keep a unprotected list of the public addresses and look the current balance up on blockchain.info.

More advanced solution is to make a "watching wallet" (contains only the public addresses so it can't spend coins).  Armory client and blockchain.info ewallet can both produce this.  I also believe there is a service somewhere which will monitor the value of an address.

gas (or any combustable heating source) can never be more than 100% efficient.  Law of conservation of energy.  1 BTU of chemical energy in natural gas can at most produce 1 BTU of usable heat.

The very best modern furnaces are 92% to 97% efficient.  Older cheaper furnaces are in the 80%.  If you have a furnace more than 20 years old it is likely is sub 80% efficiency. 

That being said you probably aren't interested in the EFFICIENCY on natural gas heat you are interested in the ECONOMICS.  Natural gas is very cheap in the US (in terms of $/BTU) so even at a lower efficiency the cost per BTU of heat added to the house will generally be less than a electric radiator (to include GPU rig).  How much cheaper?  Depends on a) electric rate, b) nat gas rate, c) furnace efficency but as a ballpark it is roughly 30% to 50% cheaper (per usable BTU).

0.2

Yeah the two concerns are future access and security. 

What is the specs of the closed source dmg format?  Who knows.  Does it have an easily exploitable cryptographic flaw? Who knows.  In 20 or 30 or 50 years will Apple still produce OS capable of using that file format?  Who knows.

While there is nothing wrong with how you make a backup, using an open standard (like an AES encrypted text file) would ensure higher future compatibility and the security is more transparent.

This is an obviously false statement.  The jackpot is paid by a 0.5% reduction in the "normal" payout.  The game is negative expectation.  Then again all gambling games with house advantage are negative expectation.  You don't need to lie or mislead customers, people using the site are expecting to gamble not invest.

I would point out extension attacks are only possible when the payload is of arbitrary size.  Bitcoin blockheaders are fixed sized, exactly 640 bits not a bit more or a bit less.   Thus even if you found a payload which has a longer length but generates the same hash it wouldn't be a valid bitcoin blockheader and thus would be rejected by the network.

Still it is possible that Satoshi either didn't understand this or misunderstood the implications of a extension attack and used the double hash as a method to "prevent" the attack.  It certainly is plausible and is the most likely explanation I have heard so far.

There is no need.  1xxxx is a Bitcoin address (3xxxx is a Bitcoin P2SH address).   Lxxxx is a Litecoin address.  Pxxxx is a PeePee Coin address.

Writing

instead of just


is simply being verbose.

I would ask

a) what makes something real money?  When they give you a tortured definition I would name things which fail to fit that definition.  foreign currency, gold, silver, silver reserve notes, digital "dollars" (like value in a bank account).

b) does it matter?  For the sake of the argument pretend Bitcoin IS PLAY money.  If I can exchange this "play money" for both USD (or other "real" money) and goods/services is there any value in the definition of real vs play.

If they still don't get it ... well they don't want to get it.   They will get it in 15-20 years when their favorite celebrity is talking about how Bitcoin is the "IN" thing.

The OP is an idiot and don't really care to participate in the rantings and ravings of loos.

Still I thought I would correct a factual mistake by BkkCoin.  The Satoshi client doesn't send change back to an existing address, it always sends change to an unused address from the address pool.

Saying 1.5 billion users are necessary to reach a "tipping" point is just silly.  PayPal has 100 million users.  If Bitcoin had more users than PayPal it likely erase the very need for PayPal and virtually every other person to person payment platform on the planet.

PayPal has a large enough network effect that if it weren't for the downsides (centralized control, seziure of funds, inability for everyone to get an account due to AML/KYC requirements, etc) the number of accounts would likely BE in the billions.

Where is the tipping point?  Hell I don't know for sure but I would say on the magnitude of tens of millions not billions of active users.

You could make a currency based on OS/2 floppy discs.  I know they aren't making any more of those.

We have sold LoC notes denominated in dollars using BTC as a transfer mechanism.  These are private notes though we favor dealing with a few sophisticated investors than trying to compete in the ponzi-o-rama (3% per week, no 5% per week, no 7% per week, no 1.2% per day, no ∞ per millisecond).

Trying to do it on GLBSE (or any exchange) would be very difficult.  Even the IPO would be tough because if you want a fixed dollar face value the amount paid in BTC is going to continually vary.  GLBSE (or any exchange) could with minimal change in code support dollar denominated assets (traded w/ BTC).  Look at bitmit.net as inspiration.  They allow sellers to sell dollar denominated products in BTC by showing the price in USD with the continually adjusting BTC equivalent.

Come on Joel that is painfully easy (and not a good analogy).  In your example of course there was consideration.  You paid the dealership for the car.

Your $$$  -->  Dealership  = consideration.

You wouldn't have given them money without them giving you the car and neither would have happened without the promise.  Still in real world you would still be SOL because the sales contract would exclude any verbal promises expressed or implied.

Sent a PM.  Just to be absolutely clear we won't accept payment by any reversible method (PayPal, CC, etc).  If you attempt to do so you will be stuck paying escrow fees.   You pay all fee including our $10 ACH cashout fee.

Nice catch.  Clearly an attempt to spoof a know user.  Daily Anarchist is spelled properly in avatar and website link.

The trolls in the prior thread missed the mark.  It is possible for skilled players to be +EV in the long run and staking players is common in the poker world.

However the OP is asking for a stake without any proof of skill, prior win history, or stats.  That is just asinine.  Someone is better off sending their money to Satoshi Dice.  At least that is provably fair.

Yes.  ING offers no business checking accounts so there is no option for instant payment. We can forward ING payments to our company bank accounts.  We are currently conducting a limited trial.  However understand that is a normal ACH so the standard 3-5 day delay applies, there is nothing "instant" about it.  So it is more like; deposit $x, lock exchange rate, wait 3-5 days, we deliver BTC.

Each node can choose which tx to include in the block they are working on.

As for why a node might not include all tx.  Larger blocks take longer to propogate so miners risk increased chance their block will be orphaned.  So miners may choose to limit the # of tx or not include free tx when block is over a certain size.

Still there is no hard rule other than a 512K soft limit and 1024K hard limit. An individual miner/pool can choose to include all tx or none in the next block.

.39000001

Which is why IMHO the optimal solution is some cryptographic based smart property type system.  Now asset owners and shareholders could CHOOSE to use a smart-property compatible exchange for ease and liquidity but that wouldn't be a requirement.  The shareholder-asset-owner relationship should be able to survive the removal of the exchange.

I mean lets step back.  What happens tomorrow if Nefario is arrested by the UK equivelent of the SEC and the servers seized?  Is the answer "Oops?".