System is now down for maintenance.
are you the mybitcoin dev creighto? No. I had tried to login, and this is the error that I received. |
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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_23/b4231060885070.htmHow's this for an idea. As the postal system fails, a snailmail delivery system paid for by bitcoin. Not one post office for every zip code, one central processing center for every city. User gets an email or text message notice when mail arrives with their shipping code upon it. User shows up to claim mail, proves who they are by actually paying for it in bitcoin in the office.
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System is now down for maintenance.
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Nothing to see here. There are likely some people with that much coin. Move along.
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Approximately six million btc at $8.00 for 10,000 people. I have not been able to convince one person that that is not a scam in progress.
I don't care about being an early adopter. I see a problem with the system for the people who asked me to look into developing a local currency. This is going to arise out of the barter project, not mining.
You're really better off going with an electronic LETS system. Which operates entirely on people forgiving the initial debt which gets passed around like a hot potato. Yes it's time based which is relevant, but it also isolates. Isn't that the point of a localized barter currency?
I got involved in LETS type things and the service development speed pales in comparison to bitcoin.
There is a very good reason for that. The potential market for a localized currency of any sort is, by intent, limited. A bitcoin derivitive isn't going to change that. I think I have a few interested individuals looking forward to "towncoins". After tomorrow expect a formal proposal. The beast is coming down.
Be careful what you wish for. |
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kjj:
So let's assume an attacker controls 60% of the network.
He makes a big transaction that is sent to the whole network.
He stops generating blocks on the legit network.
He now starts generating a new chain without the large transaction but not sending it to the rest of the network.
His fake chain will eventually grow longer than the real chain.
At some point of his choosing he publishes his longer chain to the real network.
The fake chain is now accepted as real since it is longer.
The (non-existant, we really need a programmer to develop this) 'blockchain watchdog' process would ringing alarm bells after the 60% miner had left the network. Whether that mattered would depend upon what the rest of the network does once the watchdogs are barking. The attacker doesn't need to be part of the honest network before launching an attack at all, so you would not see a sudden drop in hashing power. A longer chain would just appear out of nowhere. Once some group controls more hashing power that rest of the miners combined, bitcoin reality is exactly what they want and nothing else (can't do anything that would invalidate blocks in the eyes of honest nodes, like change block reward etc). If they are honest, then no problem, but if they want to attack the network, they can just grow their own chain, refuse the blocks generated by honest nodes, but force honest nodes to accept attackers block. Honest nodes can't differentiate between attackers blocks and honest blocks (because they are decentralized), while attacker knows which blocks are which. It doesn't matter if honest nodes get ahead for a while. Attacker will always catch up, and all the work honest nodes have done would be replaced with the attackers "reality". This idea of a watchdog system is nice, but I'm not entirely sure how much it would help if someone truly has a majority of the hashing power. I mean, even if you knew with 100% certainty, that someone is attacking the network with a majority hashing power, and maybe even how and when it's going to happen, what is the mechanism that would be used to prevent the attack in a decentralized system like bitcoin? Like you said "Whether that mattered would depend upon what the rest of the network does once the watchdogs are barking". I'm not sure there is anything they can do, without giving up the decentralized nature of bitcoin. Bitcoin is secure "As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network", but not a second longer. There are a number of things that live operators can do to inhibit an attack under way, not the least of which is to bring more hashing power to bear. An attacker coming in unannounced with blocks would cause a significant revision on the blockchain, not something that can be stopped, but it's a huge red flag. A watchdog process could alert users to an attack underway, and any commerce site using bitcoin in any automatic fashion should immediately suspend trade to protect themselves. Also, nodes are not anonymous to each other. It's not trivial, but it is possible to determine from where the new blocks came from. Also, and attacker coming in from outside the network needs at least as much hashing power as the whole honest network, not just 50%. Just having a simple majority of the hashing power is only enough to make the attack possible, it doesn't make it easy. To build a chain in the dark, the attacker must have significantly more than the whole of the honest network in order to build his dark chain fast enough to get back far enough to overwrite his intended target block. |
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two questions:
why is a simple majority and not a super majority or qualified majority of some type needed? couldn't this be changed?
No, because it's not a formal voting process. It's only the act of downloading a new client and running it with new rules, whichever branch dominates wins. |
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Approximately six million btc at $8.00 for 10,000 people. I have not been able to convince one person that that is not a scam in progress.
I don't care about being an early adopter. I see a problem with the system for the people who asked me to look into developing a local currency. This is going to arise out of the barter project, not mining.
