Die Diskussion gab's schon gefühlt 2000 mal... Altcoins haben zum Teil mit kürzeren Blockintervallen experimentiert, aber zum einen garantiert das keine kurzen Bestätigungs-Zeiten, zum anderen müssen dann mehr Bestätigungen da sein, um einen gleichen Level an Sicherheit zu erreichen, denn bei einem Zehntel der Blockzeit ist natürlich die aufgewendete Hash-Leistung je Block auch nur ein Zehntel.

Das klassische Gegenargument gegen das Warten auf die Bestätigungen ist, dass für "kleine" Beträge eine gültige Transaktion ohne Bestätigungen schon ausreicht (wenn man genügend aktuelle Blockchain-Daten hat, um ein Double Spend zu erkennen).
Was "klein" ist, ist natürlich Definitionssache - ein Kaffee oder eine Fastfood-Mahlzeit sicher, ein Wocheneinkauf für eine Familie beim Discounter für 100 EUR vielleicht, ein Autokauf ganz bestimmt nicht.
Bei einem Autokauf und ähnlichen Sachen wird man sowieso ein paar Daten vom Käufer haben wollen, dann kann man sich an den Käufer wenden, wenn es mit der Transaktion nicht klappt.
Beim Discounter- oder Baumarkt-Einkauf wird es eventuell haarig, möglich, dass solche Läden dann Limits haben werden, bei denen das Verlustrisiko vertretbar ist, und oberhalb des Limits dann so was wie eine Kundenkarte oder sonstige Identifikation des Käufers haben wollen. Da muss es halt schnell gehen an der Kasse, und der Schwund sollte im sehr überschaubaren Rahmen bleiben.

Onkel Paul

Because the "trapdoor" functions used in public key cryptography are designed with exactly that property.
In your question, the first implicit assumption is already wrong. If a function can be calculated, it does not necessarily follow that its inverse can be calculated with similar effort or can be calculated at all.
For example, the function "abs" returns the absolute value of its argument. Naturally, its inverse cannot be computed, because you don't know whether the original argument was positive or negative.
Other functions have a defined inverse but it's much harder to compute the inverse than computing the original function. Elliptic curve functions as used in bitcoin belong to this class, as well as the operations on large primes that are used in RSA public key crypto (Pretty Good Privacy).
"Much harder" in this case does not mean "requires a faster computer" but "impossible given the natural laws and available ressources of humankind."

Onkel Paul

Weird...
As I said, english is not my native language.
This page http://www.englishpage.com/irregularverbs/irregularverbs.html states both forms (broadcast and broadcasted) as possible for the past tense. In contrast, the past tense of "cast" is clearly "cast" and not "casted". This seems pretty illogical considering that the word "broadcast" is based on "cast". Irregularities within the irregular verbs - english is a crazy language

Onkel Paul

Without telling what you really want to do, it's difficult to tell, but I think the project development subforum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=12.0) is the place you're looking for.

Onkel Paul

Oh really?
If he does, he's doing a lousy job, considering how Fox News and other conservative media outlets are spilling vitriol on him.

Actually, the caricatures show some truth as Putin can basically do what he wants because Russia is too big to care what the rest of the world thinks.
I won't defend US geopolitics (they really suck at this) but Russia's isn't really better. It's all about power and influence, and lies and war are the tools on both sides.

Onkel Paul

If someone is into sleuthing, he might try his skills on this approach at discovering some info not present in the PDF files:
https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/how-you-will-not-uncover-satoshi/
Apparently, the document ID is a hash of some fields of the document. Only some of these fields are retained in the PDF file, and the article above indicates that you might be able to recover other field values by bruteforcing them.

Onkel Paul

Yup, this looks pretty genuine, even though I wonder why the sha256 hash of the document is mentioned on the web only recently (there's a discussion in the cryptography mailing list http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.general/22386).

The edits between the 2008 and the 2009 version that I see are mostly small clarifications. What I consider really interesting is the use of "broadcasted" instead of "broadcast" in the first version - I'm not entirely sure but to me that indicates that the original author's native language might not be english. I have seen this kind of mistake made by german speakers, but others are probably also prone to mixing up english language idiosyncrasies such as this ("to list" -> "has been listed" but "to broadcast"->"has been broadcast"). However, english isn't my native language either, and it's possible that native speakers make such mistakes, too.

Onkel Paul

By the way, the "CreationDate" attribute of the PDF states 20081003134958-07 for the first version and 20090324113315-06 for the second version, so it looks like the timezones of the creating computer(s) were american. According to DST rules, both would fall into the daylight saving time date range, so this were either two separate computers set up for different timezones, or one computer that was switched from one timezone to another one.

