For symbols not yet officially in Unicode, there is the private use area, and there is an organisation,  forgot the name, that helps coordinate the use of that area. Even if we haven't decided what it should look like yet, perhaps it might be possible to reserve a codepoint there.


Once we settle on a symbol, we can make a font with it, and webpages can use embeded font to render that character correctly for anyone with a modern browser.

Wait, there is no way to know which coins are the ones you got, you only know the amount? Balls, without serial numbers on them there is no data to use to transform into points on the surface of Earth

Perhaps the algo could be a space filling curve, like Z order curves or Hilbert cuver ,  to map between the coin data (One dimensional? Doesn't matter, the curves can be used to map an N dimensions array into a 1 dimensions array and vice versa) and the latitude/longitude coordinates (two dimensional)

http://corte.si/posts/code/hilbert/portrait/index.html
http://corte.si/projects/geohilbert/index.html

Regarding moving packages annonymouslly, ii got n idea, would work at least within a city, and perhaps more:

It involves magnetic packages. It works like this, there are pedestrians and there are vehicles.


Pedestrians would each be told to be at some location, wait for a certain vehicle to park or stop at a traffic light, then the pedestrian would discreetly grab the magnetic package out of the vehicle and then place it somewhere else, either another vehicle he was told about or if necessary some fixed place, then another pedestrain would be told to pick up the package and move it to some other place, and so on.

There would be lots of pedestrians, each receiving apparently random instructions frequently, and lots of magnetic packages being moved around between spots or carried by vehicles from one place to another. The packages would have no identifying features differentiating one from another, and they would be constantly kept in flux regardless of actually having a payload meant to go somewhere.


The vehicles would be vehicles with predictable routes, city busses, cars of people that work everyday etc.


There would be a distributed censorship resistant system (perhaps running on Freenet) that would define the instructions for the pedestrians  of when and where to pick a magpack and when where to place it, the system would make sure the average density of magpacks across the network remains constant and that all packages have a decent likellyhood of eventually reaching everywhere in the network. Someone wanting to send somthing, would file a request with the system, specifying the destination, the sender would be one of the pedestrians, one day that pedestrian receives an special instruction telliing about a free magpack that they can use that will be avaiable at some location within their area at some time in the near future, that pedestrian will have a window of time to intercept that magpack, load it up, and put it back on the network.

Pedestrian should report missing packages (packages they didn't intercept or lost before being able to forward into the network) and missed deliveries (not keeping a package 'cause they couldn't attach it to the intended vehicle), the system will indenpendently analyze the patterns of losses and estimate if a given pedestrian or vehicle/location has become less reliable and adjust the routing accordingly.

Routes would be submited to the system announymouslly, and once a given attachable location or vehicle has been confirmed by enough reports some of the many magpacks will be routed thru them to test (most likelly empty ones, but once in a while loaded ones as well, seemingly at random), strenghtening the reliability value of that route based on successes.


This would only work if it achieved a certain critical mass before authorities try to crack down a given section (from a single city block to a whole city) ; with enough chaotic annonymous agents and packages moving around it will be impossible to predict when and even where a given package will be, and even if the authorities intercept one package or pedestrian the odds are they will have an empty magpack or a pedestrian without a magpack.

Some routes would have multiple intercept points, with pedestrians instructed to transfer the magpack if they do find it there and if they can, one pedestrian can't the next ones in the route will, their reports of success of failure will be computed by the system adjusting the next instructions accordingly, keeping track of magpacks to decide what orders to send to which pedestrians to keep the package in flux to it's eventual destinations.


Lost and then found packages will not be trackable by the system, but if a pedestrian finds a lost package, he is to attach it to a route attempting to leave it set to open and loose it's content, informing to the system (the magpacks would have a timed opening mechanism for disposal of any potential lost content before the next pedestrian), this way reintroducing the magpack into the network empty but without the pedestrian actually seeing what, if anything, was inside.


Magpacks might be moved between cities if necessary, given that is a possible route, like attaching to an intercity bus, or by a pedestrian with additional skills and access to a piece of luggage or the landing gear of a plane etc, these tranfers and routes only used when extremelly necessary; routes with less likellyhood of getting intercepted by the authorities, with less risk for the pedestrian etc being preffered when avaiable even if the final path is much longer (some sort of risk/benefit/cost evaluation of different paths would be done by the system to decide which path to use)


To help with the critical mass issue, lots of empty magpacks would be intentionally lost, and lots of orders to pedestrians would secretly be meant to fail; keeping authorities in wild goose chases, constantly wasting time spying on people that endup not doing anything and finding packages that are empty. Obviouslly these intentional failures being considered different by the system to not disrupt real realiability calculations.


