Hmmm let me think....
   Government(s) and FEDs ?

Of course. If it wouldn't, i would say something.

Yes, the protocol still supports it, but the default client does not create such transactions. So it is not the "normal use" of Bitcoin to store binary data in it. Case closed.

Well, maybe not completely pointless, but much less useful than i thought, and certainly not much more anonymous.

OK, this seems nice and polished. But i have one, very important question:
Where do you get your random number / random number seeds ?

When it comes to computers, all "random" numbers are really only pseudo-random. And proper randomness factor / entropy is everything when it comes to online casinos.
Just look what one of the companies did to get REAL random numbers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n8LNxGbZbs

Perhaps you should consider getting real random seeds from somewhere. Otherwise i don't think the game will be really fair.

----
BTW, do you know that there are specialized companies whose only occupation is generating random numbers and selling them ?

It doesn't matter anymore if you put kiddie porn in chain or not.

Because of the default client now does not support any non-standard transactions (isStandard() function), and bitcoin is only specifically advertised & designed as currency by its creators, this case will be classified by courts the same as using a phone for coordinating a bank robbery would be.

The telephone operator cannot be held responsible for actions of a criminal which used the phone to do some evil.

That is a fair point, why didn't i think of it ?
Encryption is pointless, because when an attacker can control enough bitcoin nodes, SSL won't help at all...

Simple. So that nobody knows what IP were these transactions created by.

And SSH-like connection will be almost exactly the same as a SSL-like connection, but without central certificate authorities. Of course some mechanism of reading fingerprints from a HTTPS site could also be implemented, so people could create "semi-certificate authorities" which would be simply a list of node IP's with their fingerprints.

I propose something that has been discussed many times on the forums - implementing connection encryption to the bitcoin protocol.

Details:
- Like SSH, people will be able to connect to each other securely, using cryptographic keys / identities they need to exchange first.
- As in SSH, each host will generate its fingerprint, and set of private/public keys. So nodes connecting will be able to verify each other
- Some nodes (like banks) will be able to publish their keys/fingerprints somewhere (like on their site), so that everybody can confirm who they are when connecting to their bitcoin clients
- When key/fingerprint of remote node changes, user will be warned & asked if he wants to connect anyway (like in SSH).

- To make things easier, one could use openssl library present in every major operating system to implement this.

Possible benefits:
- Possibility of having almost 100% anonymity for each node. (if some random traffic generator will be also implemented) A third party no longer will be able to tell who is who and which transaction is which by sniffing the traffic coming in/out of a node.
- Real security & more anonymity when connecting through TOR (right now the exit nodes can easily sniff/intercept all traffic, so using bitcoin on TOR is somewhat dangerous).
- Eleminate man-in-the-middle attacks.
- People will be able to create "semi-certificate authorities", which will store each node's fingerprints and show them publicly, so nodes of the network can be verified.
- Clients (like banks) could choose to connect only to trusted, SSL-verified nodes, and ignore the rest.

Possible disadvantages:
- Possibility of centralization of the network ?

Everybody will dance as long as they are not exhausted enough to die.

There is a real mental illness that makes you do that actually, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_mania

I think the improvement would be that wallet could be completely encrypted, so to send or accept any transactions, one would have to give a password.
Still, that would not protect against keylogger attacks.

Yeah - as i said - breaking into a fully patched desktop Linux with software only from signed repos using a 0-day is itself highly unlikely.

+ Add Noscript/Flashblock = Very highly unlikely (A critical 0-day vulnerabilities which do not require javascripts/canvas/html5/iframes/advanced stuff are VERY rare)
+ Add Virtual Machine = Practically impossible

I know what You mean. I can still either run bitcoin as a different user, or better: run bitcoin in an encrypted virtual machine.
This practically takes the risk of any hack down to zero.

That attacker would have to
0) Find a MASSIVE way to attack everybody at once before the 0-day is detected (not an easy thing to do).
1) Crack my web browser (with Noscrtipt/Flashblock/Adblock installed, so it is not an easy task either)
2) Find the correct virtual machine
3) Hack into the virtual machine, breaking it's security also.

I **seriously doubt** that any 0-day will ever be able to do that.

And about Stuxnet: It ran on Windows. I don't put "windows" and "security" in one sentence.

Sorry, i just got used to the fact that on every other forum this is viewed as spam.
My bad.

I don't think this is much of a problem.

For example, mastercard has maximum capacity of 140 million transactions per hour. Which makes 38.888 transactions per second.
38.888 transactions per second * 250 bytes = 9722000 bytes = ~77,77Mbit. (Though on average, Mastercard does only 22 billion transactions a year, which makes about 2,5 million a hour, and ~700 a second, so there are probably only spikes with high number of transactions, and the rest is much lower)

So anybody with 100Mbit broadband/fiber will be fine. Just buy a powerful 6-or-more cores computer, and you probably will be able to easily calculate everything without much strain.

But by the time Bitcoin will be so popular to process that many transactions, internet connections around the world will be easily 100-200% faster than currently, so no problem there. Also, you can always buy a decidated hosting connected to 1Gbit pipe (which is less expensive that you would imagine), and You're cool.

Doesn't I2P work simply out of the box as it is a java app ?
I remember setting it up some time ago, and i could swear it worked without any configuration.

I lost interest in it, as it is meant to be a closed network of nodes, unlike TOR, which interferes with the "normal" internet by default.

Watched 2 episodes already. Not much propaganda there (or at least not more than in usual US movies).

The problem with Chineese is that they may get a bullet in their head for doing something the government doesn't like.
They don't fuck around with dissidents in China like they do in democracies. If they even suspect that you're doing something nasty, you get sent to labor camp or worse.

http://www.biddingpond.com/

No, really - WTF. Will they pay for my treatments if i get eye cancer ?

Ok... so basically you're advertising your blog on the forum for free.
Great.