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No offense, I get what you're going for, but you do totally look like a schill on that thread with the Bitcoin avatar and WeUseCoins.com link. It's not just an open-source project - it's an investment and people will view it just as suspiciously as they've learned to. Let them Google it themselves so the information feels more legitimate.
It's surprising to me how even highly technical people can think that Bitcoin has been hacked, or that a government could shut it down.
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Someone with some real cash(like a bank) can easily kill bitcoin just by achiving 50% of hashrate or destabilize it by joining the biggest pool swealing it to 51%. Currently it wouldn't be so hard to do, it's just under the radar of big realworld intitutions.
It's not so easy. Right now Bitcoin is by far the most powerful computing network on Earth, so it would be extremely expensive to even briefly execute a 51% attack on their own. Joining the biggest pool (deepbit) gives the decision-making power to the pool owner. So joining actually reduces their ability to attack - if the banks coerce the pool owner into attacking, everyone else joins another pool. And we're not under their radar: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE83108120120402?irpc=932If anything, they'll try to embrace, extend, extinguish. An overt attack would be foolish. |
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Sorry to nitpick an example, but you should probably elect the manager using the Schulze Method or another clone-independent voting system. Plurality voting causes a "spoiler effect".
Go for it! I'd certainly prefer that the two ideas (work vs stake) compete than have everyone argue about it indefinitely. Most Bitcoiners won't support this until they see experimental evidence.
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10th amendment The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. But in reality the feds do whatever they want, and the states won't fight it because they need federal money to balance their budgets. which is why the bulk of collected taxes should be surrendered to the state, and the states then pass on funds to the fed. with the fed holding the purse strings, the states fall in line giving up constitutional powers. Well so long as we're making wishes, I want a clarified commerce clause.  |
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One useful factor might be that cannabis buyers in California face almost no legal risk, so the incentive to hide cannabis purchases is very low. You never know if you're buying from a cop, and this scares off some potential buyers in other states. Less so in CA where all you'd lose are your coins.
Bitcoin might have an unfortunate effect on drug laws; usually authorities target the "predatory" dealers, but as that becomes more difficult they may shift more focus to customers. I'd like to think this would highlight the impracticality and cruelty of the drug war, but in reality I doubt most people would mind oppressing those low-status drug addicts.
This will get worse before it gets better. When government oppression fails, their solution is usually more oppression.
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Lately The Big Bang Theory seems more interested in sex and women than technology... so good luck for bitcoin.
They should make Bitcoin the currency of Greendale Community College. No no no. They should adopt Soiledcoin and then it turns out that Pierce is RealSolid. All you peasants must grovel before RealPierce! Hilarity ensues when Troy and Abed try to save Greendale by finding and compromising the trusted nodes (hint: one is Chang) like horcruxes. |
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...snip...
To adhere solely to "today's morality" is simply amoral - even if you don't believe in a God, there are at least some absolutes within humanity that haven't changed during our history or across cultures.
I don't know what those absolutes are. Genuinely, if they don't include slavery (and they don't) that's the right to life and to bodily integrity off the list. What absolute rights are there? No. I'm not going to play this silly little game where you snip off the part about you misrepresenting opposing viewpoints, and then explain the obvious as if you're being "genuine". Anything I say will just get translated into Hawkerspeak. I'm done here. Atlas, either continue reading philosophy or end up like this guy. The answers are out there but you aren't going to learn them from forum rhetoric. |
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As I said, 1000 years ago slavery was morally OK in the eyes of everyone and abortion was a heinous offence. Now most people are OK with abortion and slavery is a heinous offence.
Morality changed. Saying the bible was morally wrong is only saying that you want to apply today's morality to people that lived in a different age.
Slavery was *always* a moral abomination, whether people realized it or not. The Bible clearly condones what we now know is a moral abomination. In any event, if you accept that morality can change and the Bible can be incorrect as a source of modern moral values, then it's hard to see what good it is as a guide. If we disagree with it, we have to substitute our own judgment, since "morality changed". So if you accept this view, then that condemns the Bible to be useless a source of moral guidance. Again what you are doing is saying that today's morality is absolutely correct and that all preceding version and all the future versions are wrong. But at least we agree on the Bible It could be that in 1000 years time, factory farming, or mass abortion, or something else we take for granted is seen as a heinous offence. I'm not arguing that we should not enforce our moral standards - OP asked for proof objective rights exist. I genuinely don't think they do - our morals and our rights are part of our culture. Where did anyone say that? How did you draw this conclusion? This is a strawman argument. It even adopts your moral relativist/populist notion of "today's" morality! Statement 1 by JoelKatz : Slavery was *always* a moral abomination, whether people realized it or not. Statement 2 by me: What you are doing is saying that today's morality is absolutely correct and that all preceding version and all the future versions are wrong That's where. Until 500 years ago, slavery was not a moral abomination. Morality changed and now it is. JoelKatz statement that it was always a moral abomination is applying today's morality to an age where it doesn't apply. All you're doing now is repeating yourself, while offering no explanation as to how you bridge this epic gap whatsoever. WTF is "today's morality" if not an extension of YOUR relativist argument, not Joel's? To break down just a couple of these holes: * Where do these claims about "future versions" come from? * How could just being right about slavery make "today's morality" absolutely correct? This is just like that "immovable object" argument a couple pages back. You're defining everything in your own terms but because your terms are nonsensical, the concept you translate sounds nonsensical. To adhere solely to "today's morality" is simply amoral - even if you don't believe in a God, there are at least some absolutes within humanity that haven't changed during our history or across cultures. |
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As I said, 1000 years ago slavery was morally OK in the eyes of everyone and abortion was a heinous offence. Now most people are OK with abortion and slavery is a heinous offence.
