Agreed

This is why I love Bitcoin, where else can someone track down and prove a scam was a scam... and then again, which versions of bitcoin accept multi-signature default spending  so If you give it to someone they can't do anything with it until the second signature signs the transaction?

+1 right on Kimika, welcome to the forums. We are a very male strong forum, lots of heady technical,scientific types here.

If you need anything made, just post it on the forums. I'm thinking on the lines of,"What would I like to see in the Bitcoin community?"

We don't see many females, so your input is very valuable... don't mind the trolls, just go with the flow, they get entertaining after a while.

it's the features of the language that interest me. It can reprogram itself while it runs.
i was wondering what would happen if the program itself regulated itself for a specific target.
It's more of an experiment in AI than anything else.

I'm counting on modern compilers, a very full featured one that will allow me on the fly reprogramming, creating nodes that speak to each other mapping out the network.

  I think it depends on the market. The early adopters probably lost all their original wallets, and if they do have them, they will spend them as the  goods and services become available; They will slowly spread the BTC to worthy individuals and businesses.
  The essence of Bitcoin is to be absolutely neutral, it will not force you to spend or hoard, that is up to the market to decide; Currently the market is being valuated by the exchanges, but anyone who trades directly at the exchanges knows the cost... they will tank the price devalueing their holding, this is a consequence of the design of the exchange and not of Bitcoin itself.
  The true value of Bitcoin depends on the size of the market, the true price will emerge eventually through the broader economy. The true price is determined by buying power, in a fully working ecosystem prices must fall naturally to increase sales. If the wealth is being concentrated too much the buying power of each BTC will increase to incentivise purchases, if it is too spread out it will decrease buying power, prices will increase naturally. I believe this aspect is controlled by market concensus created by the merchants, but we are a long way from a fully functioning economy. Once the price of BTC stabilizes in its true economy, out of the exchanges, it will be self stabilizing by world wide consensus. The only thing the exchanges will provide is a gateway for new entrants into the BTC market; It will only tell us the eagerness of the public to trust in bitcoin or the number of fiat to btc to fiat transfers that are occuring in the world.
  Right now the incentive for Bitcoin is to convert it to Fiat that is the main business currently in power, MtGox, with more advertisement that business will lose market share.

Edit: think of it at a higher level, what is the flow of money? Where is it going? Right now it is only going to the best known places;MtGox, it is made by the miners who can't get it easily by buying it, the only place they can go is the exchange to make their money worth something. The Bitcoin ecosystem is not complex enough right now to create a decentralized economy... don't forget the economy.

So how do we get women to be part of our network, lots of men here on the forums and I know there are women(I made a funny comment that brought them out.)

The Female perspective is the only thing that will let us grow that demographic, we have to put our support behind whatever they want to create to reach that 50%.

Bitcoin is most definitely a weapon, the weapon of choice for mass Intelligence, information. It is basically encouraging 3 million current users to learn; What is money? learn about the money system and how it is built, to question why people have to work 2-3 jobs with their spouses and soon their children too. What does the system do? does it encourage consumerism? does it establish schools as the single source of life education? We know the Neo-Keynsian model, force them to work, force them to spend... is this healthy?

Bitcoin is definitely a response to our current system with the question; Why the hell do you need my name and payment information just to read your article?

  Power is being concentrated, a paycheck is increasingly being used as the weapon of choice to control the masses as it ever dwindles into fewer and fewer hands; Can you believe that out of the billions made by online companies the ones who benefit could fill up a medium sized stadium? What will you do with money when it is hoarded by the 1 percent and it becomes harder and harder to make them spend it... do you see an analogy with Bitcoin?
  Automation is not helping out either, it just strikes me as funny that a message was sent out with this software; We can automate your industries too and your money and power has prevented your industry from being automated even though it is easier to automate than the auto industry.

  Bitcoin is a system a technique for freedom from mass serialization... do you know your number? is it tattood on your skin along with your bank account number and information, are these governments and corporations truly entitled to have this knowledge about you? Why shouldn't we? you know there are laws against people opening your mail, why can they read your e-mails? They are amassing so much knowledge about us, why not let us all see what you are up to too? If you get too tired and need to re-invent yourself in Bitcoin you just need to make a new address and start fresh, in the real world your information follows you till the day you die.
 
