News snippets for today: Dave Birch steps into the blogging world with Digital Money. Welcome! Dave is one of the grandfathers of FC, having led Consult Hyperion, spiritually at least, through a thousand and one conferences, work outs, contracts and so forth, all in their narrow field of technomoney and other things valuable.
Several people sent me references to this house that was erroneously valued at $400million. Now, such a blunder is just a typing mistake .. until the value gets fed into the budget, and the money gets spent before it is collected:
Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses $900,000.
Many people will look for many excuses in many strange corners ... but the answer is clear - don't spend money that doesn't exist. Corollary - use a real hard money system, not one based on promises. It won't happen again, I promise.
Dave points at bit-tech that checks the predictions of Bill Gates. Here's one:
What do you carry on your person now? Probably at least keys, identification, money, and a watch. Quite possibly you also carry credit cards, a checkbook, traveller’s checks, an address book, an appointment book, a notepad, reading material, a camera, a pocket tape recorder, a cellular phone, a pager, concert tickets, a map, a compass, a calculator, an electronic entry card, photographs, and perhaps a loud whistle to summon help.You’ll be able to keep all these and more in another information appliance we call the Wallet PC. It will be about the same size as a wallet, which means you’ll be able to carry it in your pocket or purse. It will display messages and schedules and also let you read or send electronics mail and faxes, monitor weather and stock reports, and play both simple and sophisticated games. At a meeting you might take notes, check your appointments, browse information if you’re bored, or choose from amongst thousands of easy-to-call-up photos of your kids.
Rather than holding paper currency, the new wallet will store unforgeable digital money...
Whether it happened like that or not, we'll leave others to judge. Or you can what Dave wrote.