So far i keep reading lots of vague information & buzzwords on the net about Ripple, and I still cannot figure what it exactly is and what it will actually do.
Would somebody care to explain it to me in few simple words ?
It's a payment system like paypal that supports any money anyone would want to accept through it but it's open source, more decentralized and essentially free. |
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Cool idea but what stops a tool from reading the QR code and sending a payment? :O
That's not the point. The point is to make each attempt cost a bit of wealth which is basically meaningless to an actual user but which will add up to being very expensive for someone who wants to use a bot. This was a long time coming and I'm very happy someone put the work into it and made it happen! |
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Watching the lecture now. PS: Anyone knows how to embed a youtube video?
You can't. EDIT: what an excellent lecture. Thanks for posting this! |
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RE: the bitcoin.org homepage: I think replacing the links to Bitcoin-Qt on the hompage with just a link to the clients page is a good idea. Somebody should get the consensus to do that and submit a pull request.
That would be great but also the client page could use some work because too many choices can likewise paralyze someone from downloading anything.. If you'd like I can come up with a few suggestions for how the clients page could be improved. |
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Bitcoin is anyone running the Bitcoin software connected into a peer to peer network that is a payment system with a digital currency.
(technical pitch)
Bitcoin is a method of transferring wealth to anyone, anywhere, anytime, at almost no cost and with virtually no chance of fraud.
(business pitch)
Bitcoin is money that is based on freedom, honesty, progress and complete control over your finances.
(general public pitch)
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See where I'm coming from?  I do but I disagree with you on this one. Half a penny, however insignificant and small, just does not equal zero. But anyway, I'm a big fun of what you do, I just like to speak my mind and this one line of an otherwise excellent interview irked me a bit so I had to bring it up. |
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I love the work that you guys do!
But Erik, why do you say Bitcoin has no fees?
Two answers: 1) Bitcoin can be sent without a fee. This is a fact. 2) The normal fee that is included with typical transactions is so god damn tiny that it may as well be nothing. A fee that is a fraction of a penny is not even worth discussing. I don't know.. it just rubs me the wrong way kind of like some kind of a salesman who wasn't entirely honest with me about his product/service. Yes it's true you can send bitcoins without a fee but this has consequences, consequences that for many are not practical to deal with and therefor they pretty much need to pay a fee. And a super small fee isn't equal to no fee. I don't know why, you can't just be honest and say "The fees are practically nothing and plus they're optional!" - that would sound a lot better to me than telling someone "Bitcoin has no fees!" and then they research it and they learn "Oh wait, seems like there are fees here after all.. Hmm if they lied about this, what else did they lie about??". Do you know where I'm coming from? We have a hard enough time with skepticism and wild theories as it is, I just don't see why it would be a good idea to risk making things even harder on us and our case for Bitcoin. |
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I love the work that you guys do!
But Erik, why do you say Bitcoin has no fees?
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Today Gavin released a Core Development Status Report #2: https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=85Core Development Status Report #2
Gavin Andresen Dec 21 2012
Since my last status update the core development team has continued to make steady progress. We have no spectacular new world-changing features to announce, but that should be expected– in my experience, the best way to be successful is to try to make steady progress towards your goals every day. But expect that reaching your goals almost always takes longer than you expect, because you always run into unexpected setbacks and detours.
It was a pretty good month for making steady progress on the reference code; the only setback was a little time taken to roll out a 0.7.2 minor bug-fix release (release notes and binary downloads at SourceForge).
..
..
.. Continue at the link above. While I'm happy that things are moving along I am personally very disappointed that he is saying he intends to spend a lot of time on something that other services as layers on top of Bitcoin like bitpay or paysius can easily solve instead of solving the number one issue that the majority of new people to Bitcoin have to deal with: the reference client. bitcoin.org still primarily directs them to the full node reference client which means that even though this will get quite a bit better with 0.8.0 it's still a huge pain, especially for the mainstream "I want to use it right now!" userbase that I'm pretty sure we'd all like to see adopt Bitcoin ASAP. Not to mention it still has serious holes in wallet security that malware can easily abuse. Gavin, do you not know it's better to focus and do one thing and do it great instead of spreading out your attention on many things and doing them marginally? Unfortunately he isn't regulated by consumption i.e. his work does not depend on profit/loss incentives so I doubt he'll change his mind about his priorities. I strongly think I'm right about this issue and I just hope someone else will come a long willing to develop the reference client to do just one thing and do that spectacularly so it can start appealing to the masses. |
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Good. We now know which side of the fence CNN is on .... is about the only positive thing to come out of such an affront to intelligence.
Only now we know? You can't be serious. The corporate media propaganda machine always was and always will be serving the interest that owns it. Just go and see who pays their bills and you'll have your answer why they could never ever be a source for truth. |
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It isn't a fallacy (and most certainly isn't 'begging the question') -
Of course people have no better means to protect themselves from a large group (security force) than having their own large group to defend.
I never conceded that your assumption that a person would only be able to defend themselves vs a larger force by hiring a security firm. Basing a question on that being accepted as true therefor makes it a fallacy of begging the question. The fact is we don't know how an individual would acquire enough firepower to defend themselves. Would he own missiles? How about flying robots? Maybe a sentry machine gun? Maybe DNA based chemical weapons? Would he ask his friends and family living nearby for help? Would he form a neighborhood watch of sorts with his neighbors and call them? You assume it's a security firm, while the truth is WE DON'T KNOW how it would happen because ultimately only a market regulated strictly by consumption i.e. a free market can figure that out. It is a fallacy because you assume you are correct that the form of defense vs a larger force will be a security firm and then you imagine a problem this creates and you ask us to solve it. Well, I don't agree this problem would exist in the first place because I don't agree a security firm would be hired in the first place. |
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Aren't you being presumptuous with a vision of every individual in society being a "one man army" who can deal with everything?
