Regarding reporting loans to debt collection agencies, be careful to make sure your loans have sane terms. I think US passed a law limiting interest loan rates a few years back. A 300% APR loan could be considered impossible to pay back, and will likely not be pursued.

You do realize I don't give a shit about any of that, right? But hey, thanks for pointing out that you think the stereotypical thing about me is that I have a hell of a lot of sex 

Where's your evidence that it was done with intelligent guidance and intent?


And if it IS intelligent design, then why should science continue to investigate this? What evidence should science look for to convince you that it's not intelligent design? If there is nothing that science can come up with to convince you' then you *are* anti science.

I guess the answer is that you are an intolerable asshole. At least it was a pretty clear answer.

Sorry for derailing the thread.

I have to ask, what is the purpose of using the explanation "God did it?" Why would you claim that and try to convince us of that?

The ONLY outcome of convincing everyone of the idea that god is responsible for the things you claim he is, is that we will all become content with that explanation, and thinking we now know the answers, will stop searching for them. That, in fact, was the cause of the Dark Ages: everyone *knew* that god was the cause of the things we didn't understand, no one bothered to try to investigate the answers themselves, and anyone who did try was killed as a heretic.

So, seriously, do you want people to stop questioning and just accept that god is the answer to these questions? To stock experimenting, and finding more and more tiny answers to explain the whole part?

That he bothers you SO MUCH actually says more about you than him.

Hey, this borrower IS being totally honest

All my banks are closed Monday as well (NE US), so assume all banks in US will be closed Monday

Sorry, I have been, but it's been a combination of both, the OT descriptions being rather vague/high-level, and my just having a hard time wrapping my head around them (my own limits). I'm still stuck in the simple idea of "I have a coin/dollar, I send it to you, now you have it, done," and OT seems to offer WAY more complex options (though, in part, I'm also still having trouble figuring out WHY we need those options)

Actually, evolution is by definition a process. The theory is the explanation of how that process works.


I won't do any searching for you (you can find your own references), but here is how the eye happened:
1) some species developed cells on their skin that were sensitive to light. All they could feel was whether they were in a light or a dark area. There are examples of species living today that have patches of skin sensitive to light. Likely this allows them to hide, and tell if they have hidden themselves well enough.
2) The light sensitive patches progressed to be inside of a small dimple. Species with dimples containing those sensitive cells can survive better than those without, since they can not only feel the light, they can somewhat tell where it's coming from, based on which side of the dimple is lit up
3) The dimples progressively get deeper and deeper, thus giving more precision for feeling where the light comes from
4) Eventually the dimple would form into the best method for telling EXACTLY where the light is coming from, which is a hollow sphere with a pinhole towards the outside. This would mean the direction of the light would leave a precise spot on the inside of that sphere.
5) Next step would be some cells becoming sensitive enough to distinguish shades of that light. Cells being able to differentiate between bright light, dim light, and no light, is being able to "see" in black and white
6) Eventually the pinhole got covered by a membrane that would protect the primitive eye from getting junk inside
7) From there, you have your basic primitive eyeball, with the only improvements needed being the different types of light-sensitive cells that can detect different colors, and the membrane being able to focus the light a bit better to give better resolution images to those cells.
There you go. Your eyeball isn't magic.


Absolutely true. Which makes the supernatural irrelevant. If god, and the supernatural, has no means of being tested scientifically, because it can not affect the natural or the physical in any way, they why even take it into consideration? It would be no more rational for someone to believe in a supernatural god than it would be for the to believe in anything else that's supernatural (e.g. Chtulu, Thor, Santa Claus, etc)


You are VERY wrong there. Evolution is constantly created in laboratories. It's how we make medicines, test drug effectiveness on bacteria, and even create new types of foods and animals. The common household banana is the product of human guided evolution, where the guidance was based on the flavor we want, as opposed to natural guidance for survival (hardiness againt temperatures, weather, or predators)


Actually, just about 40 years scientists were only able to create about 20-30% of the chemical structures, so the only thing this furthers is that your god has only 10% of "hypothesis" to hold on to. In another 10 years he'll only have 5%, and in another 10 after that, he'll have no room left.


There is science, and it is based on observation. We can see exactly what early earth conditions were like by looking at rocks way deep underground, which show exactly what the air was made of, what kind of weather there was, and what kind of activity was happening on the surface, from chemicals, to water flows, to lightning strikes.

NOT that any of this will matter to you, obviously, since, if you think magic can be a rational explanation, the concept of rationality itself is foreign to you.

As I said already, they were all killed off by Christians and other religious types. Most during the Dark Ages.

I think I'm finally starting to understand what the heck OT is, though it still seems a bit cumbersome. I guess with OT, an issuing company would be able to set up its own OT server, and issue shares through that, thus maintaining control of those shares, knowing who has them, and where they were traded to? Or would the shares be freely traded among all OT servers, with the issuer loosing track as soon as the shares get traded on another OT server?

Also, is there anything to prevent someone from issuing identical fake shares on another OT server?

<shameless plug>
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115742.0;topicseen
</shameless plug>

I think that, with maybe Open Transactions over it, would be the best option.

It could be done with text, yes, thus my suspicion that this would be a very simple thing to do. But I'm hoping for something like a web app that anyone can install on their web server, that allows issuers to easily set up stock IPOs, the investors can do initial purchases at automatically (purchase with BTC, that addy gets registered automatically), and users can send change announcements to. For example, "log in" by entering your BTC address and signing a provided message, to see that address's holdings and other information; and use some sort of standardized POST commands to request changes, like [BTC address; CHANGEOWNER "new BTC address"; signature], which if standardized can be sent from anywhere, thus allowing third party exchanges go send requests to various distributed company ledgers. So, ideally this would be a plug-and-play package, maybe open source, with some agreed upon standards, and will, in a sense, distribute all stock issuing authority to the final points of failure, those being the actual companies themselves.

