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441  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 28, 2014, 02:10:47 PM
Going with your evolution analogy:
Evolution is not a progression from "worse" to "better"--"better" (or "wonderful," to use your language) is a post-factum value judgement imposed by us, the survivors.  It produced what it has produced, and the "wonder" existence holds it holds only for us, the product.  Nothing suggests that if the end result of biological evolution was undifferentiated slime, that slime would be any less "wonderful" to bits of that slime (if "wonder" was even a thing for those slime bits, but you get my drift).

Evolution simply produces what it produces.  Going by its definition, "survival of the fittest," everything extant is the fittest.
Again, by definition.
Not "the best," not "the best of all possible worlds," but simply "that which exists."

Another tangent:  You can no more encourage, deride or discourage enlightened self-interest than you could encourage, deride, or encourage evolution.  TL;DR: I ain't.  Is this a bit clearer?

*This is getting pretty far away from watching Teh Wall, but there's not much happening there [that I can understand or work with].  Hope we're not annoying the purists.

I don't disagree with anything you have said above re: evolution, but it seems you have gone way off in the weeds to try to invalidate a perfectly good analogy.

When I originally responded to your response to Richy_T, I did so in the belief that you were dismissing the power of individuals acting freely in their self-interest to effect significant change, but after a couple of exchanges with you now, I have re-read it, and you seem to be equating 'people acting in their enlightened self interest' with 'everything that humans do, ever, full stop".  If that is indeed what you mean, then, indeed, everything that has ever happened re: the human species is definitely the result of 'enlightened self interest'.

That, however, is almost certainly not the idea that Richy_T was promoting, and that you appeared to be trying to contradict.  Re-reading that post, it seems that he never spoke of 'enlightened self interest' at all, and that concept certainly does not seem to be necessary to support the claim he was making - that local control is frequently more responsive and effective than centralized control at some higher level (if I understand him correctly).
442  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 02:46:16 PM
...
The answer is localization and allowing people to make choices for themselves rather than those choices being made by some huge monolithic uncaring entity.

The very enlightened self-interest which you [seem to] champion brought us government as we know it today.  Simply because nothing else could have (unless you believe in something external and separate from mankind, like God, Satan, or Princess Twilight Sparkle).  A truism, but worth repeating.


'Enlightened self interest' created the very intelligence that you abuse here to denigrate its value and power.  It's called "evolution".


Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest.
It is not called "evolution."
I have neither praised nor denigrated it.  


Ok, fair enough.  Evolution ~= enlightened self interest - but there is a valid analogy to be drawn that speaks to your claim.

The evolution that resulted in YOU and the intelligence you are attempting to display here today began with random interaction of subatomic particles that formed more complex particles, which then formed molecules, which eventually somehow managed to accidentally come together in a self-replicating form.  Skipping forward a bit, we get complex living creatures, who tend to act in a manner consistent with their own self-interest - either 'enlightened' or otherwise.

Somehow, all that random and, ultimately, intentional activity - none of which ever involved any higher centralized planning - resulted in YOU.

Yet you choose to belittle the concept of 'enlightened self interest', and you seem to suggest that 'enlightened self interest' is a priori inferior to planning and committees and government.  I would suggest that, so far, nature seems to be more clever than any committee I have seen - so I would not belittle the value of what can come of random interactions of actors pursuing their own ends.

I don't suggest here that nature (or enlightened self interest) always produces the 'best' immediate result - that is a very subjective judgement.  But, like Adam Smith, I do marvel at how often it does produce a wonderful result - and I can't seem to think of anything achieved by committee that is comparable.

443  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 01:37:45 PM
...
The answer is localization and allowing people to make choices for themselves rather than those choices being made by some huge monolithic uncaring entity.

The very enlightened self-interest which you [seem to] champion brought us government as we know it today.  Simply because nothing else could have (unless you believe in something external and separate from mankind, like God, Satan, or Princess Twilight Sparkle).  A truism, but worth repeating.


