|
I personally think of Bitcoin as a completely guerrilla currency because I strongly suspect that if/when it gains any significant traction, that will be the role it is forced into like it or not. I anticipate that the forces which aligned against Bitcoin if/when the shooting starts will render Bitcoin a significant underdog, but the strengths that it possesses do not preclude a favorable outcome and it could win some notable skirmishes or pitched battles from time to time.
|
|
|
|
I've already got a small-ish but satisfactory Kubota wheel-hoe.
The projects I have include building a semi-usable access road in some fairly impossible terrain a-la Burma (where I would almost certainly role a wheel hoe) and dealing with vast quantities of brush, roots, stumps and logs (which is why a well functioning thumb and steel tracks appeal to me.) I also want to work on a 'bunker complex like thing' at some more urban property.
I'd love to have a good reason to bury fiber but would lack something to plug it into. Long range wireless is the most likely solution to my network problems unfortunately.
I hope its not one of those baby kubota's (less then 5,000 lbs) I've used those before and they can't dig for shit, cause they don't have enuf weight to transfer onto the bucket tines. Don't bury fiber, bury conduit (for power distribution and hardwired com/surveillance). You can always pull fiber thru it later, but plain ol copper works just fine  The Kubota is more or less a baby (B7800), and it's only half mine. But it is practically new so quite reliable, sips fuel, and plenty big for 95% of what we use it for. In fact we've not even mounted the hoe for a year. I've got access to several large wheel-hoes complements of relatives and neighbors when I really need one, so it makes sense to borrow (or rent) in the minority of cases when I really want to do some serious earth moving (though I prefer a dozer for that in many cases.) As far as conduit is concerned, I'm not thrilled at the prospects of trying to pull anything through a quarter mile of conduit. And to get to a fat pipe would be more like 15 miles. |
|
|
|
Buy the excavator man.. What are you considering? I have a Cat 426, I love that thing  Things that seemed silly or impossible become amazingly fun when you have heavy equipment Since my days as a ditch digger I always poo-poo'd those small machines, but I watched an old Komatsu PC-45 at work for a while the other day and it seemed surprisingly capable. In actual fact, several of the more pressing projects I have would benefit by a smaller machine with a swing boom. And the ones which would benefit by a giant machine are ones which I can pick at over time. I also would not mind being able to transport the thing more easily than moving the space shuttle. So, I'll probably end up with the smallest machine I can find which has steel tracks and a thumb. Just looked up that Komatsu pc-45. I wouldn't go any smaller then that, but it looks fun, 10,000 lbs is still big enuf to really dig in . You can weld up a rigid thumb on about anything if you really need one Have you considered a hoe? Like a Deere 310 or 410? I actually wanted a Deere 310, but got a good deal on the Cat 426, so went with it.. Now if you can find a seller that will take BTC.. It could be a bitcoin first! I've already got a small-ish but satisfactory Kubota wheel-hoe. The projects I have include building a semi-usable access road in some fairly impossible terrain a-la Burma (where I would almost certainly role a wheel hoe) and dealing with vast quantities of brush, roots, stumps and logs (which is why a well functioning thumb and steel tracks appeal to me.) I also want to work on a 'bunker complex like thing' at some more urban property. I'd love to have a good reason to bury fiber but would lack something to plug it into. Long range wireless is the most likely solution to my network problems unfortunately. |
|
|
|
Godammit! The rocket was supposed to wait for me and I only needed several more weeks  We didn't manage to touch cypherdoc's 'hidden pivot' or whatever. At least on this leg. So now I dunno what to do. What does your x-tal ball say CD? Should I hold out for lower PMs, or should I get back to looking at excavators? Buy the excavator man.. What are you considering? I have a Cat 426, I love that thing Things that seemed silly or impossible become amazingly fun when you have heavy equipment Since my days as a ditch digger I always poo-poo'd those small machines, but I watched an old Komatsu PC-45 at work for a while the other day and it seemed surprisingly capable. In actual fact, several of the more pressing projects I have would benefit by a smaller machine with a swing boom. And the ones which would benefit by a giant machine are ones which I can pick at over time. I also would not mind being able to transport the thing more easily than moving the space shuttle. So, I'll probably end up with the smallest machine I can find which has steel tracks and a thumb. didn't u get the memo? heavy equipment sales ain't doin' so good:
Fantastic. Buyer's market |
|
|
|
Explaining the details of your operations might not be a wise thing to do in public.
