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4241  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Address and Transaction doesn't show up on some sites on: June 07, 2012, 07:13:41 PM
Because Block Explorer is currently having problems and their database is out of date, as you can clearly see by looking at the "latest blocks" on their home page (note that the latest block Block Explorer has is from nearly 5 days ago).
4242  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: A Warning Against Using Taint on: June 07, 2012, 08:11:01 AM
Why do you think you are allowed to use force to prevent me from implementing some scheme on my own client?
Because you can't control who sends you coins. If somebody sends you tainted coins, what are you going to do about it? You can't send them back, since the address they came from may not be under the sender's control (eg, e-wallets), and you can't keep them but refuse to accept them as payment. Can you imagine if that happened with cash? "Sorry, we can't accept this $100 note as payment, you'll have to give us another one. No, you can't have this one back; no, it's not counterfeit, we just think it might have been involved in some form of criminal activity at some point in the past." You'd have some use of force directed at your face if you tried that in real life.

You don't have to accept coins that have been obtained dishonestly, either. That would be a personal choice. Because bad actors could respond, to honest traders who only making transactions with other honest people, with violence does not invalidate the idea.
The problem is that the people who respond with violence are not bad actors, they are honest people who have had their money taken without compensation based on nothing more than the belief that the money might have been involved in an illegal transaction at some point in its history. Remember, YOU CANNOT CONTROL WHO SENDS YOU BITCOINS! If an honest person happens to receive "tainted" bitcoins from someone else, there is absolutely nothing that they or anyone else can do about it, and any attempt to do something about it will simply be punishing innocent users for other people's actions.

Here's another experiment you can try: Open a store and keep a drug kit behind the counter. Drug test every note a customer pays you with, and if the result is positive, refuse to accept the money but don't give it back. See how long you can last without either getting punched in the face or having the cops called on you. I guarantee you'll be out of business one way or another before the day is out.

I encourage the sympathetic readers of this post to stop thinking about bitcoin as "cash" and start thinking in terms of a distributed file system containing a perfect accounting ledger. The idea is much more sophisticated than "cash" and will lead one day to a system that will allow us to keep track of our debts to each other in terms of personal economic value.
So, everyone's bitcoins will have a different value to everyone elses? How exactly are you supposed to set prices with such a scheme? "This product costs 10 BTC, but only 8 BTC if the coins come from a verified Mt Gox account, with a 50% surcharge if the coins ever touched SR, plus 10% if they came from a coin mixing service... etc" Is that pretty much how it's supposed to work? And if so, how does that make any sense? That would cause problems if you tried it in real life, too.

What you're asking is like asking how Mt. Gox can give you 5 USD/BTC one day and 6 USD/BTC the next day. Why are exchange rates set on an open market with bids and asks any different than devaluing dishonest money? If someone you want to trade with wants to charge you more because you have dishonest money, you don't have to trade with them. I'd encourage you to find someone to trade with that will give you the full value you believe your BTC is worth.
No, it's not like that at all, and I'm not sure why you even think that. They are different because the exchange rate assumes that bitcoins (and dollars, for that matter) are fungible, meaning that one bitcoin (or dollar) is just as good as any nother. This is because when you make an offer to buy bitcoins on an exchange, you have absolutely no way of knowing who, out of thousands of other traders, will actually be providing your bitcoins, and so you have no way of knowing whether you'll end up with good bitcoins or "tainted" ones. As I have already pointed out, setting prices will be impossible if "tainted" bitcoins are valued differently from "clean" bitcoins.
4243  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: A Warning Against Using Taint on: June 06, 2012, 08:00:30 PM
Why do you think you are allowed to use force to prevent me from implementing some scheme on my own client?
Because you can't control who sends you coins. If somebody sends you tainted coins, what are you going to do about it? You can't send them back, since the address they came from may not be under the sender's control (eg, e-wallets), and you can't keep them but refuse to accept them as payment. Can you imagine if that happened with cash? "Sorry, we can't accept this $100 note as payment, you'll have to give us another one. No, you can't have this one back; no, it's not counterfeit, we just think it might have been involved in some form of criminal activity at some point in the past." You'd have some use of force directed at your face if you tried that in real life.

I encourage the sympathetic readers of this post to stop thinking about bitcoin as "cash" and start thinking in terms of a distributed file system containing a perfect accounting ledger. The idea is much more sophisticated than "cash" and will lead one day to a system that will allow us to keep track of our debts to each other in terms of personal economic value.
So, everyone's bitcoins will have a different value to everyone elses? How exactly are you supposed to set prices with such a scheme? "This product costs 10 BTC, but only 8 BTC if the coins come from a verified Mt Gox account, with a 50% surcharge if the coins ever touched SR, plus 10% if they came from a coin mixing service... etc" Is that pretty much how it's supposed to work? And if so, how does that make any sense? That would cause problems if you tried it in real life, too.
4244  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: A Warning Against Using Taint on: June 06, 2012, 11:53:23 AM
You dont actually own your own house. Have you ever tried not paying local council rates ?

