I'm a furry. I am sexually attracted to anthropomorphic animals and think Rassah has excellent taste in furniture.

Half a bit and half a tit? Shouldn't it be four of each? They both come in groups of eight, after all.

It doesn't. Computers work in binary (base 2). The conversion to hex (base 16) or base58 or any other base happens later and is purely for the benefit of us humans.

You are misinformed about neutron bombs. Neutron bombs, as the name suggests, are designed to release most of their energy in the form of neutrons instead of gamma rays. Since it is the gamma rays that are responsible for the EMP, a neutron bomb produces a far less powerful EMP than a conventional thermonuclear weapon. Neutron bombs also do not leave buildings intact: all buildings within the lethal radiation range are likely to be completely destroyed or severely damaged by the blast anyway. The real purpose of neutron bombs is to kill those in armoured vehicles and hardened structures, who would otherwise survive the blast (assuming they're far enough away from ground zero to not be instantly vaporised, obviously).

I remember wondering how anyone could possibly think it was a good idea.

No, you have it backwards. Gresham's Law states that "bad money drive out good when the exchange rate is fixed by law". When the exchange rate is allowed to float (as is the case with Bitcoin), bad money simply drops in value relative to good money, encouraging people to use good money.

As far as I can tell, he's only here because he wants to build a gambling website even though he doesn't know anything about Bitcoin, scripting, security, or why people might be reluctant to trust their money to someone who doesn't have a clue what he's doing, and he's doing it because he expects to make money by doing something he doesn't know how to do. It has apparently never occurred to him to get a job doing something he actually knows how to do, or even to take the effort to learn how to do the job he wants to do.

The same people who wait that long while the cashier checks that the five-dollar note they paid with isn't counterfeit. Counterfeiters put a lot of effort into making their five-dollar notes look exactly like the real thing, you know; that's why you have to spend so much time checking. Oh wait, they don't. Nobody worries about counterfeit five-dollar notes because it's so much effort for such a small-time scam, and nobody worries about double-spends for low-value Bitcoin transactions for the same reason. Especially if it happens in a public place where there are witnesses and CCTV cameras everywhere making it more likely the guy will be identified and arrested.

And If I wanted to really risk my money, I'd "diversify" by putting half my eggs my eggs in a second basket which is identical to the first one in almost all respects, except this one is full of holes.

From Australia, I give you a chocolate-covered chocolate-cream-filled chocolate biscuit (or "cookie", as it's known in America):

[citation needed] While many popular foods contain methylated wood cellulose, Chicken McNuggets aren't one of them. Though if they were, it would actually be the healthiest thing in them besides corn and chicken. I know it's healthy because I once ate a whole cup of it to win a bet regarding my omnivority with no ill effects besides my saliva turning to glue (don't try this at home).

What are you looking at me for? I buy my bitcoins with cash. You know why? Because ever since the introduction of the new ePayments Code (well, it's not really new, but banks have only recently switched to it), all electronic transactions in Australia may be reversed for up to 7 months. Almost every Australian bitcoin exchange has been forced to close or stop accepting direct deposits for this reason. BitPiggy is, to my knowledge, the only one left that still accepts direct deposits, but only for established users.

As far as I know, the only real options for buying bitcoins with AUD are cash and international wire transfers. Sorry. Blame ASIC for this mess.

There's nothing ridiculous about it. You do have to pay tax on rocks you dig out of the ground if you sell or otherwise trade them. Ask any quarry. Why would you even think otherwise?

Of course they have value. Everything has value. Rocks have value. A sack of shit has value. It's just a question of how much value these things have.

Try telling that to the IRS. Barter transactions are, in fact, taxable. If they weren't, everybody would be using sea shells as money just to get out of paying taxes.

It isn't fiat now, and nobody said it was or is. Learn to read.

