But if it's free to generate electricity with wind and solar, why does it need to be turned off, ever?  What good does it do to turn it off?

Since wind and solar power generation is essentially free, why do they even turn it off?

Right, I would definitely want to avoid that as well.  I would think multiple warnings about address expiration would be necessary, including both email notifications and notifications on the account page itself.  An option to auto-pay from the balance of the account if the renewal is missed would be nice as well.  And perhaps I could include a buffer of days (maybe a month) after an address expires where the address will not be rented to anyone else, to make sure that the renter didn't just forget to pay and lose receipt of payments to that address.

The reason I would have to do premium addresses on a rental basis is that I cannot give out the private keys.  If I did, then whoever was using the private key afterward would have to trust me 100% that I would never do anything with that address any time in the future.  With a rental, they only have to trust me as long as they keep coins in the account.  They could just have every payment to the premium address forwarded along to a different address of their choosing, and then the amount that they have to trust me is limited to however many payments might be collected in an hour.

I would consider selling the premium addresses outright (giving the person complete control over it) if there is demand, I guess I just assumed that no one would want to mess with a private key that someone else has touched.

Thinking about starting up an insta-wallet competitor.  The site would automatically generate a no-login, URL-based wallet, just like instawallet.  A person could optionally assign a username/password to their wallet, to make it both more secure and also accessible from locations where they might not have the URL handy.

The big differentiating factor would be firstbits.  Prior to account creation, many new addresses will be generated, and satoshi's would be sent to said addresses to get them in the blockchain.  So, firstbits for each account would be INSTANTLY available upon account creation.

Also, premium firstbits addresses would be available for rental.  Premium addresses would include short firstbits (three-character addresses, such as 1dtw) and a variety of English-word addresses and names (1btc1, 1girly, 1jeff, etc).  As long as the renter continue to pay for the address, it would be theirs to continue renting (no one else could steal it, sort of like a domain name is always yours as long as you continue to pay for it).

The private keys for these premium addresses would be always kept offline in cold storage (because obviously, once those firstbits are out in the wild, they can never be reused), but as long as the transaction amounts aren't huge, I could make sure that any coins sent to those addresses would be immediately available.

So, a few questions:
1.  Do you think such a service would be viable as a competitor to other existing sites, such as instawallet?
2.  Would you use such a site, or recommend it for use by other people?
3.  What do you think the rental price (assume a monthly rental period) of premium firstbits addresses should be?
4.  Should the price be determined in an "auction" style, so that more desired premium addresses are more sought after?  The auction price would be the price the person pays each renewal period for the premium address as long as they wish to continue owning it.
5.  Is anyone interested in helping out on the project for a cut of the profits?  It is a large project, and I have a full-time job already.  Could probably get it done by myself, but it would be in a longer timeframe than I would really like.  Plus, I could use help on the security side of things.

Heck, even I could comply with that order.  How much crap, and how much bang?

Bad thread for political discussions guys... way off topic.

I'll let anyone purchase my spot in line for double the price...



EDIT:  So, BFL, you say Rev3 units are shipping this week.  Do you have enough Rev3's to cover all current open orders?  Or how many of the orders do you expect to be able to ship out?

Mid April for what?  An order placed in Jan?

Sorry.... 2011!

Started mining with my 5770 back in April of 2010.  I believe it only took me a day to generate one Bitcoin with the 5770 at the time.

Now THAT is even more intriguing!  Give me a price quote (and poundage) of one of those large ones!

You could, I just don't think it's feasible.  You could look for a new block using a prior hash of 0x000000000000000064, but that doesn't mean such a block would ever show up.  And even if it did show up, you'd somehow have to come up with enough processing power to find a hash that meets the same difficulty criteria (in other words, find a block with a hash of 0x00000000000000064 or lower), which with today's processing power, is all but impossible.

The previous transactions are only secured via the hash of the block they are included in.  In other words, if you find a no-transaction block hash that includes a hash for a potential previous block, you could theoretically save it for use in the future, if a future block hash happens to match up with the potential previous block hash you based it on.

Thinking about it more though, I don't see it being feasible.  The ending hash would still have to be below the difficulty level in the future, and you'd spend just as much time trying to find a hash for a future block that doesn't exist yet (and may never exist) instead of just trying for the current block anyway.  You could pick whatever prior block hash you wanted, sure, but that doesn't make it any easier to find a "next block" that meets the current difficulty standards.  And even then, you have no assurance that a block matching that prior block hash will ever show up anyway.

Uhm, ok, how much?? 

I can't argue with the selection argument - most of the stuff at wally world isn't sold in those huge 2.5 lb bags, thus less bonus for buying in bulk!

All good and valid reasons indeed.    I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something in particular.  People were making this out to be the deal of the century, but then the first item I calculated was significantly higher than a retail store.  Just wasn't expecting it, that's all.  Also, no sales tax in Oregon (I've already been taxed through my income), so no value gained there!

I don't think you understand how difficult it would be to find any has below 0x00000000000000000000000064.  Go look through the blockchain, and find the lowest hash that has EVER been found.  It won't be anywhere close to 0x0000000000000000000000064, which tells you that it'll take more hashing power than has ever been used over the entire history of Bitcoin to find the hash for that one potential future hash.  And even if you find that one hash, there's no guarantee that the block before it will have such a hash.

EDIT:  I think a more interesting argument would be to generate a dictionary of valid no-transaction block hashes generated from prior hashes, and have each new prior block hash checked against said dictionary to see if it matches any of the already-generated no-transaction blocks.  If it does, then submit the new block.  I don't believe this to be feasible/economical with today's hardware, but maybe I am wrong.

I don't see how this is a good deal...

Take reeses, for instance.  At walmart, I can get a 2.5 lb bag for $9 (http://www.walmart.com/ip/Reese-Peanut-Butter-Cup-Miniatures-2lb-8-oz/10449925).  That's $3.60/lb.  Your price is 1 coin per lb, which is $4.80/lb.

Am I missing something here?  Are reeses just a particularly bad example?

So you have a physical copy available for purchase as well?  Is it at any physical shops, or does it have to be shipped out?  Do you have any pictures to show off the quality of the print job?

A lot of people just have preference to read physical magazines.  I SOMETIMES don't mind reading stuff online, but I always prefer reading a printed copy.  Something about reading on a backlit screen just doesn't feel right and is kind of annoying.

Interesting.  It doesn't feel professional at all - seems like a "magazine" that someone created in Microsoft Word.  That said, it's not that bad... just not professional.

Matthew, you've got the "Bitcoin Magazine" trademark in the US already, right?

So... is his out already then?