I've never heard of it being used to only reference manual labor. I always thought it was a synonym of work. Will figure out a way to rephrase it.

I guess the difference would become very clear if someone asked "is the television laboring?"

Thanks! I tend to be a pretty boring read, even when I'm trolling (speech is not much better -- true monotone). I originally even debated whether or not the "benefits" section made the article seem overly-passionate. I definitely agree the paragraph order is way off, and should have a "hook," probably before the second-to-last paragraph.

I think trying to remove a lot of the explanation about fairly basic stuff might be a mistake, though... maybe some type of infographic format would make more sense, with "branches" explaining things they already know... it'd be sectioned off so they can simply skip it and enjoy a much shorter text wall. I really want to keep some of it to broaden the appeal, but it obviously has the drawbacks you point out.... hrm...

I love that, over a day into the news, nobody seems to have any freakin' clue what's going on. We can't even get a clear translation, much less a clear legal interpretation. Did they ban vendors from accepting BTC, did they just ban BTC-denominated bank accounts, did they ban banks from dealing with businesses using bitcoins, did they ban bitcoin exchanges, did they clarify what bitcoins are as a taxable entity?

Are they just trying to kill bitcoin with regulatory uncertainty?

  Received feedback from target.

"I have to admit my eyes glazed over" 

ETA: We've been talking more, though. I think he might end up going for the BitPay route.

Since it seems to be something very slightly off, at least the brute-forcing should be relatively quick. No idea what the issue could be aside from what was already suggested outside of something stupid-obvious, like mistaking a "0" for a "O."

Both wallets and private keys can be printed. Private keys provide access to individual public keys. Wallets are the collection of private and public keys. AFAIK, there is not currently an easy way to print off encrypted private keys, so you should keep in mind it's much less secure (except in cases where you need to protect against yourself).

Yeah, except the "payment processors" are almost entirely unlicensed individual escrow providers operating on a decentralized web of trust.

Actually, the problem has been more properly solved. See Casascius' Bitcoin Address Utility: http://casascius.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/bitcoin-address-utility/ It looks a bit intimidating, but it's actually very easy to use. It eliminates a good bit of the trust requirement in the escrow agent except in instances where there's an actual dispute and you want him to rule fairly or turn it over to a proper arbitrator. (you obviously also don't want the escrow agent acting in cahoots with the seller or buyer to scam people)

Thanks for feedback. Reading through Self Evident link. There are already a bunch of things I want to change in it (tx fee explanation, talking about modularity in Bitcoin, better explaining the idea that "bitcoins" aren't files people pass around [most common hangup I've run into with people -- I like SE's ledger explanation]), but busy now (mostly trying not to poop myself, actually!). Should have first major revision tomorrow.

I didn't actually assume a person would know much about Bittorrent. I figured it made sense to explain something relatively simple, get that quick "I've got it" feeling, and expand from there. Trying hard not to give someone the idea that Bitcoin's too difficult to understand, where it remains to them as "that Internet funny money."

Lot of things on my plate for the next few days (have had a lot to do for the past few days). Proofreading progress will be slow - about one per day (which I guess isn't too unusual)... probably for about a week. Fwiw.

I fairly quickly wrote this up for a software developer, whose products I greatly appreciate, after he gave a hint that he may be interested in learning more. This is the first explanation I'm really happy with, at least in setting out what I want it to achieve. This is intended as a middle-of-the-road between fully explaining the cryptography in a technical manner and only giving vague ideas which don't really explain what's going on or why you should trust it. It's intended for fairly smart, computer-literate people who just haven't spent hours researching Bitcoin. It probably isn't for your grandmother. Any help on it would be appreciated. I'm not certain I got all the technical information right. If I screwed something up, please, please, please correct it. I intend to eventually publish it in the newbies forum and elsewhere after a LOT of revisions.

--

We should first talk about Bittorrent, because Bitcoin takes a lot of networking ideas from there. Bittorrent is a peer-to-peer method of sharing files between many, many people. There are occasionally legitimate uses for this, but it is most frequently used for sharing unauthorized copies of intellectual property. It does this effectively, and even though it's used to violate laws in many countries, it cannot be shut down because it's a protocol, not a product or service.

