Now now, Maria. Why would an intelligent woman like you go and post something like this? If it was true, you'd be causing a rise in prices, which means your 80,000 and 25,000 BTC just got more expensive than they were a day ago. Why would you shoot yourself in the foot like that?

Then again, if it is true, and you did announce it here for the benefit of the Bitcoin community, we'll change your name to Santa Maria 

L-O-L

Chillax... it's only when the coins can be said to be competing, or in any way remotely trying to imitate, the US dollar. Believe me, there are a few countries out there that print their own currency. The US is not about to start confiscating people's Euro's, British Pounds, Drachmas or whatever. It's only because those silver dollars looked the the US silver dollar, and had the legend Trust In God on them.

Would you trust it as a way to hold the small amounts that you may use in day to day life? In other words, do you see it as being on a similar level of security as instawallet? Perhaps higher?

Hey Elggawf:

I forwarded that article to Stefan on another thread, and he replied pretty quickly. I have to admit most of this is beyond my comprehension, as I'm not a programmer, but I decided to copy it here (and perhaps even send you his reply privately) so that you can go through it and see if there are chinks in the armour, so to speak.

Here's what he said:

The main point of the article is that if the server sent you the JavaScript, you're already trusting the server, so you might as well do the crypto stuff server side and use SSL for transmission.

Browser-based crypto is by no means our end goal, but rather a stepping stone. Here are some of the things I am working on or predicting:

Downloadable bundles. There is no reason you can't take the HTML/JS from bitcoinjs-gui, package it up as an AIR or xulrunner app and have people download and install it. It would then have the same properties as regular Bitcoin with respect to software delivery.

Software security device. If you have more than a few bitcents you can install a piece of software that moves your keys and the crypto outside of the browser. If you initiate a transaction within Webcoin or another client, the locally installed software will pop up a window showing the details of the transaction pending your final confirmation.

Building a dedicated software security device will also pave the way for:

Hardware security device. For even larger amounts no measure of software security will be sufficient. A hardware device with a display and internal signing would definitely by a major step forward.

Split key signing. Half your key is on your device, the other half is at a wallet hosting service. The service could offer any kind of verification you want: Yubikey, SMS, phone call, whatever. You'd probably set a daily limit. Under the limit you don't need any special verification. Note that you could have both keys as physical backups, so you wouldn't be dependent on the hosting service if they decide to randomly disappear one day.

Also I want to point out that the only part of BitcoinJS that this criticism affects at all is Webcoin. I know some folks are working on various native clients that use our server APIs, but could be implemented in Java, Objective-C, C#, etc.

Thanks! I will forward this response to the forum member who first brought it to my attention.

Cheers,

Before we got derailed by recent forum threads, I was about to post something on the board regarding how brilliant it is, in my opinion, to have an Islamic Bank of Bitcoin.

Kudos to you... this could be a significant player in the Bitcoin community in the not too distant future.

No he wasn't. He was speaking to the hypocrisy of drawing an artificial line in the sand between having sex with someone who is 17 years 11 months and 29 days old, versus that same person the following morning.

I can understand that you may find the difference between the two subtle, but if you were to make that argument in court you'd get lashed pretty quickly by any judge worth his or her salt.

Nope, not really. The two are separate and the only thing linking them is innuendo and rumour. Still a witch hunt. Still unbecoming of a mature and sophisticated online community... which this clearly appears not to be 

I wonder why BTCrow, or another escrow service for Bitcoin, can't approach eBay and offer their services to them. It seems that if the main obstacle is the fact that a Bitcoin transaction isn't reversible, a good, established escrow service could solve that pretty quickly. And because of the transaction fees, those on eBay who bid in bitcoins would have an advantage over those with PayPal or credit cards.

The point is that Bruce isn't advocating having sex with a 13 year old. He's complaining about the hypocrisy of age of consent laws in the US, which is a position many of us will actually agree with.

Hi Stefan:

I mentioned you on another thread, and one of the forum members posted this http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/

It was done without a hint of malice, unlike so many other things on these forums, so I am genuinely interested in knowing whether you have examined it or can comment on it.

For the record, the reason he posted it is because on the other thread I mentioned how your work was one of the best things about to come out for Bitcoin.

Cheers,

Yup, some dumb ass says "a tomato is a vegetable", I'm not offended... same dumbass says "slutty women deserve to get raped", "Hitler had the right idea", "blacks are inferior" and a few other choice, idiotic remarks, then I am offended. I don't lose any sleep over it, nor do I choose to pick a fight. But if such stupidity were to be uttered in my presence, I'd feel compelled to speak up against it. As I think I am doing now.

Do you think how a woman dresses, or how much she's had to drink, or how she dances, makes her in any way responsible for her being raped? If you don't, it speaks highly of you. If you don't, but choose to not speak up when some other twit says so, it makes you a bit of an ass.

My point was that, contrary to your argument, not everyone who objected to Matthew's remarks did so out of a desire to destroy Matthew. I neither know him nor particularly care what happens with him one way or another. I disliked his statement profoundly, so your original theory doesn't hold.

Actually, d'aniel, some of us neither know Matthew nor care, but were genuinely offended by even the remotest intimation that a woman (or man, or boy, or girl) could be held partly responsible for their own rape.

It truly is an argument that was settled well over 20 years ago. Matthew should have known better than to say that.

"a tomato is a vegetable" is a mistake... "a woman should know better than to dress slutty lest she get raped" is a black hole of assholeness.

Or... someone else just used his established nickname. This doesn't even come close to the standard of evidence needed to indict, let alone convict someone. It's a joke.

Hey Mitch:

Here's a suggestion for the conference. Find Bitcoin detractors and let them debate the issues with members of the Bitcoin community. Find an economist who thinks Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme, give him a platform to expose his ideas, then have him debate them in the open with someone from the Bitcoin camp. Find a tech guy who thinks he may have detected a problem with the code and let him debate Gavin or Jeff. Find someone who believes the current monetary system is just fine, and that centralisation is crucial to a currency... you get the gist.

We need to open this discussion a bit. The rest of the world sees Bitcoin as a hobby, largely because the Bitcoin community is closed and has a definite proselytising slant to it. A sophisticated, high level argument will only benefit us in the end.

Cheers,

I can relate completely with what you're saying, Steve, but it might be a case of an unmoveable object against an unstoppable force. Shutting down this forum is probably unrealistic. If it was shut down, that would be the proof the anti-Bitcoin camp needs to say "told you so, Bitcoin is doomed". The best possible scenario would be for the community itself to mature to the point where these issues are a non starter.

If another forum is opened (check out the one Vladimir was talking about, for example) as long as it quickly rises in the search engines, it could then become the place where the uninitiated land, and this forum would slowly descend into obscurity. That might be a good thing.

Very interesting. Will definitely keep an eye on this.

Have you thought of just using the ignore function. Not sure how it works, but whether you can ignore a whole thread or a particular user, that would work nicely. It would be sad to see you guys leave, you're among those doing really good work for Bitcoin.

Have you sent this to Stefan, elggawf? He does seem to know what he's talking about, and you seem to think this could be a potential problem. I'm sure you two (and the rest of us by extension) could only benefit from the discussion.

He's on here in the forums as well, if you can't find him, I could try and give it a go.

Cheers,