I use the Bitcoin Ticker Widget: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=st.brothas.mtgoxwidget

Works well enough for me (I'm not a heavy BTC user, so my needs are pretty moderate)

Onkel Paul

Hey Shorena, Lincoln6Echo made it a few days ago, you might want to update the list...

Onkel Paul

Belated congrats! Enjoy your newly gained and well-deserved status :-)

Onkel Paul

The value of an account when used as collateral will always be quite a bit less than its value when sold directly. That's because the lender who takes the collateral normally wants to get his money back, not go through the hassle to sell an account.

That said, farming an account until it can be used as a collateral in a loan is probably pretty stupid. If your account is valuable enough, you'd better either sell it directly, or earn some bitcoins by joining a signature campaign that's paying well. Of course, it the website you intend to buy will generate enough income that you can buy the account back it might make some sense, but most often that would take quite some time in which you can't use the account, so selling it might be a better option anyway.

Onkel Paul

Disclaimer: although I'm enrolled in a signature campaign, my primary goal is not making money (see my post history, I could post a lot more if I wanted to maximize payout.) Selling my account is not an option either, I'd rather abandon it when I should lose interest in BTC than allowing a buyer to use its rank to possibly scam people.

Die Trust-Funktion ist hier wohl nicht das Problem (auch wenn sie nicht immer zuverlässig ist). SebastianJu würde ich immer noch vertrauen.
Sieht eher so aus, als ob einige von SebastianJu's Postings einem Moderator spamisch vorkamen. Ich hab die Posts selbst nicht gesehen und die Diskussion darum nur ganz am Rande.

Onkel Paul

There have been similar incidents in hospitals here in Germany, most recently this one: http://www.trojaner-info.de/daten-sichern-verschluesseln/aktuelles/cyber-angriff-auf-krankenhaus-in-neuss.html

Of course, these hackers are among the lowest imaginable scum on earth, and they do give bitcoin a really bad image, but why oh why are hospital networks not protected more effectively?
Internal networks (with medical equipment, sensitive patient data, etc) should be well-isolated from the internet, with only very tightly defined and monitored service channels to absolutely necessary outside services.
Files sent via e-mail? If the receiving computers are on an internal network with sensitive data, attachments should be quarantined without exception until their origin and content have been verified as safe.
Every file server accessible from Windows computers must be monitored for corruption, misbehaving clients must be identified and disconnected from the network. That requires some work and investment, but we're not talking about a small shop or restaurant here...

Onkel Paul

What about the following approach:
Assume that you split the data into relatively few chunks without reordering parts, and that the original source of the data computed and signed a SHA-256 hash over the whole data.
Then you could run SHA-256 over the whole dataset, recording the intermediate state of the hashing algorithm wherever you split the data.
SHA-256 runs on 512-bit blocks, so if you split at a block boundary, you only need to note the values in the hashing registers at that point.
If you split the data within a block, you need to note the hashing register values before the block, plus the 512 bit block itself.
Each data recipient receives the states before and after his block in addition to the block data, so they can check whether their pieces are ok. They need to provide you with a signed statement about this fact.
Now you only have to archive these signed statements and the block boundary states of the hashing engine. Since the last boundary state is equal to the hash signed by the original author, these pieces together can be used to prove that you did not tamper with the data.

I see two possible issues with this approach, though:
1. You would disclose a little more of the data to each recipient since you have to cut at 512-bit boundaries. I don't know whether that's a problem, or whether you can nudge your data source to deliver the data in 512-bit chunks, for example by padding each record to a multiple of 64 bytes.
2. Data recipients could claim that you colluded with the recipient of the last block so that he signs an untrue statement about the final hash value. Since the data integrity is only proven when the final hash of the last block is equal to the hash signed by the original data source, this might be a problem. It is also possible to collude with a recipient that got an earlier blocks, but you could cheat only on recipients before the one you colluded with.

I don't know whether there's an easy way of fixing the last issue, and maybe there are more issues than I see at the moment :-(

Onkel Paul

Are you aware of https://www.proofofexistence.com/about?

They provide one half of the solution, which consists of a mechanism to state that a given document existed at a given time.
However, this does not prove that you were the author. In general, authorship is difficult to prove if you don't take care (if someone steals and copies your work and publishes it before you do, how do you prove that you wrote it originally?)
So to prevent that, you need to digitally sign your document and create a proof of existence for the signed document before making it available to anybody else.
Afterwards, someone else may take your document, replace your signature with theirs, and create a similar proof of existence, but they will not be able to create one with an earlier timestamp. When there is a dispute about authorship, you will be able to present your proof of existence.

