Oh in that case, your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Keep scamming, scammer.

I think it was misleading a bit, but no more than any of Atlas's thread titles, even less so actually, because he was in fact implying that google did in fact invent the first Bitcoin.

Oh well if I can confirm that account did in fact pay back a 100BTC loan then I'll retract my statement. What account was that loan made under?

Please understand that by not responding it will be seen as an act of bad faith and an attempt to scam the community.

You're very thick, that's a given.

What do you qualify as "unusual"? Is someone selling 20,000BTC right now unusual?

Do you not understand that by releasing ANY information on deposits and withdrawals, they would be breaking their agreement with their customers?

You seem to be determined to keep your mouth moving and your brain stopped.

I'll sell you some ButtCheese for 1BTC shipping included, fresh from South Korea.

I asked Theymos and he denied ever loaning anyone named "Boss" a 100BTC loan. You sir, are a liar.

Everyone knows it's Atlas. Even the mods.

Agreed. Even if he lost, he wouldn't be able to pay. Instead of providing proof to him, he needs to be providing proof to the community that he has a dime. Considering he's jobless and lives off his parents, that's not likely.

"Hey mom, can I have $10,000 to pay some dudes on a forum for me having a big mouth and refusing to stop being self-important?"

Moreso, why would anyone trust a jobless tard like Atlas to pay for them when he loses since he's wriggled out of every single bet he has lost to date on these forums. He's just a self-important. Ignore and move on.

People who want the truth ask questions. You make statements of self-importance based on non-information.

Let me get this straight. Even though the wallet information for the stolen coins has already been publicly published and can easily be followed by anyone with half a clue, you want MtGox to break their privacy policy with their users to publish the personal information of deposits etc just so you can feel better about a statement that MtGox has already made?

You underestimate the size of the userbase. Yes, there are plenty of Robert Hamburgers there, but there are also particle physicists, astronauts, and most certainly a full share of hackers. Whoever is in the Bitcoin community can also be in the SA community.

Just a quick question...have you been asleep to what's been happening against Bitcoinica from Linode?

I'm surprised he even bothers to keep it going today of all days.

Right. So this thread has gone from straight up FUD to tin foil hatting.

Guys from SomethingAwful would do something like this and delete the wallets just for shits and giggles. Get over yourselves.

You know this how exactly?


You're out of the loop. You are also apparently clueless to the efforts of the community to assist those robbed.


No one wants your snake oil Atlas.

Au contrare, you're the annoying talking chair.

Actually, I'm talking to slush right now. And no, they couldn't, because we would know where they came from and where they went. As far as I can tell the stolen coins haven't been sold yet. Relax. It's just a mix of normal traffic (probably bitcoinica) and lots of scared bunnies hopping around.

We're not seeing any of the coins being sold being related even remotely to the ones stolen.

If they're smart enough to hack a linode management terminal, they're smart enough to mix their coins first and sell them much letter to avoid being noticed.

Bitcoin is information. We don't want to start policing that now, especially without direct proof. Nothing will kill bitcoin quicker.

Privacy policy.

I'm pretty sure Mark will be on top of it. Has anyone called him yet?

Awesome. I'm a turkey FYI, happily living in South Korea.

Every four years, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go to local voting booths to elect, among other officials, the next president and vice president of their country. Their votes will be recorded and counted, and winners will be declared.

But the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the Electoral College has not cast its vote.

For some of you, this might be a bit shocking. You could be thinking, "Whoa, seriously?" But for many of you, you're probably immediately thinking of the 2000 U.S. presidential election -- Gore won the popular vote (more Americans voted for him), but Bush actually won the presidency, because he was awarded the majority of the votes in the Electoral College.

How is it that a candidate could win more votes overall and yet not be elected? What would happen if there were a tie in the Electoral College? Who then would elect the president?

You will find out about the past elections that weren't decided on Election Day but weeks later, when the Electoral College met, and some that weren't decided until months later. You'll also learn about the strange election of the first son of a former president to win the presidency.­

The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election process. At the time, some politicians believed a purely popular election was too reckless, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.

Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. senators (2 in each state) plus the number of its U.S. representatives, which varies according to the state's population. Currently, the Electoral College includes 538 electors, 535 for the total number of congressional members, and three who represent Washington, D.C., as allowed by the 23rd Amendment. On the Monday following the second Wednesday in December, the electors of each state meet in their respective state capitals to officially cast their votes for president and vice president. These votes are then sealed and sent to the president of the Senate, who on Jan. 6 opens and reads the votes in the presence of both houses of Congress. The winner is sworn into office at noon Jan. 20. Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in that particular state. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, which is entirely legal.

If you're wondering how someone becomes an elector, it turns out it's not the exact same process across the board. It can actually differ from state to state. In general, though, the two most common ways are:

• The elector is nominated by his or her state party committee (perhaps to reward many years of service to the party).
• The elector "campaigns" for a spot and the decision is made during a vote held at the state's party convention.

There's the how, but what about the "what" -- as in, "What are the required qualifications of an elector?" There really aren't any. According to the National Archives and Records (NARA) Web site, "the U.S. Constitution contains very few provisions relating to the qualifications of electors." While the constitution doesn't dictate what an elector should know or be able to do, it does suggest who or what an elector cannot be:

• He or she cannot be a Representative or Senator
• He or she cannot be a high-ranking U.S. official in a position of "trust or profit"
• He or she cannot be someone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the U.S.