'Enlightened self interest' created the very intelligence that you abuse here to denigrate its value and power.  It's called "evolution".
444  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 01:34:06 PM
Jorge Stolfi is just an old dog who simply cannot or will not learn a new trick.  Roll Eyes
My dog has learned to run after the stick, but not yet to bring it back.  But it is too young, hopefully it will learn in due time.  Wink

No, that dog is OLD.

Jorge, I get it that you are dubious of the long term prospects of bitcoin as a currency or a store of value.  I disagree with your assessment, but even I realize that the future of that enterprise is still not certain.

HOWEVER, one thing that is NOT experimental or yet to be determined is blockchain technology.

The bitcoin network is a Distributed Autonomous Corporation that manages billions of dollars of value, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in a distributed, trust-less manner.  It has been working flawlessly in this capacity for over 5 years now.

That being said, how do you just dismiss out-of-hand the possibility that this same technology might not be leveraged to create a distributed, trust-less voting system?

This statement:
Quote
Using the bitcoin blockchain for voting sound like "how can we use a jet engine to make popcorn".   Cheesy
is ridiculous, and makes it seem that you are more interested in maintaining the status quo than in exploring real solutions to the problem of guaranteeing free and fair elections.  What is being done now is not working all that well in many places.

I find it impossible to believe that you are really that close-minded.

445  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 10:26:49 AM

Quote
On a totally unrelated tangent, Mr. Stolfi:  I read some where that you were involved in something to do with E-voting systems in Brazil.  What are your thoughts on the various blockchain-based voting systems, and the impact they may have on fair and honest elections?  One example:

http://www.bitcongress.org/

I discussed that topic on reddit a couple of months ago:
Danish political party, Liberal Alliance, will be the first party to use the blockchain for voting internally!

Basically, the main problem of any totally-digital e-voting system is that at some point the voter's choice is stored only inside some piece of equipment, and there is no effective way to make sure that said equipment will not change the vote.   One may think of issuing a receipt that allows the voter to check whether his vote was counted, but there seems to be no practical way of (a) preventing the misuse of that receipt to coerce the voter, and (b) preventing the voter from falsely claiming that his vote was miscounted.

By the way, point (a) rules out voting-from-home right away, no matter how sophisticated the counting system.  Voting must be done in a special location, that is carefully designed and monitored to ensure that no one can see the voter's choice, not even if he wants to reveal it.   EDIT: For the same reason,  the voter must not be allowed to use his own equipment when voting. The equipment must be shared by many voters and must be such that it cannot know who is voting, and cannot leak any information other than the total,  not even the order in which votes were cast.

There may be fairly complicated ways of doing that [ secure paperless e-voting ] using cruptography.   If they can be proven to work, that would be great news.  However, I doubt that they will be better in practice than the proven medium-tech solution: besides the electronic counting, ensure a paper record of the vote, that the voter can check and the system cannot change afterwards; store that in a conventional ballot box; and count the paper ballots at the voting place, manually, at the end of voting day.  That is a solution that everybody understands and anyone can help to implement.  Cannot get more decentralized and voter-centric than that...

Moreover, I don't see why it would be a good idea to use the bitcoin protocol and blockchain, rather than a separate special-purpose protocol.   Using the bitcoin blockchain for voting sound like "how can we use a jet engine to make popcorn".  Cheesy

Ok, at this point, I'm gonna go ahead and call it:

Jorge Stolfi is just an old dog who simply cannot or will not learn a new trick.  Roll Eyes

Thanks for the insight.

446  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 02:47:02 AM
Any of you market-smart guys want to comment on this?:

http://www.coindesk.com/citi-miners-merchants-keeping-bitcoin-prices-check/

Sounds pretty dire, at least for the short term.

My first comment is that some consultant must have earned a big check by copying some trivial observations, already made many times in this forum, and pasting them into a neatly formatted report with a nice plastic cover.  Cheesy

The "flat transaction profile" that they mention must be this graph, of the total daily output volume E extracted from the blockchain (according to the site, excluding the outputs that appear to be back-change).

