Well maybe a good start would to start learning programming/coding.

As basically this sounds like too many posts on game-development forums: "I have a great idea, someone please spend the thousands of bitcoins worth of programmer time free of charge to build it for me".

If learning to program is too time-consuming, or an inefficient use of your free time that put to other uses rakes in far more bitcoins than programmers would charge, by all means save up for some programming.

The use of bounties can sometimes get you more programmer-hours per coin ultimately spent than paying by the hour but programmers might also be aware of that thus cautions of bounties.

Sorry if this sounds harsh but as they say on game-development forums (and quite possibly elsewhere I would not be surprised), ideas are cheap and plentiful. (Often even over-abundant.)

If you can get exactly what needs doing really clear though maybe someone will decide to become a big name in open source p2p gaming circles by coding the thing for free.

Since collusion cannot be prevented anyway, many coders maybe have figured the whole p2p thing is a pointless waste of time since players can instead take turns being the one running the host/server, the others being the clients for that hand, or something like that.

-MarkM-

Worse. Even if you sell me a car worth $10,000 for $1, the tax on the transfer is based on the "value", not the "token" price you actually charged.

-MarkM-

Now who is trolling? Start a separate thread if you are so interested.

-MarkM-

Are you suggesting the term idiot was too mild a term?

Or that root does not have access to userspace RAM?

Or both?

-MarkM-

Many, over the years, however virtual estates are a relatively new product we are so far just feeling out the market about to see if they are worth investing heavily into.

-MarkM-

Maybe you just aren't a particularly interesting person, I don't know. Could even be a matter of [lack of] "taste" or something.

-MarkM-

This problem was already solved like way back in the 1960's or maybe even 1920's or 1940's or somesuch.

Its called a "lens cap". Google it. Use it. Duh.

-MarkM-

EDIT: Actually maybe back in the 1800's or earlier fergoshsakes. Telescopes use them. Galileo might have invented them even, though I suspect Leeuwenhoak's waterdrop microscope maybe didn't have one.

Pretty much all the major hacks involved some idiot running bitcoind on a server they did not have physical custody of.

The linode employee who uses their admin interface to steal $80,000 or $250,000 bucks worth of bitcoins doesn't seem to give two shits for any "we will not steal your data" policies their employer might have in their terms of service. There is not really much if any evidence they would give any more or less shits about $80 worth or even $8 worth. (Thought they might lurk watching the small ones, watching for the right moment to catch the wallet at a peak of its value...)

-MarkM-

Thats because I am not trolling! I am a legitimate Data Processing business, and virtual estates are data.

-MarkM-

No wonder lemonade-stands are illegal. Or is that only lemonade stands that are not sole proprietorships?

(...Okay you go grab some sugar, I'll hit the grocery store, Fred does your house have an outside tap we can get water from? ...)

-MarkM-

Well I am not sure I'd believe a nation is serious about wanting websites to identify its citizens if it cannot even be bothered to provide such a simple standard tool as a login-anywere system...

-MarkM-

Thats the spirit! Could I interest you in a virtual retirement estate?

Say, in 3-D even? Or possibly an economy edition in 2-D? Or for the frugal, how about a nice text-mode one?

-MarkM-

Far from it! Fire up BBScoin and you should make many more blocks than that in a day, if you are one of the Early Re-adopters!

-MarkM-

Could the blockchain possibly be regarded as a kind of ever-extending, massively multi-party [Ricardian?] Contract?

As in some ways that seems to be basically what it is, save possibly for the notable lack of human-language clauses directly included in the blockchain as distinct from possibly being included by reference, context or implication?

Such a view might permit the signatures / keys stuff to be relegated to the matter of the laws regarding the signing of documents using crypto keys, leaving the blockchain as primarily such a document or a collection of such documents, possibly even spoffing off the verification of the order in which various clauses, subdocuments, contracts or subcontracts contained therein, along with the associated Byzantine Generals solving stuff, to laws around the validating and/or notarising of contracts.

If all of that works, we might be left with a simple verified, signed [Ricardian?] contract or collection/sequence of such contracts.

