I was a little careful to use the terminology 'model for' because I've not reviewed the Mega implementation in detail (or more accurately, not read the critiques of qualified persons which I am not.)  What I meant by this terminology is that the service provider will not be, because they cannot be, scanning through and cataloging one's personal data and more importantly it will provide some limitation on how practical that is for governments as well.

I actually doubt the Alice/Bob [abc]/[cde] example in the aforementioned thread is valid in Mega's initial implementation, and even if it is it should be easy enough to rectify if there is demand.

I might point out that I may be a bit unusual in that I don't give two shits about music or movies so traditional IP and pirating issues are secondary to me.  The only vid stuff I care at all about is porn and there is so much of that kicking around which is not encumbered that that is not really a big problem.  I make significant use of cloud storage for many other types of documents, drawings, lists, etc.  While these are (currently) of a completely benign nature I still do not want any aspect of my existence to be housed in any data warehouse and gone through by anybody for any reason.  It's more philosophical than anything else.

+1.  The more I think about this, the more I agree.  Both with all of your points, and with the mode of operation which mega.co.nz looks like they may have taken.

After many time-outs, I got on enough to get a test account.  After many time-outs on the e-mailed link, I got signed in.  Now I'm playing with it a bit, but my test upload has not gone through.  Understandable if this really is the most successful 'start-up' of all time, and I would not rule it out.

I needed only provide a working e-mail and it didn't give a shit about my 'name' being just a short small-case username.  So, it is only one step behind 'instawallet' in terms of respecting my privacy.  I like that a lot!  I just read through all of the 'help' items and I like what I see.  So far it's looking a lot like "Kim Dotcom (and company) FTW!"

I would go so far as to say that at the end of the day, the model for the service that Mega is providing may rank up there in importance with Zimmerman's PGP work, and he Kim (and his minions) just may have the muscle, money, and smarts to make it stick.

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Oh ya.  Hey Hazek.  Don't be so butt-hurt that the guy didn't choose to pump our pet currency.  Very few 'stupid' people get as far as Mr. Dotcom and I would be shocked if he were one of them.  Think about it a little and you might conclude that by (seemingly) ignoring Bitcoin things may well work out a lot better for both us and for Mega.  They are not going to need any extra entaglements, and it'll be lucky if Kim's mansion does not end up being the location of the first drone strike in New Zealand.

edit: name clarity

That would be kick-ass actually.  Just as good, or better, than using Bitcoin directly.  As long as Mr. Dotcom does not require that I provide him with an identity theft kit (like Mt. Gox, for instance) I might even make use of their service.  Or would if it was useful to me.

IMHO, the thing that would 'save' Bitcoin would be that it becomes 'high powered money' and used relatively lightly for big-ticket and/or important things.  Then there is a potential that 'peers' in the so-called P2P system will be more than a handful of mining pool operators due to uncontrolled growth.

I think it would be great to try to get the HAM community involved, and it didn't dawn on me about the libertarian streak, but I bet you are right.

I do believe that it is for all intents and purposes pretty hopeless to do anything like P2P Bitcoin stuff over radio.  Most computer folks will argue that the system is not to bloated as long as 10GB data bandwidths still works...in theory.  There might be some room for thin clients and possibly for close geography links (like say a couple hundred meters across the boarder to a free country such as Ecuador) but after thinking about it a bit, I've concluded that it's not the best hope if/when free communications between individuals and labeled a terrorist act and such.

Although I've not studied the subject in depth I bet you are wrong in the conjecture of the meaning of Section 97.113.  Both in theory, and more importantly, in practice.  Thanks to some incredible work by some of our cypherpunk forefathers there was a gaping hole blown in the Internet part of the spectrum but I fully expect that to be patched up at some point and for our leaderships to be more careful going forward so that that does not happen again.

I may give the guy to much credit, but his extreme dickhead-ishness may not be a complete accident and may not be without some calculation.

In this community an inordinate number of souls may have more than a little admiration for his 'strength.'  Where normal people may be repulsed at the picture Josh paints involving a drunken bathroom floor abortion, others may admire the guys toughness to imagine such a thing and publicly describe it.

