I find it strange why this has become such a big issue recently (is all the fuss just because of SD?) - the software has survived with the "mining" part of it basically being removed (was there the same amount of fuss when that occurred?) and I don't see why the large tx issues can't also be handled by other external means (whether it is done through other chains or through Ripple or off chain tx's or a combination of various methods).

Maybe I am wrong but I really think that the main point of Bitcoin is it being a decentralised *store of wealth* rather being a transaction system designed to replace all others (i.e. does "digital gold" really *need* to be transacted hundreds of times per second and if so then why have 10 minute confirmation times?).

I think *idiots* is as good as term as any (although yes it is called a "parliament") - it's rather ironic that such moves are only going to help Bitcoin and other non-controlled ways of managing wealth gain popularity.

It was on the ABC news website also (the Australian Government owns that one so a rather large hoax indeed if they did that to themselves).

Realistically at the moment I'd have to agree, however, it has also been amazing to watch just how much "open source" has grown in size and scope since it's humble beginnings (and although many on this forum might not like SUSE as a distro I think that SUSE Studio is one of the most innovative platforms that I've seen appear in recent years).

Personally I think it will end up being an unstoppable tide though as more and more projects (like my own humble one) simply could not work if developers (and of course consumers) are forced to pay license fees for effectively every major component that is used to create a large software package (and the closed source model ends up consuming itself as the bigger players swallow up the smaller ones to stop just those sort of licensing problems which then leads to ugly things like anti-trust suits and the smaller players get screwed out of business altogether).

It may take several more years before open source *overtakes* closed source but once that occurs I don't think there will be any *going back*.

I guess it could work, however, will we actually need *activation* codes once everyone has finally woken up (from the "closed source is better" induced marketing mantra that has kept so many asleep) to that fact that the only *trustworthy* software is *open source* software?

This is a great read to those who are confused about encryption and hashes.

(although it's perhaps just a tad too easy)

Am pretty certain that the wallet includes tx information (check the Wiki to find out the details) as well as the key pairs and also any *labels* that you attach to BTC addresses.

If it didn't do this then the entire blockchain would have to be scanned every time you start up Bitcoin to determine your balance (if you ever do an importprivkey you'll see just how long that takes).

It also keeps information about the last block it has seen (so it knows what blocks need to be looked at to work out new tx's and your latest BTC balance).

Assuming you have not sent any tx's (and are not creating new receive addresses) then your old backup should be fine (although why not create a new backup at least once per month anyway?).

Note that every time you send a tx it is very likely that a *hidden change* address will be used (taken from your address pool which by default is 100 key pairs) so you would be advised to at least create a new backup every 100 tx's that you make even if you never create another receive address.

Indeed - they "upgraded" the GCF not that long ago and managed to block *most* of the VPN services that people had been using for years (and forget about finding any free proxies that will work).

Also often https for sites *outside* of PRC will either be blocked or *slowed down* to the point of becoming practically unusable.

Absolutely - all of the "business logic" is able to be changed and can be extended using the system itself (it is a platform somewhat like Rails although really a whole generation ahead of that kind of stuff as 100% of the "source code" is *generated* with the CIYAM platform).

Thanks - please also take a look at the slideshows at http://ciyam.org (the top one for the way the whole workflow operates and the lower one for how you go about creating a clone of CIYAM Open itself using itself).

And yes - these slideshows will also be improved (or replaced with something even better) as we get the UI cleaned up (as a marketing and sales guy I am a *great software engineer*).

Actually it is much closer to being a full release than it currently appears (a lot of work is going on in the background).

You can clone your own CIYAM system (https://github.com/ciyam/ciyam) and it can be easily configured to deal with only a single Project if that's how you want to run things otherwise I would invite you to instead consider participating with what is going to be quite an exciting project (it has years of development already so is a lot more mature than you might think from the current UI look and feel)!

And hopefully I can get Stephen to add the following to his list:

CIYAM Open
ciyam.org/open

(not *bounties* as they are a terrible way to do things that involves multiple people competing and generally producing low quality work as fast as possible so they can *claim* a bounty)

Once again I think *ideas* people ought to take a look at the Dragon's Den http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons%27_Den to understand that in *the real world* ideas are rarely worth that much at all.

Coming up with ideas is something that any creative person can do *daily* but turning an *idea* into a *business* is something completely different.

If you watch the series you'll see that most of the *idea* people rarely get more than 10% of any business (if it even gets to that point).

I think it could be useful to consider a very different approach - if the "deliverable" can be broken up into smaller tasks (and I see no real reason why it cannot) then this could easily be handled using CIYAM Open's approach to Project Management - also currently any project started under CIYAM Open will be subject to *zero* fees for it's lifetime (this offer is limited but will be kept open for this particular project as I think it is something I would be happy to support).

Also understand that all projects run under CIYAM Open are financially controlled by their Project Manager (not by CIYAM itself - so the BTC is never even handled by anyone other than the Project Manager).

We are also working on being able to provide Paypal payments and are assessing Ripple as another payment option for contributors.

Third task completed by yogi:

https://github.com/ciyam/ciyam/commit/377493d1bb51e21c5db777d768949acff920b645

and

http://blockchain.info/tx/ddfcc430782ac67620819fd1c2ea86ff72bb514dba43f58266b9dc0eedc6caee

Well done yogi - a nice improvement for all the Chrome web browser users that I will be getting integrated with the CIYAM Open website itself very soon!

Although things may have seemed to have gone very quiet recently there is a *lot* of work happening under the covers and although the CIYAM approach is much more that of the "tortoise" than the "hare" I can assure all potential contributors that this only the very start of opening up a project that has had many years in development and this process will be continuing and expanding throughout the year.

rNQD6isVP1kUiavTWY8TqDVzxGZGwY7k8U

Of course that is their right - the point was in mainland China there are no such silly rules (and last time I was in Australia there were not either).

BTW am guessing if enough noise was made in the Chinese blogoshere then soon Hong Kong passport holders will find they cannot open bank accounts in mainland China.


Of course I didn't mention anything about Bitcoin (not that I think they would have had any idea about what it was). Funnily enough the situation of staff actively *preventing* people opening accounts reminds a bit of when bank staff were *showing* people how to use internet banking prior to half of them losing their jobs (as they were no longer needed with everyone now using internet banking).

Can't verify this at the moment (am on holiday) but am fairly certain that I've done this with offline tx's before (i.e. signing the same tx twice and ended up with a different tx id the second time).

What the OP might be referring to is that when a tx is "signed" a timestamp (or similar) is included - thus if you re-signed an identical tx it would not have the same tx id.