Trading Bitcoins in America still is not substantially different than trading sea shells or WoW gold. Look up barter law. Anything used as currency will be recognised as such by the courts. No judge is ever going to say "Sorry your tribe got scammed out of millions of dollars worth of sea shells, but sea shells aren't real money, so we can't help you." The judge will instead rule that the sea shells are used as currency and have value, and that's exactly what happened with Bitcoin.

That's because the Parliament didn't represent Americans, and never would, as it was the British Parliament. In case you missed it, Americans no longer pay taxes to the British government. Americans pay taxes to, and are represented by, the American government. There is certainly no taxation without representation in the original sense of the phrase.

"Being part of the vote" is exactly what "representation" means. You vote for a person to represent you and your interests in the House of Representatives. That's why it's called a representative democracy, as opposed to a direct democracy, where there are no representatives and instead the people vote on issues directly. And I don't even want to know where you got the idea that stock ownership is somehow part of democracy.

Bitcoin is not now a recognised currency in America (and nobody ever said it was "official" or "fiat"), it always was. The latest ruling is merely a confirmation of that fact. It was always subject to taxation and regulation. Anyone who believes it wasn't or isn't is living in a fantasy world.

In any case, nothing in your post follows from that. Why should there be a "Bitcoin agency"? Why does the NYSE need to get involved? Why does any of it need to be done? It doesn't make any sense.

The phrase "no taxation without representation" in modern usage refers to right of taxpayers to have a say in who's taxing them. Do you pay taxes? Are you allowed to vote in elections? If the answer is yes to both questions, there is no taxation without representation. I'm not entirely sure how you think the phrase applies to Bitcoin. Bitcoin itself is neither taxed nor represented. The people using it are. The people pay taxes, and the people are represented by the politicians they elected. It's got nothing to do with Bitcoin.

Charging interest is firmly in the "earn" category, as you're providing a service (lending money) that your clients voluntarily pay for.

In this code:
"TimePerFrame" is a constant that you should set to whatever your game needs, eg if you need a constant framerate of 50 fps, you should set it to 20 (assuming the clock returns values in milliseconds; I think it does, but I'm not very familiar with SFML).

Then, with every iteration of the loop, it looks at how long it's been since the last time the game state was last updated, and if it was longer than 20 ms (or whatever you set for TimePerFrame), it runs the update() function (possibly multiple times, if your render framerate is slower than your game framerate, so it needs to update multiple times per frame).

The update() function is where you do your actual updating of the game state, eg incrementing the position of moving objects, applying health damage, whatever it is you need to happen in your game.

Finally, after all that, render() is where you put your actual rendering (screen drawing) code. A more advanced version of this code (which you should not attempt until you get the basics working) would have render() take timeSinceLastUpdate as an argument, and use it to do interpolation of moving objects (ie, don't draw them where they are, but where they will be timeSinceLastUpdate milliseconds from now; this allows for smoother animation, but since you're only drawing them in a different position instead of actually moving them, rounding errors will not accumulate).

One major problem with this code that you need to be aware of is that it will livelock (the technical term for what is referred to in the article as the "spiral of death") if TimePerFrame is less than the time it takes to run the update() function. Don't set TimePerFrame too low!

"One X is worth $Y" is the standard way of quoting currency/commodity prices, regardless of divisibility or lack thereof.

Wherever did you get the idea that Bitcoin is "the cryptocurrency of the everyday PC"? Satoshi states in the whitepaper that ordinary users needn't run a full node, implying that there may come a time when most users shouldn't even try to run a full node on their PCs. The only people who really might conceivably need to run full nodes (aside from miners, who can charge fees to offset their costs so it's a non-issue) are entities like banks and payment processors, who certainly have the resources; thin clients are probably good enough for everyone else. Even so, 12 TB today is still not entirely unreasonable for a PC, and costs less than $500. Bandwidth is another issue, but since almost all of the bandwidth used by a full node is for relaying transactions, obviating the need to store the whole blockchain won't help.

2013-08-09 The Straight Dope - Is bitcoin the future of money?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=274704