But I have a different explanation for why the E plot is basically "flat". (I don't recall whether I posted this already, sorry if I did).  Its current value, about 100'000 BTC/day (50 million USD/day), seems way too big to be actual payments (bitcoins changing hands).  Consider that Bitpay claims to have processed only 100 million USD in 2013, when the total E volume, eyeballing from that plot, was at least 3000 million USD.  While there must be a lot of BTC payment that does not use Bitpay, the
ratio >30:1 seems excessive.

My theory is that a large fraction  of the E volume -- maybe 90% or more -- is "fake", that is, bitcoins moving between addresses that belong to the same person.  These could be mixing, hotwallet/coldwallet movements, deposits and withdrawals from exchanges, software testing, etc..

This explanation for the flatness of the E plot may be good news, because it does not exclude the possibility that actual use may be indeed increasing.   If 90% of the E volume is fake,  even a 100% increase in real usage would be quite hard to see on the E plot.

On the other hand, this theory means that the current cost of the Bitcoin Network, in proportion to actual use, is quite large.   If the E volume were 100% actual payments, each payment would have a hidden 4% fee, currently paid by bitcoin holders (as inflation tax) rather than by the actual users.   If 90% of the E-volume is fake, that hidden processing fee is 40%.

Clearly, radical adjustments in the network and the nature of the blockchain traffic will have to occur while the protocol switches from block rewards to transaction fees, if bitcoin is to remain competitive with bank transfers and credit cards.

Ok, well, if even JorgeStolfi is dismissing this report, then I have to say it must be total BS Cheesy

On a totally unrelated tangent, Mr. Stolfi:  I read some where that you were involved in something to do with E-voting systems in Brazil.  What are your thoughts on the various blockchain-based voting systems, and the impact they may have on fair and honest elections?


One example:

http://www.bitcongress.org/
447  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 02:14:33 AM

Medicare (and Obamacare, afaik) did not revoke that premise that health care should be left to private (profit-seeking, self-regulated) enterprise.  It merely helped private health care companies to charge even more from the public, by spreading out their inflated bills over all citizens and collecting them before the salary got to the employee.

So the US merely adopted one feature of public health care (healthy people are forced to share the cost of taking care of the sick) without adopting its goal (keeping the public healthy rather than maximizing the HMO owners' income).  With the wrong goal, that feature only made things worse, much worse.

We don't need to make hypotheses about the merits of private vs. (truly) public health care, there are plenty of examples of the latter around the world.


I think you missed the part where it was working FINE as a free market until the government forcibly took over a large percentage of the market, and distorted that market from Capitalism to pure cronyism.

To keep the post within the topic: that is the way that the bitcoin mining network is going now.

By the way, I hope you are aware that the Government of the Distributed Libertopian Republic of Bitcoin, aka the Bitcoin Network, is currently supported entirely by the printing of new money, to the tune of ~4000 BTC/day; which means 10%/year inflation rate (in the strict sense).  As with any inflation tax, this one is taken from all those who own bitcoins.

And, by the way, it was with  those fiat bitcoins that KnC bought their Platinum membership in The Shrem Karpelès & Friends Foundation.  Can you see the pattern forming?
Your first paragraph started out by saying something sensible, and then you morphed into some stupid-ass FUD comments by making some kind of stretched analogy...

I understand that libertarians do not like to be told that  their new fantastic Non-Inflationary Currency is currently supported entirely by inflation tax, in the strict sense of the term.  But, unless you can point out some factual inaccuracy in what I wrote, I must assume that by FUD you mean "Facts U Dislike".


I am gonna go out on a limb here and guess that JayJuanGee is NOT a libertarian in any sense of that word.

448  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 12:59:33 AM

Yep.. both of those examples show, in my thinking, that we are NOT better off now as compared with 25 years ago.. but you can go on thinking that we are better off, and I will go on thinking that we are NOT better off, and we do NOT need to resolve those kinds of questions here.


