At the moment it appears to be the 403 Forbidden Flower.

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

I love bitaddress.org, and I consider it the Gold-Standard - er, the Bitcoin-Standard site for creating paper wallets.

That said, I see that you are using SHA256(passphrase) for the Brain Wallet.  Also, if I am following threads and people correctly, it seems that you respect the opinions of casascius.  He is advocating for a standard Brain Wallet function (based on scrypt as the key derivation algorithm).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=139390.msg1484171#msg1484171

Any thoughts?  Do you think you will be updating bitaddress.org?  And if so, how will you handle previously generated brainwallets with SHA256 - hopefully we'll still have easy access to them on bitaddress.org.


Also, I have an idea for something a little different, but I am heavily using your bitaddress.org 2.2 code.  (I'll snag 2.3, now that I see it's out there.)
Thank you for making it easily licensed.   I am actually going to try to keep your code, byte-for-byte, intact, so that people can peer-review my derivation faster (since many eyes have already reviewed your code.)

Thanks again!

It could be a collision problem, if the random generation function is flawed. 

If you want to help the Bitcoin developers correct issues with the software (assuming this is an issue with the software), then I think the best thing to do is to create another wallet, and "pay almost all of them" from your current wallet to your new wallet.  Document the transaction here (how much, when, and to which Bitcoin address you paid).

Also, state what version of the software you used to generate your original wallet, as well as the specific hardware platform.


Hopefully, the rightful owner will step forward and complain.  Then the software can be be examined for flaws in the algorithm.
If someone steps forward, have THEM pay the remainder of the coins to another wallet (to prove that they are the rightful owner), before you give them their money back.


Don't believe other people's claims that it's their money, unless they can prove control of the wallet through spending.

"Whois" says the technical contact can be reached at bitcoinclassifieds.com@proxy.dreamhost.com

You might try that.

On the contrary, I'd think that Bitcoin virus writers will likely place their viruses on Bitcoin related websites and forums.

Presumably every byte in the blockchain has a benefit as well.  And also potentially a payment which exceeds the cost.

It seems challenging to encourage other uses, because of the current paradigm that every participant in the network needs to receive and analyze every byte in every block.  This is true in the current implementation, but this implementation is unlikely to be able to handle all of the financial transactions, much less everything else, if/when Bitcoin becomes popular.   (Look at the difficulties of Android-Bitcoin apps, and their need to download the entire blockchain and stay up to date.  We're only on year 3 of Bitcoin, and the transaction volume is presumably a tiny fraction of where we'd like it to be.  One ten-thousandth?)

Handling the Woman's auxiliary guild annual general meeting treasurer vote (for a fee) will only serve to advance the usage of the Block Chain and accelerate the technology such that more people are dependent on the Block Chain, so more developers will work on improving the scalability.

In summary, funded valuable uses of the Block chain which include transaction fees will advance the popularity of, and dependency on Bitcoin, which will encourage further development and solutions to the scaling problem.  It will actually *financially* encourage development, because the people collecting fees will benefit directly with a more scalable architecture.

PS, I'm voting for Thelma Taylor for treasurer.  Check Blockexplorer.com to verify.

But the way I described it, it WOULD be a financial transaction.  And the anti-spam features (minimal transaction fee) would actually help to fund the block verifications of the financial system.

Generally, I have a belief that seems to be the polar opposite of you - that we should be encouraging usage of the system in any way possible.  We can't anticipate all the ways that the block-chain system will be used, and the "system" will adapt (through coding changes, increased fees, usage changes) to accommodate the clever uses that "the market" determines are of value.  Most other systems seem to work that way.

An analogy would be SMS messages, which were originally designed to "transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephony traffic" but the value of them for text messaging has far surpassed the original intent of the system, and the systems adapted to handle this unanticipated demand!

I meant "ownership" in the sense of possession, not in the sense of exclusive rights.  So I think we're in agreement on that point - I just worded it poorly.  At a later date, you can prove that you have the wallet of the person that possessed the digital document at the time of the time-stamp.




This sounds better than my idea.  Any downside to this?

What do you guys think of this idea?

Using Bitcoin as a Decentralized Digital Time Stamp Service.
This has been kicked around a few times in other forum posts (like here and here as just a couple of examples). But I think I have an implementation proposal that may be original.


Background on Digital Time Stamps  (skip or skim if you know this):

The problem that would be solved is this:  You have created some digital work (perhaps a photograph, an MP3, or a signed contract, or a word document, or a scanned document).  You want to be able to prove that it existed prior to some date.

The old fashioned way to accomplish this would be to snail-mail it to yourself in a sealed envelope, and use the postmark as your proof.

A newer technique is to use a digital time stamp service such as digistamp.  Digital time stamping Protocol is described in rfc 3161.

Costs to time stamp something can range from about 40 cents for quantity of one, down to about 4 cents or less, at higher quantities.


Proposed Bitcoin solution:

If you have a digital file that you wish to time stamp, perform the following steps:
1) calculate a digital hash of the file, to generate a unique Bitcoin Address
2) pay that address some very small amount of Bitcoins (somewhere between .00000001 and .01 BTC, along with the appropriate transaction fee).

