So going out of business announcement or not yet?
Why would they do that? |
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If you're going to hypothesis a small single user weather control device, why not also include a battery powered rail gun with backup 16MW laser, just to make it really dangerous?
I never said single user. People use flimsy responses to speculation that anything odd has to be a large scale operation and then use that has why is couldn't happen because something would leak. Secrets are kept and things are have major influence does not always need to be large. My mistake, you said small group, not single user. Regardless, there's no reason to think anyone is anywhere near the point of being able to steer a hurricane with any sort of device, let alone a small one. The energy required would be immense, and it would be orders of magnitude beyond anything any group as publicly demonstrated. I think so as well but I didn't want to be so dismissive to the OP which is interesting to say the least. Too often we are totally dismissive too radical ideals, they deserve debate and discourse (usually) go through the due diligence. We don't want to be closed minded and we also don't want to just jump off the deep end at the same time. This is the core of critical thinking and analysis. True, but we don't need to argue about 2+2=4. Some things are obvious enough to not warrant much discussion. |
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Mining is not as download an android app and give mining. As much as I want to sell well.
Did you miss writing a few words, or something?  English is not my native language, I think the message is clear no? Mining is not like download a app from PlayStore for people that leftover $30,000. PD: I leave a link to the only products that have now BFL for sale: http://www.cafepress.es/butterflylabsMy apologies. I gather what you are trying to say is that people who buy a $30,000 rig aren't generally the same people who need an "easy to use" mining device. I can agree to that, but I have a couple of responses: 1) BFL would like to expand the audience of miners from just including the absolute technogeekiest to more of an average user "hey, I want to check this Bitcoin thing out!" I don't know how much that'll happen at the $30,000 level, but one could argue that if even only one or two more minirig customers were capture because of the tablet integration, BFL could call it a success. 2) There are some hardcore Bitcoin enthusiasts who do take aesthetics and ease-of-use into account, even though it might not be true of the group as a whole. Myself, for instance. I wasn't about to buy an ASIC miner that wasn't enclosed in some case, and it is a bonus that the case looks good (I bought two Single SC's). If I had the funds for a minirig, I absolutely would have preordered one, and I would have much rather had a tablet integrated as they have done than had an SSH requirement or other non-GUI solution for maintaining the mining. TBH, I really dislike command-line anything. It isn't the way I like to work with computers. I also currently use BitMinter - again, because it is GUI-based, not command-line based like CGMiner and some of the other popular options. Though I may not fit the profile of the typical Bitcoin miner, I am a Bitcoin miner, and I do spend money on equipment. With the tablet integration, BFL is attempting to capture the market of people like me who do not want to deal with command-line anything, and want statistics and graphs to be automatically calculated and shown without any intervention on my part. |
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Mining is not as download an android app and give mining. As much as I want to sell well.
Did you miss writing a few words, or something? |
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The fact that something is available on the internet that is not allowed in the US is most certainly not breaking any law unless it is directly marketing itself to the US population. Hence a paid advert in a magazine that is only published in the states could for example constitute a criminal offence.
I'm not certain the US courts see it that way. They just indicted a guy for writing software that was used by gambling sites in the US. I'm certain they could indict a gambling site that didn't make an effort to keep US players out of it. |
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I am not saying their is or is not a weather machine. But, why would you think automatically other governments would know it?
Please always keep in mind that the US government is not the only government in the entire world, that the US government has many enemies, and that those enemies have a lot of spies and espionage programs around US (including foreign satellites and monitoring outposts).
Wow, so you equate that just because governments have spies, surveillance & satellites that something this damning would leak. If something is meant to be secret, it will be, the government only plays that it is incompetent. I agree with Rassah on this. The government is made up of human beings, just like us. Sure, there are some hidden secrets, but large-scale conspiracy theories rarely hold water for long, because with too many human beings involved, one of them is liable to make a mistake, crack, or otherwise inadvertently (or advertently) reveal the secret. Who is to say a weather machine would need a large scale operation? It could be a small device that only needs a relatively small group of people to operate it. If it was a small device, why is it that no one else could figure out how to make one? |
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It could be argued that they also care about features and ease-of-use. Many people do not know SSH, do not want to learn it, and would much rather have a "self contained" device with built-in display that tells them if anything's gone wrong.
