I also placed a first bid on the modem and "Bidder 1" outbid me with the minimum increment. I bid a second time and he did it again. I checked the logs and it was in the exact second I made a bid.
"Bidder 1" has placed a bid higher than yours, but only the minimum bid needed to win the auction is shown. As long as your bid is smaller than Bidder 1's bid, he will win, but not pay more than necessary to win the auction. When you bid above Bidder 1's maximum bid, your bid will stand one minimum increment above Bidder 1's maximum bid, and when someone bids above your visible bid, it will be incremented in the same way as Bidder 1's bid is now. Bidder 1's real name is not Bidder 1, btw. |
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2000:
[...]
2. Pretty much everyone is still stuck on IE.
"Still"? LOL, you are young! Only two years earlier IE's market share was still below 30%. Microsoft couldn't license Netscape, so they went for their loser, Mosaic. IE's only success factor was being bundled with Microsoft Windows when a flood of Windows users got access to the Internet. There were Unix and Mac versions as well until IE 5 (Mosaic had Unix roots), but I don't think IE ever got any share of the market on those platforms. Netscape was far better than Mosaic, and the first versions of IE was just Mosaic with a Windows logo where the spinning globe would be. |
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I manually re-activated your order. Don't know why it was still inactive.
Probably just forgot to manually update your data after deploying the code fixes.
It happened again.. I agree on better separation of currencies, I got confused myself. I can think of the following options :
- Replace LRXXX by LR$ and LR€
- Color code
- Tabbed order book
I like the first two, what do you think ?
Second or third. $ is a common symbol for several currencies. |
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I'm just going to convert EUR -> USD right now to keep things simple. I might set up EUR <-> BTC later if the volume is big enough. I'll use this exchange rate: http://xurrency.com/api/eur/usd/1A good exchange rate! Not ripping people off with bad rates like most exchangers. I'm looking forward to this! Will it be possible to withdraw EUR as well? |
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Fixes have been deployed.
You can now trust the order book.
Apparently not. I have an order (funded) which is displayed in Your orders, not in the main Order book. A part of it was traded. Different currencies should be separated in a more visible way, IMHO. |
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Why are there orders for 0.0000 BTC/LRUSD in the order book?
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Could BitCoin ever be backed by Gold or some other commodity in the following fashion? And would it be desirable to do this?
Assume for the sake of argument that all 21 million coins were in circulation as of just today. Suppose some rich reputable entity (Bill Gates or the Pope) bought up all bitcoins at market price (29 cents) for $6,090,000. This is a misunderstanding. The current market price for one bitcoin is around 0.29 USD. If you want more than about 100 000, you are already paying 0.5 per bitcoin. If Bill Gates and the Pope want my last bitcoin, they will have to part with their last dollar, and I will have my own state in the middle of Rome. What you suggest is impossible. But, of course, anyone could back Bitcoin with gold by offering a gram of gold per bitcoin, or something. Guaranteed. In that case one Bitcoin will be backed by one gram of gold, but not tied to it. The value of one bitcoin will be higher, since bitcoins are easier to use. |
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I don't get it. There are matched entries under Selling and Buying, but no trade happens. I also got an error message when trying to buy, but the bid goes in.
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This is a very good deal, folks. I am very satisfied with the analsysis I ordered, and so far it looks like I will earn money from the decision I made based on the analysis. Thank you, S3052!
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Btw, there is a race condition in your plan to post a hash of something in a transaction. Someone who picks up the hash from your transaction can send a new transaction with the same hash embedded. If both make it in the same block, you have no way of knowing who was first. That's what I thought : you don't really understand how it works. You have a something that works now? You are supposed to post a hash of the SIGNED file (in other words, the signature). There's no point sending a hash of a file signed by someone else.
This is not what you wrote here: Imagine I make a nice audiovisuel file (movie, song, whatever). I can sign and timestamp the hash of this file, and now all I have to do is to wait at least a few hours before releasing the file. Then there is no way anyone could sign my file and timestamp it inside a previous block. It's just as much impossible as it is impossible to steal some bitcoins from the block chain.
I assumed you signed it by your transaction (a key in your wallet) and timestamped it by the timestamp in the block it made it into. This is the simplest explanation. If you have a clear understanding of how this works which is more complex than what you wrote, I suggest you write it here instead of harassing people who read your posts. Am I correct in that you want to use the timestamp in the block, or do you want to timestamp the hash in some other way? I still don't understand why you want to discourage bitcoin users and make Bitcoins less efficient by putting junk in the block chain. |
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In this case you don't rely on the timestamp, but the sequence number, and you pay a high price by discouraging other people from using bitcoins. Just read the other comments here. There are so many other ways of doing what you describe in standard ways, free, accepted by courts, etc, and with precision allowing you to release the file a second later, that you should pause and ask yourself if this is a brilliant way to waste a good currency.
