If we all agree that the 5 post rule contributes to worse newbie posts, then spam posts definitely don't reveal a user's future forum behavior. I've only browsed here for a couple hours, but I've already seen many posts from people waiting to post their interesting questions to boards outside of newbie jail.

There's always one

Is there any way to capture what fraction of transactions represent BTC being spent vs gambled/shifted between addresses? That seems like an impossibly large task to me right now, but I'd be curious if anyone's attempted to ballpark this.

Cheers.

Though, as comforting as the security of keeping everything off of my machine sounds (except when I'm actually spending btc, of course), the compromise in convenience for this looks like it could be a huge roadblock for bitcoin gaining widespread acceptance. Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the security of online wallets, or too much credit to the security traditional online banking, but I can't imagine people uninterested in the mechanics of bitcoin using it without a really simple, airtight way to handle transactions and storage.

I realize this is a pretty broad tangent: anyone else care to speculate?

Can someone quickly walk through a process for encrypting and securing a wallet offline (e.g. on a USB drive)? Also, how does one switch between storing offline and executing transfers online with this type of setup?