In Bittorrent, let's say you want to share a collection of songs you made. You'd host your copy of these songs. If someone else wants to download your songs, they'd first download a tiny .torrent file (which is only a few kilobytes in size) from a trusted source and then have to download the data directly from you because, at this point, you're the only peer sharing the files. Once this new person downloads the files from you, they can now share the files with others in the Bittorrent network. This goes on and on until there may be 1,000 different people across the globe sharing your songs with other people.

Everyone's sure they still have the original files you uploaded because in the .torrent file you share are a bunch of cryptographic "hashes," which are just strings of letters, symbols, and numbers. These hashes are used by Bittorrent clients to ensure peers are downloading the correct files, because each section of a file can be translated into a hash which must match the hash in the .torrent file. If it does not match, the data is deleted and redownloaded from other peers until the hashes match. You could think of hashes as a kind of cargo manifest, where the Bittorrent client automatically verifies the contents of the various crates in the shipping vessel.

Bitcoin works in a very similar way, except the hashes (or "cargo manifests") play an exceptionally important role in securing the network, making sure all bitcoins are stored by the proper people. All transactions in Bitcoin are stored in a blockchain, a massive ledger which holds all transactions ever made on the Bitcoin network. In the blockchain are blocks (similar to data sections in files shared in Bittorrent), all of which have their own hash. Hashes in Bitcoin are not downloaded from a .torrent file, but procedurally generated based on transactions which have occurred in previous blocks. Every full Bitcoin client self-verifies every block has the correct hash, and like in the Bittorrent network - if a hash doesn't match, the block is re-downloaded from another peer. This makes it very difficult to "fake" transactions in the Bitcoin network.

Keeping record of all transactions is essential, because bitcoins aren't actual data. There are no tangible "bitcoins." You can't hold bitcoins on your hard drive. Instead, people control public and private keys. Public keys are a lot like usernames online, and what users generally talk about when they're talking about addresses. Private keys are much like passwords, and give you the authority to control bitcoins on public keys. The Bitcoin protocol is loaded with advanced cryptographic functions, and one of these allow people who control public keys to verify they control a private key without actually giving their private key away.

If I wanted to send bitcoins to you, I'd broadcast a message to the network saying "hey, I control 'this public address,' as verified by this cryptographic hash from its corresponding private key, and I want to transfer .05 bitcoins to this other public address." Computers on the network check to make sure what I said is true by checking their own copy of the blockchain, then check to make sure I included any necessary fee to carry this transaction (since everyone's transactions increase the size of the blockchain and resources it requires out of everyone else, fees are demanded for certain kinds of transactions), and if everything checks out, they will relay that transaction to all their peers. It keeps getting passed around until it arrives at what are known as miners. This all sounds complicated and labor-intensive, but because it's all handled by fast computers and networks, it can literally take less than a second.

Miners play another important role in Bitcoin. Miners take all of the transactions pending inclusion in a block, verify them, and package them all up into one neat piece of data. They then must effectively brute-force a kind of password (a hash) which will give them the authority to create that one packaged block, and this IS extremely labor-intensive, arbitrarily and intentionally. The hashes to unlock authority to create a block is procedurally set by rules to take approximately 10 minutes of computer power from the entire network, which is currently around seven quadrillion hash operations per second, tens of millions of dollars' worth of specialized equipment which all the supercomputers in the world couldn't come close to matching. It's done this way to ensure there is a high degree of decentralization - to make sure no one person or entity is capable of packaging multiple blocks in a row and potentially including faked information.

There are multiple controls in place to ensure decentralization and that fake blocks are rejected by the Bitcoin network, and I'll go over the two big ones. The first mechanism ensuring decentralization is by paying miners transaction fees and subsidies (subsidies are hardcoded in Bitcoin software) which the miner gets to collect once he's found the correct block hash. This gets everyone active in mining since they have expectation of profit, though some people mine purely to secure the network. The second mechanism in place to prevent "fake" blocks is something called orphaning. Since all block hashes are procedurally generated based on previous blocks, miners are able to determine if a block is fake and should be orphaned. If they see fake blocks, they will begin mining their own chain of blocks. Assuming "honest miners" control the majority of hashpower, they will mine the longest chain of blocks. Bitcoin clients (the users) will only use the longest chain of blocks, and discard (or "orphan") the shorter chains, effectively invalidating them. The longer, hopefully honest, chain will only contain legitimate transactions, thus orphaning any fake transactions the shorter chain contained. So far, Bitcoin has not had a serious issue with dishonest miners.

