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from the who-said-fake-money-would-never-be-worth-anything dept.
Thanks in part to Argentina's volatile financial markets, bitcoins are helping people there cut out the banks and government entirely in their financial transactions:
That afternoon, a plump 48-year-old musician was one of several customers to drop by the rented room. A German customer had paid the musician in Bitcoin for some freelance compositions, and the musician needed to turn them into dollars. Castiglione [the bitcoin moneychanger] joked about the corruption of Argentine politics as he peeled off five $100 bills, which he was trading for a little more than 1.5 Bitcoins, and gave them to his client. The musician did not hand over anything in return; before showing up, he had transferred the Bitcoins — in essence, digital tokens that exist only as entries in a digital ledger — from his Bitcoin address to Castiglione’s. Had the German client instead sent euros to a bank in Argentina, the musician would have been required to fill out a form to receive payment and, as a result of the country’s currency controls, sacrificed roughly 30 percent of his earnings to change his euros into pesos. Bitcoin makes it easier to move money the other way too. The day before, the owner of a small manufacturing company bought $20,000 worth of Bitcoin from Castiglione in order to get his money to the United States, where he needed to pay a vendor, a transaction far easier and less expensive than moving funds through Argentine banks.
Do any Solentils manage their transactions in bitcoin? What are your experiences?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2015, @11:18PM
I down-modded it as a troll post because using that font in conjunction with a wall of text is a deliberate attempt to annoy readers.
The content might be true, but the intent of the presentation is explicitly anti-social.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:02AM
You can magically read people's minds to determine their intent simply because they use a certain font?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:29AM
> You can magically read people's minds to determine their intent simply because they use a certain font?
Maybe you like it when someone pokes you in the eye, that doesn't make it any less anti-social.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:57AM
You haven't explained how you can read someone's mind. And now you're making a serious accusation over a font choice that you don't like.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @02:17AM
> You haven't explained how you can read someone's mind.
If you think font choice does not communicate information then you are just one of those geektards who insists on an excessively literal worldview.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @04:32AM
Please don't use the "tard" suffix. It is very offensive and demeaning to those who suffer from mental disabilities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:05AM
Make me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @08:03AM
Make me.
I think you mean "Like me."
But that's ok, we understand.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:26AM
If you feel that seeing that font is like poking in your eye, you should immediately see a psychiatrist.
Or at least configure your browser to use a different fixed-width font.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:08PM
It isn't the font face it's the font spacing.
If only there were a difference between a wall of text and the typical use of monospaced fonts. There is one poster, who I haven't noticed for a while, who has garnered frequent complaints for his insistence on using monospacing. This isn't some weird aberration and if you think the poster did not intend to create discomfort, then you haven't read the words of the post. As ethanol said, it was an artistic decision.
if, on the other hand, your sole point is to complain about the analogy, well then rah-rah-rah for your opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @05:24PM
Maybe the point was to use what he thinks is an annoying font to express how annoying he thinks Bitcoin is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @01:32AM
Maybe you like it when someone pokes you in the eye, that doesn't make it any less anti-social.
You are right, it usually makes them ophthalmologists.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:25AM
Think artistically, dude. It's seriously deep. The point is that the user was trying to share the essence, quite elegantly in this limited medium, of just how annoying the process really was. They did it literally with their word choice and symbolically with the wall of monospace text and repetition of words representing not only the amount and appearance of data but also the tedium.
Nerds have a well-deserved reputation of being oblivious to those kinds of personal expressions. Thanks for being a champion of the status-quo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:32AM
Just because it has artistic intention does not make it a positive contribution.
If I poke you in the eye and say "hey man, you just got to groove with it!" that doesn't make it acceptable.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:53AM
You just poked me in the eye with your bellicose and censorist rhetoric.
MODS! MODS! Ban that guy! He's being a dick! I'm gonna withdraw my subscription and leave if you don't ban that guy! Somebody said something online that was offensive to ME! MODS!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @12:56AM
You are perfectly within your rights to believe that.
The fact that you can't differentiate between form and content says everything necessary about your argument.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:11AM
The only thing that says about me is that I'm not a web developer. And you win, I lose at being a web developer. Congratulations!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:33AM
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
You need to separate your content from its presentation!
(Score: 2) by black6host on Saturday May 02 2015, @02:28AM
The difference here is that the OP was addressing the topic at hand. You are not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @02:47AM
It appears that artistic quality is in the eye of the beholder.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @02:55AM
Presentation is content.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @04:20AM
No it isn't. Presentation is done using CSS. Content is within the semantic HTML markup.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:15AM
Are you using Firefox or some other buggy browser? I'm using Chrome and it looks like the normal Arial or Helvetica or whatever font family that's used for all of the comments.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:19AM
> Are you using Firefox or some other buggy browser? I'm using Chrome and it looks like the normal Arial or Helvetica
If chrome renders the <tt> tag with a proportional font, then chrome is the buggy browser.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @01:37AM
This is a perfect example of why the moderator's name should be shown next to the moderation. We should know exactly who is engaging in abusive moderation.
It's also a perfect example of why we need some way for the entire community, ACs included, to flag moderators who abuse the privilege. We need to put an end to abusive moderation.
Downmodding a comment based on the use of a markup tag that's allowed by SoylentNews is abusive beyond belief.
Abusive moderators who engage in abusive moderation need to never again moderate, using any account.
The abusive moderation is more harmful than that comment and its font could ever be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @02:06AM
> Downmodding a comment based on the use of a markup tag that's allowed by SoylentNews is abusive beyond belief.
Downmodding a comment based on words that are allowed by solyentnews is abusive beyond belief.
The fact that it is "allowed" does not make it inherently above judgment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @03:50AM
It's getting clearer every day that the moderation system here should probably be abolished. It's abused much more often than it's used beneficially.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @04:04AM
It's getting clearer every day that the moderation system here should probably be abolished. It's abused much more often than it's used beneficially.
As one of the people who modded the wall of text down I agree.
The fact that it is modded +5 is unequivocal proof that the moderation system is being abused.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @04:17AM
You should lose your moderating privileges forever for modding down a comment that's insightful, informative, relevant and worth reading.
Abusive moderation should not be tolerated.
You have admitted to committing abusive moderation.
You should never be allowed to moderate ever again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @06:07AM
> You should lose your moderating privileges forever for modding down a comment that's insightful, informative, relevant and worth reading.
Sez you, the commentard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @03:25PM
Its been agreed that we need meta-moderation for a long time now. Apparently its a bitch to implement though, otherwise why don't we have it yet? There's definitely a lot of moderation abuse going on, most if it is of the "Asshole talking shit to me, take that!" kind and the "How dare you suggest my view of reality is false! Those so-called "facts" are nothing but a liberal conspiracy!" kind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2015, @09:26PM
It shouldn't be hard to do. For each comment that has been moderated, there needs to be a tiny icon that, when clicked, expands a list of the users who moderated the comment, and how they moderated it. Next to each moderation is a button with the text "Report Abuse". When clicked by anyone, including anonymous users, the user who engaged in the moderation is never allowed to moderate again. Moderation should be a one-mistake-you're-done-forever situation. Even a single abusive moderation should be grounds for a user never being allowed to moderate ever again. And it's better to revoke the privileges of a good moderator than it is to allow a bad moderator to make even one abusive moderation.