A lock can still be bypassed without using a key. One does not blame the house owner for purchasing a lock with "vulnerabilities" that allow it to be picked, nor the manufacturer for producing it. One blames the man with the set of lock picks.


From the point of view of the processor, I am no more physically present than a hacker. A processor simply runs whatever instructions are presented to it, regardless of where it comes from.

If intrinsic value for food was measured in terms of calories that's a property that is constant regardless of any allergies or intolerances the eater might have, or for that matter what species is eating the food.

A person with a nut allergy might very well eat a peanut butter sandwich if the consequences of not injesting the calories were worse than the symptoms of their allergy.

I would call that noise. The few irrational investors end up losing their money because the market remains "rational," and performs the way it's supposed to. Otherwise it would all be a gamble. Likewise for impulse buyers. You can't build a business hoping to make profits solely from impulse buyers. You can however use the market to increase advertising exposure and increase the number of customers. Perhaps, to be a bit more specific, I should have said that the market follows a set of specific and rational rules, but we may not know all the variables that are involved. Thus, for future predictions, we can make fairly good estimates for what will happen, but can be tripped up by variables we failed to take into account, but for past economic events, we can study the known variables and outcomes, and explain why whatever happened happened, with fairly good precision. Moreover, we can state that if the economic event happened again, and all the variables were the same, it would very likely transpire in the exact same way with the exact same results, and because of the same specific variables having the same "rational" effect. Taking noise into account (the few irrational people), if the noise is small enough, we will still reach the same conclusions. That would not be possible if economics was just a bunch of irrational actions and swings.
As for government and politicians, they have their own "rational" reasons and outcomes. Some they might know (high state tax on cigarettes may mean more people buying from neighboring states, but benefits outweigh the costs of smoking-related health expenses), and some they may have their own rational reasons for, but may just be totally clueless about (ignoring important variables), even as other people are yelling at them, trying to warn them about issues that inevitably transpire, because the market continues to follow it's set of rules (take your pick).

What is the key difference?

True democracy is a terrible system because the average person has an IQ of 81. 

perverse incentives created by the state result in sub optimal behavior of the market.

Second, even if I agree that hacking a computer is equivalent to trespass, then you would have to show me which property I trespassed upon. The hard disc? Looks just the same to me, no damage done. The CPU? No damage there either. Really - I'm not *touching* your property, only mine - my keyboard, my mouse. All you can say is that the *data* on your computer (the privkey) has been interfered with (copied), and if you want your data to be legally protected from copying, then I fail to see why an mp3 cannot be also legally protected from copying.  I get the difference that, to copy an mp3, you don't need to hack Lady Gaga's computer, or her publisher's. But, even if we allow for the trespass argument, all I need is for your privkeys to "somehow" find their way to my computer and I can fully legally, without any possible accusation of trespass transact the BTCs to myself.

Insurance companies often won't pay a claim if it can be shown that the claimant did not take reasonable steps to secure the property. So, if you leave your door open, to use the argument above, then it's still illegal to enter and steal BUT tough luck, the insurance company won't pay up. Therefore, if your computer is not adequately programmed to protect against hacking, then you would be responsible for the loss.

barring unusual circumstances

Ok, so you're a bus driver carrying 30 people.
You drive on the highway and your steering wheel braks off.
What is the rational thing to do?

The best argument for a free market is that people don't act rationally, so who in their right mind would want those people making law that everyone must abide by?

What kinds of things have that property? Food and water come to mind. Medicine, clothing, stored energy - anything an individual can use directly to sustain life and comfort.

That would be rather silly since services are just generally offered as somebody's niche becomes valuable.

Interesting. So the Certificate is actually issued by blockchain.info but signed for trust by GoDaddy? I was under the (false?) impression that corporations like GoDaddy actually issued the certificates.

That's what many people have claimed. But not by actual Fedora users. I'd like to see an actual Fedora user explain how they got the Satoshi Client working.

I've recently got a new computer and am running Fedora on it, which basically makes it impossible for me to run the Satoshi client until the devs go out of their way to build an rpm.

My old computer was/is running Ubuntu. I've had to do a clean install in the hopes of fixing some major issues it has. It crashes a lot and when it does that it screws up Bitcoin's ability to load the block index. So, I'll spend a bunch of time trying to load the entire blockchain so that I can access my full balance, but before the entire blockchain finishes downloading, my computer crashes again, thus screwing up the block index, meaning I need to reinstall the Satoshi Client all over again. So, I'm done with that. I'm ready to toss my old computer into the garbage bin.

Actually, I'm thinking about installing Windows XP on there. My first question is can I put a wallet.dat file that I had from Ubuntu into my Windows Bitcoin wallet and get my balance? If so, then at least I can transfer my balance into a blockchain.info/wallet.

My next question has to do with the safety of the blockchain.info/wallets.

I'm able to backup an encrypted wallet and send it to my email. That's nice. The website claims that it, or Multibit can import the wallet. What about Mt. Gox? For example, if I can't get Multibit running on my Fedora, and if for any reason blockchain.info goes down permanently, how else can I get my balance back?

My last and most important question is about the security of the blockchain.info wallet. Right now when I decrypt my blockchain.info/wallet I do it through a browser. Blockchain.info uses GoDaddy as their certificate authority, which means they have access to every password that gets used to decrypt wallets. Not only do I not trust GoDaddy, I don't trust the entire Certificate Authority system at all, since I don't trust any corporate entity, period. Can somebody address these concerns? Am I missing something? Does GoDaddy really not have access to the passwords to our wallets?

Decrypting on the command line

We use the Gibberish AES Javascript library to generate our AES encryption. To get this to work on the command you need to cut and paste the private key data into a text file and preserve the line breaks.

You can then run the following command. (we have the key stored with line breaks in key.txt).

openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in key.txt -a -k password

And you should get something like the results below.

You bring up a good point. I'm not looking for someone here to help me out in the sense of finding me a job, offering temp shelter, or anything like that. I was mainly looking for anyone that lived near there to give me some personal insight of the area and to find ways to possibly incorporate BTC into my trip either through monetization or exchanging coins for gas/food/etc. While I have no intentions of "slinging pizza" for the rest of my life, this job provides me the opportunity to earn a steady income all while searching for something better.

I'm a carpenter and work for my uncle's contracting business but the economy here has resulted in fewer jobs for us and other skilled laborers in the area which ultimately leads to diminished wages. I do have over 5 years experience in all aspects of the pizza business with 2 1/2 of those being a keyholding manager. Food service is not what I would call an ideal job but it's a means to an end. Plus, moving to a large metropolitan area would hopefully present me with better career options (I live in a town of less than 1,000).

I have a me, my girl, our 4 kids, and my father to worry about and I have to step outside of my comfort zone to make something happen. My father is highly skilled and educated but there's nothing locally that can use his skills and knowledge. Moving to this area would also hold more potential for him to find a suitable career that utilizes all of his abilities.