Feel free to plagiarise away--I don't believe in intellectual property.  Attribution does help people find more quality information, though, so it's nice.  I would love to do up some slides as well.  The primary constraint is my time--bounties or donations, especially for work already done, definitely helps to justify the time away from other projects (I work for myself).  If you use something I've done or want to support it, then even a few coins lets me know I'm at least on the right track.  With the intro post I'm going try using different donation addresses per question so people can have a way to tell me which ones are the most useful.  I'd work on BitCoin usability all day if the community wanted to support it!

Your opinion on such a topic is very different if you are willing to be present, understanding the real-life implications of something that for many people is only a thought exercise.  That's why it was a fair question to ask, and one that I was asking seriously rather than as some sort of line.  It's also something that I've experienced personally and it's made me very tired of arm-chair discussions about real life things.  Like I said, the internet tends to make a lot of people pretend they know what they're talking about, so it's hard to know--and there's a heck of a lot of rhetoric bouncing around on these boards that I'd rather not give the time of day to.  Calling someone "holier than thou" and "sanctimonious" for suggesting that the real-world consequences for things need to be at the forefront of this type of discussion (and then erroneously categorising me with some imaginary stereotype of the people you think would be advancing my position) doesn't really get you off on the right foot.  Nor do phrases like "brain well-pickled blah blah blah" contribute to any useful discussion.

Saying I would DDoS an assassination board is not equivalent to blaming the type of money people are using for crimes.  But more deeply what I'm getting at is that technologies do have consequences, which we need to think about.  For example, I would not have opposed the invention of the internet because of its potential for child pornography.  But that doesn't end the discussion.  The internet does change things, and foreseeing that it might be used for child pornography would be a good time to realise that at that point child pornography has become a world issue that will require inter-country cooperation to address.  BitCoin, like the internet, is real life.  It will have real consequences, and they're worth actually thinking about.  Tone down the rhetoric, and take the opportunity to have a productive discussion about it!

The available data leads me to believe that BitCoin enables more good than bad.  Neither BitCoin nor cash "promote anarchism"--at best any implications for a political ideology like anarchism are peripheral to their broader significance.

Try to step back for a moment.  BitCoin is technologically superior to and more efficient than any existing currency or payment provider.  Particularly exciting are its applications in the developing world, in enabling microtransactions, in creating the possibility for digital contracts, and in facilitating the emergence of a tipping economy.  It seems very narrowminded to me to think that BitCoin's primary relevance is political.  I'm sure there were people who thought the same of the internet, and while they were right that the internet has political consequences, it's had kind of a lot of other ones as well.

And most importantly, I'm not naive.  BitCoin is ultimately mathematics--there are plenty of drug lords and covert organisations that have the finances to run their own BitCoin-like network regardless of whether BitCoin itself succeeds or fails.  I cannot control what they do--but I can help to make BitCoin an effective counterpart to that possibility.  So that's what I try and do--think ahead, and act appropriately.

Have you ever seen a person die?  Like, not in a video game or a movie?  The internet tends to make a lot of people pretend they know what they're talking about.  Tools are never bad, but there can be good reasons to scuttle a good tool--it's a simple cost-benefit analysis on the available data.  If the available data for any good tool showed it enabled more harm than good, the only rational response is that the tool isn't worth it.  Nuclear bombs are just tools too, but you're still a moron if you want to live in a version of today where everyone is handed one at birth.

I'm working on it now.  I'm doing a first post with an intro that every newcomer should read, and then follow up posts on specific questions linked back to an index in the first one.  I'm just going by my own experience, but people are welcome suggest specific points that should be included.

You get points from me.  There are a lot of extreme ideologies thrown around on the internet without regard to their practical application.  I'd sink a good ship to prevent it from being used for evil any day, and I think anyone who supports the freedom for assassination markets to exist "on principle" should be made to be present during the event--after spending an hour talking with the person before and then having to sit alone with them in a room after.  Then they have to explain their principles to the person's family.  And raise their kids.

All you people, optimising over a single variable.  Makes me think you don't understand yourselves very well.

+1

Big words and "anonymity" aren't selling points for cash--simplicity and ease of use are.  I'm running a registered business, paying taxes on my income, and tying my real-world identity to my BitCoin one.  I couldn't care less about anonymity.  It's the technology people care about--not a niche application.  Take Linux--I support for it both ideological and practical reasons, but the vast majority of people only care about the latter.

+1

There's no "them".  It's not a pitch.  It's just a factual description of particular interest to the unique few who understand what it means.  When I'm evangelizing bitcoin I talk about digital cash, email, and ponies.  Sometimes puppies.  But mostly ponies.

For any long-term goal, the soft sell beats the hard sell.  Always.

Give it a little bit of time--not everyone lives online.

Still there, Twilight?

The problem with long threads is that it takes too long to read them, and I haven't done so.  However, this is an interesting topic.

Personally, I would offer 50/50 to someone whether they knew about game theory or not.

And, because of knowing game theory, I would refuse any offer of less than 50% under most circumstances.

The reason is simple:  taking a less-than-50% offer is only optimal with respect to the monetary variable in the question.  With respect to the social variable, there's nothing to be gained by making anti-social people wealthy.  And I have no reason to believe that me gaining 2499 bucks or less would outweigh the value, with respect to society at large, of sending a clear message to this person.

The reason for the "most circumstances" variable is that the social variable could be modified in other ways.  I just assumed for the sake of simplification that I am playing the game with a complete stranger whose identity I don't know.  And yes, the answer to this question does become very complicated if the amount to be split were more like 5 million.  I would then have to do a much more complex cost-benefit analysis over the social variable.

So here's a weird one--I have the gui logged in to a local network computer running a server process.  The gui says I've had 101 shares accepted, but the computer itself says none.  What's going on?  server is namecoind instead of bitcoind if that makes a difference, but I've never successfully generated using the gui with a local bitcoin server either so who knows?

More questions--do namecoins show in "getinfo" before they mature, or after?  And if after, how does one know they are mature and what happens if you try to register a name before your coins mature?

Forever, or on the BitCoin curve with that amount reduced every two years?

Four questions:

1.  Is there a full spec somewhere?

2.  Why does this default to the same RPC port as the bitcoin client?

3.  Has the NameCoin protocol been properly designed to allow cross-mining?

4.  Can someone explain the economics here--if this thing runs on the same distribution curve as BitCoin (with a finite total of Namecoins) then doesn't that cap the total entries at 19,000,000/0.01, and if it has an infinite total then doesn't that wipe out the mining incentive?


Now you guys see why I'm so nice to n00bs--I know that at some point, inevitably, I will be one again.

Yup.

Doing my best!