You need to deterimine what is blocking incoming connections to port 8333.  Outbound connections are obviously not blocked, because you have 8 connections.  Most likely you have a broadband router that functions as a firewall, or settings in Mac OSX that block all non-standard ports over 1000 or so.  It's not a Bitcoin client issue.

You are limited to 8 outbound connections without opening up of port 8333, so that's normal.  Slow is normal also, because of the work that the client is doing while bootstrapping the blockchain is significant.  The network speed is often not the primary limiting factor.  Since you are connecting through your school's firewall, your odds of getting them to open 8333 for you are almost zero, so if you start getting more than 8 connections then it's because your client has found another client running on the school's side of the network.  If you are at a large university, this is almost certain to occur eventually.  Just have patience, go down to the student center and let the thing run.  Playing games on the computer is just going to slow everything down that much more.

All?  No.  Some, maybe.  I don't use IRC at all, personally.  It's not necessary anymore, even for a fresh install.

Not really enough details.  Are you using the standard windows client?  What version?  Are you behind a firewall?  Do you use AT&T broadband?

Before port forwarding, try this...

Shut down your client in the normal way, give it about three minutes to completely shut down, and then restart it.  Do nothing to it for an hour.  If when you come back you still have 0 connections and your block number is still in the 130's, come back and ask again.

Hmm, not exactly an unbiased source, but certainly more trustworthy than taking Cuba's government statistics at face value.  I'll accept that number, but what would the number be otherwise?  The implication of the study is that those 45K people wouldn't have died otherwise, but realisticly speaking some percentage of them would have, if for no other reason than some percentage of people that are uninsured are in such a situtation because of their own life decisions, and thus some percentage of them aren't going to get the care that would have saved them even if it were free.  People still die unnecessarily in the best of European style health care systems, and not all because they are delayed or denied care.


I will assume that you are a straight, white male then.  Nonsmoker?  Do you have a particular religion or political ideology (but I repeat myself) you are willing to share?  Where your parents married until you were 18?  Where did/do you attend college?  If you have never gone to college, what is the nearest public university and how old are you?  Would you be willing to consider signing up as a weekend military reservist or national guardsman; or have you ever been a military "brat"?  Or had a parent who was a member of the armed services, even before you were born?  Are any of your ancestors verfiablely of the American Indian tribes, as far back as your great-grandparents?  Did you grow up any urban districts that could have been "federal enterprise zones" (basicly poor enough to get federal funds for small businesses)?  Were either of your parents 'naturalized' citizens?  What state are we talking about?

I'm sure that isn't even an exaustive set of questions, for I'm sure that there are programs that I'm not aware of

http://georgedonnelly.com/libertarian/how-to-bootstrap-mutual-aid-society

Not a new article, but I havn't seen it before.  It's not about Bitcoin per se, but mentions it.

"We need a MAS model that is resilient before we start risking people’s precious funds. We’re wise to take hints from bitcoin, open source software projects, anarchism, leaderless resistance and the whole peer-to-peer concept (P2P) (egalitarianism). If funds and lists aren’t stored centrally, they can’t easily be seized. If there is no bureaucracy and no company president or board, they can’t be indicted or compromised. The key to a resilient MAS is that simple: decentralize."

Maybe, maybe not.  Neither of us could ever know until it's tried.


You keep mentioning the 45K people per year thing.  Where do you come up with that number?  You keep calling me a liar, even when I present support for the position, but you just leave that number hanging out there like it's an accepted fact.  I don't even know where it comes from.


I doubt it.  What state do you live in, how much do you make, and who is your employer?  My wife worked for Wal-Mart for years, after quitting Proctor & Gamble.  She loved the job.  The pay sucked, but strangely enough P&G's pay scale wasn't exactly stellar, even though she had a BS in Biology and worked in her field as a microbiology lab tech.  The health care offered wasn't exactly great either, but their legal aid support (something that I've yet to see from any employer I've ever had since the USMC) was outstanding.  The primary reason that Wal-Mart employees are twice as likely to get public assistance (over competitors such as Target), is because Wal-Mart's associate legal aid will help them get it.

Give me some details, and I will show you that you are wrong.

I didn't say that they never had such support, but they aren't generally aware of it.  So a phone poll asking if you have insurance coverage isn't going to get a yes out of such people.  I don't know anyone who considers patients rights to be insurance coverage anyway.  You are talking about different things.

