Sure. There're a significant number of females utilizing BTC for their cam services.

Women are pretty smart, though. They generally don't go online and hang the "I AM A WOMAN" sign around their neck unless they're involved in those kinds of services. ETA: 5 pages have passed. I take back the compliment.

Pointless and without teeth. Mostly indifferent.

Short-term bullish, long-term bearish, but not much - I guess. Potentials will be lost by being turned off to BTC as a ponzi scheme, but having it mentioned is always good while BTC isn't mainstream. SEC "involvement," though, I don't think many will take seriously, as there isn't any serious effort being displayed by the SEC.

"We found a guy who people reported stole money, and we believe them. We think he's bad. We charged this guy who may or may not still be in the US, but we think he was a Texan. Please don't start or invest in ponzis. We're still an effective LEO bureaucracy, because even if no results come of this, we've made a statement condemning bad actions."

Lemme know when they have him in captivity, because right now, this comes off to me as an indication of powerlessness by the SEC.

CGMiner's great for ASICs, FPGAs, and GPUs in BTC and LTC.
BitMinter is great for the GPU and FPGAs (unsure if they handle ASICs) in BTC mining if you're more interested in clicking an automagic button to start without spending hours tweaking settings.

Most of the rest have become a footnote in the migration from GPU to ASIC.

http://mbdonationfund.com/

Update July 1, 2013

I appeared before the Magistrate Juliet Griffin to have the indictment read. I entered my "Not Guilty" plea to the court. The prosecutor, Byron Jones wanted to setup a bond to detain me until trial court date (which had not yet be established). The Magistrate only agreed to have a $10,000 Appearance Bond that did not need to be paid (unless I don't show up for future court). The lead prosecutor wanted to suspend my passport, for which none exist. The Magistrate decided to create a special condition for the Appearance Bond that I do not apply for a new passport, for which I agreed. The Magistrate did not create any more special conditions and no reason was created to detain me any longer given the circumstance, so I was free to go after court adjourned.


Your door on "federal aid":

Thanks. 

How do communities adapt to their currency of choice frequently fluctuating up and down in value?

Would an edict pass declaring nobody shall change their prices, because it may act as a catalyst in the price fluctuation - or try to let it work itself out? We talk about price fluctuations pushing merchants away - but with services like BitPay, while it does strengthen the bond with the hard-to-deal-with fiat banking systems & regulations, does solve the fluctuation problem for merchants. Wouldn't the price be most likely to stabilize with a constant in/out flow which services like BitPay provide by broadening the number of merchants willing to accept BTC?

Is gold considered a way to move USD around since pawn shops frequently have real-time access to USD prices when buying and selling?

(this was a hijack in another thread, so figured it should be moved somewhere separate -- deleted my reply in original thread)

I don't think I'm on the same page as those suggesting BTC shouldn't be valued in fiat. I don't understand how it's possible -- maybe my brain doesn't function the same way to be able to process the idea. I can't wrap my mind around the idea that buyers and sellers shouldn't be looking to something familiar (and high-volume) in valuing BTC in transactions. If someone could help me understand, I'd appreciate it.

So - now I'm interested, because I hear it often, but often don't have great people to ask for clarification from.

USD has pretty much every imaginable good on the face of the Earth priced with it, usually hundreds of times by different merchants.

How does someone establish a price on something in Bitcoin without comparing it to USD? I mean -- it's not just a proxy for USD, obviously, and just about every other fiat currency has a BTC price established. But - if you can buy Printer XYZ123 for $40, how can you ever be a competitive merchant who completely ignores that USD price, especially considering you're probably purchasing either the printer or the materials for the printer in a fiat currency? I understand the benefits behind decoupling BTC from USD, I just don't understand what incentive anyone has to do it, outside of ideology and a long-term commitment to BTC.

EVERY major fiat currency is priced against all the others. Whenever someone talks about the value of currency, they either price it against commodities or currencies - but nobody would think "Oh, I can exchange EUR to USD, so EUR must be reliant on the ability to buy USD with it." I suppose the argument is that Bitcoin doesn't gain and maintain value based on the ability to convert it to and from USD.... but I just don't see how it'll ever be possible to really separate BTC<->fiat exchange when thinking "what's a Bitcoin worth?" You have to compare it to something, and the most market data exists for USD, EUR, and CNY.

He wants to buy Cube World with BTC. What's to get? They don't distribute through Steam or GoG (it's in alpha), the buy button's hidden both graphically on the site and behind a registration-wall, so will probably be difficult to find someone to do it.
https://picroma.com/cubeworld
https://picroma.com/buycubeworld

Well, I guess 500k orders being filled is indeed pretty irrelevant if that huge "Joe Sixpack" market share of ASIC mining can't use them. 

It has a long way to go before adjusted for all the pre-orders.

Also, prompt sucks.

lol... by a mod, too.

Looks like it's .5/share, but kind of hard to tell.

(non-sober disclaimer)

Micon's making some great points, and anyone who's played poker with a focus on earning consistent profits rather than as a hobby can tell you that to win poker, you grind. It's a nonstop grind. You don't make many "ballsy moves." You fold, you fold, you fold, you fold, you bet and win a little, you fold. Playing poker as a means of consistent income is work. I've played a few games "to win," but it's not much fun. I'd much rather have beer, smokes, and good friends, with poker there to keep our hands and brains occupied while we play. I'd imagine people probably roll their eyes and fall asleep playing Micon outside of major tournaments. When most people think of poker, I think they're thinking of that kind of "personality poker" where people are constantly bluffing and making relatively big wagers like... drunks!

