Can we get a new graph made that predicts future generation based on past average block intervals, as opposed to the target intervals?  I understand that past performance doesn't lead to future performance, but for a while yet it might prove to be a better indicator of the pace of bitcoin generation.

Mish has been saying deflation is baked in since q2007, and he was right.  If I had listened to anyone else, I would have lost a small fortune out of my 401k.  As it stands, I did listen and lost very little during the crash.  Mish has been less of a deflationist as of late, but still contends that hyperinflation not a realistic threat, because as bad as QE is for the dollar, 600 Billion isn't a drop in the bucket against the deflationary forces at play, and black swans don't fly in from the direction that the majority are watching.  If so many in mainstream media are talking about hyperinflation, then hyperinflation would be avoided; even if some inflation is not.

I saw that long ago, and you can't imagine how many different people have sent me that same link.

Perhaps if your electricity is otherwise free to use, such as you live in Canada and only have electro-resistive heat anyway, but you are probably still talking about a 7+ year ROI.  Otherwise your average time for ROI would probably be longer than your lifetime, and might approach infinity.

That's interesting, but not uncommon for children of wealthy origins to rebel against what their own family represents, and their actual family members.  It doesn't negate my statement.  I was being factious, as I have no knowledge of your background, but just because you may have rejected your family doesn't mean that there isn't a trust fund waiting for your return to the family fold.

Actually, that's not true.  Strong encryption, regardless of the nature of the information, is (rather rediculously) considered a 'munition' under US export law.  Depending on how a court looks at this law, it's either unconstitutional or the exportation of such encryption methods gets the sender sent to prison for violation of international trade bans on weapons.  So it's a pretty good thing that Bitcoin doesn't actually encrypt anything itself, but I'm not sure that a court would be savvy enough to know the differences.

To be clear, for the benefit of our resident trust fund baby who travels the world meeting poor people; taxation is by it's nature, the use or threat of force to compel someone to support a social structure that they would not do so otherwise.  This may be a neccessary evil, but it is still evil; so the ideal answer for society is to limit the government to a set few functions that can only be performed with the use of collective force.  Aid of the poor is not one of those functions, as there are other solutions that have been successful in the past.

It is ignorace of the nature of governments, that they are constructs that are developed (even in democratic societies) to manage and direct the "legitimate" use of violence, that is leading to the breakdown of civil society in Europe as well as the United States.  This is the only purpose of armies, courts and law enforcement anywhere in the world; the only difference between such a government in a modern Western democracy and a third world dictator is who gets to decide what is a legitimate use of that force.


As such, governments everywhere are notoriously bad at managing social support networks, (because it's it beyond their realm of expertise) while generally being quite effective at the functions of government wherein controlled violence is the primary objective, such as warfighting and border defenses.

The later the better.  The longer that governments wait to act, the stronger the bitcoin network grows, and the harder it becomes to harm it.

That's an opinion, and it might be a fine one, but I have one as well.

I think that a lot of this run up was pent up demand due to the MtGox PayPal scandal.  Once payment processing was solved, dollars were trying to get into MtGox to find it's level, and now it has.  I imagine that the slow march back towards parity will continue, but the voltility of the past two weeks will be dampened for a time.

You would want to use silver silverware, silver has surface anti-bacterial properties, which is why it was made into eating utensils for centuries.

Gold does not corrode, so it makes a wonderful contact conductor, even though silver has a lower natural resistance.

Gold is not toxic to human life, as lead, uranium, thorsium and a great many other heavy elements happen to be, so it can easily replace a number of those other elements in things that need to be dense, such as ships ballast weights, exercise weights, radiation shielding, etc.

Gold is also a soft metal, so is a better bullet material than lead, copper or berrillium.

Gold also can be spread so thin, that it's semitransparent, and has the natural ability to filter dangerous light frequencies, as well as other forms of radiation, when used in this way.  The first spacewalk suits had gold plated visors for this very reason.

If atomized, gold atoms can be charged and shot through electromagneticly charged screens, and be used as a particularly efficient reactionary mass for electric ion drives on space ships, whenever that comes to pass.  The heavier the charged particle, the more efficient the ion drive can be.


Gold is resistant to chemical reactions, so gold can be very effective as a liner for dangerous or otherwise corrosive chemical storage tanks.

Those are just a few possibilities off the top of my head.

We've been thirty years from "Fountain of Paradise" for as long as I have been alive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Although we actually have the tech to do this, just not the capital or political will...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

I'm sure we will get there eventually, as a species, if we aren't wiped out by one of those asteroids first.

We actually do know how  to make gold, but it's just incrediblely expensive and dangerous to do.  The only threat to the value of gold is a process that reduces the energy input and dangerous nature of doing so.  This might actually be possible, if starting with an element that is heavier than gold itself, such as depleted uranium.  If it were possible, I'd be all for it, since gold has numerous industrial uses that are limited only by gold's cost.

The economic monetary systems would adjust.

Yeah, I went there and used it.  It's not very intuitive, and looks like an abandoned high school computer class project.  Needs refinement.

This makes me wonder if bang-paths are still a supported routing method, since I haven't done it myself in over a decade, but Wikipedia implies that it is still so...

"Current use and legacy

<snip>

"Bang path" is also used as an expression for any explicitly specified routing path between network hosts. That usage is not necessarly limited to uucp, IP routing, email messaging, or Usenet."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP#Current_use_and_legacy

I mean like isp.com!near.router.backbone.org!far.router.backbone.org!otherisp.org

It's not automatic by any means, but it is certainly ad hoc routing.  At least by any definition that I've ever heard.

Generating new addresses for each transaction doesn't increase your risks of a collision.  The risk is not simply the risk of a collision alone, but also the maximum potential losses that such a collision could represent.  A single collision with one of your many addresses only exposes the coins associated with that particular address, not the total amount of bitcoins that said wallet.dat can access.  Reuse of addresses may limit your raw risks of a collision, but reuse also increases your maximum potential losses since more bitcoins are concentrated under fewer addresses over time.  Either way, the risks are so small as to be astronomically unlikely.  If a collision were to ever occur, even intentionally, it would be big news if someone could prove that it had occurred.

If a faster path is available, what would prevent one from using a bang-path?  Are you just recommending an incentive for providers to provide for said low-latency paths?

I don't get it.  Latency is certainly an issue, but isn't it a bit of a physical hardware issue?  How could a p2p network of any kind improve latency?  Are my ping times going to improve to my favorite game server?