does anyone know why this ticker is down?
http://btcticker.appspot.com/
i loved the image embedded on my home screen to see the current rate all the time
now its gone...

I also see a problem with the amount of data that has to be stored on the file system
200MB might not be much right now, but a few GB are. especially on mobile systems etc.
one solution to this would probably be "trusted" servers that host the complete chain and offer the ability to look up what you need in this foreign chain.
so that the data is stored on a webservice base and you don't need them locally.
don't know if that makes sense, though.
please correct me if i'm wrong.

i also favor the captcha or the "moderated posts" approach!
the current situation is really annoying... most newbies are eager to join discussions and simply lose interest by the time they finally get to be a fully qualified member.

i am a cakephp developer and working on a bitcoin plugin for my online shop right now
the plugin is open source MIT and the first tryouts can be seen here:
https://github.com/dereuromark/CakePHP-Payment-Plugin

if anyone is interested in joining in or knows PHP/CakePHP, feel free to help making this a solid plugin for webshops.
i think it will really help the community as it provides another payment systems for shop owners. the more shops the better for bitcoin
there are already plugins for other shop system like OtCommerce, but for pure PHP or CakePHP there is not much at all.

the basic idea is that the php script asks the daemon every few minutes about the pending payments.
if the payment is received with enough confirmations the callback fires which then sets the order to "paid".

I dont like the restriction either - as I want to post some development stuff in the development part (and not the newbie section) and can't!
other forums or bitcoin sites use other rating sources by the way!
for example your ebay account with (in my case 118 positive) votes - which you could easily verify by sending a message to the bitcointalk profile there (if one existed).
if you scewed up you and your ebay account would be blacklisted.
it just needs some "moderators" - thats probably the problem with those rating solutions.

thx
if thats what it is so be it

Hey there
I am new to the bitcoin network.

I was wondering:
Is there same fail safe or legal steps to prevent people from taking your money but not sending the promises merchandise?
What if someone tells me that for 3 bitcoins I can have his watch or whatever. maybe on small bitcoin platforms similar to ebay/amazon.
After I paid (transaction successfull and confirmed >= 3) he just keeps the money AND the watch and maybe does this again with other people.
Maybe thinking since those addresses and transactions are kinda anonymous he cannot be held responsable anyway.

So what to do in those cases? 3-5 bitcoins is already a large amount of money (50 EUR, 60 $?).
I would not want to send money to people if the transaction was not reversable (which it isnt as far as I understood) and if the seller of the merchandise was able to trick one.
Seems to me that the anonymity makes it possible to steal money pretty easy by promising stuff and not keeping on's end of the deal...