If you were not interested in engaging in a dialogue on these matters, why did you bother responding at all?

I never said I was smarter than you - never even suggested that.  I read what you write, then search vainly for what I wrote that inspired it.  Huh

Suggesting that someone gets all their political opinions from some consumer news outlet is certainly insulting, demeaning, and clearly ad hominem.

I leave you now to continue believing what you believe now, and will always believe, simply because you cannot bear to believe otherwise.  Back in my early 20s, when I was working my butt off to get through school, I was pretty much a full-on Marxist, and thought I was damn clever to understand what my contemporaries were too complacent to see.  I came to understand better though, because I value the truth more than I value my own personal intuition born of ignorance.  I don't claim to know the breadth of your economic education and learning, but I suspect that there are some truths you simply have not read yet - and it's certainly true that none of us is likely to change anyone's economic outlook in this limited medium.
449  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 27, 2014, 12:23:00 AM
Any of you market-smart guys want to comment on this?:

http://www.coindesk.com/citi-miners-merchants-keeping-bitcoin-prices-check/

Sounds pretty dire, at least for the short term.
450  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 11:09:48 PM
 

You say "Sounds like..." and "You imply..." a lot.

Maybe you could try reading what I wrote and taking it at face value, or at least responding to it directly, instead of replying to some vague interpretation you drew from it.  



Maybe I can choose whatever words that I want in order to most reasonably reflect what I would like to say?  

What about that?


That's fine - if you are interested in having a conversation with yourself, which I am coming to realize is exactly what you want.


I am not an anarchist, and I am, for the most part, not inclined to generalization, but your every response seems to assume such of me, while at the same time not providing much, other than hand-wavy generalization as support for your own argument - if you really have any thing to say other than "Government is good.  You are a fool not to blindly accept it as your savior, as I have".

The burden is NOT upon me to provide examples regarding how if or in what ways the government is good.

If you are making suggestion that we need to change some institutions in the status quo set up and you have some vision about why too much government is bad in such set up, then buren is upon you to describe your vision of how we get from point A to point B, not me.


So your job is simply to read what I write supporting my assertions, then just say "nuhn'uh!"  I am starting to understand your rhetorical style.


As far as multiplier effects go, I recently read a study done by an economist at the San Francisco branch of the Federal Reserve, who attempted to measure the "jobs multiplier" of the stimulus package promoted by the incoming Obama administration back in 2009.  He determined that the president's claim that the stimulus had 'created or saved' ~2,000,000 jobs was an accurate claim.  He also noted that this represented a cost of ~$400,000 per job.  I think this is fairly representative of the multiplier effects I have seen from the government attempting to do the job of the private sector.

Sounds as if you have a very limited knowledge of the concept of multiplier effect in terms of the various ways that government money can be spent... And, attempting to couple this with Obama's performance seems to be a bit narrow minded on the topic... and maybe even a distraction from my original comment, which was merely that much more societal wealth will be created when we find ways to distribute money more broadly.. so take from the rich and spread across the poor in various ways, rather than doing the opposite.. which would be, for clarification, taking from the poor and giving to the rich (which has largely been the case for at least the last 20 - 30 years).

Uhm, could you at least share the logic that led you to this conclusion?  I stated an example of a multiplier that fits the context, and you conclude from that one quite valid example that I have a "limited knowledge of the concept of the multiplier effect"?  How exactly does that follow logically?

I can't make any sense of your 'attempt to link Obama performance' at all.  I didn't attempt anything.  I presented an example.  If you think that example is specifically a bad reflection on President Obama, that is a conclusion that your have reached on your own.  I just presented another example of this nonsense Keynesian notion that government spending of money they steal from people who would have spent it themselves, probably more wisely, somehow "multiplies" the effectiveness of that spending.  Richard Nixon made even stupider economic moves when he was president, i.e. wage and price controls...  Jimmy Carter did some very smart economic things as president, i.e. deregulation of the transportation industries.  This is not a Republican vs. Democrat thing.  Stupid and wrong is stupid and wrong no matter who does it.  And the stimulus bill was stupid and wrong.  And there is NO example of any such spending resulting in such a multiplier effect that you can point to with evidence to back it up.  It has never happened.  Not in the US.  Not in the world.  Not in history.  Not ever.  It sounded good when Keynes wrote it, but in practice it just doesn't happen.

