I am going to most certainly disagree. Not just Islam (see bolded in your quote), but ALL religions have some elements of violence within them. Islam is one of the worst. So is Christianity, and in both cases the body count over the ages exemplifies this truth.

Religion, or, I should say, Theistic Religions, have all the answers. Just ask 'em. Or better yet, don't, because when they DON'T have the answers, they have a tendency to label the one asking them 'heretic', and kill them. Christianity has had 700 years more to mellow the fuck out, and it largely has. What this really means is that it's adherents have evolved, and modified their beliefs in accord with a more human viewpoint, not that the core dogma is any less toxic. 200 years ago, Christians were still killing each other and others over what their Sky Fairy meant.

There are things that are good about religion, such as a doctrine of how to live a moral life, a system by which to do it, etc. However, NOT ONE of those things is unique to religion. The things that ARE unique to a religion is where it goes astray. The whole pissing contest between believers would be funny if it were not for its deadly consequences.

As noted earlier in this thread, I don't hate Islam. I've had little reason to. Most of the places I've lived, it was not prevalent, so therefore not virulent. I can't say the same for Christianity, in which I was unfortunately raised and which I have observed it's horrors first hand. From my readings of the Q'uran, I can see that it is no less virulent, probably no more. It is a bit better presented, since it was primarily written in just a few decades as opposed to several milennia, but at core, it's the same garbage. Love thy neighbor, unless he looks/talks/dresses different than you. Then kill the infidel scum. Same song, different god.

Deuteronomy 17:2 If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant,
17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded;
17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel:
17:5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
17:6 At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.

Surah 9

9:5 Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

I could fill the forum with similar examples from both of the religions herein mentioned, and not run out of material.

Religion can be a force for good, but ONLY if we don't take it too seriously, nor impose it on our neighbor.

Thomas Jefferson had it right:
"I care not whether my neighbor worships one god or twenty. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs".

I am fairly certain that I am considered a heretic by every organized theistic religion. I'm actually fairly proud of that, because asking questions is what got me there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10uRa4oENus Play That Funky Music!


And fix my BBcode skillz. Can't make it a proper link today

Been a LONG time since I was a pizza guy... But I still have the hat!
It's good to be back. Though I still think Theymos should rename the forum to Mos Eisley.

Hello Gamesters

Long time no see.

Life threw me a lot of curves, been out of crypto altogether and barely scraping by for over a year. I'm back. Not part of this project anymore, unfortunately, but I see they're still truckin' along, and it's nice to see GAME on every major altcoin exchange!

Never mind the idiots that see crypto being volatile and decide that it's the end of the world. What are we up to now, the 205th death of Bitcoin? GAME is a serious project. If y'all really think this recent flood of Eth based tokens is the future, well, try making a cold wallet with Ethereum vs. any satoshi based coin. Sure, tokens are relatively easy to make, but that's not a valuable thing in itself, and overall the platform sucks.

Further, as the GAME team keeps telling you, in game monetization is a bear for all game developers. Either they have to develop a secure token themselves, or they have to use VISA, which I can tell you as a bitcoin vendor is a BITCH when somebody decides they want to keep the money, or they can use GAME, which is cheap enough to be usable by the average joe but valuable enough to be useful to game development. Building it slow and steady makes sense. In ten years, Game will be just as robust at the underlying level as it is right now. Will Tokens? I doubt it. Ethereum took days to reach the scaling issues that BTC is facing 9 years on, and GAME's block time and niche market make scaling not only possible, but relatively easy.

Couple that with the fact that if Lighting Network works on Bitcoin, it can be adapted to GAME, and you have all the pieces for a worldwide interchangeable gaming token. Sort of the holy grail, dont'ch'a think?

I'm sure the boys and girls at the helm have already thought of this, but just in case.. This would be a good time to push adoption of GAME by casinos. BTC transactions have become too high and BCH is still too volatile. The steady pace of GAME's market is actually more of a feature than a bug. (sorry about that, day traders, but volatility is mainly good for YOU, not the system).

Whatever the naysayers want to say, I wish I'd never left the project. I had to make several decisions with zero warning. I made the wrong one.

I see.

Well, as to what I'm doing, I'm working for a crypto company as a contractor under a serious NDA, so I can't exactly say, but it's decent money. After I left GameCredits, the job I chose over it, well, the company went bankrupt with no warning and a lot of money owed that I never got... So I went back to the corporate drone world to feed my family. Wish I'd have stayed at GameCredits But at the time, while it was a lot of fun, I wasn't really making a living. I traded BTC for a bit, until it became impossible with PayPal, but that was only supplemental. About two months ago, some people I used to work with approached me to help with a new project, and that's where I'm at. You never escape Crypto.

I know it's off topic for this thread, but I had a balance on three accounts with the very first GMC webwallet, and I can't seem to recover them. Any ideas what I should do about that? (PM is fine). I was completely out of the Crypto world for over a year, things have moved apace

On topic, I'm a singer, if any of the Cypherfunks people are looking for a vocalist for the occasional project, send 'em my way.

