There is a lot of CPU work to do, syncing is not simply downloading. About 50,000 transactions per day have to be verified, with multiple txins each. That's about 350 transactions per block on average, about 100000 SHA256 tree hashes and probably ~200000 ECDSA signatures per day to calculate.

Bitcoin is single-threaded while downloading the blockchain until it passes the last checkpoint. After that, signature checking of transactions is enabled which is multithreaded, using as much CPU as you give it. Ideally Bitcoin would use 100% CPU all the time while it needs it.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Web_Hosting

Watch out for "free domain with montly hosting" sites, you want to own your domain name free and clear of any monthly charged hosting site.

Who says hackers use a web page?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1#Withdraw_bitcoins
Withdraw bitcoins

https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/generic/bitcoin/send_simple

Send bitcoins from your account to a bitcoin address.

Parameters:

    Name    Value    Required    Example
    address    string    Yes    N/A
    amount_int    int    Yes    N/A
    fee_int    int    No    N/A
    no_instant    bool    No    N/A
    green    bool    No    N/A

Being ignorant doesn't make either of you right.

It implies that spamming the blockchain and relay nodes with trivial amounts of bitcoins should cost money.

It seems that on online forums these days, the key issue affecting user satisfaction and retention is a term that is canonically labeled "signal-to-noise ratio". When a forum has unchecked spam, unmoderated trolls, and uninformative follow-up posts, the user experience is quickly degraded, and results in user frustration and abandonment. The unwanted posts are the "noise" component of signal-to-noise, preventing users from obtaining information relevant to their interests, and skewing the available reading material content away from that which is pertinent to to the forum's overall focus.

This is particularly frustrating when a narcissistic user makes purposeless new conversation threads, with unclear intention, asking a question that is easily answered or has an open-ended answer, or especially if such a new conversation thread post is re-asking a question that has already been answered multiple times. The subtext of this kind of question is that the poster thinks himself too important to search for a previous answer himself, and he or she deserves a customized and personal response crafted by other forum members who should be subject to his whims.

Today we will embark on a review of a post by username b!z, made October 17, 2013 on the bitcointalk.org forum. In the off-topic area, a post was made by this forum member "wondering" if there are any good article or review writers present on the forum (with a winky emoticon). The question is then repeated, "..are there?".

To analyze this two fragment-sentence post, and why this kind of post is frustrating to other forum members, the first point to make is that there appears to be no clear statement of why the question is being asked. Possible scenarios one could conjure:

• The poster is an article writer and is looking to share company and anecdotes with other writers,
• the poster is seeking to employ a writer for a particular project,
• the poster is complaining about the lack of good quality articles or reviews,
• the poster wants to follow the postings of good article writers,
• the poster wants to bilk and scam content authors, obtaining free work for no pay.

If that isn't frustrating enough, the second point to make is that the poster could certainly investigate this question for himself. There are many posts where technical writers are offering there services, many press links where original authors are posting their content and blogs, and other related posts. The poster can discover "good article or review writers" himself, especially since he hasn't defined what constitutes "good" in his mind.

Also missing from the article post is any information pertaining to the position or standing of the forum member that may allow a reader to independently unveil the intent of the poster. The only clue is a garish signature advertising a casino; perhaps one that the poster is involved with, but more likely a paid product placement. If so, the intrusive advertising with every post says to the reader, "this poster is a whore, and doesn't care that they are littering your screen with annoying advertisements".

Finally, the mischievous winking emoticon - a "smiley-face" type picture that is meant to communicate something with the reader. This emoticon is typically used to signal that the proceeding sentence is an in-joke, a funny retort, or an acknowledgement in some way of the cleverness of a previous quoted post. However here, the meaning is equally confusing as the rest of the content - why the wink? One can equally assume a gamut of intentions from this out-of-context use, from the prospects that the review writer being sought will be asked to do something underhanded all the way to the conclusion that the poster is flirting with any review writers on the forum.


Answer: there is no joke.

In conclusion, this author remains baffled. This post reeks of one that is simply meant to fulfill some obligation to post every day to obtain rewards for a signature advertisement - there is no content to the message other than that. While not quite affronting enough that one feels the need to leap for the report to moderator button, it still is objectionable enough that there should be no surprise if this post is the final one which earns the poster a few forum ignores, a forum feature that allows other users to protest the repeated demonstration of a wealth of ignorance by a forum member, and completely block any past or future posts by that member. This reviewer gives the forum user b!z and his stupid user name a thumbs-down for this post, and the ignore feature of the forum a thumbs-up.

Miner share finding is as capricious as block finding on the Bitcoin network. It has even more variance if the variable difficulty algorithm is setting your miner to a higher difficulty than 1 given your relatively low hashrate. Pools generally display hashrate over a small period of time, such as the last 10 minutes - the rate is better used just to see that miners are working.

You should analyze for yourself if the number of shares submitted over a period of time truly decreases, or if not decreasing, if the pool is properly crediting you for all submitted shares:

cgminer --sharelog sharelog.txt

The first entry in a log line is the epoch time in seconds. Inspect the number of shares submitted in a 10000 second period after miner startup vs a 10000 second period when the pool displays a lower rate than expected. Repeat for a different time interval.

