That's great to hear etotheipi - I do agree it would be a good option to have for those who want it!

Next cop I see, I'm going to ask if he's heard of Bitcoins before.   

Ah - you are correct Danny, thanks for pointing that out!

That may be true today, but once ASIC's are out and difficulty increases 10-fold, the supercomputers go from making a difference in difficulty to making a scratch.  Supercomputers just aren't well suited for Bitcoin mining compared to a dedicated ASIC processor.

Unless it was a double back to the same person?
- Max sends 1 BTC
- BitMofo sends 2 BTC back
- Max sends 2 BTC
- BitMofo sends 4 BTC back

I understand that, but as far as a store of value, it would never compete with Bitcoin, which doesn't inflate at all.  And if people aren't using it as a store of value, they aren't holding it.  And if people aren't holding it, they don't use it.  And if people don't hold or use it, it becomes worthless.

No they don't.

Say you did fork Bitcoin, and 95% of miners moved over to this new blockchain so they could be paid 50 BTC forever.

Now, 95% of non-miners stay with the real Bitcoin blockchain, and 5% of miners.

So 95% of miners are now mining this worthless fork that no one is actually using for transactions, because non-miners are still using the real Bitcoin blockchain instead.  The price drops on said worthless fork because no one is using it, and therefore no one wants it.  It starts to see values along the lines of Solidcoin when compared with real Bitcoins.

Meanwhile, the 5% of miners who stayed with the original Bitcoin blockchain are still happily mining along and keeping transactions moving along, the currency still has value, and people are still making transactions with it.

There's no requirement for everyone to follow suit if a new version of Bitcoin is released.

Many people are holding on to Bitcoins BECAUSE they don't inflate.  If you introduce infinite inflation, expect people to drop them like hot potatoes, and the value of them to drop equally fast.

Miners would actually make much less per block in terms of dollars if the block reward was sustained at 50 BTC indefinitely, because the price of BTC would drop so much once people knew they would be inflated forever.

That makes sense etotheipi, thanks for the lengthy explanation.  I hadn't thought about viruses being transferred via the USB device I am storing the transactions to be signed on.

Condensation won't be a problem.  Rain could be.

It's an awesome game.  There's no need for rules.

If it never goes online, is there a need to disable anything in the OS?  Unless you don't trust whoever preloads the OS...

That would be very cool etotheipi!  Hopefully someone will make something like that - I don't have the capabilities to do it myself.

No idea about bank insurance, but it would make sense that the bank would be liable for any robberies that happened on their premises.  I wonder how hard it would be to get an insurance company to pay up for robbed bitcoins though!

I disagree with the laws that give unions special powers.  I don't disagree with unions themselves - heck, if people want to band together and all go on strike at the same time, more power to 'em.  But their jobs shouldn't be preserved (unless the employer chooses to preserve them).

That said, I recently accepted a state/unionized job.  Even though I don't agree with it, doesn't mean I won't reap the benefits of them while they're still around (and my tax dollars are helping to pay for them)!

Heh, fair enough.

I'll rephrase:  "I don't necessarily believe in 9/11 being a conspiracy by the US government"

Or, maybe he decided that this is his "keep it" point, and he won the game. 

It's a plane taking a picture of the plane flying over the plane that probably used to have plains.

I posted this in the other 9/11 thread already, but everyone should watch this video, regardless of which side you are on.  And certainly, give your opinion of the evidence it presents.  I don't necessarily believe in 9/11 being a conspiracy, but I am not discounting the idea either.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/76051207/9_11_Conspiracy.avi

judas, it's not wrong to be paranoid.  Certainly, those of us who are trusting a company with our money months before we'll actually see the units we are buying are taking a greater risk than those who wait to order until BFL has a proven track record of selling ASIC's.  But the reward is also much greater.  Break even time will quickly rise to 6-8 months, and only the initial purchasers will see that large initial return on investment.

That said, I'll give you two explanations to your two issues...

1) They offer the buy-back to help build trust, and they are still making money when people trade in.  It is speculated that the ASIC chips will only cost around $10 or so each.  If someone trades their $600 unit in for a $1300 unit (and you can't trade in more units than you buy), then they're still paying $700.  Assuming the variable cost of production is $100 or so for the other components and assembly, BFL is still making $590 on a traded-in machine (which they also stated would be resold for other purposes in the future).  If they DIDN'T offer the trade in, those who already have BFL products would likely feel jaded from their recent purchases becoming obsolete so quickly, and would turn to a different company to order from in the future.  So, BFL is doing the trade in both to make money (to help recover the cost of their capital investment in ASIC technology), and to maintain a good relationship with their previous customers.

2) It's an increase in performance of 4002%, so it must be a ponzi scheme!  Erm, no, not so much.  There is no "interest rate" here, it's a performance increase.  Technological breakthroughs sometimes allow increases in performance of 4002%, and that's the case here.  An FPGA is a device that can do many things, but inefficient at doing any single thing.  An ASIC is purpose-built for a single task, and thus can have much higher performance and efficiency than a programmable array.

Well, that's partially why I haven't been more specific about the business plan. 

The OTHER problem is, it obviously requires people to have a lot of trust in me, for temporarily holding on to their coins, so I am not sure an anonymous business model would work.  Then again, people seem to keep falling for scams left and right here, so maybe it would...