-MarkM-

Since of the two players playing the one with the higher hash power can pwn the blockchain, it does not seem very useful.

Or is it your intent to pay bitcoin miners to mine your chain using merged mining, ro are you going to actually use smart property or coloured coins on an existing, already secured by sufficient hash-power, chain?

What exactly is "wrong" with the existing free open source multi-player wager-using-bitcoins code?

-MarkM-

Is it not true in Commonwealth countries that you can make a contract contain "a consideration" by including a token unit of legal tender? Like I will sell to you for ten thousand bitcoins and one cent, or and one dollar, type of thing?

It was afterall as a child in England that my parents explained to me why people sometimes would "give" a building to a charity "for a pound" (or maybe it was "for a shilling" or "for a penny") due to having to make it "for" something to make it a proper contract.

Would that only make the item of legal tender part of the contract yet the parts about all the other objects to be exchanged somehow magically remain not actually proper clauses somehow?

-MarkM-

Or to put it another way, they are trying to make a quick buck from the experimental apparatus instead of focusing on actually conducting experimental procedures with it to observer the experimental results and thereby refine the experiment.

A couple of experimental results so far seem to be that when/if the time comes to deploy an actual currency using technology based on that used in the experiment, certain legal hurdles seem likely to arise and that the experimental setting possibly lacks sufficient experimental armed forces and or experimental peace officers (experimental law enforcement, possibly including enforcement of the conditions of the experiment) to properly simulate the "real world" in which a "real" currency based on the experimental currency's attributes and technology will require.

Possibly it is that latter lack that has led some experimenters to blur the lines between "experiment" and "real world", unleashing experimental apparatus upon the real world before the experiments intended to determine whether it is in fact ready for the "real world" and, indeed, the "real world" ready for it, have been concluded...

-MarkM-

We couild, however, create merged mined blockchains each using a different contender for "world's best signature algorithm", so that specuilators and hedgers can speculate and hedge regarding theoretical breakings of one or more such algorithms by picking and choosing which such chains to distribute their wealth among and in what proportions...

-MarkM-

The laws are set up to "raise the bar" for "competing" financial infrastructures such as bitcoin from arising.

For example merely setting up experimental "exchanges" for exchanging the experimental currency "bitcoin" ran into quite a bit of hassle due to legal concerns, and setting up an experimental "stock exchange" seems to have, or to have been about to have, run into more.

Preventing the experiment from actually being run long term is problematic, maybe we should also have set up an experimental "school" where people would create "student" usernames who would perform these experiments, or something.

I have been taking the approach from the start that no one is going to participate in such experiments day in and day out year in and year out with play money they consider worthless, thus that at the very least we need our experimental institutions to be set in an experimental world/universe in which the experimental currency / currencies are valued, much like EVE online's currency is valued and World of Warcraft gold is valued and so on.

If the experiment is a success, that is, if it succeeds in developing robust, reliable institutions, solving the "rampant scams" problem players attempting to participate in investment and finance in EVE Oinline constantly encounter and so on, then we can consider the experiment a success and start looking into what would be involved in expanding an experimental, aka game or "not real just a simulation so far" currency and its institutions into the "real world".

Unfortunately the scammers seem dead set on convincing people not only that their scams are legitimate experimental uses of this experimental software, legitimate instriturions of its experimental world/game/universe, but also that the whole thing is not in fact an experiment but an actual deployment of an actual currency.

That last part is probably a huge part of the problem. The whole thing has been massively misrepresented by people seeking "a quick buck", bringing bad rep to the entire experiment and the experimental settings and institutions in which and means of which the experiment is conducted.

-MarkM-

Does your province have a lawyer reference thing setup where you tell them the kind of lawyer you're looking for and they get you a free half hour with one of that type so they can hear you out and advise you as to whether they think you need one and whether they are the right one for the job?

If so it could be worth taking, as if you can convey to them in half an hour what bitcoin is and what you want to use it for they might at least be able to point you to the right bunch.

-MarkM-