I don't think I fully understand the bit about data changing hands - do you mean that the data should be passed unchanged between several persons? Then the original proof of existence mechanism works fine.
If you're thinking about collaborative work on the data, the signing and proof publishing steps needs to be performed after each modification, creating a chain of document versions.

Note that for all of this, the document itself does not need to be published, as the proof of existence only applies to a hash of the document, naturally.

Onkel Paul

Your pet obituary in the blockchain sort of exists already, as far as I know. It's not tied to being a miner at all.
In general, any person could create transactions including any text for others for a fee, and push these transactions to the blockchain.
If the price is right, these transactions will be processed and stored just like any other transactions.
The blockchain is morally indifferent, it does not penalize transactions that you or me don't like, such as pet obituaries, drug or extortion money, donations for political parties that we disagree with.
The only thing that keeps pet obituary spammers from filling up the blocks is the economic reasoning that with a higher transaction pressure, transaction fees tend to become higher, driving out "unimportant" transactions for which the senders were unwilling to pay appropriate fees.

Welcome to a free market, if you like it or not.

Onkel Paul

Well deserved! Welcome to the club!

Onkel Paul

Just these days when my activity score rose to 966 (don't know when exactly the current activity interval started.)
So I won't make it to the Guinness Book of Records as the person who waited the longest for this honor :-(

Onkel Paul

Congrats!

Yay, at long last.

  Legendary. 

Anyone wanna buy my account? ... just kidding of course!

Onkel Paul

I know this is necroposting, but I just wanted to host a small celebration for this number:
You have reported 500 posts with 100% accuracy

Onkel Paul

Yes, at the moment transaction fees are not high enough to cover mining operation costs.
The system of mining rewards (block subsidy + transaction fees) and difficulty adjustments is designed such that it adjusts itself.

Simply stated, in an equilibrium state of the system, mining rewards just cover operation costs + return on investment for miners. Since operation costs and ROI are still mostly expressed in fiat currency values, exchange rate for BTC plays a role in this.
When block subsidies go down to near zero, mining rewards come primarily from transaction fees. There will be a self-adjusting feedback loop between exchange rate, number of miners, energy efficiency of miners, and transaction fees paid by bitcoin users. Most likely block size will play a role as well as it allows a higher number of transactions to be processed in a given time.

Since transaction fees cannot grow arbitrarily high in "real value", either the mining network operation must become so cheap that transaction fees suffice to cover them, or on-chain transactions will be used only for high-value transactions, with off-chain processing being used for micro-transactions. For the network to become cheap enough, the total throughput of transactions per hour probably has to be increased. To me, both outcomes seem possible.

Onkel Paul

A bitcoin node does not need much CPU power, but a lot of disk space to store the blockchain. Typical browser plugins work on very limited amounts of data, and users would probably not want to run a plugin that consumes dozens of gigabytes on their hard disk and constantly talks to the network.
And of course the other point is very valid: What's the practical use for such a thing? Which actual problem would it solve?

Onkel Paul

You might also be able to send without any fee if you're prepared to wait a few days until some miner decides to be generous and include your transaction in a block even if it does not have a fee. You need to convince your wallet program that sending without a fee is really what you want, though.

However, if you're curious about these things you might want to experiment with testnet coins first until you are certain that you grasped the mechanisms and know how to work with your client. Testnet coins can be gotten for free, just ask someone who has some. There is also a faucet that hands out small amounts (just google it). Testnet coins can also still be mined with moderate effort (USB miners). But mining with a CPU doesn't really work (I tried it...)

Onkel Paul

Nein, der Überweisende erzeugt nur eine Transaktion, die von Miner-Nodes in einen Block eingebaut wird und damit gültig ist. Wenn dein Wallet-Programm zwischendurch nicht gelaufen ist, holt es sich alle neuen Blöcke beim erneuten Start und sieht damit diese Transaktion, danach kannst du über den betrag verfügen.

Onkel Paul

There's a very simple rule with "double your bitcoin" sites.

They are all scams. No exceptions.

Either ponzi schemes that pay out early "investors" as long as enough new victims enter the scheme, or outright scams where nobody gets their money back.
Just stay away from these sites!
If it sounds too good to be true, it certainly isn't true. When will people finally learn it?

Onkel Paul

roslinpl might have the guy who gave you negative trust in his own trust list.
Since the whole issue seems really minor, and the negative trust given to you looks a lot like a revenge action, you might be able to convince roslinpl that you're actually trustworthy.

But whether a signature campaign accepts someone is entirely their own decision. If they don't want to, they don't have to.

Onkel Paul