Adding opportunity cost and renting cost isn't double counting.
Opportunity cost is the foregone block rewards that you lose because you didn't submit your blocks, because you were holding them hoping to build a long enough chain to double spend. When you fail, that reward that you would have earned is gone forever.
Renting cost is the actual $ outlay that it costs you to rent the hash power necessary to perform the attack.
Let me start with - I agree with you. It is infuriating - to normal people like us.
But when faced with circumstances such as this - where one is inclined to say "why don't they spend that money on X instead?" - I find it useful to reflect on how organisations, and especially government organisations, work. Feel free to ignore this if you already understand and are just "venting" (quite rightfully I'd add), but what follows would be my "explain like I'm five" for why this sort of thing not only happens, but is almost guaranteed to happen.
See, the thing is, they aren't "spending money on this" in the sense that you or I would, say, spend money on lunch - ie. we have a pot of money, and we choose to take $10 out and buy lunch with it, leaving $10 less to spend on everything else.
The reality is that they have multiple pots of money, and each pot of money is only allowed to be spent on some category of expenditure. It'd be like if we had a bank account each for food, rent, transportation, clothing, utilities, etc, and you were only allowed to spend from each separate account accordingly. Now, when you got paid you put a proportion of your salary into each account - in proportions that you get to set annually. You can't move money between accounts - at best at the end of the year you can take everything that's left over and re-allocate it as a lump sum according to the rules.
Now let's stretch the analogy further - instead of you managing everything yourself, imagine if you were merely one person managing one account, and other people (say, the rest of your family) individually managed each account. Imagine the annual negotiation for doing the apportionment of the monthly income.
Now imagine that you get a personal "allowance" for managing that account, and the size of the allowance is related to the proportion of the total budget that the account encompasses - only fair, given that more money equals more responsibility, right? How do you think that would change the tone of the annual budgeting process?
What we have here in the above tortured analogy is probably a reasonable best case example of budget and monetary management in a big organisation. You can easily make it worse - say, money left over at the end of the year? Your "automatic" starting point for budgetary negotiation next year drops by that amount, for example.
Anyway, back to the point. They aren't "spending the money" as such. It's not like someone had the budget of the entire MTA sitting there and asked themselves "What should I do with this money - should I pay a lawyer to send a copyright letter to this artist, or should I pay someone to clean up some graffiti?"
What they have is a legal department staffed with X people, many of whom are mandatory to have available on staff for when something comes up. But they also have to do something with their days. They are paid regardless of what they do - be it write threatening letters, go to court, negotiate contracts, or browse hacker news. But their boss will definitely notice if they aren't doing something. And the boss' boss will notice too, eventually.
So maybe this kind of nonsense is a warning signal that the legal department is over-staffed and some over-zealous member got bored and decided that this was a better use of their time than writing long-winded HN posts. And maybe this will get the attention of the higher-ups, who might ask the right questions, such as "Are we over-staffed in Legal?" And maybe the legal department budget gets cut by one FTE and that allocation can be spread elsewhere. So maybe the year after next when the maintenance division asks for another graffiti crew, they'll get it.
It's not unbelievable at all (the admittance, not the act, to clarify). In fact I'd say it's rather refreshing.
Firstly, these people work for Tesla. They don't work for Elon Musk.
Hoping it's not just me, but there is no way I'm lying to the cops (corporate cops, criminal cops, federal cops, whatever) to protect my CEO. Especially if I'm directly asked "Did you* do X" (* where "you" means "Tesla CEO"). Double-especially in this case where the "X" is "not Y" and the person doing "Y" actively avoided you making sure they did "not Y".
If it's my job to make sure my Boss doesn't do something illegal, and he actively circumvents my ability to do my job, damn straight I'm rolling over to the Feds.
IANAL, and I'm not a huge fan of copyright (life plus infinity anyone?), but I disagree with you here.
Seems to me that the judge grossly misused the 4 aspects of the copyright text.
Transformative doesn't apply to the use of the work, it applies to the work itself.
There is no "good faith" use defence against copyright infringement.
The "factual" nature of the photo is a red herring. Yes, the photo is "factual" in the sense that you could go to the same spot, with the same camera, on the same day of the year, and take a photo with the same settings and create a photo with incredibly similar characteristics. That would be non-infringing, because of the "factual" nature of the work. That the work is a photo of the real world doesn't make it immune to copyright.
Previous publication does nothing to diminish copyright.
I also disagree with the "didn't hurt the market" argument here. Thing is, AFAICT, that website is part of the market for the photo. Furthermore, that the website didn't onsell the photo is irrelevant - the website is the copyright infringement.
I think you're misunderstanding the meaning behind a 51% attack?
An honest network participant will accept the chain with the largest accumulated proof of work. This is necessary to resolve forks of the chain, which are a natural occurrence.
A 51% attack means that the attacker can create a chain with more work than the rest of the network.
The idea that you can say "we require 60%" makes no sense by itself - you have to say what you actually mean in the context of a competitive and adversarial distributed proof of work blockchain network...
Maybe you have some ideas how to avoid history-rewriting attacks, in which case you should write a white-paper and launch your own sh1tcoin or ICO (only half joking).
Shame it wasn't available last year when I bought my current phone. Last year there really wasn't anything truly worthy to be called a successor to the Z3 compact.
> or 2) immediately transfer the funds out in which case you're still rate limited by the root chain.
That's in there.
> 12. The method of claim 11, further comprising: performing, by the first user device, a respective virtual currency transaction using each of the plurality of decrypted third user secondary wallet private keys to transfer the association of predefined amounts of the virtual currency associated with respective third user secondary wallets to the first user primary wallet.
So I'm not sure how this is supposed to "expedite" anything.
I absolutely loved my Sony Z3 Compact exactly for that reason. Was happy to sacrifice fullHD screen for an all-day phone that was still fully functional. I was really disappointed to discover that, when it was time to upgrade, that line had been discontinued.
It's tied, but indirectly. Completion of chores properly is obviously required for allowance to be received. But it was important to us to not give the impression that this was "pay for work done". Rather, the work has to get done, the payment is for doing it properly and without complaint (ie. to save my and my wife's sanity).
But the important bits are:
1. The job gets done always. There is not an option for the child to say "keep your $2, I'd rather watch TV today."
2. If the job isn't done right, the child has to re-do or otherwise complete the job.
3. Complaints about the job, or failure to do the job promptly (ie. nagging), lead to deductions in allowance, but #1 still applies.
4. The size of the allowance and the size/number of chores are not directly related.
We also give the kids the option to change chores (within reason) - because the allowance isn't tied to specific chores. As they get older, they get more responsibility (more and/or more complex chores) but also more allowance.
Like I said, it seems to work well for us. The chores range from feeding the cats to doing a load of washing to helping cook dinner. They quickly learn that complaining about chores is a no-win situation, and accept that it's simply a part of week to week life.
Opportunity cost is the foregone block rewards that you lose because you didn't submit your blocks, because you were holding them hoping to build a long enough chain to double spend. When you fail, that reward that you would have earned is gone forever.
Renting cost is the actual $ outlay that it costs you to rent the hash power necessary to perform the attack.