I can't help but think if you're going to go to all this trouble, you may as well just require all incoming e-mail to be PGP-signed and only accept mail from people whose keys you know. Any mail signed with a key you don't know would go into a sorting folder you would periodically check for legit mails, adding the associated keys to your list of known keys.

Both methods have the problem that you have to convince people who send you mail to go to the trouble of using them.

Personally I'm too risk-averse to keep any significant* sums in BTC. Too much volatility at the moment for me to consider it a savings account. I see it as a high-risk investment.

*significant is a personal definition, of course. For me around 50% of my monthly income seems about the max I'm willing to have in BTC at any given time.

I would argue Bitcoin, too, is backed by Men with Guns. It is backed by Men with Guns because they can not destroy it, unlike they can with fiat.

I haven't used that GUI version of m0mchil's miner, but I do think you need to have the Bitcoin client running in server mode. You need to run bitcoin.exe -server (or is it --server? - not a windows user myself)

Currently, Bitcoins are divisible to 8 decimal places. It's conceivable that if Bitcoin gains real momentum, in the future that may not be enough granularity. It's not going to be a problem for a while, quite possibly ever,  but it may be in the future. So, some thinking on this follows:

I'll use the term "Satoshi", as previously coined by others, to mean the current smallest available Bitcoin unit.

-From what I understand, increasing the divisibility would require modifications to the protocol such that transfers of any sums below one Satoshi would not be compatible with clients lacking the modifications. Correct?

-I assume that transfers of sums up to 8 decimal places would still be possible between "new" clients and "old" ones, or at least the modifications could be done in such a way that this was the case.

Now, if it becomes necessary to add divisibility, how troublesome will this be? Let's say I'm selling nuts and bolts and I realize one Satoshi is too much for a bolt. I have a customer who really, really just wants to buy one bolt from me, but is only willing to pay .1 Satoshi for it, which I think is a fair price. So, I start using a modified client that allows for spending of sub-Satoshi amounts, and I tell my customer to do the same. Let's say I had 1000 Satoshi before, now I have 1000.1. I do many such transactions, until the smaller sums eventually form several Satoshi.

So, I suppose the client would be able to collate sub-Satoshi sums into Satoshis so that I can still send 1 Satoshi or more to someone not using a client capable of handling sub-Satoshi amounts. The other option is that sub-Satoshi transfers essentially "corrupt" my wallet in such a way that the BTC it contains are no longer compatible with legacy versions of the protocol. This is not the case, right?

Basically I'm wondering if there's any serious incompatibility that would result from an increase in divisibility, or if it's just a matter of needing to upgrade to a new client if one wishes to use sub-Satoshi amounts, without any added troubles if one does not. As far as I can tell, it should be pretty trouble-free, but is there something I'm missing? If increased divisibility amounted to forking the block chain, then maybe it should be done sooner rather than later.

It's possible someone's running a trading bot, well designed or not, to automate bids and sells and try to take advantage of market fluctuations.

A question to Dai:
What did you expect to get from Bitcoin in the first place? Why did you start mining, and why does the fact it's quite difficult to get bitcoins by mining make it not worth your time to bother with the currency at all? It sounds like you saw a way to get free money and now that you're told that's not how it works, you lost interest. Is that the case?

It occurs to me it would be nice to have trust ratings integrated into the forum, as long as we're doing trading here. Not sure how easy that is to do.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Then you would presumably want to modify the dispute resolution clause. I think it would be difficult or even impossible, depending on the jurisdiction, to form a contract where the parties involved abandon their legal protections and have a court accept it. Perhaps a do-not-sue clause would still be beneficial, since at least then, when taking up legal action, the party doing so would incur some loss of reputation in the Bitcoin community due to breach of contract. Assuming many people actually take such a strict view of contracts, of course.

I've ordered a Thing-o-Matic extruder and intend to offer my 3d printing services for BTC once (if) I get it running and get comfortable with the printing process. Very hobbyist I'm sure, but maybe someone will be interested.

Wow, I guess the attorney never looked up the word "terrorism" in the dictionary.

If your first enterprise is too easy for your liking, do something more ambitious next, and keep upping the stakes. Chances are, it'll get difficult at some point and then you'll see if that's what you really want.

If you understand how difficulty works, you know it's you who keeps raising it.

I bought some BTC from two sellers there with PayPal a couple of days ago, everything went well.

Just FYI, Kiba, Krita looks much more promising to me as a painting and drawing app than Gimp.

Let me modify my suggestion. If you want to see more Bitcoin mentions in different media, you can buy more and push the price up, or you can offer new goods or services people want. In the absence of either a new price hike or new uses for Bitcoins, there is little to talk about.

Much of the hype around Bitcoin has been the rapid rise in exchange rates vs. USD. This rise has leveled off for a while now, and it seems some of the enthusiasm has faded with it. No surprise, really. The kind of extraordinary growth we saw recently can't sustain itself indefinitely. Want Bitcoin to succeed? Hype it less, offer more goods and services.

http://architectureforhumanity.org/programs/2011-sendai-earthquake-and-tsunami

These people seem quite open in their approach.

Gold has a long history of use as a store of value. Sheer cognitive dissonance will help it keep its value. Bitcoin doesn't have such a history and must therefore earn its place if it's to be seen as a long-term investment. Being able to actually use it for something is a big help.