Winter moves from hemisphere to hemisphere. and pretty much skips the equatorial zones.
The virus can survive wet stored longer in cool than in warm, so probably not so much isolatied, no.
In a cold dry place it has been observed to remain infectious for 50 days. (so possibly also much longer)

Some data, and references to the studies:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/lab-bio/res/psds-ftss/ebola-eng.php

Ban is simply 100% tax if/when they seize it.

I would stipulate that we agree that both Gavin's first and second solution are an improvement over the current code, I'd further opine that the second is a better guess even than the first.
I would maintain that our best so far is still a horrible miss of an opportunity.  With any luck we won't get another opportunity on this one in quite a while.  It is not a good solution, but it can get us at least up to the next time it has to be adjusted.

It is probably a different question whether to make a change, and if so when.  And another question as to whether there is a consensus to do so.

The answer to both might be in the same little bit of work.

In order to increase predictability, we might want to have some criteria for looking at this parameter, not just for now, but also for future? 
We have done the expedient before, in changing it,
Each time should continue to be an improvement over the last.  It is a patch not a fix, and it will probably last longer than what came before.
It is far less than Satoshi's suggestion.  We should recognize that it very well may need to change again.


Your questions, David are good ones.  They suggest the way to answer it may be in a few other questions:

If the plan is to keep changing MAX_BLOCKSIZE whenever we think MAX_BLOCKSIZE is awry, how does one know when MBS is off? 
What defines a crisis sufficient to get easy consensus?

Or put another way:
How how to measure risk of preventing legitimate transactions?  When risk is high enough we do this again.


Answering these satisfactorily, would likely foster an easy consensus.

This would also be a step toward the design goals, discussed on the last page.
If we get those defined, ahead of hitting that change criteria, we may yet end up with something still better.

The 40% per year starting at 20MB as a half measure.
Its an improvement over the first round of 50% but is still picking some numbers, with some justification, arbitrarily guessed.

We aren't seeking "legendary" nor "ideal", but thank you for your rhetoric, and also for being a solidly reliable unvarying advocate for whatever the loudest voice says.  
I know I can rely on you for that, if any of the better suggestions catch traction, that you will just pile on with whichever you think is likely to get consensus.
You are also very reasonable, and your reasons clear:  Seek consensus.  Attack dissension.

I don't need to be right.  I am just as happy to be wrong, the happiness comes from improvement.

It will be nice to have this 40% solution in pocket as the minimum quality, temporary patch, while a fix may be devised that would not need future adjustment.
The max block size was already reduced once for being too large, and also once for being too small.  It isn't as though we haven't been here before, it would be a good one to see solved eventually.

Shhhh... no more bids, I'm at the bottom of the win list   
!

If so, they failed their psych courses too.
Yes, their actions run counter to their public policy.  The way to deal with panic is to provide good information in a way that is understandable.  
Their ELI5 is more like a "Lie like a dog and hope for re-election".
It is also going to make it hard for them to explain why they killed your dog and quarantined you.
http://nypost.com/2014/10/23/spanish-nurse-who-had-ebola-finally-told-her-dog-was-killed/

Hip Hip Huzzah for the wisdom and beneficence of our king!  Cheerful tidings and eternal grace be on the noble and grand Lord Smooth.  There shall certainly be much feasting in the kingdom on this day.  Roasted alpaca, a frothy brew, and a fresh apple for all whose shadow crosses my barbican on this day.

The news and politicians are stupid liars.  It is not helpful to lie in order to placate the panicking masses.  They then lose trust with information sources and make up things to believe.

"Ebola can only be contracted by contact with bodily fluids"
"Casual contact can not transmit this disease"


Ebola, like all virus, is contracted by contact with the virus.  
The virus is tiny.  It can maintain infectiousness in fine mist or moisture, and yes, this can be small enough to stay airborne for a time.  Ebola isn't like an STD (though you can certainly get it that way too).
Though it typically will be contracted when a host human crashes and bleeds out, during the clean-up of the remains, etc., statements like the above just sound like magical thinking, as though there were some limit on how the virus RNA crashes into a cell that can replicate it in a living body.  It is simple science, not magic.

Gloves may become fashionable again.
Maybe I should make some alpaca gloves.

I think you are missing the point entirely on #3, probably my fault for being overly brief there and not really explaining the point in this context.

The artificial cap on block size would fail the test of #3.  So would a too high max block size if node maintenance storage costs make processing transactions unfeasible if only supported by TX fees.  We have never seen a coin yet that survives on transaction fee supported mining.  Bitcoin survives on its inflation.  What is sought there is to compensate at an appropriate level.  We don't know what that level is, but it may be something like a fraction of a percentage of all coins.
Currently TX fees are 1/300th the miner compensation.  After the next halving, we may be around 1/100 if TX continue to grow.  Fees will still be well within marginal costs and so not significant still.
This is fundamentally a centralisation risk, and a security risk through not creating perverse incentives.  

Much mining can be done with a single node.  Costs are discrete between nodes and mining and asymmetric.  If costs for node maintenance overwhelm the expected rewards at <x hashrate / y nodes then we lose all mining under that hashrate irrespective of other costs, and we lose nodes per hashrate.  People look at hashrate to determine network health and not so much at node population and distribution, but both are essential.