Have you ever tried not paying federal taxes? By that logic, you don't actually "own" anything. But I (like most people) define "ownership" to mean "right of property", regardless of whether such rights can be revoked at the whim of the government.
4245  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: A Warning Against Using Taint on: June 06, 2012, 10:49:59 AM
This thread actually reminded me of an obscure bit of trivia I once learnt. Namely: ordinary cash (to the best of my knowledge) is not actually 'owned' by the person/s holding it. The actual bits of paper are owned by the government (or the reserve bank that issued them. It probably varies from country to country -- not sure).

This is analogous to the Bitcoin situation whereby nobody actually 'owns' any of the coins on the block-chain. As proof, anyone can download ALL of them if they want. Their usage is merely governed by the rules according to which coins are transacted using the open-source Bitcoin protocol. Therefore, the casual, social concept of ownership is not even part of Bitcoin, and everyone who bought into the idea should understand that and accept it instead of trying to change it into a different system.

No, it's completely different. The blockchain is more like a title deed, giving property rights to certain individuals, who can sign over all or part of their ownership to anyone else in a publicly witnessed manner. While it is true that nobody "owns" the blockchain, the rights that the blockchain provides (namely, the right to spend one's own bitcoins) are genuine property rights, and to suggest otherwise makes about as sense as suggesting that the deed to your house is worthless because you don't really own the piece of paper it's printed on.
4246  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Bitbid hasn't been compromised, has it? on: June 06, 2012, 09:16:51 AM
I don't know anything about BitBid, but I'm pretty sure that ads for Viagra, Cailis, et al, (covering 95% of the home page Shocked) is not normal, and highly suspicious even if it is. Does anyone else know what's going on here?

Block Explorer is currently lagging behind a few hundred blocks for some reason, and this is completely unrelated to any issues with BitBid. The information in Bitcoin-Qt is almost certainly correct (and the fact that BitBid has approved your membership and you have a balance with them indicates that nothing went wrong with your transaction).
4247  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Bitcoin error on: June 04, 2012, 04:47:20 AM
Your blockchain file got corrupted. Delete blk0001.dat and blkindex.dat from C:\Users\leigh\Appdata\Roaming\Bitcoin and restart Bitcoin and it will re-download the blockchain. Don't worry, your bitcoins are safe as long as you don't delete wallet.dat (which you might want to back up while you're at it).
4248  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Introduce yourself :) on: June 04, 2012, 03:40:46 AM
Hi new here and having nothing but problems with bitcoin. Hopefully it sorts itself out
 Huh

What problems are you having, exactly?
4249  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Bitcoins will never exceed 21 million, except via Fractional-reserve Bankin !!! on: June 04, 2012, 12:24:20 AM
Hi I appreciate further clarifying.

I see so Bitcoin is more like a competing currency rather than new money model.

So bitcoin creators want to rely eventually on existing banks to lend Bitcoin as basically a new currency ?

I thought bitcoin was deeper than just another currency using the existing model ? Maybe I am missing key advantages of bitcoin over existing currency creation method , but I am still learning. It is little disappointing if Bitcoin is just another currency as then why just not use existing ones ?
While Bitcoin is in many ways just another currency, it differs from fiat money in than no government (or anyone else) can decide to issue more of it, and there is only so much of it that can ever exist. In this respect it is more like commodity money, but unlike commodity money, the number of bitcoins that will ever exist and the rate at which they will be distributed is known in advance, and as a result its value is not subject to supply shocks. These are features which no form of money has ever had before.

Quote From this
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y so doing, they have helped Bitcoin become what it is now and what it will be in the future (hopefully, a ubiquitous decentralized digital currency). It is only fair they will reap the benefits of their successful investment.
How is exactly Bitcoin "decentralized" ? You speak of existing Banks creating Bitcoin out of no where similarly to the existing model. That would mean centralized Bitcoin creation at selected existing  Banks.
No. Bitcoins cannot be created by banks (or anyone) out of thin air. When a bank (or anyone else) loans bitcoins to other people, it must already own these bitcoins. What happens is Alice deposits some bitcoins in her bank account, then the bank loans those same bitcoins out to Carol figuring that Carol will pay them back before Alice tries to withdraw her bitcoins. This is basically how fraction reserve banking works already, except in this case if Alice tries to withdraw her money and the bank doesn't have it, there is no way for the government to bail them out, and the bank is instantly bankrupt. Alice will probably be able to eventually get her money from Carol, but whether she does or not, nobody will ever be using that bank ever again. So it is most unlikely that banks will act as irresponsibly with bitcoins as they do with fiat money.

