The problem is, most people are fucking muppets.
If the directions aren't there in big colorful iconographic form, or have some animated character pointing out how to use something, they'll just move on.
I know there's a lot of effort in trying to 'dumb down' the whole explanation, but you know what? I consider it a litmus test for who has the brainpower to 'get' an abstract idea. If you don't, fine, more for me - and they can go back to their ripoff bank accounts and paying 20% APR on credit card balances.
bingo! ..... lol, survival of the fittest, bestest with the mostest. |
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Hey, if you'd tip the author with Bitcoins you might as well sign up. It's what they want and it's not a lot to reward people who are writing accurate and balanced articles. I signed up rather than use the screenshots and it took like 20 seconds.
Why hand over your personal information for free? They need readers more than you need your reading habits data-mined ... imho. |
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The idea behind Namecoins is awesome, we need a distributed lookup system badly.
The implementation is lacking. It needs some dev love and to become more user friendly...
It's gotta get to the point that like TOR, people can just download a browser bundle and it'll work.
No reason to use a .bit if noone is able to access it.
Chicken and egg since vinced introduced merged-mining and effectively killed it .... no devs want to work on it because there are no longer incentives, i.e. namecoins are nearly worthless and no-one particularly is using the dns part of it; no users, no devs ... and vice versa. |
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Is something tangible if it can be copied?
Yes. If something can be copied it must be tangible. You can't copy the big red dragon I just imagined but you can copy the song I just sang.Information also has other properties that make it intangible.
Like? The fact that information can have value doesnt make it tangible. Never said it did. You seem to suggest that only tangible things can have a value. Seems or actually is are two different things. I did not and do not think only tangible things can have value. That's your own imagination. Dude, you're clueless. I cannot copy any song you sing, i can only copy some information about the song. Again the information is intangible. A container containing the information is tangible tho. Your red dragon is exactly like an mp3. It is information stored in some medium. The mp3 on your harddrive and the red dragon in your brain. And just like you can copy your mp3 you can also copy the information about your dragon and store it in another medium. One of the things that makes information intangible is that it requires a medium of sorts to be contained. So for information to be usefull it needs a tangible substrate. But the information is not depenant on that particular instance of tagibility. It can be copied or transfered to another tangible carrier. The information is independent of the tangible carrier. You say that you can copy tangible things but that is not true. You can only copy information and apply that to some other tangible thing. So you can take the information of how to build your house and send it to me and i could build another house just like yours. But you cannot copy your actual house and simply send me the copy. That is because your house is tangible and the information about how to build is isnt. And you did suggest that information is tangible because people value it. You came with the example of miners. Because they value bitcoin it must be tangible. Your exact words were: "...The reality is we have tangible digital goods. Clearly, otherwise I don't know why people spend hours mining for some digital gold...". So here you directly state that it is somehow clear that bitcoin is tangible because people mine for it. I don't know what you think i'm imagining here. I assume you understand what the word 'tangible' means. So please tell me what aspect of bitcoin makes it tangible? And why would you insist on applying such an inadequate description to something like information anyway? Why not find a more appropriate word that covers the intricacies of informational transfers in a better way? Whats the point of calling it tangible when it's not? Dude, you are out of your depth ... still waiting for your explanation of why my comments were "one-sided paranoia FUD ..."? At this point, it seems you have chosen the tangential reasoning path to cover up your slandering. |
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So far socrates1024 didn't finish his theoretical work, I guess mostly because of lack of interest from other people due to little practical need. But personally I am fascinated with this stuff. socrates1024 has completed some portions of this work and afaik is still making good progress (from what I've read/discussed). |
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Sounds far fetched, but Virgin and other companies are seriously looking into mining in space already.
Indeed they are looking into it, but honestly I don't understand why. If you really want to mine stuff, I'm pretty sure it would be cheaper to mine sea floor than asteroids. There are indications that some of the deposits of the minerals on the asteroids are pure (due to their particular pressure/temperature/gravity histories) ... i.e. zero refining costs ... basically you just have to go up there, pick it up and bring it back. |
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so we could inhabitate other planets later on. There are no other planets. And extra-solar is just too far away. ... with the currently known physics. |
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Actually, this would be a really good publicity stunt for bitcoin ... see if you can get one of the astronauts up on the Space Station to receive some bitcoins! (I bet the Russian guys would) Bitcoins, first human currency in space. |
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Maybe the OPs question should have been
"What can the state do?"
it would make for good starting point for an analyses of possible state/supra-state attack possibilities upon bitcoin.
There's plenty of documentation available about what governments do when they go full retard. This is what's happening right now in Argentina, for example: The government claims inflation is 9.9% and has outlawed calculating or quoting any other inflation rate. Forty percent of dollar deposits have been withdrawn from Argentina since last October. Now there are capital controls. You need special permission to move your dollars overseas. To take a foreign vacation, Argentines have to apply to a bureaucrat for permission and explain where they got the money for the trip. And there are rumors that it will be made illegal to talk about the existence of the shadow market exchange rate for dollars. If you pay in dollars, you could get 25% off the price of property. The government has outlawed this, making the buying and selling of real estate in dollars illegal. Just one more rule Argentines will find their way around. The government claims that the rate of outflow has slowed. But with every passing week, companies and individuals figure out new ways to get their cash out. But they continue to do incredibly dumb things. Two years ago, President Kirchner seized private pension accounts. Now she is going to lend $4.4 billion of this money, at a rate of one-tenth the inflation rate, to new home buyers. A lottery will decide who gets the loans – not capacity to repay. If you want more examples this list should provide a good starting point: http://www.munknee.com/2011/03/21-countries-have-experienced-hyperinflation-in-last-25-years-is-the-u-s-next/Argentina sounds like it is being run by a desperate, paranoid, jealous, suspicious woman .... |
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Maybe the OPs question should have been
"What can the state do?"
it would make for good starting point for an analyses of possible state/supra-state attack possibilities upon bitcoin.
