I've seen this argument before. It makes some sense, but it's not that strong. The same thing could be said of an absence of government then.

And, well, Switzerland started with a small federalized government centuries before US was born, and today it is still smaller than US federal government. The fact that they've kept their currency pegged to gold up to the 90s probably helped on that, but the question "why the same didn't happen in Switzerland" is still open, since all those banks there could have managed to end such pegging before, but they did not.

Great text, OP.

Another good text, explaining why so many people, particularly leftists, have a wrong understanding of economics: http://mises.org/daily/4700

Well, I know it's possible to build bitcoind alone. What I meant is if the bitcoind executable will contain useless GUI code or not... before, they were not separable, the core code from the graphical code. At least I remember reading this somewhere.

Does that mean the graphical code has already been separated from the core code, and we can build them separately now? I thought it was still one big chunk of non-modular code.
Damn, I thought I was following these forums, but I've been losing major things apparently...

Yes, definitively!

Thank you for your contributions to the project, it's getting better.

That sounds cool. Maybe the window in step 3 could be the same window of the total list of addresses, with the new one selected.

The recommended way to use bitcoin is by creating a new address for each receipt. Somebody following this practice will already have to click a button to generate a new address in a new window. In this window it's already possible to copy it to the clipboard.
I don't think the behavior of not following this practice should be facilitated by the client, as it is today, by making the last address there, available to be copied and reused.


Wouldn't a combo become too big eventually? Anyway, if it is easy to filter by the address label I suppose that's not a problem.

Nice to see such improvements! Great work!

I'll suggest a change that I think would make some newbies understand bitcoin addresses faster: remove the last selected address from the main window. Make the user always have to click somewhere to open the list of addresses, even if it only has one.

I think that would be good because frequently I've seen people who think that address which is being shown there is the bitcoin addresses of theirs. Like if there were only one, as a bank account number. This happens frequently.

By not having this one address on the main page, they will have to search it somewhere else, and there they will see that there is space for an entire list, with buttons to "create new" and all that.

At this stage, a violent attack from a big government like that would put bitcoin in all mainstream TV shows.
It's possible that the more abiding of governments subjects start to run away from the technology, but such publicity would attract those who are not that abiding. I'm talking about this: http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/16/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-one-unlawful-trade/

So that would be shooting on their own feet.

And about the blogger of OP, I think he just wants to provoke bitcoin enthusiasts to see their reactions.

This topic reminds me of this nice song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV7u91A3KGQ

Ah bon? Ça fait longtemps que je n'utilise pas Tor pour venir ici, mais avant j'utilisais sans problème. Sérieux qu'ils ont décidé de bloquer Tor complètement? C'est mauvais ça...


Les gens qui viennent faire du spam ou troller souvent vont s'utiliser des IPs communs ou qu ne leur appartiennent pas. Une politique de blocage d'IP c'est toujours mauvaise, vu qu'elle finis souvent pour affecter des gens qui n'ont rien à voir. Comme cette politique de bloquer Tor déjà.

No smellyBobby, people have the right to suicide if that's what they wish, is it so hard to understand?

I would understand if friends use force to prevent another friend to kill himself, depending on the situation I might do it myself. But that's ethically wrong. In your example it's a form of kidnapping if you will.

Ce n'est pas une bonne solution. Tu peux finir pour bloquer un Tor-exit node ou le proxy de toute une entreprise par exemple.

For such situations, I'd say no better way to define the age of independence than independence itself. You want to be in full control of your life? Ok, go and do it. Oh, you want me to keep sheltering you, feeding you, and buying you video-games? So you're not independent yet, go finish your homework. 

That's only true if you mean what was done after the crisis, not what was being done before.

Although quite laissez-faire in many aspects, Iceland had an insane central bank, printing much more money than US Fed. The M1 yearly growth rate has touched 90% in 2007. The average was between 20% and 30% from 2002 to 2007. An immense increase of credit through money pumping. No wonder the crisis hit them so hard. For a more complete reading: http://mises.org/daily/3499

Haven't yet read the text but US leftists which use Sweden as example so much should realize this country is, in many senses, much closer from a free-market than the US is, even though it's many miles away.

I've seen many economical freedom indexes ranking these Nordic countries as very easy on regulations, which are much more critical (do more damage) than government spending.
And even when talking about government spending, although true that they rob their subjects insanely, more than the US gov does, it is also true that the government gets to decide what to do with the money less than in most big governments. A considerable amount of the stolen money is just redistributed to the people so they decide how to spend it. For example, instead of using tax money to finance public schools, they give this money to parents so they choose which school to put their children in. I don't know how their socialized health care works, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was in the same line. This is still far from free market, but much closer than the majority of US school systems. Another major point regarding government spending is that they don't finance huge mass murderers military forces, doing multiple wars at a time - this counts a lot. They didn't even join any of the WW as far as I know, what is obviously great for the economy in the long run.

Ah, also, did the article mentioned that the Swedish government did not bailout large corporations like Saab? Bailing out failing companies is horrible to the recovery.

I don't think he meant that only coders can help the project, but rather that in a FLOSS project you don't get to complain as if you were a client, what's very true. You're not a costumer, you're getting it for free. If you want something better, either contribute to it directly or convince/hire someone to do it for you.

Good feedback is always welcome by any reasonable person, but it is true that many people think devs here are at their service, complaining as if they were on the costumers line of some service they're paying for.

I think Rockfella made a good point here. Currently, well, it is mainly for geeks which don't use Windows. At least if you want to keep it yourself, on your computer. You may as well trust a third party to keep your money, but the recent attacks on MtGox show us even that is not very secure either.

I realize it's a pity, but I really don't see how can you expect average non technical people to protect their bitcoins effectively. That might change in the future, let's hope it does, but it is not the case right now.


Entirely in agreement with that one.

The same possibility exists concerning pool operators, right now. Slush + Deepbit have more than 50% of the computing power. BTCGuild is also huge. They wouldn't have much trouble to coordinate some attack, if they wanted to. But if even them, which only get a small share of what is mined under their pool, don't have an incentive to double-spend, imagine a botnet owner who would get 100% of the mining returns if doing it honestly?

Double-spending through a >50% attack is not cost effective. The incentives to be an honest miner are much stronger.

If we should worry with a >50% attack, that would be a politically-motivated one, with the intend to pause the network for as long as they can at the expense of some taxvictims. And even that is not very likely either.

There's certainly interest in such a thing. Show everyone what you can do.