There isn't anything technically wrong with your post. But with the above sentence you are just preying on the lack of education in the database technology. In particular this is just a rehash of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_model databases that were unsuccessfully standardized under CODASYL in 1968 (and over a few years later).

I blame it on C.J.Date's Introduction to Database Management Systems that in the fifth(?) edition lost the entire sections about the Hierarchical Model and the Network Model and greatly expanded the Relational Model section. C.J.Date was then employed by the IBM's DB2 group if I'm not mistaken. Anyone can still ask a librarian to borrow e.g. Third Edition and have a nice trip to the past where the NoSQL's roamed the Earth together with the other mainframe dinosaurs.

The "right" chain is the chain that is supported by the exchange that is willing to swap your coins for other things of value. Any discrepancies between the exchanges are decided by the arbitrageurs with capital, not by eggheads with propaganda position papers.

That is the difference between the real financial systems and the long-cons trading baloney.

I disagree that such a combination would be safer and easier to audit. Java and C++ runtimes are very hard to properly interface, especially in the exception handling and threading aspects. So the purported audit would not only involve auditing the code of the Bitcoin core but also auditing a large portion of the Java runtime.

One could make one or two restrictions in the mixed architecture you're proposing:

1) C/C++ code are only "leaves" on the call tree, i.e. only Java calls C++, C++ never calls Java.

2) "Java" is understood to mean not "validated standard conforming Java" but "subset of Java supported by the gcj ahead-of-time compiler" matched with the gcc/g++ used for the C/C++ code.

otherwise the mixed-language program will have a large minefield in the inter-language interface layer.

Edit:

Historical note: if "Java" would mean "Microsoft Visual J++" with J/Direct instead of JNI as an inter-language layer that could also work relatively smoothly. Those things are of historical interest only although there is at least one vendor in Russia that still maintains a Java toolchain that is unofficially compatible with the historical code: http://www.excelsior-usa.com/ .

Maybe it is true where you live. Where I live C++ enjoys resurgence in the form of superset/subset language SystemC, where certain things about the programs can be proven.

Likewise, gmaxwell posted here information about new research where a specific C subset (targeting specific TinyRAM architecture) can be used to produce machine-verifiable proofs. AFAIK this is still a long-shot option for Bitcoin, not something usable currently.

My comment here pertains to the consensus-critical code in the dichotomy you've mentioned later.
 

I couldn't understand this too, when I was younger and inexperienced. After few years on Bitcointalk I started to better understand the psychology of the hustlers that associate here. The old saying is "it is not about the catch, it is about the chase". For a hustler the good hustle is better than orgasm, money is just a nice thing on a side.

Selling bitcoins to pay refunds denominated in bitcoins?

Our intellectual bulldozer seems to be running on the last fumes to power his bulldozery.

I always had trouble understanding the "fun" part in "scamming Bitcoiners for fun and profit", but after reading some threads in the mining section I think I begin to understand how some people derive fun in those situations.

It wouldn't be "just for Bitcoin", but would be "where Bitcoin-related programs are particuarly short". I would presume that it would have (at least some) 256-bit registers and the elliptic curve operations would be single instructions.

For the similar projects please skim through the zk-SNARK paper to get a high-level overview of the Tiny-RAM machine (and related GNU C compiler back-end) implemented there.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/507.pdf

The goals are also somewhat similar to the goals of SystemC, a C++ subset/superset.

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

The main objective is that the architecture must be so precisely defined as to allow automatic synthesis of equivalent digital circuits and machine-generated proofs about some programs expressed in that language/bytecode.

It has function call operator (used in P2SH) that allows implementation of iteration through recursion, so this old chestnut should better die.

I think you are overstating the importance of the "user experience" and discounting the value provided by "robot experience" (by robot I mean the indexing and search engines). One of the most important factors of the growth of "web" was that HTML became some approximation of the lowest common denominator of information interchange. XML family of standards tried, but failed to improve on the HTML model with this regard.

I don't want to devalue your insight, but here is a recent example of "UX uber alles" problem:

http://torrentfreak.com/fail-mpaa-makes-legal-content-unfindable-google-141122/

exhibited by the "overapplification" of the user experience. I'm sorry for the ugly, hastily coined word. I don't know the better term. But from my childhood I still remember a paper pop-up book for "Puss in boots" which could be animated by hands. It was very cute, but didn't meaningfully improve the classic text printed in the plain book.

Edit: One more link from today that is tangentially related to the subject matter:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/11/23/1714255/blame-america-for-everything-you-hate-about-internet-culture

You forgot to add one important issue for Bitcoiners:

 - the entire development toolchain for Trezor is open source, whereas dedicated secure micro-controllers frequently have only proprietary toolchains that cost money, are closed source and may require signing onerous non-disclosure agreements and other encumberances.

 

Yeah, but the "fitness testing" would take way more than 10 minutes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Koza had run this type of experiments (not in cryptocurrency though).

By itself Bitcoin's "chain with the highest sum of proof-of-works" will tend to favor fastest functions, not the best hash functions. Somebody with heavily optimizing compiler, SAT-solver or similar optimization tool could then exploit such coins that don't extensively test the evolved hash functions.

The problem with true random changes to the algorithm is that most of the resultant mutated algorithms have some deadly fault that makes it unsuitable as a proof of work. You'll have to incorporate the ideas of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_programming and constantly monitor and test the fitness of the mutated algorithms to being a properly working hash function. Otherwise your algorithm evolution will turn into cancer that produces exploitable hash functions.