No, not really.  'Proactive' care, which I assume means preventative care, isn't easy to come by for free if you are an adult under normal circumstances.  Every major city that I've ever lived in has some kind of public clinic system that one can go to to get such care for free, but it's usually funded (primarily) by a charity organization and tends to be continuously overworked.  However, if you have some kind of established condition that the state considers a disability, such as visual impairment, you can generally get get preventative care coverage via the state's Medicaid block grant programs, but those vary by state.  The statement that only 'emergency care' can't be denied is mostly true, but loses details.  The laws that govern this vary by state, but basicly result in the same end.  Every hospital, in order to be considered a 'public' hospital and receive the many legal and tax benefits of being a public hospital (as opposed to a private corporation, such as the Mayo Clinic) must have and maintain an "emergency room" with a minimum set of equipment, medical staff and 24/7 operations.  These emergency rooms cannot deny service to those who enter the emergency room based upon ability to pay nor, for the most part, the nature of the medical condition.  The only thing that can to discourage the use of the emergency room is to triage the low priority cases, but if you can wait long enough, you will be seen even for simple things that aren't remotely life threatening.  These emergency rooms are a significant operating cost for the hospitals, but less than the legal benefits that they usually receive.  So, as a means of controlling costs, the hospitals will often band together to sponsor the free clinics (in order to offload much of the demand) in major urban areas while encouraging the inclined employees to volunteer some of their time there; while also charging insurance companies enormous markups for emergency room visits, thus resulting in insurance companies sponsoring 'urgent care' clinics with late hours and engaging in publicity campaigns among their covered clients to encourage them to choose the urgent care clinics for "less than emergency" immediate care needs.  The point I making is that, even though care is often not funded by government structures, access to care exists even for the poorest Americans.  It just comes in  variety of forms which are often not widely known.  Another such example are religious aid networks such as Medi-Share (www.medi-share.org) which is a mutual aid/cost sharing network that most people wouldn't consider to be insurance, even though that would be it's net effect.  My mother-in-law is blind, and thus receives coverage under medicaid rules, but those rules don't cover heart surgery.  Yet she received a triple bypass two years ago for next to nothing, because her surgeon was in a charity based cost sharing network.  She knew nothing about such a network, and as such couldn't have applied for the aid unless her doctor had told her about it.  Americans, as a rule, really do tend to care about one another; it's just that Americans, as a rule, don't consider such care a right.  We consider it charity.

Same to you.

While I will concede that it's very likely higher than 3 million since the economy crashed, this poll hides some very important details.  First, I said adults & citizens.  This poll includes children of uncovered adults as being uncovered as well.  Being uncovered by your own choice or the lack of action by your parents doesn't really count, because there isn't a single child of a US citizen that isn't eligible for state subsidized coverage.  Not one.  The poll states that they only consider 18+, but by extending their population percentages to the entire population they assume children as well.  A deeper look at the source will also support this position.  Nor does the poll exclude non-citizens from the polled pool, for there is no credible way to do so.  Something that is bound to skew those numbers.  I wouldn't be shocked at all to learn that there were more than 3 million uninsured illegal aliens alone in the US who also happened to have a cell or landline, but not insurance.  If they are citizens, then they also likely have access to subsidized insurance coverage; depending upon the state and the particulars of their situation and/or medical conditions.  Lack of knowledge of such programs isn't anyone else's fault either.  Perhaps I should have been clear that I was talking about adult citizens who were either not eligible period or have explicitly chosen to not pursue such subsidies.  This is akin to the crap about Americans on food assistance (http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/02/food-stamp-use-reaches-record-45-8-million/), sure the rising trend is evidence of rising need, but it also indicates rising eligibility.  For example, my household is eligible for WIC (woman and infant children) and several of my kids are eligible for state sponsored health insurance, and my household income now pushes six figures.  Why are we eligible?  Because we are also agents of the state, because we are state certified foster parents, and wards of the state live within my household.  Which is also why I know a great deal about those kinds of state subsidized programs.  I literally cannot refuse those programs for these kids, because they are not my kids.  The state is their legal guardian, and I'm the employee.  I can't reject the WIC or Passport (the child health insurance plan) for those kids any more than I can refuse their scheduled vaccines, whether I have a religious objection or not.  I'm bound by contract to abide by the state's policies, and one of them is that the state supports foster children through such programs.

Further, this poll also includes a great many working adults who have access to an employer's plan, but choose not to participate for whatever reason, which skews the low income and younger than 30 brackets.  As well as including those over 65 who don't consider themselves insured, despite the fact that anyone over 65 that isn't eligible for Medicare didn't pay at least 10 years of (payroll) taxes nor a spouse that paid such taxes. (https://questions.medicare.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/10/~/who-is-eligible-for-medicare%3F)  The only people that such is true are those who are wealthy enough to not need to work at all or those who were not productive citizens long enough to count.  There are so many things wrong with this for me to pick at, I'll stop there for brevity.

Again, not contest.  But so what?  They are amoral corporations seeking profits.  They still have to 'innovate' continuously in order to do so.  Pharma patents die in the US after 15 years, after which the company loses it's profit advantage to generics manufacturers.  They cost too much, yes.  But they have produced the largest volume of advancements in the history of the world in pursuit of that gob of cash.  Your own society has benefitted unmeasurablely from the inefficiency of the American medical system.

I challenge you to remove every medical advancement that your own nation pays for, but that was created by a for-profit corporation in the United States, and then try to judge how high the quality of your care is then.  You are more dependent upon the US than you care to acknowledge.

