Couple of points: 15 minutes from the airport is by helicopter. I worked as a motorcycle courier in A'dam, and there is no way I could do Schiphol->Passenger Terminal in 15 minutes. 25-30 minutes minimum in brain out mode, Amsterdam traffic is difficult, and taxis are bastards. If u want a good one: call 020 7777777 for the central taxi dispatch.
Your best bet from the airport is take a train. The main airport hall has a train station underneath it, 20 minutes to Centraal Station,  then 10 minutes walk from the station gets you to literally 100's of hotels.

Which is another problem...I've just checked a few hotels/hostels in A'dam : Hotel Arena, Hans Brinker, EasyHotel, Botel, and a couple of others. No rooms available for the weekend, a couple had a free space on Thursday night, one with a free room for Friday.

If you need a hotel, book it fast. I'll look around a bit more, if I find any decent hotels with a number of free rooms, i'll post it here.

  

Going back to the legal aspects: i wouldn't worry about the NSA too much. If they want access, they'll get it. Probably already have, given the age of the project.
And providing that you aren't tagged as a "terrorist" by the US gov, it shouldn't be a problem for the average user or Maidsafe itself

I'd be more worried about Sony, tbh. Every dropbox system ever created has been used by the warez scene (remember the Yahoo Briefcase, godabuzz fans?) and an encrypted, decentralised, anonymous storage system certainly offers possiblities for the illegal sharing of copyright content.
If Sony (or any other big music/software/movie company) felt that MS was stepping on their toes in any way, the central core of the MS project will be an easy legal target, and Sony has resources that make the $12 million (?) from the IPO look like coffee money.
.
The same problem also arises with law enforcement /police agencies: individual users may well be able to remain relatively anonymous, but the public head of the MS project is always going to be an easy target.

Any MS guys with ideas about this ?

oopppss.....wrong thread.
Too many tabs open.

?

What did they do? The IPO went a bit twisted with the whole MSC/BTC conversion thing, but immoral ?
People are free to invest in whatever they like.....I I dont really see where you're going with this.



My next question, the elephant in the room: illegal content.

How is MS going to deal with this issue ?

I'm going to assume that individual users data will be encrypted, split and then distributed to the network, so that no single farmer will be hosting a complete copy of an individual users data. This will mean that any individual farmers drive will contain a mix of random chunks of various users data. This also means that no farmer will be hosting complete copies of illegal content, (hopefully, otherwise in deep shit)  but will open up all MS farmers/users and MS itself to government/law-enforcement scrutiny on this point.

I really cant see law enforcement allowing MS to roll this out without providing a backdoor for them to access/check content, but allowing a backdoor will kill the central points of security and anonymity. Has MS given any thought to this?

You can tell that NXT discussed this stuff a while ago.....

I have a question:

MaidSafe is, in theory, going to provide an encrypted, p2p distributed dropbox functionality, correct?

So how is MS going to provide guaranteed 24/7 access to clients data?
Farmers will provide storage space, and recieve SafeCoin as an award, but these guys are mostly not going to be IT pro's who can guarantee 99.9% uptime.
How will MS deal with a farmer that drops out, taking the stored MS data on his/her hard drive with them ?
The only option that I see to come close to guaranteeing 100% uptime of individual clients data will be to stripe/mirror that data over multiple farmers, but even that still doesn't give 100% certainty that all of the data will be online and accessible at any given moment, and will massively increase the amount of storage needed on the MS network.

Anyone have any idea how this will be implemented?

AFAIK: You are totally right. All NXT apps will have to be created pretty much from the ground up, whereas Eth will offer a "Turing complete" programming language allowing easy creation of financial apps. Think Lego for finance.....
So, in theory, Eth will probably be the superior system, at least from the point of view of a developer.
But Eth is a long, long way from any form of code release.  Eth isn't slated (AFAIK again) to release anything usable until the end of this year.

You don't read very much then.....
Try this:
https://nxtforum.org/index.php
then try:
http://www.cracked.com/

NXT is simply ahead right now, in terms of delivering usable code, no argument possible. Neither MS nor Eth are anywhere near actually releasing anything, while NXT's Asset Exchange is set to go live in less than a month.
I'm not bitching MS or Eth up, btw, either one of them could become an important player. I'd bet on Eth before MS, though.

And as MadCow said, NXT is strong on tech, and much weaker on marketing right now.
That you haven't seen that makes me think that you could maybe do some first hand research on NXT.

I never stated that NXT will replace Bitcoin. It might do, it could do, but thats gonna be at least a few years down the line, if ever.
BTC has massive advantages:  proven tech, huge user base, great usability and utility. It's here to stay.....probably.
NXT doesnt actually have to beat BTC to be successful, because it is competing in the 2nd generation game, not the first gen. where BTC rules.

Amsterdam is not cheap, €1600 per month isn't exceptional.

On the costs for the conference: yes, it is bloody expensive but have you seen the list of speakers ?
Pretty much every heavy hitter in the BTC world is going to be there, and if you want to have face-to-face access to these people, it's going to cost money one way or another.
And I know, from talking to the organising team, that registrations are selling like cold beer on a hot day......

NXT has the advantage of starting a lot sooner than either MaidSafe or Ethereum, but both MS and Eth (too lazy to type more) have a lot of serious backing, probably more so than NXT right now.

