I think you owe opencoin and the entire ripple economy an apology now that the distributed ripple server is opensourced.

what part is even vaguely controversial? ?

It will have value if anyone ever wants/needs to make transactions on the vanilla ripple network.  The forked xrp could be valuable, too...just like litecoin has a value.  Since xrp is meant to have minimal value anyway this is not a huge deal either way, except possibly to opencoin shareholders.

false. I addressed it...this is functionality that you can either work with opencoin to make happen now or wait until opencoin's ripple system is actually released...

Except the power weilded by xrp is an insignificant fraction of that weilded by other currency within the ripple network to the point where this power is irrelevant

But, as you must know, while it works fine it is incomplete and *they are finishing the job*.  XRP, with all its sketchy properties looks like it was the key to their being able to do so.

Actually that's evidence that you're not using your media efficiently.  600 is a little extreme, but 150 is really low ball these days.  You can be  interacting with people in some way shape or form 24/7 and can know more about the people around you than your ancestors would have thought possible.  Trust has always been a hard nut to crack, but I think that Dunbar's Limit can actually be computed in terms of ripple connections you can honestly maintain in the interests of both parties.  Once Ripple (and other technology) enters into the equation, you can coordinate with much larger groups than had been up until that point reasonable (however still finite).

Suppose the Gateway has a physical location, somewhere that they rent, such as the Toronto Startup space company that accepts bitcoin.

They might be interested in being able to pay rent with Ripple, however the Toronto Startup space does not trust them.  They would trust their rental space, and in the event that they managed to use that trust, they would pay a month's rent with it, putting the balance back at 0, perpetually.

In practice this just looks like the customers paying rent for the Gateway, and I've seen something very similar work.

Maybe, but maintaining the status on those cheques would be a management nightmare with 600 friends.  Ripple makes it easier.

(Also not everyone gets free chequing -- if you trust your friend for 2$ but your cheque costs 2$ to cash...doesn't help you two much)

Also there are things that Ripple can do that are not included with that scenario.

You are unjustly paranoid.  People and institutions have other people and institutions that they trust.  Even if most employees do not have access to the cold storage wallet SOMEONE does, and that person the exchange trusts.  The exchange trusts employees to not quit, to not steal from them, to not cause legal problems on their behalf, and so on.   There is no institution that is free from this necessary trust that binds society together.   You'd need a purely virtual exchange to do this and then you wouldn't be dealing with fiat currency at all.


Firstly, who are you to tell the world how to help their friends?  More options for friends to work their finances together isn't necessarily a bad thing.  So it's not your cup of tea, that's OK - you don't have to use it.  But it just works.

Secondly, you don't necessarily know when your friend is going to need it.  Suppose they don't need money 99.99% of the time, is it really worth the effort of their asking you to borrow it when they need it, rather than ahead of time when they don't?

Thridly, since you're effectively creating money when you create ripple connections, this is money that does not really exist in the economy, and as the money supply is increased, the amount of trade that can occur increases, further separating your group of friends, and the entities it is involved with from autarky.. If you only lend money to your friend when he needs it rather than making sure the ripple network routes it appropriately, money can sit more idle than it could given a Ripple network to route it.  It can allow him to be *more productive*, allowing your friend to be better off, which reduces the odds even further of him having to actually use it for something he needs.

Gateways have entities they can trust, such as employees, and true friends will trust eaxhother with trivial amounts ( which do add up in aggregate. )

False and false.  Please learn what you're talking about before you spout out about something

No one forces you to trust anyone.  You are grossly mistaken

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1b9k4b/why_arent_we_using_ripple_as_an_exchange_instead/c953blo

That post is mostly laughable, he does not seem to understand what he's talking about, and even if he does, I think a good case can be made that the flaws he perceives are not so.

For more discussion along those lines, see the posts in:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ripplers/comments/1f4jcy/ripple_the_definitive_discussion/

This feature is exactly the whole point of Ripple.  Congrats for missing the core point - that only YOU can ensure that one IOU is one IOU is one IOU, and that the only way to do so is by having nurturing mutual trust, something that you have not shown a willingness to do.

While this is strictly speaking a Ripple related post, it is also a Bitcointalk* related one --

I have created  foresight exchange claim ( http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=RIPRPL ) for those here in the bitcoin community who are critical of Ripple (and conversely, some of us in the Ripple community) to put some of your reputation on the line.  One of the worries is specifically due to the delayed release of the server (and it's respective source code).  Scam or not, Ripple is not currently released -- and it is possible the US government could prevent this release entirely, despite OpenCoin's best efforts.   If this is something that you believe is likely, then please consider betting on this idea market claim.

And if you believe you could be a neutral judge on this matter, please consider signing up to this site, and signing up as a judge for this claim (or if you believe this claim needs love, or a new claim is justified please contact me via this thread or via themusicgod1@zworg.com)

*Specifically I expect that in the event of OpenCoin imploding due to US government interferrence that this event would be discussed here, on the bitcointalk forums as an example of how the Ripple 'scam' was shut down(do those reading this post agree that this is likely to happen happen? I mean the discussing it here part -- not the US government shutting it down part).

First of all there is no such thing as "intellectual property".  You obviously any subtle treatment of this subject is going to be lost on you if you believe in such a misleading frame.

In the present xrp is cheap and plentiful and the only way you are going to run into issues is if you are an exceptionally social person or very broke.

Unreleased software can be open source. Do you have a binary of the server?  If not you do not have the right to the source.  It will be possible to fork it once it is released...and in fact an attempt at doing so is planned.

Xrp is an unimportant detail.  Even if opencoin did print more...which they won't, it doesn't matter.  The source is important and it is important that they release it but concerns about the amount of xrp are a distraction at best.  Don't invest in them as they are not made for that purpose.

Tradefortress is someone who was deleting comments critical of his opinions in his thread.  Free speech my hat