This payment would effectively be destroyed, as the likelihood that anyone has that address in their wallet would be extremely small.  The value of everyone else's Bitcoins would rise ever so slightly (as supply would be reduced), which should make many of you happy.  There's no extra burden on the Bitcoin system (as would be if you stuck additional information in the transaction record).  The only burden would be a small transaction, which would be funded by the transaction fee.


To defend your claim of the time stamp, you'd simply need to show that the digital hash (fingerprint) of the file equals the address that the coins were sent to. 

To prove that you "own" the digital file (if necessary), you'd simply need to show that you are in control of the sending Bitcoin address (so you'd need to save your wallet file).  This claim would obviously not be as strong as the timestamp claim, as you could have stolen the wallet file.


Pros and Cons:

When compared to other digital time stamp services, this can be much cheaper.  It is decentralized.  But it is not RFC 3161 compliant.  And it wastes/destroys small amounts of Bitcoins.



Any comments?  Any ideas for improvement?

Does anyone else think it's ridiculous to introduce errors into the QR-Code, just because you can?
All you are doing is making the QR-Code less likely to be able to be read successfully.


Remember, these QR-Code scanners are trying to adjust for size, angle, lighting, distance, color, reflection, smudges, etc.  Why intentionally introduce errors with a giant Bitcoin logo in the center of the QR-Code?    Silly if you ask me!

I'll tell you what will drive up the price.  One thing:  Increasing the perceived likelihood that Bitcoin will have a long-term value as a currency.

If there are news stories, it will generate interest.  And people will buy in.
If there is a true value as a currency, people will "give it a try".

So get off your butts and start getting Bitcoins accepted by merchants!!!!


Don't think that increasing mining difficulty will increase the price - that's crazy talk.  The ONLY way that increased mining difficulty could possibly have a positive impact is if the miners say "It took me $20 to generate each Bitcoin, and I refuse to sell at a loss, therefore I'm not selling."  (We're seeing this in the housing market right now, but it's more likely in the housing market because people borrow money to buy their houses, and if they are "underwater" with their mortgage and they sell, then they have to come up with the cash difference.   I doubt that anyone is taking out loans that are secured by bitcoin generation.)

Honest People:
Just as a reminder, send the PM before you send the money.

Dishonest People:
Go to http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ and watch for an unconfirmed transaction going to this account, and claim that you sent it.

1.3% is a lot of money!   [Mt. Gox in-and-out fees]

I can't believe Tradehill didn't POUNCE on the market that was HANDED TO THEM ON A SILVER PLATTER.  They should have immediately declared ZERO fees for 60 days, and they would own the market right now.  Everyone is too short-term greedy, when the rewards are in the long term.

Camp BX, if you are reading this, just announce free trades.  It's a cheap price to pay for market share.  Free trades through the end of the year.  Or 500 free trades, or whatever.

So simple.. but I guess this is what you get when you have tech guys leading companies, instead of marketing guys.

Where, where did you see this mistake?

Ah, a virus that causes a fever....

Check your number of connections.

It's possible, I suppose, that you are connected to an "outpost" of the network, that isn't connected to the entire network.  For instance, if you have 0 connections, obviously your transaction is not going to reach the miners.  If you have 1 connection, and the person you are connected to only has 1 connection (i.e. back to you), then the transaction isn't going to make it to the miners.  If you have n connections to people who only have 1 connection (i.e. you), then it's not going anywhere.  And if you have n connections that are all interconnected but have no external connections to the network, then it's not going to make it to the miners.

I agree, but unfortunately more than 80% of the people would pay for easy, rather than get open for free (in the desktop O.S. market).

Option 1:  Run Bitcoin Client on your PHP machine, and set up JSON-RPC.  You can set your config file for Bitcoin client software to allow JSON-RPC calls.  And then your PHP code would call the JSON-RPC software, passing the queries to get the balance of a certain wallet ID.

See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/API_reference_%28JSON-RPC%29#PHP
and https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Original_Bitcoin_client/API_Calls_list
and https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin for bitcoin conf settings

You can call "getbalance" to see if it has a positive, confirmed balance.

Option 2: Hit the Blockexplorer.com site with your address.  This is lame, but can be a quick and dirty method.  Just don't hit it every half second, and code to handle potential outages.

Option 3:  Set up a remote machine with the code on it as described in Option 1, and communicate between your remote machine and your server.  That way your "wallet" is one step removed from the web server.

I tested the website, and was only mildly impressed.  I didn't think the user interface was all that great (and just hated the color scheme).

On the other hand, though, Keyur has been unbelievably receptive and responsive to feedback.  And they seem to be putting security, reputation, and trustworthiness at the top of their agenda, with just a few feature advantages. 

I would LOVE to see another successful exchange, so I'm keeping an open mind on this one, and wishing them the best of luck!

I carefully studied the video (several times), and I just can't see where the guy in the striped overalls comes in to play.  Perhaps this device is similar to the cams on a train....

Seriously, this looks like an interesting project.  Not quite for me, but still interesting.

Meanwhile, I think it's important to capture this quote from the BitCams thread:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20984.msg281011#msg281011


We all can check in with BitCams on Christmas Day, to see if he's captured 10% of the online porn market (or is the largest bitcoin website).  Maybe with a Waldo-type device he'll get the market penetration that he's looking for.  Clearly if he installed a device like this, with a built in camera, business would be looking up.