Reading, lots of reading. I haven't gotten into trading as of yet, because I'm doing my best at understanding the tools available, and the forces that make the markets move. I want to trade not only bitcoin, but several other cryptocurrencies. There's an entirely new ecosystem growing, and I suspect we'll see amazing things. For now...
Understanding it is very important before jumping in with the money you feel comfortable losing. There's a lot of people that jump in depending on their profits. That doesn't leave room to learn, you're going to need room to learn.
All in all, knowledge is power.

Odds are... never.
I was checking on Bitcoinwisdom's mining calculator, and even with a 1% increase in difficulty every 2016 blocks and a 1% pool fee, assuming free... you'll never get back your $20 investment (assuming free shipping). The closest you'd get to breaking even (according to that website) is $19.98 in red. Mining with that for profit isn't worth it. At all. It might be good to get started, to see how mining works, or just for fun. But not for profit.

I repeat, you will never break even if you mine with that.

You know in fact that at least one student was armed?

John Parker, a 36-year-old military veteran, was on campus during the tragic and terrifying Oregon mass shooting at Umpqua Community College Thursday, and he was carrying a concealed handgun. But in interviews after the incident, he explained why he did not attempt to intervene and take down the killer himself.
http://www.inquisitr.com/2465730/oregon-shooting-john-parker-armed-vet-on-ucc-campus-says-shooting-killer-would-have-been-bad-idea/#MSsKO5jL92azrurR.99

Anyways, I will recognize that the security personnel should be trained in firearm use and should have access to one should such an emergency go down. I do think that it's not exactly necessary for campus security to be armed 24/7, but that's debatable.

Some cars are already hackable... hack-able? Anyways, there have already been tests in which a car was taken control of in the highway, speeding up and slowing down as the driver input was completely ignored. Best part of it is that it left no trace. So if you're driving a recent model of car, you might already have a car vulnerable to hackers. There's always inherent risk in new technology, it's up to each of us to decide whether or not to take that first step early, or afterwards, when everything has been ironed out.

Drone? Like the guy that doesn't know that the college was not a gun-free zone!? Yet, on and on you went about how dangerous gun-free zones are, despite the fact at least one person had a concealed carry license for the gun he had.

I provided the testimony. You need for more information to come out to use it as fact! But no, you're so eager to push such narrative. We'll have to wait and see what the rest of the eyewitnesses say. It sounds like that guy heard it from a source not inside the classroom, I think so because he states it as fact "he systematically starting asking people one by one what their religion was. [...] He would say 'good, because you are Christian, you're going to see god in a minute' and he would kill them". Not as if he heard it from someone there, say... his daughter. I fully believe that's what he thinks happened, but I don't think that's what actually happened. I think he got it fed to him by the media, before his interview.

McGowan told family members that the gunman didn't specifically target Christians but asked them about faith. The shooter, apparently planning to die during the massacre, told students: "I'll see you soon" or "I'll meet you soon." [...] "The shooter would call a person: 'You, stand up,'" Salas said, recalling what her son told her. "And then he would ask them if they were a Christian, knew God, or had religion. And it wasn't like it was stated on TV. It wasn't that he was just trying to pinpoint Christians, no."

-http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/10/gunman_in_oregon_college_shoot.html

Another completely inaccurate thing said as if it were fact by people very eager to politicize this tragedy. This is why you wait a day or two, for all the information to come out. That way, you're not helping propagate inaccurate data, at best, lies at worst.

PS: I don't see how White supremacist is only for pure-blooded white people. People of all backgrounds can have bigoted views. Of course, a black man being a white supremacist is like a slave that agrees with slavery, but I guess they exist. Also, based on the tone of his skin (photo found on google), I would guess he would be more likely to hold white supremacist views than someone of the skin tone of say... Obama.

     

Well, that's good. But irrelevant, as he was not targeting Christians to kill.

McGowan told family members that the gunman didn't specifically target Christians but asked them about faith. The shooter, apparently planning to die during the massacre, told students: "I'll see you soon" or "I'll meet you soon." [...] "The shooter would call a person: 'You, stand up,'" Salas said, recalling what her son told her. "And then he would ask them if they were a Christian, knew God, or had religion. And it wasn't like it was stated on TV. It wasn't that he was just trying to pinpoint Christians, no."

-http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/10/gunman_in_oregon_college_shoot.html

Didn't a mother of a columbine shooting victim claim her daughter got killed for being Christian, profiting off of a lie about her daughter's death? And fueling the Christian persecution complex, much like that particular part of this story... Well, the lie's already made it halfway around the world. Let's see how far the truth goes.

Really puts the whole thing into perspective, huh? It's good that this (and probably many other forums) cannot be stopped, thanks to backups and the ease of data storage. If the forums server was completely deleted, I'm sure it would take less than a week to have it up and running again. Technology truly is amazing.