I'm not because I never said that. But you called it a fallacy. Why? Because I never conceded that the assumption that the only way anyone could get protection is by hiring a security agency.That would be a black & white fallacy, whether or not it's a vaild question or not. Regardless, quote please, or it didn't happen.  Well, I'm not that motivated at the moment, so I'm fine with it not happening. But Hazek's accusation was basically a sophisticated Ad Hominem attack. He criticised the quality of the question, calling it a fallacy of the kind where it's really a criticism that draws its conclusions from earlier assumptions. So I asked where those assumptions were... And it seems I was right. Hazek was making assumptions. Firefop never said this: the only way anyone could get protection is by hiring a security agency. Hazek assumed. The fallacious assumption behind that fallacious question: Lets start with privately funded security.
What happens when one such security provider becomes tyrannical and starts abusing people?
is that there will be a need for a private funded security. I never conceded that people would need private funded security, the OP just assumed that that is what would happen, that that is how people would provide for their security. I don't think I can spell it out any more clearly than that. |
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Aren't you being presumptuous with a vision of every individual in society being a "one man army" who can deal with everything?
I'm not because I never said that. But you called it a fallacy. Why? Because I never conceded that the assumption that the only way anyone could get protection is by hiring a security agency. |
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Aren't you being presumptuous with a vision of every individual in society being a "one man army" who can deal with everything?
I'm not because I never said that. |
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That being said - Isn't it interesting that the people he ignores for being bad people, are actually much more respectful of others than he is? I mean the rest of us are actually having a conversation and trying to learn something here... and he's just being insulting and advocating writing off anyone who doesn't agree with him.
In my opinion he is not wrong, but he is not being productive either. I will also strongly condemn anyone who uses the initiation of violence against other people in order to get them to obey their arbitrary rules but I might try and persuade them with an argument first. Perhaps he feels he exhausted that option.. |
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Lets start with privately funded security.
What happens when one such security provider becomes tyrannical and starts abusing people?
Fallacy: begging the question. You make an assumption that security is only provided by privately funded security businesses and then you make a conclusion that we ancaps should now argue against. Well many ancaps may fall into this trap, but I wont. I never conceded to your assumption that private security firms would be the only way security would be provided in an ancap society. Quite the opposite, I strongly think that in an ancap society people would generally realize that ultimately they themselves bare the responsibility for their security and that means they themselves would need to find ways of providing it. How does this change your argument? Well it changes it a lot. Originally your assumption (which I did not concede to) assumes that people have no choice, or better said no other means to protect themselves from a rouge agency that they hired to provide for their security. The truth however is much more likely that people would be highly capable of quickly dealing with such an agency and that even the threat of such a swift defense would be enough of a deterrent for such an agency to never even attempting it. And here's a broader point you have to understand about ancap theory. We ancaps usually, if we are honest, do NOT have almost any answers as to how certain problems in such a society would get solved. Why? Because the solutions could only ever come from a market regulated strictly by consumption i.e. a free market and not any single person. Just like no person 200 years ago could have given a correct or even an answer in the right neighborhood when asked how the fields would be worked on and food produced if slavery was abolished. But not having any answers is irrelevant. What are relevant are the foundational principles upon which a society is structured. It didn't matter that no one could have given the answer that "big metal machines with many consecutive tiny explosions of petroleum inside of them" would work the fields because all that was important was that if you want to live in a society that will offer you a good life, slavery couldn't be a principle upon which it was built. And this will be pretty much the same answer of an honest ancap to any of your "issues" you might raise of how an ancap society might solve certain problems: "We don't know, but it's also irrelevant that we don't. Our theory is valid because of the principles not because of the solutions any one of us might be able to imagine." Just because you don't have a good answer for a question doesn't mean it shouldn't be asked. I didn't say I don't have an answer, I said that the specific question you asked was a fallacy. But I also said that even if it weren't, even if you raised a valid question I couldn't answer it because only a market regulated strictly by consumption i.e. a free market could possibly answer it. And I also said that the fact that I couldn't answer it is irrelevant to the validity of the ancap theory. |
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That of course is up to you, but be advised that many may not afford you the privilege to conduct yourself in this manner in their communities. Specifically this forum.
Take this as a friendly advice, as I once had to myself, if you can't think of a constructive way to contribute, don't contribute at all.
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Well the corporate media propaganda machine had to do something.. there was way too much positive news about Bitcoin lately  They can't allow the general population to get any crazy ideas like being completely in charge of one's money now can they..  |
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Rudd-O, while you are quite likely absolutely correct in your analysis of their question I do not agree with your approach for a response or lack thereof.
If we are ever going to get to an ancap society it will require a lot more people adhering to the same principles as we ancaps already do. Since people do, what they were taught by their parents, friends, teachers, priests and other gurus it's really pointless to blame them for their beliefs or worldview because it's not their fault they got taught bullshit. It's likewise pointless to point out to them their coping mechanism because it does not teach them anything of value but instead likely turns them even further away from listening to you and your ideas, not to mention some may consider your approach borderline trolling.
Why not instead recognize that what they know and how they live their life is not their fault, recognize the likely coping mechanisms they deploy to deal with the fallacies they base their principles on and find a way around all of that to help them realize where they are wrong on their own? In other words why not do your best to teach those willing to listen instead of going on rants?
Of course this has reasonable limits but don't you think you at least have to give them a chance if we are ever going to get enough people reasoning correctly?
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