Yep. It's scientifically vacuous. While the experience of heat is relative to environmental temperatures (even for us humans) the actual pain caused by thermal damage to the frog's skin would be an objective sensation, and would be enough to cause the animal to attempt escape.

Sounds about right. This exact same folly ended it all for the mighty Roman Empire, the British Empire and even the Nazis (debatably).

My thoughts EXACTLY cablepair!
I didn't have the balls to suggest it - but since you brought it up...

Another +1 from me.

This is a heavy-handed way of dealing with something that is at worst a minor annoyance on the odd occasion. Why not allow individuals to choose for themselves to display signature images or not? This is much better than a totalitarian ban, and I think you would find most people would leave them on. It's would be trivial to implement - slush has already suggested a way of doing it.

And DEFINITELY do not ban embedded images within posts. That would be signing the death warrant of this forum. Who the hell wants to frequent a text-only forum that bans all forms of imagery? Last time I checked, this was not the Soviet Union.

I stand corrected. Shouldn't use wikipedia for my sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Ownership_of_debt

That $1 trillion are China's holdings of treasury bonds only though. Do you know how much private debt they own or how much USD they hold in reserve? That is not taken into consideration in the treasury debt, if I'm not mistaken?

Anyway, it's besides the point. I was speaking in hyperbole.
I obviously don't believe that china owns the USA... not quite yet, anyway.

But how the hell does one nation still blow through $15 trillion in the space of a couple years, when the government spends virtually nothing on evil 'socialist' economic programs? The debt was minuscule in comparison not 10 or 15 years ago.

I was admittedly speaking in hyperbole.
About 35% of the total debt of $15 trillion is owed to various foreign investors.
China owns about 16% of it, or about $2.4 trillion - quite a chunk.

By how much will the USD have to be hyperinflated to pay back that pesky $15 trillion owed to china?
That is almost $50,000 for every man woman and child in the country.
Greece's national debt is only $470 billion, or about $41,000 per citizen - thats $9,000 less per capita.

A huge chunk of Greece's national debt has come from guaranteeing bondholder debt, unlike in the US where one of the biggest banks in the world was allowed to fail. So how has the US managed to rack up such a ridiculous bill? Especially when they are not even providing social programs like most of the european states?

It would seem that the US has a bigger immediate problem on it's hands than greece does. The USD is losing is dominant role in world finance, and with it the economic and monetary hegemony held by the USA. I wonder how long it will be before we see 1 billion US dollar notes, or an outright default on it's national debt?

It will be the country that has the most guns, tanks, ships and fighter jets that will be the victor in all of this.

Yeah. Very grateful to payb.tc for his effort. I haven't had a chance to change it yet.
Going to to it now.

How is the automation script coming along?

You're going to have to do a better job on the website before you will attract any investors.
It's just a plain text document with a static form at the bottom.

Right now, your company isn't worth anything, let alone the 234 btc that you are valuing your company at with an IPO of 0.1 btc/share and 2340 total shares.

My advice would be to get the site to at least a semi-developed phase by yourself first to show that you are a competent person to invest in.

I don't know if I would be happy storing funds for people to be honest, not in a wallet on the server anyway. What I was thinking of doing is creating a "virtual" account on the server that users could load funds to. Payment would sent the same way as currently, to an offline wallet. If you want to withdraw, it wouldn't be an automatic process as I would need to verify and send the payment from my local machine where the coins are being stored. It's not the best way, but I really don't want a bitcoin wallet stored on this server. If it gets hacked, seized, or fails in some way I have no recourse and would be liable for the loss.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am reconsidering. I don't know if I am happy storing coins at all, on or offline. It just opens me up to unnecessary risk and makes the accounting a hassle. I like TTBit's suggestion about buying download credit bundles though. That way you can pay for some bandwidth with your couple of bitcoin and use it as you need it, topping up when necessary. And the good part is that I don't have to hold coins for users, bringing extra liability, as they are being paid in exchange for future use of the service so can be considered assets rather than an expense that may have to be paid back at some point. What do you think?

Really great work payb.tc. It looks so much better than the logo I currently have. And thanks for your generosity mate, thats really kind of you offering the logo for free. If you are a member of the site, I can give you a discount on the rate instead if you like? Just PM me your username and I'll take care of it a.s.a.p.

Thanks again.

Dwolla is legit, and fees are only 25c. Lots of people use it and it's pretty easy.
You have to provide your bank account no. and sort code, and they make two small deposits in order to verify the account.
Then you do an ACH transfer from your bank to Dwolla, and the funds are available after a few hours.
I'm never used it personally as I'm not from the US.

You don't know what a wire transfer is? Are you just being sarcastic or what? How do you fund your paypal account if you don't have a bank account/credit card? MtGox accept cash deposits to their USA bank if I'm not mistaken.

https://mtgox.com/users/addFunds

It's pretty easy to deposit some cash into MtGox's USA chase bank account. It's easy and fast. but you have to trust MtGox with your personal information as a verified MtGox account is required to do so, according to the site.

You could try to find someone trustworthy on these forums who would sell you bitcoins for cash in person, or by cash in the mail. That is probably the safest and most secure way to go about it.

Nice work mate, I think I prefer the second style.
I know a green background is hard to work with. I might end up changing the header to a fainter shade of green.
I do need a properly formatted psd though, so I can make modifications later if necessary.

One of those cylindrical coin tubes, down at the bottom of the page, would be nice if you had a lot of the 1btc coins.
I'm sure they are available in the correct size somewhere online.



BTW, did you get my PM casascius?

No problem. I hope you succeed because I want to see more options for businesses in the bitcoin economy to cut their fiat cost risks. I would have great use for your service. Reasonably priced, scalable dedicated server plans that I could pay for in bitcoin would be very nice indeed.

Do you know any php? It can be done pretty easily. Here is the MtGox HTTP API documentation on the bitcoin wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API#HTTP_API

It has a few straight forward examples that you can follow.

Here is a more brief overview of the API on MtGox:
https://mtgox.com/support/tradeAPI

What I would do is make an automatic script that takes the client's order, waits for payment to be received, then initiates a sale on MtGox using their API for the exact amount required to pay for the server in USD. The rest of the coin could remain in your wallet as a buffer in case the market goes against you on future orders.

You don't have to withdraw the fiat from mtgox immediately either, you could wait until you have accumulated enough to save on fees. As long as you cash out enough coin immediately to pay for the cost, you can use the market capital from the IPO as a float for the paypal account.

Complicated though, and you would need a better website interface. But I think it is possible.

It's better to only cash out the amount you need in order to pay fiat costs. If the price of btc rises, you have to pay more if you plan to buy btc to pay dividends. You are increasing your risk exposure by cashing out everything immediately.

Also there is a time lag between the time you quote the price to the client and the time they actually send payment. They might delay for 24 hours, in which case your quote would no longer be valid. If you plan to run on tight margins, you will have to ensure that the quote expires after an hour or two if it is not paid.

Also, don't forget about taking the cost of a paypal lodgment into consideration. Have you got a reliable exchanger for paypal that is not going to chargeback after you send the bitcoins? How much commission do you pay for btc:paypal transactions?