And Cuba isn't known for skewing the stats for PR reasons, either; right?  You choose to trust the CUban government that they are better than the US on this?  IS that credible?  Chile is more trustworthy, but how many babies are born without records in either nation?  IF a baby is born in Chile in the slum andit dies, is it recorded?  I doubt it, but it sure will be here.

You quote articles that depend upon government stats from Cuba, but complain that the link that I provide has been produced by a gropup with an obvious bias?  Really?  Why am I even talking to you?  Because they admit to bias, they are falsifying the stats, is that what you believe?


I didn't make the claim that Americans live longer.  There are many other factors that contribute to that, including cultural and racial influences.  Is the gun crime that kills young black men in Chicago a sign of a dysfunctional health care system?

"The primary cause of the disparities between racial and geographic groups is early death from chronic disease and injuries, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics showed."

http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/0002418/42/

And then there is the dramatic range in life expecancies between racially identified sub-cultures...

"Asian-American women living in Bergen County, NJ, enjoy the greatest life expectancy in the US, at 91 years. American Indians in South Dakota have the worst, at 58 years"

And then, what about locale?  The states with the highest life expecancy also happen to be those with the greatest population concentrations, implying that proximity to urban medical centers plays a significant role in life expecancy as well.  Europe is much more densely populated than the US, is it not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy

You do realize that noting the fact that Americans are, on average, much wealthier than other nations tempers some of the differences in actual monetary costs, right?  For example, if I make the American median income (around $31K per year, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income) even a rate of 3 times the cost of care means that, as a realtive percentage of my income, my health care costs less of my income than literally half or more of the planet, even if I had no insurance at all and paid every dime from my own pocket.  New Zealand rings in at about $20K per year, while the Netherlands rings in at about $24K.

The median income of the entire planet is only about $7K per year (http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/10/07/average_earnings_worldwide/) and that includes Americans.  That means that Americans near the poverty level (In 2009, in the United States of America, the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was US$11,161; -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold) earn almost twice as much as half the population on Earth, while also being with public transit distance of some of the best hospitals on Earth.  As has already been noted, they get 'mandatory' treatment whether they can pay for it or not.  You can't honestly expect that the lower half of the rest of the world could have access to nearly the same care, even if they could tax their own citizenship to pay for it at a third the cost that the US pays for.

So I have to support my claims while others do not?

Um, nothing explicitly stated such, but an implication was certainly present.  Is English a second languge?  Perhaps you don't understand what the word "implies" correctly means?

And don't call me Dick, Mister Cheney.

By and large, by non-Greeks.

No contest there, the question then is why is it so inefficient?  I may be too close to see the big picture, but from where I stand it's because of government regulations into the medical industries, not despite them.


The "worse quality" meme is provablely false.  The vast majority of medical advancements over the past 50 years or so came from American doctors and scientists working for companies with a profit motive, whether the doctors themselves were motivated by money or not.  There is literally nothing that you can get medically that I don't have access to, even if you can get it cheaper.  Your high quality care is a direct result of our highly inefficient system.


We do way better than Cuba, too; on average.  Even Casto's health has benefited from American capitalistic medicine.  Which is, itself, and irony; considering that our federal representatives have repeatedly tried to kill him.


Have you bothered to follow this thread?  I addressed this already.  The methods of record keeping is different.  For example, if an infant is born dead, but there was no evidence that the fetus was dead before labor began, that baby is counted as a infant in the US, but not in many other nations until it survives for several minutes outside the womb.  Many other stats are skewed in similar ways, because the standard methods of record keeping is different between countries.  In the US, if a pregant mother is murdered, it's recorded as a double homicide.


You're happy with it because you're ignorant of what the costs are, and I'm not talking about monetary costs.  Pray you never have to find out.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596

"Underinsured" is not remotely uninsured.  It's also a vague term.  In the case of this report, it means that 25 million Americans "had inadequate health insurance to cover their medical expenses".  In other words, 25 million Americans no longer have insurance that pays for all their medical costs.  I have no doubt that I will soon be added to this metric, since I will be switching to a health savings account soon.  By my own will, BTW.  My prior health insurance falls under the 'cadillac plan' tax in Obama's health care law, so the company can't afford the costs anymore.  This past year, the average plan value was just under $16K per employee.  Thanks for that promise that I wouldn't have to change plans if I liked mine, Obama!

Not a student of history, are you?  "The bankers" have been doing this for hundreds of years.

Where did you find that bs?  We have roughly 3 million adult citizens that are uninsured, half of which still have access to subsidized health insurance.  That's about 1% of the population.  There is not a single child citizen that doesn't have access to subsidized health care, including those not born in the states themselves, such as Puerto Rico.  For that matter, all US citizens have access to subsidized health care, regardless of age, including felons; for anything immediately threatening.  Illegal immigrants don't, but you weren't counting them, were you?  After all, I wouldn't have a right to your taxpayer funded health care simply by traveling there, would I?  Are you saying that all those funds that I pay for international health coverage while out of country is a waste of my money?  Great!  If I get brain cancer, a plane ticket is far cheaper than health insurance anyway!  I can drop my coverage altogether!  Hey, can I stay with you?