I agree that it would be more fair if every person started with an equal number of bitcoins.
Everyone does start off with an equal number of bitcoins; we all start off with zero. Brilliant! Brilliant, indeed. |
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And highest bid is still 200 BTC.
Anyone at 220 ?
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What I would like to see is a document that outlines the core values that can never change without it becoming something other than bitcoin. For example the absolute limit of 21 million bitcoins. There are probably only about half a dozen really core principles.
The purpose of that document would be to provide the moral authority to argue against a usurper (Facebook, say) giving their users an inferior system and saying that it is bitcoin.
Agreed. We should work on writing those specifications. |
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I remember reading that some of this system had a two password system. One password would open a phony part made on purpose in case the police or other criminals is forcing you to give them the key. And then the real key would take you to where you have the info. Maybe stenography could also solve this issue. But I find it difficult to find good doc about that. |
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but those people who print dollars are not taking it for themselves. So it's a little unfair to give most of coins to people with powerfull machines.
People who print money do it with no effort whatsoever, and there is no limit to their greed. On the contrary, bitcoin miners are just extracting something which exist in a limited amount anyway. As it has been said many times, it's just the same for gold. Can't blame someone because he has found some gold in a river, or because he decided to spend some time there looking for some. Seriously, mining is a perfectly respectable activity. And there is no unfairness in it, since anyone can do it if he really wants to. Powerfull machines are not a priviledge. Anybody can buy one. |
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Any idea for a change in the protocol should not be applied to bitcoin, but to a bitcoin fork. I can't talk for Satoshi, but I guess he would accept new ideas only if they allow a better implementation of the protocol, but not a modification of it.
satoshi seems to fall on both sides of protocol compatibility ;-) He makes a very strong effort to support ancient clients (and their ancient implementations of the bitcoin network protocol). But he also suggests future incompatible changes may be integrated via patterns such as if (block > 200000)
Do Something New And Different ()
Well, this is not good for my confidence into bitcoin. |
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I am amazed by the number of people (most of them being newbies) who complain about how difficult it is to obtain some bitcoins. Bitcoin is a money, so what did they expect ? Did they think they would just start the program and that bitcoin would just magically generate money ?? How valuable would be bitcoins in that case ??
It's perfectly normal that the casual user have difficulties generating any single bitcoin. A casual user uses a very common machine, such as mine, a laptop with a Intel 1.6GHz processor. Obviously, if it was easy to generate bitcoins with such a machine, then there would be something wrong with the whole cryptocurrency concept. To me, it does make sense that only state-of-the-art machines can generate bitcoins.
Is that unfair ? I don't think so. Not at all. Anyone who really wants to own bitcoins can just buy some. There's nothing wrong if some effort is required to obtain something. Whether this effort is technical (acquiring and running powerful machines) or financial.
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I also fail to see why Bitcoins (which still isn't officially in version 1.0, let's remember this is still in the "pre-release" experimental stage right now) can't possibly change or why new ideas keep getting shot down. To force ideas to ferment and refine the concept to something strong, or shoot down poorly formed ideas is fine and I understand that too.
Bitcoin is the implementation of a protocol. The fact that the software is in a version inferior to 1 doesn't mean the protocol is in developpment. When we say bitcoin is a beta software, it means that the software is an experimental attempt to implement the protocol. But the protocol itself must not be changed, otherwise it would be a different software. Any idea for a change in the protocol should not be applied to bitcoin, but to a bitcoin fork. I can't talk for Satoshi, but I guess he would accept new ideas only if they allow a better implementation of the protocol, but not a modification of it. |
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Just got mine, thanks!
Good. unfortunately I had no other order, so I'm reducing my price. 9 BTC per sticker. The keyholder is not available anymore (it's mine now  ) |
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You see ? Told ya. Definately not enough  Let's just say it's an other reason always to use a different address for each transaction. So that in case of a collision, you won't loose all your wallet. |
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Seriously, like a banker actually worries about every 1 in 10^100 possibility. Bankers are comfortable with at ATM password of length four digits. If someone finds a card in the street, that gives them a one-in-3333 chance of being able to get money from the card (because you get three tries to enter the password). By comparison with that, atom-in-universe risks are not worth considering. Well, to be fair, the number of atom in the universe (10^80) is not a good comparaison. I just checked, and the total number of addresses is actually much lower. It's about 1.5*10^48, according to theymos. It's a huge number, but not as huge as 10^80. I'll see if I can find an other physical comparaison. |
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Bankers and traders deal in risk everyday. They're perfectly well versed in the theory of probability and expected value.
