Wireless adapters, you say? Would you be interested in one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Linksys-WUSB300N-Wireless-N-Network-Adapter/dp/B000I5K4MQ

It's used but works perfectly. Long range, high speed. 2 BTC including shipping? PM me if you're interested.

I have an account with Portal 2 and CS:S (along with TF2, with the stuff that only people who bought it get). Can't gift you, but willing to sell whole account for 3BTC.

Please. Agaumoney, your argument makes absolutely no sense to me. What argument could you use to support the idea that the right to life is a fundamental right that already existed and humans simply identified that you could not use to argue that the right to delicious ice cream is also fundamental and not just created by me right now?

Title says it all. Worth $80 $70 (now that TF2 is free). Willing to haggle. Please PM me and we can work out the logistics. I am selling the entire account - I am NOT gifting these games individually.

Not trying to feed the troll or anything, but isn't this something you could debunk just by looking at the source code? Just making sure I understand how BTC works...

Would you rather:

1) Pay me $1,000. I generate a random number from 1 to 1,000. If that number is 523, I will pay you $1,000,000,000. You can keep playing as many times as you want, but after you play a few times the reward drops from $1,000,000,000 to $500,000,000

2) Take $1,000 I give you for free right now.

See the problem? If you are unlucky before it drops to 25BTC/block, you CAN NOT expect things to average back out in the long run. You COULD get lucky in the short term too, but then your EV is the same as (not better than) solo mining. It's a question of whether you think the implicit fees you mentioned are worth the fact that you might make losses that will not be smoothed out by the law of large numbers after block payout changes.

EDIT: Wait, or would the probability rise to 1 in 500 at the same time (in situation 1)? In that case, nevermind, but:

The logical extension of your mentality about this is that you shouldn't buy health insurance because you would pay more per month on health insurance than you would on average spend every month on paying for your own healthcare when you get badly injured.

Wow, lots of good explanations. Very helpful. I'm still not entirely convinced but at least I know what to read up about now.

What method has the least total fees? Without having to send cash through the mail, that is.

Is it direct exchange at #bitcoin-otc after depositing cash to paypal via a prepaid card you buy at the grocery store? There must be better ways. Perhaps keeping an up-to-date thread with advantages/disadvantages of different exchange systems would be helpful?

Also, anyone researching bitcoin and seeing all the pyramid schemes/gambling will definitely not think good things about the state of the currency. Please add a new forum ASAP.

Hey there,

I've been lurking these forums for a pretty long time and signed up as a member more recently. The reason I want to be whitelisted is that I'd like to be able to jump in and ask questions in specific threads without having to start entirely new threads in the newbie section. I could just come up with a few dumb topics to start threads about here but it would be a waste of space. Hopefully my post history is enough to convince you I'm capable of rational thought and will not be a detriment to the quality of conversation elsewhere on these forums.

Many thanks,
-toast

I mean the theoretical argument for why IP laws will tend to discourage innovation. I can see pretty clearly why existing laws do that =]


So this is a discussion of how to successfully implement IP law, not an argument against the idea of such a law.


This is why libertarianism seems dogmatic to me. In this case, stopping someone from printing a particular book and selling it (which they couldn't have done if the book was never written!) trumps enriching everyone's lives by rewarding the innovator for his useful new idea and encouraging people to come up with other useful ones. How can anyone subscribe to this ideology?

Wait, what? Why does the fact that all ideas are combinations of old ideas have anything to do with the fact that if people do not have incentive to come up with new ideas it is worse for society as a whole than if they did? To your second point: Isn't it better for ideas to temporarily benefit their creators than for them to not exist at all (remember, I'm assuming the IP laws would be reasonable, not like they are now).

I am interested in hearing how IP laws discourage innovation. I can think of many real-world examples of how innovators would not have made any money (because let's face it, feeling good for making the world a better place is not sufficient reward for many) for significant time investments.

But what if anyone who discovers the recipe enjoys higher profits if the recipe is not publicly known? Then nobody will ever benefit from that knowledge except for the people lucky enough to discover the recipe, whereas if there were short- or medium-term IP protection laws, I would find it profitable to share my recipe with everyone sooner (more people enjoy its benefits for longer periods of time) AND after I have earned some money for my time and energy the recipes are now available for everyone to use (just like they would if some kind soul discovered the recipe and decided to give it away to everyone rather than profit from it). Having IP protection seems strictly better, under the assumption that IP laws are not extreme (like many are now).

Edit: At the very least, have NDA agreements be enforceable by law so I can go around and try to sell my book to different publishers without them printing what I show them without my permission.

Killing someone is a direct violation of the 'no violence' foundation that libertarians have. If you really wanted to masturbate all day instead of saving people's lives then go ahead.

But your main point is that the publisher's rights to make money by printing a book I wrote is more important to preserve than the healthier (and tastier!) lives people will enjoy if I find it worth my time to write this book. Basically, libertarianism is inherently non-utilitarian. Am I correct?

I figured perhaps someone on this forum could give a concise tl;dr to highlight the main points. Obviously if I want an in-depth explanation and understanding I should turn to existing literature, and if I think it's interesting/relevant enough I certainly will.

Disclaimer: I'm generalizing the anti-IP-rights position to all hardcore libertarians because I've seen several who hold this position. If you believe anti-IP-right are not consistent with what it actually means to be a libertarian, then correct me. I still want to know what people who do hold this position think, though.

Suppose I am a master chef in a small village. My food preparation method is healthier and tastier than other alternatives. There is no way to reverse-engineer my food preparation method from the food I serve. I want to write a cookbook. It will take me 500 hours to write this cookbook, in which time I could just make more food to earn me some money. My secret recipes are so good that it is clear that society as a whole will be far better off if more chefs could utilize my techniques than if I spent the 500 hours cooking better meals for a small number of people. You would agree that it is better if this method was known to more people.

What incentive do I have to write this cookbook? If I try to publish even a single copy, any established book publisher with more efficient book-printing resources than I do will be able to prevent me from earning any money while earning a hefty profit themselves. The only possible solution I can think of is the idea of selling my final draft of the cookbook to a publisher - that is, selling the right to be the first person (besides myself) to see what I have written so that they can publish it. The publisher would only offer me prices comparable to what I could make with IP protection is if they were able to read it first, in which case I would have to have some contract protecting my IP rights with this company (but again, this requires a government to enforce this contract, which means IP is something the government has to recognize).

edit: Also, assume the IP protection I'm talking about is temporary (enough for what I make to make the time investment worth it), not something that would give me permanent control (maybe like music copyright, but shorter and without the draconic punishments from infringement).

(also, sorry for posting in the wrong forum, but I don't have privileges to post everywhere yet)

Wow, it's like you stole my idea, made it 5x better, and implemented it before I even got the resources to make a site like this. Great job!

Sweet! I'll probably put some stuff up later. Good idea, the ability to buy tangible goods is what bitcoin needs right now.

Quick question: I tried depositing yesterday, and every since then if I run 'bmc.py folio', it displays: "<my id>== ", with just a blank space after the ==. When should my deposit show up?