One reason hinted at above: collisions.

Practical database design, Part 1 By: Philipp Janert http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-dbdsgn1.html (dead link)

- http://www.jroller.com/charlie.li/entry/practical_database_design_part_1

Arguably, Bitcoin users are supposed to change addresses over time. The Addresses don't identify a specific user: but a place to send the output of a Bitcoin transaction. The resulting "coin" from the transaction:output pair does not change over time (though it may be spent).

Edit: it should be noted that some addresses; particularly Pay-to-Script hash addresses, may be under the control of more than one person. In that case, the address is not really a pseudonym at all.

..Unless you wallet is running on a compromised general-purpose machine.

Call me paranoid; but you have to plan for the day Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Google may be compelled to steal your funds.

I recommend avoiding proprietary maps.

http://coinmap.org/ uses Open Street Map.

The moral rights of the author for attribution and control over publication are independent of Copyright Law.

Censorship happens at the publication stage. Also, every time somebody refrains from building on what came before: over copyright concerns (in the case of Disney they appear to be trying to make mickey mouse a trademark as well).

For example, Apple's online store demands that authors produce exclusive content in order to reach their locked-in users (this is typical of DRM platforms). As a consequence, (Free and) Open Source Software is prohibited in the app store. The exclusive content does not have to be elaborate; but is a prohibition on the author from publishing work elsewhere. For example, the iTunes version of Alestorm's "Black Sails at Midnight" album includes "P is for Pirate". The (labeled) Official version on youtube is a drunken rendition. Though, in a related video, presumably ripped from iTunes, the uploader comments they appeared to be drunk in that version too.

In researching my reply, I came across a tangentially-related Wired article entitled: The Long Tail. It explains why publishers are only interested in publishing "hits". It goes on to explain why "hits" make up for less than half the demand for media. The author suggests that publishers with well-curated collections may be able to compete with "free" (as in pirated copies of random quality).


I don't see how. You can prove an document existed at a certain date by: scanning it if necessary, hashing, and putting the result in the block-chain. However, that does not prove ownership. I can hash the works of Shakespeare and claim ownership if I really wanted to.

Here is an example of proof-of-existence: [CASASCIUS] 0.5 BTC coins: BTC 0.89 (incl. shipping, capsule, proof-of-age) Note that the owners can change several times without changing the proof of existence. Edit: The process is explained in this post.

This is becoming a FAQ. The answer is no.

Edit:

• "identity theft" is actually identity fraud. Bitcoin solves this by ignoring Know Your Customer laws.
• Copying is encouraged by the Bitcoin protocol. The only thing that is not copied widely is the private key(s) used for spending Bitcoin
• Copyright was invented as a censorship tool in response to the invention of the printing press. We should consider abolishing it.

Or kidnapping where the kidnapper does not have to risk being exposed for a money-drop.

Well. don't use SMS-based 2FA then.

I was able to measure the heat dissipation of a room by measuring the change in temperature after leaving 120W of lighting on. For that I assumed the temperature outside the room was stable (kept at 20°C by a thermostat in the winter).

If turning the the equipment off for 15  minutes every 3 hours helps, I would just underclock the machine by ~8% It would save on heating/cooling cycles.

2 factor authentication tries to mitigate remote control of your computer by asking for something you have rather than something you know. To do this remotely, you essentially need one-time passwords.

SMS based 2FA is not secure against corporations installing software on you phone: such as your carrier, Google, Apple, or Facebook. Almost by extension, it is not secure against governments either.

For example, the facebook app now asks for permission to read all of your SMS messages. If facebook was able to obtain your other login credentials (do you reuse you user-name/password? Did you let them log into your master e-mail account to download your address book (the same one used for resetting passwords)?

I suggested that my bank implement Paper-Based 2FA, rather than rely on "security questions" for "untrusted" computers.

I can try imagining what Clark Kent and Lois Lane's babies would look like too: but what would be the point?

The problem is that P2Pool auto-detects if the miner is using the old get-work protocol. However, most stratum proxies auto-detect stratum pools by trying to use getwork first. An option to disable this auto-detection on either side would be nice.

Would probably be difficult with the P2Pool software since the listening port is also overloaded for the stats page.
Edit: I suppose P2Pool can start sending out the X-Stratum: (not sure about spelling) header directing such clients... to the same port they connected on.

