...couldn't I still be working on a false chain that would be as long as the widely-accepted chain?

Say there are 2 miners on the network right now, and I control one of them.  Why can't I...
a) wait 'til my miner creates the longest chain
b) at that moment, disconnect from the network and just keep processing my chain, making it longer
c) at an arbitrary time, say, "hey guys, guess what, I've got this chain and it's 4 blocks longer than yours and I have all the bitcoins in it!"

 For the last several days I've been trying to connect to "the network" with the standard bitcoin client (0.3.20.1), but it's stuck at 0 connections, 125364 blocks.

I saw that there was a version 0.3.22 released, but I didn't think I had to upgrade to stay connected.

How can I help my poor client connect?  I've got a few coins floating around in transactions my client hasn't downloaded yet, and would like to send them somewhere else!

Do you really want to be the seller of these sticks, though? The only guy who could know anything about the identity of a bunch of people who really don't want anyone to know anything about their identity?

Does it make sense to make the image for these sticks publicly available on the net (anonymously), let the baddies make their own, have them tell you their IP address, and then point your mining power at that IP?

Then you never have to know their bitcoin address.  But maybe you could still find the generated coin? I don't really know how pools work.

I run a store online and would like to offer a discount for people who pay with bitcoins. We can afford to run a 10% discount, but on a $40 product that's not going to be compelling enough to get someone to figure bitcoins out.  I want to apply for a grant, or something, that will help me give 50% discounts.

Such a fund could encourage producers to accept bitcoin AND encourage consumers to use bitcoin.

If I had a billion USD, I'd spend $200k on BTC for myself, $1M on BTC for this fund, and $100M on advertising, apps for phones and stores, and startup capital for BTC-based companies.  If you have a billion USD... please get cracking!

Even if you just have 100 kBTC, you might consider spending 1 or 2 of them on a fund to help businesses encourage BTC use.

My balance on 1KmTsdzjvrkZcMxtdoR9WdHwb8Bn5v6fpd decreases a couple of times a day. What's going on?

Wow, thanks sgornick! I forgot that mtgox would do transfers for free for over $800, and I didn't know about a lot of those other resources.

Seems like bitcoins are... for real!

Wow. I understand that the transaction fees for btc-btc trades is very low, but with the transaction fee for btc-usd at 3.5% (I'm trusting your numbers)... that's more than I lose to Visa when I use a credit card for dollars.

I run a business currently accepting BTC, and I was thinking of offering a discount for BTC because there's no transaction fee (I pay about 3% to Visa, otoh), but until I can actually SPEND my bitcoins I don't think such a discount is really viable.

Of course, if BTC continues to double every other day, I can provide a discount... but who's going to spend bitcoins when their value doubles every day?

I see that mtgox takes a 0.65% fee for all trades.  But, I also see that I can only get my dollars out via LibertyReserve, which seems to have its own charges.  Are there signup fees in any of these places?

If I load 100 bitcoins into my account at mtgox, sold them all at $1.00, and went through all the steps to get cash dollars in my hand, how many dollars would I have?

I run a business and want to accept bitcoins on my website. Is there a standard logo licensed for free use I can incorporate in a "we accept bitcoins" kind of banner?