I've racked up quite a few bitcoins myself, and purchased some.  But with the price roller coaster and ever-rising difficulty, why would this or how could this EVER become a usable currency?

Here's some things that have bothered me about the currency.

1) Not enough people own any of the currency, and retailers will never bite.

You need much more than a couple hundred thousand people to have a currency.  Also, it doesn't really work when a very small amount of people have such a large chunk of the total currency.  And why would the rest of the world consider it valuable?  Ever?  

Say myself and a dozen friends come up with a design for a physical coin made out of wood, lets call them woodcoins.  However, for a woodcoin to be worth anything within our group, it needs to be hand carved with a specific and complex design.  We then start trading and buying eachother's woodcoins as a hobby, and the "value" within our group starts to get high because the ones that have the most are considering themselves "rich".  Does the rest of the world care what these wooden coins are?  No.

Ok, so let's find some small mom and pop shops that will accept these woodcoins because they have value to us.  They find that we would purchase them back from the shop for real cash, because we believe they have value.  So the shop sells t-shirts or other cheap crap and will accept the woodcoin as payment, and then immediately go back to sell the woodcoin back to someone else in the group.  So the woodcoins never really leave the group.  Why not?  Because the shop can't buy it's supplies to make it's product using the woodcoins, and it can't pay for it's rent and utilities using woodcoins, they need real world cash.

Eventually, the shop stops accepting the woodcoins because it's more of a hassle than just dealing with straight cash, and it's also unpredictable since the value is determined within this group of a dozen people and they can lose out any time if the price drops.  Shops don't want to gamble, they want to make a steady cash flow.

I don't have free electricity, but I do pay a flat-rate for all I can consume here in Germany

And yes, it's at my home.

Yes I've heard of this scam... you keep returning the small amounts of cash plus the profit until people get comfortable and trusting, and start sending larger amounts, until one day, you have enough from all these trusting people to say screw it, and keep all the money to yourself.

Old scam...  Except this time on the internet.  But best of luck to you on finding fools.

Yes, I'm aware of that, it's been going on for a long long time and was also an issue when iTunes came out.  But what I posted is not that at all, and you sir, have totally missed the point/joke...

No, actually, I wrote this up myself after following the apple lawsuits over the last couple of months and thinking, "who else are they gonna sue next?".

Totally original me

Your argument requires more cowbell.

Non-reference or "Open" cards are great if you have enough airflow.

I have a, few, fans...



With the side panel on my case, I also get a 140mm fan blowing directly on the cards.  

Like so:


Temps at 975Mhz are between 67-72*C with GPU fans @ 50-60%

I like all the pictures of all these crazy homemade rigs and wall-mounted arrays, but I'd like to see what you guys have running in normal computer cases.  What I like to call "Living room miners" or "Office miners".  I'm sure there are quite a few who didn't post in the other thread simply because they don't want to post their case among these rack-mounted monsters, so I figured I'd try to start another.

My case isn't spectacular, but it has to be nice since I use it in my living room

CoolerMaster CM690 case fitted with 6 coolermaster fans and soundproofing foam.
Intel Core2 Quad Q8400 @ 3.8Ghz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU Cooler
8GB Crucial Ballistix @1066Mhz OC'ed to 1200Mhz
ASUS P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard
2x Radeon HD 5830's crossfired overclocked GPUs @975Mhz Mem @320Mhz
---->Top card is Sapphire 5830 Xtreme, bottom card is ASUS EAH-5830 DirectCU.  The ASUS is much better!
Thermaltake 750W modular PSU
Scythe fan controller
RAID 0 with 3x Spinpoint F4's (320GB*3=960GB)
250GB Spinpoint F4
1TB External eSATA

GPU temps 67-72*C

CPU Temp 40*C

Very nice and quiet, even with all my fans maxed.  GPU fans run at 60% for my top card, 50% for the bottom one.

All my intake fans have washable filters to keep the dust out.  Works great, the inside is still spotless!







Still need to work on my cable management a bit more:




And my 52" Monitor via HDMI

+2 internetz for the old school IBM keyboad

Yes, just as new currencies operating within a country are competition for that nation's currency.

Find a new hobby, fast.  Start going to the gym.  Do something extra that will keep you busy and that you enjoy.  It'll make you much happier much faster.

After a desperate attempt to file patent and intellectual property lawsuits against all of it's competitors, and not getting anywhere, Apple Inc files a lawsuit against Apple Inc.  

The claims are that Apple's iPad2 is clearly a blatant copy of Apple's iPad, and violates several patents owned by Apple, including the look of the OS, how images and maps are manipulated using multi-touch and "pinch-zooming", the dimensions and look of the casing, and even the packaging it comes in.

The strongest arguments coming from Apple, is that Apple even copied it's boring interface, including how limited it's customization is, and the fact that it's browser doesn't support flash.

An Apple representative stated "We're quite shocked at Apple's attempt to copy our technology down to so many details, including our iPad's browser feature which doesn't support Flash.  No Flash support is our technology!  The fact that the iPad2's browser also doesn't support Flash is a blatant infrigement of our intellectual property rights, and we will be requesting that Apple includes Flash support for their iPad2, which will allow us to retain our position of being the only company that runs a browser without Flash support.  This is an important feature for us."

Shown below is an image of Apple's iPad, next to Apple's iPad2, clearly demonstrating how the iPad2 is an obvious clone of the iPad.


As you can see, the look is almost identical, except for the fact that the iPad2 is thinner, and weighs less than Apple's iPad.