Same with painting a picture of delivery of the hot-off-the-fab ASIC chips with car chase scenes.  I have to believe that a majority of people would find it childish and retarded.  But normal people would not be giving pre-order money to BFL.  The segment of the population who would may be impressed by the 'action film' nature of the corporate image that Josh is peddling, and even if subconscious, they might actually believe it to some extent.  Or at least it may get them off.

Being forced to radio sort of indicates to me a very severe situation.  I would guess that under a situation where free communications were severely restricted, any attempt to carry on data conversations would result in a very quick visit from a drone.

About ten years ago I got interested enough in all the funny noises on radio bands and got an RX320 radio then ported some software to my operating system of choice.  Someone told me that they were 'computers talking' when I was a kid (70's) and I always wondered what they were saying to one another.  I found that there are a lot of modulation types and it is quite possible to receive data from all over the Pacific at least.  I went back to work about that time and have yet to get back into the hobby.

My current belief is that while it might be possible to keep any eye on things like spot prices and such, but again, I imagine that any attempt to actually send would be nothing more than a beacon telling the authorities where to find you.  Or at least your radio gear.

They've got a mailing list or forum or something, and presumably when one put in a pre-order they have e-mail addresses for news.  I've not tried to sign up for it (so I probably should not be bitching about lack of design details I guess.)  Anyway, the purported shipping date is right around the corner so it's almost pointless at this point to worry to much about lack of info.  We'll know soon enough if they've got anything.

As for your opportunity, I surmise that any potential you had to be an early-bird has flown long ago.  If they (have something which works and) stick with their pretty modest supply estimates, one does not suspect that they'll be needing a huge amount of effort to keep the pre-order pipelines full.

All you have to do to make the point is steal the BTC I have in Instawallet.

Any day now.  Still waiting.  You better make it quick because I just bought something for Bitcoin for the first time ever (hurray!) and I'm waiting for the guy to figure out what software he's going to try to use to accept them. (After looking into things I'm going to suggest he tries Armory I think.)

Ouch!  I didn't hear about that.  The risks of trying to put one's money to work I would guess.

Actually, in the interest of analyzing all inputs, I should point out one thing which had slipped my mind.  Yifu did seem to have a non-trivial involvement with Bruce and his show.

I personally don't consider this to be a sure sign of scammery as I am pretty confident that some people who had a personal involvement with him were unaware of what a dirt-bag he was.  Much to my embarrassment Bruce fooled the shit out of me on-line.  He probably would have in person as well if had ever met him.

I hope not because that is the price range where I plan to re-coup my initial USD outlay (and indulge in some hooker and blow or some such I guess.)  Naturally I'll retain significant bulk of my BTC stash for whatever the future holds.

Figuring out how to do that is going to be a hassle I'm not looking forward to.  One thing I'm not going to be doing is sending Mt. Gox a ready-made identity theft kit even though I expect that their security has tightened up a bit over the years.

If coinable can exchange some BTC for bullion without me giving him a DNA sample and iris scan maybe I'll be going that route and just eat the various spreads.  Probably I'll explore direct Person2Person sales though.

Or, as has been discussed, someone does some 'enhanced interrogation' on your ass.  If BTC values go ballistic I don't even consider the possibility to be wildly fringe.  For my part, I specifically don't keep my offline storage in a mode which is accessible in this way for that reason, and it goes farther than just my BTC holdings.  Call me paranoid I guess.

As for trying to remember a pass phrase, I learned long ago...and much more cheaply than losing a wallet.dat...not to try that.  It just does not work for me, but YMMV.

It is very possible.  Likely even.

In order for this to happen though, a certain amount of BTC will have to go on the market.  The trouble is that there has been a fairly steady upward trend for a year now (with some exceptions.)  If this trend continues then anyone who steps off the train with the intent of getting back in at a lower price could easily be left behind.  Most of those who have done so in the last year are probably no longer on the train or took a beating if they are and may not want to re-live the experience.

Put another way: "Do you feel lucky punk?  Well, do ya?"

Agree.  From the time ~ngzhang showed up on this forum he seemed like and interested and thoughtful person.  Nothing more or less.  And all of the technical stuff I've seen from him seem quite credible to me (although I'm not terribly qualified to make a call here.)