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I've just started keeping track so I don't have many data points yet but I have a simple approximation based on current block and time between blocks as reported on blockchain.info.
So far my estimate falls in a six hour window on the 28th between 14:30 and 20:30 UTC.
umm, simple approx. says about 6 days, 16.6 hours from nowish ... so 2100 28.11.12 UTC ... roughly speaking? |
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So anyone know why bitcoinwatch and bitcoincharts are saying next difficulty change at 209,664 blocks ... I thought the halving and next difficulty change co-incided, i.e. 210,000? http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/EDIT: evidently they don't coincide ... my mistake, just had always assumed they would ... the next difficulty change will be the 104th and the block reward halving will occur 336 blocks after that change and 1680 blocks before the 105th difficulty change ... as you were, no need to panic.  |
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AFAIK Kim Dotcom's assets were all frozen and he is living on only 'small' amounts that the court grants him ... i.e. I don't think he has access to $5 million.
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It would be good if you could figure out a way that the customer maintains some control of the funds ... use multi-sig somehow technology maybe?
I just don't think the blind trust model is going to attract any users again any time soon.
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In the beginning, Satoshi created bitcoin. - Genesis Block 1:1 And Satoshi looked at bitcoin and knew that it was good. Genesis Block 1:10 "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" Genesis Block 1:16 |
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If a gang like that ever gains the power to do what you are suggesting, then users will abandon the currency and set up another one that isnt controlled by a gang of authoritarians.
Hence Bitcoin. Sorry cunicula, but your seem to have turned up to a free-money-movement talking shop trying to talk about how effective it would be to try and turn it into a system that's just like the one the one we want rid of. People will vote with their feet if that came to pass, just like they are now with turning to Bitcoin. My point: Bitcoin cannot succeed as a free-money movement. Full stop. If you think otherwise, you are deluding yourself. If they haven't crushed you yet, it is because you are too insignificant to merit their attention. Bitcoin is succeeding quite well as an example for the Free Money Movement, the current authoritarian delusions of what 'money' should be is beginning its implosion. I'm not sure I want to watch your increasingly nasty, shrill disgusting pleas for state-violence and thuggery to defend the failed monopolistic monetary ideologies as it all progresses. In the end, the superior technology will win the battle of ideologies as people choose "what just works". I do not see any potential superstar crypto-currency programmers or mathematicians amongst the central banking keynesians ... so unless they can recruit the mind-share of a team of technologists needed they are dead as an implementable ideology ... and the market will probably reject it on basic economic principles even if you got one of your fantasy blockchain Inflatacoins off the ground. Maybe you should go and learn C++, a bit of number theory, crypto, etc and try competing in the marketplace with a real product instead of spouting your failed ideologies? Then again, teachers teach because they can't do, isn't that how it goes Mr. Economist? |
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[It is also possible that the CC cartel interferes with this. Funny thing about bitcoin libertarians. They like cartels, but cartels fuck them anally. Does this mean libertarians are bottoms?] No. I'm an economist. Whatever else you might be, you are clearly a filthy-mouthed, mean-spirited, little blow-hard who has no qualms leaving the refuse of your mind all over otherwise civil, well-meaning public forums. |
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To any regulators it means this: We will fight you with litigation and we have the financial resources to hire attorneys. We have the moral high ground because of our position regarding freedom of speech. We can lay claim to the power of that moral high ground because of our ability to transmit those ideas far and wide. Thus, if you attack us then it will be like attacking freedom of speech.
Just think: How many millions of bloggers will donate to WordPress if they ask for help defending a Bitcoin related lawsuit? What type of a PR nightmare would that create for the governments? You saw how the market and Internet mobilized against SOPA and PIPA. And who was one of the leaders in that? WordPress.
And if governments are stupid enough to attempt to litigate against WordPress, assuming there actually is any legal issue with accepting bitcoins, think of how swift, how powerful and how vicious the Internet's reaction would be to their attempt to stifle freedom of speech. And who will probably be on the vanguard as defense counsel? The EFF (so don't be too hard on them; I think their reasons for not accepting Bitcoin are specious).
Nice sunnaker, this summarised some of what I was thinking/wondering ... it seems like the next move might well be from the govts (against WP) and does WordPress really understand what they are taking on?? If they do, then it is v. ballsy of them (big ups) but also belies that they understand the moral power that they may claim to, if need be. WP are declaring themselves to be more than a just another bitcoin user, but a willing, powerful ally (though I easily may be reading too much into this). Lord knows we can use more allies. Re EFF ... when they finally declare that they will be accepting bitcoin donations it is going to get plastered far and wide as the ultimate bitcoin endorsement, you and I can make sure of that.  (we'll call it the EFF rally) |
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