The colored Bitcoin idea sounds interesting, as long as it exists alongside Bitcoin, not as a part of it, but, again, it may be overkill for a whole new block chain just for this. It would work well for other types of contracts, but if the stocks are distributed, but the company is not, that distributed colored Bitcoin stock won't help any if the company is shut down.

As for scams, at least until some third party central exchange gets started, if you wish to invest in a company IPO, you would actually have to go to the company page directly. Hopefully that means that you will have to do some actual research and see what they offer, in head of just get a brief description of financials and expected returns. Hopefully this also means that companies will have to do some heavy promotion and advertising to get their awareness out, since they would have to get people to come to their site, as opposed to some fly-by-night scams simply registering on an exchange with minimum of info, and running off as soon as they get enough gullible investors.

Regarding #assets-otc, that's close, but, again, it's another centralized point of failure. Also, why stick with PGP keys? We can sign with BTC addresses, and BTC addresses are all that is needed to receive IPO purchases and distribute dividends. PGP keys seem like a redundant extra layer, since you would still need to register a BTC address alongside it to receive dividend payments, and since to use PGP you need to install separate PGP software and learn how to create, use, and backup PGP keys, while BTC address signing is already available in many BTC wallets.

The train of thought I'm operating on nowadays is decentralize EVERYTHING.

The problem with the global economic model is that it is still composed of people who want different things. Some will want to spend more hydrogen on developing space travel, others will want to spend it on generating more energy at home or building dirigibles. Regardless of what the all mighty computer decides, someone will be very upset, and likely eventually decide not to go along with the model.

I think Open Transactions may be a hell of an overkill for this. Since a single entity is being invested in, that single entity can be the centralized source that keeps all the ledgers and keeps track of all transactions. It doesn't really matter if they decide to change their system or use a different database, either, since all that they have to store is "Address so-and-so owns so many shares, until we get a BTC signed message to tell us otherwise." And if the company goes down, it won't matter which exchange manages the stocks, since they would be worthless. Admittedly, I am only barely familiar with Open Transactions. I just could never figure out the point of using a second layer to send Bitcoin to someone when you can just send Bitcoin directly. Maybe there is a module in OT that already does most of what I described?

Regarding not being able to change someone's balance, I'm not sure why that is required. A centralized exchange can also arbitrarily change people's balances, though that would not be very, um, nice. And not having restrictions on changing balances means a company that controls the stock can do stock splits etc. without needing permission from everyone.

The point is, yes, there would be a single point of failure, and a single entity to trust, but that point of failure and trust is also the company being invested in, meaning the trust is redundant. If you can't trust the company to do basic accounting, you likely shouldn't trust them with your investment. And to get something like this off the ground, I imagine all that's needed is a simple database, and a not-so-simple front-end.

I think the REALLY BIG AND IMPORTANT POINT to point out here is that an RBE can exist within a free-market society (even as a separate country/bubble), but a free market can not exist within an RBE society, since it will likely be suppressed as something undesirable.

You probably heard that GLBSE went down recently. I am hoping someone out there can code software that uses BTC address signed contracts and allows companies to issue and track their own stock shares instead of relying on a single third party. In short:

1) Company announces a number of shares for sale.
2) Users bid on shares
3) Once bidders win, they pay for shares, and their BTC addresses become the owners/signature for their shares. I.e. shares are tied to a BTC address, not to users.
4) Company issuing the shares stores the ledger that states "Bitcoin address X owns so many shares," and any dividends get paid directly to those addresses
5) If a user wants to sell/transfer their stock, he sends a transaction message signed by the BTC address that owns those shares, telling the company ledger that the sold shares now belong to a different address
6) Company updates their ledger, and pays dividends to the new address.

This way
- you only have to trust the company issuing shares (and if you can't, you wouldn't buy those shares anyway)
- there are no costs associated with registering or trading stocks unless the issuing company takes a fee themselves
- stocks traded on the open market can be traded through third party auction houses similar to and as simple as eBay style bidding, and can be traded privately among users using OTC.
- shares can be sold by any company in any country, without concern about what regulatory jurisdiction a specific exchange falls under.

I wouldn't think something like this would be TOO difficult, since it doesn't even rely on Bitcoin transactions and blockchain, just signed messages and any means to see what address payments came from. Comments/suggestions/improvements?

The only reason you are outraged and offended by leprechauns is because you know they are stealing your shiny things.
Admit it.



Such a society would be too focused on happily living their lives and trying to make their lives better (like the modern secular countries, and unlike the modern religious countries), NOT trying to dominate others. On the other hand,
Christianity/Judaism/Islam wasted a lot of resources trying to figure out how to torture and kill anyone who didn't believe in their crap. So obviously the group that believes in illogical crap that tell them to kill others because a magic sky voice told them to will eradicate the rational society that believes people should be left alone to live however they want.




You know what else can? Santa Claus.


*cough* um, I was fairly sure it was paganism throughout most of Europe, and Norse gods in the colder parts. At least until Christianity came through and maimed and killed anyone who didn't believe the same as the Christians.

I think assigning a static address to the lenders has a lot of benefits. Besides being able to send money to your own account, it would be easy to set up the repayment system to automatically take any repaid BTC sent to it and split it up among the lenders to the same addresses the loan originally came from. If you end up supporting multi-signature transactions, this will be essential.