Might make some sense if one has the time, interest, and skill to run an effective honeypot. But I cannot see that laying out the welcome mat here and in this way is likely to pull in more than an handful of ankle-biter class victims. |
|
|
|
KABOOM:   ...rocket up pic... Godammit! The rocket was supposed to wait for me and I only needed several more weeks We didn't manage to touch cypherdoc's 'hidden pivot' or whatever. At least on this leg. So now I dunno what to do. What does your x-tal ball say CD? Should I hold out for lower PMs, or should I get back to looking at excavators? |
|
|
|
Thanks in advance to all the wonderful people of this forum, and at the risk of biting the hand that once sort of fed me, Bitcoinica, wtf dudes? at least put up a place holderpage at bitcoinica.com to explain your position, very unprofessional, is this show still being run by a 17 year old? Cause I remember 17, I wasn't a financial wizard, I was in the back of a night club dry humping some girl I barley know.
Nope. I wouldn't handle things like this. Yikes. That does not sound to promising. I wonder if I will lose my entire $9.00 or whatever it was I had in that hole. How will I survive? So. Z. Heading back to Singapore? Seems like the dream destination for a lot of folks, but maybe that's just the old rich ones? |
|
|
|
|
I theorize that Bitcoin will remain fairly fringe and in relatively low demand until the alternatives stop working acceptably well. And I'm not talking about in some theoretical sense; I mean in practice. Right now, and as far as my eye can see, it is in fact a giant and expensive hassle to translate value between legal tender and Bitcoin. To avoid the problem one can simply hoard (my strategy) or try to find something that you want to actually spend it on. Sadly, I'm not into on-line gambling, drugs, or wanking off to someone's web cam so my options are limited. Most of the BTC that have left my wallets have gone toward donations to some cause I think is worthwhile.
Now, a failure in one or more legal tender currencies coupled with likely capital controls could really open people's eyes to Bitcoin and could send demand through the roof. If one is prepared to capitalize on such a thing it could really be a windfall. I suspect that in such a scenario there would be enough of a panic globally that the few exchanges which vaguely work today would become completely useless. So the trick would be how to get your Bitcoin into the hands of those who want it, and how to get something you want from them into your hands. That might be easier said than done in part because they may have nothing you want...or at least nothing they wish to part with...and even if they do it might be a real challenge to take possession. Having a reliable agent in the likely regions of failure might be worth trying to cultivate.
I expect that there could be a sonic boom of sorts in BTC values (though I still consider it a low order probability event) and some pretty good opportunities for those who control more than a trivial amount of BTC but, if the bitcoin network makes it through that phase, the phase which follows will be one where Bitcoin is recognized as more of a transfer mechanism than a reliable store of value. Even then with the number of BTC in circulation, the amount needed to provide liquidity would put a pretty dear price tag on a single BTC.
|
|
|
|
How about just ... Not keeping bitcoins on the server?
How bad would it be if all non-trivial withdraws needed up to 24h to be done manually? Where the platform issued pgp signed and encrypted withdrawal requests that were reviewed and performed manually, offsite?
Well, with any site that needs to send bitcoins back out you need whats known as a hot wallet, ie, a wallet that ONLY has enough to do day to day business... you setup your software to send excess coins to a cold wallet (offline or otherwise hidden on another machine), and message you if you need to manually transfer from cold to hot. No one has $90k worth of coins in their hot wallet. I hope you learned something here today, Mike |
|
|
|
Note that I don't mean Roth IRA vs Traditional IRA -- I've already decided Roth is better.
I mean Roth IRA vs Bitcoin.
What say you?