I find the state of VOIP saddening. It *should* be as easy as using e-mail. However, all the major companies involved want to lock you into their platform: which means interoperability suffers.

I tried installing Skype under GNU/Linux. It is not cross-platform like Microsoft claims. It requires Moonlight, the Free version of Silverlight. It is all but unsupported; and never supported DRM. Skype was also not as vulnerable to government wiretapping before Microsoft bought it.

Google talk supports XMPP, but is being replaced by the proprietary Google Hangouts. Edit: http://www.google.com/talk redirects to http://www.google.com/hangouts/

FaceBook uses XMPP to facilitate Instant messaging between their users. However, their server is configured not to communicate with other XMPP servers like Google talk.

I was impressed by Ekiga.net: up until I tried to actually tried to use it. (They store passwords in plain-text and don't sanitize database inputs: It broke such that I could not reset or use my password)

Energy can be stored. The catch is that power storage plants must cost at least as much as an equivalent generator (since they need to go into generation mode to return power to the grid).

One example in sevice.

Ironically, Nuclear power needs power storage almost as much as solar/wind energy. (Nuclear power can supply the "base load" while other plants spin-down off-peak.)

How are we supposed to conclude that you are not a fed/cop/sting operation?

General advice: reversible (credit cards and PayPal) and irreversible (Bitcoin, wires) payment methods don't mix well.

You are unlikely to find criminals successfully converting "identity theft" (more properly called "identity fraud") into Bitcoin.

I used to turn off all the lights and play board games by a 6W flood-light. Then I calculated that recharging the batteries at 4W for 14 hours uses about the same amount of energy as drawing 60W for an hour

I get the impression the slug in the middle is hard to duplicate. What about the glass sleeve? is that marked somehow? Perhaps with an integrated marble?

BTW: I fear the greatest threat of Bitcoin loss is people loosing their encryption keys (assuming they are using some kind of sane cold-storage). M-of-N keys in multiple locations can really help protect against physical key destruction.

That appears to be a P4 or PIII machine, which I believe pre-dates the alienware brand Nope, Alienware has been around since 1996.

Edit: PIII by no P4 power connector.
P4 because large wire bundle appears to have at least 2 12 volt lines (yellow), but the 20 pin ATX connector has only 1. I checked: The proprietary Dell connector also had only 1 12V wire

I really liked the concept until you explained the details.

The user has to supply a "secret" or "private key" if you will. They need to keep it private, yet it has to look valuable enough that it won't be thrown in the trash.

I understand that the user needs to supply their own secret to avoid trusting the manufacturer, but that also implies that the device(s) are no longer self-contained.

For (Paper) "Bitcoin checks" I wanted to develop (but have been too lazy to): I instead focused on ways the manufacture could prove they printed a document. This, combined with the manufacture trying to prove to themselves that they or their employees can not inadvertently record the private keys, should be secure enough for transient storage.

DWOLLA got popular because of Bitcoin. Then we learned that Dwolla was just as reversible as the rest of the Banking system.

Major change happens slowly. People thought the .com boom changed the rules; but the crash at the end of the last century proved that was not the case. Bitcoin proves that "Know your customer" laws are a human rights issue. The average person can possibly console themselves that they are not likely to run into the reporting limits (that are no longer actually hard limits).

Bitcoin is also not ready for mass adoption. At an minimum, multi-party signatures have to be easy enough to use in a privacy-respecting way (meaning with a new address for every transaction). The network is still limited to about 7 transactions per second as well. If it goes "big" as-is: it will replace wire transfers, and not much else.

It took the industrial revolution about 300-400 years to happen after the invention of the printing press made the dissemination of information cheap and efficient. The governments in power fought the change: inventing copyright law to slow the spread of information. The agricultural revolution probably took a similar amount of time, if not longer. The invention of networked computers will lead to the information revolution if we don't kill ourselves first. I don't expect it to complete in my life-time.  Sadly, many never learn the new technology. The old generations have to die off before truly revolutionary change is accepted.

Bitcoin is a revolutionary experiment. It is the "first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers." (Out-of-context Bruce Schneier quote) Governments and banks will attack it through legal and technical means. It may only have a small niche over the next 50 years. If that happens, it will be OK: because it is just an experiment.

P2Pool.org is not the same thing as running your own P2Peer Pool node