On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 10:40:10 -0800, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:

On 2/15/26 08:55, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:11:51 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid>

wrote:

On Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:19:59 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

"A penny's worth of better algorithm is worth a million dollars
worth of better hardware."
-- gus baird

Was that back when programmers were being paid pennies to program
computers worth millions of dollars?

Yes, as opposed today when programmers are paid pennies to write
programs run on millions of computers each worth only a few dollars.

Then shouldn't the "penny" be adjusted for inflation?

Yes but the US Penny is being eliminated due to cost. Last I read was

about

4.6 cents to make each penny. And it is now mostly zinc so not a
copper's worth.

That doesn't answer the question: shouldn't the number of pennies
programmers are paid be adjusted for inflation? May it's reached a
nickle by now?

Nickles, BTW, cost 17 cents to produce. Don't tell Trump.

The adjustment to a post-penny America is going wierdly, as might be
expected in a country run by petulant 5-year-olds whose planning
abilities are lacking. I currently am living with two systems:

1. Small stores, which (at least locally) are acting as if nothing has
changed.
2. The supermarket, which is rounding all pennies /down/ before giving
change.

The latter still takes pennies; presumably, these eventually reach a
Bank, which then issues them to stores that still use them.

Interestingly, when I used Bing, the articles on "rounding" all used
the normal rounding: down for 1,2,6,7 and up for 3,4,8,9. Of course, I
/am/ in Seattle, where things are sometimes a bit ... strange.

An article on another business that converted to the same rounding as
the QFC gave as /their/ reason that so few of their transactions were
in cash that they could easily stand the loss. And that is one
solution: everyone convert to using a card of one sort or another --
the problem being, of course, that not everyone /has/ a card (or a
card that can be used to buy whatever the user wishes, as opposed to a
gummint card restricted to, say, food and a few other items).
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 10:48:51 -0800, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:

I doubt that but then I started with the C=64 which was about $200
dollars plus a floppy disk drive at about $210. The floppy was good to
store about 161 kilobytes
and a programmer really had use assembler to get anything done. We got
the first
boot block viruses and had anti-virus programs. Some publishers of
programs got
infected. Modernised C=64s with extra memory and maybe accelerators

are, I

believe, net-capable. Some compatible drives may be available. But
they still so many
years later have active programmers doing demonstration that other

people

enjoy. The manual was misprinted and it contained several code
sequences to be
used that simply did not work but it was still the most popular single >computer
model ever produced.

I still remember reading an article in (IIRC) BYTE pointing out that
cost of a then-current small computer had dropped to the price of a
common new car -- $5000.

Cars, of course, common or not, have gone up since then. Computers,
which specs nobody even dreamed of back then, have dropped. A lot.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

I still remember reading an article in (IIRC) BYTE pointing out that
cost of a then-current small computer had dropped to the price of a
common new car -- $5000.

Cars, of course, common or not, have gone up since then. Computers,
which specs nobody even dreamed of back then, have dropped. A lot.

Futurists predictions don't always work out right, but I think in then
event they wash out.

We didn't get electricity too cheap to meter, but we did get long distance service too cheap to meter. Car stereos and television sets are too cheap
for thieves to even bother with them now. But now people are stealing
tampons and toothpaste.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2/15/26 1:40 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:

On 2/15/26 08:55, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:11:51 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=ÿ <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:19:59 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

"A penny's worth of better algorithm is worth a million dollars
ÿ worth of better hardware."
ÿÿÿÿÿ -- gus baird

Was that back when programmers were being paid pennies to program
computers worth millions of dollars?

Yes, as opposed today when programmers are paid pennies to write
programs run on millions of computers each worth only a few dollars.

Then shouldn't the "penny" be adjusted for inflation?

ÿÿÿÿYes but the US Penny is being eliminated due to cost. Last I read
was about
ÿÿÿ 4.6 cents to make each penny.ÿ And it is now mostly zinc so not a copper's worth.

Whatever it costs to make, this little blurb has gotten through my
mental media filters to mildly annoy me[1]. The way the media I've seen
tosses this out there[2], it's presented as a self-evident fact that a
penny should never cost more than 1 cent to make.