I've sorta vaguely worked with Yifu in a minor way once.  Although I was not totally impressed with him as a conceptual visionary, I never had reason to doubt his integrity.  I did feel that bitsyncom was a little to eager to monopolize the project I had some interested in, and that they never really followed through very well.  I lost interest and/or had a philosophical shift as well so I cannot hold that against them to much.

Anyhow, all of these things together give me some degree of hope for the Avalon project (relative to BFL or bASIC...which is not saying much...)

This point has been made before, but if Avalon is not trying to get people to send them money, there is not a real good reason to expend a lot of effort on proving that they actually have something.

Under the hypothesis that they have gear and a pretty anticipated production rate going forward, a good psychological strategy would actually be to let doubt and accusations build to a crescendo, then just go ahead and make their early deliveries without a lot of fan-fair.  The effect that would have would be to quash a lot of future doubt in whatever projects are to come.

I, of course, have no idea if Avalon is legit, total scam, or something in between.  I hope they are legit because I am starting to feel that it might make sense to get into mining (although not particularly for an immediate profit) and the basic design these guys elude to is compelling to me.

I do wish Avalon were more forthcoming with information, and that they are not counts as a negative to me, but as I mentioned it could be the case that there is not a compelling business case to be.  And they are likely fairly busy.  If they do not take the time to work on transparency at some point I can be pretty confident that they'll not count me as a customer.

I went back looking through my 'dark days' threads and don't find as much as I remembered having written arguing for the potential logic of continuing to accumulate.  Mostly just a few posts saying that that is what I was doing.  You were certainly much more vocal, but I do remember that almost everyone else was changing sides or dropping out completely until there were only a few of us left.

Anyway, things are looking pretty good today.  Of course we had the run-up to $15 some months ago and it took this long to claw back so who knows.  I do expect that if Bitcoin 'goes' (not a certainty yet in my mind) it could go pretty fast.  This could be the one.  Or not.  There are probably still a number of big early-days holders who might wish to dump, although I would think that most of these would have been shaken out in previous run-ups.

It does feel kind of good to see $15 after having been so lonely in the argument that Bitcoin is not necessarily at end-of-game.  I imagine you feel the same.  Here's to even happier times ahead!

Nope.  I considered the fall to ~$2/BTC to be a gift from the sky gods, and an opportunity to make up for having missed out on the early days (almost got going in the end of 2010 but neglected due to getting involved in financial projects) and tanked up.  At this point it's looking like a good move.  We'll see.

In '89 that would probably be the case I suppose.  My first modem was 300 baud, but was not acoustic.  It was out-of-date and I got it for next to nothing, but quickly updated to a blazing fast 2400 baud unit.  Acoustic modems could be handy though in end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios though perhaps.

As I was tapping this out, I just got to wondering if anyone has tried doing genuine acoustic transmissions using old-time big-ass satellite dishes or something of that nature, and if so, what kind of range is possible.  At least such a thing would stay off the electromagnetic spectra.

I suspect that if/when BTC values reach their potential, the people who will be able to capitalize will be familiar with the following form of e-mail addressing:


BTW, I do still have a modem.  The only other option is satellite, and I do use that when it is working although the modem is actually preferable for ssh sessions (barely...Viasat isn't bad these days in terms of latency.)  At my office in town I have cable thankfully.

I've always said that if/when Bitcoin finds it legs, it will have almost nothing to do with Bitcoin and almost everything to do with more general global monetary systems breaking down.

To me, the question of this poll is the same thing as asking how long before there is a crisis in confidence in current global monetary regimes which leaves people scrambling for whatever exits exist.  I voted 'within a year' because 5 years ago I thought this would happen by 2012 and we are already past that.  I actually I probably should have been more conservative and gone with 2-5 since our leaders do seem to have some room to hold things together yet.

Actually, I see $1000/BTC as in the range which could be reached absent other issues.  The 'big values' are much larger.  I think that $1000/BTC probably is achievable through 'organic' growth in the 2-5 year timeframe but would certainly not bet on it.