People that enjoy building housing?  If people weren't paid to do stuff they don't like, and had freedom to choose, they would be able to do what makes them happy.  Everyone is a good person, deep down.  Everyone wants to contribute to society, people just need to find their destiny.

Edit: 1420th post.

I think that, simply, like all companies, Bitcoin based ones should only comply with the minimum law requirements. And if businesses can find a way to ignore the law successfully (either like Silk Road, or by being distributed enough as to be impossible to regulate), they should do that too. Black markets still provide tons of benefits, from jobs to goods for those who need them, so I wouldn't consider them inherently bad (the only bad thing about them is that governments don't get their licensing fees and tax revenues, but on the other hand, black markets also don't receive business and security protections from government that legit markets get). Being able to skirt government laws and regulations also points out errors in those laws, such as the way Bitcoin does for "money transmitter license" requirements (the system itself is the money transmitter, so there's no one to buy the license). Likewise, skirting government laws points out errors of laws themselves, such as laws that may have had good intentions, but which shouldn't have existed in the first place, and being able to easily skirt them causes society to change its mind on them (such as copyright laws, which are now often ignored, especially in cases where videos are limited to specific regions, or TV episodes are available on Netflix/Hulu months after their original air date).

TL;DR Bitcoin should push the limits of what we consider moral or justifiable, as opposed to what we consider lawful, and thus help redefine the laws. It likely won't die any easier than Bittorrent.

Well, the simple answers are: "any sort of work," "as much as you alter with that work," and "nobody, unless there's a dispute." For a more detailed explanation, here's a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle

Richy_T, thats certainly something to bear in mind. But am still stuck how to (chemically if possible as I do not have a robotic staming machine!) transfer the private key image to the metal.

Any further ideas welcome.

On the matter of parties, what I was wondering is whether or not primary voting would still be necessary.  There would be no disadvantage to one party running multiple candidates.  There could be both party-wide campaigning (vote for a member of our party) and individual campaigning (vote for me specifically).  Then again, I suppose they would still need to come to some agreement about which group of candidates they endorse.

approval voting woudln't help that

I have a question for you - and guess what, its bitcoin related!! Chemistry, I dont know, but you seem like a bit of a lateral thinker so here goes.

I'd like to manufacture a china mug, that like a casacus (can I even spell that!!) coin has a hidden private key inside it. I imagine that there would be a hollow botom in the mug and the key place in the compartment before it was fired. In this way it really is almost impossible to get at the key without obviously breaking the mug, or x-raying it which I assume is beyond a normal persons methods.

One technique is to "print" the key on to thin tungsten foil - such is available at reasonable cost, and this would not melt at the firing temperature of normal pottery. So you could use a stamp and stamp it on for example, you could do this by hand in theory. But this wont work because the process must be 100% error free - the only way you would find out a mistake had been made is when the mug is smashed and the private key does not work, (and you loose your bitcoins!!) so a better way to do this is needed. In practice, I need a way to photographically do this from a printout of the key from a normal printer. Some sort of UV sensative coating that I could contact print from, possibly develop, and then perhaps as a result of the firing or perhaps not would etch the metal so that it could reliably and certainly be read. Or can I glaze or enamel a tungsten foil photographiclly? What about a platinotype on a tungsten base? Too complex, methinks. (And expensive!!) Its got to be pretty certain to work, or capable of being checked for readability before insertion.

In truth I am dead-ended here and would welcome any further ideas from the OP or someone else. I want a bitcoin piggy bank, that truly has to be smashed to release its contents!! How cool would that be?

I think SMF works pretty well now. I fixed the most pressing issues. (This is one of the reasons I haven't been too motivated to get this job done.)

So while doing some research last night, my partner found http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/

I think the article makes a valid point.  What do you think, theymos?  Maybe bcrypt(SHA-256(password)) if we want to be uber paranoid

you can trust me 

It always surprised me how successful ebay is. It's a crap site, and it was also crap in the 90s.

However, a good auction/sales site would be nice. I guess bitmit can also be massively improved upon...

this is true. I was thinkin same model ebay uses. Have the auction site, but have payment through a paypal like clearing house that uses bitcoin. And keep fees managable for sales, none of this crazy percentage crap those guys are charging. I was thinking ~1-3% Fees Btc on selling. Maximum.

Because having a way to stop a person with the means and motive to be a flight risk is always bad.

You seem to have misunderstood what I said. It doesn't matter that the Swiss Franks aren't U.S. government currency; what matters is that they are physical property. They may only be bits of paper with pictures, but they're still your bits of paper, just as if it has been bars of gold or important legal documents or an unpublished manuscript in that safe instead of Swiss Franks.

That's what I've read.  It certainly reduces the spoiler effect, greatly, but since one candidate can knock another one to a lower level, there's still the potential for similar candidates to inadvertently sabotage each other.

I don't have a full understanding of the math involved, but that's what I read.  One of these days I need to run some simulations of my own.

You know, I wonder what effect approval voting would have on parties.  One of the functions of parties in the current system, the primaries, would be rendered unnecessary.

This argument, and several others similar to it, are predicated on the idea that bitcoins (a) exist, and (b) are property. Bitcoins, per se, do not exist. They are not physical objects you could stake a claim to, or even contracts granting you a claim to property, like your contract with your bank.

What does exist are entries in a distributed database in the form of "A transaction signed with the private key matching this address can transfer exactly X bitcoins to another address of their choice." However, this database exists only by consensus. There is no contract. If the other participants in the bitcoin system fail to recognize your signed transactions, or rewrite the ledger such that the balance is associated with some other key you don't control, that is just too bad for you.

You are completely reliant on others choosing to follow the established bitcoin protocol--and the protocol does not have any regard for ownership in the sense you refer to, only possession of the associated private keys. Use of a key to sign a transaction is only proof of possession, which is true (and thus not fraud), however you came by the key. Any claim you might make against someone misusing your private key would have to be based on the principle that acquiring the key in the first place involved a violation of your rights to the physical property in which the key was stored.

There is a reason you can't openly drugs on this forum, and it has nothing to do with the operators 'not being libertarian enough' or 'wanting to interfere with trade'.

Keep in mind that in developed countries other than the US, supporting gun control is not "getting into people's shit".

Assuming you are actually referring to the anti-IPR society, how is it fraud to copy a number, and execute mathematical functions on it? What exactly have I defrauded you of if I copy they keys in your possession, and transfer the associated bitcoins to a key in my possession.