Oh, and again - do you really believe Americans are poorer now than they were in the '30s?  I have never seen the American standard of living decline in my lifetime.  When I was a kid, we didn't even have a telephone, or air conditioning (in the deep south!).  Now, even the poorest people I know have cellphones and HDTVs.  Is it different where you live

In a couple ways, you are fucking amazing.  1st... I mentioned comparing the 1990s to 2014, and then second if you believe that cell phones, air conditioning and HDTVs are indications of wealth then you are likely looking at the situation too narrowly.

Not indications of wealth.  Indications of being better off than someone who DOES NOT have those things.  Yes, that is a narrow definition of 'better off', but I don't think any of us here are qualified to judge every facet of the quality of anyone's life, so we have pick something as an indicator.  If you have an indicator that negates mine, please present it.

I believe in one of my recent posts I took into account other considerations and that is how much we make and how many hours we work, but I was NOT tryin to get into the weeds on this.  I do think, however, you are making a considerable assumption if you believe people are generally better off now than they were 25 years ago.  Maybe you drank the Fox news coolaide?  sounds like it.    Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy Cheesy


You are not making your case more persuasively by turning this into some ad hominem attack, or an attempt to paint me a some political caricature you feel superior to.  I might be right in my beliefs, or I may be wrong - but I am just as well-read and educated on the subjects at hand as you are.  I may disagree with you, but I will respect you and your opinions as long as you afford me the same respect.

I do believe people are better off in general than they were 25 years ago, certainly in terms of material wealth - although, as Richie_T pointed out, that is mitigated somewhat by the fact that we do have to work longer hours now - and we ALL have to work too.  Single income families are not really viable now like they once were.

451  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 09:23:34 PM
Oh, and again - do you really believe Americans are poorer now than they were in the '30s?  I have never seen the American standard of living decline in my lifetime.  When I was a kid, we didn't even have a telephone, or air conditioning (in the deep south!).  Now, even the poorest people I know have cellphones and HDTVs.  Is it different where you live?


You have to be careful there. The amazing advancement of technology has somewhat masked the loss of (inflation adjusted) income. Sure, you have a TV in every room, two cars in the driveway and a supercomputer in your pocket but your housing costs now take up half your income, you're eating processed, not real food, your wife has to work and you have two kids, not five.

Valid point.
452  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 07:38:52 PM


I'm a little sick of hearing about this "wealth disparity/inequality".  If the rich get 10% richer while those of us who are not rich get only 4% richer, I am ok with that - especially since "the rich" usually means people who are actually starting/growing companies and making life better for others (intentionally or otherwise), while risking their own wealth.



You are sick about hearing about wealth disparity, and you are just throwing out some random numbers to make the problem to seem, not so bad.

Also, there are a lot of assumptions in your comment concerning trickle down economics and your belief in the fallacy that if rich people get richer then they are going to reinvest a good portion of that money in the appropriate infrastructure.  that assumption is NOT correct.

If you have ever heard about the multiplier effect of money, you would come to realize that distributing money in various ways... especially to poor people has much better multiplier effects than giving that money to an ever narrowing sliver of people who neither need the money NOR deserve the money.






Are you really poorer now than you were 20 years ago?  

Sounds like you are using a small sample... and also sounds as if you are engaging in overly optimistic thinking and failing to take into account real changes in society and the deflated value of the dollar or even public services and infrastructure that is available... For example, let's say someone makes $20k per year in 1990 and $20k per year (in the equivalent of 1990 dollars in 2014); however, what are the public services that are available now versus then and what is the infrastructure now versus then and what are the number of hours worked and quality of life... IN fact, most people are NOT keeping up with the wages from the 1990s.. for equivalent job categories and skill sets.