Morality changed. Saying the bible was morally wrong is only saying that you want to apply today's morality to people that lived in a different age.
Slavery was *always* a moral abomination, whether people realized it or not. The Bible clearly condones what we now know is a moral abomination. In any event, if you accept that morality can change and the Bible can be incorrect as a source of modern moral values, then it's hard to see what good it is as a guide. If we disagree with it, we have to substitute our own judgment, since "morality changed". So if you accept this view, then that condemns the Bible to be useless a source of moral guidance. Again what you are doing is saying that today's morality is absolutely correct and that all preceding version and all the future versions are wrong. But at least we agree on the Bible It could be that in 1000 years time, factory farming, or mass abortion, or something else we take for granted is seen as a heinous offence. I'm not arguing that we should not enforce our moral standards - OP asked for proof objective rights exist. I genuinely don't think they do - our morals and our rights are part of our culture. Where did anyone say that? How did you draw this conclusion? This is a strawman argument. It even adopts your moral relativist/populist notion of "today's" morality! |
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Sounds very much like discussion on qualia. You might want to read about "Mary in the black and white room". Google it.
The main difference being qualia are inherently impossible to define. In that sense, the experience of perceiving color is a quale, but the wavelength of light is not. So it might be impossible to describe what it feels like to have one's rights violated without analogy. |
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I'm not sure, but if no one else has any suggestions I think it might be a corrupted database. Since there are no coins to recover, try temporarily renaming your hidden ~/.bitcoin/ folder to something else and running bitcoin-qt again, that might fix it. Bitcoin makes a new wallet if it doesn't detect one.
If any gurus can chime in at this point, I would appreciate it too.
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All the downloading should be done automatically when apt installs bitcoin-qt. Did the three commands return any errors? You can check if they worked by typing "bitcoin-qt".
I suppose if I'm running this offline (as when making a secure wallet), I'd have to download everything beforehand? Thanks for the help too, I'm really curious to learn more about bitcoins as an alternative (or hedge really) to fiat money. I can see the potential, but I want to do my homework and become comfortable with how the whole system works, securing my own funds, etc. I'm not sure what the Bitcoin icon points to, but it should be the GUI. Could you type "bitcoin-qt" into a terminal and paste the terminal output (if any) here? It should do one of two things: A) Crash, giving us a hint as to what went wrong, or B) Start up and spend hours syncing with the network Syncing with the network will only take a long time when you first install Bitcoin, after that it just downloads updates in minutes. The standard "Satoshi" client doesn't create offline transactions, you'd need a more advanced client like Armory for that. But Armory depends on the Satoshi client to run, so let's keep it simple until you're up and running. |
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All the downloading should be done automatically when apt installs bitcoin-qt. Did the three commands return any errors? You can check if they worked by typing "bitcoin-qt".
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You're on the right track. Bitcoin-qt IS the GUI and you want to add the Bitcoin PPA, which works like a tiny software repository. No compilation required. Official directions here: https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoinSo I think you should type: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bitcoin/bitcoin
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bitcoin-qt Hope this helps! |
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What changed? How come we now have "natural" rights like the right to abortion in the US that are new and the right to own a slave has been lost?
Technically, what changed was that humanity ran out of undeveloped land into which to expand. Morally, neither abortion nor slavery have ever been rights. It's just that rights are violated every day, and the choices we make regarding which violations to suffer and ignore changes over time and place. Um, slavery certainly was a moral right. Read the bible. "But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. " Women, kids, cattle, all much the same thing. That's slavery. Sorry to feed the trolls, but this guy keeps posting the same goddamn thing in every thread. IS != OUGHT, HAWKER. The bible was morally wrong about slavery then and it still is now, regardless of who voted on it and who was in charge at whatever time. Is it too hard for you to perform ANY moral reasoning on your own? Must local opinion shape every single thing you believe is right and wrong? |
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a future where MtGox isn't the Bitcoin Police and the community comes to a consensus as how we police ourselves - before someone else does.
There already is such a consensus. Bitcoins should be as interchangeable as gold coins. If anything, we need more/better anonymity services, so that even an exchange performing due dilligence can't trace them. Today it's AML, tomorrow who knows. |
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I HEREBY ISSUE A META-BOUNTY of 0.1 BTC to update the wiki page to Fordy's satisfaction.  If unavailable for comment or unwilling, I will assess the improvement myself. Donors: Explodicle (0.1) Updated the links to my own satisfaction. Can I claim my own bounty :p Absolutely.  Sent to the donation address on your sig. |
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You should use "Ragnar Redbeard" as your next user name.
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Ok, but what does that mean in "processing power".
It doesn't mean anything to me. That's not a term I would use. I just used it as a shorthand while assuming 1 laptop = 1 synapse. It doesn't really mean anything, and I have no idea how hard it actually is to simulate a synapse. I understand, but what would be the combined processing power of 10,000 laptops working in parallel on a problem at 2 ghz? Do you just add them up? Yes. So a 100% speed upload would be possible sooner if you're willing to buy more computers. |
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