14 Percent Gamers Are Americans — Fourteen percent of Americans use a computer or console to play a video game at last five hours per week — and that doesn’t include those who use mobile devices.
Get Ready For Bitcoin
Get Ready For Bitcoin — Expect to see stories about the bitcoin in the old general media.
Online businesses are starting to use this digital currency because it dodges credit card fees and goes a long way in eliminating payment fraud.
Unlike a fiat currency such as the dollar or euro, bitcoins are mined like gold except that instead of a crusty old guy with a mule wielding a pick they are found by math geniuses using computers.
Each bitcoin transaction involves data called “blocks” each of which contain just a little bit of meaningless random information. The miners take all the data in the transaction, shuffle the random part and find a “hash” which are mathematical processes that are easy to reproduce but impossible to reverse and hard to predict. This means that it is more expensive to counterfeit them than to try to find them the right way, as counterfeiters would have to account for more data.
They are backed “exclusively by code” as per the Bitcoin Foundation.
By design there is never more than 21 million bit coins. New, more difficult to hack, hashes replace the older ones. At some point the system will stop creating new coins and the miners will be out of business.
Note, there is no government regulation or oversight.
Get Ready For Bitcoin
Doubt though you may it appears to work. Over 70 exchanges for bitcoins can now be found online. It is on these that you can get your bitcoins for buying. Merchants, of course, can simply acquire them by accepting them for goods or services.
To use bitcoins, a merchant can site up an account with an exchange such as BitPay which will convert the money to dollars and direct deposit it into the businesses bank account. It charges a processing fee starting at .99 percent which is much less than a credit card.
Here is some more information about bitcoins.
Prediction number 2: Expect to see governments based on fiat currency start attacking bitcoins.
Hat tip Entrepreneur magazine
Get Ready For Bitcoin
Link Of The Day
And this is why people are clueless about why their lives are getting harder.
Hat tip Tom C
Cryptowit
By William W. Lawrence Sr
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Answer to yesterday’s puzzle: Happy Birthday, Bill Sr. It’s a shame Hoover was your first president.
Amity Shlaes
Exiled From Academia
Exiled From Academia — Mary Grabar, Ph.D., founder of Dissident Prof, (www.dissidentprof.com) interview six of her colleagues who had been “exiled” professionally and socially from academia for ideas deemed heretical by the radicals who are now running things.
She compiled them in Exiled: Stories from Conservative and Moderate Professors Who Have Been Ridiculed, Ostracized, Marginalized, Demonized, and Frozen Out.
At least someone has the guts to speak out. And why do we taxpayers give these university honchos such rich lifestyles?
Exiled From Academia
License Plates For Paratroopers, Merchant Mariners
License Plates For Paratroopers, Merchant Mariners — The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) is now offering license plates for members and veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces who have served with a U.S. Military Airborne Unit or as a World War II Merchant Mariner, reports state Rep. Jim Cox (R-129).
The new license plates for members of a U.S. Military Airborne Unit feature images of jump and glider wings, and the plates for Merchant Mariners features an image of the Merchant Marine emblem.
For information about how to get one visit here.
License Plates For Paratroopers, Merchant Mariners
Cryptowit
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Answer to yesterday’s puzzle: But winter lingering chills the lap of May.
Oliver Goldsmith
Kids Still Like Radio
Kids Still Like Radio — The most popular form of listening to music for those ages 13 through 35 remains old-fashioned AM/FM radio with 24 percent citing it as their primary means of doing so. Internet radio is second at 23 percent, followed by digital files — like those you’d find on an iPod — at 15 percent, on-demand services at 14 percent, CDs at just 9 percent and, satellite at 5 percent. Ten percent cited other.
Kids Still Like Radio
Omnibit Of The Day
The diamond engagement ring tradition was started by Archduke Maximillian of Austria in 1477 when he slipped a diamond ring on the third finger of Mary of Burgundy’s left hand. Over 80 percent of first-time brides now receive a diamond engagement ring.
Philadelphia Inquirer Still In Decline
The latest Alliance for Audited Media report puts the print circulation of The Philadelphia Inquirer at just 184,827 with its digital circulation at 67,958 and branded editions at 54,048 for a total of circulation of 306,832. This is a drop of 18,458 from last March.
The area the Inquirer covers has a population of 5.77 million. Even including the digital readers that’s not a real good penetration.
In its heyday, the Inky’s print circulation was over a half million.
Philadelphia Inquirer Still In Decline