Yes. Miners are needed to process transactions. However, this is incredibly unlikely - how would every single miner in the world stop working at the same time? Nuclear war? Even then, the Southern hemisphere would possibly escape much of the initial destruction, and - to be honest - the entire World would have much more important things to worry about than sending bitcoins!

USD: none. The only times I might have needed it is when travelling, and even then I'd tend to use Sterling or Euro cash or travellers cheques and some local currency, if I'm able to get it in the UK.

BTC: as much as I can avoid spending :-)

If that's the case it's probably a breach of copyright - there's nothing in the paper to indicate it has the same permissive license as bitcoin-the-software, and even without an explicit copyright symbol anything published is still protected by copyright - but if Satoshi were to try and enforce his rights it would mean "breaking cover". Maybe that's what the gaol is? Though I suspect it's just someone trying to make a barely-honest buck...

118 years on average. You might be luckier...

Many people here probably believe that the person working in a corner shop probably should understand, or at least make an effort to learn, about inflation and deflation. But the reality is that they don't, won't, and probably don't need to - yet they use cash all the time. It's kind of the same with bitcoin - we don't really need to know about deflation to use it. If we find stuff interesting we'll make an effort to learn about it, but a lot of economics doesn't have neat, easy answers. I find this interesting, but the more I learn the more I realise that there are huge disagreements about a lot of this stuff. There's an old joke about a politician asking how to get five different economic opinions, and being told to ask four different economists... :-)

The calculator I normally used has changed, to reflect the fact that most people these days are mining in pools. But it suggests that, if you were in a pool, you'd be earning about 0.01 BTC per day. On that basis, I'd strongly recommend pooled mining - my GPU gets me 340 million hashes a second, and I gave up trying to mine solo a couple of months ago (at which point it was estimated it would take me two weeks to receive 50 BTC).

Would it annoy you if I told you that I mined my first 50 BTC solo, with a quad-core CPU? :-) I used my puny 5870 (340 Mhash/s) to mine quite a few blocks solo, too. But those days are, as you say, sadly long gone :-(

Agreed, and the "New to BitCoin" thread you referenced in your first post is an attempt to be that guide. But this is all run by volunteers, and some things (many things!) aren't completed.

The questions you asked aren't necessarily simple, either (well, the second is: if someone tries to buy up all available bitcoins the price will skyrocket, and either they'll be successful and many people will end up very rich, or - more likely - they'll fail). The deflation question doesn't have such a simple answer, and it's entirely possible that several different views exist. What I can tell you is that 21 million bitcoins are divisible to eight decimal places, so there are - effectively - 2,100,000,000,000,000 "things" which mitigates - somewhat - the problem of lost wallets. I believe it may also be possible to change the number of decimal places.

Questions like yours help the process of building documentation move on. Hopefully someone will take this thread and update the "New to Bitcoin" thread, if they feel there's enough detail here to do so. If not, another post may draw out further detail. But these things do take time, as the people working on them are all volunteers.

I feel the need to appeal to as many people as possible, and I don't believe that dismissing a substantial part of the population as "out of touch with reality" is (a) going to achieve that, and (b) grounded in reality. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, and you are, of course, entitled to express it. It would be good, however, if you did it somewhere where it won't hinder people's perception of bitcoin or the bitcoin community. It's sad you feel we don't need to promote bitcoin - I strongly disagree with this. I want bitcoin to succeed, and I believe it stands more chance of doing this if we encourage people - all people - to use it. I'm not from a marketing department - or marketing background - either, but I believe that I need to play a role in promoting bitcoin if it's to succeed.

True, but artificially discouraging people, men or women, from using bitcoin - by belittling a group of people - hinders that, surely?

Look, if more people start using bitcoin we all benefit. If we discourage people - some people, many people, whatever - from using bitcoin we don't benefit. Presumably you don't sidle up to people at parties and say "don't use bitcoin, it's useless". But that's effectively what you - and other posters - are doing when you choose to sideline women. We have an opportunity here, an opportunity to see how we can make bitcoin and the community more attractive to women - we can take that opportunity, and benefit ourselves, or we can ignore it and lose that benefit. To me it's a no-brainer. It'd be like a website choosing not to be accessible to half their potential customers, except instead of one corporation suffering we all suffer.