The distribute system itself would be a black box, even if somehow the authorities managed to read the whole system at any given time, it would be white noise, once activated no one would be able to actually see inside the system, the system would run itself, it's message to the pedestrians saying enough for their current step, no pedestrian would be aware of where their current magpack originated nor where it is destined to go, people sending things would communicate with the pedestrian intended to receive the package telling them where to expect their package by means outside the network, they wouldn't know when, but when receiving a package, the target pedestrian would have been given an order similar to when someone gets an empty package to send thing, with the window being for withdrawing the contents before forwarding the package back into the network instead of depositing somthing in it.






Given the scale and complexity of this system, i guess it would be hugelly difficult to implement it right now, it's probably somthing that would exist in books and movies, but not be real in the foreseable future, but at some point it might be.

Btw,

Already present on Unicode:

☺ u+261A
☻ u+261B

㋡ (that's tsu encircled )

At first i thought you had took some regular symbol and did some sort of inside out  logarithmic transformation in a graphics program, but then i got it!

It's an interesting idea, but i think that one works better as a logo than as a symbol, it doesn't look like it would be easy to handwrite, and the details at the top would probably be missed when rendered in smaller sizes...

rename the file as with a .raw extension and, at least with Windows, using programs like Irfanview, Gimp etc, you can open it as a raw bitmap image file with arbitrary dimensions and bit depth (with choice of different color enconding standards at higher bit depths), works with any file.

Damn, i thought this thread was gonna be about pornographic eastereggs 

Once the coin to geocordinate algorithm has been figured out, i imagine it shouldn't be difficult to use Google Earth overlays to visualize the data.

Do you got a bank account on Brazil? I would be particularlly interested if you got an account on bank Itau (so i can transfer without significant fees nor hassles).


I wanna try buying a few BTC using brazilian Real, and after a few small transactions to get a feel and evaluate the exchange rate, how fast things happen, reliability etc, i might be interested in investing up to around R$100.00 total at this moment.

Would using HotspostShield work for people outside the US or do they do more checks than just geoip?

Interesting info with the infograph there, thanx.


But what are the odds of a situation like that happening on the Bitcoin network?

I'm talking about the emergence of netsplits stable for a prolonged period of time, when the the homogeneous foam starts developing coalescing clumps that remain separated from each other for a while.

What would happen if the fee associated with a transaction was used for prioritizing that transaction like this: on a node with no other transaction in the queue a transa with no fee at all would get processed, but if before it is done another transa arives with a 0.00000001 fee, that one would get processed, if another with 0.00000001 arives it goes to the queue, then if one with a whole Bitcoin for fee arives that one gets processed; transactions with the same fee get processed on a first come first served based, transactions with higher fees are given priority over ones with lower fees.


(erm where i'm supposed to put the question mark there?)

I saw on TV that at one point, the only way they could tweet was to call a phone number and leave a message on an answering machine, the messages were then automaticly posted on Tweeter as audio clips.

Without the devices, the notes are offline wallets.

The devices that redistribute Bitcoins between notes would be connected to the network. The notes don't got copies of your wallet, they are a wallet on their own, when transfering Bitcoins you're really transfering Bitcoins, not copying wallets.

What are the odds that the Bitcoin network will suffer a freak alignment of connections where big cluster of nodes will clump up remaining separated from each other for prolonged periods before eventually dissolving back into a more homogeneous foam?

I can see a future where "paper" money will contain flexible electronics and display tecnology, a single note will be capable of holding any amount of bitcoins you transfer to it (it will be a physical standalone wallet), and will change it's appearance to reflect it's contents; you will be able to exchange notes without using any network, or even electricity, like how you exchange paper money nowadays,  but with a device (any one of the many types that will be avaible) you will have the ability to redistribute the Bitcoins between notes as well between notes and other wallet storage means. (An empty note would only have a very small value simply for the benefits it has for exchanging Bitcoings instantly and without needing any connection or energy once charged, they would be made in great numbers, so many that people will feel more confortable throwing away an empty one than people nowadays feel about leafs falling from trees)

One way it could be done, would be for someone to aquire a good amount of BTC, then encode the data as annonymous donations to several innocent addresses, those transfers once validated become permanently embedded in the blockchain, right? Then after a month or so, after the data has become an essential part of the blockchain of the network, that person releases the program to aquire and decode the data  and the knowledge about it on Freenet where no censorship can take it down.