If hashrate indeed decreases, many things might be going on, from OS entering a low power state, USB driver problems, overheating/bad hashing in the ASIC, etc.

The best way is to send a whole bunch at once (like 20+ BTC). The larger the amount, the higher the priority, and less likely you will be prompted for a fee. If using Bitcoin-Qt, you will be prompted that a fee is necessary when it IS necessary. The official client knows the rules that miners enforce, because they use the same software, so it is not a good idea to create transactions without the proper fee unless you like your money not getting to the destination.

The reason that particular Bitcoin address has a balance is that someone sent it bitcoins. You can send money to any Bitcoin address provided it numerically has a hash160 and valid checksum. You can even send if the address was just made up and there is no private key that can spend the money.

The reason that particular Bitcoin address still has a balance is that it was created with an invalid private key; it cannot be spent with the private key 0x000̅0. If client software uses the raw output of a 256 bit hash or allows any user-input key without checking validity, it is basically allowing people to lose their money. Even if the chance is extremely low, not checking the RNG or brainwallet hash for valid range is irresponsible.

It's more likely a case of scumbag MtGox not paying any fees for it's outgoing transactions. It is also preferable, in my opinion, to withdraw money to your wallet first, so you are in control of at least part of the transaction and it's progress can be easily monitored.

I think you are right:

The explanation above about P2P is BS though, P2P comes from primarily end-user IP space, and ad content from content delivery networks.

Just looking at the forum where they completely ignore the actual issue, and as a hurdle to providing support cut-and-paste instructions to run (registry-hosing) ccleaner and publicly posting an intrusive system scan dump, makes me very wary of their software. I have previously used this software as one of many to detect malware, but like just about every AV, they've turned to bloated crap.

If an AV company actually set up a honeypot and characterized malicious Bitcoin port traffic sources, and based per-app blocking rules on this, it could be a useful service, but this looks like they are messing with your internet just so they can pop up a window to remind you that their software is doing something for your annual credit card charge.

Not mentioned here is green addresses.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Green_address

If a zero-confirmation payment needs to be trusted immediately, it can be sent on behalf of the purchaser from a service that controls the green address and guarantees funds are not going to be double-spent if they come from that address.

Unfortunately MtGox doesn't pay Bitcoin transaction fees, so it is likely (and has been witnessed multiple times) that their green address payment won't confirm for hours or more, the opposite of the desired effect.

It's more like USD goes in, JPY comes out.

Somebody's not following the rules - it is supposed to be six blocks an hour...

263765 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:22:16
263764 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:19:42
263763 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:19:09
263762 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:16:35
263761 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:15:05
263760 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:03:09
263759 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:00:28
263758 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 04:59:58
263757 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:00:04
263756 (Main Chain)    2013-10-15 05:02:30

135W? That doesn't even make for a good space heater! At least my 200W of GPU keeps my feet warm...


A 10 year old Pentium 4 2.4GHz makes 5000 MIPS and about 1 MHash/s. /thread.

There are already people that have submitted requests for addresses with a reward offered, and a crypto secured procedure where the "miner" can't also spend the bitcoins.

https://vanitypool.appspot.com/

However, people that would be wanting a vanity address likely have better hardware themselves than a super crappy laptop; the easiest-to-find addresses that are being requested on that site would take about 20 days on average with a high-end GPU. It is also less profitable than mining; most are offering about 1% of the "honest fee" where they would be paying the same as the miner would earn mining Bitcoins for the same time.

See link in my signature...

Blocks still are mined and give a reward to the miner even if there are no transactions to include in the block. Much of the blockchain in the first year of Bitcoin's existence is blocks with no transactions other than the one that pays the block mining reward.

The "coinbase" transaction is the transaction that miners are allowed to include, paying newly created bitcoins and the transaction fees to themselves.

Virtualbox doesn't necessarily know how to free up previously used space. Even if you have emptied your recycle bin and such, previously used freed areas of the disk may still have data.

Essentially, you need to defrag the disk in the guest OS and write 0s to the free space. Then close the VM and compact the virtual drive.

http://dantwining.co.uk/2011/07/18/how-to-shrink-a-dynamically-expanding-guest-virtualbox-image/

You mean this button?
   
That'd be too easy!

You can send 0.01 or more without a fee, however the priority has to be quite big. As an example, if the input of the 0.01 BTC transaction has 10 BTC and 9.99 BTC of it will be change back to the wallet, it won't require a fee after only 15 blocks of age. However, Bitcoin doesn't pick the oldest coins or the coins that make a free transaction out of your wallet, it chooses coins that create the minimum change, so expect sending 0.01 BTC fee-free only to become likely if you haven't used your wallet for 100+ days.

The code that mandates a fee for transactions below 0.01 (a CENT is a constant for 0.01 BTC):

main.cpp

Note that on windows, RPC command lines have to be properly escaped if you are typing them at the command line and not into the bitcoin-qt console (Help->Debug Window->Console). Example:

You also must specify the internal "account" from the RPC accounting system (use listaccounts RPC command to see if there is a balance in other accounts besides the "" empty-quote default account).