Also seems like in the Bitcoin model the creators of Bitcoin or existing Banks will act the equivalent of  "central banks" as individuals will not be able to do that eventually... except for the existing "developing" state with the lottery.

Futher from ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_are_new_Bitcoins_created.3F ) seems like at the moment bitcoin is being created through a "lottery" and those having most PCs participating are most likely to have more coins. However this "lottery"  is a temporary mechanism as the main goal is to get existing Banks( or new specialized Bitcoin Bank ) issue these coins similarly to existing currencies ? Yes / No ?
No. Bitcoin mining is not a "lottery", it is actually more like a business. What miners are really doing is verifying transactions and securing the Bitcoin network, and they receive a payment for providing this service. The payment currently consists of "new" coins, however there is only a limited amount of coins that can be created this way, which is why miners also receive transaction fees. Eventually, when the "new" coins run out, the whole network will be supported entirely by transaction fees (the way it should be) and the economy will be a totally closed system (again, the way it should be). The whole "new coins" business is just a way to bootstrap the economy by distributing the initial coins to the people who contribute the most resources to the network, which is the fairest way of doing it.

If banks will create Bitcoins out of nowhere do you plan for  an option to increase the Bitcoin supply beyond 21 million in the future when banks have adopted Bticoin and now need more Bitcoins to meet demand for new coins, similarly to the existing money model ? Yes ?
No. If large-scale adoption by banks increases the demand for bitcoins, no new bitcoins will or even can be created to meet the demand. Instead, the value of individual bitcoins will increase, exactly the same as if it were a scarce commodity like gold.
4250  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Typical way of using/reusing addresses in a wallet on: June 03, 2012, 11:36:04 PM
I reuse addresses only when receiving multiple payments from the same person for the same reason. You should create new addresses for payments from different people or from the same person but for different reasons, because otherwise it just becomes too difficult to keep track of who's paying you for what.
4251  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: A few questions about addresses on: June 03, 2012, 10:44:20 AM
Thanks sipa for this thorough answer.

Incidentally, I have read somewhere that there are approximately the same number of bitcoin addresses as there are atoms on earth.
Did anyone check that ?

I guess it depends on your definition of "approximately". There are actually about 70 times as many atoms in the Earth as there are bitcoin addresses:

Number of bitcoin addresses (2^160): 1.462 quindecillion
Number of atoms in the Earth (according to Wolfram Alpha): 100 quindecillion
4252  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Bitcoins will never exceed 21 million, except via Fractional-reserve Bankin !!! on: June 03, 2012, 01:19:02 AM
Bitcoin is not an alternative to private banking, it is an alternative to fiat money. Private banks and fractional reserve banking will still exist with Bitcoin - in fact, existing private banks could start accepting Bitcoin deposits and making Bitcoin loans right now if they wanted to. The just don't want to because there's no government to bail them out at the taxpayer's expense if things go wrong. For this reason, banks and other institutions dealing with Bitcoin will be far less likely to take unnecessary risks with other people's money, and that's a good thing.
4253  Economy / Speculation / Re: [Daily Speculation Poll] :: Is bitcoin a fad? on: June 02, 2012, 01:47:03 PM
Bitcoin isn't a fad, and never was. It is more. The initial excitement isn't over, it has actually yet to begin. Bitcoin is the light that shines upon us as the world economy enters its darkest hour. Just don't stare directly at it. It's very bright. Cool
4254  Bitcoin / Armory / Re: Armory - Discussion Thread on: June 02, 2012, 12:12:01 PM
Is there any way to restore the wallet from a seed in Armory?
It claims to have deterministic wallets, but I couldn't find an option to restore.

Wallets -> Restore from Paper Backup

Ok I somehow missed that, is there a way to get the seed without a printer and physical paper?


Print it to pdf.

Or just look at the print preview and write it down the old fashioned way. Like I always say, you just can't trust printers these days. They keep a record of everything you print. And add invisible patterns to your pages to identify you. That's how The Man gets you. ¬.¬
4255  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: when will bitcoin become practical for every day people? on: June 02, 2012, 09:37:30 AM
how did I get 22 reads already? can you say rigged?
Your subject line is interesting enough to get people to read it, yet your content-free post ensures nobody will actually respond to it. Well, nobody except me. Dammit, now look what you made me do. Angry

anyway back to the point. is bitcoin an even bigger joke than the US dollar? I would say it's safe to say so.
Of course Bitcoin is a bigger joke than the US dollar. The real question is, who is the joke on, and do they know it yet? I would say it's safe to say that we Bitcoin users will be the ones laughing in the end. Cool
4256  Bitcoin / Armory / Re: Armory - Discussion Thread on: June 02, 2012, 08:06:40 AM
Is there any way to restore the wallet from a seed in Armory?
It claims to have deterministic wallets, but I couldn't find an option to restore.