I do agree that I'd be worried about the longevity of such a setup, and whether it would run reliably for months on end without requiring human intervention. However, BFL must believe that the tradeoff for that potentially questionable reliability is worth the feature set it offers.
An alternate hypothesis is that BFL may recognize that this is a more effective strategy to rope in the simpletons who would be likely to send them 'pre-order' funds without any tangible evidence that BFL will ever be delivering anything. People who don't want to 'learn ssh' are likely a super-set of the 'have money, will send to strangers' group. A valid hypothesis if you believe BFL hasn't given tangible evidence of future delivery. |
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Delivery of said nuke is a feat in of itself. Which is one of the things that the war-monger politicians in the U.S. never seem to want to say is that even if Iran did have a nuke they still have no way to deliver it.
Yes, certainly that does pose a challenge. They have methods that *could* work, but at great risk of being caught, in which case, it was all for naught anyway. Seems like there have been a large number of bombing attempts in the US lately, none of which have been successful. If one of those were a nuclear bomb, it would simply be confiscated, and the organization would be out the hundreds of millions spent on it. |
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I might be wrong but playing online poker is legal in most US jurisdiction because it's a skill game. Online gambling like Satoshi dice is illegal at federal level because it's pure gambling and banned by the Wire Act. Some states specifically ban online poker but most don't. Funding poker account via the US banking system is illegal because of the UIGEA.
Satoshi dice might fall in a grey area since it's legal to gamble online with playmoney and Bitcoin might not be considered real money. You don't need to fund your account via the US banking system either.
I'm not a lawyer but I was a pro poker player for 6 years.
Isn't it illegal to gamble with anything of value though? Bitcoin certainly has value... |
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If you upload a transaction to the recipient directly they can verify the message you provided makes sense, and only then broadcast the transactions and take the money. While that is a nice touch from a UI / accessibility point of view, it's not quite what I meant. The problem is in the underlying protocol: transactions are considered valid when signed only by the payer. Under the proposed system, there is still nothing to prevent someone from uploading a transaction on their own without involving the merchant. The cases I had in mind are those like the political campaign which was accepting Bitcoin contributions a while back; they had specific rules regarding which kinds of contributions they could accept, but no way to block transactions which failed to meet those rules, and no reliable way to know whether it was safe to simply return the funds to the originating address--which may belong to a wallet or payment service or exchange rather than the contributor. What I had in mind was essentially P2SH with two scripts, one to send from an address and another to endorse receipts. To receive funds you would take the incomplete transaction and add the address's receive script, a signature for the amount received, the memo field, and (optionally) the originating address(es), and then broadcast the updated transaction. For multiple payees, partial transactions could be merged until all the signatures are present, at which point the completed transaction can enter the blockchain. The private key for receipts could be different from the key for payments, so "cold storage" is not affected. I think it'd be good for both types of transactions to co-exist (I do not understand your plan enough to know whether that is the case). I would not want to have to approve each transaction in which I was the receiver - I want the money there and ready to be spent next time I am at my computer. Most individuals probably share the same viewpoint. From a business perspective, it makes sense to accept transactions, from a personal standpoint, maybe not so much. Also, how would this affect sendmany transactions? Every receiver has to sign off on it prior to acceptance into the blockchain? |
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also known as Nexus7 in a BoxTM
1) Cut a hole in a box. 2) Put your junk in the box. 3) Make her open the box. And that's the way we do it! You know it's CES and my wallet is open wide Gonna show you something so you know what's on my mind A gift real special, so take off the top Take a look inside -- it's Nexus in a box Not gonna get you a mining rig That sort of gift don't mean anything What is clear is that this company seeks above all the aesthetics of its products, and that alone does not give me much confidence. If you wanted to add a host on minirig (which should be cast from the first day) was more practical to include something like a RaspberryPi or similar accessible via ssh but is easier to put a mobile phone embedded with nice graphics and touch screen, leave that pileup running 24/7 for months to see what happens ... It could be argued that they also care about features and ease-of-use. Many people do not know SSH, do not want to learn it, and would much rather have a "self contained" device with built-in display that tells them if anything's gone wrong. I do agree that I'd be worried about the longevity of such a setup, and whether it would run reliably for months on end without requiring human intervention. However, BFL must believe that the tradeoff for that potentially questionable reliability is worth the feature set it offers. |
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I am not saying their is or is not a weather machine. But, why would you think automatically other governments would know it?
