Maybe Bitcoin should Call in Greenspan, Bernanke and co to offer advice on setting up a fair market trading system, anyway, it's a currency trading system, shouldn't bitcoiners be investing in startup companies offering real goods and services.
All these exchanges are is Casinos, trying to profit from fluctuations in relative prices between currencies, Bitcoin will fail unless there is investment in real start up companies. 

What are they, I thought bitcoin transactions were free, if this is because individuals are contributing processing power to the network, I'd prefer to offer that free than have charges.
If there must be charges, maybe there must I don't know, but if there must, why not 0.0000001BTC on every transaction, over time this might amount to significant amounts and could fund full time developers and maintenence.
Who gets these charges anyway, not that it bothers me that much at the moment with no BTCs to trade with.

Agreed so it's up to people like us, who can see that without creating a real economy, the thing will die, at the moment, bitcoin prices are driven by people speculating, we need people who are going to set up real businesses that will tempt Bitcoiners and the public to use BTC's.
Agreed also on the Food additives, pesticides comment too.

http://harveyalexander.weebly.com/food-additives.html

Used Veg oil is Free,.
Also, if it were so inneficient, farmers wouldn't be able to grow it and sell it for less than diesel, I know it costs the same now but that's only because the petrochems and govt hiked the price of veg oil up shortly after the Jeremy clrckson experiment.
Prior to that I was buying veg oii at 52p per liter, regular diesel was 100p oer liter, this is impossible according to your argument because it eats more energy than it gives out.
It may well be that photosynthesisis oil molecules is inneficient,  but mother nature is doing the work, not the farmer, and as used veg oil is Free, it's efficiency skyrockets.
I used to use veg oil in my car regularly and know many people who use used veg oil.

In fact, just like Bitcoin, using used Veg oil as fuel is a booming industry, maybe BitCoin and Biodiesl should meet up, I'm not knocking solar, it's a faboulous technology but Biodiesel is 100% carbon neutral, the CO2 released by burning the oil is only that which was absorbed by the plant while it was growing, there is no NET CO2 gain to the atmospherre.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=veg+oil+biodiesel&btnG=Google+Search&aq=o&aqi=&aql=&oq=

I'll try add it to one of my Blogs.

We need more shops setting up, surely as Bitcoin has low transaction fees a reasonable trader ought to be able to undercut regular shops, there are no credit card fees, Bank charges, with those sort of advantages, BTC shops ought to be exploding and raking in a profit.
Mining and speculation will not make BTC succesfull, real trade will bring in the masses.

It seems to me there are lots of people trying to aquire Bitcoins, either by mining or simply buying them, there is another alternative, setting up multiple businesses selling things for Bitcoins that people actually want.
How do you identify what people want, well, everyone needs food, water, so let's start with that.
How about setting up local businesses that will deliver ( so now we need to hire Drivers ) food locally for Bitcoins, that also means that we now need local BTC traders, see how this thing can Grow, and if you provide a good service, you will generate Bitcoins, in fact your website could have one of the webpage miners on it.
If we want people to buy into this economy, we have to provide them with the things they want.

Bitcoin has the ability to trade at very low cost, it seems to me there should be an explosion of companies setting up using BTC because they can undercut regular Business in terms of transaction fees.

I've made a 3hr DVD, with videos on Bitcoin, Linux, the Economy, the Buy silver campaign, cryptography etc, I made to give to friends family etc, I have a few left to give away, they are in PAL format, and will post anywhere at the cheapest price, this is a free offer, you don't even need to pay postage.
There is a bitcoin donate address if you wish on the DVD, please feel free to copy the DVDs even use them to promote your own business by putting your own labels on the DVD.
Leave me a message with a postal address if interested.

http://vaccinesdeadlyimmunity.tk

If businesses wont accept BTCs for what you want, pool a few of those BTCs together with others and create a business that will.

bitcoin backs itself, the only reason why the USD ought to be backed by Gold is to stop Gov and central bankers cheating, by printing more money.
Since no one can print more bitcoins, it doesn't need backing, total transparency is what backs it and that is as good as gold.

Wht does it matter if the network is run by Botnets, well, it means all the remaining bit coins will be held by very few people, then we will be back in central bank territory.
The original poster is correct, when mining begins costing serious energy, parasitic mining will be viewed as stealing energy, then how will people mine.
Either by parasitic illegal mining, botnets etc, or by collaboration, I don't think many individuals will be able or even willing to mine.
The parasitic miners will end up owning significant shares of BTCs, yet the original intent of Bitcoin was that BTCs should be widely distributed, not into the hands of a few.
The webpage mining facilities are a way that people can collaboratively agree to mine legally, and also ensure BTCs don't end up in the hands of a few.

