North Korea's faulty Nuclear program is more worrying than any risk of attack. They don't have the money to properly maintain a nuclear program even with the majority of the country's income going towards the military. I'm not an expert on nuclear weapons, but I am on powerplants and such which require somewhat similar levels of procedural maintance which would drain the entirety of NK's resources. The risk of North Korea flubbing a missile due to improper care, and causing a mess that ends up leaking somewhere in an ocean is far more likely than anything ever reaching the US. That would probably do far more damage, as the fisheries probably support the US in some way or another. That said, the Raegan era ICBM defense strategies would be more than a match for North Korea's abilities. South Korea would be the only viable target for them, which would be stupid beyond belief given their proximity. Its not North Korea's abilities that make them the slighest bit freightening. A local boyscout troop could probably fund more destruction than them, its the fact that no one can tell how bright their leaders actually are.

*counts to see how many watchlist buzzwords there are in this post*

There are a lot of assumptions in general. Would one be able to secure reliable internet in a third world country, would one be able to secure a computer in a third world country, does the person have a disposable income, ie if they lost their investment would it be castrophic or just inconvient. A little bit of ingenuity and one could secure a physical asset. I think there are a lot more assumptions required in order for that person to be able to obtain Bitcoins in the first place.

All of that asside however is where my first response comes in. Gold is an assured store of wealth. Bitcoin may have more potential, but its not assured. So, assuming the person in the 3rd world country A. had the money to spare to buy Bitcoins, B. Had the proper means to obtain the Bitcoins (owning a computer and internet) C. would not be devestated if their Bitcoins became obsolete, lost all value, or became unusuable, I'd say go with Bitcoins. Else, I'd say go with Gold. (Actually Silver is an even better investment) but thats not the question, so I'd say in this particular situation, go with gold.


*edit*


Do you know anything about gold's historical price? It was under $300 per oz in 2002. It hit $1800 per oz a few years ago, and has been around $1200-1300 per oz recently. It has doubled in value in a single year.

If you could only invest in one, I'd say gold. As much as I love Bitcoin, its a technology in its infancy, theres no telling if its going to last long term. I think your chances of having a high return are greater with Bitcoin, however you are pretty much guarenteed at the very least some return on gold. Gold has been currency/an asset for 5,000 years. Bitcoin has been for 6 years.

If its not a one or the other choice, why not invest in both?

Default trust as designed is for newbies, no one should be relying on it. When Theymos made the system, he wasn't betting on people being too lazy to create their own trust networks, it was assumed that default trust would be just that, a default setting that would be customized and then become decentralized. When the scammer tag was done away with, the idea was that people would use default trust until newbies had enough experience seeing how things work here to make their own trust lists. I would still argue that the trust system has been a net positive, yet modifications do need to be made to the system in itself to make up for people's lack of willingness to think for themselves. As it is, the system is centralized around Theymos, most reasonably so as the operator of the site, he would have the best motivation to keep the site running. I'm sure Theymos would be thrilled to death if he could remove himself from the role, but as of yet no proposal has been made that is free of major flaws.

Vod is on the second level of default trust, if his being there is a "cancer" its not the system, its in Tomatocage's judgement. Flaws in the system would be if there was issue with Theymos' judgement on who should be in the first level of default trust. In one of the other 30 threads on the subject matter I made a note of saying that to a reasonable extent, I side with Vod's point of view on the matter, I personally think his application of negative trust was apt, perhaps a neutral would be more appropriate but that's not for me to decide. That conversation then turned into "well maybe he should change his wording to be a little bit more clear" and I had no desire to start arguing semantics. It is completely reasonable to make the information known to potential buyers that MSDN keys violate Microsoft's TOS, and that any report of it would invalidate the keys leaving the buyers high and dry. That is reasonable enough in my opinon.

Anyway, there has been a dialog open about changes to the trust system for months now and people's participation is encouraged, if you feel so strongly, devise a new trust system that is without as many flaws as possible, submit the idea, and if it is the solution we have all been waiting for, it will be implemented.