If you enjoy company, alcohol, and relaxation while playing an engaging game, poker's got you. If you want to make a living out of it, you better fucking love repetition, studying the game, and have excellent self-discipline. You may actually be better off grinding video game items, currencies, and character levels (as a matter of fact, I made some tidy sums in high school!). MMORPGs, incidentally, have a lot of the same things going on as in poker, and a lot of the same costs/rewards depending on how seriously you take earning revenue from it. Earning the most valued stuff in MMORPGs is boring as ass. For example, in traditional MMORPGs, this is raiding -- for something like EVE, it's something horrible like corp. mining events, where you're expected to have a regular schedule including carting minerals back and forth between certain times the entire group agrees on - and if you're late, they may well kick you out (this occurs with "raiding" on traditional MMORPGs, too). OTOH, having fun, such as through PvP, where there's a dynamic challenge, is usually a low-to-no reward venture. It's a really fucking bizarre dynamic for games, but it helps stimulate the game-currency<->fiat/BTC exchange. It basically creates jobs. In cases where PvP can be high-reward, you end up with people taking it very seriously - like a job, and it ends up a grind like anywhere else. Even something like SC2 tournaments - you look at players, and they'll have the exact same face on as professional poker players in a tournament. Maybe a weak smile if they win, but otherwise without emotion, because they're being 100% logical, which is almost necessarily not fun.

Gox no longer handles the vast majority of BTC exchange volume. Well - they still do more than all other exchanges combined, but not nearly what they used to do (don't hold me to the chart being accurate within a ~10% range, but it's a fair indicator). http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

I think a strong trend toward private selling (due to a large-enough number of factors that I don't feel like listing them) is also contributing to a lower overall volume on exchanges.

Volume - and this is probably the biggest factor - has also pretty low at this particular moment because the price has been exceptionally stable, so there isn't much volume from traders.... but we all know that could change within a few minutes at any time. The $2xx-~$60 crash took about 7 days and saw nearly 2M BTC trade on Gox alone. Since mid-May, though, it's been unusual for Gox volume to exceed 100k/day. It doesn't help that Gox hasn't processed a USD wire withdrawal since just a bit after that time...

It'll be interesting to see if BTC prices plummet on Gox once (if) they start pushing USD out again. Right now, BTC on Gox commands a 10-15% premium over other exchanges, I assume because it's much easier to move BTC on Gox than USD. Gox could make tens or hundreds of millions just by selling BTC bought on other exchanges with the USD they can't (or won't!) send out to customers.... 

Oh, man... I wish some of those were real. If I got an email like this one, I'd consider letting him run over our house. http://dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=94

Soft-stream martial arts? Yikes...!

They generally only remove proven scams. Of course, it's very difficult to prove something a scam before people are scammed, report it, have the report checked by a mod, often have it sent back for needing more evidence, resubmitted, and eventually sent to admin for approval.

Theymos requires a mountain of evidence (his words) to label someone a scammer, and that doesn't prevent them from coming right back on a different account. Both auction shilling and using sock accounts for other nefarious purposes are considered non-bannable offenses (though depending on how the sock is used, a "SCAMMER" tag might be applied, which would be great if it weren't a sock...).

Were the thread not justified, there wouldn't be 5 new scam reports/accusations a day just on the forum (reporting a scam publicly is generally useless since they're dealing with socks, so who knows how many happen but aren't reported), almost all being because they either 1)didn't use 2FA 2)stored money on a website without holding the site owners/ops to the same standards as any other stranger because the website look professionally-designed 3)visited a malicious website on the same PC as a live Bitcoin client 4)didn't use escrow 5)thought online reputation was an equal substitute for verifiable ID


ETA: I think I might be confusing the requirements for scammer tag with req's to release personal information. I'm not sure whether or not they're exactly the same.
"You have compiled mountains of evidence that the person is guilty, and the person has been given several weeks to respond to the allegations (because you've posted a topic about it and you've PMed the person), and you have a global moderator or other very trusted person second your request. (Have the trusted person contact me to make the request)"

"this account had been hacked....i lost 1.5 btc send to this addres 176rSQx4ij439YuekdaTi2biaT5SPugnN5, from ghana fucking hacker.
 I will close this account"

Good job, guys. You did exactly what the "ghana fucking hacker" wanted. 

Man, everyone with negative rep's getting hacked these days... almost seems... ridiculous.

Oh - fwiw, though - probably shouldn't assume poster would advertise paying for rep with the account he wants rep on. Probably a sock.

God... all I thought about was how to design a case to work around that length. It really wouldn't be hard... It's crazy how long graphics cards have become in the past decade, though - but you know, you can't knock cost-efficiency for aesthetics. I guess you can, if you're Apple - but it's a limited market.

I'll always favor giant CPU heatsink towers over those puny little "space-efficient" models which just can't do the job as well. I don't even use cases anymore - I think they're an indicator of technological illiteracy.

I don't live in a Japanese apartment. My domicile has over 500 sq. ft. -- bring on the unwieldy cards and cooling designs! Can Samsung design a super-fast 40-platter hard drive which is ridiculously tall but able to compete with SSDs? I'm all for it if the price is right. I'll just build around it!