 

You can mine and hoard all the bitcoins you like, they will be worthless unless the Bitcoin community gets more involved in setting up shops and businesses, most people are not interested in trading, they just want to know if they can buy a pair of shoes with bitcoin, and if they can't, or it's difficult with few options, they won't buy in.

Some of us could do with some equipment like that, let us know when you are NOT around, have you added in the cost of potentially having your kit stolen.

Have you thought about using biodiesel from USED Veg oil ( Carbon Neutral )  and a diesel generator, many restaurants will gove you this free since they have to pay to have it disposed of.
Not sure of the numbers but anyone running a serious mining operation might want to look into using waste veg oil and a ( preferably whisper quiet ) Generator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFbsaNeZps

Thanks for a Great Post, it does appear that the 'wallet' and it's security is not straightforward as it might at first appear, it would be wise to assume that anyone who has installed Bitcoin to a PC could theoretically be compromised already, and it seems that if someone took a copy of your unprotected wallet.dat file three weeks ago, they could wait 1yr or two yrs and assume that Bitcoins will be worth more then start using those wallets.
So here is a worse case scenario, that EVERYONE who installed Bitcoin, in an unprotected fashion, which would probably be most people. may have had their wallet 'peeked', you might not have cared then, you might not care now because you only have a few Bitcoins, but theoretically, hackers could have been scouring the net, looking for unprotected wallets and taken copies.
In 5 yrs time, many of these wallets may no longer exist, but a few at least may well have significant amounts of Bitcoins in them, which they wil be able to use because they have your wallet, which is more accurately likened to a Key.
That means anyone who has left themselves vulnerable at sometime in the past, even if they didn't have any Bitcoins, is now at risk because those Old snapshots, taken of your empty wallets can be used to run transactions at sometime in the future, when your Wallet may contain significantly more BTC's.
Does that mean also that anyone mining using the CPU or GPU is inadvertently sending out a signal saying their wallet is 'open', an invitation for hackers to come in and take a copy of your 'wallet' for use at a later date.

Anyone with significant no of BTC's who has ever left their PC in an unprotected mode is right now at risk that someone has taken a copy that
they may well be able to use at some later date.
So the real procedure we need is not how to create a backup wallet but how to get those bitcoins out of that wallet, destroy the client we have downloaded, shred, defrag, wipe the disc and start again with a new download.
My guess is we are all potentially compromised, and if you intend having any significant BTC's in that wallet, you / we should think about
starting again, I mean surely all the bad guys have to do is release a virus that infects harddrives and sits there looking for wallet.dat, sending a copy to BadGuy Central, it could even be of a fresh install, it will not matter if its a copy of a freshly created wallet because at sometime in the future there will be coins in it, which preseumably they can check with Block explorer, aren't we all screwed ?

Federal Reserve notes are not lawful tender either.

http://harveyalexander.weebly.com/themoneyscam.html

Govt and Hackers and all sorts of ner do wells are likely to be targeting Bitcoin, it's time to get VERY serious over security, Hackers will already be scouring the net, probing computer defences for unencrypted wallets.

Free Security Options
http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/index.shtml

Anonymous Peer to Peer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P

Was also thinking of passwords interfaces, I'm no expert on cryptography, but I know of such things like keyloggers etc, I was thinking what would be the worst case scenario and how would I defend against it If I had the necessary coding skills, I might try with AutIT later see what I can come up with, and I thought the worst case scenario would be if the thief, hacker, were watching over your shoulder as you were logging in, perhaps with CCTV.
So my suggestion might be the GUI, when it opens up should scramble the login buttons around randomly, that would help defeat keyboard loggers.
The Letters on the individual keys could be catchpa like letters chosen by the user with the ability to change them, then the Password, itself could be a meaningless sentence, 'elephantsandfrogspreviewletTuce' the login asks not for the whole password but 4 or 5 of the letters, EG what is the 7th letter of your password.

Thus the scrambling of the keys randomly each use might thwart keyloggers, and even if there were CCTV, the catchpa letters would make recognition difficult and even if the hacker were standing over your shoulder he'd still have no idea what your pass word or phrase was.
Even better if the file you were unencrypting would be automatically encrypted again after a specified time.

Perhaps if anyone is writing secure log in and encryption tools, they could have the option whereby people pick and choose various option, keyboard layouts, scrambling codes etc so the finished product is personalised in someway.

Hull here, looking to Buy 2 BTC's for Cash or PO, MoneyGram.

Aren't most who sign up just going to add to their Bitcoin collection and Hoard them as well, wouldn't it be better to set up number of online shops to encourage real trade.

The Biggest Drug Runners are the Govt, Don't let them in.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cia+drug+running+wayne+madsen+alex+jones

Very Subversive, I like it, get the Charities on board.