Let me add a bit of endorsement here.

The game he mentions, Turbocharged? I was involved in GAME back then. The voiceover on that game is me. Michael is legit.

Life hit me like a freight train a bit over a year ago, had to make some choices, and leaving the GAME team was one of them. I regret that choice, but I simply couldn't do it at the time. And for more transparency, I owe Nele some money. Haven't forgotten that, Nele, you'll get it eventually.

A question for you, Soundposition, is Simon no longer involved or just not doing development?

<emphasis mine>

I must take extreme exception to the emphasized portion. That seems to me, and I have an unfortunate amount of exposure to Christianity, to be the EXACT truth of religion. "nothing matters in this life".

As an atheist/agnostic (I'll get back to that), I feel that what I do in THIS life is the ONLY thing that has any consequence. If like-minded and smarter people than I are able to extend life, then maybe there will be another lifetime. But I have no belief due to extreme lack of evidence in any sort of after life. From my perspective, the day of my death is my ending. Therefore what I do in this life is of PARAMOUNT importance, cuz it's the only shot I get.

Religious people like to mix up atheism as an actual philosophy, rather than something else. And there are atheists who do the same.

Thus, two categories have been arbitrarily assigned, and capriciously labeled.

The first, the so-called "strong" atheist, does indeed hold the view that there is no god. They hold this as close and dearly as the Theist holds to their beliefs.

The second, the so-called "weak" atheist, does not. I fall into the latter category, and I call it an arbitrary and capricious label because the "strong" position is logically weak, whereas the "weak" category is utterly defensible.

I do not believe there is a god or gods. Note that this is the exact opposite of believing there is no god. It is rather a statement that I do not have sufficient proof for the extraordinary claim that some being(s) who "live" outside of time and space in violation of all that we have learned caused it all to happen.

Is such a thing possible? Yes, I suppose it is. Is it plausible? Decidedly not.

To make this explicit in the minds of "believers", I will present to you a very simple argument that to my knowledge destroys all theistic religions. Not all deistic religions, mind you, but theistic.

Theism, regardless of stripe, holds the following as axiomatic.

1. There is or are a deity or deities
2. This being or group of beings is omnipotent
3. This being or group of beings want(s) to be worshiped by humans.

Following these axioms, there could NEVER BE more than one religion, arguments of free will notwithstanding. If all three are true, than we would KNOW that there are gods.

Now if point three is false, and the god(s) simply don't care, then they could exist within a logical framework. Of course, this, too, puts the binders on all theistic religions.

As for some of you claiming that atheists have no spiritual beliefs, this is simply untrue. A great many of us believe in such things, or at least ponder whether they can or do exist. Personally, the idea of spirits makes sense to me. Energy came first, why would it not also evolve first? That doesn't make such beings, if they exist, gods. Just a different sort of conscious life.

In my own life, I explore the esoteric and arcane to a great extent. I did not come lightly to my lack of belief in any gods. I started from the standpoint of rather extreme Christianity. When it failed to match up with reality, the cognitive dissonance was more than I could bear, so I went exploring. The exploration is not over, I yet live. But if there is a god, it's not that monster, nor the monster of the Muslims, nor any of the other monstrous deities who's followers wage war on one another over bullshit.

The thing that religious people never seem to understand about atheists is that we are NOT defined by atheism except by YOU. "Atheist", as a label, describes what I am NOT, not what I am. The word simply means "without gods". While it can imply a great many things, it doesn't define anything.

For instance, I am a philosopher, a religious man in a different way, a bitcoiner, a singer, a cook, a father, a son, I am a great many things, none of which are determined by what gods I don't believe in. I also would point out to you believers that absolutely every one of you is an atheist in regards to all the other gods aside from your chosen favorite. Again, it merely defines what you are NOT.

As I indicated above, I believe the "strong" and "weak" labels are arbitrary and capricious, and completely wrong. There is not one thing that is weak about my beliefs. One of them is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and that is simply lacking. If the supposed creator(s) of the universe made themselves known and could prove their claims, I would cease to be atheist, because it would no longer be a matter of "faith", which Mark Twain defined as the belief in what you know ain't so. But the dusty writings of Bronze Age people, while interesting, is not and will not be the definition of who I am. Or you, for that matter, because the computer you're using to view this would be viewed as an infernal device by those same people.

Religions, like life itself, evolve. But their core doctrines often hinder that evolution. For the most part, through this process, Christianity has become far less violent, though no less vile, over the course of centuries. Islam, with 700 years less to develop, came to it's more violent middle stage at the same time that weapons got a lot worse. Would be interesting to see who has the higher body count between the two.

I don't hate
 Muslims. I also don't hate Islam, exactly. Not near as much as I hate Christianity. Both are just flat wrong, and I'm about to show you why.

This is actually true of ALL Theistic religions that I am aware of.

1. A priori beliefs:

 There is a God
 This being is Omniscient and Omnipotent
 This being wants to be worshipped.

2. The problem.

If all of the above are true, how many religions could their possibly be?