As society further entrenches itself in new laws and new lines of power created by our current system a new one must be created with a better foundation to create a new path that these laws do not allow us to follow. Bitcoin is creating incredible innovation it is letting people see things in a new way without the baggage from the old, we will only take what is useful from the old to the new. Think of all the barriers they create through laws that control us in a broken system that lobbies for our strict control as if we were cattle, think of all the fear that is created as the purveyors of purchasing power now control who and what we can empower, should a system as big as that of the credit cards, banks be this politisised that it controls through fear what is allowed without government mandate from the people.

sorry but I have not bothered to read all the 5 pages on this subject but... think about it.

what does extreme volatility mean? it means only the most entrenched believers will stay and everyone knows the price will go up again as demand surges.

so what is the probable outcome of this? extreme distribution before the full ecosystem is fully running.

People will gamble, hedge their bets, transfer money, buy goods at a low level because of the instability, but the instability will disappear when it reaches a certain threshold causing the currency to flatline. Bitcoin is now worldwide there are nodes active in every single country at one moment or another; think about it, that is a Bitcoin seed being planted growing organically much like it did from the Genesis Block, the one who knows what it can be nurtures it, grows it, spreads its seeds and waits for the day that it is fully grown and ready to bare fruit.

Each barrier to growth is known,The White Paper; the creation story, the Genesis Block; the sharing,discussion among the experts, Lazlos Pizza; the experiment in its value, MtGox; the gathering, BitcoinJ; the world domination tour.

I was born in Honduras and I can tell you, everyone there has a phone... I can buy a phone that you buy here for 400-600 dollars for 50-100 dollars there because we don't have the same regulations that there are in the western countries, we buy direct from Korea, Japan, China. If the citizens of the most violent country in the world have access to all communication technology, what is to stop it from going there? language? culture?  The major foundations of Bitcoin have been built, now it's time for the people of the world to embrace it through their cell phones.

The things to monitor I believe are the exchanges; They will be the marker of non-techies entering the market, it will die down when the Bitcoin ecosystem is more developed. When the ecosystem is fully built there will be direct ways for everyone to earn bitcoin without mining it, it will have become decentralized.

The ease of acquiring bitcoins; The systems of the world are closed, they flow from one to the other, spreading, converging like water does in nature; no one ever worries about finding money because it is everywhere to be found in its natural habitat, with a little effort you can get some yourself, so will it be with bitcoins; A closed system that flows when the time is right.

Everyone will accept it; you will know that bitcoin has arrived when the beggars on the street know and accept bitcoin too.

The language will change; A language that denotes doubt and discrimination or fear is one that speaks of greater fears, non-questioning denotes compliance acceptance. That moment will come when it is so easy that everyone else is doing it, you'll feel stupid to ask someone for help because everyone is doing it, why would you question it?

These things will come when the system is world wide when you have 7 billion people across the planet actively trying to get one coin it will be very hard to hoard. The level of hoarding will be extreme just before that moment arrives but it will be for small amounts because of the ever increasing difficulty of getting one and that is when the ecosystem will begin branching out, people will begin working for them.

The amount necessary for this is a market cap for Bitcoin of 42 billion USD, only a fraction of that will be circulated actively everyday; 6 bitcoins for every human being alive. the amount of active commerce will have to match the active movement of the currency that requires a lot of variety in purchasing power... don't look for single service providers look for meta-providers with thousands of products thats when you know the time for Bitcoin is near.

You guys too... trust me stay away from eBay companies, paypal, kijiji. Something screwy is happening with them and Bitcoin right now.

There are too many stories circulating around about odd behaviour with ebay: buyers getting accounts revoked, listings being canceled, insane periods for listings to post which normally take only seconds, etc.

Just don't do it, start frequenting bitcoin friendly sites.

Aldous Huxley knew the solution a long time ago... all carrot no stick, we'll drug everyone and condition them assembly line style.

lol! Yeah the irony of it. Such a simple language with very extreme flexibility.

A high level language like this may give me the ability to prototype a very complex program without having to worry about the little details.
I was thinking of introducing AI routines into it to self optomize while it runs, just to see what the proper settings should be. later on I'll program it in a low level language to make it ultra efficient... not sure what to use though C? Machine code? Assembly on rails? lol!

Hi all thought I'd do something crazy with my time, if i was able to program Bitcoin in LISP, what crazy things do you think i could do with it?

i was particularly interested in the fact that Lisp can pretty much write itself while it is running, this could be an interesting point towards far more resiliency by the client... Self Programming bitcoin client maybe?

I don't care what other people say the Dev team rocks! wow so many cool features in Bitcoin, I bet you all the unfinished code has to be reviewed, probably finalized sooner or later.

But damn good job.