Right now I'm in both to diversify. The more time that passes, however, the more confidence I gain and the more % of my assets I move into Bitcoin. But I haven't cracked my IRA at all to buy BTC, but sometimes I wonder why I have it if the government may decide to confiscate it some day anyway ( hey, Argentina has done it, as well as many other countries that got into financial problems... )
I personally have had zero interest in IRAs going back as far as 2000 (when I first had to start thinking about them.) I don't remember the reason, but I suppose it had something to do with not trusting that the regulators of our financial markets were really on my side and I expected these pots of money to be far to tempting to those who had the means to dip into them. A few years after that I started doing most of my saving in the form of physical PMs had have never looked back. When the Bitcoin bug slammed into my windshield I took a position, but I have always considered it highly speculative. I earnestly believe it quite likely that one of two things will happen: 1) Heavy-duty means testing. That is, if you make it to retirement age...which is scheduled to be bumped up into one's senile years...anything you get from an IRA will be subtracted from what you get from SS. or 2) We'll be under an entirely different monetary system which somehow didn't seem to manage to tow IRA and SS pools along when it was implemented...maybe because they ended up being sludge pits when the covers were drawn back. I may be wrong...I often am. |
|
|
|
2) If you are serious about security, don't advertise your genius ideas.
On the contraire, if your solution is proven and tested, you shouldn't be afraid of sharing it with the public. "Security by obscurity" is just laughable, and the source of problems like the one Bitcoinica is going through perhaps. Let's bet that nobody knows where our server is, or how we secure it. Let's just bet! How very true. The main strength of Bitcoin is that all the security is FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) and yet is an extremely secure system. Now compare this with the multi billion dollar DRM industry, which is entirely based on security by obscurity using propriety software. With DRM the "security" is usually cracked by some teenager who in the process also makes an utter fool out of some multi billion dollar corporation or trade group. This however does not prevent many very deep pockets from paying for the security by obscurity snake oil. +1 It's kind of difficult to tell if we are looking more at a 'reading' or more at a 'comprehension' problem here. But it's hard to care that much either. |
|
|
|
General Comment: Interesting how what feel like a stream of daily disasters for gold (and what are loudly characterized as such by certain posters to this thread) don't look like such a big deal in this analysis. Another Score: 5/16/12 year ago now delta mult BTC 7.40 5.09 + 0.69Gold 1495 1533 + 1.025-------------------------- ref (for future updates): http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#czsg2011-05-08zeg2011-05-08ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv (change date) http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html (hist cgi at bottom) mult=now/year_ago Another Score: 5/15/12 (corrected year ago btc) year ago now delta mult BTC 6.80 5.03 + 0.74Gold 1492 1545 + 1.04Another Score: 5/14/12 year ago now delta mult BTC 8.50 5.00 + 0.59Gold 1495 1555 + 1.04Another Score: 5/12/12 year ago now delta mult BTC 5.40 4.95 + 0.92Gold 1505 1580 + 1.05Another Score: 5/11/12 year ago now delta mult BTC 5.00 4.95 + 0.99Gold 1505 1580 + 1.05Another Score: 5/10/12 (kitco down, gold est from INO.) year ago now delta mult BTC 3.82 4.90 + 1.28Gold 1510 1593 + 1.05Another Score: 5/9/12 year ago now delta mult BTC 3.75 5.03 + 1.34Gold 1510 1590 + 1.05Another Score: 5/8/12 year ago now delta mult BTC 3.64 5.03 + 1.38Gold 1497 1605 + 1.07 |
|
|
|
I'll get to today's update this afternoon. Sorry for the delay LOL! everyone loves to irritate each other around here. no problem, Sir! Glad to see you've not lost a sense of scope and humor. Carry on on your side. It's all in good fun to me. Firstly, the metric is about as fair as anything, and is quite meaningful to whoever might have done transactions a year ago. Also, the relative changes in the numbers mapped to what seem like distressing turns of events currently are interesting and an eye-opener even to me. Secondly, we are still looking forward to the PM spikes, and in fairness I'll try to do at least one update at the worst looking time even if this thread is ossified. No guarantees though. Thirdly, there is a non-trivial chance that Bitcoin will take off like nobody can believe and produce some jaw-dropping green numbers. And it could happen quite rapidly. I have enough hope for such an event that I let quite a bit of value ride just in case. I've eat a flock of crows vis-a-vis BTC vs. PMs for a chance to see such a thing occur. |
|
|
|
General Comment: Bitcoin recovering...let's hope the trend holds.
