Shoudla bought that unit of Freeciv gold while it was available for only $1000 usd...

-MarkM-

Quote: "What else can they do if they can not lobby for government violence?"

What happened to the private police / private army "solutions"? Not cost-effective even with (even your victims having cheap easy access to) modern weapons systems?

-MarkM- (Oh yeah, sure, cheap easy smratbombs. Pigeon powered guidance systems or hologram-brightspot car-counter parts or what?)

Quote: "I pledge 1000 BTC if the girl is topless."

Are we talking something short enough to go on telly nice and late / wee hours to target the "intelligence 18 and up" market?

(Possibly needing titover 'shopping in some jurisdictions...)

-MarkM- (ooooh I want to hear your voiiiice, but only if you subscribe using bitcoin,,, all the coooolest singles do...)

Oh cool, when the megabucks get given out no-one will know wtf they are so there'll be all more for us!

-MarkM-

Nice. AD is a great ADD site, in the course of being distra^H^H^H^H^H^Heducated by following links I even learned wtf those liberish people in the economics section are on! Thanks.

-MarkM-

how to distinguish a missed/untreated string: really really JIVE jive piratejive otherjive superjive

Not to mention sed -e 's/^/I DID THIS ONE ALREADY>/'

-MarkM- (Or 's/^/<blink><green>/" "s/$/</green></blink>/' if its htlm strings...)

Wow I am glad I don't do Windows.

How is this project coming along? I am not much judge of whether guides / manuals are usable by Windows users because I tend to way over-estimate people's ability to make sense of guides / manuals. (If they can't make sense of unix style man pages well sheesh what would it take to make sense to them?)

I am bumping this because I might have an interest in keeping track of it which will be easier if it isn't way down deep out of sight. This way I can at least find it again by checking what threads I have actually written in.

-MarkM-

Because trying to accept bitcoins instead of whatever currency one normally retails things for is so ridiculously fraught with various hoops one has to jump through and maybe even daytrading one has to get into just to let someone give you $x.xx using bitcoins instead of using $ directly, I have been trying to figure out how a bot might be able to accomplush the feat instead of trying to make a retailer do it themselves using hours they probably should be using to do retailing instead of to do arcane forex stuff involving bitcoins.

How does the following sketch of a potential algorithm sound?:

- Do not offer to sell anything until enough DSM (DropShipperacceptedMoney) are on hand to cover the dropshipping of the product.

- Upon obtaining any currency of a kind a dropshipper will accept ("DSM"), select from dropshipables where cost is less than DSM on hand.

(The object of this is to avoid accepting any orders that we'd be unable to fill if we failed to sell customer's offered bitcoins.)

- Announce the availability of one of the products found by the select, if it found any. If not wait for more DSM to somehow become on hand.

- Upon receiving an inquiry as to price of the announced to be available product, look up current conversion rate of bitcoin into DSM, convert, and warn inquirer that price might already have changed depending on market conditions so better buy quick or inquire price again.

- Upon recieving bitcoins, sell them for DSM and go back to select from dropshippables step.

(If we recieved them from a customer, in re a product, order the dropshipping of the product, duh.)

- Now we know how much some of our DSM actually cost us in bitcoins. This could be useful to know when we get back to the look up price step, as we could plug it into the how one determines conversion rate. One could use the conversion rate one actually got one's current inventory of  DSM at to moderate in some way - exactly what way might be very debatable. Maybe always use whichever conversion is better for the retailer, the past one or the current market one?

Is that about it for the basics?

Then of course things like "do you want to gimme some bitcoin up front to automatically buy this product for you if ever I see it can be gotten for the amount of bitcoins you want to gimme up front to work with?"

-MarkM-

Where are the project threads how many of them are there and do the people actually report their progress or have to be constantly prodded in order to even consider putting in some more work on the project?

-MarkM-

Once retailer-friendly "buy now using bitcoin" buttons are working...

It would be interesting to make some pages like

Buy this item now using $USD, only {bc$price+propagandicmodifier}...

Or buy using $USD for only {bitcoins that result in bc$price $ in retailer's $ account}...

Or buy that many bitcoins now for only bc$price $USD !!!

NOTICE you could buy the bitcoins to use cheaper than you could simply
buy the darn product! Sheesh, only a bonehead would buy it with directly,
any fool can see it is better to use bitcoins, duh!

-MarkM-

I don't see any catch. How much work is involved in such an undertaking?

Especially if the person haunts forum/irc a lot (maybe even too much ) ?

-MarkM-

Earlier today on IRC it came to my attention that there does not seem to be a simple straightforward way to add accepting of bitcoins to a retailer's normal day to day retailing.

Take a simple buy now button for example.

I should be able to have a buy (my 125 kopeks or 2.5 whatsits or 45 thingamajigs price) item using bitcoin button that, when the user uses it to buy my item, gives me my whateveritwasiwanteds in my thosethingsIwanted account.

I should not have to daytrade bitcoins nor have any interest in how much bitcoins are worth other than being able to be confident that the button-service isn't going to scare away my customers by charging my customer far more bitcoins than my price in my units of account are worth in the eyes of a knowledgeable bitcoin-using customer.

It is really true that no such buttons have so far been implemented?

Even for relatively common whatretaileractualwants things/currencies as $USD or $CDN even if not yet kopeks or thingamajigs?

-MarkM-

So if the situation seems to be the case, turn on your mining in your client, duh! ?

Also maybe it would help if "get through to each other even if both are behind NAT / firewall" were included?

Usually a firewall will allow a remote machine to send packets in to you on a port you already tried to send out to them on, especially if the packets are coming from the exact port on the other box that you tried to reach... ?

-MarkM-

I thought the clients themselves mine too, at least if they have the incoming port open?