Should it cost less than 10 cents to make a dime? Less than a dollar to
make a dollar bill?

And if a penny gets used 10 times, is it worth 10 cents? If it gets used
100 times, is it worth a dollar?

And how much "should" it cost to make a nation's currency secure from counterfeiting, duplication, etc?

Tony
[1] Only mildly annoyed, and even some of that annoyance is the fact
that this slipped through my filters.
[2] Not you - just using this opportunity to jump in.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:46 -0500, Tony Nance wrote:

Should it cost less than 10 cents to make a dime? Less than a dollar
to make a dollar bill?

One would hope so. Otherwise the companies making the currency end up
being richer than the entire countries that are paying them to make
that currency.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:46 -0500, Tony Nance wrote:

Should it cost less than 10 cents to make a dime? Less than a dollar
to make a dollar bill?

One would hope so. Otherwise the companies making the currency end up
being richer than the entire countries that are paying them to make
that currency.

That's what happened in Zimbabwe.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2/18/26 16:05, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:46 -0500, Tony Nance wrote:

Should it cost less than 10 cents to make a dime? Less than a dollar
to make a dollar bill?

One would hope so. Otherwise the companies making the currency end up
being richer than the entire countries that are paying them to make
that currency.

That's what happened in Zimbabwe.
--scott

Once Rome slipped away from the copper standard it began its decline.
Should have hired it out to the US Mint. We used to print some other nations currency...

bliss


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 17/02/2026 04:11, Cryptoengineer wrote:

Ryk Spoor, (aka Sea Wasp) used to be a regular here. He still posts
on FB and his blog. Yesterday he posted an entry of interest on this
topic

Another AI Post -- on Assumptions and the Future https://seawasp.dreamwidth.org/642712.html

Its worth a look.

Yes. A quick read with interesting questions. My immediate thought was
of _I, Robot_ the Isaac Asimov short stories.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:28:31 -0800, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:

On 2/18/26 16:05, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:46 -0500, Tony Nance wrote:

Should it cost less than 10 cents to make a dime? Less than a dollar
to make a dollar bill?

One would hope so. Otherwise the companies making the currency end up
being richer than the entire countries that are paying them to make
that currency.

That's what happened in Zimbabwe.
--scott

Once Rome slipped away from the copper standard it began its decline.
Should have hired it out to the US Mint. We used to print some other
nations currency...

The <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa_thaler> is produced
by the Austrian mint (among others) and is used in a lot more places
than I thought before reading that article, apparently always dated
1780. Yet both Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman Empire have been gone
for quite some time.

I first learned of it when taking Arabic while in the Army. It was the
coin used by Beduins, and the Arabic "dullar" (long U) came, we were
told, directly from /Thaler/, not "dollar" (which itself comes from --
you guessed it -- /Thaler/).
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-02-19, Ted Nolan <tednolan> <ted@loft.tnolan.com> wrote:

I believe France still prints (and somewhat manages) the currency of
a number of its former colonies.

I'm pretty sure the German Bundesdruckerei prints the banknotes for
any number of countries, although neither it nor the central banks
concerned seem eager to publish details.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Bobbie Sellers wrote:

On 2/18/26 16:05, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=ÿ <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:19:46 -0500, Tony Nance wrote:

Should it cost less than 10 cents to make a dime? Less than a dollar
to make a dollar bill?

One would hope so. Otherwise the companies making the currency end up
being richer than the entire countries that are paying them to make
that currency.

That's what happened in Zimbabwe.
--scott

ÿÿÿÿOnce Rome slipped away from the copper standard it began its decline.

One of the most despised emperors, Domitian, actually reestablished the currency in the 80s and 90s. The prosperity of the empire under the
"five good emperors" owed a lot to his reform.

Well, that and the vast amount of loot Trajan acquired in his conquests.

ÿÿÿÿShould have hired it out to the US Mint.ÿ We used to print some other nations currency...

Ah, the American Banknote Company, founded in 1795 and still extant
despite a recent bankruptcy. They no longer print banknotes, however.

There were a number of amusing scandals around the ABC, not involving nefarious activity by the company, but by people acting in its name.
After all, who wouldn't trust a well-dressed rep of the ABC?