Because of the wife and 3 year old kid of dmwardjr.

Each engineer (like dropt) will have some ethical responsibility to warn the readers against duplicating the dangerous electrical work.

If that was just dmwardjr doing an elaborate suicide in private that would be OK. But here we have innocent wife and kid, and some readers that may attempt to do similarly dangerous "farm upgrade".

Edit: Lots of posts and pictures got deleted, so I'll do a quick summary: residential building, wood + plastic, basement looks "brick-like", but may be "decorative brick slices mounted on plywood". Owner brags about installing rosewood (and some other) wood panelling. Mentions wife and 3 y.o. kid living in the same structure. US electrical code requires derating to 80% load when installation doesn't have an "engineering supervision". Owner clearly isn't an engineer, makes rather simple mistakes in calculations, doesn't seem to be using any measurement equipment to verify and monitor his work. No firefighting equipment in sight. Essentially a tinderbox coffin and wind tunnel combo with an electrical ignition.

Don't do that at home.

From the game-theoretic point of view this is dubious. Assume the existence of two alliances: B & F. Alliance B uses Bitcoin-based financial system without fractional reserve. Alliance F uses the conventional debt-based financial system.

F issues war bonds to finance war of aggression against B. Because B is not capable of financing its own defense it gets easily conquered by F. F then subjugates the people of B and robs their natural resources to pay off the war bonds issued. By demolishing all B's massive mining farms it also significantly increases the availability of cheap electricity. 

It would appear that the adopters of Bitcoin necessarily put themselves at disadvantage in a military conflict or that your model needs further refinement.

At last we somewhat converge in our opinion. Even to the anarchist issuing licenses is acceptable so long as those licenses are issued by a private concern with recognizable brand name and status symbol cachet (Tesla,BMW,Mercedes,...) and not by some governmental authority.

The main resultant difference is in the hashrate required. A general-purpose monetary blockchain that is supposed to serve all comers needs high hashrate and high participation to have reasonable safety. In a special-purpose blockchain that serves only licensed users high hash rate is not required because hashing serves mostly as an error-detecting and fraud-detecting mechanism.

I did a brief analysis over 2 years ago in my long-term mining prognosis post (from the signature):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91101.0

Because it is effectively a reductio ad absurdum of the whole^* Bitcoin concept you are not likely to get much response or discussion about the idea.

Edit: ^(*) Not really the whole, but mostly the might-makes-right aspect of the current proof-of-work.

I can't blame you for quoting accurately. So the remaining question is: what to do when fact-checking an authority shows him to be a bullshit artist?

Edit: Let me try to translate Vitelik's bulshiteese into more straightforward English:

Bullshit detector tripped!

Floating point since forever had two flavors: binary and decimal. The most well known standards are: IEEE 754-1985, IEEE 854-1987 & IEEE 754-2008. The only remaining question is which flavor of bullshit is being served here:

1) undereducated/incompetent
2) intentional deception/preliminary setup for future fraud
3) two-for-the-price-of-one mixture of the above

Standard links for those who are not afraid of the truth and not afraid to admit that they may have slept through some lecture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_floating_point
http://speleotrove.com/decimal/
 

Well, Tesla Motors is very new, and I don't know much about it. But two other well known car brands: BMW & Mercedes already have the incentive for decentralized ownership tracking and counterfeit detection. In fact they are desperately researching all available technologies, because the theft, counterfeiting and reassembling of partially totaled cars are so prevalent. E.g. I know that they (and the car insurers) paid for a pilot program of DNA-marking the genuine products with killed harmless genetically engineered bacteria mixed into paints. They (BMW & Mercedes) operate in so many jurisdictions that none of the centralized solutions have been working out for them. In particular counterfeiting and reassembly of wrecks is of interest to buyers and resellers because of how they affect collision safety of those expensive cars. For sellers being able to include uninterrupted record of periodic maintenance greatly increases the price.

Outside of the automotive business I know that Cisco is one of the globally recognized names that is also desperately researching ownership tracking and counterfeit detection technologies.

Edit: I forgot to add one thing: even before I joined this forum in 2011 I spoke with an IT executive in insurance who was interested to use Bitcoin/Namecoin/altcoin variant for tracking relevant non-financial transactional information to facilitate truly global market for health, ship & plane insurance. This Tesla and cars discussion distracted me from the original thought I meant to write.

It is just above: Flashman's example of a blockchain specific to cars made by Tesla Motors. The incentive would be tracking of ownership and detecting counterfeits. I just don't know much about those cars besides that they are electric, expensive and a status symbol.

The ROM dump will give you a single Tesla Motors mining license. By sending a sudden flood of TM-blocks with your TM-license ID you'll identify yourself as a thief and fraud. Your GPU scheme will collapse and all Tesla owners will be made aware of that.

In your original example Tesla Motors is a good central point for issuance of the licenses to mine on the Tesla Motors blockchain and is a way to distinguish true Tesla Motors cars from counterfeit ones. There's no point for providing "incentive to mine" because the cars are "mined" only in the factory and "mining" is just a way of distributed tracking of the ownership and detection of counterfeits.

The rest of your message where you switch back to talking about Bitcoin and anarchy can simply serve as an entertainment when contrasted with a nearby message:

Again: licensed mining was extensively discussed here and on other forums years ago. It was rejected for Bitcoin as inconsistent with the goals of the project. But it is still a viable solution where the existence of a centralized or distributed authority is not questioned.