Use pgp. Post key ID in a thread, and if the post's marked as edited, it's no good. Security of forum account is weak, and MAC certainly wasn't the first to fall victim to the same kind of scam we've seen before. (nor the first to voluntarily pay for damages)

Most importantly, this is a good reminder never to use the same password anywhere important, and if you use a password management service - it NEEDS to be unique. I previously tried just using a few different passwords, with the password used correlating to sensitivity of the site. Once one of my sensitive passwords were leaked from a site compromise, I was out a whole lotta BTC.

Cypriot television?! Last I knew, there were two channels. There's the Turkish channel, and the Greek channel. That place is dirt-poor. We wouldn't hear about it if NATO didn't use it for military/diplomatic operations. Christ, they probably don't even have cable! The blockchain would have to be delivered by ferry!

Turkey invades Cyprus because Greece is LOL.

Bitcoin user still affected.

Well-said.

It should also be noted, that while some people may oppose these "zero-growth" accounts, banks pay for this in consumer services, which typically make up roughly 2% of deposit amount per year. CUs, for example, offer subsidized rates on short-term loans, payday advances, etc. Checking, free notary service, etc -- all this has a price, and these services have effectively replaced interest. Financial institutions are spread thin because they think they can do everything... unsure how it will play out.

Some in here may wish to look up Paypal's short-lived MMA accounts, of which I was a member. As far as "compound progress" goes - I'll again note Bitcoin is a tool, not an end. It could end up being the enabler of evils we could have ever imagined - and it's important, that while this's is a great tool, we actively "do" good with it, not just promote Bitcoin. Evil things can and will be done with Bitcoin, so we need to DO, not just talk, to get that first-movers' advantage.

I also have no idea what a "wedding social" is. It sounds like where you live, they have door prizes at the reception??? 

Since it seems a lot of people neglected to read BB's post... a bump. There have been "local thread rules" for as long as I can remember here, and are a privilege I've used and enjoyed. Allowing OP-moderation beyond "hey theymos, some guy posted a response here saying his dick is bigger than mine, but I made a rule against that. Please delete his big dick." just makes the whole process much more efficient.

Forget technological improvements -- think about the massive improvements to businesses' attempts to build a second line of ASIC units with 5x the pre-order demand vs their first line. Once established, everything will be dramatically cheaper, and the current market is made up of just a few manufacturers (many who've quit). $/THs will decrease dramatically within the next five years if ASIC manufacturers see sustained demand. New players will emerge, and first-gen businesses will get in the most effective changes now they've gone through the first line of product.

I'm not thinking like a guy wondering what kind of technological improvements will cause $/THs to decrease, but someone guesstimating what kind of improvements experience will bring to first-time operators of ASIC companies.

(US)

This would probably be most viable with an employer willing to do direct deposits, and a Bitcoin organization with an established credit union or bank. For direct deposit, you usually need a simple note from your bank/CU stating you actually own the account. An organization like BitInstant could then have it credited to your checking account with a debit card attached. BitInstant may also be able to (I don't know the regulations surrounding this) immediately convert received funds to Bitcoins.

It would likely not be viable any other way, but if there's a company which'd expand to opportunities like this, it'd probably be BitInstant.

I've tried to sell a couple houses for BTC with no luck, one in a well-populated US city. One sold for USD through traditional channels (~2 months after posted here), and the other I decided to continue living in instead of selling. I doubt anything will happen with this one, especially in the location, but it would be very interesting...

Umm... Who gives a shit if the current-gen ASICs will be compatible forever? Their life cycle is perhaps one year before they're paper-weights. People talk about Bitcoin being in its infancy... Bitcoin-specific ASICs are newborns in IC units with kidney failure.

Thar's something very phishy about that website. Reminds me to go back to browsing from a VM...

I be a gangsta yo, but y'all knew dat n' mah Wallet.

Bitcoin is neither necessarily a force of good nor a force of evil. Individuals choose what to do with it. It's a tool. It'd probably be almost impossible to pull of a Satosh type thing (Satosh could effectively become Father State in a "perfect" execution), but I pulled the idea out of my ass while writing up a more serious (and much more boring) response... I'm sure there are plenty of scheming individuals with free time coming up with better ideas. And with that said, I can't think of any reason why "Satosh" necessarily could not work. It seems ridiculously unfeasible, but while Bitcoin's young, it's vulnerable and open to much more threatening exploits than just the unforeseen technical kind. Bitcoin is also particularly vulnerable with the specialization of hardware we're seeing, where the number of individuals mining will plummet as barrier to entry is high enough to not just be a hobby - and that's not to say it even matters given how popular a handful of pools are. In a "Satosh attack," Satosh never needs to actually "own" any of the hashing power, just get miners (or their effective representatives, the pools) to accept a set of rules on which transactions are allowed to be included in the blockchain.

