I keep hearing people compare Bitcoin and other crypt's advantages over "fiat" currencies, but Bitcoin is a fiat currency as well, just not a government-sanctioned one.

"Fiat currency" is any money that has value simply because someone says it has value, or because people want it, without being backed by any physical goods or services.  Bitcoin works exactly the same way - the only difference is that the people declaring its value are the community of its users, rather than a government entity.

Wallet won't stay synced

and

PREMINE SUCKS

I can understand a little for bounties and such, but 10,000,000 coins?  over 10% of total supply?

+1 YES!!

Offer BigVern over at Cryptsy 5BTC to list it on the BTC exchange - I'm pretty sure he will do it

I also think Datacoin is probably best. 

The devs are good and it has a very strong community supporting it.  The diff isn't much lower than XPM or PTS but I think Datacoin has a better chance of taking off than either of those two.

I disagree 100% with the OP, and with any speculation that Bitcoin is going to reach some ridiculous number like $50,000 each or something like that.

I think the vast array of altcoins coming out (practically daily now) is taking away from the value of all other coins.

Think of digital currencies like an economic industry, like automobiles or clothing or kitchen appliances.  Right now, the "digital currency" industry is worth about $8billion USD.  This number is not climbing steadily along with all the additional coins coming out, this value is remaining relatively static and is simply being distributed amongst all the digital currencies.

ALL COIN TRADING PATHS LEAD TO BITCOIN.  When a new coin comes out, it simply subtracts from the value of Bitcoin, because Bitcoin must be used to invest in that currency, or to convert it to $USD.  New currencies are not adding wealth to the digital coin industry, they are simply providing more places to move it around.

Something major is going to have to happen before this can change, I'm not sure what it is.  Maybe BTC needs to show up on the NYSE or NASDAQ so normal Joe's can invest in it instead of it being some "dark an mysterious" hacker-currency like the media has made it out to be.  Maybe some major retailers like Amazon need to start accepting it so it gets more public exposure.

As far as Bitcoin reaching $50,000 or some ridiculous number like that, this is simply nonsense.  Again, think of digital currency like any other economic industry.  With BTC at $50,000 that would make this industry worth well over half a TRILLION dollars - sorry but I just don't see that happening.  That's as large as the entire U.S. auto industry.

  ROFL    So true

What I don't understand is why the hell we don't have about 20 other "memecoins" coming out right now. 

Cowbellcoin
HoneyBadgerCoin
ErmagerdCoin
IDontAlwaysDrinkDosEquisCoin

man, I can think of about a hundred

His site definitely has some problems.

I've been mining for awhile now, just in the last week or so started getting into trading.  I signed up through Cryptsy because they seem to have the greatest variety of coins, decent web interface but I'm beginning to think maybe I made a mistake.

The site is HORRIBLY slow, constantly logs me out, even while in the middle of doing stuff.  When logging in, the CAPTCHA on the login page *ALWAYS* fails on the first attempt no matter if I type it in correctly or not.  Second try always works.

And yeah - the site goes completely down at least once a day or so as well.

All the while, that SOB is staring at me through his sunglasses on his live twitter feed on the home page . . .

uhm, WTF
{
"blocks" : 329,
"currentblocksize" : 1000,
"currentblocktx" : 0,
"difficulty" : 3.13628194,
"errors" : "",
"generate" : false,
"genproclimit" : -1,
"hashespersec" : 0,
"networkhashps" : 80821370055,
"pooledtx" : 0,
"testnet" : false
}
Are we seriously at 80 TERRAHASH already on this coin?

Yeah, no chit . . . here I was thinking the release was 12/21 12:00am EST (which was 5 minutes ago), apparently the dev doesn't realize how dates work

Saturday night, 12:00am CST is actually 12/22

This is a great site showing different video card hashrates, and what GPU/memory speeds and cgminer settings were used to achieve them:

https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison

It does not exist on CoinMarketCap because it's not listed on any of the English-language exchanges.

Take the CoinWarz profitability numbers with a grain of salt.

The altcoin difficulty rates and exchange rates can change rapidly over just a few hours or even minutes time.  The #1 in $$ per day on CoinWarz might be #12 five minutes later.

It is a calculation based on current (and constantly changing) rates and difficulty numbers on all the coins, the amounts given are accurate only as of the moment you clicked the button.

If you're into scrypt mining I highly recommend using one of the profit-switching altcoin pools such as MiddleCoin.com.  The performance on Middlecoin has been outstanding the last few days, I am getting close to 0.02BTC per day with a measley 500khash

What happened to SPT on CoinMarketCap.com?  Disappeared yesterday sometime?

All cryptocurrencies' values in $USD are based on what is known as a "perceived value."  It is based solely upon its users confidence in the currency and its usefulness in being bartered for goods (and of course being bartered for $USD/EUR and other fiat currencies).

This works the exact same way as government-backed currencies as well.  $USD is more valuable than Mexican Pesos because the U.S. is considered a more developed, productive, wealthy, prosperous and successful nation than Mexico (whether that is actually true is another discussion, but I digress . . .)

Bitcoin, having started in 2009 and far, far more accepted for online purchases than any other crypto, is years ahead of the Cryptocurrency game compared to 99% of all other altcoins.  Heck probably 95% of the altcoins on exchanges right now are less than a year old.  Because of its seniority it carries a much higher perceived value than all other coins.

I just wanna say my initial impressions of Middlecoin pool are great.  Only been mining there for a couple days but so far the payouts have been far better than I hoped.  Looking at other people's transaction history with hashrates similar to mine makes me think we're doing a little better than average the last day or two.  Keep up the good work, I hope these payouts can continue!

Merry Christmas, too!
SFCKbe7TcEvmDNXhL7k6Fv5J5pob1fyn7n

I don't believe there is an option to specify number of course (but I could be mistaken)

However, putting cgminer on low CPU priority works well for me (assuming you are using Windows):

1.  Start cgminer
2.  Open Windows Task Manager
3.  Switch to the "Processes" tab
4.  Find the cgminer.exe process related to your CPU mining
5.  Right-click this process, choose Set Priority -> Low

This will allow this instance of cgminer to use 100% of CPU resources, but allows other tasks to "steal" CPU time if needed

1. No
2. Yes, that is probably your best option - if you can set it up in your room, you won't have to pay for power
3,4,5:
BTC mining is no longer profitable, in my opinion, unless you've already made a significant investment in high-powered ASIC mining hardware. 

You're too late to the game to spend any $$ on mining equipment now and expect to get your money back.
By the time the first batch of 1-3TH miners are shipped out in January, the difficulty on BTC will go so high, everyone else who gets theirs in March or April will hardly be able to mine anything.

However, if you do decide to buy one, you'll probably need to take it with you and setup in your room.  These things do need rebooted occasionally, it's unrealistic to think it'll just sit there and run for 6 months without intervention.

Good guide for settings on various cards here:

https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison