Well, I stand corrected. I didn't quite understand the data since I didn't see any headings, but after examining it a little more, it seems that your pool and a few others have never found an empty block, which I find kind of surprising.

I used logic, I have not verified it. Logically, more CPU cycles to process transactions will take more time than not spending those cpu cycles to process transactions. However, I will test this and see if my theory is correct.

I do not think that such a test would be an accurate test. Since both pools use different software and are run on different servers and configurations, there are too many variables that could change those times. Instead, I will perform a test on a regtest network where I will create a mempool of 0, 10000, 50000, and 100000 transactions and compare the times it takes for the getwork and getblocktemplate commands to complete. This creates a controlled test environment and reduces other factors that could affect results.

Because it negatively impacts the network. As we have seen with SPV mining, there are issues that can occur and cause blockchain forks and weaken Bitcoin. However, I personally don't think empty blocks negatively impact the network. They are typically found within seconds of the previous block, so for transactions, it really is just like a block was found with two block rewards. It doesn't particularly mess with confirmation times and while it would be nice if those blocks included transactions, it doesn't matter (at least for me) that those transactions wait another ten minutes like they should have

You should be fine with the first backup. You only need the private key to spend the coin. However, if the wallet.dat is anything like Bitcoin's, after you use 100 addresses, you need to backup again because it will generate another 100 addresses for the keypool. If you don't backup, you could lose those coins since the keys are generated randomly not deterministically.

No. You can see any trust you like, so long as you configure your trust list to include people that you trust. Default Trust is added to everyone's trust list to protect newbies from scammers. It includes people that have proven to be trusted in their time on this forum. You can remove Default Trust from your trust list if you want to.

What pool do you want them to mine with then? Every pool that I know of mines empty blocks. It is simply part of mining. Gathering transactions from the mepool to fill a block takes time, time when another pool that doesn't do that can claim the block reward before your pool does. They lose time and money by creating only full blocks. For receiving an extra 0.1-0.2 BTC every so often, it doesn't make much sense to most pool operators and miners.

You can use mixers as people have already suggested, or use CoinJoin transactions which have multiple people participate in one transaction that makes it incredibly difficult to determine who owns what output of the transaction.

Actually, Default Trust is not seeable by everyone. You can set who is in your trust list, and the user DefaultTrust is automatically added to every account's trust list upon creation. You can create your own trust network by adding people that you trust to the trust list. This will let you see the trust ratings of people you trust.

Probably has to do with the volatile price. Since the price of Bitcoin is not very stable, businesses are less likely to use Bitcoin because they could lose money with it. They could use service likes BitPay, but they charge fees. Most businesses use services like BitPay to convert the Bitcoin to fiat immediately.

Also, they might not want to be associated with Bitcoin because of all of the negative press that Bitcoin gets. For some reason, people always associate Bitcoin with drugs and illegal stuff when they think of Bitcion.

The blockchain is very big. This is normal. To sync faster, get a super high speed internet connection and a very high performance CPU. If you don't like the wait, go for a SPV wallet like Electrun or MultiBit.

There is no service that does this AFAIK. I have looked around for a while and the only ones I see accept Bitcoin and give you fiat, not the other way around.

I just did this and Keyscrow's service is very nice. It tells you exactly what to do and requires only a little bit of technical knowledge. Overall, the service is great for multisig escrows and I would definitely use them for real transactions.

No one is going to give you free money except the lottery and faucets. Try actually working for your Bitcoin. Check out the services section and see if people want to pay you to do something or sell stuff in the goods section to make Bitcoin.

Did you paint that little yellow word on the left? Or did you just find this?

Hard to know. Hashes are used everywhere in Bitcoin. The Bitcoin address is based off of two hashes, and missing a character should invalidate the address. The last several characters of an address is a checksum, which ensures that the address is correct. If the checksum doesn't match, then the whole thing is wrong and should never have sent.

You either need to use older versions of the software or change your OS. You could upgrade to the latest version of OS X and all of the current software should support it. Or you can install a different OS such as a distribution of Linux or a copy of Windows.

The last post was discussing hardware issues. Since Bitcoin core is very hardware intensive, it is a good test of whether your hardware is failing or not. Apple has diagnostics to check your hardware, but you should also use other tools to check also. 2112 used diagnostics from Debian due to his suspicions of hardware failure.

MultiBit and Electrum are two very good wallets. They use SPV so you won't have to store the entire blockchain on your computer.

They are only linked if the addresses sign the same transaction. Meaning if they are used together in the same transaction. However, there is nothing else that will link multiple addresses in the same wallet. All of that information is available to search in blockchain explorers and in the blockchain in general since all transactions are public.

Did you use -connect or -addnode?

That might be the problem. You are using an old unsupported os.

Yes. You can import the wallet.dat file into blockchain.info's web wallet and perhaps other wallets too. However, if you do that, I would recommend that once the wallet is imported, to move all of the Bitcoin to a new wallet and not receive any Bitcoin on addresses from the old wallet.

The miner can put whatever he wants into it. He could put the coinbase sig and impersonate some other miner if he wanted. Once the block is mined, it becomes immutable, but the miner has free reign over what goes inside.

If you could connect to every single node in the world, then it would be possible to identify which ip address first relayed a block. That node would be the person who found the block and that ip address could then be associated to a name.