NXT can also offer the functionality of both MS and Eth in one package, which is a good thing. Saves time/money on integration hassles.

So: answering the OPs question: MS and Eth are not really in direct competition with each other, but NXT is in the race and ahead at this moment.

It's going to be an interesting year...............

Probably from Tykes alt-coin book project, he's been spamming pretty much everyone lately.

Couple of points :

Premine isn't applicable to pure poS currencies...no mining, no premine. All coins are created at genesis.
As with NXT: 1 billion coins in a few seconds, and no more will ever be made.

IPO's are tricky. NXT was probably the very first use of an IPO-like structure to distribute a coin (correct me if wrong, pls) but since NXT's launch the use of an IPO has become insanely popular, especially with the more scammy members of our community.

Most of the 2nd gen cryptos have much more in-built functionality than the old-school first gen cryptos. In order to utilise and exploit this functionality, businesses are being set up by the users of 2nd gen currencies such as NXT.

I think you are being too conservative. The possiblities that some 2nd gen systems offer are absolutely amazing....I think that in a few years to a decade (barring a zombie apocalypse) almost all of a persons financial life will run on a blockchain somewhere.

This means not just using the simple money payment/storage/transfer that first gen systems offer, but asset exchanges, blockchain storage, distributed autonomous corporations, contract signing......everything: your mortgage,  your employers business, your investment portfolio, your favourite game, your NetFlix content, your customer loyalty card, will all be under your direct control, accessible via a 2nd/3rd generation blockchain based system.
(I hope this system will be NXT, obviously)

@Lauda: well, there are a few people who like NXT, but that isn't really the point.
You can't turn the clock back by five years, mate: first gen cryptos will become obsolete, 2nd and 3rd gen will take over that functionality and much more.
The only real question is who will be the ultimate leader of the 2nd gen pack : NXT, Ripple, eMunie, Ethereum, MasterCoin...?  

And Bitcoin is slow in comparison with NXT. I can shift NXT from account to account with almost no lag-time in between hitting send and seeing it (unconfirmed) on the recieving account. BTC takes minutes to achieve the same, and getting the required number of confirmations is again slower than with getting NXT transfers confirmed.
I've just spent much of last week trading NXT to BTC to fiat, and NXT is so much quicker to use.    

Yup, that really sorted out the situation.

I was going to be a bastard and say: sell yr DGB and move into PoS, preferably with NXT, but someone beat me to it.....

Read the thread, bro...this thread was killed a long time ago:


Once again, all current NXT discussion is on:
https://nxtforum.org/index.php

Saw Zenithcoin on coinmarketcap, tho'. "Doing quite well" is an interesting way to describe Zenithcoins performance.
24hour trade volume of $7.....I am impressed. Still, 134th is better than it's usual position at 220th or lower. Good pump, mate.

Hey, a thieving butt monkey as usual...hows ZenithCoin, Carlos?

Nothing wrong with a few illegal firearms, IMHO, and terrorism is just a question of your own personal viewpoint...the only content I'd be unhappy with is, obviously, CP. Bah....

NXT debated this question a few weeks ago, though our blockchain storage system is still vaporware (like MaidSafe), and we came to the conclusion that the best way to deal with undesirable content on a BC storage system would be to have a robust reporting system in place, to allow users to flag dubious content.

However, this still opens up a big bag of worms for the people who will open up their storage space to MaidSafe (or NXT BC storage) content.
Can u monitor what is being placed on your hard drive by other MaidSafe users ? Are u legally liable for the contents of your own MaidSafe shared drive(s) ?

NXT is going to be there, as a contributing sponsor with a booth.  Dont ask what the booth cost.....

This is the 'official' Bitcoin Foundation conference and is probably going to be THE Bitcoin-related conference this year, certainly in Europe, maybe in the world.
Have a look at the list of speakers:
http://bitcoin2014.com/


If any of you guys/girls/whatevers are planning on attending, get your hotel/accomodation sorted out now. I'm on the search for hotel rooms for our guys, but much of A'dams hotel spaces are already booked solid for the weekend.

Here's the NXT thread for our internal conference organisation:
https://nxtforum.org/nxt-promotion/bitcoin2014-btc-foundation-conference-amsterdam-may-15-17/

If people want to get in for free/cheap, the only workable options will be to be a student or to get press accreditation. There was the possibility to get free registration by working for the BTC Foundation as a volunteer, but all the volunteer spots are now, afaik, filled.

If anyone needs some help with conference/Amsterdam related stuff, feel free to drop me a PM, or ask here.
I'm pretty busy at the moment, and I'm giving NXT (obviously) priority but I might be able to help out......

You can still get in on buying lots of NXT for not very much: 20,000 NXT per BTC. I'm grabbing every one of the little bastards I can get my hands on right now.
People forget that NXT is nowhere near complete yet, there are a shed-load of 2nd generation features coming up. Inside a year, maybe less, you'll be able to trade everything from BTC to dollars to silver bullion to dogecoin to....(etc), on NXT's native Asset Exchange, for example.

Get into NXT, you probably won't regret it.

If I'm wrong, you can come and share my cardboard box under the bridge.....

ITGeniusGuru has obviously never heard of open source......don't fuck him too badly, crunchynut.