Full Disclosure: I am on default trust, but I care very little opinion on the politics of it all, as I use it as intended for people able to think for themselves. If Theymos said tomorrow that the trust system is desolved and things are going back to market anarchy, that wouldn't effect me in the slightest. People would complain about scammers getting away with scams like they did in the olden days though. I do however think something needs to be in place to protect new members. If you have been here for a year and fall for the obvious signs of a scammer, I dont feel bad for you in the slightest. Someone who has been here 5 days on the other hand, something needs to be in place so we aren't throwing them to the very obvious, not so clever sharks.

Pretty sure a party would be out of the question. Too much issue with organizing it, where to have it, etc. Also people that donated under the pretenses of getting new forum software probably wouldn't be thrilled.

Theymos could have thrown himself a party, but that probably wouldn't have gone over well.

Save it for what? I'm curious as to whether Bitcointalk will collect any BTC for anything once the new forum is done. Its just a forum, what else is money needed for?

If Advertising campaigns tried moving to PM, all of their members would be banned pretty quickly, and the managers as well I'd imagine. PM spam is much harder to get away with than posting spam. There are also far less warnings with PM spam.

Placing a limit on post count doesn't really work, since like I said there are some people who can post large amounts of high quality posts. Banning spammers is what everyone is working on now, and I dont think there is a huge problem with bots. Moderators tend to catch them pretty quickly, far before they could apply for an advertising signature.

Staff members don't generally ignore members, because then they are in effect turning a blind eye to what is probably disruptive behavior that they want to watch for. Why not just have everyone post their ignore lists, see who is most commonly on them, and edit that into the OP? Then there isn't need for any trusted members, its just consensus. As you said, theres no adding anyone by default, so people can just pick and choose who they wish to ignore based on common "suggestions". I can't imagine this will be a overly popular idea, so theres not really any danger in sock puppets trying to get someone ignored. Not to mention people are free not to add the entire list.

my only concern is, it will just end up being a popularity contest which generally isn't a good idea. That said, it doesn't really matter if it is or isn't because no one is being forced into using the suggested ignore list. That and people tend to be lazy, so its likely that the only ones interested in actively seeking to increase their ignore list will be the ones with enough initiative to see if they agree with the list or not. On that note, while I can't see the idea being particularly harmful, I can't see it being particularly useful either.

No, if one of their alts was banned for spam, all accounts are banned for the same period. Its not ban evasion unless they continue to post outside of meta with another account.

Some people can post 100 times per day and keep their post quality up. I dont see why punish them for something that some people do. Paid advertising signature spammers are annoying, and something will be done about it, but if possible I think it would be best to continue allowing them. If you are going to post here anyway, why not earn a bit of coin? I dont know, I'm just not big on the whole prosecuting the group for the actions of the few idea. Some changes definitely need to be made, but it would be preferable to target only those abusing paid advertising signatures, rather than everyone.

I honestly have no stake in paid advertising signatures, they benefit me in no way, and cause only annoyance for me through spammers, however I personally have no problem with them at their core. My ideal situation would be that campaign managers take a more active role in weeding out spammers, and we devise a way to allow those who don't want to partake in viewing them to opt out without removing signatures all together.


I am a huge fan of signatures for the reason above, its very helpful for personal advertising, and as a plain text link, its not overly obtrusive. If it catches someone's attention, it would be because they are interested, not because a wall of color and letters are screaming in their face. I've got 3,000 posts 99% of which I'd like to believe are constructive and well thought out. It would be stupid of me to waste that. While I have no stake in paid advertising signatures, I would fight against the removal of signatures all together for that reason. That said, people can already turn signatures on/off entirely, I'd prefer if they had a few more options, such as turn stylized signatures off, etc.

