We're talking about the US government which owns computers powerful enough to create a greater proof of work than the rest of Bitcoiners combined, not some Russian script kiddy in a basement.
The bitcoin network has, in collective, surpassed the total (estimated) hashing power of the top 500 (not secret) supercomputers on Earth. Even taken as a given that the US government actually does have this much computational power in total, it would be a non-trivial issue for any branch to assert control of the computational power of the others for such a project. And by the time this could be arranged, the power of the network will have quintupled once again. IMHO, this was once a real concern, but no longer is. This is no longer the most likely attack vector by any government agency, their attacks will come in the public view, not in the dark reaches of the Internet. Actually, as chain "checkpoints" are hardcoded into the default Bitcoin client, even with the processing power it is practically impossible to pull something like this off. That's true, too; but they could still dick with the last couple hundred blocks. |
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I have this widget, and for the most part it works great. However, if the interval were configurable and the time at update was replaced with a time since update, that would improve things. Also, when I click it, I want it to update immediately. Could this be done?
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Its funny how the only people to complain about any type of socialized medicine, taxes, etc are from America. You really don't hear any complaints from any Britons about ther NHS, or from the Canadians about their health system, or any other civilized country's citizens for that matter.
I certainly have, though I must admit that it's never come from the government "regulated" media outlet known as the BBC. |
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I actually agree that drugs should be legal and one should be allowed to ingest anything they please. But what should and shouldn't be has little to do with what IS and ISN'T. Drug trafficking IS illegal in the united states. This rich and powerful man now sees drugs and bitcoins as indivisible and mining and trading bitcoins as a criminal offense. He is actively trying to convince his rich and powerful friends of the same directly because of silk road. Silk road is a thread to the bitcoin network and I personally want to see it exterminated.
I know there are forum rules, but at what point can I say mean things about this guy? "Tact - The ability to tell someone to go to hell so that they will look forward to the trip." It's not the intent, but the content, of the posts that are affected by the rules. |
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Except that's not how legislatures work. Other people in the Senate have to take him seriously for him to get anything done. And they don't.
Try selling that to the three percenters. In a perfect world, I'd agree. It seems that the average inteligence of the forum membership has dropped a bit since Shumer's army arrived. Do you know what a "3 percenter" is? |
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I want to be able to do everything that I can do with the gui client, but inside a terminal window.
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We've got ourselves one hell of a cease-fire.
I find myself laughing even more at the meaning of your handle. |
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Until then, cork it.
Same to you, Corky. |
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If the people behind this dont have any kind of idealism or ethics
You have no idea how ironic that is, nor just how offensive it is. |
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We don't have the numbers to force a military action. They'll label us criminals, round us up for fraud, counterfeiting and what have you, and any of us dumb enough to take up arms will be labeled terrorists on fox news and, if they manage to evade being killed outright, they'll be imprisoned too. All they'd need to use is the DEA's current infrastructure to serve up warrants for raids, and local enforcement would handle it from there.
And where would we get revolutionary numbers, when the John Q Public has either yet to hear of bitcoins, or he has heard bad things?
I have introduced the topic of revolution in some of these discussions to point out the depressing impossibility of defiant use of bitcoins in this country, at this time. Not as a serious idea.
You don't get it. There is no "us". I won't be participating in any military actions, and neither will you. The nation state is imploding by it's own weight. It's only an idea anyway. If a civil war begins, it will be because the powers-that-be couldn't figure out how to stop, and thus began eating each other on the way down. This is how all empires have failed throughout history, but unlike those in the past, the Internet has enabled new forms of self-organizations so that a new nation state need not rise up from the ashes of the old one. What comes next isn't going to be entirely unfamiliar to you, but nor is it going to be something you would have predicted. The Internet enables not just vast, rapid and cheap communications (a necessary element to any social order on the scale of a nation-state) but also Bitcoin. Bitcoin thus enables the phyle, an entirely novel form of civil order. The near term is likely to be a bit scary for you, but assuming that you don't lose your mind (or your life) in the meantime; the long view will be grander than you seem capable of imagining. |
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Vaster and far better armed than the bitcoin movement, my friend. I doubt that seriously. A war machine on the scale of the US military is ill equipt for a occupation of it's own citizenry. I should know, I was once part of that military machine. I, like many of my brethren, saw the ugly truth of our nationalism writ large from the inside of that machine. The only way to do what you expect that they will do, is to use loyal manpower willing to kill in the defense of an ideal. Not only is this already a limited subset of the population at it is, it would rapidly decrease once the whole thing started. One man can only carry one rifle at a time, so in the end the whole of the Us military is at a disadvantage. And I'm sure that you would discount this as rediculous, because you believe that the public favors the government as such. And this is probably true at present, but nothing less than a civil war is going to stop the breakdown of the status quo now; and if the government starts a civil war with it's own citizenry, it's going to have more than a crisis of confidence on it's hands. |
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if deepbit is not broken up or limited we may have to take action against deepbit, i would hate to have to do it but this is posing a security risk to the end user.
