It's harder to write a script to post things that don't identify the script as a bot, then it is to write a script to surf around the forum for four hours.  Harder, not impossible.  Every now and again, a spam bot does make it through.  It also encourages real people to ask questions about bitcoin that they don't understand, before they have a chance to dive into the deeper forums and post stuff based on ignorance.

As this post should prove well enough, we are still paying attention to the newbie section, even if we don't respond often.  If you have a question, start a newbie topic and you will get an answer.

I was speaking to anyone, really.  Thanks for the honesty.  Ultimately, the morality of IP laws are an irrelevant argument then?  The 'greater good' of the general public is of no concern, even though that is exactly the (official) reason that IP laws presently exist.

This is exactly why I called this entire topic an intellectual circle jerk.  I'm not going to change my opinion, unless you can demonstrate a moral foundation for their support, which I believe to be impossible.  And you're not going to change your position unless I, do what exactly?

But if it's defensible, then it's just as defensible as a licensing contract.  If it requires the use of a government monopoly supported business model to exist, it's not defensible.  If copyrights ended after 15 years following the first publication (or patents 15 years after the first product in production or demonstration) then we wouldn't likely be having this debate, simply because it wouldn't be a worthwhile issue.  There would be much more important issues to fight about than the morality of a 15 year long monopoly on copying of published works.  The problem isn't so much that immoral and inconsistant laws exist, nor that there are businesses that exist to take advantage of those laws; but what those laws, when their immorality is left unchallenged, become over time.  Legal weapons to be wielded and expanded by and for the benefit of entrenched businesses.  At the core, this is the reality that you support when you argue in favor of IP laws, of any sort and for any reason.

I can prove, without much difficulty, that the abrogation of copyright laws would be in the best interests of the public, just based upon the educational aspect of popular culture alone.  There are few, if any, educated supporters of copyright that would contest this position; and most of their arguments are based upon the 'property rights' aspect of considering data to be equal under the law to real physical property.

If I go to the trouble, would you even consider changing your position?  Be honest, now.

From what I can tell, it never has been, although there has been a concerted effort to produce the image that it's either down or gone.  Intentional digital camo, I suspect.  Many of the early outrage that came about due to the public articles has dispersed, in part, based on the belief by the TOR ignorant public (including a couple of senators) that Silk Road had been run off.  I've never bought anything on Silk Road, but everytime I tried to access it, due to trying to verify reports of it's destruction, I found that the reports of it's untimely demise to be exagerated.

By what logic must I address any particular film?  What makes any particular film worthy of support contrary to principles?  Would Spielberg have created E.T., or even developed the wealth and prestige to do so?  Probably not.  Is the particular movie that we know as E.T. worthy of special consideration under the law?  No.  Spielberg's wealth is predicated upon a monopoly on distribution of works, a monopoly enforced by government agency.  This is pretty much what the OWS protestors are protesting, the unjust favor of government of one group over the remainder of the people for unjustifiable (according to the remainder, anyway) special treatment under the law.


I'm not denying them compensation at all.  That's a fallacy.  I, personally, would pay the asking price or simply not see the film.  It's the idea that the producers have the right (in addition to the monopoly provided ability) to deny that others can see the film, or produce derivitive works based upon the film, 70 years after the original copyright holder has died.  As already pointed out, current films don't really depend upon copyright laws for their revenue stream; they largely depend upon contracts.  Steam doesn't even depend upon that, only on the technical difficulty in subverting their system compared to the cost of convience of voluntary participation of users.  Copyright law doesn't substantially affect the first run profitability of a major motion picture, but does on the 'long tail', which limits who can see the film or produce derivitive works of the film, including upon the decendents of the copyright holders themselves who may not have even been born yet.  You never did address Nina Paley's right to freely sell her own magnum opus, which just happened to included modern versions of old blues songs.  Does she not have the right to earn a living as well?