You may be thinking "well - that's nice and all. It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, I guess, but what's the point?" Bitcoin has many benefits over conventional payment mechanisms.
1) It has no central issuer and cannot be shut down by anyone. It's simply not possible to kill Bitcoin. You can shut down bitcoin exchanges (which convert government money to bitcoin), but you cannot actually kill the protocol or the network. It's going to be with us forever. It's not like e-gold, where a government can just send them a letter saying they must stop and shut the whole thing down.
2) It's extremely fast. You can send bitcoins to anyone in seconds. Depending on how many confirmations you want to wait for from miners, to ensure the transaction is legitimate, it generally takes about an hour - anywhere in the world.
3) It's unprecedentedly cheap. No more going bank to bank, converting funds back and forth as they each take a little chunk of the money you send. You can send the equivalent of $millions in seconds for fees ranging from absolutely nothing to the equivalent of about $.50.
4) It's extremely fungible, like nothing else in the world. Because Bitcoin ties coins to public addresses, not government identities, you can send and receive funds to/from anyone at any time, potentially without anyone knowing who, exactly, sent what where. In this new world, you do not need the government's permission to send funds to Wikileaks' Bitcoin address. You can just do it - total freedom. The Bitcoin network doesn't care about political issues - it's completely agnostic. All the network cares about is whether or not you had the proper hashes giving you the authority to send bitcoins.
5) No more worrying about fraud. Your client and miners do this work for you. No more worrying about chargebacks or whether or not the dollar bills you were handed are counterfeit. Once the network has confirmed funds you've received a few times, you can be 100% confident they're authentic and now completely controlled by you.

This concludes a basic overview of the Bitcoin network. For more in-depth information on the cryptography behind Bitcoin, there's an excellent series by Khan Academy at https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-what-is-it . For a more basic introduction and list of Bitcoin clients, you may wish to visit http://bitcoin.org/en/

BREAKING: Chinese Government Assassinates Al Gore. PAAAAAANIC! (and then thank God)

Confusing link OP posted. Cloud.com (not to be confused with xn--l3h.com which OP is selling), as a business, was purchased for $200m, with the domain alone estimated to be worth $18M by the company Citrix.

Whew. Thanks for warning. Almost missed this. Have a really light-colored ticker I can't see well. BTCBTCBTC

OP is/was Atlas, among many other pseudonyms he took after being repeatedly banned for turning everything into an argument about why governments across the world will fall to libertarian ideals (you could be talking about which soda you prefer, and Atlas will surely come in and start ranting about the soda Nazis, and why libertarians must drink unlicensed soda to rebel against government oppression). When not derailing threads, his range of topics (which varied greatly, along with personality, depending on which sock account he used) included "everyone should use blue light bulbs" and "I can't make the 'u' thing on my keyboard." His MO consisted mostly of quoting dead people and complaining about the heavy-handed moderation policies. As you probably know, you basically can't post anything on this forum without having your thread being deleted by Thermos the Tyrant.

Petty style preferences:
*altcoin, not alt coin or alt-coin.
*blockchain, not block chain or block-chain.
*All coins (Namecoin, Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc) are not spaced or hyphenated UNLESS the developer has created the software using an alternative writing scheme. For example, if you boot up a LOL-coin client, and right on the header and in all the documentation, it's called LOL-coin, write it as LOL-coin. AFAIK, there are no altcoins which do this.
*Internet should be capitalized except in rare cases which would probably only come up with discussing mesh networking. When referring to the Internet we all access, with all the TLDs we commonly use - that is the Internet. However, it's possible to be talking about internets, where people are interconnected on other networks. The Tor network (sites actually behind Tor) is an example of an alternate internet, and this does mean the Internet is an internet.
*Cryptocurrency, not crypto currency or crypto-currency. Crypto-anything-else should probably be hyphenated, but "cryptocurrency" is used so often, I think it's deserving of being a proper word.
*In cases where the use of "Bitcoin" is very ambiguous, I'd prefer it capitalized. For example, under current rules, if someone was referring to a Bitcoin wallet, or Bitcoin transactions, you could really go either way. It could be referring to transactions using Bitcoin, or it could be referring to transactions in bitcoin - and that same ambiguity exists with "Bitcoin wallet," as well as in a few other cases.
*Swiss Army knife. It is (or was?) the knife issued to the Swiss Army. You could make a case for that being capitalized a few different ways, though.

