In some threads, the only content is "I put you on ignore".

Say that you could only trade oil for dollars.  If an oil-buyer didn't have dollars, they'd have to buy some, using whatever they do have, to use to buy oil.  If an oil-seller doesn't want to hold dollars, they'll have to sell the dollars they get from the sale in order to get whatever it is that they do want.

So, if the buyer can get dollars just before the purchase, and the seller can get rid of them just after the purchase, where could a net demand for dollars possibly come from?  It can only come from the desire to hold dollars.

Read this.

Wow!  What an amazingly unbiased poll!  If you don't get the landslide you are looking for, you should crosspost that into all of the foundation threads.

Erm.  I'm not sure where to start.

The blocks aren't in the database, they are just stuffed into files, and those files will not be changing at all.  What goes in the database is just index information so that blocks can be found quickly when needed.

The network passes blocks around, not files.  There is no need to distribute "new" database files.  New clients that don't have the blocks loaded will continue to load them as usual, by asking the network for them.  I haven't been following the work on leveldb, but I see no reason why the client couldn't include both sets of database libraries so that people upgrading can keep reading their old indexes while they generate the new ones.

And, I promise to leave at least one of my personal nodes running an old version for quite a while, just in case.

Accounts are just a local bookkeeping feature, just some numbers to help you keep track of stuff.  They have absolutely no other meaning, and the network knows nothing about them.

You can tag an address with a label (account), and the system will keep track of how much comes in to that label (account).  When paying out, you can also choose to have the payment amount deducted from the balance for some label (account).

The move command just reduces the number associated with one label (account) and increase the number associated with another.

To answer your specific questions:

1.  No.
2.  No.  Never.  Never.

FOREX.  Look it up.  The currency of settlement for oil purchases is unimportant.

Just FYI, the background color behind the Ignore button changes the more people have used it.

Is TOR a valid option?

Since this is the newbies board, and some of the people here might be new to these forums, I'd like to point out to everyone that there are ignore buttons on the left side of the page.  They can make a dramatic improvement in the quality of posts from certain users.

In the real world, exchanges don't hold the shares, ever.  They collect and match orders, and then issue (basically) receipts.  The actual movement of shares (whether physical, or on the books of the entity) is handled by the brokerages themselves*.  At no time does the exchange ever possess the shares.

* In reality, the brokerages have delegated the settlement function to clearing houses, just like banks have delegated check clearing to the ACH system.  That detail isn't important here.

Ahh, but the problem with all of the current exchanges (including GLBSE) is that they not only provide the service of facilitating the sale, but they also act as the sole recorder of ownership.

Meh.  I would say that money is all about trade, but that's just me.  And the rest of the world.

This is why I don't take you seriously.  Well, a lot of it.

Yup, that is correct.  To spend, you sign the transaction with the private key, and then provide that signature and the corresponding public key to the network.  The network then verifies that 1) the signature could only have been calculated using the private key that corresponds to the public key provided, and 2) that the public key does actually hash down to the hash (address) in the prevout.

A key point is that using a public key once does not claim it or make it special.  If someone manages to find a different private/public key pair with the same pubkey hash, that key is just as valid for other transactions using the same hash as the original was.

Hahahaha.  I agree.  But probably not the way you think.

"They" refers back to the previously used noun, in this case "everyone", for small values of everyone, meaning "the bulk of the people" or "society".  Regarding Keynes and Austrians, I think they are both wrong in general, mostly in the sense that they have convinced themselves that they know things that they don't really know.

I think that they most of the cheap labor parts of the world would be for a much rougher ride than the west if ties were severed.  Their economies are geared towards trade, not domestic needs, and I don't think they have the capital to change direction as easily as we could.  It would be bad, but my stone age comment was more hyperbole than a specific prediction.

You keep saying that I'm being condescending by pointing out the lack of accumulated capital in those parts of the world.  In my view, the lack of capital is not a moral issue, and I don't consider them morally inferior for it.  For it to be condescension to point that out, one would need to hold that lack of development is a moral issue.

P.S.  Hong Kong was under British rule until very recently.  Great example of local development.

How are payroll taxes and VAT not hidden?  Payroll taxes are money that is gone before you possess it.  It isn't something you have and then get taken away, it is just a number on the stub.  The emotional attachment is different, even if you are intellectually aware of them.  VAT is hidden by being rolled into the prices of things.

People act on the superficial all the time.  Many people are uneasily content paying their 50%+ taxes, because they are distributed and hidden.  If 100% of that money came into their hands, and then more than half was removed by force, there would be much more pressure from the people to reduce them, which is essentially the same thing as pressure to reduce the size of government.  I'm not sure which specific beneficial effects you are looking for me to list.  Do you want me to say that people with smaller governments are more rugged and self reliant?  I think that they are, and I think that those are virtues.

I don't care if you take me seriously at all.  I sure don't take you seriously.  Want to answer the questions in that last paragraph that you skipped?

I prefer random keys too, but realistically speaking, cracking the master seed is equivalent to either 1) breaking all EC math, including bitcoin, or 2) stealing your wallet and cracking your password.  (I'm pretty sure armory encrypts the master seed at least as well as the reference client encrypts the private keys.)

In either case, you have big problems.  EC wallets have plenty of advantages, and only insignificant theoretical disadvantages.  They should probably be the default.

The bylaws have it as "THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION, INC."

Ding.  Supply side automation is the way to go.

One of the nice things about bitcoin is that there is no pull capability, the closest you can get is pull requests.

One possible way to do pull requests...  You tell your wallet that it can automatically push transactions out if they come in signed, according to limits set by you for each key.  Your cable company gives you a key, and you allow it to pull up to X bitcoins each month, and your power company's key is allowed up to Y BTC per month.  Any requests that come in unsigned are discarded, and anything over the limits is queued up for manual approval.