[TAG] Fwd: Change your life with this New Program

[Ben Okopnik]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 09:28:49AM -0700, Mike Orr wrote:
> Some advice from STONER.
 
Mike, you should know better than to take advice from stoners; all they
want to know is where their next joint is coming from. It would also be
very handy if you could 'X' out the spammer's addresses and other
identifying info; we really don't want to *support* their business
model.

> Their FAQ says they have a Zero Tolerance Policy toward spam.  "We
> have not tolerate spam.  We will disabled the account."

They'll disable their own account? Oh, goody. An _auto da fe_ of sorts -
except what they're preaching is Moronism... for which they _should_ be
burned at the stake.
 
> Supposedly you sign up with them for a low $11 fee, then you get $4
> for each new member you refer, or $2 for each indirect referral.
> That's funny because they accept only e-gold and they pay into your
> e-gold account, and e-gold is denominated in weight not dollars.  So
> how can they guarantee dollar amounts when the exchange rate changes
> and each e-gold broker charges a different rate?  

I don't want to play the devil's advocate, but that's a quibble that's
easy to overcome. The missing phrase is "converted at that day's rate" -
at which point, dollars (or any other convertible currency) make sense.

> Not only that, they
> have prices like $1.0, what currency is that?  

Almost any currency, as long as you decide to round the hundredths up to
the nearest tenth.

> The
> only currency with one digit after the decimal point was in Philip K
> Dick's "Time Out of Joint", where the money is plastic wafers with
> units like 7,2.

("Time Out of Joint"? Are we back to stoners again? Sounds like a
description of the "low" between two highs.)

Lots of sci-fi novels use the "credit" as a future monetary unit - and I
recall several that use "tenths" as small change. A quick search reveals
Iain Banks' "Consider Phlebas", Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series,
Clifford D. Simak in his "So Bright the Vision", Cordwainer Smith
(several stories in "The Best of Cordwainer Smith")... there's many
more. I believe the point is that, when you have either a very basic
monetary system (e.g., "pieces of eight" of New Spain, etc.) *OR* a very
stable one in which the small commodities are taken for granted
(presumably, the future), you don't need very much granularity in the
coinage.


-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *