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5961  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Where do you see the BTC-USD exchange rate in month? on: April 06, 2011, 11:01:05 PM
I highly doubt that, if you live in California you can't accept Euros, silver for payment.  If you could no one would use the dollar.

It's true. From the treasury site:

Quote
The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," which states: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."
...
This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services.


Case law, however, does exist that basicly means that if US$ were offered in settlement of debts, but were rejected because of a contract that required some other form of settlement, any court will hold that debt as void.

So, in practice, any business that allows a customer to acrue a debt first (as an example, a sit-down resturant, where you eat first and pay on the way out) must accept US$ as payment of that debt, even if they had a huge sign on the way in that said, "No gold or silver, no service".

I've used this to my advantage in the past, as I don't use credit cards.  I had reserved a particular tool from Home Depot's tool shop, and went in to rent the item.  Advance reservation is free, unless you cancel, so they didn't ask for anything more than my name and address on the phone when I called.  I went to pick it up, and they asked for a credit card for the security deposit.  The clerk insisted that he couldn't rent me the tool without a credit card, and I said that I was certain that his computer system did have a cash deposit option in theer somewhere, because that was the law.  He ended up calling his manager, and after going through the whole ting again, the manager called some kind of corporate office, who proceeded to tell him how to access that part of the POS system.

I left with the tool, and did not need a card despite their insistance that only a credit card was acceptable.
5962  Bitcoin / Mining / Re: If I am mining with 2 GPUs at the same time, are they competing? Other 2gpu prob on: April 06, 2011, 10:49:06 PM
are they?

Not unless your starting nonce is identical.  If you are using a pool miner, the pool should be managing the nonces of the miners so that they are not duplicating work, although I'm not certain that this is done.

If you are mining locally, are you using two independent instances of the mining client?  If yes, then it's very unlikely that they are duplicating work.
5963  Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: WeUseCoins: 2nd Video - Content on: April 06, 2011, 10:42:17 PM
Note that we mixed technical and economic issues. For the economic stuff we'll try to get our script corrected by an actual economist.


Which economist?

I can assure you that there are academicly trained economists that are watching Bitcoin.  I can also assure you that none of them that you would want to review Bitcoin is going to be willing to stake their professional reputation yet.

If all you need is the script reviewed, either post it here in the economics section of this forum; jump to one of the many economic forums elsewhere.  I think that you'll find that there is no real consensus that can be achieved on any of the questionable parts.
5964  Other / Off-topic / Re: I feel ignorant today. on: April 06, 2011, 10:32:52 PM
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Atlas Shrugged yet, even though that's not quite what he is asking for.

Alongside Night  (The defining agorist novel)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Cryptocromicon & the Baroque Cycle Trilogy, in that order.

Basicly anything by David Brin, but in particular Glory Season and Infinity's Shore of the Uplift Series

Fountains of Paradise

All of these are fiction that illustrate one or more libertarian concepts in some fashion.  In the first three, such concepts are central to the plot; in the rest they are incidental.
5965  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Remove "generate bitcoins" from standard client? on: April 06, 2011, 08:37:52 PM
It's also important to keep the ability to mine via cpu's in the vanilla client, should there ever come a day when the system is attacked, and the userbase is called upon to mine at a loss in order to defend against an ongoing blockchain attack.
5966  Economy / Economics / Re: Governments will want their TAX ??? The solution is obvious but scary. on: April 06, 2011, 08:31:24 PM
Consumption Rate is part of the equation but once on the downside, you can never reach the peak again.

I don't know much about Coal Reserves, but I do know we don't drive our cars and airplanes on it. It might be able to supply electric plants for a while for electricity. But I must assume, that since basic metals such as copper have passed its peak, coal must be close or has already passed it.

But Coal didn't get us here, Oil did, so once Oil goes so does society as we know it.

We are not past the peak in copper.  The prices for copper are more volatile than simply the cost of production, and very little of it is consumed in industry.  Most of it still exists in a refined form within electrical conduits everywhere.  The big cost driver for copper over the last decade is the increases in the construction demands of China and India.

Actually, we are, but unlike Oil, Copper is re-cycled and can sustain a market much longer. When it becomes a little bit more expensive, it will be like gold and be 80% recycled.

If the price keeps going the way it does, all people with forclosure proceedings could just strip the Electrical Wire out of their house, sell it and pay off the Bank.  Grin

Here is some interesting reading: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory

It covers peaks on many materials.

I'm aware of the science, and I'm telling you that we have not hit that peak.  Hubbert's Peak has limited applications to resources that have a significant recycle use anyway, because it relates only to the economics of resource extraction.

And if it even apraaches the spot price in silver many of the major uses of copper (electrically related mostly) can be easily repalced by other materials.
5967  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: All internet connections are not the same... on: April 06, 2011, 08:27:24 PM
Stopping at 8 connections implies that inbound connections are being rejected.  If all you did was add the wifi router into the mix, it's probably configured by default to deny incoming connections on unknown ports.

You were correct!

It was because I did not forward the ports properly.

However that still leaves me with a question about platforms.

Why does bitcoin on linux jump up to 60-70 connections within minutes, and bitcoin on windows 7 takes weeks to get up to 30-40?

Because Windoze sucks?

I can't help you here, as I don't use Windoze if I have a choice.
5968  Other / Off-topic / Re: I feel ignorant today. on: April 06, 2011, 06:12:05 PM
Fiction, non-fiction or both?
5969  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: How long until governments outlaw bitcoin usage? on: April 06, 2011, 06:05:09 PM
Can anyone suggest while this bit of paranoia-inspired "we need to be able to watch all money flows for your own safety" legalese would *not* apply to USA based Bitcoiners ?    Would a legal technicality of how bitcoin is "not *money*" in the FinCEN regulated sense be enough to hold off the wolves ?

I suppose, ultimately, nobody will know the answer to this question until a case has been heard in court.  However, the reality is that there are so many laws on the books that everyone is a criminal already, even the little old lady from Pasadena.  Consider all the sales tax revenue that US states lose to online sales.  How many people do you know who don't shop online?  Of the people who do shop online, how many dutifully calculate and remit the required state sales taxes?  Since everyone is already guilty of financial crimes, it's much more productive to talk about methods of defense than what is legal or illegal.  I think the best defense for this type of attack against the Bitcoin system is to have as many small exchangers as possible.  Ideally, everyone who participates in the Bitcoin economy should offer to do exchanges.  It just won't be worth the government's while to chase down and audit/prosecute everyone.  This is, in a general sense, how distributed systems will ultimately triumph over centralized forms of control.

And this is a good argument for establishing a legal defense fund for the day that the government decides to make a test case out of one of these, otherwise indefensible, exchangers.  With many small exchanges, it is indeed impossible to stop it from occurring.  However, as we can see with the pot industry, they can sustain a persecution campaign for a long time; and we could lose years if the precendent is unfavorable.
5970  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Awesome free state project open to bitcoin donations on: April 06, 2011, 06:00:07 PM

Magnetic is a stupid medium to archive as its life is almost Random, and easily destroyed.  Remember those magnetic tape erasers they used to sell at Radio Shack that you plugged into the wall pulled a trigger and erased several cassettes at once, Somebody with one of those could bypass all security programs, passwords, etc... put it next to a computer and fry it. Actually I think they could fry just about anything with electronics and/or a hard drive.

This used to be true, but try it now and you aren't even likely to harm a modern hard drive, and might not even disrupt a running (GNU/Linux) server enough to get a kernel panic.  Modern magnetic drives have pretty effective shielding.
5971  Other / Off-topic / Re: "The war is over and Linux has won" - says Linux foundation CEO on: April 06, 2011, 02:53:03 PM
Cheers!  Here's a toast as a raise my glass made with open-source makerbot 3D printer containing home-brew beer as I type on my Ubuntu Desktop into an open-source Simple Machines Forum onto a server running Linux.
would you sell reprap parts for bitcoin? I want to build a Mendel or Huxley for bitcoin Wink

I've been thinking about buying one of those open-source 3D printers and starting a bitcoin=>3Dprinting service, but I think the government would think it extremely suspicious if I am shipping out a bunch of random plastic parts from my home without seeing any detectable trace of income money...

What makes you think that the government has the capacity to monitor your mail in such a way?
5972  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Technical Support / Re: do new installs automatically generate 100 addresses? on: April 06, 2011, 02:48:23 PM
Hi,

I backed up my wallet about 1-2 weeks ago, but since then I have received a rather large amount, and wallet.dat just disappeared today with a hard drive failure.

What I'm wondering is, if the default client generates 100 addresses, then the address that received the large amount should be backed up already, correct? Even though it received the money after the backup.

Thanks... you never know what minute of the day your hard drive is going to fail Smiley


Yes.  If you have a good backup of your wallet.dat file, just reinstall the newest client and put a copy of your backup into the proper directory before starting it up.  It should find both your new and old funds as it bootstraps the blockchain.
5973  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Manipulating the difficulty? on: April 06, 2011, 02:43:30 PM
Imagine Google can summon 5.4 TH/s of power. The current hashrate is .6 TH/s. For the sake of simplicity let's say difficulty adjusts every 2000 blocks.

