I check it several times per day. The submissions and comments are pretty high-quality. There seems to be a higher population of people unfamiliar with Bitcoin on /r/Bitcoin than here.

The next software will fix this. Until that software is finished, I think it's better to keep the restrictions.

The size limit will probably be removed from clients once clients stop downloading any full blocks by default. This won't be possible for a few years, I'd guess. If necessary, the max block size could increase to perhaps 10-25 MB while clients are still downloading blocks to detect transactions.

Miners are always free to reject blocks that are above a certain size. They can do this now, in fact. This is always extremely unprofitable if most of the mining power is not doing it. If the majority does reject large blocks in order to justify raising fees, then low-fee transactions will accumulate, creating an ever-growing incentive for miners to overpower the majority, create larger blocks, and accept the unclaimed fees.

Blocks can't be larger than 1MB, so an attacker can't bloat the chain too much.

I created the section.

Ineededausername will not be a mod because he's never reported any posts (as far as I can see), so I can't determine whether he would moderate appropriately.

Right. It's due to the Base58 conversion, and especially the way Bitcoin handles zeroes.

25-character addresses aren't really possible, but this is only due to "bad luck" in the hashes that SHA-256 produces. Here's a 26-character address, the shortest length that is actually possible:
11111111111111111111BZbvjr

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Your visible ad text (ignoring link URLs, etc.) must be less than 150 characters in length, and it can only contain links: no other style. It will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Eight of the slots are for sale here. (One of the remaining slots has random factoids, and one links to the current ad auction.)

The ad lasts 7 days starting from when I put it up.

Stats: On the 27^th of September, 2011 there were about 730,000 views of topics. So one slot would have appeared around 73,000 times per day. The ad doesn't appear on topic pages with only one post, though, and it only appears for people using the default theme.

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Auction rules

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the max number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all eight slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 8 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 8 slots. If the two highest bids are 8 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 7 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

- When you bid, all of your previous bids are automatically canceled.
- All bid prices must be divisible by 0.5.
- The bidding starts at 0.5.
- The auction ends exactly 6 days after the time of this post. (Hint: if you have your local timezone configured in the forum settings, this time will be very easy to figure out.)
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the auction end time, then the auction will be extended by 30 minutes. If any valid bids occur less than 30 minutes before the new end time, then the auction will be extended again, etc. The time will not extend beyond 6 hours total.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slot may be sold to someone else.

Dollartrader was unable to pay. I sold his slot to Cory in a mini-auction on IRC for 3.1 BTC.

Next round: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49624.0

I think it usually happens when antivirus software messes with Bitcoin. It could also just be random disk corruption.

I don't think a character symbol is really necessary. Just use BTC.

On images, the B with four vertical lines is unique and clear.

Probably your block database is corrupted. Delete all files in your data directory except wallet.dat.

I won't be around at the auction end time, but the auction will still end at the scheduled time (or later, if there are late bids).

If you are a winner:
- You should get a PM from Maged with an address. Send him the appropriate amount.
- Send me (not Maged) the ad text that you want. I'll put it up sometime on Sunday when I get back.

Maged will distribute one of these addresses to each winner:
17Vd81QcT48gbUbtd1GuHY8KRZWcciQZow
18yx9od92B7uWTuAzM4CrW2BaFi7gsduqV
1EnzgRYYKdsh9QfP4Xn9BMhSqHR5Jvk8Vd
12SU99Tbk1PvFPqjvyVUHgF3Le4U7aMgQb
13gk93cU7qgC6Q3tN7tmrvHQazQYH96mJw
1G21BW2dZoypyxUMLRAmT1PQjqkhKcjD4x
1Nhh5W1NL3msqbKuyUCPQH7kR9wV9BKrbL
177o5gn7DwWWm5Rrq1A5aJAh9d9y5SKygE

He was probably thinking of changing character encoding. This can fix problems with broken characters.

First start an Arabic topic in "Other" so I can see if there's any interest.

I updated the OP, incorporating some of the suggestions and adding some more things I thought of.

Probably I'll start accepting bids in about a week.

Fine. Pay here and I'll create it:
1GwinApxnpGij63thBf4PssYFxjiaNt4nm
You will not get donator status from this.

Its description will be something like, "Spreadsheet games, forum-based games, and discussion of individual rounds/games on other sites."

ByteCoin has mentioned flaws with the current address checksum method. Address version 1 could maybe use a better scheme from the start.

Scripts executed by OP_EVAL could use a fixed version of OP_CHECKMULTISIG that doesn't eat an extra stack item. Some disabled opcodes could also be enabled.

My concerns have not changed since the previous topic about this. In particular:

"One thread per site" is a guideline. Moderators will determine which topics are spam on a case-by-case basis.

Only if you're sure that the transaction you're spending will eventually be included in a block. Bitcoin spends 0-confirmation transactions that it has created, but never 0-conf transactions from other people.

These transactions will have very low (maybe 0) priority, but this will increase as the inputs age.


No, but that would be nice.

New VIP donator: btcx. Thanks!

I may raise the required donator/VIP donation levels if the BTC price stays this low, so now would be a great time to donate.