Now, what about the "who?" Who is it that gets nominated or voted in and assigned to the post?

Usually, electors are people who are highly politically active in their party (be it Democrat, Green, Libertarian, Republican ...) or connected somehow to the political arena, such as: activists, party leaders, elected officials of the state and even people who have ties (political and/or personal) to the Presidential candidates, themselves.


So, we've covered the how, what and who -- but that's not all! There's still faithless electors, winner-takes-all and the district system to consider...

The final electors for each state are voted on by the state's residents on voting day. In many states, the electors' names are printed on the ballots -- where those names "sit" depends on the state. For example, the electors could be listed directly under the presidential candidates' names (Democrats with the Democratic nominee, Libertarians with the Libertarian nominee, Republicans with the Republican nominee and so on) or simply grouped by party somewhere else on the ballot. And, of course, the names might not even be listed at all. Essentially, it is the electors who get voted "in" who end up casting the "real" vote. Hold on, it seems like the last two sentences don't go together, "How can someone be voted "in" if they're not even on a ballot?" Consider this information from the Department of the Secretary of State for North Carolina:


The key is this part, "A vote for the candidates for President and Vice-President named on the ballot is a vote for the electors..." This is the case for 48 states -- it's known as the "winner-take-all system." The other system, known as the "district system," is observed in both Maine and Nebraska. In these states, two electors' votes are made based on the candidate who received the most votes statewide. The remaining electoral votes go by congressional districts, awarding the vote to the candidate who received the most votes in each district.
Now, in regard to "winner-take-all" states, keep in mind what we said in the last section: Most of the time, electors cast their votes for the candidate who has received the most votes in that particular state. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people's decision, which is entirely legal. Although if you do vote against your party, you'll most likely be simultaneously forfeiting your post as elector and you may even incur a hefty fine.

It turns out there is no federal law that requires an elector to vote according to their pledge (to their respective party). And so, more than a few electors have cast their votes without following the popular vote or their party. These electors are called "faithless electors."
In response to these faithless electors' actions, several states have created laws to enforce an elector's pledge to his or her party vote or the popular vote. Some states even go the extra step to assess a misdemeanor charge and a fine to such actions. For example, the state of North Carolina charges a fine of $10,000 to faithless electors.

It's important to note, that although these states have created these laws, a large number of scholars believe that such state-level laws hold no true bearing and would not survive constitutional challenge.


Under the electoral college system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. These figures will most likely change after the 2010 Census.

In most presidential elections, a candidate who wins the popular vote will also receive the majority of the electoral votes, but this is not always the case. There have been four presidents who have won an election with fewer popular votes than their opponent but more electoral votes.

Here are the four elections when the candidate who led the popular vote did not win the office:

• 1824: John Quincy Adams, the son of former President John Adams, received more than 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither candidate won a majority of the Electoral College. Adams was awarded the presidency when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives.
• 1876: Nearly unanimous support from small states gave Rutherford B. Hayes a one-vote margin in the Electoral College, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden by 264,000 votes. Hayes carried five out of the six smallest states (excluding Delaware). These five states plus Colorado gave Hayes 22 electoral votes with only 109,000 popular votes. At the time, Colorado had been just been admitted to the Union and decided to appoint electors instead of holding elections. So, Hayes won Colorado's three electoral votes with zero popular votes. It was the only time in U.S. history that small state support has decided an election.
• 1888: Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote by 65. In this instance, some say the Electoral College worked the way it is designed to work by preventing a candidate from winning an election based on support from one region of the country. The South overwhelmingly supported Cleveland, and he won by more than 425,000 votes in six southern states. However, in the rest of the country he lost by more than 300,000 votes.
• In 2000, Al Gore received 50,992,335 votes nationwide and George W. Bush received 50,455,156 votes. After Bush was awarded the state of Florida, he had a total of 271 electoral votes, which beat Gore's 266 electoral votes.

Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the election. In cases where no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the decision is thrown to the House of Representatives by virtue of the 12th Amendment. The House then selects the president by majority vote with each state delegation receiving one vote to cast for the three candidates who received the most electoral votes.

Here are the two elections that were decided by the House of Representatives:

• 1801: Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Democrat-Republicans, received the same number of electoral votes, despite the fact that Burr was running as a vice presidential candidate, not for the presidency. Following 36 successive votes in the House, Jefferson was finally elected president.
• 1825: As mentioned above, Andrew Jackson received a majority of the popular vote over John Quincy Adams, but neither man received a 131-vote majority of electoral votes needed at the time to claim the presidency. Adams won the House vote on the first ballot.

Proponents of the Electoral College say that the system served its purpose in the elections we talked about, despite the fact that the candidate who won the popular vote didn't always win the election. The Electoral College is a block, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election, as happened in 1876. Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state. The goal of any candidate is to put together the right combination of states that will give him or her 270 electoral votes.

In 2000, as the election approached, some observers thought that Bush, interestingly also the son of a former president, could win the popular vote, but that his opponent, Gore, could win the Electoral College vote because Gore was leading in certain big states, such as California, New York and Pennsylvania. In the end, Gore secured the popular vote, but Bush won by securing the majority of votes in the Electoral College.

TL;DR? Voting doesn't work. Ron Paul doesn't have a friend in the senate. He can't win even if every single American voted for him because what he advocates would put everyone controlling the country out of their powerful jobs.

I can't believe I'm the one having to take this side against someone like Atlas.