The last payout to that address was block 15003. You had 886 shares out of 188,397 and got  0.22808749 NMC.  No shares have been submitted since then. This was 2011-06-28 01:35am New Zealand time. Does this sound right?

I look forward to namecoin support!

Yes, namecoin is essentially a re-invention of RealNames , but decentralized and using bitcoin ideas:

Я бегу bitparking. Я не говорят русские. Я использую Google Translate.Сеть namecoin потерял много добычи энергии. Блоки очень медленно, подлежащих обработке. Именно поэтому балансы не обновляется очень часто на bitparking и почему суммы ниже.Сеть namecoin нуждается в большем количестве горняков.

Browsers already do this. When you enter a domain in the URL bar of the browser they can interpret this however they want. Sometimes they lookup the domain in DNS. Sometimes they use a search engine. Sometimes they use 'keywords'.

Ten years ago there was a system called RealNames. This was a way for people to register a 'name' with a location. It was effectively a DNS replacement. Browsers built this in and you could go to sites by just entering the 'RealName'. At one point they had $130 million of funding. Namecoin is similar to this in concept but is decentralized. From the wikipedia entry:


It would be interesting to learn from the RealName experience - why it didn't succeed.

Regarding the namecoin connection, did either of you who lost coins but also used a namecoin client try any of the 'Namecoin GUI' programs that people posted about in some of the forums? At least one was a trojan of some sort IIRC. Note that these GUI programs weren't namecoin official programs, they were developed and distributed by third party forum members.

My explanation wasn't an explanation of namecoin. It's a description of different ways it could be used. If someone asks me what namecoins are I say "It's a system for registering a special type of domain name".

And that's fine. 99% of regular people have no idea what bitcoins are good for. These things take time to catch on. At some point regular users won't even need to know they're using a namecoin service. There was time time when 99% of regular people didn't know what a foo@example.com email address was or what an http://example.com URL was. I remember people thinking I was strange when I used those.

It's early days for namecoins. Currently there is little in software and support for users of it so it's expected that the price and interest in mining would vary. Currently if you buy a domain name you are restricted in its use. You must essentially re-buy it every year and it's subject to control by ISP's, registrars and various governments (ie. domains are easily seized). Aside from the 'domain name' side of things, namecoin is a generic naming service. I'm sure other innovative ideas using it will appear.

There doesn't need to be '.bit' DNS proxies for it to be used. Software can build in support for the namecoin protocol itself. For example, a poker client could use namecoin to lookup IP addresses for its servers. There's no need to worry about the user's ISP filtering their DNS for such things (like the 'blacklists' that some countries ISP's use). Torrent applications could use namecoin directly to find torrent search engines. Browsers could build in the lookup and bypass the need of '.something' and just have 'name'.
 
I think namecoin will remain a niche for quite a while as services as software build around it. If that doesn't happen then it will probably fade away. Maybe it'll see some use as a secondary currency. If services and software do start to use it things could get more interesting. If it fails, hopefully something will learn from it and a better alternative system to DNS will rise out of it.

(Disclaimer: I run a namecoin pool and exchange)

You don't necessarily have to install a custom DNS. For example a torrent client could build in the ability to query the namecoin blockchain. It would then use this for name lookup. No DNS client software needed.

For those that used the previous version of the bitparking namecoin pool, before I rewrote the software to what is the current version, I've sent out all the remaining balances that remained.

Nice! I have a WP7, I'll give it a try.

Has it gone through? If not, PM me the details.

The pool was getting overloaded. I've moved it to a new server now and it seems to be operating ok.

The errors are due to the long poller having problems. What's happening is there's so much computing power on the namecoin network right now, and difficulty hasn't adjusted yet, that blocks are being solved every 2 minutes or so. With the thousands of long polling clients it's taking longer than this to notify them of a new block. So multiple blocks go by before you get the notification. At some point the long poller server locks up. Things will calm down in a day or so when difficulty adjusts to match the network speed.

Anyone would be willing to do that given the rate they're selling at on the exchange...Next estimated difficulty could change things though. Big 3x jump estimated.

You probably missed the 'install prerequisites part from build-unix.txt. The number of people who ask why the libdb C++ header files are missing or what's with the upnp errors...

Yes.

1. Install build prequisites from the build-unix.txt document. Then following the steps at http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2011/05/12/namecoin-a-dns-alternative-based-on-bitcoin.html.

Install the required prequisites mentioned in the build-unit.txt documentation. Build with:

make -f makefile.unix USE_UPNP=

See here: http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2011/05/12/namecoin-a-dns-alternative-based-on-bitcoin.html