Miners and merchants do, and will continue to control the future of Bitcoin. They don't need to be malicious hackers to cause massive damage... any sociopath would do.

I'd think the analogy (with SD tx ban patches in mind) would be more like "should private road owners prevent 80k individuals insisting on walking in the middle of owners' individual roads from creating a traffic-jam for the 20k cars also using the network of roads?" Even that analogy sucks, though.

Now - if you read past the first sentence of OP... this entire thread is about a potential volunteer organization to get past the problem of having SDice just change their betting addresses. 

I doubt it, and Satosh increases demand for hashpower - but only within pools agreeing to host the Satosh virus. If 50% of pools offer "130% PPS," there should be a 30% increase in hashpower, assuming no dip in price, and those pools offering the Satosh-subsidized "bonus" will also very likely swell in proportional size.

A new miner would have LESS incentive to join outside the Satosh pools, because he's not only spending more per hash due to increase in overall hashpower, but not earning as much as he could be in a Satosh-infected pool. That's not what you're really going at, but it is essential in understanding just how rapidly Satosh becomes established... The idea that swooping in and overtaking an established authority is trivial, I don't think would pan out. It'd be like one of those AltCoins. Relative to Bitcoin, they're miniscule, and unless they're massive (in the Satosh scenario), they have no authority. As Satosh grows, dethroning them goes from difficult, to extremely difficult, to virtually impossible.

Similar to the USG, it'd be virtually impossible for someone to just come in and say - Hey, my government I just made up ought to rule over you, instead, and I'll give all policemen and soldiers a 10% raise over what they currently make should you defect! Starting an army (hashing farm) able to rival Satosh would become exponentially more difficult with time, and the time-span we're looking at is very short. Once Satosh reveals how deadly are, things will happen fast. You should just be happy if Satosh permits elections of pre-determined freely-nominated candidates.

(Incidentally, this might be the one time an entity really has feasible ability to start something able to effectively replace the USG, among other governments, assuming Bitcoin becomes a "success" in the most idealistic of visions.)

All the information's publicly posted, so I don't see why it would be too difficult for a client to pull this information.

It should be noted that a .0005BTC bid is not equal among miners, core rules ignored for a minute. Certain pools create certain allowances, bans, and modifiers for different transactions, as well as perhaps certain entities. The SDice patch is a good relevant example. The worrisome spat of no-tx blocks a while back is also a good example of "the rules" being modified - because the rules are more default settings than rules, as I understand it. If you made Luke-Jr really mad, for instance, he may have Eligius ignore all transactions coming from addresses known to be yours., and IIRC, Eligius is known for having irregular bid rules.

Thus, there probably isn't particularly accurate information on whether or not the particular tx you send out will be included in the next block. But, you could get a fuzzy idea using simple information, assuming everyone uses the default bid weight settings.

I have meditated on it, and I'm pretty sure Roger Ver is not the anti-christ.

I have arrived at this conclusion, because when I say "Emperor Ver" aloud - and I don't know if you're familiar with a MidWest US accent - but I sound like I'm fucking wasted. Empur'r'vrrrr....

So, it's probably one of those other try-anything-once fellows with ambition. Maybe ambition is the anti-christ? Perhaps Our Lord and Savior (I'm not sure why we use both titles, because it seems ambiguous to me -- we could be referring to multiple people - a sin We killed many, many people over at some time, I'm sure) interprets ambition as brat-like rebellion. Brats (unlike wieners) who don't know their place are smited by God. Oddly enough, it's almost always our elders who tell us this, often followed by "That nigger in office wants to take 'r guns away!!" -- Then, a pause... "What do you think about that?" the Inquisition inquires. Anyway, I need a previous quip stricken... God does indeed smite wieners in the wrong place (even if you only THINK it's in the wrong place, because God does indeed punish intent). ♪Smite that, smite that garden hose. Put it in the correc' hole.♪ -Unnamed Negro spiritual.

No, I don't think Ambition is the anti-Christ, because then "We" are the anti-christ, and Time Magazine already tried that.

Okay... I think Kafka & Kurt are out of my system, now. Need books for the next couple weeks.

You're suggesting to a board made up almost entirely of introverts they should eliminate the security of owning what they know how to service (or maybe not...) in favor of enjoying the existence of others.