I guess there are people on this forum that are good in maths too. So let's compute this. Let's say 10 billions of human beings are using bitcoin and that each of them generate a new address per second, 24/24h, 7d/7. How much time do we have to wait so that we have 1% chance that at least one address has been generated twice ? |
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Provided your application (e.g. bitcoin) is depending on probabilities that are way more extreme than those that your hard disk is depending on, it's simply not a relevant issue, even in the black-and-white world of binary bits.
You don't have to say that, ribuck. A probability of 10^-100 is ridiculously small. It is just silly to think otherwise. Even if it was tested every nano seconds, I could easily bet 100 years of intensive non-stop torture that such an event will not occur during my entire life. |
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Some people like to hold a physical item in their hand.They perceive this as more valuable for some reason,maybe its the human need for visual stimulation or something.
It's perfectly normal to be willing to own physically something. That's why I think gold and bitcoins are so complementary. None of them will replace the other. You can't hold bitcoins in your hands, nor can you pass gold through copper lines or electromagnetic waves. |
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This guy *really* just wanted to introduce himself. I mean, that's the only message he posted ! He really just wanted to do that.
Ha ha ! That makes me laugh so much... My Profile Pages says: "Posts: 25 (1.667 per day)" 1.667 posts per DAY.... isn't enough!?  Ok you passed the Turing test. Congratulations, and welcome. |
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Not really, but i still don't like it. I am a programmer and i what like more are 0 and 1 states: either it is possible or not. So "impossible" is much more interesting for me than "so improbable that almost impossible".
Seriously, you should give up on this idea that a non-zero probability is not negligeable. A probability of 10^-100 is really impossible. Do you know that according quantum mechanics, the probability that your ass crosses your chair when you seat is not zero ? I can't compute it, but I wouldn't be surprised if such a probability was about that small. |
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BTW, is storing a file on FreeNet reliable ? I mean, as I understand it, FreeNet is P2P. This means that a file is there only if people use it. If I am the only one who need a file, isn't it likely to disappear from the network if I don't consult it regulary ?
It might stay for a week or two (unpredictable). It's certainly not a good destination for backup. They are working on two of the main issues with persistence: First, things aren’t getting routed to the right spot, so they are hard to find; the new load management code should relieve much of the issue as nodes that _should_ have the data will be much less likely to be 'backed-off', an overloaded state, and reject the insert. Secondly, there is an ongoing work to spread the word of freenet, the more people who run nodes, the more places there is to store data  Still, I doubt FreeNet is suitable for backup. I wonder if online mail provider, such as Gmail, is not a good idea for that. I don't like webmails. I think this concept is silly, but it exists and it provides almost unlimited amount of storage. It's also easy to access, for all you have to do is to send an email and attach your encrypted wallet. Of course, it should not be the only backup solution, since at any time Google could destroy your data. But still, it can be added as a complementary solution. The more backup copies you have in different places, the better. I don't have any Gmail account right now, but I seriously consider creating one just for this purpose. |
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BTW, How does Bitcoin make sure that every generated address is unique ?
Is it just at random + seed, so there is a theoretical possibility of collision one in a billion billion times ?
Collision is theoretically possible but is astronomically unlikely. Remember that there are much more addresses than there are atoms in the universe. If two people were randomly choosing an atom in the universe, how likely do you think they are to choose the same atom ? |
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"The bitcoin forum have more libertarian computer hackers than any institution in the world! Let do battle for economic dominance, Greenspan." - Kiba, 2010.
Good thing about this battle is that it will be easy to judge. We'll just have to see which money will survive the other. Even if it's quite an unfair game, since dollar is basically backed by US army and police force, my bet still goes to bitcoin. |
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Just for curiosity, is there any limit in the amount of addresses that can exists in the whole bitcoin network?
Not really. The "limiting" factor, if this makes any sense, is rather the number of transactions. Too many transactions could make too a big block chain for disk storage. But the use of Merkle tree makes it unlikely to be a problem. As for the total number of possible addresses, it is much bigger than the number of atoms in the universe. |
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