I (and others) can compile earlier versions of wxwidgets, earlier clients, and on earlier versions of Ubuntu. If you has actually compiled 0.3.24 on Ubuntu 11.04 yourself, please post your magic sauce.

That's an excellent idea. I was planning to ensure that everything was encrypted on the disks, but yours is a much more elegant solution. Thank you.


Did that get you IN TO the room? Or just make matters worse/more confusing?

In 2004 I was carrying a childrens' book (it was small, hard covered and convenient for carrying tickets) whose title translates to "The mole who wanted to know who shat on his head". A passenger in the next line noticed and commented on it. We had a friendly conversation. Minutes later, the passport agent became very suspicious as if I were holding bomb manuals. I was initially in light spirits but quickly saw this situation was going too far. I wasn't pulled to a back room, but I was questioned heavily.

I'm not surprised that the English/American version of the book has such a flaccid title:

Because the greater the waste ratio the greater the advantage to the previous awarded miner, which is an advantage to a malicious miner. The waste due to latency is expected to increase as the network grows and we really do not have a huge margin. Increases in waste proportionally increases the likelihood that any block/transaction is invalid. And waste is ... wasteful.

Have you normalized the prices against forex? The USD is certainly fluctuating all on its own.

Nice. a plastic go board as #2 item...10 BTC?!

I don't get any browser complaints in Firefox.

Hey foggyb, I'm giving you a DDD rating. Your sig is a blinding sight.


That depends on your calculation or who you ask. The CIA's World Factbook says 58% (*) of GDP while the IMF says 93%. If we take the IMF's 2010 numbers the United States is doing better than only these rock stars.


(*) Does not include the state debt issued by individual US states and intra-government debt

Because gold is pretty, has history, and is an excellent store of value. Bitcoin is potentially the most liquid money ever seen on Earth. But not yet.

Hey Nefario, for those of us who might wish to travel to the states (with a credit card as well) do you have any advice? What made customs suspicious? Did you have a t-shirt that said "F the Fed" or something? Did you answer YES to one of the questions: Nazi, Communist, Terrorist, Bitcoinist?

As far as I can tell, Google is all about creating a moat around search./advertising I'm not sure if Google+ is part of that moat or a new fortress (still advertising of course). I don't think bitcoins adds to the moat very much. I should think Google would want a bit of lock-in or demographic tracking. On the otherhand, I can't picture their competitors embracing bitcoin either, so it could be a distinguishing advantage. Apple should accept bitcoins for its app and music stores, but they won't. Apple doesn't think different.

Well, I may have had a very different use case, but I noticed a difference between an older client and 0.3.24. In my case I copied the wallet. I probably send coins from walletA and then closed the client and opened the copied walletB and sent coins again. In client 0.3.24, I saw two transactions. One with 0/unconfirmed and another with 3000+ confirmations. It looked weird, but it was clear that the first transaction never made it into the block chain.

I'm happy to see numbers thrown down and I think you make your point well. This is my third attempt at rebuttal rewrite.

As soon as the attacker wins a block he can broadcast his alternate chain. The honest nodes should accept the winning chain. If the attacker times his attack well (releases double-spend on the network immediately after the previous block) he has a 51% chance of winning the first block. If he looses, then he can continue without broadcasting.

I'm not sure how to calculate his chance of completing the first block and winning the second block before the honest nodes win the second block, but let's say he has 26% chance (I think it is sig. higher). If he fails to win that block, then he must continue without broadcasting until he catches up and wins the third block with (I don't know) 13% chance. Even if the attacker waits an entire block to launch his attack, he can just hash away (at 51% power) until he catches and surpasses the honest network. If he has unlimited time and resources, I believe he is guaranteed to win eventually.

I am tempted to agree with your calculations for the 51% hash power attack, but I can not agree with the 40% on pure intuition, unless you are calculating each block discreetly (the chance that he wins any one of six rather than an entire chain of six). If the 40% hash power attacker has a 65% chance of winning a six block chain then the honest network with 60% hash power could have only had a 35% chance of winning the same block chain. That can't be right.


Edit #4: We're talking past each other...


You are calculating the chance that any single attack of many attacks will succeed. I am discussing the chance that an attacker will win a single attack by chasing the block chain. I'm claiming that a 51% hash power attacker can always win (with unlimited time and resources) while a 49% hash power attacker, if he doesn't win immediately will have diminishing chances as time goes on (even with unlimited time and resources).

Are you using the latest client? Do you have multiple (copied) wallets? Can you write the exact text on the line 0/unconfirmed or 0/.... ?

Hi Omar. Interesting ideas.

Satoshi envisioned sending bitcoins to IP addresses, but this has since been rarely used. In fact, I think it has been disabled by default in later clients over security concerns. PayPal uses an email so that they can initiate the payment process, whether that means telling you the amount, sending you a link to login, or to create an initial account. A bitcoin address IS the destination and cuts out numerous steps even for seasoned PayPal users.

As for memorability of the address, perhaps you should look into the first bits 'notation' which presents the shortest unambiguous case insensitive prefix compared to all previous addresses present in the block chain. Satoshi's first address is '1' while one of mine is '168Bc' first seen in block 128188. Maybe the first dozen addresses in the chain can help clarify the idea:

Because I can't compile wxwidgets...

Do you know any individual (in the flesh) who does? If my friends' data are backed up it's only because I do it. The number of times I've tried to restore coworkers corrupted NTFS disks never fails to amaze me. Hell just last week I was asked to help restore (assuredly non-critical) hospital data.

I think the 100 key pool is a good idea. But I think the wallet should cycle through the keys. If I want anonymity, I'll increase the pool size or create multiple wallets. But leaky wallets are disastrous.

I symmetrically encrypt each of my wallets and check them into DVCS. But its such a PITA that I've come to rely upon that 100 keypool buffer.

I would like to see a ewallet service that uses a finite set of keys for each user wallet and lets the user download a copy.

And/or a service that handles the block chain and protocol allowing my client to deal only with my transactions and keys such as Webcoin and BitcoinJS are attempting:

I imagine a malicious node (or clustered nodes) with majority power has better than not chance of beating the network by definition. If he does not broadcast the first winning block, but waits for two winning blocks, then the network will rightly accept his block chain. If he does not win after two blocks, then he does not broadcast at all. Because of statistical deviation, the network will be rightly concerned, but I don't think there's much the network can do about it in the short term.

Satoshi posits that any would be malicious but typically greedy node has a greater incentive to mine legitimately than to try to double spend. However, this incentive does not apply to a truly malicious node who wishes to see the entire bitcoin economy collapse at any cost. With the economy well under 1 B USD, I think this attack is still quite plausible.

Google has often surprised me in the past. BTC is appealing precisely because it lacks arbitrary inflation. I don't see any advantage for Google to create a new walled garden/gaming currency. They could create their own BTC-like block chain but would only piss off the obvious early adopters (unless they had a wonderful protocol improvement). I would more likely see Google do only two things: make a better paypal (using established fiat) and/or backing BTC POS with faster transactions.

Google could certainly hash up 51% of the network. Maybe they'd offer some mining nodes for a price?

donate some coin and he might spread the good word

Suppose you had dollars in Dwolla today. Would you transfer it to Mt. Gox or return it to the bank?