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5781  Economy / Economics / Re: First Nation to keep Bitcoin as Official Reserves on: April 18, 2011, 06:25:08 AM
Iceland.

Of all the sovereign nations, Iceland has a highly educated populace, high network access, low electricity costs and high heat needs, a currently weak national currency, and is not (yet) part of the Eurozone (and may never be now).  They also have a small population and therefore an elected government that is very subject to public pressure.

If any nation can directly benefit from openly accepting Bitcoin as an international trade medium, it's Iceland.
5782  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: How a social attack could defeat a prosperous Bitcoin network on: April 17, 2011, 09:02:24 PM
Any closed source client would be prodded and reverse-engineered by the open source community.  Even if this somehow doesn't expose the backdoor controls, any use of code that can be shown to have been taken from the open source community would expose the closed source client to using the copyright laws against them.   This would not be the first time that China had been caught doing such things.

In short, I'm not worried about it.
5783  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Bitcoin awareness is going to explode tomorrow. (TIME/tech) on: April 16, 2011, 04:39:22 AM

Someone just please close this thread or delete it.

Why?  It is the readers' job to vett the accuracy of the posts.

Because people are lazy and might be confused, remember thinking for oneself is a bad thing.

Well, no matter how allinvain may feel about it, it's not part of my job here to pass judgement on the accuracy of forum members' statements.  I guess we are going to just have to trust that most forum members will muddle through somehow.
5784  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Bitcoin awareness is going to explode tomorrow. (TIME/tech) on: April 16, 2011, 04:02:45 AM

Someone just please close this thread or delete it.

Why?  It is the readers' job to vett the accuracy of the posts.
5785  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Re: m0mchil's poclbm miner flagged as malware by AVG antivirus on: April 16, 2011, 04:00:20 AM
I am sure the miner program is safe right?

Did you run md5 against the package to verify that you have the correct one?
5786  Economy / Economics / Re: Defending Capitalism on: April 16, 2011, 03:58:05 AM
Go read up on homesteading. Simply saying "I own sea to shining sea" isn't enough to homestead it. I'm willing to bet that the majority of land hasn't been homesteaded. I don't actually know that though since I haven't done the research. I'm betting you haven't either. Let me know if you have then you can make some meaningful claim.


Well, that's not true with the US as a whole, but more than half of Utah, by area, is "legally" the property of the Federal government.  This sounds rediculous, but it is so.
5787  Economy / Economics / Re: Defending Capitalism on: April 16, 2011, 02:05:04 AM
How do you think Las Vegas was built?  It was built by criminals and gangsters.  And it's maintained by activities which are illegal most other places.

This is generally true with just about every city.  Those things are illegal in Vegas as well.
5788  Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: Android Bitcoin Client Bounty (1740 BTC pledged) on: April 16, 2011, 12:38:36 AM

Quote
Is BitCoiner available via the Market ?

No. Since its not finished Im to cheap for the 25$ Android market fee ( which i find ridicolous considering google also collects a sales percentage :-)



Wait, do free apps have to pay this fee also?
5789  Economy / Economics / Re: Negative Externalities on: April 16, 2011, 12:37:31 AM
Then it sounds like the opposite of what you are arguing is true.  Air cycle refrigerators exist in aircraft because of the risk of liability for freon leaks at 30000 feet, and because of laws which account for this externality.

Airlines would be using the least dangerous tech regardless of what consumer protection laws might say.  It tends to be bad press when airlines kill their customers.
Quote

Overall I don't think this is a very good example of unjust government intervention, even if we assume the law is at all enforceable.  Considering the fact that I am not being arrested for breathing, I think your interpretation is somewhat broad.

It's a less than ideal example, but I wasn't the one who brought up CFC's in refrigerators.
5790  Other / Off-topic / Re: I wonder how much he would take in gold. on: April 16, 2011, 12:25:58 AM
Only $325k??? You can barely buy a flat for that here...