Maintenance costs are generally pretty slim. I furnished my kitchen for ~$2k with everything new. So far, maintenance costs have been $0. It costs money to heat the room I suppose, but there are no maintenance costs otherwise. Unless there is unchecked leaking or something like termites, there's generally no cost over time with extra rooms outside of initial purchase cost and, more expensively, the extra property taxes. I don't need to waste my time vacuuming an unused room because.... it's not used. More importantly for me, having something like a kitchen allows my wife to cook, which she enjoys (as do I), and minimizes my need to rely on others to cook for me. Worst case scenario, I have to cook for myself, not walk through a blizzard to find the nearest restaurant is closed (in my case, that'd mean I'd either have to walk 3 miles back home, or go 10 miles to the next town). More importantly for me, I can take a good lunch with diversity of food to work for maybe $3, instead of eating a greasy sandwich of bland meat by-products for $10 from the work cafeteria. If I did not have control over the food I'm eating, I would need to eat the greasy by-product sandwich, and it really doesn't matter whether it's a systemic problem or just that one company throwing sandwiches into an oven, because that's the company which provides food service on Wednesdays.

I don't think comparing a house to the Internet is reasonable. The Internet requires you be connected to other people, which, without ISPs, would require you go to every building and establish a connection to "your" Internet, which is kind of the opposite in owning a house where you're able to sustain yourself at-home. Establishing something like Google in its current form would be absurd for an individual to do, simply because it'd take too much time (especially in learning what's required) for one person to complete in their lifetime. Cooking takes maybe an hour a day for results, which is probably less time than it'd take for food to get to me if I ate out three times in a day, and I know I'm getting exactly what I want, not selecting from a list of 20 items with ingredients I won't know much about until tasting (or perhaps only after tasting!). I am happy using Google, though I don't own it - but I'm fairly sure I'd be happier if I owned Google, simply because of the opportunities ownership presents. Ownership allows you to make changes... in this particular community, I'm sure almost everyone on the board has a list of what they want Google to do differently. It also presents new opportunities to rapidly learn many advanced ideas from high-ups in the company, an opportunity you likely wouldn't get otherwise. If I owned Google, we could immediately create massive acceptance of Bitcoin, change the news, and ultimately change the course of humanity in a meaningful way -- something more in our image (or perhaps not in case of unintended consequences). Conversely, if I rented an office unit in a building Google owns, they probably wouldn't even allow me to paint the walls a preferable color.

Cars, though... I might be with you if you favor renting cars. I'm very sick of owning and having to repair cars, mostly because a jack is now sitting under one of them, crushed and yet immovable because one of the tires was removed when the car fell on the jack (there's no room to slip another jack under it). The car's now sitting - leaning - in the driveway, and that's pissed me off to no end, largely because it was purchased less than two months ago. Very pissed. Actually, it's so bad, I'd agree with you should you support public transportation, were it available where I am. Cars are not houses, though.

What if 100k of 1m people are as fickle as 1k of 100k people when doom&gloom or sunshine&roses reports are made, then repeated by other news outlets?

If Walmart accepted Bitcoin today, it would be the "start of Bitcoin."

If Walmart stopped accepting Bitcoin in a year, it would be the "end of Bitcoin."

Should a large handful of major B&M stores accept BTC, it still only takes a few months of "Bitcoin is crashing, doomed to failure" for them to abandon Bitcoin. Once one drops out, they'll all stop dropping out, and that's the "end of Bitcoin." It's like HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. Once a couple major organizations dropped support, Blu-Ray won. Currencies we're used to don't have this problem, because the government forces everyone to accept that one currency. If I took out a BTC loan from - Idunno, AmericanJohn... he would necessarily need to accept USD for repayment in a court of law. He can't say "Oh, no - you can't give me USD. I gave you BTC, and that must be returned." The judge will tell you to GTFO before he rips up the paper giving you any reparation at all.

Bitcoin can always be replaced by something new and can always be abandoned. It creates a lot of uncertainty.

I guess the question I really wanted an answer to here... Is Satoshi the antichrist? - Because it could still be Gavin or Ver or someone like that. Can there be multiple antichrists given there's not much reason there couldn't be multiple anti-popes similar to Orthodox kingdoms each having their own Patriarch? Okay, so these must represent the directors of the Satosh Administrative Districts. Each one represents the anti-government (government being infallible; God). So the SADs (SADists?!!!) are pretty much Satan's Army.

Basically, I think we need to burn everyone important alive to prevent the Muslims from re-taking Jerusalem. Or the Jews need to hold Jerusalem.... something about the water levels decreasing and two guys spitting fire out of their mouths at heathens, which I think is a metaphor for the cool new drones the USG has purchased. Not very familiar with Zionism & Christian end-times, tbh... but there are flamethrower drones in the Bible, right?

ppfffffchhzzsczzhrrr! That's the sound I imagine they make. (I guess they were made by a Polish or Hungarian company)


Ahhh! Ahhh! Help me, the administrative bureaucracy of the formerly-decentralized monetary system is burning me alive! (that person was made in America!)

Dammit... I wish I could draw.