998 I was told by an Air Force pilot they were upgrading our CF-18’s computers from a 386 based board to (I believe it’s been over 20 years now) a pentium. If a 33mhz processor can handle real time tracking and radar locking with modern missiles when the system is built to be dedicated to that purpose, is a lower spec processor banging out some space nerds math problem really that hard to believe?
Once upon a time people could do math with a pencil and a piece of paper. And a computer doesn’t have to be able to download an app off the cloud to be useful at its assigned task. It’s a glorified calculator, they had analog computers for the battleship guns back in 1945 during WW2 that kept track of the number of shells fired and powder used per barrel to calculate and adjust for the barrel wear. You HONESTLY think the math for launch velocity and re-entry are so difficult you need an iPhone to do it for us? Sorry but that’s the weakest anti-moon landing argument there is. As for Skype being shit, it is but a lot can be done with almost unlimited means and preferential treatment. People with a T3 line in the 2000’s could do things people with lesser tech couldn’t. Nasa streaming audio and video data with a tv provider to broadcast it isn’t as hard as trying to get 4 kinds of windows to see each other’s files on the same network.
Suppository.... noted!