Your concept of IP is narrow.  You assume it comes down to simply copying.  Oftentimes it's not about a direct copy at all, but simply a similarity.  The band that recorded "Under Pressure" sued over five notes that were substantially similar to five notes in "Ice Ice Baby".  They won that suit, even though it came down to five notes.  They did not contend that the songwriter could not have come up with five notes on his own, nor did they contend that his song was substantially similar to theirs, only that they had a copyright on the song, including 'samples'. 

Parodies are protected under free speech, and thus are considered exempt, but producers of parodies get sued under IP laws all the time.  What about all those artists?  Do they not have a right to an honest living?


Nor is it possible to parody pop culture that does not exist.  Again, your concept of IP is narrow.

103 pages of mental masterbation as two ideological sides talk past each other, neither side willing to consider the position of the other, because they have mutually exclusive principles.

Because you can't seem to wrap your head around the idea that data isn't property, so that any business model based upon the use of force to treat data as property is fundamentally unjust.

It's a recent development.  It's based on the idea that the cow has some kind of control over it's world, however small, and so the cow is generally happier.  It doesn't seem to alter the productivity of the individual cow significantly, but the incidence of any particular cow going bonkers and harming themselves inside their own pen has been reduced.

I'm still up over 500%.

There is no accepted theory of gravity, only mathmatical models that describe and predict it, generally.  We actually know that those models are wrong at the galaxy scale, because galaxies don't rotate at a rate that is consistant with our models.  There is, in fact, no generally accepted theory as to what gravity actually is yet that doesn't detract from our acceptance that such a force of nature exists, because we can all easily observe it's effects as well as predict it's results.

I know that you guys might consider that semantics, but I bet you all have heard a general explaination of how evolutionary theory works; but if you had any credible explaination of what gravity is (as opposed to how it acts) then I'd be very impressed.  The truth is, that even Darwin stated that his theory of evolution was based upon several assumptions that couldn't be demonstrated in his day, one in particular that has been proven incorrect.  That premise was that natural selection (which is a process that can be proven to exist) is the only process by which new species are created.  This has never been demostrated, and likely cannot, even though natural selection is undoubtedly the dominate process of species change.  The proof is in the details of "irreducible complexity".  Said simply, if there is any species with any features that couldn't be developed by natural selection (within any reasonable probability of mutations occuring in the same individual organism) then Evolutionary theory is disproven.  There exist hundreds of such examples, a couple dozen of which are bluntly obvious.  But first, a link that smacks of a quote here....

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/natural-selection-defies-the-odds/

<snip>

Natural selection is, of course, a real force of nature, as demonstrated by the development of drug resistance by the malaria microbe through purely Darwinian processes. But, as Michael Behe​ has convincingly demonstrated, the power of natural selection is limited. Natural selection can provide a selective advantage by degrading a genome, as it does in the malaria example. But its power to BUILD a complex genome has never been demonstrated in the laboratory. In fact, the laboratory has shown as that over countless trillions of reproductive events, natural selection has NOT created complex new additions to the genome.

When Darwin observed the beaks of Galapagos finches, he was observing small changes in an organism’s phenotype (i.e., the organism’s body plan) that gave the organism a selective advantage and thereby increased its predominance in the population. From this observation Darwin made an inference that has literally changed the world. He inferred that the same process was responsible for creating finches in the first place. Obviously, Darwin did not observe this process create finches. He reasoned, however, that a process that could create one small change in a population of organisms could create other small changes, and over time, those changes would accumulate, and when sufficient changes had accumulated over a long enough time, an entirely new species would emerge. This entirely natural process, Darwin reasoned, was responsible for the creation of all life, from the first single-celled organism on though to human beings themselves.

The important thing always to keep in mind is this: “Darwin inferred . . .” Again, Darwin did not observe one species morphing into another through the process of natural selection. The finches remained finches. They did not change into another kind of bird, much less another kind of species altogether. Nor has anyone since Darwin observed a species morph into another.

