one last time: it doesn't matter what participants of your poll think.
the only thing that should matter in making decisions on how to change the bitcoin protocol, or if it is needed at all, should be the hashing majority.
setting up some meeting on a desert in las Vegas, or wherever, where a bunch of guys who consider themselves the elite of bitcoin decide how to change the protocol, and maybe even (god, I hope not) how to push it through, without the people noticing - shame on you. that's all I have to say

it's cool. cannot imagine using it for my real life, but it's cool :-)

these  are some pretty clear thesis.
now prove them, as a scientist should before developing a system to satisfy them.
I'd actually like to see at least one proof that increasing the block size is going to make the bitcoin world anyhow better, from what we have now.

So, you've pointed out that I derailed the thread into a non-technical discussion, therefore I am a troll, but now you are proposing to get us back to politics?
No thank you. I'm done with you.

You want it technical? No problem.
Please tell, if you know, me how long one EC_verify operation takes on your PC?

I disagree.
IMO it's very honest - it is as much honest, as you want to get from me.
One more level of my honesty up, and I would need to start swearing

I'm sure 4 years ago I was also thinking that my internet speed would be going up, along with my CPU speed.
But it didn't, so if I was Saotoshi I would likely review that targets now.
And since he is not here anymore, your guessing of whether he'd be voting to increase the block size now, or not, is as good as mine.
And even if he would, his vote only counts as much as he can hash - that's the rules he designed, himself

Since Satoshi is gone, everybody has a right to interpret his ideas in their own way.
For me, the biggest achievement of Bitcoin is that it managed to get the money out from a control of governments, using P2P decentralization along with the hashing.
Today when I read that the lead developer does not consider decentralization as particularly important and he even does not care about what the miners think of his ideas to change the protocol - for me, it's like betraying Satoshi's ideas.
Though I must honestly add that (unlike Gavin) I did not know the guy, so maybe indeed he wanted to invent a more secure way of doing a visa/paypal transactions...

And I don't see an option for "It will stay in the geeks' mode, because the core devs will betray Satoshi's ideas for a corporation's 40 silvers, while the people's (hashing) power will stand up to them, in order to protect the actual values behind their Bitcoins".

Though, even then, I barely ever participate in polls that have more than a Yes/No answer.

That is where the "Treshold" parameter was supposed to come handy.

Unless I misunderstood your problem?

It's funny how people believe that it is not possible for all the governments to do it, though they have no question whatsoever whether their own government (the one that they elected) would do it, as soon as it gets a chance

Please, for your own sake, stop proving to us how incompetent you are in predicting governments' intentions.

Obviously they wont call it "a law against running a node" - they will just shut down your node saying that it was being a part of a global money laundering syndicate, or whatever terrorism sponsoring related, and so if you are lucky, you will be able to leave the prison yet before you die.

They won't even need to change a single law in order to shut you down; their interpretation of what kind of evil you are doing running a node without exporting an API for their censorship app, will be just enough.

No. Because if I win, you won't be able to pay up anymore.

Plus, I don't bet on things which I am against, because this would create a conflict of interests inside me, and unlike some people, I do have problems with such.

I know, but please note that it does not imply at all that the value of our bitcoins would go down then - I'd rather say that it would go up, like BTCUSD rate went up on MtGox, after they seized their Dwolla account. And like drugs got more expensive, after they had been banned.

Moreover, a theory that the commerce is very afraid of the possibility, pretty well suits to a theory that the commerce might just corrupt the devs, so they would help to make bitcoin protocol as the government requires; centralized and with a built in censorship mechanisms.

Whether every government - this I don't know.
But I am sure the one you have over your head, would be one of the firsts..

EDIT:
But I think essentially, yes.
Because every government wants to have control over what you do with your money.
Because money is power and they surely prefer to keep the power for themselves.

Only because running a bittorrent client does not require you do own a data center.
But whoever had to have a data-center and was found supporting a P2P sharing, has likely been shut down already or will be shut down in a near future.
Not to mention that they even go after the poor people, just to make punishing them as an example to others.

No reason to assume that the same thing would not happen to bitcoin, if we let it happen by centralizing the infrastructure.
And the reason is always the same: they want to steal your money, though to make it sound right, they call it either a tax or a copyright fee.

So  what if one day the requirement becomes "you must have a government issued license to run a full node"?

You don't think that the governments would never do it to bitcoin, if they could, do you?

You're talking bullshit, man. Transaction fees are at the very core of the bitcoin protocol, so don't tell me that bitcoin was designed with free transactions in mind.
If you make the transactions free forever and this will centralized the infrastructure - how will it be different from what a paypal is today?
How are you going to prevent people running huge bitcoin nodes from getting arrested in Spain, or just killed without a trial in Pakistan, by US authorities or a different mafia?

Obviously. Read through this topic carefully, instead of just barking around like a rabid chihuahua, and you will find at least a few good ideas.
But they won't get a chance to really develop and built the infrastructure, as long as the transactions are free. So forcing transactions to stay free is probably the best strategy to kill these so needed innovations; and I am old enough to suspect that it might not be a coincidence, but an agenda at work.

I am an asshole, because Gavin, after being pointed out that his neutrality in the matter is at least questionable brought up an argument of his family member passing away, and I dared to call it silly?

Well, if such a behavior falls under a definition of being an asshole, then maybe I am one - whatever.
But it still doesn't change the fact, that in my opinion there is something seriously wrong with the development of this project.
While the community expects the dev team to solve the scalability problem, the lead developer just makes an announcement that he already made the decisions along with all the other important people from the community and they decided that instead of addressing the scalability issue, while there is still time, they are only going to make it worse, and they will do it as soon as possible. And before it happens, they are also going to lobby against implementing any alternative ways of addressing this issue... hell, they are going to pretend that it isn't even possible to solve it otherwise.

Thank you though for giving me the opportunity to present the various arguments, even though by your definition I obviously belong to the ones who don't care