No, just have a look back at theymos' formula:
There are two numbers that come into this
- total number of posts (activity will never be higher than that)
- number of two-week intervals in which you posted multiplied by 14

So if you post 400 articles when you first log in, your post count will be 400 but your number of two-week intervals will be one, so your activity is 14.
When you get back to the forum 14 days later and post (not just visit), you've got 2 two-week intervals with postings, so your activity will rise to 28.
If you stay off the forum for a year, the number of two-week intervals with posts from you obviously does not grow, so your activity is still 28.
When you start posting again, your activity will rise to 42 since now you have 3 two-week intervals with posts.

On the other hand, if you post one or two articles per week but without long interruptions, your activity will not be determined by the number of two-week intervals but by the total number of posts.
For example, if you post one article every week for a year, your activity will be 52 because that's your post count. You can then quickly raise activity to 26*14 = 364 if you post enough (=312) articles in the last week.

Hope it becomes a bit clearer...

Onkel Paul

Actually, e-mail has been around for a bit more than 40 years: See http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
It's true that e-mail phishing is a somewhat newer phenomenon (about 20 years, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing), but the prerequisite is that sender information can easily be forged, which is basically built into e-mail protocols from the beginning.
The only way out of this would be to widely use public key encryption and signatures. Most people don't think their e-mail communication is valuable enough to warrant the additional effort, though.

Onkel Paul

The most likely explanation is that your BTC are being stolen from you. You would not be the first to suffer from this, and not the last...
I don't know what operating system and wallet software you use, what kind of other software you installed recently etc. There have been quite a number of cases where bitcoin wallets (even password protected ones) were being emptied using information gathered through some trojan/keylogger.

Alas, once your computer security is compromised, creating a safe wallet and transferring what's left in your current wallet there to save at least some bits is not so easy - you'd need to set up a second computer as safely as possible, generate a fresh wallet, and transfer your bitcoins there after your old wallet has caught up with the blockchain, so you don't generate invalid ("double spend") transactions.

Onkel Paul

Maybe a flashing bright red "NEWBIE" warning on PMs by newbies would be enough to deter impersonators/scammers, while not preventing legitimate new users from asking their questions?

Onkel Paul

With "reorg" you mean a long chain that becomes orphaned?
I've just looked it up, and unless the info I found is outdated, the longest such orphaned chain was 4 blocks (March 2013): http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3343/what-is-the-longest-blockchain-fork-that-has-been-orphaned-to-date
That non-canonical chain was mined on for some time by clients that were not updated, so it grew longer but never became the "official" chain again.

So more than 6 blocks should be a rather rare event. I suspect that exchanges should have fork alarm mechanisms in place that allow them to stop emitting and accepting transactions when there is a reasonable expectation that a fork may happen.
If they don't, they will probably negotiate with their users about how to handle BTC deposits and withdraws that are invalidated due to the fork. There is no defined "right" way to handle this, as neither the exchange nor the customer can be made responsible for the failed transactions.

Onkel Paul

Here's some dividing code:

You can have it for free

Onkel Paul

Seriously, if you don't specify what you need, how do you expect anyone to give you a serious offer?

Wenn man genau wüsste, wie der Preis sich entwickelt, wäre es ja einfach...

Jeder hier kann nur mit mehr oder weniger guten Begründungen raten. Im Moment ist der Kurs ja ein Stück in die Höhe gegangen (und wieder etwas abgesackt), also wäre halten die richitge Entscheidung gewesen. Wenn man es denn vorher genau gewusst hätte...

Mein persönliches Bauchgefühl ist, dass es in diesem Jahr noch ein Stück weiter nach oben geht. Möglicherweise auf ein neues Allzeithoch, aber darauf würde ich im Moment noch keine Wette eingehen.

Onkel Paul

Yup I'm already doing that when I see a spammy post, but most of the obviously spammy registrations don't even post.


My offer was actually to reduce work for the mods by assisting in bot registration removal, not push work towards them
To me, the bots don't matter much, I don't even notice the non-posting accounts, and the spammy posts will be reported...

Onkel Paul

Welcome to the world of internet mail. It's been like that for 30 years or so, but you're probably not the last one to realize that it's broken.

Onkel Paul

I'd be willing to remove bot-made accounts - I'm pretty good at detecting and cleaning up forum spam
@mods: PM me when you think I can be trusted and the work would be useful.

Onkel Paul

You need to construct a transaction with one output for each destination address.

See http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1xi326/how_can_i_make_a_multioutput_transaction/ for a short answer. I can't verify the menu functions at the moment, though.

Onkel Paul

Actually, no-fee transactions can and will be included in the blockchain if some other parameters are right (size of transaction, age of inputs, output amount).
See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees for some info (I haven't checked whether it is up-to-date but at least you'll get an idea).
It might take some time since some miners may refuse to process no-fee transactions, though.

Onkel Paul

They're not counting the days but the hours. So after 7*24 = 168 hours you will get your payment. Considering that most members are in wildly differing timezones this is only logical.

Onkel Paul