Understood. (And I had read the FAQ, but thanks. )
I mentioned it here because I downloaded it from the official pristine location, linked in the topmost post.
If the official version accidentally packaged up a trojan version of a 3rd party library (libpdcurses) it seemed worth mentioning.

-Jesse

re: anti-virus declaring a Trojans.

I just downloaded the cgminer-2.4.3-Win2.zip

I use AVG anti-virus, and it said that libpdcurses.dll contained a Key Logger Trojan.

On the one hand, I suspect it is a false positive.
On the other hand I don't mind getting a new copy of a library from a trusted source just to be safe.

-Jesse

re: Reality Check
Excellent question. (If "reality" is reasonable to apply to this prim rose path. )

Line 1 : the subject
Line 2 : personal attributes of the subject
Line 3 : continued attributes of the subject
Line 4
    On Emma's side   : describes a nebulous attribute of the subject
    On Satoshi's side : describes an action taken by an unknown actor about the subject
Line 5
    On Emma's side   : describes the span of time and domain pertinent to the subject.
    On Satoshi's side : describes the span of time and an action taken by the subject for a goal in a domain.
Line 6
    On Emma's side   : describes the conditions the subject encountered.
    On Satoshi's side : describes in more details the goal required of the subject by an unknown actor.

So, the semantic structure has drifted a bit.

-Jesse

[/quote]

Satoshi Nakamoto, handsome, extremely brilliant, and rich, with an unknown home of happy hashes, plotted to demolish some of the worst shortcomings of Fiat; and had endured over many years on the Internets intending very little to distress or vaporize Blueseed.

There! That's the right paragraph.

-Jesse

Huzzah! We have a season!

Oops. Sorry. Wrong paragraph.

Ah!
I had not checked for "sub-projects", only those listed at the top level of Boinc's project list.

Interesting that GPUGRID does not list Donate@Home as one of their sub-projects.
    Well, not directly.
    If you go to their "Donations" page, it is quietly mentioned.

Also interesting that at Boinc it is only mentioned in a forum.  I guess sub-projects are second class citizens.

-Jesse

Small typo:Excellent hook to the opening.

And it qualifies as the first of the (minimum of) three challenges a "hero" must pass to accomplish the quest.

I refer to Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey".

-Jesse

I read somewhere that an "epic adventure" was always in three volumes.

-Jesse

PS: The "somewhere" was the last page of "The River of Dancing Gods" by Jack Chalker.
The publisher (of the first edition) was most careful to avoid mentioning on the outside of the book that it was volume one of a series.  I usually wait until I have all of a series (that I expect to be good enough I'll want to just plough through and read it all in one sitting) before I start reading the first volume.

Chalker got me, as he intended.

If you are unwilling to assume that the human beings are honest enough,
Then why would you assume that the math functions in your computer are honest?
Wasn't the software written by human beings?
    Open Source Software is not a panacea.
    You either have to read and understand all the code yourself.
    Or you have to _trust_  someone else who did.
        ( or the community of many who did )

re: the souless machine has no vested interest in any particular outcome.
The soulless machine has exactly the interest in a particular outcome that someone programmed it to have.

If that were not so, then there would be no debate about electronic voting machines being used to subvert an election.

re: Humans do, and that is the root of the problem with fiat currencies.
If the very Human "love of (fiat) money" is the root of all evil, then how is the "love of bitcoin money" any different?

-Jesse

Actually, I was talking about normal business practices of spending currency to:
* produce something
* convince Consumers to buy product
* make a profit doing it

-Jesse

I disagree that it is a function of the State (or even of the State's Fiat Currency).
I believe it is a function of Human Corruptibility.

If a politician were offered 1M to make a decision a particular way, it doesn't matter if it is in USD or EURO or BTC.  What matters is the character of the politician.


As I understand it, (which is still a raw Newbie level of understanding in may ways) as the total number of bitcoins approaches maximum, ans as the "deflationary" aspect kicks in, the quantities transferred for a particular commodity could dropfrom 1BTC to 0.001 BTC  to 0.000001 BTC etc.  If the bottom rungs of the economy need to deal with nano-BTC to be meaningful, it will likely mean that some small number of individuals (or more likely corporations) are the only ones for whom 1 BTC is still meaningful.

It doesn't mean that they do not spend.

It means that don't need to spend as much this year as last year for the same thing.
It means that there are a limited number of players who can offer anything to them worth 1K BTC or 1M BTC.

Whether such a deflationary economy will be good for Bitcoin or not, I have no idea.
Whether such a deflationary economy will be good for the average human in this planetary system or not, I have no idea.
Whether it will even turn out exactly that way, I have no idea.

Whether trying something different than what has always failed before is a good idea or not, ..., I think so.

-Jesse

re: "If they spend them then the don't have them any more."

A company spends currency in order to reap even more currency.
True, they do not "have" the original items of currency, but they don't care, they have more total value of other items of currency.
If they don't get more (on average over time) then they go bankrupt.

The Typical End Consumer spends to consume, true; but does not typically spend to produce.
The Consumer typically trades "their time at work" for some currency (whether Fiat or Bitcoin or whatever).