Legislation and political correctness have nothing to do with it.

We're effectively ambassadors for a product - bitcoin. It's decentralised, and has no corporation behind it - no marketing department, no public relations team - just us. It falls to us to promote the product, and we can do it by either taking into consideration the need to appeal to and not alienate 50% of the population, or we can do it by ignoring women altogether and hoping that smarter, more mature individuals take up the reins before the supply of male adopters runs out.

There aren't going to be any laws to force us not to be chauvinist. There aren't going to be any regulations requiring us to be "politically correct". We need to take responsibility for promoting bitcoin, and we need to do it by taking responsibility for what we say and how we act.

Nope, PCI-E 1x should be fine - in theory! Being cautious, however, I'd suggest trying one out first if you can - unless the PCI -> PCI-E card is cheap enough to not matter if it doesn't work?

Luke, you might want to try Slush - Slush runs one of the largest "mining pools" and is either from or lives in the Czech Republic. I can't say whether Slush would be prepared to speak to a journalist (many bitcoin users like the anonymous/semi-anonymous nature of bitcoin and value their privacy) but it would be worth asking - an interview with Slush would be great!

What publication would this be in? Is it online? (i.e. will nosey people like me be able to read it? :-) )

But isn't PCI-X basically a fast PCI? It's parallel (like PCI), whereas PCI-express is serial.

I think your "mere observation" would be my "sweeping generalisation".

We have a golden opportunity here to learn and understand from someone who represents 50% of the population. We can choose to do that, or we can choose to stick to our prejudices and call them "observations". Personally, I'd like to see bitcoin grow and I don't believe that the way to do that is to alienate women. There are plenty of places online where we can maintain our prejudices without having to worry about the negative impact it may have on something we're trying to promote - I'd suggest we use those outlets for "humour" and save this one for mature discussion.

I had a quick look at the FAQ when this was first posted - it doesn't really go into the kind of detail I think we'd want as articles in the "New to BitCoin" thread. I think what we'd want, for the deflation question, is a summary of all the points raised in Hazek's thread.

The "What if someone bought up all the existing bitcoins" question could, however, probably be covered by rezin777's answer - there's not much we can really say about a sellers' market!

True! But worth it. It's a bit like learning languages - the first one (apart from your native language) is hard, but subsequent ones are easier. If you learn Linux you'll pick up transferable skills that will stand you in good stead if you have to use another Unix-variant (including OS X), or even something unrelated (if such beasts still exist).

Incidentally, you could always install Linux as a virtual machine, using VMWare or VirtualBox, to play around with before you commit your rig to Linux.

No. It's about what I'd expect. I'm actually getting (very) slightly more than I'm used to with Slush's pool, but the (voluntary) fee I'm paying is half as much.

Sure, as difficulty has gone up payouts have gone down. I used to mine solo and get 50 BTC every four days or so. These days I mine as part of a pool and am lucky to get 1 BTC per day - I'm probably nearer 0.8 BTC/day.

But the point remains: however much you're getting, what you need to do is work out whether you're making a profit. Back when I was mining solo 1 BTC was worth only 0.5 USD - I was making $25 every four days, or $6.25 per day. Right now 1 BTC is worth around 8 USD - I'm making $6.40 per day. The income you get from the pool isn't the important part - what's important is actual profit.

Edit: my example isn't as clear as it could be - I'm looking at income in BTC against income in USD (or local currency). You need to also consider the expenses - power consumption etc - but as that's fairly fixed in my case I've left it out of my example.

Well, I'm around 340 Mhash/s. But Chucksta is right - you need to look at your own income and outgoings to make the call.

Good question! I'd imagine it's because the developers are overworked and underpaid!

I'm not sure how practical digital signatures would be in the short term, as Thawte etc will charge for them - but hopefully someone nearer the issue than me can comment.

Regarding hashes, that should be pretty easy to implement - but I'd imagine it's time that's the problem. I don't suppose you'd be able to volunteer to help out the devs with this?