Is this on your home machine?

The .01 BTC transaction fee is probably because this is what the system requires to send if the amount sent is less than .01 BTC.  This fee exists to make transaction spammers pay for the act of cramming a block.  Are you certain you didn't enter the amount too small?

I wonder if the daemon translates the user entry into the raw bitcoin number by default, if it takes the input without 'moving' the decimal point.

They don't have to make anyone pay it.  There will be those who are willing to pay it for the advantages that it holds.  The 'free' section of the block is very limited, and in a successful future, very few people will be willing to wait for those free transactions to process, as they could take weeks in a future that Bitcoin processes at a rate comparable to Visa.

Bitcoin is actually pretty crappy for micropayments, but variations on the online wallet service isn't the only way to do instant small value sales.  The double spend attack is relatively difficult to pull of, due to timing issues, so it's very unlikely that anyone is going to attempt it for a free soda and a bag of chips.  Even so, a vending machine client can reduce it's own exposure to such an attack in a couple of different ways.  Blockchain confirmations aren't even important in this context, as the transaction (once verified for validity) can be accepted at face value with as much confidence as it can accept a quarter dropped in the change slot isn't a slug.  Honestly, it's just a machine, and can't know; but the vending owner includes a risk premium to cover his own backside.

I personally know someone who owns a number of vending machines and video games at a few local bars, I need to have a talk with him about Bitcoin.  It might be time to put theory into action.

Too many outside variables to know if this would actually happen.

The are, in fact, private banks operating under a government charter.  So, by definition, they are privately owned.  The idea that they are owned by the public in any context is false.

+1

Such a thing does exist, but it happens to be pretty expensive.

If someone were to develop such an ASIC and put it on a small SOC, and networked a bunch in a ribbon, they would make great heat trace cabling for water lines.  Parking garages (which still have to have fire suppression systems) have heat trace wrapped around water lines and mains, which are then insulated over that.  These water lines have to be heated continuously anytime the outside temp is below 35 degrees, so that cold spots don't freeze & bust the water lines.

I considered making a Linux cluster like this about 10 years ago, but never did anything with the idea.  These might sell well in high latitudes.

That has probably already happened, perhaps more than once.  That would be one reasonable cause of the spike and drop in hashing power about two weeks ago.

Actually, there is no such thing as a national bank in the true sense.  Banks must be within a given state, and even when there are identical bank branches across state lines, they are legally two different bank networks.  I've run into this before, when I used to work in Cincinnati and live in Kentucky.  In order for me to have funds on both sides of the border at my favored bank, I had to have two checking accounts, and they had different routing numbers.  I would literally have to wire funds to myself, which was a pain in the ass.  It's some kind of interstate commerce law.  It often took more than a week for my paycheck to clear, for this exact reason.

Actually, that's the point.  Accidents do happen, and I want her to learn how to deal with them while she is young enough to experience them while we are still there to be able to step in if need be.  Small cuts from a small two inch blade aren't going to get her killed, but never learning how to handle dangerous tools before adulthood just might.  It's like teaching a child about the hazards of water; is it better to teach a child to stay away from the pool, or to teach the child how to swim?

No, she doesn't.  She's an urban child, but I grew up with a Swiss Army knife and used it daily; and have carried a series of 'multitools' (currently a Leatherman Wave I've had for ten years) which I use daily.  I tell my kids that the ability to recognize and use basic technology is what sets humanity apart from the remainder of the animal kingdom.  My wife objected to me wearing my "belt tools" to church (multitool & small holstered flashlight) until after 9/11.  Once the story about how one guy lead his entire office floor out of the dark building using an Indiglow watch, I said, "see!  Imagine how many more could have survived if they simply had a flashlight!"

I've worn my "belt tools" everywhere I go since that day.  I've literally never left my house without them, even having to check them before entering the courthouse on a couple occasions.

About a year ago, I heard about a case wherein an elderly woman got her excessively long scarf caught in an escalator, and was strangled in a panic because there was no one in earshot who had a pocketknife.

You were doing fine until you conflated anarchism and libertarianism.  For the record, they are not the same.  Ideologically speaking, an anarchist is one who believes that he can govern himself, and that all individuals can rationally do so as well.  A libertarian is someone who believes that government is an evil that attracts the worst kind of person to be trusted with it's power; but that it is a necessary evil, and that there is a few minimum functions of government that are legitimate, and the kind of people who shouldn't be trusted are also the same kind of people that tend to be very good at actually performing those core functions so long as they can be restrained in expanding the scope of their authorities.  (i.e. sociopaths make great generals, but crappy overlords)

Personally, I'm of the latter camp.  I can see the potential for success in anarchism, but I can also see the potential for an epic failure.  I believe that violence is not a legitimate means of social or political change, but I also believe that there is such a thing as justifiable use of force, either collectively or individually.  I also believe that the founders went through this same kind of discovery process; which is why they chose to replace the Articles of Confederation with the US Constitution. moving from an almost anarchist society of states to a more uniform, but more restrictive, libertarian state.  Not a perfect example of either, mind you.

Still, even as I contest the idea that anarchy is sustainable, I can accept that it is possible; and perhaps one day technologies that we can't even imagine today will make a stable anarchy a reality.  That could only come if technologies make the primary functions of governments obsolete.  But as we have all witnessed over the past 20 years, we can't really fathom what may yet be.

If Neal Stephenson is to be believed (and I am one to wonder if the man is really a technological prophet, not a sci-fi writer) then the emergence of a digital, anonymous and distributed monetary system is the technical precursor to an entirely different form of political association, based upon voluntary social and cultural identities, as opposed to to geographical association and imaginary lines on a map. 

Time will tell.

I have a small collection of custom knives, and would be very interested in what you have to offer.  Are single piece knives all that you make, or do you make folders?  Right now, I'm looking for a small folding pocket knife for my daughter's 11th birthday.

She got her Marlin rifle at eight, which really got a rise out of my mother, but that stays in the gunsafe.  I think that she's ready for some real responsibility.  Any recommendations from the forum?  What kind of pocketknife would you buy for an 11 year old girl?

If he were to sell all of his investments, convert to cash, and burn it all in a public pyre; then all of the remaining cash in existance would be, temporarily, slightly more valuable.  Not to any extent that would be noticable, however, and only for however long it took the Fed to replicate those destroyed bills.

As for injecting it into the economy, that is exactly what he does with most of it.  That's what investing is.

You don't.  My client has never asked for that.

I think that you guys are forgeting an important point about Bitcoin.

It's not a US centric system.  Just because the US government might choose to stamp it out, doesn't mean that it dies in Russia or New Zealand.

I think that you are both arguing on the same side, but from different perspectives.

Food and energy both had a large jump.  The prices in consumer products are lagging as compared to oil, because they were made with last summer's oil.  We see the prices in food rise quicker, in part, because nearly everything that we eat takes a great deal of energy to transport from where it is grown, to where it is processed, to where it is sold.  We will see prices rise in consumer goods if the current oil price maintains it's present levels.

What do you base this upon?  Are you assuming surface area of geoengineerable planets?  Because I seriously doubt this is accurate.

87.3% of statistics found on Internet forums are made up on the spot.


Again, based upon what?