You're forgetting that if you lose, you get back 0.005x your original bet (minus transaction fees). This is so that you can easily tell the difference between a loss and a failure to pay out a win due to technical problems - win or lose, you will always get something back from SatoshiDice; if you don't, that means something went wrong.

1.957 x 50% = 97.85%
0.005 x 50% = 0.25%
97.85% + 0.25% = 98.1%

Correct. There are, of course, many ways to hide the connection between a bitcoin address and your real-life identity, but there is no way to hide the address itself.

Actually, if you add one of your own change addresses to your address book, it will get added to your list of receiving addresses, and then you can sign a message with it. This fact is known to almost nobody, as almost nobody ever has to actually deal with change addresses (and ordinary users never do).

Nobody ever has to know what their sending address is either, especially as if you use an e-wallet, your sending address will not even belong to you. If anyone ever asks you about your sending address, they're doing something horribly wrong.

Actually, that's not the strong point of Bitcoin. Electronic payment networks using digital signatures to authorise transactions are old hat. That's how wire transfers work internally. The strong point of Bitcoin is that it issues currency on such a payment network without the involvement of a bank or other centralised institution. Which leads to the next point:

No, that's not decentralised. If this entity is dishonest, or is "persuaded" by the government to shut down their operation, or a movie villain drops an atom bomb on the gold warehouse, then the whole system falls apart. This entity is a central point of failure. The lack of such a central point of failure is what makes Bitcoin revolutionary.

You sell your bitcoins for USD. Doing that while getting the best exchange rate without getting ripped off (hint: don't use PayPal or eBay, no matter what) is entirely your problem, not theirs. That's why I strongly recommend you don't use Bitcoin for large transactions until you're confident that you've got it all figured out. Again, you don't have to accept bitcoins unless you have a contract that says you do.

Why? The sole purpose of Bitcoin technology is to allow monetary transactions without a central issuer. If you've got a trustworthy person with a bunch of gold in a vault somewhere issuing the currency, what do you need Bitcoin for? More importantly, if you need a trustworthy person with a bunch of gold in a vault somewhere (ie, the whole system would collapse if anything ever happened to this person or his gold), then Bitcoin technology won't (and can't) help you. What exactly do you hope to achieve by this?

They indicate the location of the fluoro- groups on the carbon chain. Each carbon atom on the chain is numbered, and the functional groups are numbered according to which carbon atom they are attached to, in cases where the molecular formula is ambiguous. For example, in the case of 2,2,3,3-tetrafluorocyclopropanecarboxylic acid, this is the molecular structure, with the carbons numbered:
(Numbering starts from the primary group, which is this case is the carboxylic acid group (-C(=O)OH). Not shown is the extra hydrogen attached to 1, which is implied by the fact that it only has three single bonds instead of four.)

This system is necessary to avoid confusion with other molecules sharing the same formula, such as 2,2,3,4-tetrafluoro-3-butenoic acid, and 3,3,4,4-tetrafluorodihydro-2(3H)-furanone, which both also have the molecular formula C₄H₂F₄O₂.

Yes, it is:If your client says it's not valid, then that's a bug in your client.

No, that's not what's actually happening. Every input has to satisfy the conditions of a previous output (in most cases, the condition is "provides a digital signature that matches the public key"), and every output has an address. The only exception to this rule is newly mined coins, which have no inputs. As a result, every transaction which doesn't generate newly mined coins has one or more clearly defined "from" addresses. There is no "trying" to match addresses, nor is it possible to hide them. However, most clients do not display this information, or allow you to determine which address(es) you'll be sending from if you have multiple addresses. Ordinary users never have any need for this information, and if anyone asks you for this information they're doing something horribly wrong.

Hey! You're only supposed to add one atom at a time! Not four! That's cheating! Now you've made it slightly harder for the rest of us. Are you happy? I'm not.

C₃H₂F₄O (1,1,3,3-tetrafluoroacetone)

No, that just means your coins have been transferred somewhere else from your wallet - either by you (if it's your own wallet) or by your e-wallet provider (in which case it doesn't mean anything nefarious is happening; it's exactly the same as if you deposit a $100 note at a bank, then when someone else withdraws their money the bank gives them your $100 note, then when you withdraw your money they give you another $100 note entirely).

Yes, upgrading will not affect your wallet. But back it up if you're worried (though you should always back your wallet up anyway, whether you're upgrading or not).

FTFY. Although there's only one molecule with that formula, that'll change once our molecule gets bigger and more complex, so you need to be more specific than just a molecular formula.

CH₂O (Formaldehyde)

H₂ (Hydrogen)

No, and it's never going to because credit card transactions are reversible and Bitcoin transactions are not.

No, only versions 0.7.2 and earlier need to.

Did you actually read what I wrote? When the stock is "selling off", somebody is buying it. If you want to sell, you need a buyer. If you can't find a buyer, you need to lower your price until someone is willing to pay it, or else you can't sell at all. There can never be an imbalance of buyers and sellers.

No, they don't. They make their commission on volume. If the price of bitcoins is twice as high, people can only buy half as many (they've only got so much cash to spend, after all). They're still trading the same amount of money, so Mt. Gox makes the same commission, and all the money they spent buying up bitcoins to keep the price artificially high is completely wasted.

Consumers can spend bitcoins with no risk of identity theft, a real danger with other electronic payment systems.
Merchants can accept bitcoins with no risk of chargeback fraud, another danger which you don't hear about as much because merchants simply pass the costs on to you, the consumer.
Everybody using bitcoins benefits from extremely low fees as compared to other electronic payment systems.

There are also economic and political reasons for using bitcoins, but they're not as important to most people, who just want something they can use to buy pizza and beer.

You do have a choice. Although Bitcoin is a great system for sending money internationally, perhaps the greatest aspect of it is that nobody can be forced to use it if they don't want to. Bitcoin is an experimental and volatile currency with real risks associated with it, and you should not be pressured into using it if you are not comfortable with it. Unless your contract with this company specifically states that they will only pay you in bitcoins, you can insist on payment in dollars, and sue them if they refuse. Talk to a lawyer if they refuse to budge on the issue.

Right.

Because as long as your price isn't too low, your order will likely be matched by the next person to sell "at market"; eg, if there's already a bid order for BTC2 @ $96, and you place an order for BTC3 @ $95, all it takes is for one person to sell at least BTC5 at market for you to get your coins. The only way this won't happen is if a lot of other buyers outbid you before that happens, or if there are no sellers.

It's not. It only shows current limit orders. Market orders and future limit orders obviously cannot be predicted, and therefore are not shown.

You seem to have a misunderstanding about how markets work. For every buyer, there has to be a seller, other who are they buying from? Likewise for sellers. The volume is the number of trades that took place, and each trade consists of a buyer and a seller. You can't have a trade without at least one of each, and the number of coins sold is always exactly equal to the number of coins bought.

When the price goes down, that doesn't mean everyone is selling. Obviously there's just as many people buying. What it means is that buyers are not willing to buy at the present price, so sellers can't sell unless they lower their prices. Price rises are caused by the reverse situation: sellers aren't willing to sell at the present price, so buyers have to bid higher prices to convince them.