The main point is that the power of natural selection to create large, as opposed to small, changes in the genotype and the phenotype of organisms remains, to this day, an inference from the data, not the data itself. If any NDE proponent commenting on this post disputes this assertion, I invite him or her to cite a single example of one species being observed changing into another since Origin of Species​ was published in 1859.

This gets me back to our discussion of probability. As I said, NDE proponents assume that natural selection has the power to beat the odds and create, for example, highly complex and specified strands of DNA, the creation of which is beyond the power of mere chance. But since no one has ever observed natural selection create complex changes in a strand of DNA (much less create the strand of DNA from scratch in the first place), how can NDE proponents be so dead certain of the staggering, almost God-like powers of creation they attribute to natural selection? One would think they would be more modest in their claims for a process that has never actually been observed. Instead, they bombastically assert that their theory has the same epistemological standing as the theory of gravity.

<snip>

The Theory of Evolution, despite teh provable existance of a process of natural selection, is not equatable with theories of physics that describe gravity.

Dr. Jobe Martin is a former devotee to Evolutionary Theory, who was challenged by his students to prove that it was correct, and by attempting to do so and failing, began to be convinced of the alternative.  He has produced a number of videos that document species that have irreduciblely complex features that could not have arisen by natural selction (that is, could not have aided the organism in surviving to reproduce) unless those features could have arisen simultaniously, an event that is roughly comparable to an address collision in bitcoin.  (not impossible, but astronomicly unlikely given the time frame).  His most famous subject is the cuddlefish, whose active camo is so advanced that it uses it to put it's prey, literally, into a trance.  Yet, if it's camo wasn't almost as advanced as it is, then it's prey wouldn't have been dazzeled.  Since the cuddlefish is neither fast enough to catch it's prey, nor it's prey being defenseless otherwise, the cuddlefish would have starved to death or pursued easier prey.  Neither path leads to the present condition under natural selcetion alone, thus evolutionary theory is either incomplete or completely inaccurate.  Other such examples include the girraffe, a mussle that requires the intervention of a particular species of minnow to reproduce, and a species of cave insect that only exists in the Mammoth Cave system with no apparent relatives anywhere else.  Now this doesnt' p[rove anything either, and Dr. Martin has chosen ID as his alternative theory, which certainly can be wrong.  But to assume that the current state of science is correct, in the face of history, is simply assurting another ideology.

1)  Bitcoin is already successful, it's just not widely reported yet.  As I have already pointed out, I have used it to buy many things online, both digital and physical.  Many others have as well, both within this forum and external to it.

2) You're excused.  If you think that it's even possible for every exchange to be shut down, even if every nation on Earth were to cowtow to the US government, you seriously lack understanding about how the exchanges work, or even how exchange works in general.  I've literally bought bitcoins for cash, in person.  I've never used MtGox or any other centralized currency exchange to get bitcoins, nor have I ever mined a single block (as I already mentioned and you ignored).  I've only dealt with individuals to buy more bitcoins.  I've speculated on MtGox, but I deposited in bitcoin and withdrew in bitcoin.  Never have I done so in any form of fiat currency, US FRN's or otherwise.


We are all early adopters, it's still early.


No, never.  Never even tried to mine.  Difficulty was low, only relatively.  It was never cost effective for me to mine.


I understand your point, I'm trying to show you your error, but you're ignoring the realities I'm presenting.  I've neither mined, nor bought a single bitcoin on any exchange for a dollar that I had to deposit.  Considering that, and the fact that I actually have some to spend, how the hell did I get them if they are inconvenient to get?  Maybe if you live on a farm in Kansas, but if you live in any major urban area in the US, you can buy bitcoins from someone in the next week.  You just might not like the markup.  If you live in NYC, Seattle or Chicago; you can buy some in person today without much trouble.