Blocks 1-10000: Business as usual; network ends at .6 TH/s.
Block 10001: Difficulty resets. Google turns on their network; starts hashing.
Blocks 10001-12000: Google finds these blocks approximately 10 times faster than they should, or, approximately one per minute.
Block 12001: Difficulty spikes to approximately 10 times the last difficulty. Google shuts off their network; hashrates are now .6 TH/s again.
Block 12001-14000: The network finds these blocks approximately 10 times slower than they should; or, approximately, one block per hour. Instead of taking two weeks, the next difficulty reset takes five months.

Except that can't work.  As I mentioned earlier, there is a difficulty adjustment parameter rule that prohibits the difficulty from adjusting up or down by more than a factor of four.  So the max that can be expected is that the Google can do is move the difficulty by that factor of four, which may or may not actually be worthwhile, but if the attack cannot be repeated in consecutive cycles (maybe, but I would say that it would be very unlikely to work out that way) then it's probably not a worthwhile means of manipulation for profit motives alone.  What kind of harm to the system itself could such an attack cause?

If someone had access to 100 tera hashes per second... they could user 10 for the first 2016 blocks, 25 for the next, 50 for the next, and 100 for the next 2016 blocks... and then leave... placing us in a predicament that takes more than a few hours to allow a transaction through the network...

This sounds like the old joke, "I always give 100% of my efforts at work!  10% on Mondays, 25% on Tuesdays, 50% on Wendsdays...."

Tell me this, if any single entity had access to the kind of hashing power to make this work, why bother with such a complex attack vector?  Why not just simply dominate the network?

Hypothetically if they had that much power and were trying to destroy not just manipulate the btc economy they could easily right? Obviously it can come back etc but they could cause some serious problems.

True, but Bitcoin is subject to overwelming computations anyway.  Which is why the system is designed to encourage participation in the hashing that keeps the blockchain strong.
5974  Economy / Economics / Re: Governments will want their TAX ??? The solution is obvious but scary. on: April 06, 2011, 02:05:05 PM
Consumption Rate is part of the equation but once on the downside, you can never reach the peak again.

I don't know much about Coal Reserves, but I do know we don't drive our cars and airplanes on it. It might be able to supply electric plants for a while for electricity. But I must assume, that since basic metals such as copper have passed its peak, coal must be close or has already passed it.

But Coal didn't get us here, Oil did, so once Oil goes so does society as we know it.

We are not past the peak in copper.  The prices for copper are more volatile than simply the cost of production, and very little of it is consumed in industry.  Most of it still exists in a refined form within electrical conduits everywhere.  The big cost driver for copper over the last decade is the increases in the construction demands of China and India.
5975  Other / Off-topic / Re: Bill Gates on Ford on: April 06, 2011, 01:48:16 PM
That's a not so recent joke.  I've seen versions since about 1998.
5976  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Manipulating the difficulty? on: April 06, 2011, 01:41:50 PM
Imagine Google can summon 5.4 TH/s of power. The current hashrate is .6 TH/s. For the sake of simplicity let's say difficulty adjusts every 2000 blocks.

Blocks 1-10000: Business as usual; network ends at .6 TH/s.
Block 10001: Difficulty resets. Google turns on their network; starts hashing.
Blocks 10001-12000: Google finds these blocks approximately 10 times faster than they should, or, approximately one per minute.
Block 12001: Difficulty spikes to approximately 10 times the last difficulty. Google shuts off their network; hashrates are now .6 TH/s again.
Block 12001-14000: The network finds these blocks approximately 10 times slower than they should; or, approximately, one block per hour. Instead of taking two weeks, the next difficulty reset takes five months.

Except that can't work.  As I mentioned earlier, there is a difficulty adjustment parameter rule that prohibits the difficulty from adjusting up or down by more than a factor of four.  So the max that can be expected is that the Google can do is move the difficulty by that factor of four, which may or may not actually be worthwhile, but if the attack cannot be repeated in consecutive cycles (maybe, but I would say that it would be very unlikely to work out that way) then it's probably not a worthwhile means of manipulation for profit motives alone.  What kind of harm to the system itself could such an attack cause?

If someone had access to 100 tera hashes per second... they could user 10 for the first 2016 blocks, 25 for the next, 50 for the next, and 100 for the next 2016 blocks... and then leave... placing us in a predicament that takes more than a few hours to allow a transaction through the network...

