Another update: I deprecated the whole cookie thing. Instawallet will no longer make any attempts at trying to remember you.
+1. Good improvement. |
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Suppose I am a master chef in a small village. My food preparation method is healthier and tastier than other alternatives. There is no way to reverse-engineer my food preparation method from the food I serve. I want to write a cookbook. It will take me 500 hours to write this cookbook, in which time I could just make more food to earn me some money. My secret recipes are so good that it is clear that society as a whole will be far better off if more chefs could utilize my techniques [1] than if I spent the 500 hours cooking better meals for a small number of people. You would agree that it is better if this method was known to more people. [2]
What incentive do I have to write this cookbook?[3] If I try to publish even a single copy, any established book publisher with more efficient book-printing resources than I do will be able to prevent me from earning any money [4] while earning a hefty profit themselves. The only possible solution I can think of is the idea of selling my final draft of the cookbook to a publisher - that is, selling the right to be the first person (besides myself) to see what I have written so that they can publish it. The publisher would only offer me prices comparable to what I could make with IP protection is if they were able to read it first, in which case I would have to have some contract protecting my IP rights with this company (but again, this requires a government to enforce this contract, which means IP is something the government has to recognize).
edit: Also, assume the IP protection I'm talking about is temporary (enough for what I make to make the time investment worth it), not something that would give me permanent control (maybe like music copyright, but shorter and without the draconic punishments from infringement).
1. No it is not. 2. No I do not. 3. If "society" thinks it is important that you write a cookbook, it will provide you with whatever you need to write it. If they don't then maybe they didn't need it that badly after all. 4. Not necessarily, but also not really relevant. There are other solutions which would allow you to share your recipes with only minimal inconvenience to yourself. Such as allowing a single observer to watch you prepare the meals and take notes on the ingredients and process. Just because you are unable to think up a business model which makes what you want to do profitable does not mean you should be permitted to invent one that benefits you to the detriment of the rest of the society (as IP laws do.) I would claim that IP laws do more harm than good. (with regard to the creation of what is currently called IP) But we have a "tradgedy of the anti-commons"[5] where just because we don't see the things that are not created we don't count them as negatives. Also, +1 on what the 3rd party contract people said. [5] if anyone knows what this is acutally called, please let me know. |
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will they pay in bitcoins?
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britcoin.co.uk
UK based exchange site.
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Instructions for using the Bitcoin forums:
1. Trust no one
2. Before you read something, read the title and answer the question: "What does it have to do with ME?"
3. DO NOT at any circumstance get emotional with anything.
4. After you have read a post or a thread, answer the question: "Can I think of something constructive that I can get out of this for MY situation?"
5. Before you post anything, answer the question: "Will I be adding anything of value to the discussion, or will I be wasting someone else's precious time?"
6. If you want to casually browse and read posts, make sure that you HAVE NOTHING BETTER to do at that time.
7. Ignore the above at your own risk.
Good list. I need help with number 6 (and number 5 as well apparently. Assuming you're supposed to do something different when the answer is "No") |
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I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before. (I searched but could not find a good link.)
Blocks have to be within a certain time window (+/- 2 hours maybe?) of the last block to be valid.
If you're winning enough blocks to be able to drift the time in your desired direction you may as well just be directly manipulating the transactions you're including.
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As an independent observer (who will probably regret posting in this thread):
jerfelix you did not win any bet. bitlotto was asking if there was a way he could undetectably cheat at the lottery. You did not provide a solution to this.
As for escrows why should bitlotto be any less reliable than any other escrow provider?
The solution is simple. If you don't trust bitlotto for whatever reason, don't play his lottery!
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Ok. How does that thread not already answer your question? As for what I was trying to say, as usual theymos says it better in that thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=2965.msg52466#msg52466Is a bitcoin uniquely identifiable against any other bitcoin?
I think the answer to this question is 'no'. Think of each bitcoin address as a bucket of water. If a bucket is created which contains 50 liters of water. If you combine 10 of these buckets into a big 500L tank, then take out 1L of water from the tank, you cannot tell which bucket the water started in. So therefore the water is not uniquely identifiable. It is the same with "bitcoins". |
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I'm a bit confused by your quoting.
Anyway:
If I put 2 coins from address 'A' and 1 coin from address 'B' into a new address 'C'
Then I spend the 3 from 'C': 1 to 'D' and 2 to 'E'
Where did the coin in address 'D' come from? 'A' or 'B'?
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So with all this talk about hacking, everybody is rightfully paranoid about their wallet.dat security.
I was thinking... wouldn't it be possible to generate a bitcoin address whilst OFFLINE/not connected to the internet? On a fresh ubuntu/linux install...
If you send the coins to that wallet after encrypting it securely and uploading it to a few remote cloud storage type services... and then sent some bitcoins to an address you had generated in the wallet... that wallet would still contain the coins you sent it correct? Even if it was NEVER connected to the network?
So that in 20 years if I wanted to access my "rainy day" fund, I could retrieve my wallet.dat file that had been encrypted on "the cloud", pop it into a bitcoin client, and my coins would magically appear? (After a massive block download wait I assume).
Am I right?
What is wrong with this idea? Anything?
I am only worried about trying it because it means I would never actually have any proof that the bitcoins were indeed in the wallet, if I never connected to the network that is.
Couldn't somebody else create a wallet and generate the same address as me, since I never told the network about my address?
There is nothing theoretically wrong with this suggestion. You can check that there are bitcoins in your wallet by checking the individual addresses in the blockexplorer. You only need the wallet if you want to spend the coins. I'd be most worried about cloud services being around in 20 years. and/or losing/forgetting my strong password |
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This seems like a good idea. Is there something wrong with it?
Is this proposal (or a similar one) discussed in another thread?
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Or you could just use the -rescan command line option which will go through the block chain and find your missing transactions without having to re-download the block chain. -rescan Rescan the block chain for missing wallet transactions |
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If you want to do this put the following text into your Signature: [b]Anonymous Cash-By-Mail Exchange: https://www.bitcoin2cash.com[/b] Signature edit box can be found in: Profile -> Forum Profile Information I'll make this my signature from 13/6/2011 -> 13/9/2011 for 0.10 BTC. (If you change your signature it will require a new agreement.) |
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I got these two messages different to/from names from: "SilverKnife"
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why not embed something like i2p with the bitcoin client, leaving it on by default or at least toggleable? what are the arguments against anonymity/security not being 'bring your own' ?
It is good practice not to make things more complicated than they need to be. Not everyone wants/needs strong anonymity that something like i2p might provide. Feel free to build your own client that does. |
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If you ever wanted to test a closed source client you could put it inside an emulated environment, where it would look like real btc was at stake and such, but all emulated.
Good luck emulating 5000Ghash of mining power. I guess you'd just need to be patient. |
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That would work but it requires you to teach every browser how to handle the bitcoin:// protocol. Running a local web server requires no additional configuration of other applications.
Unless you have a firewall or are on an internal network... |
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You can't buy 0.00001 of a stock.
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