Yeah, write them a strongly worded letter and if they don't respond then write them an even stronger worded letter. Or better yet, just start an advertising campaign for the small pools directed at Deepbit's miners. |
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Who's going to make it happen, creighto? A handful of nerds with assault rifles? The people aren't behind us. They haven't even heard of bitcoin, and what they do hear - from governmental controlled news outlets - is mostly bad.
The irony is that there doesn't need to any outside group making this happen, the governments will naturally do it to themselves. The rest of us just need to stay out of the way and let it happen. The meek shall truly inherit the Earth. Do a google search for that quote that I presented, you might find the author interesting. Here, I'll even make it easier... http://kunstler.com/blog/http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/ |
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Bring it. The govt. and banksters have put them out of work and on the scrap heap so they have nothing to lose.
I think you are starting to "get it". The free market will not be denied what it needs. Right now it needs the bitcoin monetary product more than any other technology or product out there. The current monetary products are busted, legal, moral, ethical, rubber-stamped ivy-league lauded or otherwise. Or have you been off the grid for the last 10 years?
Go against the free market at your absolute peril.
What you are speaking of will require violent revolution to bring about, without the cooperation of my government. If that is the way of things, so be it. I got this from the very beginning. What I don't get is the people here who believe that bitcoins can exist in the defiance of a power structure that has every reason to stop bitcoins. You give governments too much credit. They are, after all, simply vast organizations of people. |
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I am getting paid nothing but grief and indignation and ill will. I can purchase nothing with these, and I'd honestly rather not have them.
Bad things are ahead, unless dudes like Gavin can redirect the flood. Remember that scene where Mel Gibson eats dog food and savors it? That's us, sans income tax, because our country's entire infrastructure is SO heavily dependent on it that the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards without it. Do you get it? We can't go back, not all at once. There's just no way without toppling the power structure completely.
Cold turkey is the only way it's going to happen, and it must happen, or this will be a "world made by hand". |
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This is all I have to say in response:
[facepalm]
[facepalm]
[facepalm]
You think the psuedo-anonymity of Bitcoins is going to protect you from uncle sam if he decides to dedicate a fraction of his resources into tracking and penalizing bitcoin possession and exchange? That's what I'm talking about here. There's a huge power structure in place here that stands to lose a lot of its control over trade and traffic of goods if bitcoins takes off. Who's gonna' dump all that value into bitcoins when nobody can trade them openly, buddy? The price can't keep on going up unless people can legally offer their goods and services. Speak for yourself. Many of us desire to use bitcoin precisely because of the difficulty in preventing or taxing trade. If you think government cannot exist without taxation of income, perhaps you should rethink or abandon the idea of government. Have you watched Mad Max 2? That's going to be my new catch all line against ridiculous anarchists. Fact is, there's an income tax now, and the current power structure will collapse without it. There would be a total lack of order. Mad Max 2. How much are you getting paid to troll this forum? Really, you can tell us, we already know. |
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Do "capital gains" add to your total income for the purpose of determining your tax bracket or are they taxed at the rate of your income-only tax bracket?
I do not believe capital gains adds to your total income for determining your tax rate. So what about students and the like, who perhaps have no income or have income so low as to qualify as exempt? I would assume they'd pay at the lowest bracket, right? This is correct. In 2011 for a non-married individual, if you make less than $34,500 you would pay 0% capital gains taxes. So, before you sell your bitcoin, ask for a reduction in your salary, then wait a year  Or just retire, then wait a year. If retiring = zero income, then yes. But any distributions from qualified plans, deferred comp, stock options, rental income, 85% of social security etc.. all count towards ordinary income. Social Security payments don't, and the sad fact is that most Americans over 55 are counting on SS as a major component of their retirement funding, because they didn't bother to save anything. |
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