Yes - it was interesting/fun to debate points of view.

An unlikely one.  The point is, all of the variables and relationships do not necessarily hold over the entire range.  Hence, while enormously improbable, it is at one end of the possible spectrum of outcomes.

If the relationships were exactly matched, the profit margins from mining would still be high like they were 1, 3 or 6 months ago?  This has not happened, and forecasting out to the $3m/hr scenario the relationship is unlikely to hold as other block economics start to have an influence.

I wasn't trying to suggest the humour content could not be copyright, but that generic diagrams would be difficult.

One the first point, a google image search returns lots of material, not all of which is the original with correct attribution - that doesn't appear to be an infringement worry for them.

I just want to post because I can ask, "so, APPLE is a ponzi scheme?"  They might be one of the worst companies when it comes to treating their customers badly, maybe apple users are masochistic and rich - I don't care as the products look clunky and unfriendly.

More seriously, the issue of dividends in companies is a choice of distribution.  Investors can choose to hold the same relative percentage irrespective of dividends and the dividend rate is driven more by tax efficiency than anything else.  You don;t need dividend income from a share in a company to realize value.

I look to some of the features of currency and Bitcoin has an advantage in low cost international value transfer and that is what I will use it for.  I would also recommend people read the original Ponzi scheme notes for how it worked - a stroke of genius for the time, but pure fraud.  I do not need anyone to value my otherwise worthless bitcoins, similarly, I don't need anyone to value my USD either.

It was not claimed as his work, and fair-use rules allow reproduction of publically available image (just posting a link would not have been as useful).  Yes attribution might have been nice, but the post was unnecessary (ref the ensuing clutter in this thread, including this post).

btw - org charts and network diagrams with random labels would be hard to copywrite.

That would be great if I was the only one mining - say one 4850 or 9800 card somewhee, or even one i7 core.  The statement misses too many of the other variables to be sensible (sorry).

If difficulty is near zero and only one person mines, six block per hour will still be created.  This does not imply 30 GW.

Off the top of my head throws would be around 13BTC and the blankets around 20BTC.  I would point out these products are not the kind of thing you'd get from k-mart.

We currently price in NZD and quote in USD, AUD, GBP and pretty much anywhere else in the world we need to send to.  We might peg a price to a weighted price of the main exchanges, so would use a conversion around USD14 at the moment.  One of the plus points I can think of is that it saves on the conversion costs between currencies.

Anyway -testing the idea here first, will discuss with the other company directors in a week or so when I get back to New Zealand.

Yes. 

We'll make you a custom fit elf or Gandalf cloak if you wanted - they are not too cheap though.

There seams to be a shortage of "hard" goods outside of a limited range so I thought I'd throw in a new item.  I have a manufacturing business that makes wool products.  Normally we wholesale and some direct internet retail around the world.  As a poll of the forum community interested enough to read this to include a bitcoin payment option?  ( www.stansborough.co.nz )

If you have a few spare coins you can even buy an official Lord of the Rings cloaks.

Last I saw I thought you were testing this as an idea, rather than actually doing the trade - has that changed?

Catching up on posts - as of 10 July it says "abandoned".

Just a fyi in passing - the Cerulean Tower does has a TMO Internet company listed on the building directory - but as it ws the weekend, that was the view from the door.  (Some other nice big companies there too, not the kind of place to find a bitcoin operation.)

I got my transfers eventually (after a 4 days, 6 days and 7 days) - three small transfers done around the same time.  This lack of liquidity is keeping me away from Gox at the moment.

From experience with 5970s, they tend to fail and then run hot with fans on max until you either RMA or bin them.

As something new today I set fire to a hard-disk - plugged it in, turned it on and watched the flames burn happily through an IC on the back for 5 seconds before I could turn the PSU off.

I've had a search, but couldn't find anything, so asking fresh.

I was alerted by my network administrator that my computer was attacking our internal network (port scanning).  Tracing a few ideas and different tools (especially TCPview) I eventually found my browser scanning each port in turn with connection to static-ip-188-135-101-169,inaddr.intergenia.de  This is the host site for bitcoincharts.com and as soon as I close that window, the port connections stop.

Has anyone else noticed this or have a better explanation why this address is scanning?

p.s. I have asked them for some tech support on this too.

I have sympathy for the OP.  I withdrew my funds from Gox a week (seven) days ago in three bites (over the space a a couple of hours) because it was part of a trade, not some kind of deliberate exit.  I have just received the last installment (the other two were yesterday and back on Friday).  It might have only been USD1000, but more than I would like to lose.

Looks to me like they do not have the cash for withdrawals even though the money left my Gox account in less than a minute.  To have it sitting in limbo for a week isn't good enough so I'll be away from their exchange until they can sort themselves out or implode.

Nothing like a good run on bank funds.

They don't need to be traded on an exchange - many contracts are done directly between buyer and seller (say a physical delivery wheat contract).  You buy my crop next year for $200/t and I'll deliver 1000 tons.  If there is a drought, I'm in trouble, if the weather's good, I'll do ok.

You might then decide to on-sell the contract, and an exchange facilitates that.

Trust not required if done properly - margin calls fix that - both an agreed initial margin and margin variations.  If one side doesn't perform, the margin is lost to the other side would be a bonus.  Helps if there is a clearing agent doing the calls/holding the funds too.

Having a call option is another variation - $4 premium - interesting there is a number attached to it already, well done, but no thanks.  That combo doesn't work for me.

So, you're not actually ready to do this contract.  Otherwise I would consider it (nominal physical delivery of BTC in December and I assume you mean payment in December as well)

so, when this thread was arguing the possible flaws of one person generating all the blocks, did anyone bother to notice that 1/3 of the coins are already in existence?