Thank you 727m! My old laptop is only able to mine about 3000 kbps and nowhere near other's Gbps. I started this as a pilot long ago, to show a potential investor that it was real, and hoped for a 20 computer network but never got funded. Oh well. Have to proceed from here. So here's what I propose. I have researched into other areas since then, and have power production inventions on the tech side, and neocortical self-programming upgrades on the biological side. The first would significantly reduce miners' electric cost for mining, and the second shows people how to hard-"wire" new information directly into long term brain storage. I have autism, suffered a brain injury, and combined my investigations and rewiring (neurological) with understanding others' "savant" skills, to create a new method of remembering and learning. Increased memory and creativity result.

There are additional books and projects on which I'm working as I have time, but I am horribly cash-shy. No funds to invest in mining equipment, so I would like to find some of you with capital, and discuss options to help improve your lives or those of your choosing, so that I can earn BTC to launch some of the international projects (tech and education) which I have in mind, so that I can finally get out of poverty and improve the planetary standard of living.

Anyway, if you are open to discuss further, and/or can gather the veterans here who may remember me starting to at least have familiarity, then I would much appreciate it.

(And, the bitcoin program is caught up up to 3 years and 4 weeks ago, which means it's regrowing everything from the beginning. Hope my transactions appear.)

Have a great Monday!

Thank you for your answer. bitcoin-qt is version 0.5.1-beta. And I just checked it again after letting it run for a while, and happily it has 5 connections now. And last block was 1050 days ago! So it'll be a while. Oh my lord, did I see that right? 20 GB size to see the latest BTC transactions? I only have 0.003 BTC coming, which is about $0.01. For 20 GB size I wonder if it's even worth it. Maybe I should wait until I get a better computer? This is an old 2010 one. What do you think?
UPDATE: Ok, just found the latest bitcoin-qt version, downloaded, running fine. It does notify me that it's out of sync, and connected faster to the servers, but surely will take a long time. Thanks for help. I feel stupid for not figuring it out myself, but meh, it's been years since I mined.

Hi. I have been in stasis for over a year, and just now am returning to Slush and mining. So I found that my 0.003 BTC was never transferred, so lowered my threshold and it was transferred. But I checked my wallet and it didn't appear. So after chatting with another user for advice, I downloaded MultiBit which is an updated wallet program. Anyway, I it won't open my old wallet, so I went back to the old wallet and it says it's not synced. It says it's trying to sync, but won't connect to the Bitcoin servers (says "0 active connections to Bitcoin network", perpetually). Am I just screwed, and need to start all over with a new wallet using MultiBit, or is there a way to recover my old wallet using another program? It wont update, remember, and it's stuck, and there is a pending transaction from Slush for 0.003 BTC. Do I just shrug and lose that? Here is the block to prove the transaction, which I am unable to receive: http://www.blockchain.info/address/1JxJLf5kV9zxCAuCFqbeiY9YgQyNQ3icCd

Can any of you recommend a solution? I'd appreciate it. Thank you so much!

THERE!  I passed 8 posts and am over 4 hours, so please whitelist me. Thank you!

Ah, my great apologies.  I just checked my stats (just found how to view them), and it says only 2 hours and 54 minutes so far.  So still 66 minutes to go before I should request whitelisting.  My apologies to any of you who saw my error. 

Over 5 posts and over 4 hours now.  Unsure if prompting is necessary, but *waves* I'm requesting whitelisting.  The correspondence on the Newbie forum has given me some orientation as to the general nature of the community, and I've also read several other informative threads.  If you feel I need to be given any suggestions or feedback, feel free to Message me.  Thank you. 

Having put inspection time of about 36 sleepless hours into all things I could learn relating to Bitcoin, and considering the multiple parameters involved, my preliminary take on the best role I should play in the Bitcoin community, is not stressing my MacBookPro hardware to mine with an itty bitty hash rate, as the wear will likely cost more than the BTC return, and the percentage of block creation I would contribute would be minor.  Those of you with serious graphics cards such as ATI on PCs running Linux, godspeed.  The electricity and equipment to produce your coins is certainly a cost to factor in, but you are profiting well.  Add to that your technical expertise and competent maintenance, and you have become the founders rising above the launchpad in a new self-establishing industry.  As my hardware is comparatively feeble, my computer knowledge not much above amateur anymore, and my time limited, the wiser choice, I feel, is going to be lending my business experience and creativity to the community. 

This may find consistent manifestation in two main areas - raising funds to help you/ mining contracts, and marketing/ public awareness through business interaction such as advertising.  Miners and business owners, please Message me so that we may begin discussing strategies.  So far, market makers (exchangers), service providers, and goods sellers are balancing in this equation well.  I hope to work with many of you to increase your success and expand the economy.  Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

Went to the address per your signature, ninjacoin.com .  No current miners, so have you ended the mining pool, and have you begun another?

Having just perused a few Bitcoin market makers like MtGox, I am concerned that companies which start and engage in trading Bitcoins for fiat currencies, may thereby fall under commerce regulations which would allow governments (like the U.S.) to attack citizens in order to publicly smear this bastion of economic freedom called Bitcoin.  Your experience being greater than mine in this new realm, what are your educated guesses or knowledge regarding this concern and how it is being (or may soon be) overcome? 

Ok I'm sorry.   My assumption was that not all of the plethora of users on here were actively involved in Bitcoin programming, and that a peripheral person or two may want to help.  I certainly was not looking to "whisk away" your resources!  Sorry I tripped on a nerve; nevermind.   

and

UPDATE:  Re: e-gold, I can no longer access my account anyway since I no longer have the old email address with which I set up that account (e-gold is asking for a PIN it just sent there).  So... lesson learned.  Any new currency that ties to gold, silver, or a paper currency, can and will be attacked by governments.  Bitcoin wins... again.  This really is an economic game-changer!

Having been one of the early users of e-gold and watching that not catch on like we hoped, I have surveyed e-currencies since.  In the past few years, I became disillusioned as nothing worthy seemed to appear.  To my happy surprise, today I learned of Bitcoin and am excited about its future.  E-gold has some value and use still, but my outlook is long term.  So my question to the community is, what percentage of e-gold versus bitcoin do you feel is prudent at this stage in the game?  And further, I'd like to convert about $25 of my e-gold into Bitcoin, so does anyone have a recommended service to conduct the e-gold to Bitcoin transaction?  Or, if any of you want gold that would save me a fee. 

And a third and final question I have is, since I feel happy to be among fellow geeks and prefer to work within a community of people both willing and able to make intellectual improvements in this world outside of government control and corporate greed, I have some educational and industrial improvement projects to launch which can be greatly assisted by a community like many of you on this forum.  So although I realize I should not go into such projects here on the newbie forum, I invite those of you with Mac or PC application development, graphics animation, and website coding skills, and others with mathematics backgrounds, to PM me with some basics for now about your proficiencies. 

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your answers.
-IO

The genius with which Bitcoin has been created is noteworthy indeed.  Merely an hour into learning about this currency, I've thoroughly researched it and believe it to have a strong chance to gain a significant percentage of online transactions within the next 4 years as people become disillusioned with fiat currencies.  Kudos to all of you working to help make this currency a truly viable alternative.  If any of you need an editor or writer to assist you with public interaction, PM me such that I can assist.  And thank you to the community for ushering in a new age in universal economics.  I look forward to working with many of you in the future.