(So all the puny clients would "confirm" transactions among themselves, until some huge mining consortium trivially creates a longer chain in moments, invalidating hours days weeks or whatever of work by the puny clients?)

(I am thinking a lot of people might not leave their client running 24/7...)

-MarkM-

What about anti-monopoly laws? Is it bad to prevent monopolisation or merely that only a monopoly on the disallowing of monopolies can prevent monopolies from forming?

-MarkM-

Looking into the complexities of trying to accept Bitcoin as a retailer, I realised that in all the years since Digitalis Cluster used to run on a BBS the agnostic pricelists it used have not become something I hae seen anyhere else yet other than currency markets.

The basic idea was a trader in a ship at a starport knowing local currency might well be totally useless on other planets might prefer to perceive the local prices in terms of almost any item that happens to be on the pricelist.

If a retailer could let browsers of their site see prices denominated in whatever currency that particular visitor to the site is thinking of using to purchase with, it would not be necessary to even reveal to the prospective customer what currency the owner of the site actually maintains it's own account(s) in. All the merchant would need do is tell the shopping cart system which currency the prices they are telling it are in and let the shopping cart / payment processing system take care of converting that into the visitor's currency both in the price lists and, eventually, at checkout.

Cluster's agnostic pricelists were even more agnostic than that. Pick any item on the price list and have the list displayed in terms of that item's list price.

Making it clear to the visitor that all the prices are of course based on the current market values of all the commodities or at least those of all he commodities that like to think of themselves as currencies or that have historically often been used as if they were some kind of currency could provide a rationalisation to the person browsing the site for why the longer they take to get to the cashout without refreshing the page the more the prices of any or all items might have changed by the time they do "check out".

This would be similar to the case of a PayPal-using merchant who chooses to maintain their PayPal account in some specific currency they prefer for their own use whilst customers pay using any currency PayPal implements, but, it would not require alienating potential customers by failing to present one's prices in terms of their own pet/favourite/fiated currency.

No risk of bitcoin users seeing your prices are not denominated in bitcoins and thus avoiding you as not catering (pandering?) sufficiently to bitcoin. No risk of U.S. dollar users seeing all your prices expressed in bitcoins instead of in dollars.

Ability to keep your money in swiss francs without having to also show your prices as being in swiss francs. Let the visitor see your prices as they would have been in their chosen currency had they bought instead of bringing up the price list. Do they want to refresh the price list to see how much the price has changed since last they refreshed the page or get to the checkout before it changes more than they are comfortable with?

The big advantage Cluster had of course was it had no intention/capability of changing what a given planet's local-currency price was for each thing. The type of planet it's population etc determined it's prices for each thing and even it's population was not dynamic, it was merely a repeatable random number generator so necessarily always produced the same planet every time.

The underlying problem here seems to be market volatility. It is hard to know how many icecream cones your merchandise is worth if the price of icecream cones changes from moment to moment.

But there should be no need to reveal to customers whether your own internal accounting is in icecream cones or tons of rocket fuel or some made up unpronounceable local currency that only that planet alone in all the petabillions of galaxies ever even heard of.

(Though Cluster did in fact by default display prices in just such a previously unheard of currency local to the particular planet.)

If shops could actually display their prices in terms of bitcoin instead of merely accepting bitcoin that might decrease the "necessity" of figuring out "how many dollars is that" or "how many kopeks is that" each time you consider using bitcoin instead of dollars or kopeks to buy something.

If all the prices are in dollars, it kind of seems more convenient to simply spend dollars than to go look up how many dollars I could get for a bitcoiun right now.

Why should I have to even think about that? Show me the prices in bitcoins. Or in kopecks. Heck in any currency you accept. And if you can do that and you happen to sell monkeywrenches heck I wonder what the other things' prices would look like if you display it all in terms of moneywrenches. No big reason not to be able to, is there?

-MarkM-

Cool. I am still there aka here. Though the phone number on my WHOIS records is out of date as I have no phone at all. (If I tried to change it I'd have to change it to 902-555-1212 aka directory inquiries, so haven't bothered trying.)

For Amway related matters though my upline, K-PC Ltee on Agricola Street, would be happy to take such calls. They are in the phone book and also at http://www.k-pcltee.com/ (but don't take BitCoin yet themselves, have to nip over there and chat with them soon...)

(Of  course if you have Dan's cellphone number you could pass messages through him conceivably.)

As to the community being small, well of course it is, otherwise as an Amway Global IBO I would not be "advertising" so openly. This is me to this small group of people, not mass advertising, presumably. Other folk should probably ask their own friendly neighborhood Amway IBO if they are interested in Amway products and or services. They can cash out their bitcoin to whatever their local IBO does accept or talk their IBO into accepting BitCoin.

Mainly I wanted to dispell the illusion that Bitcoin cannot be used for a whole gamut of standard stuff such as can be obtained through Amway or it's partner stores. No need to keep saying there isn't much one can use Bitcoin to buy.

-MarkM-

I only know English and computer-languages, but I have filters that "translate" English into various "jive" type "dialects" would they suffice or would it be better to break out (separate) implementing the yaml/translation (localisation) facilities from actually nonmechanically-translating into some actual non-English language? I can grammar and typo fix (proofread) English along the way of course.

-MarkM-

Sure there are, you just have to print them on the right quantities of the right heavy elements and deliver them the right way...

-MarkM-

Hi, I am an Amway Global Independent Business Operator.

I have heard there might be a demand for products and services buyable with BitCoins.

Do any of Amway Global's product and/or service offerings fit any such demands?

If so, I am open for offers denominated in BitCoins...

-MarkM- (In business as Digitalis Data Services since 1980 but as Amway IBO only since hmm not sure but less than a decade I think.)