This sounds like the old joke, "I always give 100% of my efforts at work!  10% on Mondays, 25% on Tuesdays, 50% on Wendsdays...."

Tell me this, if any single entity had access to the kind of hashing power to make this work, why bother with such a complex attack vector?  Why not just simply dominate the network?
5977  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Manipulating the difficulty? on: April 05, 2011, 09:35:19 PM
Imagine Google can summon 5.4 TH/s of power. The current hashrate is .6 TH/s. For the sake of simplicity let's say difficulty adjusts every 2000 blocks.

Blocks 1-10000: Business as usual; network ends at .6 TH/s.
Block 10001: Difficulty resets. Google turns on their network; starts hashing.
Blocks 10001-12000: Google finds these blocks approximately 10 times faster than they should, or, approximately one per minute.
Block 12001: Difficulty spikes to approximately 10 times the last difficulty. Google shuts off their network; hashrates are now .6 TH/s again.
Block 12001-14000: The network finds these blocks approximately 10 times slower than they should; or, approximately, one block per hour. Instead of taking two weeks, the next difficulty reset takes five months.

Except that can't work.  As I mentioned earlier, there is a difficulty adjustment parameter rule that prohibits the difficulty from adjusting up or down by more than a factor of four.  So the max that can be expected is that the Google can do is move the difficulty by that factor of four, which may or may not actually be worthwhile, but if the attack cannot be repeated in consecutive cycles (maybe, but I would say that it would be very unlikely to work out that way) then it's probably not a worthwhile means of manipulation for profit motives alone.  What kind of harm to the system itself could such an attack cause?

Motive questions moved aside.

The factor four thing wont really help, I think, because google could just do the attack for 2 consecutive difficulty adjustment periods and raise the difficulty by up to a factor of 16.


For the attack to work once, it already requires that the attacker have control of at least one of the blocks wherein the difficulty is adjusted (perhaps both) that buffet a 2016 block set.  To do this attack twice in a row requires that the attacker be able to reliablely control at least two of these critical blocks in succession.  If the attacker has that kind of processing power at hand, then the 50% takeover issue is probably within reach.
Quote
Also, in such a scenario, it should be possible for the majority of nodes to decide to change the rules to somehow adjust the difficulty more quick. This might bring up some trustworthiness issues, since we keep saying the rules cannot be changed easily, but I think in such a case a majority could form. On the other hand: we've got quite a few coins in circulation, doesn't really hurt to have mining slowed for half a year, does it?

The majority rules cannot be changed in such a fashion.  The only way that the protocol rules can be changed is if the majority of the potential generating userbase (which is larger than that actuall generating base) we to agree to change the rules, and vote by downloading a new client that repected those rules.  It couldn't just happen during a relatively short time frame, because once that attack ended, which it must eventually, the entire network would revert to the existing protocol stack, and any temporary changes made by the attacker by brute force would simply be undone, and all of the attacker's new blocks rejected.  Resulting in the atacker gaining nothing for his efforts.

Honestly, it probably woulnd't harm the Bitcoin network at this point, but in the future it might make getting honest tranasctions into the blockchain difficult, which could impact further adoption.
5978  Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Re: Something vexes me .. transaction fee issue. on: April 05, 2011, 06:50:33 AM
...The power to withold my custom from providers I disaprove of, is extremely important to me.

Am I alone here?

No. Not at all.

I (and the rest of north america) would instantly refuse (without question) to help fund any group labeled as a "terrorist".


Wow. Please tell me this is sarcasm?

Yes, it's sarcasm.

Is English not your first language?
5979  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Manipulating the difficulty? on: April 05, 2011, 06:47:56 AM
Remember the Mystery Miner?
I think the Mystery Miner predates me. Got a link to discussions on it/him/her?

Not really, it was just a spike and follow-up drop in the hashrate a couple of weeks ago.  Someone just referred to it as our "mystery miner" and it just stuck.  We don't have any evidence that it was a single entity, or several with bad timing.  My best guess about the whole thing is that someone tried renting out the cloud to mine for a bit, before having the facepalm moment when they finally realize that it's going to be hard for them to pay rent five times higher than the value of the bitcoins and make it up on volume.  Another credible possibility was that someone with a botnet was benchmarking their network.  The truth is that it is actually impossible for us to ever know any details, so we are all just guessing.
5980  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Manipulating the difficulty? on: April 05, 2011, 06:41:36 AM
The current hashrate is .6 TH/s.
Where did you find that figure? I've been thinking about analyzing the P2P network's combined hash power, but if someone else has already done it I won't bother.

http://bitcoinwatch.com/

It's near the bottom on the left column.
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