If there's auto-update, it should certainly be rolled out gradually.

You definitely don't want to tempt an attacker with the chance to cripple everyone else, while they attempt their 51% attack!

The power to deprecate old versions is already available to the network as a whole, since each node can refuse to connect to instances running an outdated version of the protocol. The network is where that power belongs - not with the developers, although developers of course can influence it by releasing new versions that are important enough to the network that it becomes worth deprecating older versions.

Auto-update is all fun and games until an update contains a vulnerability or a show-stopper bug. Sooner or later, this WILL happen.

Good software hygiene requires keeping control over what is being installed on your computer, and when.

Just reading the vibes - and there's a suspicious lack of "credible articles" to the contrary.

People are doing SEPA withdrawals in Euros, because MtGox's dwolla withdrawals are causing problems for many.

Flatter started really well, but gradually they made everything more and more complicated.

Even that's not a good thing. If you issue a "message warning" to users every time there's an update available, users will soon get upgrade fatigue and may miss urgent updates.

By all means display a warning when a problem has been found and fixed. But an update notification should never be "in the user's face" if the update offers only increased functionality or cosmetic changes.

I understand what you're saying, but it's missing the point to think that an auto-update is OK because it securely guarantees an upgrade to a specific official binary.

If the auto-update somehow installs an official binary that has malicious behavior, it might reach 51% adoption very quickly. If people update by hand, the adoption rate is much slower and there's time for a frantic re-release if a catastrophic problem is discovered, before adoption reaches 51%.

Yeah, like the rogue bad guy would push a "major version" rather than labelling it a "minor bug fix"!

Anyone who would run any type of Bitcoin software with auto-update enabled doesn't understand what they're dealing with.

You have just over one ten-thousandth of all the BTC that will ever be issued!

Whatever my code libraries use is what I use. Nowadays, that seems to be JSON more often than not.

But YAML is great. Even CSV can be made usable.

(I think the current rally is due to new users coming to Bitcoin because they've heard about Satoshi Dice. Nothing more, nothing less.)

As for the Euro, the stories are obviously exaggerated. The Greeks and Spaniards do not fear holding Euro notes, because there's no difference in value between a Euro note spent in Germany and one spent in Greece or Spain. What they do fear is for the transactions in their Greek and Spanish bank accounts being limited, or for their bank account balances being forcibly converted into "New Euros" or Drachmas or whatever. But to protect against that, it's sufficient to hold Euro banknotes under the mattress.

Well that's a difficult call. There's historical precedent for gold being confiscated, and there's historical precedent for land being confiscated.

If it were me, I'd probably hang on to the real estate, simply because it avoids the expenses you will incur by selling real estate and buying gold.

Here's my attempt:

elliptic-curve-in-dc-0.2.8

*original source is here

If you want to cover something up, you would need to use a faster-acting attack than cancer!

For what it's worth, a partnership is not an incorporated entity. Perhaps you are thinking of a limited liability partnership (LLP).

These people are Papercashs. Bitcoin virgins. Fiat users. Central Bank apologists. Notewavers. Tree-squashers. Oldtimers. Checkwriters. PayPal tragics. Visabois. Dollar worshippers.

But most of all they are Future Bitcoin Users.

Oh I'm not advocating that they should accept bets that they may not be able to pay off. Just that if they were better capitalized, they could set a limit that is conservative (will probably never need to be dynamically reduced) yet high enough to engage the big players.

Unless I'm missing something in the maths of the dynamic limit, it's going to harm the business if the way it works isn't changed.

Here's a bug. If a question has two answers pending, it's not possible to reject the second pending answer (clicking the "reject" button produces a "Whoops, we just had a server error" message.

For example, I can't reject answer number 27 here:
http://bitquestion.com/question/10

I think this is dangerous for the house, because the limit dynamically reduces immediately after any large payout.

Therefore, most of the largest bets are going to be ones that the house loses.

I have a couple of comments.

- The "Post a comment" button would work better if it was placed after the last comment, i.e. in the place where the comment would appear

- The phrase "Without author's intervention, this question will auto-accept" would make more sense if the wording was changed to "Without author's intervention, this answer will be auto-accepted", and moved from the question box to the box of the answer to which it applies. Also, you could put that phrase into italics or into smaller type, so that it doesn't look like part of the text posted by the user.

Overall, the site seems to work smoothly.