If the US bans bitcoin, much of the rest of the world would gravitate towards it because it irritates the US government.  Including many US citizens.

Easy to remember, difficult to get confused in common speech or in text.  I like it.

+1

For practical reasons, it's best to refrain from lumping soldiers in with the others.  After all, odds are high that if there is going to be any shots fired at dawn (or any other time) they are going to be doing the shooting.

Ironicly, I'd bet that he doesn't even have 10kBTC anymore.

If there were a way to secure the network while also contributing to useful computational projects, we would likely do that.  But there isn't any way to do this.  The compuations can either be useful for some altruistic project or be useful for blockchain security; but not both.

In a way, yes.  But mostly because any monetary system has to have the initial distribution somehow, and distributing the currency based on the contributions towards blockchain security is about the most equitable as can be devised for an anonymous, digital currency.  Eventually that initial distribution cycle will taper to zero, and then miners will be "paid" to process transactions, but the method of processing transactions also contributes to the ongoing security of the blockchain in like manner.

Added to that, once those early adopters finally decide to take those profits, then those bitcoins are loose in the system, and no amount of gaming or lobbying is going to give those early adopters their advantages back.  It's a one time advantage, whereas fiat currencies are constantly being screwed with to the benefit of some insider or another.  Hell, even the gold and silver markets are manipulated to some degree.

The obvious difficulty of getting current users to agree to such a tax collection mechanism to be added to their clients aside.  Which government would this tax be collected for?  Any government entity that you could choose will 1) not have the jurisdiction to tax all bitcoin users and 2) will have citizens of other nations that would desire to actively undermine the collecting government's ability to collect any taxes.

Only if they can learn to do it the same way that everyone else before them has, without a subsidy.

Hell no.  Those professions require years of committment to master, and flooding those labor markets are going to crash the skilled labor value.

I think you don't really understand what you advocate.  What defines "basic health care"?  Health care is an abstract concept, a collective service provided in small portions and in different ways by many different people.  None of whom are obligated to do anything in particular for anyone in particular.  If "basic health care" were to be defined as whatever form of health care that was available to the richest person 50 years ago, I'd be for that form of socialized medicine, because whatever knowledge hasn't been updated in 50 years of medical science is dirt cheap.  I do agree that there is a social problem with public health, but I don't agree that there is an ideal solution.
The rich always benefit from scientific advances before the rest, medicine notwithstanding.  That is the way of the world.  Do you think that you would have your smartphone today unless overpaid Wall Street wonks were willing to pay way too much for crappy wireless cell service in the 1980's?

Maybe, but then this either becomes a digital 'arms race' as the vendor's programmers come up with new ways of flagging frauds, or simply new ways to identify fraudsters.  If the vendors cannot keep ahead of the fraudsters one way or the other, vendors will simply default to requiring confirmations, and online wallets will truely become required for 'instant' transfers.

Most captive portals allow the owner to permit certain ports at will, so whitelisting port 8333 would allow the user to connect to whatever bitcoin client he desired prior to payment, and then tentatively allow access with the receipt of a valid transaction.  If the transaction turns out bad (double spent, or whatever) during the next 20 minutes, cut the user off.

Confirmations are not required for small value payments.  Take a look at the 'vending machine' threads.  Online e-wallets are one solution, but a double-spend is a tough thing to do, and not something a person is likely to attempt for small value gains.

No, it only requires that you recreate the circuts repeatedly to identify as many of the nodes on the network as is necessary to narrow down the possible locations of the target.  Most hidden services use a few highly trusted nodes in order to defend against this attack, as victory is defined as establishing a circut with an owned node in direct contact with the target.  Still it can be done by first identifying those trusted nodes, and then literally breaking into those nodes to directly locate the target.  It's not an easy attack, but the CIA certainly has the resources to do it.  I doubt that the FBI would do it, for no other reason that such an attack wouldn't likely lead to untainted evidence for a trial.  But the CIA's goals don't usually involve a prosecution.

My problem isn't with the idea of socialized medicine per se.  My problem is with advancements in medicine.  Sure, there are some nationalized social care that does a respectable job overall, but every last one of them depends upon the innovation in medical science in order to improve.  And every last company that does the research depends upon the US's semi-open market in order to pay for that research.  Government cannot replicate market based innovation, no matter what they think they can do.

It's similar to triangulation.  The hunter sets up an number of intermediary nodes that they can modify to track packets, then repeatedly make circuts to the target.  Since they know the starting content of packets, they can identify their own packets as they cross their nodes, even encrypted, by timing and packet size.  Then they note which node the packets are going too next.  The idea is to identify the path from different directions, narrowing down the geographical location of the target by progressively locating the nodes in the circuts.

Woodwick candles, at a competitive price shipped.

Badger bug balm.

 what if another neighbor considers you a threat because they don't see it the same way as yourself.

In many fiat currencies, a particular denomination of note displays a particular important figure, with the lower the value (and therefore the most commonly used note) is the most important person.  Of course, these people are usually already dead, and as far as we know all of the important persons surrounding Bitcoin are not.  But since Satoshi is IMHO the most important person, and Gavin is very close these days; .000001 bitcoin should be a Satoshi and .001 should be a Gavin.  There should not be a name for a bitcoin denomination beyond the sixth decimal place.

I suppose that depends on how one defines "criminal".  The halls of prisons are filled with unsuccessful  and ignorant sociopaths, alongside the non-violent drug offenders.  While the halls of Congress and the Pentagon are filled with successful and intelligent sociopaths.