See, this is why you're not allowed at magic shows any more.

As I understand, the format of the blockchain data itself isn't changing, just the database that indexes it (which Armory doesn't use at all), so there should be no problems.

We're not the ones inventing names for decimal units. If it weren't for inflation ruining everything, you would know that the word "mill" is already used to describe a thousandth part of a currency unit. And anyone who doesn't know this but is even vaguely familiar with the metric system will figure it out in about two seconds. Only a complete moron would confuse "mill" with "million".

Okay, I'll bite (I know it will taste foul and probably poison my mind, but I'm trying to build up an immunity). Pray explain what part of Bitcoin requires everyone on the planet to receive a mark in their right hand and/or their foreheads?

That's actually quite easy to explain. The banks have a magic pocket, from which money doesn't disappear when they take it out. Like all magicians, the banks don't want you to know how the trick is done.

Nothing. The sanitiser apparently deletes RTL override characters.

The "generate" option simply enables solo CPU mining (and as far I can tell, it still works, though it is no longer listed in the options menu). Whether solo CPU mining generates bitcoins is a whole 'nother story.

Yes.

No. Only miners collect transaction fees. It would be nice if we could pay nodes for their services, however there is unfortunately no way to verify their work (unlike miners, where being able to verify their work is the whole point), and therefore no way to fairly compensate them.

Nodes relay transactions and blocks between miners and other nodes. If all miners were connected to all other miners and everyone had a direct connection to a miner, there would be no need for relay nodes, however this is obviously not feasible. The more nodes there are, the more resilient the network is against network disruption, by having more paths to route around any damage.

It all depends on transaction volume and bitcoin value. If bitcoins are worth more, or there is greater transaction volume, then the required fee will (probably) decrease, and vice versa. It is likely that free transactions will no longer be accepted once the block reward drops low enough, though even that's not certain (while most miners will certainly refuse free transactions, it's always possible a few might be charitable enough to accept them anyway).

Free transactions are still accepted if they are of high enough "priority" (value x coin age) that even a zero fee is considered "sufficient", though of course this is unlikely to be the case forever.

It looks like a Berkeley database file (because that's what it is), and renaming it won't fool anyone (which is to be expected, since renaming files never fools anyone). You should be using encryption to hide things you want hidden, not some stupid trick like this. Note that Bitcoin's built-in wallet encryption only encrypts the wallet's private keys (preventing anyone from spending your coins without the passphrase), it does not hide the fact that it is a wallet or even your public addresses. Encrypt your wallet again with another program (such as TrueCrypt) if you want to hide it.

Rogue.kdv.686001.1 is a false positive. Bitcoin and Litecoin miners in general (and minerd in particular) are often used in malware to steal other people's CPU cycles to mine coins for the attacker, and thus are flagged as malicious by some antivirus programs (if you have a miner running on your system that you didn't install yourself, that's bad). But if you installed minerd to mine coins for yourself (instead of someone else installing it to mine coins for themselves), you've got nothing to worry about, and you should probably get a better anitvirus program.

The comparison to spacewalking is unjustified. In space, you keep your damn safety line attached at all times.

I read it as the anti-spam fee not being required because all transactions will require fees, regardless of whether the transaction is spammy or not. The only reason the anti-spam fee exists at all is because miners (currently) allow free transactions, but they naturally don't want people abusing the privilege.

These transactions will only be stored in the memory pools of clients which have been modified to accept such transactions. Unmodified clients will neither store these transactions nor forward them unless they end up in a block. Miners using unmodified clients will not mine these transactions either, even if there is free space for them in a block. Removing the anti-spam fee from you client doesn't allow you to spam the network, unless the network (including miners) agrees to accept your spam. It does, however, allow other people with similarly modified clients to spam you, making it a pretty dumb idea.

First of all, I assume you mean 0.7.1, not 9.7.1. And it should contain two versions of each executable, one for 32-bit systems (i386) and one for 64-bit systems (amd64). The error message you're getting indicates that you're running the wrong one for your kernel - if you're running a 32-bit kernel, you can only run 32-bit binaries, regardless of the fact that you have a 64-bit CPU. Try running the 32-bit version of bitcoind (although from the sound of things, you probably actually want to run bitcoin-qt instead).

You can find a slightly out-of-date version of bitcoind (but not bitcoin-qt) in Debian Sid. Due to the fact that is out of date and it doesn't have bitcoin-qt, I'd advise against trying this unless all else fails.

To get access to your bitcoins from an old installation of Bitcoin, you'll need the wallet.dat file. It is a binary file, not a text file; I'm not sure what you mean by a text file with the encrypted key, but I don't think it's what you think it is. None of the text files in the Bitcoin directory will help you get your coins back. If you're unable to recover your old wallet.dat file, I'm afraid whatever coins you had are gone forever.

Also note that the current version of Bitcoin does not mine coins by itself (earlier versions did, but used the CPU only, not your graphics card; this feature was removed due to how ludicrously ineffective CPU-only mining is). For that, you need to also install a bitcoin miner. If you didn't install a miner before, you either weren't mining any bitcoins at all, or, if you were using a very old version of Bitcoin, you were mining an extremely small quantity of bitcoins.

What? They only gave you a calendar for the 13th b'ak'tun? They didn't give you one for the 14th b'ak'tun? Some people are just useless. Here, have one of mine. Now you're all set until 26 March 2407. Besides, it's not like it's the end of the world when your calendar expires. You just buy the new one. Honestly, what's wrong with these people?

Miners aren't compelled to include transactions in a block, and blocks containing no transactions at all are perfectly valid. However, transaction fees provide an incentive for them to do so. Currently, most miners are willing to include transactions without fees under most circumstances, as most of their income comes from the block subsidy rather than transaction fees, however it is likely that transaction fees will eventually be required for all transactions, as the block subsidy is halved every four years and will eventually become a negligible portion of mining income.

You definitely need to find a new accountant. Preferably one who actually knows the meaning of the word "investment".

Yes, and in a big way. Virtually all web wallets use them. Eg, suppose Alice, Bob, and Charlie all have an account with the same wallet provider. Alice and Bob deposit BTC5 each, and Charlie deposits BTC10. If Charlie then sends "his" BTC10 somewhere else, it might actually come from Alice and Bob's deposits. It's exactly the same as if you deposit $100 cash in your bank account, and then withdraw it again later: the bills you get almost certainly won't be the exact same bills you deposited, they'll have likely come from another depositor, or even several different depositors. The assumption that all sending addresses belong to the same owner is bogus if web wallets are involved (unless you consider the web wallet itself to be the "owner"), and so is the assumption that it's safe to send a refund back to the original sending address, since that address might not actually belong to the person who originally sent the money at all.