Using publications, blogs and so on are not that good. It's not as robust as bitcoin would be. Then don't use publications, blogs, etc. Use e-mail, wikis, facebook, IRC (logged channel), snailmail, public syslog servers, fax via internet fax services, Twitter, etc. There are limitless possibilities, and many are well suited to post the work in full. I also don't understand why you consider using bitcoin for timestamping would "waste" the currency. It's fondamentaly the same function that is used, only for different purpose. No, it isn't. The timestamps in the blockchain are not ment for timestamping Bitcoin transactions, just the blocks. Btw, there is a race condition in your plan to post a hash of something in a transaction. Someone who picks up the hash from your transaction can send a new transaction with the same hash embedded. If both make it in the same block, you have no way of knowing who was first. If the other one makes it into a hash before you, possibly by paying a higher fee, then you lost the race completely. You have to encrypt your message to make it unreadable for others. Anyway I very much doubt the volume of timestamping transactions would be large enough to disturb the network. As I see it, monetary purpose would be way larger than timestamping. Timestamping transactions? Btw, your hash isn't worth much if the hashing algorithm is broken. You better sign and post the entire file, not the hash of it. At least post more than one kind of hash of the file, if it is important to you. The blockchain in Bitcoins make it impossible to change your hash, but your hash itself may be worthless because someone can claim that you have changed their work in subtle ways to make it match your hash.
Well, if you question the security of the hash algorithm, then you question everything. This is way too much a big hypothesis. Especially if you consider the possibility of a collision, as you seem to do. Collision attacks on MD5 are well known. Find bits which can be flipped without changing the hash, flip, repeat. The first collision attack on SHA-1 was published in 2005, and found a collision in only 2^63 operations. Those attacks do not change everything, and the blockchain is immune to simple collision attacks due to it's length and the merkle hash on top. The single hash you put in there as "proof" of something is not, since you don't need to change that hash. All of this can be done out of the blockchain or in a separate blockchain if you insist on connecting it to Bitcoins. Perhaps another blockchain demanding accurate timestamps, if what you want is timestamps.
Doing a separate block chain specialised in timestamping of signed documents could be a possibility, indeed. But I doubt their would be enough nodes to keep it running. What would be the intencive for those nodes to mine ? It is way much simpler to just use the current bitcoin network. You could pay the nodes mining the other chain with bitcoins for transactions. Thereby using bitcoins as a currency, as it was always ment to be. |
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Are you all mad?
What you call timestamps are so inaccurate and easy to skew that the best you could do is a datestamp. If you want to make a reliable system for timestamping, you should at least make the clients to agree on the time within a second or less. Satoshi could have done that if he wanted to make the system useful for timestamping, but he didn't. There are many systems out there which are made for timestamping, which are free with microsecond resolution. If you insist on paying for a datestamp with horrible resolution, you could just use snailmail! Their datestamps are even accepted by courts of law.
I'm well aware that bitcoin timestamping is not accurate, but it is really not an issue at all. Since there is one new block every 10 minutes or so, globally bitcoin timestamping precision is more or less 10 minutes. Imagine I make a nice audiovisuel file (movie, song, whatever). I can sign and timestamp the hash of this file, and now all I have to do is to wait at least a few hours before releasing the file. Then there is no way anyone could sign my file and timestamp it inside a previous block. It's just as much impossible as it is impossible to steal some bitcoins from the block chain. Accuracy is not the issue. Robustness is. In this case you don't rely on the timestamp, but the sequence number, and you pay a high price by discouraging other people from using bitcoins. Just read the other comments here. There are so many other ways of doing what you describe in standard ways, free, accepted by courts, etc, and with precision allowing you to release the file a second later, that you should pause and ask yourself if this is a brilliant way to waste a good currency. Btw, your hash isn't worth much if the hashing algorithm is broken. You better sign and post the entire file, not the hash of it. At least post more than one kind of hash of the file, if it is important to you. The blockchain in Bitcoins make it impossible to change your hash, but your hash itself may be worthless because someone can claim that you have changed their work in subtle ways to make it match your hash. All of this can be done out of the blockchain or in a separate blockchain if you insist on connecting it to Bitcoins. Perhaps another blockchain demanding accurate timestamps, if what you want is timestamps. |
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Again : timestamping is pretty much the core of bitcoin service. The distributed time server is the most original idea of Satoshi's design.
I just don't think any other solution is better.
