I hope I won't be banned for saying this, but I think the USA is a totally sick and perverted country. These almost weekly massacres are just one of many symptoms of a society that is completely twisted and out of control. The sick minds of these killers reflect the state of the nation's economy, politics and horrible foreign policy.

As for this event in China -- Attacks are a lot less common there. Plus, you can't achieve the same results with a knife.
They have their fair share of problems with corruption, poverty and what not. But they mind their own business and their culture is not quite as sick as that of the USA.

I hope that nothing like this will ever happen again, in China or the USA.  But if the profits of the weapons industry are more important than saving all the innocent lives that are taken in vain, daily in the USA, then what can you even say?!

Nej du, lol! Sverige är värre!
Jag bor inte ens i Sverige och det blir värre var gång jag besöker!

Så om det är så dåligt i Danmark, jämfört med Sverige, varför är den danska kronan värd mer än den svenska?
Allvarligt, vet du/någon?



(och jag skrev fel dessutom! skulle skrivit "Danmark ligger långt framme när det gäller IT)

"Work in cryptography" fascinating! What exactly do you do?

I remember back in the days of compulsory military service in my country, they used to test all the guys (not me, I'm a girl) to check what they were best suited to do. The absolutely smartest ones got drafted for a bit longer than normal, got a language course thrown in, and did something cryptology related that they weren't allowed to talk about. Exciting stuff and it sits good on their CVs to this day, I think, because everyone knows they scored top on IQ at 18.

Det låte bra! Danmark ligger ju alltid långt framme när det gäller politik.
Det behövs ju att några länder behöver satsa på det här.

Nope... I didn't have the inclination to do lots of research until after the software was up and running so to speak. So I just went for what I perceived to be the official client.

Basically I thought (like you normally do) I install the software FIRST and then learn about it when I have it in front of me.
I'll read up on the other clients you mention but I assume that there is a benefit with downloading all these blocks, or this client wouldn't do it! Or is it simply the difference between a web based architecture and client/server with a local fat client? 

Well, I now have 16,285 blocks left. 
At this speed, it's another 2 days!
Seems like the further you get, the slower it gets.
Does this come down to the CPU or what? This is a good spec machine with a CPU that was top of the range 1.5 years ago.

I happen to be a technical person, and I strongly believe in what bitcoin stands for. No pain, no gain and I will persevere.

But I am also: A regular internet user who just wanted to pay a subscription; A girl; Someone who normally don't have anywhere the amount of time disposable that I have now spent on this. And as such, I am thoroughly fed up now!

This is before I've even attempted to buy Bitcoins here in the UK (just moved here from another country) I do not have a "Barclay's Pingit" and I don't want to get one right now. Everything else seems a bit dodgy or complicated, although it's probably the route I'll have to take.

But before that; 2 more days of just waiting!
While it's downloading and processing I don't even know what my wallet number is.

Looks like you might have to do this yourself, or pay someone.
But how hard can this be? Isn't it just an integration job?
As far as I am aware you can buy a gambling site off the shelf, more or less, plug in the games you want, from any number of providers, and the payment methods you want. The only difference  here is that you want bitcoins. No doubt there is some easy way to hook up bitcoin with the accounts/wallets on the site. I honestly doubt that a lot of programming would be involved unless you wanted the site to have something over and above the normal.

Source: I've worked for two of Europe's largest online gambling sites.

Searched for anonymous ways of paying online a couple of years ago but did nothing about it back then.

Remembered the name though.

Now I needed to pay for VIP membership of a usenet search index and they accept only Bitcoin, so I thought it was high time to get started with bitcoin.

It had actually hung. The green bar did not show and rebooting the program any amount of times did not help.
I cleared out the data from "AppData" and started from scratch.
It gave an error code and stopped again later on, but that time, just rebooting the program made it continue from where it had been.

I did that, but after it loaded and opened the client (took forever) I noticed that it was further back than I had been in the synching process the regular way. So I reverted to the ongoing sync.

This is totally frustrating though! I am on DAY 3 of just trying to finish the installation. One thing that would have been really helpful would have been if the software had given some kind of warning that we are talking about DAYS here, not minutes as with other software. But it continued on as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a software installation to take HOURS, if not days. I have 20,000 bits left and it's running slower than 1/second, so I won't be done until tomorrow if all else is equal.

I don't see bitcoin catching on with the masses unless this gets resolved! Regular people will assume there is "a virus" or that the program "is broken".

I am trying to set up bitcoin for the first time, but I think I've triggered a bug or a problem.
The wallet just won't finish syncing. I've tried re-installing (although I didn't clean out everything, just did the installation one more time).

It's hanging at the block that's referred in the screen tip text below.

This is preventing me from starting to use bitcoins... What should I do?

Thanks a lot, I will try that!

I really want to start using bitcoins, but the threshold just seems too high, based on what I am reading in this thread. I need to be able to sort this out from the PC, or with a one step visit to a bank or similar. No snail mailing purchased codes off to other countries or similar. I also don't want to invest a fortune in bitcoins, just try it for a few small purchases.

I have spent a while trying to read up on this, but it seems to me that this is a labour of love if you live in the UK.
Or can I actually buy bitcoins online somehow?

If so, please would you help me with a step-by-step?

PS - Intersango, aka Britcoins is registration by invitation only. I don't know anyone who could give me an invitation so that is not an option for me!