My house is 2400 square feet, three bedroom, two story 'four square' built in 1919 within one of the largest urban historic districts in the US; with a detached garage and 800 square foot apartment over it, that I bought three years ago for $110,000.  I don't need the apartment income, so I 'rent' it to my younger brother for $410 a month; which just covers the cost of water, sewer, heat, electric, 10Mbps Internet, basic cable and telephone service.

Why does everyone always assume that real estate costs where they live are comparable to places that they don't live?
5791  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Mining: the need to grow on: April 16, 2011, 12:15:45 AM
Total hashing power is roughly proportional to the exchange rate.

At present no government or corporation is going to bother attacking Bitcoin because it's far too small and obscure.

When the Bitcoin user base grows, so will its value, and so will the hashing power.

By the time Bitcoin becomes so large that governments start feeling threatened by it, the exchange rate will have climbed to over $100 USD/BTC hopefully.

Feeling threatened is one thing, but until a large bureaucratic institution actively starts fighting Bitcoin, several more years may pass.  

Governments and large corporations have a track record of being slow to react to paradigm-shifting technologies.



I'm not convinced the hashing power will grow with the user base by that much.  You'll start seeing more consolidation as the casual miners become no longer profitable, and only those with dedicated rigs in areas with cheap electricity will be able to compete.

What about those governments that choose to help Bitcoin because of the potential threat that it poses to the US $ hegemony?  China doesn't want to see their $3 Trillion in reserves suddenly drop in value, but if they did they could destroy the US$ value in days by simply dumping all of their treasuries upon the market.

Iceland, however, would be vastly favored by directly supporting Bitcoin, openly or otherwise.  Bitcoin would be far better for their own small economy than the Euro.
5792  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Mining: the need to grow on: April 16, 2011, 12:10:20 AM
> Whose image would be more tainted, the victim's or the attacker's? Imagine the headlines: "US government spends millions to hack and steal digital money from US citizens and foreigners".



To avoid this scenario, I can think of 2 things to do:
1- Continue to make clear that BitCoin is good for everyone (including governements), not a way to avoid taxation or screw governements.
2- More miners, so that BitCoin is more resistant to attacks.

I honestly don't think you're going to convince governments that btc is good for them. I'm not sure it is. Please tell me how if I'm missing something.
I see the benefits (if any besides off the books dirtyness) being very few and the cons being huge for the gov.


Depends upon which side of government that you are talking about, the public side that is honestly serving the public, or the shadow side that desires to continue to control the monetary system.
5793  Economy / Economics / Re: Negative Externalities on: April 15, 2011, 11:55:46 PM
I think you're really underestimating the proclivity of industry and commerce to simply ignore stupid laws.

Aircraft are a special case.  Weight is an issue.  They require pressurized cabins.  Etc..

Well, I did oversimplify the situation, but the basic premise is true.  Air cycle refrigerators do not exist because prior regulations into the industry makes research into alternatives unattractive for manufactures.  How much does the risk of getting sideways with some nitwit government oversight board cost?  That seems worthwhile with aircraft, mostly because the risk of a freon leak in a pressurized cabin at 3000 feet could kill your customers.  I doubt that it's worth the risk with consumer devices that usually depend upon profit margins measured in a few dollars each.
5794  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Mystery miner at it again? on: April 15, 2011, 11:38:13 PM
I can't imagine what kind of damage a botnet can do

It seems likely that most botnet machines would be lower-powered, without capable GPU.  So, you'd need a really, really big CPU mining botnet basically...



But what if the botnet intrustion code was smart enough to search for a suitable GPU (it would not care about mining efficiency so it would go for both ATI and AMD)!! Smiley Imagine the hashing power such a botnet could achieve. Imagine all those poor games who are left scratching their head wondering why their system lags and why temps spike "myseriously"...Tongue


If it's that smart, then why would it even be noticed by the user?  It should be able to throttle the GPU so that it's running just below full fan heat and stop whenever the screensaver dies.
5795  Economy / Economics / Re: Defending Capitalism on: April 15, 2011, 11:35:42 PM
How about gas prices? Technically an oligopoly but still. Concidering the profits they make they're overcharging, but there's no competition.

