I looked at your post history to see if I could help, but you seem to be implying that I was lying over my McDonalds double spend, so you are on your own as far as I am concerned.

Why you think that I should lie over a petty amount of merit I don't understand. If I had the inclination to manipulate the merit system, I could make a much better job of it than that.

Blockchain technology is unsuitable for most of the projects that purport to be using it. However, it is the current "must have" word in new financial projects.

China has become a super-power, and many Chinese are extremely wealthy. Banning mining activities in China won't meant that the Chinese will have a reduced mining activity. The mining owners will just move their operations to other countries, and they have already done this to a certain extent.

I constantly see merits associated with ranking for signature campaigns, and for this reason I think that the Junior requirement should be raised to 10, and the member requirement raised to 25. For me. I believe that merits should be an indication of the opinion of the community about a post or topic. I use merits I receive, as well as replies, to decide if I should continue or expand a project or opinion. Upranking should be a consequence, and not a reason for the receipt of merits.

It isn't difficult to earn merits, I've got 3 alts with member status, and I have received the 1,000 requirement for a Legendary. I believe that one of my alts is the faster to achieve member status in this forum. My level of technical knowledge is far inferior to a large number of the members here, but I believe in Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Talk forum. I'm also convinced that Bitcoin started a banking revolution that is as important and far reaching as the creation of Central Banks. If you believe in the crypto economy, and you support this forum in its aims to help people to adjust to the dramatic changes that affect everybody, then merit will find its way into your profile. What is more important though is that you will be helping "ordinary" people to escape the tyranny of the current political elite.

The Fit to Talk English translation projects are pretty inactive at the moment. There are still merits to be awarded for members who would like assistance in starting quality topics in this forum.

I created the Mobile Image gallery for members to post pictures of local political events or traditional activities, and tell us about them in this forum. I believe that sovereignty and traditional values are important, and by understanding more about other countries and customs, it is easier for us all to work together in harmony.

The receipt of merits for the above projects should be of secondary interest. Maintaining Bitcoin Talk as an important international forum is far more important in my opinion.

I bow to your judgment.

Now back to trying to understand penetration testing with Kali Linux.

I'm a gnat's wedding-tackle away from giving the guy another 20 merits for the post just to piss off the whingers. Would that count as merit abuse, or would it be frock puppet abuse?

Before you do anything else, I would mirror your hard drive. You may have other things that you need to recover, and you may destroy them  by running recovery software or procedures.

I'm bottom of the pile then. I was always in detention at school. My parents put me over the washing machine and took a belt to me. I hate milk on its own, and I don't eat cookies. I rebuilt a motor cycle gearbox in my bedroom as well. This probably shaped my character, and this may or may not be good.

I agree that the important things relate to forum activity, but good and helpful posting doesn't mean that a member won't try to take advantage of other members in a financial transaction.

If escrow is used, then trust doesn't enter into it. In fact it indicates a lack of trust. Of course it isn't worth admins spending time validating entries - the community will do that. All that is needed is the names of the two parties, the value of the trade, and a reference. This will give a member thinking of a future trade, the chance to form his own opinion. With only two minor Bitcoin purchases, then I would go to the bottom of the list, but anyone who is considering a major trade with me can review my posting history, and that should give them an idea of my moral stance.

The double spend error seems to be the most common, but if awarders only give a max of 5 sMerits, then I don't think it is significant. The deliberate abuse should be the main focus, and the awarders won't be reversing those.

Why does it have to be "default" trust. Why not just trust based on actual trading activity.

Will Nigel Farage create the third revolution in the UK to overthrow the ruling classes. King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta as a result of a revolt by the population. Oliver Cromwell started a civil war to overthrow corruption and repression in the ruling classes. If one believes that everything in life is cyclic in character, then the third cycle must be ready to peak.

Maybe trust and reputation should be different categories. In real life, some of the most obnoxious and badly behaved people I've dealt with have been the most trustworthy. It's the smarmy do-gooders that I treat with caution, especially if they gain reputation with the trappings of wealth.

We've had sock puppets for quite a long time, but now that I've returned from a period of low activity, I've noticed a new breed of alts. These are the frock puppets who seem to post like a bunch of schoolgirls, and even resort to crying on occasions.

Well I've given the above posters 10 merits each, so you can have a whinge about that now.


and that doesn't include my source merits, so nobody that is creating a decent post for me to see is going short.

Oh! Neither of them is a frock puppet of mine either.

This buggy was parked outside the cafe on Hayling Island. It is based on a 1970s VW beetle chassis, and the body is a fibre glass kit that popular last century.

Thanks for providing these tables. I find it interesting to see who the broad distributors of merit are. By this I mean awarders who have merited more than 200 members, and have an average of 2 to 3 transactions per member. Should merit sources stick to this average, or should we be looking for major contributors to encourage by following them?

You should never do this. All it does is to confirm that the mail address is valid, and that you read spam mail. This probably increases the value of you address by 100x or so, and will lead to an increase in spam in the future. Just delete the message, and block the sending address if you want to.The last action may be a waste of time, as the sending address is probably a throwaway.

I don't remember the full details, but I do have trouble in finding good posts, and I decided to award 5 merits to the guy for starting the discussion. I thought it could become useful for those members who were considering starting a mining project to learn about Bitcoin. I still intend to do this myself, but I've got too much to sort out at the moment.

If somebody looks into the merit award, they will see that it is in fact 2 awards of 5 merits, and they were made within a one minute period. This was caused by problems with using McDonalds WiFi , and it has happened on several occasions. McDonalds has two channels on their WiFi. One has the ID of "O2" ( their service provider ), and the other is " McDonalds free WiFi". Periodically the current channel will disconnect, and then the computer will auto-connect to the alternative. If this happens at the time I award some merits, then the computer may resend the submission through the new connection. I'm guessing that the confirmation packet gets lost when the old channel disconnects, and this is why it retries. Maybe somebody with more knowledge can confirm this.

I don't think it is worth worrying about this glitch, it is fairly rare, and it just means that one member will be lucky and get a few extra merits.

Many people resort to bullying in real life. They seem to believe that it will gain them respect, but very often the reverse is true. I'm sure that this is true of some members here. However, one has to be careful when venturing such opinions, very often the evaluation is subjective, and it could be that one hasn't considered the wider ramifications for the forum.