Thread from Endless-sphere forum when people found out about him acquiring the BTC for $5,000.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30632&sid=bc2ba1be6bb99fef8c9941ef67f4b5b3

reddit is leaking.

This guy has bad luck with being investigated for computer related crimes he claims he didn't commit.


In the last post KnightMB made here, in June this year, he claimed that his pile of Bitcoins was pretty much all gone.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6825.msg973679#msg973679

It's probably worth remembering that he acquired the BTC under questionable circumstances and that there were allegations that he'd screwed over previous employers as well.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30632&sid=bc2ba1be6bb99fef8c9941ef67f4b5b3

With due respect, there were plenty of people saying the opposite - that, yes, shoe seems pretty messed up and none of the players in the drama are particularly likeable but no matter what she did not deserve those beatings.  The scariest people of all in that thread were the ones saying "well, it's Texas and beating your kid is legal there, so what's the big deal", as well as the "one mistake shouldn't ruin someone's career" chorus.

In the original thread, the reason why people were telling her to delete the furry stuff and the bestiality-related stuff was because if the media got hold of it she would lose a lot of public sympathy and her father would use it to portray her as crazy.  It wasn't - for the most part - "ewww, furries" (an attitude which definitely does exist on SA, for reasons I don't totally understand) in that particular instance.  She made some terrible judgements in how she handled the attention she got at that time and people were trying very hard to stop her from digging herself into an ever-deepening hole.  Goons being goons, they weren't happy when she ignored that advice and started pissing in the well.

She is actively disliked by many now, mostly due to the racist comments and the bestiality stuff (which she now claims was trolling but if that's the case she was trolling a lot of places).  That doesn't - and never should - excuse or in any way be used justify the beatings she received as a teenager. 

She's started a new thread on reddit and it will be interesting to see whether that deteriorates in the same way the reddit threads did last year.  Hillary and her mother are seeking donations to establish a foundation for abuse victims.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/11telw/in_the_wake_of_domestic_abuser_judge_william/

None of the other shareholders have suggested that GLBSE was paying any significant amount in dividends.  I think that you're making a whole lot of flawed assumptions here because you're applying real world principals to what was essentially a toy company run by someone without any business expertise whatsoever.

theymos indicated that GLBSE held less than 1000 BTC of its own - the vast majority of BTC it held were user funds.  That's a very low amount of reserves to have on hand.  If GLBSE had been the cash cow you believe it was, it would have had more than enough funds on hand to cover the double payments.

And yep, there are lots of expensive places in the world.  $15 per hour is the minimum wage where I live and average weekly earnings are between $62,000 and $69,000 depending on whose statistics you use.  Housing, electricity and petrol are all extremely expensive here, so people earning wages which might sound high to those living elsewhere are going to be living significantly lower lifestyles.

That nefario was earning more than the lowest 20% of households doesn't mean much.  The lowest 20% of households in any Western nation are almost certainly living in abject poverty and working part-time if at all. 

Your two big issues are that you're not going to get your jalapenos before the block reward halves and that by the time people who place orders now receive their ASICs a whole heap of hashing power will have been thrown at the network by those who had earlier pre-orders and received the first deliveries.  You will still be able to mine some BTC, but your returns may be slow and small.    Hopefully they'd be enough to cover your loan repayments and your electricity costs, but you need someone to run the numbers for you (lots of people in the custom hardware forum are good at this) and work out whether you'd have anything left to put into funding the things you want to do with the coins you mine. 

You could probably earn the $300 you borrow to buy the ASICs a whole lot faster by doing odd jobs in the real world than you can earn it by mining.  Likewise, you could probably earn $20 to buy stock for your guitar pick business by mowing one lawn.  The amount you can earn from mining with your jalapenos once they're paid off might be good for "hobby" money, but it's unlikely to be enough for funding expenses, whether they're business or personal.

The guitar pick business is also unlikely to bring in more than "hobby" money at first, so you really need to be looking at setting up a lot of income streams if you're going to choose ones which don't earn much or you need to think about income streams which will provide a greater return.  You need to be making a weekly profit in excess of what you would earn in a minimum wage job in order to make these ventures worthwhile.

To the extent that they would not be enforceable in whole or in part in the real world, Bitcoin contracts pretty much exist only by mutual consent.  I know that everyone likes to take the "Wild West, different rules, blah, blah, blah" line but I think that doing so not only leads to absurd over-valuations, it also encourages total paralysis when shit goes wrong and to some extent it discourages realistic recovery arrangements.