William Hyde


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:56:14 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber wrote:

I'm pretty sure the German Bundesdruckerei prints the banknotes for
any number of countries, although neither it nor the central banks
concerned seem eager to publish details.

I wonder how a business like that gets new customers ...

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2/19/2026 9:56 PM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:56:14 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber wrote:

I'm pretty sure the German Bundesdruckerei prints the banknotes for
any number of countries, although neither it nor the central banks
concerned seem eager to publish details.

I wonder how a business like that gets new customers ...

There are always new revolutions and coups....

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 07:59:21 -0800, Paul S Person
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

<forgot something>

The <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa_thaler> is produced
by the Austrian mint (among others) and is used in a lot more places
than I thought before reading that article, apparently always dated
1780. Yet both Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman Empire have been gone
for quite some time.

For those who think the cost of minting a penny has anything to do
with it's usefulness or whether it should continue to be minted:
the Maria Theresa is solid silver. Even if it's economic value is
equal to that of the amount of silver in it, the cost of making it
will be more than that.

Keep in mind that, originally, many of the words used for coins were
measures of /weight/. It is not necessary to go back to BC and refer
to the talent; the British /pound/ was originally a pound of sterling
silver.

The original coins were the given weight of the given material; they
cost more than that to make; but, at least in theory, they were
convenient because they did not have to be weighed, the official
stamping guaranteed the weight.

Of course, forgery, coin-clipping, adulteration, and other financial
crimes followed, if not immediately, then quite soon.

This would have been one of the concerns behind ensuring correct
weights and measures, which exists to this day in some contexts.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 05:56:16 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D?Oliveiro
<ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:56:14 -0000 (UTC), Christian Weisgerber wrote:

I'm pretty sure the German Bundesdruckerei prints the banknotes for
any number of countries, although neither it nor the central banks
concerned seem eager to publish details.

I wonder how a business like that gets new customers ...

Those in the business are, no doubt, well aware of such services.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 15/02/2026 16:55, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:11:51 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?= <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:19:59 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

"A penny's worth of better algorithm is worth a million dollars
worth of better hardware."
-- gus baird

Was that back when programmers were being paid pennies to program
computers worth millions of dollars?

Yes, as opposed today when programmers are paid pennies to write
programs run on millions of computers each worth only a few dollars.

Then shouldn't the "penny" be adjusted for inflation?

Code review alone costs more nowadays...

Charles Stross's fixup _Accelerando_ eventually
imagines planets converted entirely to computing
matter, probably operating as optimally as
possible, but there is reasonable doubt that
it is doing anything useful. Doubt only, because
living humans are no longer in the Solar System -
so how could they tell?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 15/02/2026 18:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:

On 2/15/26 08:55, Paul S Person wrote:

On Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:11:51 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

Lawrence =?iso-8859-13?q?D=FFOliveiro?=ÿ <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 14 Feb 2026 12:19:59 -0500 (EST), Scott Dorsey wrote:

"A penny's worth of better algorithm is worth a million dollars
ÿ worth of better hardware."
ÿÿÿÿÿ -- gus baird

Was that back when programmers were being paid pennies to program
computers worth millions of dollars?

Yes, as opposed today when programmers are paid pennies to write
programs run on millions of computers each worth only a few dollars.

Then shouldn't the "penny" be adjusted for inflation?

ÿÿÿÿYes but the US Penny is being eliminated due to cost. Last I read
was about
ÿÿÿ 4.6 cents to make each penny.ÿ And it is now mostly zinc so not a copper's worth.

This comes up in Terry ptpratchett's comedy
fantasy novel, _Making Money_.

Summary and spoiler: A fantasy city reforms
the currency by inventing banknotes.

Along the way, the reluctant bank manager
meets the craftsmen who produce his metal
money, some of which indeed costs more than
its face value to make. This isn't treated
as mad, but it is held up as a paradox.

I suppose in the old days in the real world,
value resided in actual metal, and a coin design
represented a statement that the coin actually
contained the right amount of the right metal.
Unless, as pointed out, someone trimmed some
off the edges.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.11
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)