(By the way, since I'm starting to add to my collection of utterly ridiculous projects with ~0% chance of success, if someone wants to help me create a gamified text editing process, where you have a physical or digitized tabletop game with the most extensive ruleset on Earth, I think it could sell to to the text publishing industry... I'm envisioning a D&D mutation. In that way, it'd be kind of like the hybrid genre Typing of the Dead popularized, but many, many, many multitudes more complex. Call it a dual-motivator, where bonus pay and layoffs are dictated by progress on the board, and you don't have to play unless the team starts sucking. Of course, it has the drawback of having to hire someone full-time who only translates the ruleset into progression in the game. "Ah, Percival, you rolled a three, yesterday. As such, your sixteen misspellings have translated into your character receiving cerebral palsy as calculated by ((((pg. ct. /"content difficulty")*"pay grade modifier")*16)))*d3) being equal to 106, which, as it's >100, resulted in a random card draw from the 'disabilities' set. Your 'mental acuity' check failed as calculated by... ...Cerebral palsy results in one of your cards being dropped and reshuffled into the deck every three turns. Cerebral palsy remains attached until character death or may be removed from cards in the 'miraculous healing' set drawn when ((((pg. ct. / "content difficulty" )/ "pay grade modifier")*16)))*d3) equals less than 10. On error category 2 of 8..." Sounds like fun, eh?!)

I would strongly advise you not to use this service if you a) are comfortable with an exchange, b) do not know and trust me, c) want to spend more than you can afford to lose, d) are temperamental, e) do not understand how this process works by reading it, f) do not understand how Bitcoin works, and/or g) want to use escrow. There are absolutely no guarantees with this service, it is provided individual-to-individual, and you are expected to send first knowing full-well there're hundreds of different ways for me to scam you out of money. If you have to ask or search to find if I'm reputable - if you have to look at my trust rating on this forum - do not use this service. This has a very limited number of reasonable uses, and it probably doesn't apply to your situation.

Given the practical exchange blackout in the US and current lack of ATMs, I've decided to reopen the "Pen & Paper Exchange," this time without the "exchange" part. Meet in person (or with CU shared branching) for a simple cash-for-btc trade.

Fees, minimums, locations:
Base % fee (over Bitfinex Last at time BITCOIN is sent to your wallet): 10%
Hard maximum: $10,000
Soft maximum: $5,000 (any amount over $5,000 incurs an additional 2.5% premium over spot)
Hard minimum: $500 ($25 fee tacked on for amounts <$500)
Soft minimum: $1,000 (trades <$1,000 incur an additional 2.5% premium over spot)
Locations: Jackson, MI (properly, Parma, MI - you'll enjoy my scenic garage) - no additional charge & near-instant send of BTC to the address you want.
Other locations: Lansing, MI - Ann Arbor, MI (flat $50 travel fee tacked on, you must have at least 100 posts on this forum and a join date before 2013 or have me know you from somewhere else, and you only receive BTC after I've gone home to verify the cash [I don't keep privkeys on my phone and never will]. After cash is verified and counted, THEN exchange rate is calculated and BTC sent) -- some other relatively close locations may be possible with those same caveats (and potentially lesser fees if they're close - like Albion). I will not willingly travel into the city of Detroit under any circumstance, and I will not meet in an airport or other "depot."

If you are with a credit union which participates in shared branching, the base % fee is lowered to 6.5%, the "hard minimum" is lowered to $250 ("soft minimum" is lowered to $500), and the "hard maximum" is lowered to $1,450 (there is no "soft maximum" in this case). The exchange is near-instant so long as you schedule it with me and alert me when you send the funds.

