4 ms·
The one I'm surprised about is not the stars, but actually the bitcoin character. It's just a form of branding to me, and while I think there's interesting uses
by treve 10y ago
The one I'm surprised about is not the stars, but actually the bitcoin character. It's just a form of branding to me, and while I think there's interesting uses for blockchain technology, public interest seems to be a bit inflated. Plus that blockchain tech will likely outlive bitcoin itself.
- sqeaky 10y agoIt's not like there is some central Bitcoin company so what is the brand? Brands are generally owned by companies and are intellectual property in the eyes of governments.
- nerdponx 10y agoWhatever it is, it's likely to be short-lived and therefore a questionable addition to Unicode.
- vertex-four 10y agoUnicode doesn't just contain things that are in use now and will be in use forever. It contains characters that were in use in one computer system once, characters for dead languages, abstract symbols that the next generation will barely understand, and more. The Bitcoin symbol is used in textual documents today. It deserves to be in Unicode, or Unicode fails its goal of being able to encode any textual document.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoYes, there's already symbols for other dead currencies in there, for example.
- sqeaky 10y agoWhy do you think it will be short lived and on what scale is it short?
- nerdponx 10y agoAs other people said, blockchain technology will outlive bitcoin. In this case I am saying "short" to mean a decade or so. I expect Unicode to last much longer.
- sqeaky 10y agoI really don't understand the downvoting of an honest question. I am curious if he knows something I don't or maybe thinks short is some thing interesting like days or millions of years.
- munificent 10y agoBitcoin may be short lived, but documents talking about it will not. Linear B isn't exactly widely used in new documents today, but it's still useful to have glyphs for it so that anthropologists can use them in documents about it.
- nerdponx 10y agoThat is a good point.
- justinpombrio 10y agoIt's a currency. I bet that unicode has glyphs for even more obscure currencies.