You find a more direct way via Bitcoin-OTC.  Forget PayPal, forget LR (which personally I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole).  There's still Bitcoin2CC, and there are still people willing to exchange Bitcoin for services.

In short, while the shutdown of Paypal-based services is a drawback, it's not the end of the world.  Bitcoin will survive.

EDIT 2:  edited to remove me being a dick for no reason.  My apologies.

I'd vote against AlertPay, though I will openly admit that this is because they cut off funds to a site I support for (what I consider to be) stupid reasons, and they didn't allow the site-owner to withdraw the funds in his account after they cut him off.  So I'm possibly biased.

Let's just hope that the "Any publicity is good publicity" saying holds true.

I will take you up on your offer as soon as I can manage to run the Namecoin software on Windows without a .dll error.  I am actively working on fixing that so... >_>

If this is true, then I retract my words, and then I am indeed new to the concept. 

Am I the only one who's slightly suspicious of these past few replies?  They're mostly all by new members, and they have the generic cookie-cutter review style that I would normally only see in eBay feedback.  I have very rarely seen people use the phrase "+1" until I saw this thread, where apparently every customer is familiar with it.

It's just setting off warning flags to me.  Not of the service itself, but of the possibility that these accounts are faked to try to raise reputation for the service. 

Unless you have a really terrible GPU (like I do lol), it will outperform the CPU even at 4 cores.  But nevertheless, to compare, simply go into the options menu and make sure that you're not limiting the number of cores being used by the client, then turn the Generate Coins option on.  In the lower-lefthand corner you'll see your hashing rate.  My CPU tends to get about 1 Mhash/s per core.  

I'm not entirely sure what will happen here if you haven't downloaded the full blockchain, and your previous post suggests this might be happening.  If this is the case, give it an hour or two to download the blockchain before proceeding.  

When you say 10, what are the units?  Khash/s?  Mhash/s?  Note that http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php will be your friend when trying to determine how much profit you're likely to get, and that it uses units of Kilo-hashes-per-second.

For what it's worth, if I pushed my laptop (circa-2008) to the max I would get about 5 Mhash/s, and I've already given up mining, even in a pool.  It's just not worth the wear and tear on the machine when you're only earning pennies a day.

For a while, Bitcoin Gateway exchanged Bitcoins for debit/credit card funds, and that's actually how I got my first coins.  The problem is that credit cards (and debit to a lesser extent) also have the same chargeback/fraud issues that PayPal has.  The only reason Bitcoin Gateway was able to work is because the guy manually called up the bank to make sure it was actually your card, and then called you personally to confirm the order, using the phone number on file with the bank.  It was a lot of manual labor and because of that, it couldn't scale to the size that CoinPal/CoinCard reached.

I actually have a very minor request, if you're interested, regarding my current avatar.  Since I don't have a scanner, the image was taken from my digital camera, and to the left of the face you can see the circular reflection of the lens.  I'd be looking to merely have that reflection removed while still keeping the natural gradient.  Probably only needs the smudge tool, but I don't have Photoshop or Photoshop experience myself.

Offering 1.5 BTC for the job (~$5 at current exchange rate), and if you're interested I will provide the high-res camera image to work with (I'll resize it to avatar dimensions myself)

Without going too much into the specifics...

The standard Bitcoin client only does CPU mining.  As GPUs can be much much more efficient for this particular type of hashing work, mining with the standard client is fairly pointless at this point in time.  You *might* get really lucky and mine a block with it, but don't count on it with today's difficulty level.

I don't know what your particular GPU is capable of, but if it supports OpenCL or CUDA then it might be worthwhile to switch to a GPU miner, of which there are several in the Mining section of the forum.

In theory, over an extended period of time, you'll get the same amount of Bitcoins while mining solo or joining a pool, minus any operational fees the pool imposes.  It's more of a psychological effect - you feel much better about receiving 1 bitcoin per day than you do getting 50 bitcoins every 50 days.  It gives you more of an instant reward, which encourages you to continue.

At this point, I'm guessing your best bet would be Bitcoin-OTC, which can be relatively low-key and fly under Paypal's radar.

Well damn, really sorry to hear that.  Thanks again for your hard work.  

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty has a good explanation, but in a nutshell, it's a "magic variable" that determines how easy or hard it is to successfully mine a block.  The goal is for the network to average one block every 10 minutes, so every 2016 blocks (which in theory should be every 2 weeks), the system adjusts the difficulty based on how quickly those 2016 blocks were mined.  If it took fewer than 2 weeks, the difficulty rises; if it took longer, then the difficulty goes down.

So yes, it is a delayed response to the pure amount of computing power in the network.

I have a credit card for one reason only:  to build up credit, for when the time comes that I need to make a large purchase.  I only use it for things I would have otherwise used debit or cash for, and I pay it off in full every month. 

Works for me, at least.

Regarding the application directory, in both WinXP and Vista (probably 7 too), opening up a Windows Explorer window and typing "%appdata%" into the address bar will bring you directly to the appropriate application data folder.  From there just find Bitcoin and you've got your wallet.dat file.  And yeah, I don't know what tlhonmey means by the files being "locked out" - they're hidden by default I believe, but it only takes a single change in the options to make them viewable.

First off, thanks for fixing things.  I've made several exchanges since then.  I've also learned through observation that BTC deposits take somewhere between 1 and 3 confirmations to appear in the account (wasn't watching too closely to get a more exact number).

I had a quick question though: in another topic you mentioned:
In light of your involvement with the Alabama relief efforts, are you still planning to go ahead with your $0.40 promotional sale in a few days?  So far you've proven to be a man of your word, but I just want to make sure.

(I'm asking this here to help prevent that thread from going more off-topic)

Nanaimo Gold has been shown to be fairly trustworthy in the past, so this accusation is somewhat surprising.  If your story is true though, then I'd be inclined to agree that you have a rather serious case.  I'd wait to see how NG responds publicly here before making a judgment though.

I'll reply, as I just had a similarly frightening situation occur (the laptop with most of my funds died completely).  I had to do some juggling of wallet files to ensure I still had all my funds.

If you have a backup of your wallet.dat file that's fewer than 100 transactions old, your money is safe.  You might need to use the "-rescan" option when launching the Bitcoin GUI, but in the end you'll be okay.  Of course, it's your job to make sure you have this backup in the first place.  With Bitcoin, you are your own bank, and you are in charge of ensuring that your wallet.dat file is safe and unique.

"Unconfirmed" will appear when there are fewer than 6 confirmations, which should theoretically take about 1 hour (one block per 10 minutes).  It's generally accepted that after 6 confirmations, there's no chance of double-spending.  Many websites will use even a single confirmation (~10 minutes).