I do not accept anything other than physical USD or a shared branching transfer at a CU. For example, I will not accept gold, Western Union, Paypal, cocaine, sexual services, Chase QuickPay, Venmo, Dwolla, wire or ACH transfers, mailed money (unless you literally waive me of all liabilities), karma chips, or Amazon gift certificates. In some instances, non-rotten venison may be accepted for partial-trade. I will not buy bitcoins. By bringing a bag, box of rolls, or jar of coins and expecting bitcoin for them, you agree to be (and waive me of liability resulting from any potential damages from being) punched in the teeth and possibly shot at as you attempt to leave.

In any case, this is a limited service provided as-is (unprofessionally) and will not always be available. Orders cannot be canceled once I have the cash in hand and there are no refunds. Escrow is not accepted under any circumstance (I couldn't possibly think of all the ways this could go wrong or ways in which the btc-buyer would be dissatisfied) and you always send first. If you want a receipt, bring a pen and piece of paper. If you're unsure of what your fees would end up being, PM me asking for an example quote under certain circumstances, keeping in mind I cannot provide you with a real quote before cash is processed.

This thread will be locked unless major revisions are made, partially to prevent trolling, and partially to prevent people from taking any positive feedback into consideration (when you should already either know or not whether you'll trust me with significant sums of money), though I'll be more than happy to report negative experiences to hammer in the point of the first paragraph. PM me if interested.

I initially considered that but quickly realized it's not suited for me, which isn't saying anything bad about that kind of book. There are other niches than just straight-faced Bitcoin promotion. This obviously isn't the Bitcoin book, and there are loads of niches to fill.
1) I can't think of a way to make that interesting for people who've already heard about Bitcoin, and frankly, I talk to those people more than enough. If you want reasons 1-1000 Bitcoin will succeed, you go anywhere with "Bitcoin" in the name (this forum, for example) where people are trying to sell you on the thing they happen to have 20%+ of their savings in. It's done over and over and over again - and it should be, but I don't have interest in it.
2) If you give far-fetched examples of why Bitcoin will succeed, you end up making Bitcoin look like a joke. By giving far-fetched doomsday scenarios and subtly hint at how ridiculous they are and, in some cases, very easy to solve, you strengthen Bitcoin's case. I'd argue this is more easy to turn into an argument for Bitcoin than an upfront defense of Bitcoin.
3) Because you can't use far-fetched examples, content is extremely limited and usually narrow in scope. The book might be able to cover maybe five major catalysts to Bitcoin adoption, but the site would have to be the standard "company X accepts Bitcoin. CEO thinks it's the future." "company Y accepts Bitcoin. CEO thinks it's the future." "company Z accepts Bitcoin. CEO thinks it's the future." with intermittent "Bob lays out a way to do X with Bitcoin." "Alice lays out a way to do Y with Bitcoin." It's just the same damn thing over and over. There's very little room for creativity in the writing space there (it's a very informational space, I'd argue, because Bitcoin has a very strong case in favor of it), though there's a ton of room for creativity in the "doing" space there.
4) I'd argue it's healthier to look at new things from a very critical point of view. You don't want to be that guy who has "faith" in Bitcoin, and when someone proposes a reason Bitcoin might fail, you look like a deer in the headlights and start to doubt your faith.
5) It's already being done. Andreas Antonopoulos has a great book deal which I'm sure will produce excellent arguments in favor of Bitcoin in a very informational way which will help you use Bitcoin. http://bitcoinbook.info/

It's fine, AFAIK. The only thing maybe not allowed is posting uncensored porn images directly on the forum.

I've been wondering for a while whether or not we should come up with a formal response to the inevitable fire & brimstone evangelist argument that Bitcoin is the global currency of end times. Maybe it's not too late.

Of course, if we even argue against it, it could just fan the flames and lead more people taking the position that Bitcoin is some type of antichrist currency.

Same here. A bit pissed off because I've been waiting for that but figured I wouldn't need to have an alarm tied to bitcoin price. Slept right through it.

This thread... 

What next? FBI agent claims to be assassin, posts pictures of assassinated targets from FBI database as proof, guy pays him for hit, and is arrested instead of having target assassinated? Scammer tag, scammer tag!