Ironically, they are the one that pointed out the "backfire Effect" earlier in the thread.
Suggestions on the linked page are to let tempers cool down a bit, or if it suits your purposes, make them look like an idiot.

Edit: on the original topic: Bitcoin is supposed to avoid the mega-miner scenario by lowering the barriers to entry. I don't think Satoshi anticipated the rise of mining pools where people blindly point hash-power at a few "trusted" entities.
If the hashers don't smarten up, something will happen to crash the price. Hopefully after 2-3 years of sliding value, hashers and pool operators will know to not concentrate hash-power again.

Apparently I only knew about 2 of the 3 data centers in my area. Bandwidth prices are around $1/GB no matter who you go with. I blame the "supernet" Public-private-partnership. Wholesale bandwidth costs $50/Mbit.month.endpoint. At those prices, power is included (within limits).

(Population is also sparse)

PS: if anybody is interested in data-by-mail, PM me. (Not useful for Crypotcurrencies, except for the initial block-chain download.)

It takes time.

I was able to check that you ports are open by accessing you node over the Internet.
Well, I only checked port 9332.

Does that include obscure ones like plant breeder's rights and the EU database directive?
Edit: I am having fun wrapping my head around "moral rights", of which the statute of Anne appears to be a simplification.

I bring it up because I am influenced by Richard M Stallman's Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It's a Seductive Mirage

In that essay, he argues that you should not talk about "Intellectual Property" like it is one large neat category. Patents, Copyright, Trademarks, and even the more obscure ones all have different purposes.

The main benefit of the term appears to be to convince people that this "virtual property" deserves strong legal protection. Since the 1996 WIPO "Copyright" and "Performances and Phongrams" treaties, copyright has started to trump physical property rights. General-purpose computers are no longer a commodity you can easily buy in the store: the ones you find all implement multiple forms of DRM. Gone are the days when your computer comes with a circuit diagram.

You appear to know what you are talking about, but I disagree on this point.

It is good that you are making a distinction between Patents, Trademarks and Copyright, but inBitweTrust appears to have missed that.

Copyright law is censorship. It currently gives the author exclusive control over their "creative expression of ideas" long past their death. There are necessarily exceptions like fair dealing (fair use in the US). Without such exemptions, copyright law would violate human rights.

Patents give a person or entity exclusive control over a novel invention for a period of about 20 years. It is stronger than copyright in that they are able to prohibit competitors from using that invention during that time-period. With the current trend towards "patent thickets", patents no longer protect the small inventor. It is not clear how many new patents meet the standard of "non-obvious to somebody skilled in the art". I am temped to say we should scrap the whole system.

Trademarks, as you mention, never expire unless they fall into common usage as a generic term (they probably expire if neglected as well). Despite their indefinite life-time; I have no problems with trademarks (other than occasional abuse). They are not "property" though. They are a way to identify a product or company in the market-place. Trademarks are essentially an anti-plagiarism rule for goods and services.

Melancholy Elephants predicts that production will go down in the face of perpetual copyright terms: even with half the population working in the creative arts.

I returned two $200 laser printers to the store after they tried to impose conditions after sale.

The first was a Lexmark. They had printed a "patent license" on the box claiming that I did not own the print-cartridge and had to return it to the manufacturer after a single use.

The second was a relatively entry-level HP multifunction printer. It is was "dumb" printer that does not work without proprietary drivers. The EULA said I was not allowed to install the software on more than one machine: for a network printer.

Stop and ask yourself why anybody would agree to such terms?

I also find your use of the word "digital" troubling. If it can be easily copied (per definition: that is the purpose of digitization), you want to be able to charge for every copy? I suppose copying VHS tapes and old audio cassettes are fine simply because the information is analog.

Do you pay the plumber every time you use the toilet?
Do you pay the electrician every time you flip a light switch?
Do you pay your car manufacturer every time you fill it up with gas? (Yes, that is a real example.)
Edit: Just to get it back on topic: Do you pay your bank every time you make a payment?

Artists do not live in total isolation. They draw on the culture around them.

The short-fiction story Melancholy Elephants explores the consequences of taking copyright to it's logical conclusion.
 

The article mentions the 35% attack:

Probably a variant of selfish mining.