Agreed Are you all mad? What you call timestamps are so inaccurate and easy to skew that the best you could do is a datestamp. If you want to make a reliable system for timestamping, you should at least make the clients to agree on the time within a second or less. Satoshi could have done that if he wanted to make the system useful for timestamping, but he didn't. There are many systems out there which are made for timestamping, which are free with microsecond resolution. If you insist on paying for a datestamp with horrible resolution, you could just use snailmail! Their datestamps are even accepted by courts of law. |
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Name one. It's good enough for their use in the Bitcoin blockchain. For other purposes the timestamps are still worthless. Accurate timestamps are free.
For example, say that I have figured out how to break AES encryption. I put my method in a text file and hash it. I put the hash in a block. Then, if someone else finds the same method independently, I can prove that I was the first one to find it by showing them the hash in the block. Unless someone found my method less than a day after I did, observers can be very sure that mine came first because the block timestamp is reliable enough for that. It would be enough, and much easier to mail it to someone. Use a gmail address or something, and you will have your timestamps accurate to the second, at least, on many external locations. This method is free, and not an annoyance to thousands of Bitcoin users all over the world, who are paying for their internet connections. |
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Bitcoins are worthless as a source for timestamps. The block creator can put whatever he or she wants in there.
The timestamp must be after the median time of the last 11 blocks and before 2 hours in the future (using adjusted node time). [blahblah...] You could have saved the trouble of writing all this by quoting one more word from me: Almost. This property is valuable in certain circumstances.
Name one. It's good enough for their use in the Bitcoin blockchain. For other purposes the timestamps are still worthless. Accurate timestamps are free. |
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As I wrote earlier: You can find many examples of blocks with timestamps older than the block before, or even several blocks before.
So? They're both accurate within a few hours, as I said. In these cases, the producer of the second block believes that the first block has incorrect time. What do you expect him to do, other than use correct time? The producer of bitcoin blocks can do whatever he wants, and that is one reason why bitcoin blocks are useless for the purpose of timestamping anything. The original claim was: A bitcoin is actually not only useful as a currency but it has the ability to timestamp. If someone could use this special bitcoin property similarly to how scientists used the conductive properties of gold, then bitcoins could takeoff in a different tangent which could further increase its value.
Bitcoins are worthless as a source for timestamps. The block creator can put whatever he or she wants in there. Almost. Look at the timestamps in the current block chain. Try to imagine anything relying on timestamps where timestamps invented by the block creator is a useful property, when accurate timestamps with microsecond resolution are free. Another claim is: The block number IS the timestamps !
But it isn't. The block number is a sequence number, and the timestamps aren't even in the correct sequence. They don't need to be for their current purpose. If you are looking for gold, you should try other properties of Bitcoins. Your wallet contains some cryptographic keypairs which may be useful in connection with bitcoins for messaging or verification purposes outside the blockchain. |
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You can not derive time from the block number with any useful accuracy.
The network tries to keep the block timestamp accurate within a few hours. This is useful for some things. Bitcoin uses it for difficulty adjustment, so it has to be at least generally accurate. As I wrote earlier: You can find many examples of blocks with timestamps older than the block before, or even several blocks before. I can't imagine why anyone would want to use such an unreliable timestamp when accurate timestamps to the microsecond are easy and free. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. "I can probably make the window fit in the frame using my hammer." Maybe, but it is a horrible choice of tool for the job. |
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The block number IS the timestamps !
No. The block number is a sequence number. You can not derive time from the block number with any useful accuracy. |
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Is there a breakthough application waiting to be discovered using the timestamp property out there???
Bitcoin timestamps are worthless. If you examine the timestamps in the blocks, you'll notice that many blocks are timestamped to be older than the block before it. This is impossible, of course. The best you have got is a sequence property. Blocks are generated at random times centered around 10 minutes (actually less, which is why the difficulty keeps increasing), which is another property, but I don't think Bitcoin blocks would be very useful as a source for random numbers either. Bitcoins are however very useful as a secure currency or commodity. |
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I'm running Bitcoin on a Dell laptop with an Intel i7 CPU. OS is Ubuntu 64 bit.
I deleted the contents of .bitcoin and copied a new wallet.dat. After downloading about 50,000 blocks the computer shuts down and I get a bios message saying "warning: CPU temperature has exceeded 90 degrees".
The funny thing is that this only happens when downloading the blockchain. I can generate coins for days, even at 100% using all 8 CPU cores, and the computer doesn't overheat.
Seems like a peculiar behaviour. I have used a lot of computationally intensive software before, but I've never managed to fry the CPU like this. What might be going on?
Perhaps the airflow passes over the harddisk before it reaches the CPU, and the disk is getting hot due to lots of activity? Hotter air for CPU cooling makes CPU cooling less effective, and it may overheat. A lot of I/O may also make your chipset hotter than usual. Do you have the latest BIOS firmware installed, btw? |
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