I think that Patrick's real world occupation and his experience in the energy derivatives market created a perception that he was or should have been aware of the strong possibility of correlated risk to a far greater extent than the other PPT operators.  I think that people made the assumption that "Patrick knows what he's doing" in large part because of his extensive experience in high risk markets where correlated risk has caused spectacular collapse in the past (Enron anyone?).

I'm curious about which jurisdiction you think this contract exists in, because you're sure as shit not going to get an award of punitive/exemplary damages under NZ law.  Nor are you going to get an award for full costs (typically, only about 60-70% of actual costs are covered in a judgement where costs are awarded in Australia and NZ).

I don't agree with Joel's reasoning, but you're dreaming if you think that a NZ court would award you the amount you're trying to claim you're owed.

Pretty sure that Don Shrents was a bitlane alt.

I'm not sure whether the Bitcoin logo itself has ever been trademarked (there are reasons why it might be difficult to trademark).  There are several trademark registrations of the Bitcoin name though.  I can't remember who holds which trademark in what class and where but MtGox holds at least one,  Paymium holds another, and someone else holds the trademark in France.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=105638.msg1231502#msg1231502

For the most part, people have registered the Bitcoin trademarks so that patent/trademark trolls can't register them in "first to file" countries and prevent them being used by the community.  For a very long time one of the reasons people wanted a Bitcoin foundation was so that it could hold the trademarks for the benefit of all Bitcoin users.

People have been using the various Bitcoin logos on commercial products for a while now without any dramas so you're probably safe in respect of that one.

Definitely keep looking for logos and other images which are already in the public domain or already licensed under CC.  Expired trademarks might also be a good thing to look for as many people will have never seen some old corporate logos from decades ago so they might have a certain "retro" appeal just because they're different.

The Black and Decker logo is a trademark registered with the US Patent & Trademark Office.  The 7-11 logo is also a registered trademark.  They are additionally protected by copyright laws and your intended use does not fall within fair use provisions.  Using someone else's registered trademark for a commercial purpose is something which requires the express permission of the trademark holder (and the copyright holder as well if they are different people/entities).  It's very easy to find out if a company logo is a registered trademark.  


Actually, you can't.  By definition, a CC licence makes a work available for use by everyone, not just by you.  The reason people trademark logos is so that they can control who uses that logo and when they do licence others to use their logo (which isn't especially uncommon) there are generally significant licensing fees and/or royalties involved.  Many companies have existing merchandising/licensing agreements contracts which they would be breaking if they were to suddenly make their images available for use by everyone free of charge.

You might be able to get away with cutting picks from expired gift/store cards issued by the companies concerned, but I wouldn't count on it if your actually selling them and especially in large quantities.  That's the kind of thing they generally don't care about if you're doing it for personal use but can get very shitty about if you're doing it commercially.

It should not cost $20 to ship 20 guitar picks to Australia.  Amazon has sent me books by international express post for less than that and guitar picks weigh a lot less than books.

I would definitely include the letter, to make sure that the attribution aspect is covered and that the "intact" requirement of the notice is satisfied.

You've already said that you're intending to put your own logo on the back of the picks.  I'd consider stamping them with the recognised symbol for CC-BY-SA as well.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/CC-BY-SA.png

Do you even read the things you use as references?

Your own citation specifically states that attribution and citing the specific type of CC licence under which you are using the work are required.


Additionally, the CC agreement itself to which you linked above explicitly states that



Every copy.  Not just a notice on the cart section of your website.  The reason it needs to be with every copy is because the terms of the licence itself mean that others can reproduce/modify it under the same licence which allowed you to reproduce/modify the work - the "share alike" provisions of a free culture CC licence require you to make others aware of that.  If you fail to do that, your right to reproduce the work under CC will be revoked automatically.

From what the shareholders have said, he wasn't being paid that much - about $40,000 per year which is not very much to live on in the UK.  And just because Bitcoiners love to use the terminology of the real business world which they despise so much, doesn't mean that self-selected titles like "CEO" or terms like "IPO" imply any kind of competence or massive amounts of money.

theymos was trying to sell his shares prior to anyone learning of nefario's intention to shut down GLBSE and nobody wanted them so nefario's shares weren't especially valuable either.

People repeatedly make the mistake of assuming that just because a Bitcoin enterprise is highly visible means that it's highly profitable. 

