Anyone want to travel to Belize?

A friend of mine is sending out this press release tomorrow.

23 March, 2013

Pedro's Hotel Now Accepting Bitcoin Payments

SAN PEDRO, BELIZE - Pedro's Hotel in San Pedro, Belize has started accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment in their Hotel, Bar and Pizzeria.  They will become the first hotel in Central America and one of only 4 hotels in the world to accept the currency.

Bitcoin, a relatively young digital currency, has seen increasing acceptance in recent months, particularly by popular online companies like Reddit and Wordpress.  However, brick and mortar businesses have been slow in understanding the benefits it brings to a local business.  The owner of Pedro's Peter Lawrence saw the potential benefits that Bitcoin could bring to his business. Lawrence said, "With Bitcoin we will be able to lower our transaction costs. It's perfectly suited to our type of business where nearly all of our reservations are taken online or over the phone."

Effective March 23nd, a newly constructed Deluxe Room will be available for 1 Bitcoin per night (price subject to change). Bitcoin will also be able to be used to pay for food and drink in the bar by pre-purchasing bar credit in the hotel office.

To check availability, make a reservation or learn more about paying for rooms with Bitcoin, email cindy@pedroshotel.com or call 704-990-8658 (US) or +501-226-3825 (Belize).  More information about the new Bitcoin option at Pedro's can be found at http://pedroshotel.com/bitcoin

About Pedro's Hotel

Pedro's Hotel has been one of the highest rated hotels in Belize for many years.  It caters to the budget minded traveler but offers amenities found in much more expensive establishments.  Pedro's has 50 rooms, two swimming pools, wireless internet and an onsite restaurant and bar serving the country's best thin-crust pizza.  For more information on Pedro's Hotel, please visit http://pedroshotel.com

About Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency that can be used to buy and sell goods online without a credit card.  Transactions in Bitcoin are anonymous, irreversible and are completed with very low transaction fees.  For more information about bitcoin, please visit http://www.weusecoins.com/


Contact Info
Peter Lawrence
Proprietor
Pedro's Hotel
cindy@pedroshotel.com
+501-226-3825

Is there any way to suppress the whitelist thread from the "Show new replies to your posts" option?

I find it a bit irritating to see it in there so many times each day.

...the thread in question...
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15911.0

I have a friend that I've been helping get started with Bitcoin.  He's asked his bank to wire transfer some funds to Mt. Gox so he can buy in when the price is right.

Unfortunately his bank (Chase) is telling him that they won't wire the funds because it's "Too Risky". 

I've never had a wire transfer denied to anyone before (international or domestic) and am kind of shocked to hear that they would deny one outright.  It is his money after all and his risk to take.

Has anyone else ran into this themselves? 

Is there a recommended alternative funding method? 

Maybe via Dwolla or something? 

I don't think there's enough volume on the other exchanges to direct him elsewhere right now.

I'm trying to call "getrawtransaction" on 4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b.

When done via the JSON-RPC API, I am getting an HTTP error 500.

When done via bitcoind, I get the error:
error: {"code":-5,"message":"No information available about transaction"}

Is it possible to query for information on this?  It does seem to come back at blockchain.info.

I'm noticing some problems running bitcoin-qt on our local wireless mesh network (http://open-mesh.com OM2P). 

When bitcoin-qt is syncing the blockchain, eventually the wireless will stop taking new http (or IMCP) requests.  open connections still transmit data fine and DNS lookups resolve.  Exiting the bitcoin client causes the wireless to resume working after about a minute or two.

I've been in contact with the open-mesh support team for quite some time about seemingly random wireless dropouts but the discovery that starting the bitcoin client dependably reproduces the problem for me gives me a technical path to target.

So a couple questions...

Has anyone ever seen anything similar happen when starting bitcoin on your network?

What might bitcoin be doing during the blockchain download that could cause something like this to happen?  I know there are 8 connections and some downloading going on, but it can't be any more of a bandwidth hog than a big youtube or movie which both download fine without causing the network brownout.

Any help or hints you could give would be great.

I have been working on a bitcoin related site that I haven't publicly announced or posted about anywhere.  Somehow, it's already been found by someone in Russia who is already trying to hack into it.

Fun.

I have to say that I was fairly impressed with bitZino overall.  Only tried the blackjack, but other than a few interface quirks, thought it was simple to understand and easy to play.  While I enjoyed my experience, bitZino will have to enjoy my BTC for me as my luck did not quite turn my way.

Can someone send me some testnet coins? 

mrsfC7PGmhKWdaAXxNfVESxT3RxWwFfDLM

I'm dong some development work and finding them hard to come by.

Thanks,

I'm still trying to wrap my head around some concepts so forgive me if the question is naive or completely out there...

I'm thinking about a local network situation where several users all have their own wallet files but for space and bandwidth reasons there is only one copy of the block chain shared between each user.

Is there a technical reason that you could not have a shared trusted blockchain which was used by multiple clients for validating transactions in their wallets?  Assuming that blockchain is trusted, is there a security risk in doing this?

From the FAQ:

"In general, selling things that are fairly cheap (like snacks, digital downloads etc) for zero confirmations will not pose a problem if you are running a well connected node."

What makes a node well connected? 

btw, I'm assuming Node means client based on the usage of the answer in question.