It is not so much an artificial limit created for profitability, it is a technical limit to preserve network resilience through node population and distribution by being sensitive to the ratio.  Much of the discussion on blocksize economics treats mining and node maintenance as the same thing.  They aren't the same thing at all.  Its more a chain length vs hashrate issue.
In later years, there is a very long chain, and most coins transacted will be the most recent.  Old coins are meant to get to move for free, this reduces the UTXO block depth.  We don't know how it will play out, its uncharted territory.  #3 is more about not creating a perverse incentive to unbalance this that doesn't materialize until the distant future than about encouraging compensation through artificial constrain on supply.

For better clarity I should swap #3 for

3) provide conditions conducive for node maintenance and mining when the transaction fees are supporting the network by avoiding perverse incentives.

Ah yes, the backstop reference, grandma at the ball park watching grandkid play, protected by the backstop.

Its that fence behind the kid, that protects them from the wild pitch and thrown bat.

lol @ grandma-cap for Bitcoin
We agree, in this case "grandma" is substituting for "bitcoin enthusiast" WRT bandwidth availability, I think.
I'm guessing he was thinking that our enthusiast might be living with grandma, or maybe is grandma, IDK?

Right, That is just the first of many criticisms I have of the current proposals.  
I don't like extrapolations used for predictive purposes.
They assume too much.
I'd prefer a method of rightsizing max block size through use of the data of the future which may be derived from the block chain through sums of fees or block size.
This can be done much in the same way that difficulty is generated.
The risks of doing it in this better way may be that it could create some perverse incentives for folks that wanted to "game" the metric.
I'd like to see a proposal that doesn't come with what amounts to a guarantee that it will be wrong because it relies on a guess made years ago.

Bandwidth doesn't increase according to Moore's.
At best, Neilson's
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/

This would be in time of peace, in rich nations, with good infrastructure, and other assumptions.

There is some discussion of methods to achieve this in a way that is flexible to accommodate changing conditions.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=815712.0

Yes, this makes it more likely (and less expensive) to get gold in this auction with the extra supply.
This early gold will produce more stone due to more days of holding it.
Everybody must get stone 

Cold and darkness preserve the virus, so that it can remain viable and infect over a much longer delay. 
The upside is that intense UV can kill it. 
(Using mechines to deliver UV is one of the proposed methods of disinfecting hospital rooms.)

We share these design goals, and priority.  They aren't comprehensive for me though.

I'd add (at least)
3) provide conditions conducive for mining when the transaction fees are supporting the network  
4) avoid future changes on the same issue.
And of course avoid introducing new unmitigated risks (more of a criteria than a goal).


If we wanted to be brutally pedantic on ourselves we could kick around the definitions of who grandma might be, and what makes a transaction legitimate, but I agree with the sentiment entirely.

I don't recall Gavin ever proposed what you are suggesting here.  1st round was 50% per year, 2nd proposal was 20MB + 40% per year, yes?


I'm less a fan of voting than you might imagine.  
It is mostly useful when there are two bad choices rather than one good one, and a choice is forced.  I maintain hope for a good solution yet.  To give us an easy consensus.

This flag gives only miners the votes?  This doesn't seem better than letting the transactions or the miner fee be the votes?
Its better than a bad idea though, as it does provide some flexibility and sensitivity to future realities and relies on proof of work for voting.
It fails the test of being a self-regulating approach, and remains based on arbitrary guesses.
So I don't think it is the "best" of either world, but also not the worst.  More like an engineering trade-off.

Presumably this is counting years by blocks, yes?
This would give 100MB max blocks size in 2018 and gigabyte 6 years later, but blocks are coming faster than the years, so wouldn't likely take that long.

At such increases, Bitcoin could support (current) Visa processing peak rates within a decade, and a lot sooner if the votes indicate faster and the block solving doesn't slow too much.  (perhaps as soon as 6 years, by 2020)

The idea has a lot of negatives.  Possibly its fixable.
Thank you for bringing forward the suggestion.

Oh?  And I thought you were ignoring me.

I understand your goal, and your ossification fears.  I don't mean to be ignoring you, only thought this was already fully addressed.

If your ossification fears are justified (and they may be), then (I would argue) that it is more important to do it right than to do it fast, as the ossification would be progressive, and more difficult in years to come.
I understand your position to be that a quick fix to patch this element is needed, that we are at a crisis, and it may be now or never.
I disagree.  If it were a crisis, (even in an ossified state) consensus would be easy, and even doing something foolish would be justified and accepted broadly.  

Unless you are Jeremy Allaire, I probably want this particular issue fixed even more than you do, but I would rather see it fixed for good and all, than continuously twiddled with over the decades to come.

To your bullet point assignment...  maybe.
One of my publishers has been pestering me for a paper so I will likely 'write something'.  I'll try not to point to it and say "but didn't you read this" as if it were the definitive explanation of everything, because it surely will not be that.

No worries there.  The Illuminated understand how
meaning is additive.  True meaning are not subtracted, though they may be obscured.
Meaning, it does not subtract.
From these words you now read, you may derive a meaning, and you may not be able to resist adding the meaning these words have for you.

Confusion occurs when one attempts to resolve multiple meanings into one, fusing them.
Yet not all meanings are true meanings. 

When the true meaning of these words are within, you will have ascended.