Of all the poor souls I grew up with, very few could answer "yes" to that - and the ones that can are usually going to be victims of other problems created by the government, like the current health care system.


Sounds as if you are again speculating about the government bringing things down be providing reform to healthcare systems.  I doubt that people overall are going to be worse off b/c more people are covered by health care.  That just seems like some speculative talking point.


You say "Sounds like..." and "You imply..." a lot.

Maybe you could try reading what I wrote and taking it at face value, or at least responding to it directly, instead of replying to some vague interpretation you drew from it.  I am not an anarchist, and I am, for the most part, not inclined to generalization, but your every response seems to assume such of me, while at the same time not providing much, other than hand-wavy generalization as support for your own argument - if you really have any thing to say other than "Government is good.  You are a fool not to blindly accept it as your savior, as I have".

As far as multiplier effects go, I recently read a study done by an economist at the San Francisco branch of the Federal Reserve, who attempted to measure the "jobs multiplier" of the stimulus package promoted by the incoming Obama administration back in 2009.  He determined that the president's claim that the stimulus had 'created or saved' ~2,000,000 jobs was an accurate claim.  He also noted that this represented a cost of ~$400,000 per job.  I think this is fairly representative of the multiplier effects I have seen from the government attempting to do the job of the private sector.

Oh, and again - do you really believe Americans are poorer now than they were in the '30s?  I have never seen the American standard of living decline in my lifetime.  When I was a kid, we didn't even have a telephone, or air conditioning (in the deep south!).  Now, even the poorest people I know have cellphones and HDTVs.  Is it different where you live?


453  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 06:50:42 PM
When I was a kid, my mother could call the local doctor and he would COME TO OUR HOUSE and treat us (an unbelievable concept in America now), and he would charge us $10 for that service.  Everyone I knew was about as poor as we were, but I cannot once remember hearing someone say "Oh my God, what will we do about the medical bills?".  The mess that the American health care system is in now is another creation of our government - but again, that is a long argument that exceeds greatly the bounds of this thread.
Indeed, it was the creation of a government who traditionally considered health care not to be its concern, and therefore left it entirely to private enterprise.  As it always happens, left to its "self-regulation"  the health care market degenerated into an oligopoly, whose only concern is to maximize the revenue of their owners; who that maintains their dominance of the market by buying out the government.

This statement shows an utter ignorance of the evolution of the current health care issues in the US.  Anyone can research this and see that the situation was going pretty damn well until the government decided to dive in to the health care market head first with Medicare.  I was a just a kid when Medicare became law, and the effect on health care costs was apparent pretty quickly thereafter, and has never let up since.

There were no old people dying in the streets of America before Medicare, btw.
454  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 06:26:06 PM
your suggestion that we do NOT need government seems to be an oversimplification of social structures.

I made no such suggestion.

Additionally, you seem to imply <blah blah blah>

I did not imply anything of the kind.  I simply pointed out that government assistance is not strictly necessary, and for many of us not desirable.

Wealth disparity in this country has devolved to tragic lows b/c of lack of strength of government and lack of ability  or willingness to keep some of the wealthy decision makers and movers in their place.. whether it is job creation or export of jobs or other ways that they leach off of the public infrastructure to run away with and to steal wealth from the public sphere... that has worsened in the last 30 years or so.... and little by little eroded the whole social fabric of the country... with stupid ass ideas that the only value is rugged individualism and lack of government as the solution to all social ills...

I'm a little sick of hearing about this "wealth disparity/inequality".  If the rich get 10% richer while those of us who are not rich get only 4% richer, I am ok with that - especially since "the rich" usually means people who are actually starting/growing companies and making life better for others (intentionally or otherwise), while risking their own wealth.