I dont know what the problem is, if MSDN keys were illegal, they would be removed from the forum, its just against Microsoft's TOS. So while that isn't for forum moderation to handle, people can do as they wish with the trust system, Vod being on default trust puts him at a higher standard, but again he doesn't misrepresent any claims. As Vod is a Microsoft engineer, would it not make sense that he would be more involved than others?



The feedback he left doesn't misrepresent anything. It looks like a fair warning in my opinion. He doesn't say this guy scammed anyone in particular out of X BTC, he says, Microsoft can trace it back to the original MSDN subscription and invalidate all of the keys. People are still free to purchase the keys, but they should be aware that they could be invalidated.

The Staff/Admins have been considering new methods for counteracting signature spam without necessarily banning paid sig advertisements or removing the signature space. If I'm not misinterpreting, most everyone wants to keep the signature space for personal use in play. Removing signatures all together, "As in delete, disable, gone." is a very unlikely senario at this point. Our most promising lead is to add an Ignore Signature option, so that people can turn off signatures they dont want to see. That would ignore all signatures that are the same so one hit of the ignore button for a particular sig would ignore all of the sigs of that design by that campaign. That would require a few additional clicks on the user's end, but if you just casually browse, ignoring signatures that you don't like as you see them it shouldn't take long to have them all ignored (if you so choose)

The effects of that, would be signature advertisements would then become less effective, as people who choose to ignore the annoying signatures no longer are forced to view them, reducing the value of spamming. On the flip side, those lower payments could incentivise additional spamming if people are trying to maintain what they had been earning prior, in which case it becomes that much easier to spot them and remove those people. Spamming is really our only motivation here, we don't care if people want to make a few extra bucks per month posting as they would regularly. We wish that signature campaign managers would work a little bit harder to prevent spam on their ends, but one person can't do the best job of reviewing thousands of posts to make sure that they are quality, so that responsbility falls on the staff.

Regardless, something will be done. It may take us a couple tries to optimize whatever plan we settle on, but the way it is out of hand right now is not here to stay.

Archival is where threads go to be "deleted" but not out of public sight for those that may need to look for it in the future. Threads go to the trashcan if they may need to be found again by staff, but not by the public, and threads are very rarely "deleted".

Why you can post in Archival is sort of not important, information is still public there, but its a good way of knowing that a thread is concluded.

The side conversation about the individual ponzi and its operation was split to here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=998774.0

If you were responding to that, please do so in the new split thread, further discussion in this thread about the matter will deleted, do so in the new thread above.

*edit* A few posts may have got caught up in the new thread, sorry about that, splitting topics doesn't let you pick and choose posts, I scanned over a few pages to find the beginning of the discussion, and tried to get as few posts related to this topic. I'll quote relevant posts and bring them back here.

Probably faster to just report their post/posts and in the comments of your report write what you did here in the OP. Anyway, checking.

Do you have an Alt account that was banned? I'm not seeing a ban request for you. (SMF is bad so Moderators can't give temporary bans, so we have to request that an admin temp bans in a thread)

Well, it comes with two mouthpieces, one is metal and can be boiled/sterilized, the other is plastic and can either be rubbed down with alcohol, or a new plastic mouthpiece can be purchased and slipped on, they are pretty inexpensive. (Can be had for $10-20 on Amazon)

Thanks for your interest  

People seem to not understand the motivations behind spamming bans. We don't care about whether or not your campaign is paying you for insubstantial posts in certain areas, you can be banned for insubstantial posts even without a signature advertisement. Having a signature advertisement doensn't subject you to a new set of rules, its just a trend that people with sig ads tend to spam more often than those without, and the flashy design catches more attention than a discrete spammer that takes us longer to catch.


As long as they dont post outside of meta they are fine. Given the benefit of the doubt, since your other posts are before today, I'd hope that you account was banned today and you already had that one, else you are ban evading.

Sadly, SMF has no merging features. I understand what they are going through, and their posts are constructive and not something that the moderators want to delete, however the thread creation is spam, so we have started locking/merging his threads linking through a single thread's OP.