If you are more adventurous,
the much improved, faster next version (0.8 ) needs lots of testing, too.  Especially on Windows.

Yeah, I dunno why BitcoinX removed it.

Since you are interesting in how long, I think Someone42 and I will have a few boards assembled for validation only in 6 to 8 weeks.
I'm plan on staying at the validation phase for a while. Don't want to rush boards to everyone without finding the HW bugs first.

Let's get Tom Woods, the rockstar Austrian economic historian who I believe is friends with the antiwar.com people, to look into Bitcoin. If he came onboard he'd become the best public speaker Bitcoin ever had.

We're actively working on the project and we're making progress on many details. You know, there's no linear progress. Every piece must be finished independently, then integrated to the final solution somehow. At this stage many pieces already work. It requires some patience to put them all together and then *bang* - we're done :-).

I'm working on RPi software prototype, Stick is preparing circuit and PCBs for custom device, Lionluck is preparing casing prototypes and optimizes them for mass production (next prototypes will be finally made from eloxed duralumin/aluminium, not from plastics ).

Our original deadline was to have working prototype on RPi in December, which was somehow fulfilled - I already signed transaction with deterministic wallet over protobuf/serial connection and broadcasted it to bitcoin network. Then I disassembled it again because I found better solution for transaction streaming. I also heavily refactored original code, to be more similar to MCU environment (single threaded, non blocking code in master loop). It also interfaces HW buttons and OLED display with fancy UI (if we can call "fancy" anything on 128x64 px viewport ).

So there's progress, but it is all under the hood. At this stage there's nothing breath-taking to show publicly, but nevermind - that time will come :-).

Do they not know what price controls do to the supply of a resource?

Do they not understand that a minimum wage is a price control?

My objection to this sort of explanation is that while it is technically correct, it gives absolutely no insight into why any of this is happening; what's the point of all this bundling and bow-tying anyway? Or who is resetting that combination lock and adding and removing digits from it?

Imagine that every "Bob sends 1 bitcoin to Alice" transaction is an envelope. What Bitcoin mining is is listening to the Bitcoin peer to peer network for any new envelopes flying around and gathering them. At the same time you're gathering all these new envelopes you're trying to bundle them up into a package and tie a nice bow on it. To tie a bow you have to solve a math problem, and the solution to that math problem is the fabric that will give the bow the right shape, a shape everyone else in the network will recognize as following the rules of Bitcoin.

So, many people are doing this, they are gathering up all these new envelopes(transactions) and trying to tie a bow on the new package. Who ever is first to successfully tie a bow on the next new package, gets to send this package to everyone else in the network. They also automatically insert their own special envelope that isn't coming from anyone but is addressed to them with a reward of X bitcoins (was 50, now is 25) for doing all of this and that is the block reward and it's how all bitcoins will be issued.

When the rest of the network receives his package they check the bow and the contents of the package and if the package looks like it's following the Bitcoin rules they add a copy to their chain of packages they already received and if it doesn't they simply ignore it, hence why no one can cheat in Bitcoin and issue themselves more bitcoins then allowed by the code.

Then everyone tries to bundle up all the next new envelopes that aren't included in any of the packages yet into a new package of their own again and thereby starting a new round of competing for the reward for successfully doing so.

The reason this is done so is because Bitcoin is decentralized. If you have a central authority that keeps track of all the envelopes(transactions) you don't need this complicated system. But because Bitcoin is decentralized this is the only way yet discovered how it can work and it does work very well. Instead of a post office keeping track off all packages and deciding how much new bitcoins are issued, everyone part of the network is doing it, and everyone is issuing the new bitcoins through this lottery of tying a bow on the package. And that math problem is analogous to a lottery because it's random who solves it first although the faster your computer the higher your chances.. Also it's difficulty is dynamic meaning that if more people participate in the lottery it self adjust and gets harder to win so that there is an insured constant rate of 1 new package added to the chain every 10min on average.

All of this, the difficulty, how the bow must look like, the reward amount, when it's being cut in half was decided and embedded in the code of Bitcoin and cannot be changed anymore because to do so, you'd need to convince everyone part of the network to download a new version with new rules, which is pretty hard but more like next to impossible given that it's open source and anyone can read the entire code.

I AM NOT ATTEMPTING TO OPEN A BITCOIN CREDIT UNION

Ok Bitcoin is money and now any exchanger is subject to all the state regulations regarding money transmission.  That was kinda the whole point. Eventually FinCEN will make a definititive declaration that Bitcoins is money (unlikely) or that Bitcoin is a currency substitute and thus Bitcoin related enterprises to both federal and state regulation.

"Standing ones ground and taking them to court" would simply make that day arrive sooner.

Your contention is that a free market can exist simply because it can be shown "in theory."

So we agree that minimum wage laws supporting a living wage are good and that business profitability is a complex issue that cannot be narrowed down to one issue like consumer demand. I would love to debate you live just to hear you shouting and ignoring my argument like you are now.

That was quick.

a "new bootloader" to block competition... ugly!!