The daily trade volume is going to pass #6. What happens?

I was thinking that the total Bitcoin difference between two adjacent blocks is always newcoins = (50e8 >> (height / 210000)), so the following rule should hold:

    "sum of all input values of all transactions in a blocks + newcoins = sum of all output values of all transactions in a blocks"

But it is not!!! Only the ">" instead of "=" holds in the above rule, there have been some blocks having less newcoins than the expected value above. Now, there are more than total 10BTC disappearing in nowhere and the reported total coin in most websites are simply wrong. I feel faked by it as there is really a way to destroy Bitcoin: Users pay the transaction fee and miners throw them into blackhole by not adding it to the block's coinbase.

This rule can be very trivial to verify by simple additions with no additional backtracking required. So why don't we enforce the coinbase output value to satisfy the rule above?

Example: https://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000000016034213ddfedb834de864de92b03723db20ae70d3e631ef68d

Reading few methods of offline transaction (https://bitcoinarmory.com/using-offline-wallets-in-armory/), it seems that there is still no easy way to do that at the moment (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167312.0). There are many details to take care in BOTH online and offline clients. The less thing to do, the less the risk. So could the whole process be easier if the whole blockchain is copied to the offline computer? Is there any problem in following procedure?

(1) Copy the whole folder ~/.bitcoin/blocks to the offline computer
(2) [offline]: ./bitcoind sendtoaddress <address> <amount>
(3) [offline]: ./bitcoind getrawtransaction <txid>
(4) Copy the hexstring transaction back to the online machine
(5) [online]: ./bitcoind sendrawtransaction <hexstring>
---------- Alternative ----------
(4) Display QR code of hexstring transaction in offline computer
(5) Scan QR code and paste the transaction at https://blockchain.info/pushtx
(6) Erase everthing on USB to prevent any information leaking back to online computer

I have couples of concerns about the Satoshi client:
* Is the ~/.bitcoin/blocks folder contains all the necessary information of blockchain? Is it enough to only copy the newest part of database?
* I dont want to backup wallet every time. So to prevent the keypoolrefill(), is that the only way is to sendmany to send back to the original wallet? Do I need to calculate the exact amount in the sendmany to prevent it to send remainder to new address?
* Is the fee determined from the offline computer accurate? Even if the blockchain is not the newest one?
* If there is any errors found about the transaction before submitting, how to remove it and make a new one?

[Objective:]

Bitcoin started with cryptographers, and then penetrated to libertarian and techies. Now, it is the time to move on to the next level and penetrate to more general users. Comparing with the geek people in this level, the next level of users should have no knowledge of Bitcoin when using it. It is very important to get their feet wet BEFORE forming any opinion of Bitcoin. A good target is your non-technical friends, and friends of friends.

Objective:
Increase number of Bitcoin acceptors by providing an opportunity for your friends to try Bitcoin. Focus are the easy to use as micropayment system

Action:
Ask who want Bitcoin in your facebook and Google+. Send Bitcoin to them and remind them to spend all Bitcoin

Date:
To be determined. A particular date, or a short period few months later

Details:
During the given time period, all participants create a post asking who want to try Bitcoin in their own social networking website such as facebook and Google+. Then you send 0.01 Bitcoin to each of your friends who post a Bitcoin address. The amount can be adjusted but it should be small to demonstrate the micropayment ability of Bitcoin.

The second part, and the most important one, is to make sure they spend Bitcoin. You may recommend them to donate those Bitcoin, say, to occupy wall street. Or you may recommend them to send to other friends. Some friends may want to collect Bitcoin you given away, so, as a motivation, the total Bitcoin you sent out should be large enough to buy some stuff, such as snack. With such condition, you will be able to create a discussion afterward.

To increase the willingness of your friends to accept Bitcoin in the future, it is best that their friends are also Bitcoin acceptors. So if your friends are happily spending their first Bitcoin, try seeking their help to spread more Bitcoin to their friends

The whole trials for your friends must be quick, easy and foolproof. No Bitcoin client. An online wallet is strongly recommended, such as instawallet. No discussion of Bitcoin. Most people won't waste time for any geek stuff, you will just scare them away. All they have to know is how to use Bitcoin and how easy it is for cross website.

Benefit for participants:
* Identify your friends in your social network that can accept Bitcoin
* Create usage within your social network such as an easy online debt system with your friend
* Bitcoin on your hand will worth more than the other owners because you have more place to spend
* Bitcoin given away in this campaign may be covered "exchange fee" in the future because there are no need to exchange it to dollar

Expected results:
* Your friends know how to accept and spend Bitcoin
* Your friends get the idea that Bitcoin is a very easy to use cross-website credit system
* Create local network effect and increase the number of acceptors, but NOT general users, miners, buyers or owners
* Create a usage bubble without price bubble

Notes:
* Avoid details explanation of Bitcoin: Similar to money, there is no need to understand it before using it. Remember that the targets are those people who are not going to spend time to learn Bitcoin, and we should show that Bitcoin is easy to use. If they are fascinated by the cryptography, decentralization, global currency, avoiding tax, chances are that they already know Bitcoin. Repeating it is useless and you just scare others away.
* Avoid discussing price of Bitcoin: It is much easier to ask them to spend if they think it is a virtual credit system at the beginning. Also, the large price fluctuation is also a negative signal for some people. Hence, exchange should not be used as online wallets in this campaign.
* Avoid trolling environment: The only purpose is to give Bitcoin to those non-technical people who haven't tried Bitcoin yet.
* DON'T ask them to buy Bitcoin: Otherwise, you will create another price bubble. More importantly, your friend will think you are scammer because of dropping price.

Maximizing impact:
* To increase the curiosity of other friends, it is best that some of your friends know Bitcoin before and post a Bitcoin address in a short time
* If you have spare Bitcoin, you may try to raise it in twitter and forum
* Spreading the word about this campaign to maximize the effect
* Introduce website that accept those tiny amount of Bitcoin for extra services
* Introduce a way to earn Bitcoin afterward, such as feedzebirds

I find that the "transaction time" shown in the client is actually the receiving time of the transaction but not the sending time.

When old wallet was opening and downloading new blocks, it shows that there is a new transaction one minute ago, but in fact it was three months ago. This behaviour is really confusing and, even more, it shows ten thousands confirmation for that one minute transaction. I can only go the blockexplorer to find the correct date and remember that this transaction was sent between my wallets. Rescan does not solve this problem. Also, it is a problem that there are no simple way to check this in the client.

I really think the blocking time or sending time should be display in the client instead.

I have tried to see how many active client nodes in the network. By running it for few days, the maximum number of connections I get is around 900.

So is it truely the size of bitcoin network at any moment? It is a bit weak in my opinion, isn't it?

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/

Rambling around stackexchange and see the bitcoin beta site suddenly pop up. Congratulation!  It finally come out. Hope that it will be a high quality site about bitcoin question

People sometimes sign their message in this forum, so I wonder how you guys verifying their signature with the message? It is tedious to copy and paste message to the gpg program and it even does not prompt for importing any key so how can it verify the signature? I am just curious that is there some plugin that are easy to use like the enigmail for thunderbird?