Edit: It is indirectly: blocks with the [color-listed] transactions would be ignored by the participants. They came up with a way to do distributed selfish mining.

From ATLAS SHRUGGED, by Ayn Rand, page 387

There is another way: cooperation.

I hate money because I am a wage-slave; and know many other people who are the same.

Edit: On-topic: cooperation is the solution to pool concentration as well. If your pool of choice approaches 25% hash-power, find another one. Encourage others to do the same.

Pools can help this process by charging higher fees as they start to exceed 25% hash-power.

Not anymore. Everybody knows large sums get flagged. Also suspicious is:

• Several transactions over several days just under the reporting limits.
• Exchanging cash with somebody in the lobby.
• Taking a back-pack with you when visiting the safe-deposit boxes.
• Visiting a Branch location not near your home or place of work.
• Bringing in a large number of bills without knowing the total amount.
• Unusual knowledge or interest in reporting requirements.
• etc.

I suspect that as with many things, the Americans will use their quirky unit, while the rest of the world will simply use the metric system.

FINTRAC has nothing to do with taxes. They are all about tracking large flows of money.

As far as I know, registering as a MSB requires posting a $2 million bond so that you can pay the $2 million fine for failing to report "suspicious transactions" when required.

It is also not clear that this actually covers Bitcoin (though Bitcoin was explicitly mention in the budget speech, and this bill implements the budget). It only covers "virtual currencies", to be defined by regulation.

The Bank of China (which had previously banned using "Virtual currencies" (defined a tokens backed by a single non-government issuer) for real-world goods) considers Bitcoin a "Virtual commodity" instead.

I looked at the FINTRAC guidelines years ago when I was just becoming interested in Bitcoin. They don't make sense for Bitcoin because the reporting requirements change depending on which jurisdiction the sender and recipient reside in. You are also required to send this information with the transaction, which is expensive and dangerous (due to the lack of privacy) to do with the public block-chain.

I suspect HDCP does something like this. Why else would the High-definition video formats use a 192kHz sample rate for all of the audio channels? To put that in perspective, FM stereo broadcasts fit in 200kHz of bandwidth.

For those not aware, Nyquist's theorem states that the sample rate need only be twice the highest frequency in the audio. That means that a 192kHz sample rate is able to encode audio up to a frequency of 96kHz. It is generally accepted that the limit of human hearing is only 20kHz. I am one of the rare people that can hear over 18kHz as an adult.

And yes, HDCP does allow the studios to remotely shut-down your Blu-ray player or monitor if it was used to produce a copy found on Torrent websites. Thing is, these HD formats are huge. Trans-coding is often used to get the file-size down. It may very well filter frequencies people can't hear. Edit: people don't rip the decoded frames on the way to the display anyway: they simply break AACS (the on-disk encryption) before HDCP even sees the video.

The only thing you have to know is the metric system.

With "bits" you have to research whether they mean 1BTC, 1µBTC or 10nBTC by calling them up and asking them to quote an unambiguous  unit.

Technically, Bitcoin is not money until it is a commonly accepted medium of exchange. Until then it is, in the words of the Central Bank of China: "a virtual commodity."

No, not impossible. Just not a good idea if you want some consistency in the experiment called Bitcoin.

This is one area where altcoins are actually useful: they can try out new mining algorithms without disrupting everybody.

On my node, I set that to 196kB out of 500kB.

The fees are mainly to prevent spam, and are mainly a bonus at this point.

Between 12% hardware error rate, 20% penalty for no long polling, and another 10% for slow CPU lag (probably 3 seconds), I am getting 43% local DOA though.

As promised in this post (1 day late), I have sold half of my Bitcoin.

This month I sold a total of 750mBTC. The first 250mBTC was unrelated to the mining concentration situation, but I am counting it because I have another 250mBTC that I can not access. For the remaining 500mBTC, I broke up my Bitcoin with a vanity 1Bitcoin address. That address has some sentimental value. I would sign a message with the private key, but multibit does not appear to let me import raw private keys. The sx tools I use do not appear to support arbitrary message signing.

PS: I caution any would-be followers that the sx tools are scray and typos can lead to unexpectedly large mining fees. While I do use vanity addresses, I never re-use them (mining being a possible exception). I actually cross out each address on the paper copy of my key-pairs (wallet if you will) as I use them.