Another Score: 5/15/12
year ago now delta mult
BTC 7.50 5.03 + 0.67
Gold 1492 1545 + 1.04
isn't it kind of pointless to measure against "a year ago", when we know what's coming? bitcoin will go very RED soon, but not because it's falling now, but because there was this hype last year... i've already told him this but it doesn't seem to matter. year on year comparisons are only useful in stable, long term established markets that don't vary much in the first place. its then used to pick up subtle seasonal changes. Bitcoin doesn't fit this category. I'll get to today's update this afternoon. Sorry for the delay |
|
|
|
If you don't have a solution which obscures necessary weaknesses behind solutions which provide some degree of opacity, you probably have a somewhat primitive solution. Of course you lose this advantage if you blather on about how you've done things. Just sayin...
Well I will respectfully disagree with that , but to each its own I guess. If you apply the tools properly, no obscurity is needed. Case in point: Bitcoin. The cryptographical principles that make bitcoin secure are completely open source, and published everywhere, for everybody to see, tinker, and to break. Can I steal your Bitcoins by breaking the cryptographic mechanism that protect your private key? NO. I agree with your assessment of how to make a rational choice of tools (and realized that in doing so, I've already neglected to practice what I preach to some extent.) But there is a big difference between choosing tools and choosing how, exactly, to glue them together. I don't really need to paint a neon sign on my deployments to enjoy the benefit have having skilled attackers work on the tools I have chosen. |
|
|
|
2) If you are serious about security, don't advertise your genius ideas.
On the contraire, if your solution is proven and tested, you shouldn't be afraid of sharing it with the public. "Security by obscurity" is just laughable, and the source of problems like the one Bitcoinica is going through perhaps. Let's bet that nobody knows where our server is, or how we secure it. Let's just bet! If you don't have a solution which obscures necessary weaknesses behind solutions which provide some degree of opacity, you probably have a somewhat primitive solution. Of course you lose this advantage if you blather on about how you've done things. Just sayin... |
|
|
|
...
Kids, here is how you secure a financial server:
...
Here's another couple of ideas: 1) Don't follow anyone's cookie-cutter solutions...particularly if they are good ones (because if they are, they will be popular.) 2) If you are serious about security, don't advertise your genius ideas. |
|
|
|
Having fun? You do see the rest of the commodities and you do see USDX and you do know what that mostly likely means for the near future right?
considering all the abuse, skepticism, attacks, trolling i've taken on this thread from everyone here since the beginning (last August), yes i am. Make hay while the sun shines. |
|
|
|
$1523 coming right up!
I hope so for a couple of reasons. One of the most trivial and petty of them is that if Au does not touch $1523, cypherdoc will be able to say "Well, it would be at $1200 instead of $2000 if my target had been touched and therefor I'm so right about everything all the time that I amaze myself." |
|
|
|
gold bugs should know better. when the news finally becomes mainstream, it's already too late...
I'm still considered something of a freak amongst my friends and co-workers due to my interest in actual physical PMs. Even my Indian ones interestingly enough. It is anything but mainstream. Of course my interest in Bitcoin simply confirms their suspicions. On the bright side for pretty much all of us here, it's looking more and more like Bitcoin is winding up for a jump to the upside. At least that's what it looks like to me. It would be cool to me to get out of the red on Bitcoin although it is purely psychological. As is the case with PMs, the price of Bitcoin is meaningless in practice except when I wish to buy or sell...and I'm happy with my holdings at this point. ----- And on the topic of the convenience of Bitcoin vs. PMs, one might consider a situation where I needed an unusual amount of USD as part of a property purchase and dipped into my PM stash. With a bit of bank-hopping and other planning, I had the USD in the account I needed within a day. Contrast the above experience with this: MT.Gox will not release over $26,000 USD |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
