I think this would only apply if someone was running a website like piratedmoviesforbitcoins.bit. They wouldn't be able to seize the name, so then the bill allows pressuring the payment processors (traditionally Visa/MC) into shutting down the account. This would be harder with Bitcoin, the payment address can change every time and you would have to figure out where the bitcoins are going and try to make all exchanges not take bitcoins from that address (or coins that were ever in that address, etc). Fat chance; about as likely as invalidating dollar bills if they were ever used for illegal purposes. If they can discover the name of the person running the site, and MtGox has received identification from that person, they could make MtGox close that person's account, except US laws don't apply to businesses in Japan. Anonymous digital currency without central control wins again.

Americans can deluge their congress critters with negative messages about this RIAA/MPAA-authored piece of crap legislation, and let them know that our votes cannot be influenced by their MAFIAA kickbacks, and we don't forget.

I will need to look up the postage rate for standard mail to your country to see if it is the same rate as shipping from US to Japan. Please let me know where it is going so I can check.

bet: this thread will be on page 10 of "off-topic" by 2/29/2012...

actually its winter, temps expected 31-35 deg F for the next week....

It seems grue's hypothesis is that #3 (20° drop) allows #4 (overclock to the max), enabling #6 (profit). However, overclocked mining is less efficient in terms of hashes per watt, and, if you are wasting the heat output that could be heating your house, is pointless when it costs more in overclocked electricity than is earned in additional bitcoins.

Amazing, isn't it? "Loan us $1000 for a year, and we'll pay you a dollar"... As if banks don't have much confidence in the dollar holding it's value either (along with the fed offering super-cheap prime interest rates [loaning our tax dollars to the rich] as "economic stimulus").

This refers to mega or million hashes per second, a measure of how fast miners (who support Bitcoin and earn income by computing the puzzle used in generating Bitcoin transaction blocks) are able to brute-force search SHA256 cryptographic hashes of transaction blocks for one that meets the high-difficulty challenge.

SOLD! the highest-valued circulated coin in the world + a coin with a hole in it. All with pretty flowers.


If my camera didn't suck, and it wasn't so hard to take pictures of shiny coins (they aren't really dirty, that's a white background and the coins are too reflective), this is what it looks like:


The coins are dated 昭和53年 (1983, 2nd year of 500 coin) and 昭和50年 (1980), if you are curious...

(550 Yen = $7.04 right now, or 1.815 BTC on MTGox.)

You mean, a "somebody gave me this coin, what the heck is it and what am I supposed to do with it?" video...

It would seem that redemption is not the primary purpose of a BTC-in-a-coin; it is that it can trade hands without touching the Internet, and be a keepsake and pretty representation of your savings. Bitcoins in digital form work perfectly, except when there is no technology or Internet around. Let the recipient know there are people willing to pay more than $4 for their token because it contains a bitcoin.

A share withholding attack is used against a PPS pool. If I modify my miner to send difficulty 1 shares to the pool, but not to send full difficulty block solutions, I still get paid the same amount per submitted share. Assume now that I and my fellow attackers are 50% of the pool's hashrate: the pool is earning 50% less in block generations than expected for the number of submitted shares, but still paying the same calculated rate per share, which will put them into financial losses quickly. The attack motive is purely lulz, or to bankrupt a competitor. This is hard to defend against; you can't just go banning miners that have never found a block, many have made over 400BTC pool mining but never found a block themselves. With PPLNS however, miners will be denying themselves earnings by not submitting the winning share they found, so it is not a realistic attack vector.

To address the original post, the factors that are the pool equivalent of "speed" in that they affecting earnings:
1. Efficiency/stale share rate
2. Uptime/responsiveness
3. Fees
4. Payment system (must not be proportional or "hoppable" system where earnings are reduced for other miners by bad actors)

Maybe that's how the other "non-merged" pools work, you don't know they are actually running merged mining, and they do keep them...

Rhetorical: The hashrate of Namecoin is now about 40% of Bitcoin; do all the pools with merged mining add up to that?

Simple answer why you might not be earning as many Namecoins:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=51456 is about all I have to say...

This is your problem, drivers 11.12 and 12.1 include a new sdk that overwrites the old one and doesn't uninstall, and causes a performance drop. Follow the instructions here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54693.msg651989#msg651989

The Earth has a limited one-time gift of gold, and it gets harder and harder to mine; this is probably the model that is emulated in Bitcoin mining.

Not everyone in the world can have gold, the total amount mined in human history is estimated at 165,000 tonnes, and yearly mining is now about 2500 tonnes per year - 83 million troy oz / year for 2 billion adults in the industrial world. Note that your portion of gold is also in all those electronic devices you buy, autos you drive, etc.

The interesting part is that 1/3 of all bitcoins have already been mined, but are held by a very small percentage of the billion people on earth that might someday use Bitcoin. We are still early adopters. This economic reality is what pushed the first bubble.

Transaction fees may help fund mining more after coin generation is reduced, but it doesn't seem like they will be anywhere near 25BTC per block in a year, to replace the drop in earnings - they currently average .2 BTC per block.

That hashrate is good for about 1.1 namecoin a day, or about .01 BTC a day at current exchange rates. You could just sell them yourself and get .3 BTC per month, until it drops even more.

OMG, it's the pie-fucker!

Jewish banking came about because their religion doesn't have such prohibitions, and they were able to offer banking services to European aristocracy during the early part of the second millennium. Banking and loans enabled hiring armies, industry, and expanding power. Our modern civilization relies on banking and the ability to raise capital; if Intel couldn't sell stock to build a $2.5 billion dollar chip fab, you might still be using an abacus.

If it is for a trivia game, some of the previous are so trivial as to need a web search, i.e. "When was Youtube created?","February 14, 2005", or "How many million units did the original iPhone sell?","6.1"; are not absolutes but estimates: "How many billion years ago did the Big Bang occur?","13.7"; the question makes it ambiguous: "When did Adolf Hitler rise into power?","January 30, 1933", "When did the World War II end?","September 2, 1945" link; or are wrong: "When was Steve Jobs born?","October 5, 2011".

Questions should be knowable to a decent percentage of people, have a single correct answer, and perhaps at least easier to know than to search online.

Good: Which cocktail is made with vodka, dry vermouth & a lemon twist?
Good: The bible uses what term for loaning at a exploitative interest rate?
Good: Which "dark lord" does the title "Lord of the Rings" refer to?
Good: What is the the prehistoric single continent called?
Good: Finish the meme: "this thread is ____ to my interests"

Bad: What is the 1000th digit of the logarithmic constant "e"?
Bad: What date was Thanksgiving signed into US law?
Bad: What percentage of satellites are launched into in geosyncronous orbit?
Bad: How many languages are spoken in the world?

This is analogous to a shop that has a pickpocket problem so bad that the store operator was advised by customers they should get security guards and a camera system, 75% of the regular customers leave (the hashrate used to be over 600MH/s), and the pickpockets claiming that it is one of their stores of choice so nothing needs to change.

If you have the space (or you make a box for your miners), you can just pump the heat outside. I have a small room with a window, I closed the room and put a box fan in the window during the summer. Even so, replacing a 1500W space heater with one that also makes Bitcoins is certainly a benefit in the winter!