Mt. Gox will likely take the wire no problem.  When it turns out to be near impossible to jump in the Avalon queue and one wishes to get their money back, note that Mt. Gox will probably require one to supply them with an identity theft kit (scans of ID's and the like) just to get the same money back out.

Mt. Gox has a pretty spotty record with data security, though in fairness they've not had a severe problem (that has been detected) in some time and they've likely tightened things up a bit since the old days.  But still, letting them hold such identity info on me, in perpetuity, is about the last thing I'm inclined to do.

How many spare kidneys have you got?

Only 95%???  But Josh can fly an airplane!

Sounds like a good topic for one of those Bitcoin bets sites.  Probably easier to verify than most of the retarded bets I've seen attempted.

Jesus it's hard to stay on topic.  Go Avalon.  That better?  Maybe if Avalon ASICs are so much more efficient that GPU or ASIC it will tip the balance in terms of global energy conversion and set a course for the destiny of planet earth?

Somewhat, as I understand things, and I think this is the scientific consensus.  The loss rate is not quite made up for by solar flux, radioactive decay, and the like.

Note that this has nothing to do with atmospheric warming or what people commonly refer to as 'global warming.'  Nor does it have anything to do with Avalon for that matter.  It's just been an amusing expression (to some) since about the time that Lord Kelvin was kicking.

Why?  I mean, if you (or anyone) gets any BFL stuff sometime before the earth stops cooling, it'll be to late.

It could be argued oppositely (and I think I've detected Avalon trying to do so...)  Probably the best thing for the health of the Bitcoin project would be if ASIC gear comes onto the market at a slow and steady rate and gets distributed in some fraction to relatively responsible and disparate parties.

It always made more sense to me to simply buy Bitcoin vs. trying to mine competitively over a reasonable period of time.  The only argument that might change my mind at this point would be if Avalon ships a working product, nobody else does for some time, and Avalon keeps a pretty modest delivery schedule.  All big ifs, and even if it does turn out that way, it'll be pretty hard to get one's hands on the gear.  I don't think the risk is probably worth it unless the USD/BTC rate really skyrockets...and as always it would also work well to be sitting on a full wallet.dat in that case anyway.

The time to 'shift gears' would have been in early 2011, or during the 2011 crash despair.  For someone with balls, the ability to hit a jackpot may still exist at $20/BTC, but obviously not to the same degree as earlier.  Of course we may get another crash-like-thing, but if I were wishing to get in at the present time, I'd not wish to wait for it and risk being left behind.  I'd just dollar-cost average from here to get my possition I suppose.

My only interest in ASIC gear is to locate it strategically to capitalize on state sponsored interference (and support the Bitcoin network in such an eventuality) so I'll be interested both in proof of a working product and more importantly in a flexible and well documented product (aka, 'open'.)  Avalon hints that they have no interest in being any more open than they have to which leads me to believe that it'll be someone else who ultimately stirs my interest in mining enough to throw money at it.

It would surprise me not if most people participating in the forum itself felt this way.  In a funny way that is part of the appeal of it to me, but then again it is not robbing me of time I would be spending on worthwhile things ATM.

Nice work on that zerohedge thread Hazek.

For anyone interested, I found this on Dotcom's twitter:

--------
Max Keiser ‏@maxkeiser
Bitcoin is to central banks what mega is to Hollywood: the solution. CB's and H'wood are both poison. Encryption is the cure.
--------

I could not agree more with Max.  Also, it seems to lend some strength to my suspicion that Dotcom is at the very least, keenly aware of Bitcoin though it remains a mystery what his exact feeling and plans are.

There is a huge difference between 'I think', and 'I hypothesize'.  Generally speaking, most hypotheses are specifically not something 'I think' or more precisely, 'believe to be true.'

I hypothesize that both Mega and Bitcoin are honeypots because they would both be effective in this role, and because I've seen no evidence that completely invalidates either idea.

This method of understanding our world is so well proven and widely used by the sciences that it shocks me how so entirely ignorant of it most people seem to be.

It's one of many hypothesis that I currently entertain.  Same with Bitcoin.

I like the forum and it's operation, but it's not going to look very good if BFL turns out to be a complete scam given the thread name change and that still, a quarter after BFL were to have delivered, I continue to see bitcointalk.org pumping BFL through their (presumably) paid advertising.

Thought for the day.  Now I gotta go to work...though that has not stopped me from spending way to much time on the forum than is healthy over the last 1.5 years...

To be more precise, my failure to communicate with you.  Adios.

I was being sarcastic, but in a way which seemed to have escaped you completely.

I guess it is largely because so far Theymos has not seen fit to restrict the forum to unquestioning fan-boys.

I wish Satoshi would have entertained the (not completely unheard-of) concept of sharding as a possible way to address the inevitable scaling issues back when his brain was churning things.  I'm not impressed with how his theoretical work on Merkle pruning is coming along.  Even if someone adapts the most astonishing database technology imaginable to the problem, it's only going to go so far.  If Bitcoin takes off, that is.


Do the clients take part in strengthening the network...aside from (or as opposed to) paying up whatever is requested to the infrastructure operators?  (That is actually a fair question since I do not know the answer to it at this point, BTW.)

Of course.  Indeed, the modern banking system is also 'peer to peer'.  To become a 'peer', you just need to plunk down some capital on account at the central bank and get a license.  Easy as pie.

The "high-performance servers that handle the most complicated parts of the Bitcoin system" that Electrum brags about fail to impress me a lot.  Wells Fargo undoubtedly has gear which would put to shame whatever the Electrum branch of philosophical thought has cobbled together.  One way or another, that's exactly the opposite of what attracted me to Bitcoin in the first place.


Interesting that already we are at a phase where it is occasionally the case that a forum member 'knows people' who undertakes such a novel and unusual thing as to run a client just to 'support the idea.'  Time is definitely on high speed in Bitcoin-land.

It was a good opportunity to find out whether or not Bitcoin was still workable as P2P.  As I expected: Nope.  Armory seemed to have a decent feature set if it had turned out to be practical to be a peer, and he would have liked to help support the network if possible.  Electrum looks like SWIFT without legal protection (and possibly the opposite at some point) to me.

We just used instawallet to get him a few coins to play around with.  This isn't your granddad's Bitcoin.  I anticipated the scenerio, but I imagine that some of those who bought the P2P hype a year ago might be down-faced about things.