You realise that free culture licences require that you both attribute the work AND that you make clear the terms of the licence under which the work has been produced - you will need to put that information on the guitar pick itself to satisfy those requirements.

It doesn't matter if no-one's told you no yet.  Either the work must already be released under a CC licence or the rights holder will need to release it under a CC licence.  You cannot just write to Disney - for example - asking them to let you use TalesSpin images under a CC licence and then use those images to make guitar picks because they didn't tell you no; they must specifically tell you "yes" and specify exactly what kind of licence you can use the images under and what limitations apply to using it.

Do you have problems with reading comprehension or something?  The very site you use as a reference clearly states that a creative commons licence is issued by the creator or rights holder of a work.  A free culture licence is the least restrictive of the creative commons licences but you can only reproduce something under a CC licence if the author has chosen to licence it that way.  There are 6 different types of CC licence and not all of them allow commercial use of a work even when it is a CC licensed work.  

General lawyers know shit all about IP law.  If the lawyers you've consulted have actually read anything about creative commons licensing rather than just relying on your total misinterpretation of how it works, then they would know damned well that only the creator or the rights holder of the work can licence it under CC.  

The only works which you can use in the manner you intend to use them are those where the creator/rights holder has chosen to make those works available under a free culture licence or those which are public domain.  You can't just use anyone's logo or trademark - the person who owns that IP has to specifically make it available under CC and they get to decide whether you can modify it in any way or use it commercially.

You can search for public domain images here.

http://www.public-domain-image.com/

There are multiple places you can search for CC images.

You seem to have a history of not grasping IP issues, whether in relation to TaleSpin, your movie theatre restoration project, or using images owned by others to make guitar picks you intend to sell.

Because ignoring what their government is doing has always worked so well for Americans in the past.   

What a crock of shit.  Plenty of religious rituals are illegal in many Western nations and if you could just declare something a sacrament in order to prevent its use being illegal there'd be no illegal drugs (do you seriously believe that people haven't considered this in respect of illegal drugs in the past?).  

While I believe that religions enjoy far too much protection, that protection is far from absolute.  As has been pointed out already, the manner in which the US applies the principal of separation between church and state would impose limitations on how and where Bitcoin could be promoted if it was somehow brought under the umbrella of religion.

That is not how creative commons licences work.  Creators who choose to release their work through creative commons licences can still impose limitations on the use of their work disallowing its use for commercial purposes or disallowing any modification of the original.

If you want to be able to use the work of others without restriction, you need to look for works which have a specific type of creative commons licence called a free culture licence.  Even though this is the most liberal of the creative commons licences, it still requires you to attribute the work to the creator and to publish the licence notice.  You can search for works which have been released under creative commons licences here.

http://search.creativecommons.org/

There is no such thing as a licence which you can obtain that allows you to use any logo you wish.  Many logos are trademarked and can't be used for commercial purposes without the express permission of the trademark holder (even non-commercial use can be a violation but they're less likely to pursue someone for that).


He also needs to factor in the time he spends on trying to sell his stock.  A hobby business like this which is likely to make only a small paper profit each month can have a significant opportunity cost if getting enough sales to stay in the black takes up a considerable amount of his time - and bulk orders aren't likely to just come to him, he's most likely going to have to do a lot of cold calling and other marketing.

I found guitar pick cutters for under USD 30, which means that it would be extremely economical for people wanting large quantities of custom picks to cut their own.  To make this business viable, logansryche needs to be able to offer images and/or materials which people can't easily obtain themselves.  Embedded images are more time consuming to produce so that market might be a more viable one.  The PVC sheeting for embedding images is relatively cheap (~10 cents per pick for small quantities) as is the glue.  Sanding the edges takes a little time, but you'd be doing that with any picks you punched from credit cards and the like, anyway.

Necklaces are likely to be way more profitable because the sale price is so much greater than the additional materials cost and they don't require a great deal more time to create.

I think a lot of people would be uncomfortable with that information being released to anyone other than government investigators and that some PPT operators probably won't give that information up even if presented with an official request.

I think that many people have misgivings about the creation of an informal repository of information which can't actually be used by investigators.  what's the actual point of the community playing "follow the coins" when investigators would need to do it for themselves in order to be able to use any information that process reveals?

Tax exempt status is given to organisations, not their members.  Even if you could somehow pull of registering a Bitcoin organisation as a religious organisation, only that specific organisation and it's subsidiaries would enjoy tax exempt status.