As for hardware, Apple's iPad2 beats Apple's iPad in a few areas.  The iPad2 boasts a newer dual-core processor compared to the iPad.  The iPad2 also has twice the RAM compared to the iPad.  Other features included in the iPad2 that are lacking in the iPad are a front and rear facing camera, a gyroscope and HDMI output.


Clearly, Apple is furious that not only did Apple copy their design, but they made a better product.

The Marketing Director stated "How dare they come out with a product that is so similar to ours, but it so much better!  We can't have tablets running around in the wild that are better than ours!  Especially after all the time and effort we've spent toting our iPad and claiming that it's the best thing since the invention of fire.  I mean, what's next?  A tablet that supports SD memory cards?"

Uh oh!  Look out Apple, looks like it's not only Apple that is trying to out-do you.  Seems that there are already a few tablets out there that support SD cards!  I mentioned this to the marketing director, pointing out that SD support is already present.  His response : "Well, that's not a problem for us because we will just include SD support in our next version, then we will patent it or buy a generic patent that somehow relates to SD memory cards in some roundabout way, and then we'll sue every company that has SD tablets.  We just have to claim that we came up with it first and stop them from selling their products.  Easy peasy."


So, what will happen with this Apple vs. Apple lawsuit?  Hard to tell.  Looks like both companies have a strong case against eachother, although Apple seems to have proof that their iPad came out before Apple's iPad2.

Either way, whichever company loses will have to revert to their next step in their "pad" product.  It uses no batteries, doesn't crash, doesn't need updates, and you can customize it and do whatever you want with it!  The product has already been shown to a select few at this year's technology expo





















Lastly, a preliminary hearing was held today, which was quite short...  Both sides didn't even get a word in.  As the judge took his seat and was introduced to the plaintiff, Apple Inc, and then the defendant, Apple Inc, he simple yelled out "ARE YOU F^#$ING SERIOUS?!?!?!?"  and then walked out.

(Yes, this is of course a joke!  I've been following the apple lawsuits in the news and find it quite funny.  I'm not an apple-hater, although I don't like them or what they're doing.  And yes, I did buy an iPod a long long time ago for the gym, but that's it.  I actually don't like their computers or their ridiculous iPad)

Didn't Satoshi pre-mine more than twice that much?

So what's the big deal here then?

Some of you are missing my point, or I didn't explain it well.  IPv6 will make it MUCH easier to firewall based on location.  Yes, I know you can get geographical info of current IPv4 addresses now, but I'm saying with v6, it will be easier.  And like I also stated in my post, you will still be able to use VPN's/proxies/tunnels/tor to get around it.  My point was simply that the majority of people don't use vpn's or the like 24/7, including myself, even though I do have a really good VPN service which I pay for.  But I mostly use it for downloads, accessing one of my bank accounds, and watching HULU shows since it's blocked in Germany 

My guess is the whole controversy about bitcoin being an "evil hacker's currency to buy drugs" together with national economies around the world becoming more unstable and likely getting worse in the future, is only going to get the attention of governments, bad attention.  And I'm sure there will be governments that will try to put a stop to crypto currency.  Keyword being "try".

Just have a look at Paypal.  They already made it clear that they want nothing to do with the currency right off the bat.

I'm thinking once the bitcoin difficulty gets way too high, people will gladly switch over to the easier difficulty of IXcoin or i0coin...  That's why I'm mining both.

Yeah but my concern is that the client (i0coin.exe) is reporting hashrate : 0 when I do a "getinfo" request on it...

Good info toasty.  I wondered about companies that operated globally!  But I was told again and again at conferences that the subnets(or blocks) will be divided geographically.  Perhaps this was only meant to be divided when it came down to the registries.  But the speakers specifically mentioned how you will be able to tell where an IP is originating from (geographically) solely by the first few digits.

I'm sure this is the latest idea and the intention, (which I was not a fan of), and the ball is still rolling, so I guess time will tell.  I remember TONS of people registering for IPv6 subnet space back in 2002 or 2003, which they were given, only for it to be taken away less than a year later when plans started to change.  Even my organization was given a massive chunk because we operate in most countries worldwide, and have our own satellites to extend our networks, but it was taken away and redistributed, taken away, changed to another range etc etc.  We still have a massive chunk of address space, but who knows if it will change again...

In a way, the idea could have some advantages.  Such as finally being able to "google" something relevant that is in your own region (website, online shop etc) and not what gets the most hits (or fake hits).

I kinda don't like the fact that there will be less NATing, and hope that ISP's retain NATing, since I like the fact that I'm partially protected behind my modem, and my computers' IP's can't be DIRECTLY accessed from across the net.

As for the P2P design being able to reach anywhere as long as there's enough nodes, yes, that works, however, it won't work if all traffic is blocked at the "borderline" for that protocol.  It would essentially break up the single large worldwide P2P network, into smaller independent P2P networks of the same breed that can't talk to eachother anymore.  And it could be done if a government or agency thought it was important enough to do, just look at the great firewall of China... 

If what I've heard at the conferences happens, IPv6 will only make this even easier for everyone to do.

So am I not the only one that can't solo mine?  I'm running the windows client, and both i0coind and i0coin -server seem to work, and the miners are busy hashing away, however, the client reports a hashrate of 0(zero)....  That and, I tried the solo for the better part of the day and got nothing...

 

Yeah, me too, well, not THAT old, but been into computers/networks/programming since I was a young teen.  I can still draw up my subnet mask tables in a jiffy on scrap paper hahaha

Haha, I never, EVER post in the morning on the weekends either, I'm still sleeping until at least noon! LOL

Late friday and saturday nights :p