Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, ICANN has this big red button with key switches on either side of it, which has the magical ability to force arbitrary network operators (even those outside the US) to do whatever ICANN wants (most are already doing what ICANN wants, but only because ICANN doesn't want to "turn off" the Internet). Though it was never fully explained to me just how it works exactly...

Seriously though, the power that ICANN and other governing bodies have over the Internet is purely voluntary. If their decisions prove unpopular, network operators can and will simply ignore them, except where required by local laws (and sometimes even then).

Well, it contains most factually accurate information about Bitcoin (in fact, probably the most factually accurate information in a single report - the only glaring error is the statement (on page 14) that bitcoins will cease to be generated in 2033, clearly based on a misinterpretation of the famous money-supply graph) presented sensibly from a law-enforcement perspective, so I'd say it's likely to be genuine. It strongly implies that the FBI don't see Bitcoin itself as the problem, but rather the illegal activities that involve Bitcoin and are potentially made easier by it (which is exactly the sort of reasonable approach that (all jokes aside) one would expect from the FBI).

It actually depends on the glibc version? Now I feel like an idiot for not mentioning earlier that my copy of glibc is from a different distro, which makes sense for reasons I'm not even going to try to explain... Well, I guess that clears that up.

I don't see why you couldn't have done that two weeks ago when I suggested you do exactly that (better late than never, I suppose):

It is much better. Thanks.

Isn't the correct solution to just make the paper wallets use black text on a white background, regardless of the system colours? That's what virtually every other program that handles printed documents does.

Right here. It's called the Internet. It seems to work pretty well all things considered.

That's where you're wrong! If you hand in your MintChip to the bank when it still has a positive balance, they'll give you shiny metal discs! Nothing dubious about it! Except for the fact that the discs have almost zero intrinsic value, but that's not the point! The point is it's backed by "hard currency"!

Miners broadcast blocks they mine to other nodes, who then broadcast those blocks to other nodes, and so on in that fashion until all the nodes have all the blocks (that's how P2P networks work). The only difference between mining nodes and non-mining nodes is that miners occasionally generate new blocks in addition to passing on blocks received from other nodes.

Actually, this is a rather weak example because all blocks valid under the new system are still valid in the old system (it didn't actually change the rules, it just fixed a broken implementation of a rule), so even people who didn't upgrade eventually switched over to the new chain when it overtook the erroneous chain in difficulty. An actual rule change like increasing the block reward could definitely not be done in the same way.

It doesn't create a "rift" in the network, it creates a whole new network, separate from the original Bitcoin network. And that's assuming the forked blockchain somehow manages to propagate to nodes following the new rules (nodes following the old rules will not propagate the forked blockchain, regardless of how much support it has).

They broadcast blocks. Specifically, they broadcast valid blocks. If a block isn't valid according to a particular node's rules, that particular node will not forward the block on to other nodes (even if the other nodes would accept it as valid). Yes, forking the blockchain is possible (and very easy, in fact). But you won't be able to propagate that fork using the existing Bitcoin network.

Okay, now that Dropbox is no longer hating me...

For what reason, if any, does the python 2.7 version require python 2.7? I'm going crazy here. Can someone else with python 2.6 please download the python 2.7 version, install it with dpkg --force-depends, and confirm that it works anyway? I don't want to be only person here who's crazy. And if it does work with both 2.6 and 2.7 can we drop the libpython dependency and finally get rid of these two separate versions once and for all?

Moving on...

The Armory logo no longer fits in its panel (at least on my system), regardless of the window size, though everything else that didn't used to fit, now does fit. (Screenshot)

I've noticed that closing the Wallet Version Warning window does not cancel the Migrate Wallet operation - exactly the opposite of what should happen. Also, the text in the Migrate Wallet window doesn't fit unless the window is resized, and this particular window does not remember its size.

I'm also still annoyed that I can't change advanced encryption options for an existing wallet, and that paper wallets don't print correctly on light-on-dark colour schemes. Any word on when these will be fixed?