Whoa!  Hold on there!  You're going to have to support that statement, I will not accept it as a given that gas companies overcharge you.  And by what logic do you claim that there is no competition?  And which companies are we talking about, exactly?  The oil companies that pump it out of the ground, transport it from angry & sandy locales, convert it to petrol, transport it to your local station, or sell it to you at the station?
5796  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Wow what a rally! on: April 15, 2011, 11:31:24 PM
Hmm, I wonder if this rally was purely market driven (ie buyers entering the market) or just cause of the increased difficulty...miners had to increase their ask rates to cover increasing costs of mining bitcoins. But then again one does wonder if the increased difficulty justifies a jump from 0.77 all the way to 1.03...so indeed this may be simple increased demand.

difficulty drives price? wat?

Can it not? I mean those miners gotta sell some portion of their bitcoins to cover the running costs of their rigs. If it does not *drive* price it certainly affects it!

Price and difficulty are 'coupled', but I would be inclined to think that price drives difficulty, not the other way around.  Miners can't simply raise prices to cover costs any more than Wal-Mart can, which is to say, only as far as the market will bear.
5797  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Wow what a rally! on: April 15, 2011, 08:32:23 PM
it would be more accurate to value it in bitcoin -> 100% accurate  Wink
seriously, you dont count your dollars in gold. when you have 3000$ you just think "thats quite a bunch of money" not "thats 100g of gold" or something like that.



But you do value your dollars in their trade value.  Said another way, you value your dollars in what you can trade it for.  You could be valuing it in the dollars/beer-can metric or the dollars/hooker-blowjob metric or the dollars/pot-ounce metric; but we always value anything as compared to other things, not itself.
5798  Economy / Economics / Re: Negative Externalities on: April 15, 2011, 08:24:33 PM

State-sponsored force has been the only agency so far by which any modicum of forward-thinking can be imposed on the market.  Without it, fridges would still be pumping out CFCs,

It's funny that you should mention this because...

(wait for it)


...they still do!  And it's largely because of government regulations that they do!  Did you know that common air is a refrigerant?  It is....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_cycle_machine

So why isn't air cycle refrigeration used for household refrigerators?  Two reasons...

1) Air cycle machines were inefficient as compared to the ozone destroying refrigerents banned in the US in 1992, but modern advancements have improved their efficency so that they are competitive with the green(er) (still CFC based, just less destructive) refrigerents used in consumer devices today.

And the big reason...

2) Air cycle refrigeration is, by definition, and open cycle.  And the same law referred to above also banned the intentional release of any refrigerant into the atmostphere related to the production, use, repair or destruction of a consumer device.


So it is against the law to manufacture a refrigerator that uses any open refrigeration cycle, including one of the few modern refrigeration cycles that does not use CFC's!  There's your govenment at work!

The airlines get to use open cycle refrigeration because they are not consumer devices!
5799  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Wow what a rally! on: April 15, 2011, 07:23:17 PM
It's funny that so many forum members get excited when they revalue their bitcoin holdings in the depreciating currency they loathe.

It's what we deal with everyday, so it's kind of natural.  But you are right, it would be more accurate to value bitcoins in gold.
5800  Bitcoin / Mining / Re: How important is power efficiency in mining? on: April 15, 2011, 06:08:23 PM
Would you put down a deposit to get first dibs on an ASIC? If so, how much would you put down for a 2Ghash/s device that consumes 5W?

If we are talking about a working card with an asic (or any other method, for that matter) that gets those kind of specs, I'd be willing to depost $50 up front if I was fairly convinced that the offer was for real and the cards were ready for production.
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