>> It showed how compound interest worked, but the idea that he would
>> sell all of his assets in order to be able to run the time machine to
>> get the money doesn't work. With that kind of money, he could buy
>> power plants, not just power. No reason to give up his wealth, but
>> it did allow for a great punch line.
>
>How much were his power company stocks worth two minutes after he
>switched on?
>
>How long will the world supply of uranium last?
>
>At the end of the story, does he still have the time machine, or...
If I remember correctly, he sold his extremely large portfolio (big
enough to be the cause for world wars), in order to buy enough energy
to run his time machine. No, it doesn't make sense. Or cents.
If the number of other realities is at least countably infinite (and it
most probably is uncountably infinite), then you can implement a scheme
where every version of you, for every coin lost will recover x coins,
where x is an arbitrary natural number.
This is not preying and I do not see any moral grounds not to use the
hilbertian hospitality...
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabík http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk |
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| Have you heard of something currently happening called "bitcoins"?
| This seems to me to be a bad idea unfolding into full bloom of its
| badness, including global computer crime gangs taking over your PC
| just to set it to work "mining" for new bitcoins for them, although
| I'm a teeny bit nervous about re-reading _Cryptonomicon_ in case
| bitcoins were its core concept. But actually it's just occurred to me
| that a major plot objective in the story is a very considerable
| quantity of gold - ordinary, non-interdimensional gold; so that's
| probably all right!
It's been a while since I read _Cryptonomicon_, but I seem to remember
that they /were/ aiming for some bitcoin-like electronic currency (*not*
user generated though) and the real gold was to back up the value of
this e-money, like the US used to do with Fort Knox.
--
Reverend Paul Colquhoun, ULC. http://andor.dropbear.id.au/~paulcol
Asking for technical help in newsgroups? Read this first:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm a teeny bit nervous about re-reading _Cryptonomicon_ in case
>> bitcoins were its core concept. But actually it's just occurred
>> to me that a major plot objective in the story is a very
>> considerable quantity of gold - ordinary, non-interdimensional
>> gold; so that's probably all right!
>
> Though part of the whole point was that the gold wasn't _ordinary_
> gold, or wasn't supposed to be... so that may sway your balance.
>
> Dave "you get three rereadings to decide which chapter is heavier
> or lighter" DeLaney
I understand that that -- "Solomonic gold"? -- was an element (pun
unintended) of the Baroque Cycle trilogy, which is set in the same
universe as, and well pre-dates, _Cryptonomicon_, but is there
anything in _Cryptonomicon_ itself that suggests that the large
cache of gold in question is anything other than bog-standard
Element 79?
-- wds
The first gizmos duplicated things only. After the story moves several
generations into the future, they have gizmos that can produce fresh food
and other perishables from an arrested prototype ("prote") and somewhere
they must have had devices for making "protes". The bosswife--the woman
who marries each generation of boss and dies young--is repeatedly re-
created from a prote. The story she tells, though, makes it sound like
she is the daughter of the family we meet at the beginning of the story,
so the ability to create protes must have been developed only a few years
after the gizmo.
One of many problems with the movie _Paycheck_
Mr Root showed some interest in the project iirc.
I didn't really get along with the Baroque Cyle books well enough to
see how well Stephenson mated them with _Cryptonomicon_
--
John Fairhurst
e: Jo...@johnsbooks.co.uk
w: http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk