Painfully difficult to set up properly on your computer, and painfully slow once it is working.  It also makes a poor data haven (it's primary purpose) because the network has the habit of "forgeting" pieces of the file that you desire over time.  This happens because nodes have limited storage space, and favor popular content; and because there is no way to compensate anyone for their contributions, so nodes drop off without warning.  It's really mostly used as a huge encrypted BBS, distributing messages and content, much of it because it is objectionable to someone. 

I've tried freenet before, I'm not a fan.

No, this is awesome, but how does one pay for the service?

Perhaps some kind of control protocol overlay that uses bittorrent as it's transport mech, with tracking internal to the control network.  Perhaps this could be a TOR hidden service with the bittorrent traffic external, I'm  just thinking out loud.

Are there any truly p2p content delivery networks?  All those that I am aware of require a central server for control.  I'm thinking along the lines of a distributed 'data haven' that has no single point of failure.

So what would prevent me from registering the domain jackass.theymos.btc? 

What do you mean by sender code on the website?  If you are using the sending address as your transaction reference, then anyone who sends you money via a pooled client such as www.mybitcoin.com isn't likely to match up.

Yes.  Generation is intentionally hard, otherwise it would be worthless as a trade currency.  It's much easier, and less costly to most people, to buy or trade for bitcoins rather than generate.  I've never generated a block, personally.

Corporations are creatures of the state.  I can't imagine how the shareholders could ever be certain that their shareholder rights are being respected, without the implicit force of the court system should the corporate executives turn to the dark side or were frauds to start with.  Reputation is a real economic force at the personal level, but not the corporate level.  They were orginally developed to distribute risk across a working group, and also distribute liability in the same manner.

I would say no, since it isn't about bitcoin directly.

There exists a couple of different p2p distributed data storage systems without central controls, but in nearly all cases they use some kind of tis-for-tat system of limiting the free rider problem.  All of which have limited success in that endeavor.  Centralized off-site backup sites also exist, and some that use the "cloud", but they are all dependent upon a centralized server model.  Any ideas from the forum minds about how a decentralized p2p distributed data storage system could be implimented that uses bitcoin payments to compensate those who contribute disk space and bandwidth to the share, and still be anonymous and equitible?

As I see it, such a system would have to have a number of qualities, at a minimum...

1)  Mutiple sets of the same data,

2) stored across numerous nodes

3) using system-wide encryption (mostly to protect the nodes from the liability of objectionable content)

4) with a payment system that can use market based pricing to charge small amounts for uploading, storage term period, and downloading separately.  (someone using the system for critical backup is unlikely to ever download, but would desire to have a higher number of copies on the system; while someone using the system to distribute cladestine content will upload once and download perhaps numerous times, but may not desire to have so many copies for data protection)

I imagine it something like paid bittorrent seeding, but this isn't my thing.

A protocol one, but it's not a particularly interdependent design decision.  The bitcoin balances are stored as integers (64 bit, I believe) and the decimal point is centered by the client for human readability in base 10.  It could be changed to a larger integer without a great deal of technical fuss, but that would require the general agreement of the entire running network.  So it's more of a political problem than a technical one.


As noted above, bitcoin actually does use 16 places in base 10; so the next step isn't quite so inexpensive as one might imagine, because it involves stepping up to an 128 bit integer, at a minimum.

 

A you asking for recommendations on study resources, or something else?

That depends upon how rough you are willing to accept the product. 

You have just described a 'phyle' system.

Has anyone tried to intergrate bu.mp?  Use an extra data field in bu.mp that a script can automagicly copy from the bu.mp addressbook into the send money address field in bitcoind?

That really depends on so many factors that it's hard to judge.  A double escrow could be limited far longer, because it would be rare that any conflict would last to the limit, but you don't want it to be indefinate either, because the site owner doesn't want to have to hunt down disgruntled clients should there be a need to close the site.  I would say that three years is about the high end limit for such a thing, but one year should be long enough.

which is why it's difficult to completely remove the human element of it.  When two parties agree to use such a service, they are ultimately putting trust into a human being.  Most of even the conflicts will resolve out without intervention of the escrow site owner, as a sour deal will most often not be caused by an attempt at fraud but a misrepresentation/misunderstanding that will just end in the two parties agreeing to keep theirs and move on.  Only the rarest of deals will be unresolvable without adjudication, but some will.  The one year wait is a strong encentive for the two parties to work it out, even if they would prefer to just stick it to the other; which is part of why I think that a double escrow would be better, because otherwise the seller could get ticked and just refuse to release the buyer from the agreement until the year was up, as he has no real skin in the escrow itself.

There is still no way past the zipcode page to even look at the plans or phones.  I'm stuck in a loop.  They need to update their coverage database.  Without being able to look at the plan details, I can't really compare the service to my present prepaid plan from Virgin, which also uses the Sprint PCS network.

I would wager that guys like him have contacts back in the mother country willing to get into the other end of things, and eventually we wont need to convert at all.