Those are the gate keepers, you can do anything you like regardless of who you are but Bitcoin is so disruptive to their natural state of mind that they have to do something about it... Basically Visa and Mastercard get the go ahead because they are a known brand... Bitcoin is confusing the gate keepers so they are trying to apply everything to them. You could probably complain and attract their attention to the gift cards and have them removed... or you can get a really useful tip on how to bypass the system through a loop hole; just have to ask.

Last I read they aren't bothering with the legalities; They are working as a manufacturer and the licensing for their jurisdiction is up to the customer.

You know an interesting thing that Bitcoin does? I don't think anyone has noticed but those useless computations that are done to secure the transactions they are hash collisions... finding by brute force the original hash of a transaction... in essence one day Bitcoin itself will crack the SHA256 algorithm at a 2x level... double SHA256 makes direct collision attacks brutally difficult so brute force has to be used... Bitcoin is brute forcing the algorithm and recording it.

the fee structure would kick in if any of those catastrophic disaster scenarios happened, drive the fee price up offsets the loss in hash power. The ASICs right now are an issue, driving the difficulty up that high and dropping it all of a sudden would increase the time for a block by 100%. If it is known immediately, the fee structure can be implemented to saturate the blocks in the 20 minute period that will occur for 3 weeks; doubling the transaction per block would increase the fees within a day drawing reserve power from hibernating miners the moment they heard the news.

only when surrounded by shitty people and have to deal with their BS till I get a chance to get away... They are plotting! I know it! just want to act oppressive and inconsiderate to make me want to off myself! but haha! they don't know i don't give a fuck! Gotta get away, gotta get away from this place.

It will definitely improve the situation. Though I don't think Bitcoin is the complete answer to these problems.
Sure with a deflationary currency people are not as stressed out about inflation: i hear it all the time people on the news
saying inflation is good for the economy... why? Because they get to print money to further magnify their incompetence?
If governments were forced to work on a limited budget they would be more mindful of the environment they run, they'd
have to be mindful of how they do their work instead of being heavy handed when searching for tax revenue.

It doesn't help either that all that printing devalues everyone elses savings, forcing people to invest in appreciating assets like homes
and stocks... I don't know if forcing people to gamble with their savings is a good idea.

But with Bitcoin there is an incentive to save and also a counter an incentive to spend because it is a closed loop, it is in everyones interest to offer good services to prevent people from hoarding. It is quite ingenious the balance that must be maintained, and it can not rely on force... the design of bitcoin prevents that at the protocol level, businesses must entice people to freely spread it.

Would Bitcoin end bankruptcies? in a very round about way yes, if someone kept all the addresses they ever generated they could research exactly where they went wrong... the amount of data on the blockchain is staggering. they can compare it to other businesses with public addresses and see where they went wrong in a environment with limited resources or players(with mandatory quarterly address changes everyone would be able to keep their operations secret till the next change.)

Would unemployemnt end? well actually no, it would magnify it, but the sources of revenue would be magnified by the blockchain, so further automatisation could occur in the economy and people can invest smartly in succeding businesses and clearly see if something they are getting into is a ponsy scheme or not. In essence people would know more precisely where the money is being succesfully syphoned from general circulation so they can target their investments and products better.

The belief I have is that if everyone knows the rules: there will never be more than 21 million coins, the inflation rate is predictable, value changes according to the amount of pressure coming in from the real world economy a measurable statistic with the blockchain;
then everyone knows what must be done: monitor the flow of bitcoins, see where they are going; Target products to the most succesful businesses and demographics; don't worry about inflation/deflation once the system stabilizes it won't budge, decisions can be based on real world factors... a more intelligent economy can emerge, exact data can be delivered to the people without compromising private security.

Can poverty form... no, not with this system. too much info on the blockchain, aid groups can target their resources more efficiently to see what truly lifts people from poverty. it's the information that is generated that will change everything, when people have accurate data they can respond in a more human way... do you think a ceo will more likely make decisions that will destroy a sector of society when it can be traced back to them? i mean small towns can even monitor how much money is coming in and out of their economy and make decision accordingly thanks to that data.

It's the human factor, we may not be predictable, but we know each other, we have emotions and ethics with real understanding of what affects us as human beings, it would only be a matter of time before we adjusted to the feedback provided by this system... we would adapt.

I'm not to scared of Bitcoin stopping the motor of the current world, it is building a new one, I'm worried about the programs that build upon it that come next

Just imagine the poor sobs giving their ID to Bank of America, HSBC, Royal bank, etc they don't know their dollars and pounds are going to be confiscated for BTC.