Wrong. You can't change the rules with over 50% of the miners, you need the support of virtually 100% of the nodes, including non-miners. Nodes that don't follow the new rules will reject blocks mined under the new rules. At best this will result in the blockchain being forked; more likely, the blocks following the new rule just won't propagate through the network, and all the effort mining them will be wasted. While there are a lot of things you can do if you have the support of more than 50% of the miners, changing the core rules isn't one of them.

No it isn't. Because the attacker's hashing power increases at exactly the same rate as the network hashing power, the security threat in the future is exactly the same as it is now. I never said that there was no threat, just that whatever threat there is will be no greater in the future than it is now.

Of course not. You just have to include the date of issue as well as the depreciation rate with the denomination, eg:

ONE MicroCash Dollar
minus 0.5 cents per day since 1 June 2012
This MicroCash Coin will be worthless on 18 December 2012
Spend it quickly!

Miners don't vote on the value of bitcoin, the market does. If the supply of bitcoins increases beyond the demand for bitcoins, the value will go down, regardless of what the miners do.

Any block which doesn't follow the rules will be rejected by nodes that do. Any attempt to change to the rules will fail for this reason. Explain how it is otherwise.

They number of miners will not increase beyond the point where mining is no longer profitable. Unless incentives change radically (and I've explained why I don't think they will), the total hashpower of the network will increase in accordance with Moore's law (and so does the hashpower of any attackers, so if security is good enough now, it'll be good enough for the future). Whether this means the same number of miners with more powerful rigs, or more miners with less powerful rigs, I don't know, and I don't care either - the effect is the same as far as the security of the network is concerned.

Uh, can I have links that aren't circular redirects? Or does Dropbox just hate me?

The rules cannot and will not change. The total number of coins cannot be increased.

I do. Right now, fees are about 0.1% of the block reward (at least they were last time I checked). If the fee per transaction stays the same and transaction volume increases by 1000 times, the resulting total fees will be equivalent to the current block reward. There's no problem here unless transaction volume doesn't increase enough, in which case Bitcoin is doomed anyway.

It means you may need to upgrade. The current version is 0.6.1. What version are you using?

Only one is required for Bitcoin to work, though Bitcoin will try to make 8 connections (by default), to ensure there's no interruptions if some drop out.

I don't, but Bitcoin will still ask you to pay an additional fee for "low-priority" transactions though, regardless of what you set here. Note that although fees are (mostly) optional now, eventually a minimum fee will be required (at least if you want your transactions to go through).

Yes, but miners processing zero-fee transactions is also optional.

To elaborate, right now the block reward is so large that miners just don't care about transactions fees, and are (usually) willing to process zero-fee transactions simply because it makes no significant difference to their profit whether transaction fees are included or not. But after the block reward drops a few times, miners will start prioritising transactions with high fees (because that's where their profit is) while transactions with low or no fees get ignored.

Why is this post #345? Did the person before you delete their post just to screw everything up?

This is post #359. The next post will be #360.

(The following instructions apply to the default client, but other clients are similar) After the bitcoins show up as confirmed in your wallet, click Send Coins, enter the bitcoin address you want to send to (most sites will give you a unique payment address for each purchase) and the amount of bitcoins you want to send, then click Send. Simple as that. You will be asked for your passphrase at this point if your wallet is encrypted, and you may (or may not) be asked to pay a (typically very small) transaction fee.

In the bottom right corner, the icon second from the right indicates whether you are connected or not. Hover your cursor over it to see exactly how many peers you are connected to. And blockchain.info only shows nodes connected directly to blockchain.info, not all the nodes on the Bitcoin network.

The market is smaller, even though FPGAs are less specialised than GPUs, but only because GPUs are so widely used in gaming. It's not that hard to find used FPGAs for sale on the Internet as well as code examples, mostly for Xilinx FPGAs. I dunno about Butterfly Labs though. I can't seem to find any information about programming them, which to me suggest there's something very wrong here... Probably best to stay away from Butterfly Labs if you're worried about resale value.