Man, I would have expected a few posts on disapprove. I agree with inequality. Of course, it's up to every single individual on what they want to do with their cash (or bitcoin), whether distribute it to the least fortunate or keep it. There is a wall between the people in poorer places (I remember reading someone in Alabama frustrated about the lack of local options for buying bitcoin) and the wonderful new technology that is bitcoin. It's really easy for a newyorker to walk to their closest bitcoin ATM and buy some, but what can someone from [insert third world country here] going to do? Even if they have the disposable income to buy bitcoin, it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to buy bitcoin. I tried buying bitcoin in a place where there are no exchanges set up, I couldn't, not without paying 48% over the market price. That's something I think we should be working on that, as a community.

urm... I think calling the college a gun free zone is wrong. If I remember correctly, there was a student with a concealed weapon license in the college while the shooting were going on.

The conservative site Breitbart and others assert that guns were banned at UCC. This is not true. The student code of conduct bans guns "without written authorization." Under Oregon law, the university could not ban people with a valid concealed carry license from bringing their weapons on campus. (They could ban gun from various buildings and facilities.) Conservative writer Dana Loesch, who initially claimed the campus was a "gun free zone," updated her article to clarify that individuals with concealed carry permits were allowed to bring guns on campus.

-http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/01/3708256/ucc-was-not-a-gun-free-zone-because-public-colleges-in-oregon-cant-ban-guns/

I found something quite cool to share. In the next decade, you might have the chance of buying a self-driving car. And those self-driving cars will be saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the US alone. That's according to new research that shows that self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year.

You can read more about it in this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/self-driving-cars-could-save-300000-lives-per-decade-in-america/407956/

He just said that he wanted a legendary member account for the purpose of abusing the trust system. I think that's worth a ban, maybe. I'm not entirely sure what does and doesn't warrant a permanent ban (other than spamming).

Maybe there is someone out there that wants to be able to get a few loans with the high trust account for a legitimate endeavor, for which they know they can pay back later (possibly with the fruits of such endeavor)... but that's very, very unlikely.

Maybe have people write what they like most about bitcoin under their address? Or have them write a few sentences of the subject of their liking (no repeating subjects)? Hm, that's all I can think up at the moment...

No, I don't have 1 bitcoin. I'll be having one by 2016, hopefully.


Well, it depends on the person and how badly they want a bitcoin. Me (for example), I would love to start working, but right now I can't. I'm studying in college, and my parents will not allow me to work and study (not while I live with them, anyways). So making a small amount of money voicing my opinions, posting my analysis of bitcoin and interacting with the fine people here sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I don't like being expected to post at least a certain amount of comments every week/month/etc, so I haven't joined any. But I might look into it.

That's a great answer. We also gotta keep in mind that the law is way behind on this. There are almost no laws in the first world countries, definitely none in third world countries (or "developing nations"). In most of the US, you're going to have to be careful to adapt this new digital money to the laws that already exist surrounding money, debit and credit.
I highly suggest that you find a lawyer, or a law student about to graduate to talk to about it.

I'm holding on to a few Litecoin, because I bought some at about its halving (when the reward for solving a block was cut in half, sometime this past August) when it was at $5. So, I'm waiting for Litecoin to reach about $5 in worth or BTC0.023 bitcoin to convert it back to bitcoin. I've been considering investment in other Altcoins, but I don't really have the space in my laptop for full nodes at the moment. I don't trust any online wallets for altcoins since one stole 2 of my LTC. So, for now, I'm only holding some Litecoin.

Personally, I think that it's branding that is moving the cryptocurrency market. That, after the coin shows that it actually works and has a strong dev team behind it. I don't think there will ever be a project that is perfect, every single new coin that comes out will have issues. There will always be problems.
Once the initial problems are out of the way, I think the marketing involved is very important. Getting merchants to accept it is also very important. As of right now, the only one of these that I've had personal experience with is NXT, so I chose that one.

I'm pretty sure it's 0.1 BTC, based on the profitability estimates I've seen. You usually seem break even in a year or two, so BTC0.01 or a little bit more is what makes sense in those timeframes.

Actually, there will be way more halvings. Look slightly below the table that ends on the 6.25 BTC per block. According to that, there will be 33 halvings before one last "halving", reducing the reward to cero. So all bitcoin will be mined by the late 2130s or early 2140s (assuming each halving runs on time at about 4 years, or 3 years and some months).
The transactions will be many by 2030. They're many now (relatively, anyways. I'm sure they'll be parties celebrating the first time we handle a million transactions a day (once we get this block size bullshit gets sorted out). Is a billion transactions a day even possible? I think bitcoin is going to find out.