The rate are which such a Consumer can acquire BTC is limited to their ability to work.
( e.g., there are only 24 hours in a day )

The rate at which a Rich individual can spend currency to produce currency in not limited in the same way.
( e.g., the more currency I have, the more I can use to produce more currency )

re: Where exactly is the problem?
It isn't a "problem" but an "observation".

In the Bitcoin economy, as in every other economy so far known, "The Rich Get Richer" (faster than anyone behind them).

In this early phase where not all BTC have been mined, then it is determined by who can afford to throw the most CPU/GPU power at mining.

Eventually, when all bitcoins have been mined, that aspect goes away.  The Bitcoin Economy will still be subject to normal economic flows.

-Jesse

Darn it all, you are correct.  I saw "Boing" and read "Boinc".
<expression type="facial" category="grin" style="sheepish" />

-Jesse

EDIT: As far as I can tell, there are no Boink projects dedicated to the mining of bitcoins.
Though some teams do declare that they accept donations in BTC.

Agreed: a moot point.

Physical Reality - as opposed to Computer Modeled Reality, where most modern Currencies live.

Philisophically, I agree there is no fundamental difference.
You might have a harder time, however, those who have not already, at least in part, become Bitcoin Enthusiasts.  It is only a small percentage of humanity that thinks much about the philosophy they use to view the world.

Hopefully not random!  Hopefully it is the amount they decided to create.

If you know how to create gold ....


That phrase "the exact amount of bitcoins in existence" can be taken two ways:
* the maximum number that are mathematically possible to ever exist
* the exact number that have been "mined" and moved into the economy
Both are known, public, and predictable.
What interests speculators is the rate (and the stability of the rate) that mining moves BTC into the economy.


Which brings to my mind a tangential question about the "creation" of a new economically active bitcoin.

I have not looked at the source code yet, but the question raised is of the fesability of tweaking the generation code. (without Bitcoin Client noticing, or what would be the point)

As I understand it, a bitcoin is:
* a properly check-summed encoding of ...
* a properly calculated hash of ...
* a properly generated term in ...
* a really scary cryptographic equation series.

And, as I understand it, the job of Bitcoin Client is to:
* validate the encoding and check-summing of the hash.
* validate the transaction chain
* * since the creation of this particular bitcoin
* * if not all the way back to the Bitcoin Epoch^(tm) beginning.

Which suggests that the "transaction of creation" (if that is a proper phrase) must contain enough information to verify that the data used to create the hash did in fact come from the scary cryptographic equation series.

And that this "transaction of creation" is still in the transaction chain so the client can verify it and all following transaction (that involve the bitcoin in question).

So the question becomes:
* Is it mathematically feasible to build a "transaction of creation", that passes current tests for validity, using less CPU power than the standard mining process?


I suspect the answer is "No" to the best ability of the cryptologists and programmers behind Bitcoin, else there would be no Bitcoin.

( : I seem to have drifted far from my original topic. : )

-Jesse

DAG NAB IT!

My session timed out while I was typing my response and the entire thing got lost.

I had done "Preview" many times, but that did not (apparently) save a copy anywhere in the system.

Sigh.

I will attempt to recreate my thought process, but I will remember to Ctrl-A Ctrl-C before I click "Post" from now on.

-Jesse

True, the event is long over, but I was using the quotes/transcripts as a starting point for discussion in this thread.

The differences (especially for us Newbies) between the Bitcoin economic system and other economies is not intuitively clear.

-Jesse

It is a good example.
But it only looks at Bob.  Not at the differences between Bob and Alice (The Rich).

In your example, the out of pocket expense for Bob is under $2K for that first year.
    ( $1000 + ($2.61 * 365.25 days in a year) )
        (before he can sell the PC and recoup some of that expense)
Bob's mined income for the year is about 219 BTC.
    (0.6 BTC / day * 365.25 days in a year)

That comes to about $9/BTC.
If Bob does get $800 for his old rig, the final cost is about $5/BTC; the profit you calculated.

Bob will only make a profit at all if he can sell the old rig for more than: $510.
(a good probability, but no guarantees in this economy. that's one of the risks Bob is taking.)

HOWEVER, and I think it is a big "however", that initial outlay of $1953 is a larger percentage of Bob's expendable income that it is of Alice's.

If you look at the same percentage of "expendable income" (or "investment capital" as Alice likes to call it) then the rig Alice gets is much more powerful than Bob's rig.

Alice's rig will likely produce at better than 1.4Ghash/s.

My contention is that for the same "percentage of expendable capital" Alice will harvest BTC at a higher rate than Bob will.
( and, therefore, at a better profit margin )

And therefore, my conclusion of: for the same level of personal pain, "the Rich get richer" than the non-Rich.

-Jesse

I do now. ;-)

@Kazimer,
Well, technically, bitcoin also is "created" at the press of a button.

It just takes lots of computer time to finish reacting to that button push.  Analogous to (but likely longer than) the printing time it take for the Fiat system to react to the button push.

-Jesse

@Kazimer, @realnowhereman,
I stand corrected on the "hard/easy to counterfeit" aspect of "Fiat Currency".  Even if I wasn't trying to talk about "Fiat Currency".

Gold, though, is still pretty hard to counterfeit.
It isn't used as a direct currency much these days.

-Jesse