You're really better off going with an electronic LETS system. |
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What I think that he is really looking to do is start a LETS system that is somewhat distributed, entirely digital and automatic. Modifying Bitcoin is a good way to do this, because it's already pretty close to a LETS for the Internet as it is. A blockchain for a LETS need not be secured in the same fashion, however. There is no need for a currency limit if transactions are based upon mutual credit, nor any kind of currency distribution process as in Bitcoin. The blockchain would only serve as a distributed ledger system for the LETS, and the difficulty would be largely irrelevent.
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This can be done, but we aren't going to help you do it. If you try it, change your currency's name and start with an entirely new genesis block on a different port number and different IRC channel.
This is doomed to an epic failure, but you are welcome to try as long as you don't intefere with Bitcoin doing it.
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He is correct, there are no special rules beyond normal social convention. If you wouldn't do it to your mother, or wish your mother to see it, don't do it here. Common sense is the only rule.
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Bear in mind that Mybitcoin.com is a small business with few people to answer messages, and a large and growing userbase. Sometimes these things take time. Plus it's the weekend and the middle of the night in New Zealand.
I've been trying to be patient, but It's now almost three days since I sent the last message. Oh well, hopefully the service has not gone rogue and I will get the BTC back. Send another message. Use the internal messaging system. |
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Only assumption made...
Is that investing in a deflationary currency...
Is generally a pretty bad idea...
You can't really argue that...
Oh, yes I can.
There are pretty much not one...
Scenario where investing in a mining company...
Can come out ahead...
Of just buying the coins...
I can think of many, off the top of my head.
I know that the thought of free money...
Can be pretty sweet to all of you...
But do the numbers...
And you can see...
How this is never gonna make any....
A poet without a rhyme. |
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Different nodes could get their timing from different sources. It's rational for an Android client to get it's timing directly from GPS whenever it can, and for servers to get their timing from ntp. Different methods of achieving timing mean that it's pratically impossible for this kind of attack to work, because how it is achieved is dependent upon all the nodes involved in the attack using the same timing methodology.
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To a libertarian, prostitution is not criminal and should not be treated as such. It's a business agreement between consenting adults. There is no victim. It can be unethical, however, as I don't know a single libertarian that would wish such a profession upon their own daughters. But it is better than starvation or incarceration.
This doesn't follow. Few people want their children to grow up to be toilet cleaners either, but there is nothing unethical about janitorial work. I said it "can" be unethical. Depends on the culture. A culture dedicated to truth and reason has a more solid grasp of ethics. That is to say inflexible and excessively categorical philosophy such as the Taliban's or Shaker's lead to a system that is unjust and divergent from reality. Everyone is still very much culture dependent. For example, if you accept that the prostitute in question is legit, assuming that she is an adult and acting of her own free will (setting aside the crap about needing to eat, since that is not the john's fault to begin with) What if she is 15 years old? At what age is she actually an adult who can decide for herself? At 13, as in old tribal cultures? At the various ages of consent established by laws of various juristictions? Or not before 18? What if she is 22, but is mentally impaired enough that no rational person could conclude that she was capable of consent? If she is an adult at 15, is the john still a pedafile? Can you see why I say that ethics is culture dependent, and not entirely an objective determination? |
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To a libertarian, prostitution is not criminal and should not be treated as such. It's a business agreement between consenting adults. There is no victim. It can be unethical, however, as I don't know a single libertarian that would wish such a profession upon their own daughters. But it is better than starvation or incarceration.
This doesn't follow. Few people want their children to grow up to be toilet cleaners either, but there is nothing unethical about janitorial work. I said it "can" be unethical. Depends on the culture. |
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Bear in mind that Mybitcoin.com is a small business with few people to answer messages, and a large and growing userbase. Sometimes these things take time. Plus it's the weekend and the middle of the night in New Zealand.
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Well, you're right that Bitcoin is being somewhat misrepresented by the new media so far, but it is very complex so we have to give them a bit of slack in this regard.
As for your "criminal unethical" comment... We libertarians aren't criminals, nor do we suffer criminals in our midst. We have a very tightly defined interpretation of "criminal" and most of what statists would call criminal is nothing of the sort. We have a broader interpretation of ethics than the general public as well. Before you go and insult those whom you know not, take a little time to try and understand us.
To give you an example,
To a libertarian, prostitution is not criminal and should not be treated as such. It's a business agreement between consenting adults. There is no victim. It can be unethical, however, as I don't know a single libertarian that would wish such a profession upon their own daughters. But it is better than starvation or incarceration.
If there is no victim, there is no crime.
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