If Bitcoin is a preferred payment mechanism, give a discount for using it equivalent to the convenience it gives you.

What is typically represented is how much you make out of it out of how much effort.  I doubt your mom would have signed up if she knew how little she was making.  I'm sure some recruiter told her about all these huge success stories where people made a ton.

These companies are basically scummy (not really scammy, although some make you pay up front a lot, which are more pure scams), where they basically rely on sellers to work for near free by putting social pressure on friends to buy from them.  Very few people have the proper connections to actually make anything out of them (which basically relies on having wide networks to recruit others), and it basically scams people to be employees for free.

It's a pretty successful model because there are lots of suckers out there (both those trying to get rich quick selling, and those who buy into the pressure to buy from friends).  My wife has had a huge part of her social network get involved in these, and there is a lot of pressure to buy from friends, even when the product is junk or overpriced.  The friends get a tiny cut, maybe enough to recoup costs plus a few bucks an hour, and the company gets rich.  At the very least scummy, with many that are pure scams.  It's probably more exploitative than scam, though.

Make sure it's clear?  Reformat.

HEY GAIS, DONT PLAY CRAPS, ITS FOR SUCKERS.  INSTEAD, PLAY ROULETTE!

You can buy those things, just in Europe.

I trust fiat because my entire life I have been able to spend it almost anywhere.  That's all that matters for currency.  Can you spend it today and in the future?

People have evolutionary reasons to not just randomly try new things with no track record.  That's why gradual changes are so prevalent and it's tough to introduce revolutionary ideas.  Society and people through trial and error find a lot of things that work, and it doesn't matter if they understand why it works or not.  People tend to get angrier around red things, for example.  They don't need to understand it.  It just served us well for a while.  There are societal customs that don't make sense, but people aren't about to change them or even question them.

Now there are times when superior ideas do come about and take a while to catch on.  Usually it takes some set of early adopters to test it out and prove it works, then more get on board.  This is the case with almost any new idea that ever happens.  And a lot of the time, the better ideas win out.

So trusting fiat will work until it doesn't.  No one needs to know why Bitcoin is superior.  Only the early adopters do.  The rest will follow along once they see it works and see some tangible ways.  They don't need to know how it works any different than knowing how an internal combustion engine works when they drive their car or how structural engineering works when they drive across bridges.  They see lots of cars driving down the street and across bridges and figure that's good enough.

Pretty good take on things.  A lot of the gambling, however, comes from bored speculators IMO.  I don't know of many people buying Bitcoins to play Satoshi dice, but plenty of hoarders will play since there is nothing better to do.  This isn't to say there isn't some gambling going on where people are acquiring to gamble.

You'll notice the areas where Bitcoin thrives is where it can vastly outperform the other options.  Things like online retail just aren't that useful compared to the options.  A lot of people complain about the credit card fees that exist, but that gives you a lot of protection as a consumer and the cost of acquiring Bitcoins quickly makes it not useful for the non-Bitcoin hoarder.

For Bitcoin to succeed, it will first be in places where it vastly is superior.  Drugs and gambling it currently is vastly superior.  I'm surprised we haven't seen more on the porn side as well.  Once you have more widespread usage in these areas, expect the cost of acquiring Bitcoins to drop, thus making general economic activity more common.  It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem - you don't really use Bitcoin as a currency if there is nowhere to spend it, and you don't accept it because not many people are spending it with you.  If it starts becoming more widespread (say 10% of people use it for something, even if its just some niche use), then they will be much more willing to accept it.  Then small edges become more useful (sending money with Bitcoin to a friend would be easier than PayPal, etc..., but not if your friend has to go through an exchange to spend it or find some small site to spend it).

Find areas where people cannot buy things with traditional means (gambling, drugs of course, but what else?), and that's where you'll see it take off.

If you were looking for education, maybe ask a question instead of make a bold (and dumb) proclamation as a thread title.

Escrow services for large purposes will be needed for these kinds of transactions.  For small transactions or places with very trustworthy businesses, you don't escrow.  Very simple system, just the Bitcoin economy is not mature enough to really have anyone fill this need.

People read this kind of drivel and post threads like "Isn't the Bitcoin Community really Smart?"  LOL @ them.

Whether or not to use Satoshi's client is decided by the market.  Game over.

But they are selling the ASICs to the hands of many.  They can make more money selling to rubes than mining, and there goes your central distribution theory.

If you have free hardware and free electricity, it can certainly work.  Most people entering mining are not good at actually accounting for if its a good idea, and plenty of people have been "lucky" through price increases to be bailed out on that decision.  I do spend very little time worrying about the miners, but it gives me a little bit of joy inside seeing people who thought they could get rich quick getting crushed.

Na, still zero fucks given about whether they are profitable or lose their ass.

No need to be tough, just don't see why the survivor of GPU miners is important at all.  The GPU whiners are like the bloated labor unions whining that labor is going to China.  Oh so sad, you can't compete.  Go mine LTC or buy ASICs.

Maybe, maybe not.  Depends on so many variables it's hard to tell for sure.  But you get more Th/Watt, which is a good thing.

I give zero fucks about GPU miners.

I have updated my repository with the latest updates, including using OP_HASH160 instead of OP_RIPEMD160:
https://code.google.com/r/allenpiscitello-oracle2/

I still have a substantial effort to clean up the code and actually put most of the contract and redemption creation as part of the standard library rather than as a test case, but I expect to start on that shortly and actually integrate it.  Then on to the protocol and test application!

I'd really like to make some type of youtube video animated presentation on it with voiceovers and all, but that is completely new territory for me, so I may have to settle for something basic.  Although the test app is much more important to have for people to play with.  I've made a lot of progress quickly with the prototyping, but making a real app, even if a bit clunky and ugly, will be more work, especially since I'm just working on this stuff only a few hours a week in my free time.

Isn't hex entirely solved?

Pure skill games suck for gambling, though.  You need a lot of variance, at least, which is why backgammon is at least somewhat better.  You need a healthy supply of people who are playing at a loss to fund players at the top, and players at the bottom simply will not play if they keep getting destroyed.  They at least need the illusion of having a chance of winning against anyone.  Look at how many people make a living playing chess (besides giving lessons) vs. those that make a living playing poker.  Backgammon has a significant luck element where a poor player can upset a good player, but the good player has a large advantage.  If I played a grandmaster in chess, I would have < .001% chance of winning.  If I played a world class poker player for an hour, I would have at least a 1% chance of winning money against him, and likely much more.  If I played chess against a player 10 percentile points ahead of me in chess, he still would likely win each game 95% of the time, but in poker it might drop down to 60% (depending on the game).