Are you really poorer now than you were 20 years ago?  Of all the poor souls I grew up with, very few could answer "yes" to that - and the ones that can are usually going to be victims of other problems created by the government, like the current health care system.
455  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 04:31:00 PM
see....that is exactly what we call struggling, your father paid tax on hard earned money just to see you later working your ass to earn that education you deserved!! to whom he paid the tax, you don't even have a  decent health care system!!!  Citizens in almost every country in EU and north Africa (I don't know about Asia) don't have to worry too much about working their ass to pay what should be entitled to them.

My father was ROBBED of money that he could have used to support my family, who damn well needed it.  Being robbed by the government doesn't ENTITLE you, it should ENRAGE you.

When I was a kid, my mother could call the local doctor and he would COME TO OUR HOUSE and treat us (an unbelievable concept in America now), and he would charge us $10 for that service.  Everyone I knew was about as poor as we were, but I cannot once remember hearing someone say "Oh my God, what will we do about the medical bills?".  The mess that the American health care system is in now is another creation of our government - but again, that is a long argument that exceeds greatly the bounds of this thread.

And when you say that the only people struggling are the one who have "chosen to be so", this is exactly the filthy idea that they inject in your culture, I am sure that not everyone choose to live the shitty poverty life, and people who point to them with "Fuck you, not my problem, get your ass up and do something" add to their problems and take their dignity and all hopes of humanity.

You are just wrong about this.  People who live in 'entitlement societies' cannot seem to comprehend that stealing from others to make you life easier is just plain WRONG, so I will not try to re-argue that argument here yet again.  I will just agree to disagree with you, and hope that you can someday come to know the value of personal initiative.

the American dream IMO is to suck the living hell of people to make shit loads of money... in other words it is taking advantage of people, but the difference is that it is written in the constitution.

The American dream is that we may help our children to live better than we could.  It's really just that simple.  My parents succeeded in that dream, and I hope that I will also.


456  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 03:57:00 PM

it is sad how most Americans have no clue about what is really going around the world, and still think that USA is the greatest country in the world and the land of "freedom", when most of their follow citizen still struggles and cant get the basics of a free education and health care.

Free education? How do the teachers feed and house themselves?

The students don't have to pay all their lives for loans, their education comes from already paid taxes which goes to pay teachers and expenses of college... I for once paid annually 20€ for registration fee in college and another 40€ for my dorm room, then there is the student coupons (supported price from the government ) to use in restaurants.

If I pay my tax they better use it to make my life and the life of my children better, most EU and north African countries have this system, but in the US they instead spend tax money exporting "democracy" and "freedom" around the world, billions of dollars spent on war while millions of Americans struggle in poverty and losing the basic human rights, things that even central Africans are improving at.



You don't know squat about the 'poor' in America.

I grew up dirt-poor, as we say on the south.  My father was an uneducated, unskilled worker in a cotton mill, and my mother was a full-time mother to 7 kids.  We never went hungry or without clothes because my father was both frugal enough and industrious enough to make sure we always had what we needed - without ANY government assistance - even though plenty of that was available to those who would take it.

In America, there is always someone who will pay you to do useful work, and my father took advantage of that fact to supplement his income.  On the weekends, he would grab me and/or one of my brothers and we would go do house painting or general handyman work, yard work, or whatever we could to make a little money.  We also did plenty of hunting and fishing to supplement the food budget.

When I left high school, my family didn't have the money to send me to college.  I went to work in the same cotton mill where my father (and his father) had worked  and EARNED the money to send myself to college.  My siblings did exactly the same.  One sister is a veterinarian, one is a nurse, I'm an engineer, one brother owns a construction company now, another is a CS geek - well you get the picture...  All of us achieved what we have without the handouts you seem to believe are REQUIRED to escape 'poverty', and I never owed ANYBODY any student loans - because I went to college BEFORE government interference in the education market drove the prices through the roof.

The only people in America I have ever seen "struggling in poverty" were doing so because they chose to depend on the government to support them.

People like you would voluntarily make yourselves into livestock owned by your 'government'.  Well, have fun with that.