Y'all know the answer, you just don't want to face it.

It really doesn't matter whether experts testify or not. If you want a really good example of why, go on Youtube and watch the Senate hearings regarding the PMRC. The level of ignorance and privilege present in the American government was of epic proportions back then. It hasn't gotten better. No amount of expertise can break through deliberate ignorance.

And it is deliberate. Since 1913, The ENTIRE underpinning of the power structure has been the (suddenly fiat) US Dollar. Anything that threatens that is frightening, and they haven't figured out a way to control it. Within the limits they have to live with, there really isn't a way to control it. No entity, ever, is more Luddite than a "conservative" government, because Technology represents change, and possibly progress. Those are two things that tend to weaken power structures, especially power structures that are a century or more past their theoretical usefulness. I personally dispute that they were ever useful, but that's a discussion for another time.

We have reached the point where the various ruling instrumentalities have no choice but to recognize BTC and other digital currencies. Lack of choice does not compel good legislation, if there is such a thing.

What he said. I threw a little sarcasm above, because, well, I'm sarcastic. And I rather enjoyed mining Eligius back when GH/s was a thing in Bitcoin mining. Yeah, things OFTEN went wrong on the stats page etc. But hey, zero percent fee. There were also multiple times that I recall where it took a while for a manual payout to be made. Wizkid ALWAYS made it right, eventually. The level of FUD, baiting, and outright trolling that he endured in those instances was truly ridiculous.

So fast forward a few years. I've not been on Bitcointalk in around a year, and lo and behold, SSDD in the Eligius thread.

And these are the people that secure the network...

Wizkid, As you may recall I'm rather militantly not religious. But you're a saint. I hope you carry on.

I mined here back in 2013 and ain't got paid a single satoshi since I quit mining. What the hell is going on here???




Sorry, I had to. Been out of the space for a long time, good to see you're still here Was catching up in the thread, and while this has been a longer than previous "mess up", I can't believe the same people are still panicking. Face it folks, Wiz is not gonna just vanish after this long. Now I think he might be justified in busting some heads after the nth time that "Eligius stole my BTC because nobody held my hand today"....

If I can raise the funds to get back into mining, y'all won't have to guess where I'll be pointing my rigs. Stats or not.

FTFY, though Mr. Coleman's comment applies.

I'd be interested if the games were interesting. Poker, Blackjack, etc. Not fucking dice games. I'm ok with them existing, but they bore the fuck out of me.

if you have even one active connection, it should find more. It's also, as mentioned above, easier to add them to your config file. If one goes bad it will be ignored, so a long list is not a big deal.

Not really. They all at core believe in the same writings. Interpretations are massively divergent, which in the past led Christians to kill each other. Much like the Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims of modern times. None of it can be proven, beyond the few points where the 'inspired' scriptures touch on real locations or known historical characters. It's all a fiction designed to give one group of people control over another. Like all religions.

Since Christians claim the Judaic scriptures as part of their holy writ, it's very EASY to find examples of pure evil within the religion. I'm not going to cite specific scripture right now (though I can with a bit of looking, my memory is a bit rough), but just look to the so called Old Testament. The Israelites were commanded by their vicious god to wipe out entire cultures, and punished when they failed.

"Successful" religions are just about all steeped in a history of violence. The major difference I see between modern Islam and modern Christianity is not doctrinal, but that modern Christians have adapted to a larger world and don't, for the most part, take it too seriously. They want to have a "personal relationship with Jesus", but they aren't willing to go to war over it. For the most part they need a more compelling reason to commit mass murder. Unfortunately, at least in the United States, they find it in the expansionist dreams of the ruling elite, but that's an entirely different rant.

Well..
no. But the major ones for sure. However, Christianity (which I view as a horrible religion), has mellowed out. Islam has not. If Christians followed their religion, they would be as or more violent than the Muslims. Thankfully, Christianity grew up. They've realized (for the most part) that not everyone is going to convert, even with the sword. Islam has not reached this point. Given the seven hundred year disparity, not all that surprising, but with modern weapons, it becomes a MUCH more serious problem. 700 years ago, ONE fanatic couldn't waste very many innocents before being killed or negated himself. This is no longer true.

The questions stand. Your red herring has been addressed.

Let him play. He ain't taking over, but he's got a big mouth and might draw some flies... attention, I meant. Attention. Yeah, that's it. I spoke with Thundertoe, he's not going anywhere.

two. there has to be two

@kiklo, one minor quibble with your last post. If you don't specify an address for dumpprivkey, it will dump ALL keys into a text file with one go. Almost always works.

The rest is right on point, but that adds some extra steps. Sometimes you have to do it one by one if the .dat file is too messed up, but most often it's not necessary to do it one by one.

With that out of the way, you've been one of the best members of this community! Keep up the fantastic work, eh?

compile linux from source. it's easy, and it works good. If you've never compiled a wallet before, it will take around an hour on a decent machine, including installing all dependencies. If you've compiled wallets before and already have the dependencies, about 15 minutes.