Wallets -> Restore from Paper Backup
4257  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Help Selling BTC Online on: June 02, 2012, 03:07:45 AM
You can trade bitcoins for money in your PayPal account at Spend Bitcoins. You can probably trust them not to reverse the payment, but can you trust PayPal not to freeze your account if when they find out the money came from selling bitcoins (which is against their TOS)? If you want to buy something online from a vendor that doesn't accept bitcoins, Spend Bitcoins has other options which you might find suitable (and which are much safer than PayPal).
4258  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Opting out of Social Security on: June 01, 2012, 11:32:26 PM
If I was an insurer and had no data from seat belt tickets, I would require that the car records detailed seat belt data, and that the customer shares these data. Right now it would be pointless because cops are checking instead.

Or you could just ask the customer if he wears a seat belt, then refuse to pay out if he claims to always wear a seat belt but the accident investigation reveals that he wasn't wearing it at the time of the accident.
4259  Bitcoin / Armory / Re: Armory - Discussion Thread on: June 01, 2012, 06:09:24 AM
I actually meant "weighted majority" of CPUs -- I recognize that not all CPUs can use compatible instruction sets.  However, a majority of users are using CPUs that have a common instruction set.  I was under the impression that multiple instruction sets are generally supported on each CPU, hence "SSE", "SSE2", "3DNOW", etc.  Given that I've seen large lists like that on CPU spec pages/boxes before, I suspect it's the case...
MMX, SSE, 3DNow!, etc are not instruction sets in their own right, but rather extensions of the standard IA-32 instruction set (this is the common instruction set for x86-32 CPUs). Any code which is compiled to use these extensions will not work on any CPU with an instruction set that doesn't include these extensions. As I understand, it is possible (in assembly) to write two versions of a function (one using the extended instructions and one using the just the standard instruction set) and have the program select which version to use by querying the CPU at runtime, but that's far beyond my level of expertise. Note that this is only possible because these extended instruction sets simply add new instructions without replacing or changing the standard instructions.

Either way, I removed the -march option and it seems to work.  The documentation suggests that gcc will decide for me what to compile, which is not march=native.  Maybe I still have no idea what I'm talking about, but I'm going with what works.  So far the python2.6-i386 works after the change.  Please try the others and let me know.
Are you sure it works, though? On all IA-32 systems? Unless you're absolutely positive the default is safe, -march=i386 is the only way to be sure. Compiling for any other architecture is very likely to result in a binary that is guaranteed to crash on certain systems.
4260  Bitcoin / Armory / Re: Armory - Discussion Thread on: June 01, 2012, 04:58:43 AM
I see there is no -march=generic option, which is unfortunate because I figured there would be an instruction set that is supported by a majority of CPUs.
If you think for a moment about what a CPU is and how it works, you'll realise what you're suggesting makes absolutely no sense. Every CPU has a single instruction set, and cannot use any other. IA-32 (i386) is a subset of all the various instruction sets used in x86-32 CPUs, and that's about a close as you're ever going to get to one instruction set being supported by a majority of CPUs. The instruction sets of other CPUs such as PowerPC, ARM, et al, are all totally incompatible with each other and with IA-32, so there's absolutely no way to compile code so that it works on all of them.

It looks like, just not using the -march option at all is what I want, and -mtune=generic. 
Actually, that may be what broke it in the first place. Specifying the target architecture is mandatory for the above reason. If you don't, the compiler will use the system default, which may not always be what you want. You must always specify what architecture you're compiling for if you want it to work on systems other than your own. I strongly recommend that you use -march=i386 -mtune=generic to avoid any future surprises.

-mtune doesn't actually have anything to do with what instruction set your target architecture uses - instead it just optimises your code for things like the cache size of a particular CPU and so on. Setting it to the wrong CPU (even a CPU that doesn't use the same instruction set as the one you're compiling for) won't ever break anything, but it can have a detrimental effect on your code's performance. Always set it to "generic" unless you have a specific CPU in mind.

Does this also mean that I can use "-march=i386  -m32" to compile the 32-bit binaries on my 64-bit system?  It would be nice to be able to cross-compile, but I never bothered to figure out how, and have a separate VM for each .deb file...
I've never cross-compiled either, but yes, that should work. Let me know how it goes.
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