I agree that the US government spends what to much money on imperialistic endeavors, but that is another argument for another time...
457  Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion on: August 26, 2014, 01:19:37 PM
WTF is twitch?

Amazon bought it and it accepts BTC

http://t.co/7HZB0AlnOg

Twitch is a live video streaming website, it is mostly used by gamers to stream their game plays...
Not so important I guess

More than 55 million visitor/month. It's like the Youtube for Gamers, because they can stream their gameplays, too.

> Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers. We want to connect gamers around the world by allowing them to broadcast, watch, and chat from everywhere they play. <
http://www.twitch.tv/p/about

I think that they're really important and you can find some stats there --> http://stats.twitchapps.com

Just trying to understand if this was the main reason for the spike today!

Twitch is apparently the 4th biggest consumer of bandwidth on the internet, behind Netflix, Google, and Apple:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/twitch-ranked-4th-in-peak-internet-traffic-ahead-of-valve-facebook-hulu/1100-6417621/
458  Bitcoin / Pools / Re: [600 TH] p2pool: Decentralized, DoS-resistant, Hop-Proof pool on: August 24, 2014, 04:00:06 PM
Has anyone read about Matt Corallo's new "bitcoin backbone project" - https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/08/a-bitcoin-backbone - would it make sense to connect bitcoind from a P2Pool set up to this low latency backbone.

My take was that what Matt is doing is very cool and when blocks are several MB in size something like this or Gavin's alternative proposal for eliminating retransmission of transactions with every block will be important.

For me, each of my nodes has a connection which p2pool and bitcoind never come close to utilising. So I didn't think the block size was a particularly big deal at the moment from a speed perspective. Don't know if that's been actively researched.

If Matt's built it and it works then I see no reason not to connect to one of his nodes to gain the benefit of it.

I'll be adding Coin Cadence to his east coast relay on the next restart.

If you are running bitcoin-qt, you don't need to wait for a restart - you can just type:

Code:
addnode public.us-east.relay.mattcorallo.com add

in the debug console.


Thanks.

From my brief bit of experimentation, the above doesn't work. It looks like you can't connect bitcoind directly to the Relay Network. You need to run RelayNodeClient which connects to the Relay Network and your local bitcoind.

So you would do:
Code:
java -jar RelayNodeClient.jar public.us-east.relay.mattcorallo.com 127.0.0.1:8333 


That worked for me and I saw transactions and blocks passed to my bitcoind. Then you'd just have to get the RelayNodeClient application running in a persistent way (upon startup, with a watchdog, etc.). That will vary based on your operating system. I'll be getting a systemd unit file ready to run on CentOS 7, which is what my node uses. If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to share it.

My bad - you do have to specify port 8335 - but you don't need to use anything but bitcoin-qt, as others have already related above.


It seems that this actually does not work.

It appears that the ADDNODE command in the console will always fail if you already have 8 outgoing connections.  It will eventually use the connection you added only if one of your 8 outgoing connections drops.

Sorry again for the misinformation.
459  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Technical Support / Re: Is the ADDNODE command in bitcoin-qt 0.9.2.1 debug console known to be broken? on: August 24, 2014, 03:55:20 PM
No matter what node I try to add with:

Code:
addnode node-addr add

it fails.  If I do a getaddednodeinfo command after, it always shows as not connected.  Am I doing something wrong, or is it just broke?

If I put "addnode=node-addr" in bitcoin.conf, that works fine.


AFAIK its only working if you do not have 8 outgoing connections yet. If one of those fails it should use the node you just added.

I see.  Thanks for the education Smiley
460  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Technical Support / Is the ADDNODE command in bitcoin-qt 0.9.2.1 debug console known to be broken? on: August 24, 2014, 03:16:30 PM
No matter what node I try to add with:

Code:
addnode node-addr add

it fails.  If I do a getaddednodeinfo command after, it always shows as not connected.  Am I doing something wrong, or is it just broke?

If I put "addnode=node-addr" in bitcoin.conf, that works fine.
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