Apparently not yourself.  You're a troll, and the very reason that we have a 'newbie hell' section.  If you had asked a single question about how bitcoin works, I'd have been happy to explain it to you.  But you come in our house and sh*t on our dinner table and expect me to treat you with kindness?  There are 10K forums on the Internet for you to talk bad about bitcoins, but this is our home.  Guests come in here to learn about the system, and to trade and talk in peace.  Not to have some newbie jerk tell them all how bad everything is, that money laundering is what they are engaged it, or tell them that they are reporting them to the IRS.  Most of the good trolls have the sense to act respectablely until they make it out of newbie hell, before they go off on their missions to destroy all things bitcoin.  Some of them actually post things worth reading, even funny, and manage to stay here despite being trolls; after all, it's no fun listening to your echo.  But you couldn't even manage that.

I have, always.  I know what it is, which is why I'm here.  Since you don't really seem to want to know what it is, or how it works, don't count on a long stay.

Wow, that's incredible.  You've registered today and have it all figured out don't you?  I use bitcoins to buy things on a regular basis, exactly like I would if I were using cash to buy something in person, such as at a yard sale or via craigslist.  I've bought handmade jewlry off of Etsy, small hardware such as thumbdrives, sd cards and even a cell phone, as well as pre-paid cell phone service cards and online game licenses.  I've paid for server rentals.  I've never bought anything remotely illegal, and have never even connected to Silk Road.  The IRS isn't going to shut down MtGox, and even if that were possible, there are a dozen more such exchanges ready to snatch up their market share across the planet in as many different countries that don't care what the US IRS wants.


My nephew has mined two blocks on his computer, he's a child.  I didn't show him how to do it, either.  I actually have never done so, or even tried.

The non-savvy will pay the savvy to create convenient systems for them.  This will just take time.  I'm not particularly computer savvy myself, but the main client isnt' all that complicated.

Inflation is, always and everywhere, the expansion of the base money supply; either in absolute terms or relative to the growth of the economy that it represents.  Deflation is the opposite.  FRB, lacking the capacity to "print" more currency (the primary function of the central bank) can only do this in a limited time frame, but that same expansion of supply must eventually contract to the same degree.  If it happens because loans are paid off, it's business as usual and occurs so slowly and smoothly as to not be noticed.  If it happens because of the bank collapses, then deflation is rapid and catastrophic, but only to those who have had direct dealings with that bank.

A wallet service is not a bank.  At least not like what you are describing here.  A wallet service cannot issue it's own currency as an alternative for bitcoin, because the users are still sending actual bitcoins.  The network will accept nothing less.  It's not possible for a wallet service, no matter how large, to fake a bitcoin or to 'float' a transaction like one would a check.  A particularly large service might be able to get away with short term loans of user's funds, so long as there is never a "run", but it's not really possible to create more funds.

Well, yes and no.  The key difference being that gold was held in deposit because it wasn't as convient to carry as warehouse receipts.  It is unlikely that a true bitcoin bank could ever issue a bitcoin backed credit currency of it's own, because the convience of bitcoin itself is a pretty high mark for an online currency.  Even if it does happen, the risks of such a thing rest solely upon the bank, it's investors and depositors.  No one that does not do business with that bank is at risk of loss of value as a result of either that bank's failure or it's success.

You would fail.  Public schooling has never been about education.

This is a myth, taught to you by a dysfunctional educational system.  Almost no one believed that the Earth was flat in Middle Europe, certainly not anyone who sailed on the ocean or lived near a coast.  The curvature of the Earth was easily demostrated.  Likewise, the belief that Columbus was trying to prove that the Earth was round was bs.  He was trying to prove that it was smaller than the majority of educated people in Europe believed it to be.  He was wrong and they were right, but he got lucky.

From all of the game keys I see on offer from so many people on these forums, it's terriblely obvious that there is much overlap between the bitcoin community and gamers who use Steam.  I therefore suggest that current Steam account holders politely request that VALVe & Steam add bitcoin payments to their list of accepted forms of payment.  They already use quite a few, and I'm sure that they would pursue the issue if they were made aware of the demand.

I don't know how to even get a copy of the wallet.dat off of the phone, I've left it untouched for two months taking up phone space.