I face a dillemma here. How do I get the bitcoin client into a non internet connected machine? This is assuming that you can never 100% trust the computer you're using to download the client. Along each step in the process of securing your bitcoins there is a small but every so slightly possible risk. Heck the client itself could be compromised. A hacker could break into the sourceforge servers and cleverly attach a payload into the official client. Guess how many people would not notice until it was too late.

I think the safest and most paranoid idea I've head so far is to physically print your private keys. I am even tempted to print them on a freaking gold plate!

Dark pool trading doesn't show up in volume though right?

former fee was .01BTC, which at the time was a meaninglessly low number.

It's now been dropped to .005

What the developers of Bitcoin needed to do was incorporate an exchange  (usd/btc) into the bitcoin client along with the market depth and time & sales. That would be ideal transparency and the "commissions" that MtGox generates would go to the miners instead as transaction fees.

I have been observing price on mtgox.com through bitcoinwatch.com, and it doesnt seem to vary too much.
Has the price settled?
Or is mtgox not working, since I notice volume is decreasing consistently?
Or is there very less interest now in bitcoin which has led to low volume?

Any thoughts?

It's once exchanging BTC for fiat is declared illegal that most people will exit the bitcoin "market".. which is just as well anyway. 

Here's my experience with Bitcoin7:

I transferred $1750 from MtGox to Bitcoin7.  It took 4 hours to clear.

I bought just under 100btc.  $5.238 was added to my account as a "promo bonus".

I transfered those btc to my wallet.

They showed up immediately as 0/unconfirmed.  They are now sitting at 6 confirmations.

Maybe they cut corners on the text, but they don't seem to be outright thieves.

Jere

Another suggestion: I realize you want to keep it pure, but how about adding an extra character as a checksum? It's very easy for the payer to mess the address slightly by writing it down wrong or hearing something wrong. A one character checksum would drastically reduce the chances of sending money to the wrong account.

This is great! Love it! Enough to suggest that it be built right into clients.

Of course if you start doing that then no need to limit it to shortened addresses... http://firstbits.com/givememoney could work just as well :p

Idea/Suggestion:
Redirection of URL of type http://firstbits.com/1kk5k - to a page with the expanded address. (or to the main page with and perform the search)
This way people could link to their firstbits easily.

True, but I think it could be dropped for the same reason that people no longer start with "h t t p colon slash slash w w w dot" when they say the address of a web site.

Yes, I get that, but I was puzzled by the loss of information. I guess it's technically not the "first bits" of the address, since you lose some bits by lowercasing the address.

A suggestion: make the decoded address a link to blockexplorer. Makes it easier to check that you got the right one.

EDIT: Another thought... isn't the "1" at the beginning unnecessary since it's always the same? Drop it and the short version becomes even shorter.