Please always keep in mind that the US government is not the only government in the entire world, that the US government has many enemies, and that those enemies have a lot of spies and espionage programs around US (including foreign satellites and monitoring outposts).
Wow, so you equate that just because governments have spies, surveillance & satellites that something this damning would leak. If something is meant to be secret, it will be, the government only plays that it is incompetent. I agree with Rassah on this. The government is made up of human beings, just like us. Sure, there are some hidden secrets, but large-scale conspiracy theories rarely hold water for long, because with too many human beings involved, one of them is liable to make a mistake, crack, or otherwise inadvertently (or advertently) reveal the secret. |
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I inquired about a refund as well. I paid with BTC and asked if I would be recieving the exact amount of BTC I sent them as payment in return, or the $ value of the order back in BTC. The value of BTC has gone up since I ordered, so I am hoping it is the former.
Yeah they don't do that. And for good reason too - it'd be a free hedge for anyone unsure about the BTC price. If the BTC price moves up, just ask for a refund and cash in the profits. If the BTC price moves down, sell your new miner instead, and cash in the profits. BFL has already converted all the sales to USD anyway - they wouldn't have the money to refund everyone the same BTC they paid, only the USD equivalent. They sold their equipment for a USD price, with option to pay in BTC. They did not sell their equipment for a BTC price. |
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Wow, that IS a great idea. I hope other political movements follow suit...!
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It most certainly requires a huge change of mindset, and this could be the greatest challenge Bitcoin will face with regards to mass adoption. I call BS on this. People generally already know how to handle cash, there's no reason they couldn't quickly adopt all those same principles to handling bitcoins. I disagree. How many more instances of people sending Bitcoin to scammers do we need to see before people "quickly adopt" to it? Handling cash is a different animal. You get to see the person you are doing business with. In almost all cases with Bitcoin, you do not. It is much harder to be scammed using cash, unless you're sending it in the mail (a bad idea to start with) or paying drug dealers in a back alley (another bad idea). But the purpose of Bitcoin is, effectively, to send cash in the mail! There is no commonly-held precedent of understanding that can apply to this. |
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They claimed to have sent something to the FCC for certification
...
Or else they lied about the FCC.
Which is more plausible? After all, this company does have a reputation to maintain. I wonder if they do. From my topical scanning of things, it seems that BFL found a stockpile of out-of-production FPGAs for their FPGA product line and screwed them together in some manner to get them out the door. When that source dries up, they would not have very much to maintain. They were almost perfectly positioned for a 'long con' in the ASIC scam-space, and my suspicion that that is what they did grows by the day. Willing to bet on it? |
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Im new and just starting to discover the btc world. It sounds like its too late in the game to really start mining now wish I would have known about all this stuff at the beginning but ether way I'm glad to be apart of it now lol
2 years from now, people will be looking back to today and thinking the same thing. Consider yourself fortunate to have discovered it when you did! |
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When your money disappears for over a month with no explanation, that is not the fault of the network, that is definitely MtGox's fault
You gave them an invalid address twice. If you asked them to send cash in the mail, and gave them the wrong address, would it be their fault if/when the money disappeared? If it took two weeks for the post office to return the undeliverable mail to sender, and Mt Gox could re-send your money, would that be their fault? I think his complaint about MtGox was how they held his money hostage for a month and customer service was virtually non-existent. Sounds about par for the course for them. |
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Mike has some good points but there is one fundamental difference with Bitcoin. It can't be reversed, it can't be frozen, it can't be suspended.
Yes. That's great for the merchant. Less great for the gullible victim. This point is far too often missed in the Bitcoin world. Everyone touts irreversibility as such a great thing, when in reality, it just shifts the risk of payment from the merchant to the customer. As Mike mentioned, that's an improvement over the old system, but it's still not perfect. It most certainly requires a huge change of mindset, and this could be the greatest challenge Bitcoin will face with regards to mass adoption. Customers are used to being able to order things online, and if they don't receive them, they can call up their CC company and cancel the order. We need to make sure Bitcoin users are aware that sending Bitcoin to someone unknown is roughly equivalent to sending a package full of cash through the mail - you're not getting it back, so you better be sure whoever you are sending it to is trustworthy. |
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