It's just a place where donors can conduct private trades, plan future businesses, reveal the latest scandals, spread gossip, and post photos that are much more interesting than the "count to 21 million with images" series.

On the other hand, just because we can, doesn't mean that we do

Wise words, Hawker. May they serve you well!

I don't see any reason not to use real bitcoins. As chmod755 suggested, set the client to display Millies and you're set to go.

There's not really a hard limit for the percentage.

If an attacker has 47%, they might get lucky and maintain the longest chain for 6 blocks, which is enough for a devastating attack. On the other hand, they might have 53% for a while, and not manage a 6-block attack during that time.

Satoshi did a mathematical analysis of this in section 11 of his paper.

So I think "51% attack" is a good name for this attack, even though it's not a complete explanation.

However, the real reason is even more "oddly plausible".

The increases in benefits paid to single mothers led to a huge increase in the number of children, particularly african-american children, being raised by only one parent.

Being raised by a single parent is correlated with many kinds of deprivation, social failure and economic failure.

And when those children reached the age at which they became rap musicians, well, the nature of rap music changed.

Anyway, at least the conspiracy didn't get to Juice Media Rap News!

Doomed to failure.

OK, then I misunderstood your original post. It seems to me that there's no point voting unless there's either (a) a government to enforce the outcome of the vote, or (b) an agreement amongst the voters to respect the outcome of the vote. In the absence of any suggestion of (b), I assumed you intended (a). Please clarify...

Suppose the following question comes up: "Should there be import tariffs on chairs made in Siberia?". The question is put to your voting system, and the result is that 51% of eligible voters favor import tariffs being levied on Siberian chairs.

What happens now? If someone tries to import a Siberian chair, does an import tariff get levied under threat of violence or not?

There are really only two cases:

1. People could lose bitcoins
2. The network could be disrupted.

Gavin's original post included these two examples:

(a) a bug that could be exploited to steal your entire wallet ("critical")
(b) a bug that could be exploited to misdirect your next bitcoin transaction so it goes to an attacker ("serious")

As far as I'm concerned, those bugs are of the same level of seriousness: "people could lose bitcoins".

Do you see the irony in your valuation of the "worth of real assets" in terms of USD?

Of course that's not a violent takeover, and I don't see how you got that idea from my comments.

Miners voting with their feet is ethical and non-violent.

As far as I can tell, you are proposing that, provided there is an efficient voting system, it's ethical for 51% of the population to violently impose their will on the other 49%. As in the example of "13 men and 12 women on an island voting to decide who can have sex with whom". Yes or no?

I think it would be desirable to specialize the shards. I do like the idea that there could be a micropayments shard. The incentive to keep it alive would be that the fees are lower. And the fees would be lower because the design would be more lightweight than the main shard. Perhaps, on the micropayment shard, unspent balances would need to be carried forwards every 30 days so that the micropayment shard remains compact.

Just imagine how violent things would get if caffeine was prohibited. The caffeine wars would make the current drug wars look like a picnic.

But yes, the "war on drugs" is really a "war on society".

Actually I don't think that the OP's proposal would be a step forward. As I understand it, the OP is proposing that the public can vote on each and every issue on a 51%-wins basis. That just degenerates every vote into the situation of "13 men and 12 women on an island voting who has sex with whom". The current system, corrupt and inefficient though it is, at least provides the possibility for an elected representative to show some integrity and make some tradeoffs to avoid the situation of "every decision is a 51% attack".

There's not much point changing a government, either democracy-style (by voting) or Egyptian revolution style, or Afghanistan invasion style. It always boils down to "out with the old boss, in with the new".

Instead, one should strive to return power to the people by making government irrelevant.

So you shouldn't ask "what would be my first step?", rather you should ask "what steps am I already taking?".

I, along with millions of others, have been helping to move society beyond old-school IP laws by my support of and contributions to open source software, and by my support of and contributions to media freely licensed under creative commons.

I, along with millions of others, have been helping the people to obtain increased access to knowledge and information through my support of and contributions to Wikipedia, and my support of and contributions to OpenStreetMap and to other similar projects.

I, along with everyone else here, have been helping to make honest money become a reality, by facilitating the spread of Bitcoin.

I, along with some others here, are building trust by undertaking voluntary trade free of the invoked power of the state.

I have donated over a thousand bitcoins to worthy organizations who are working towards increasing people's liberty, opportunities and self-worth.

If more people would do things that empower individuals and make government less relevant, and if people bring up their children to respect the non-agression principle in public life as well as in private life, then eventually we will achieve a society where the application of the NAP is widespread.

However, tweaking the voting system is nothing more than a distraction. People should just stop voting, except for voluntary organizations. Voting just encourages those in power, and lends a veneer of respectability to their wars, their debasement of the currency, and their oppression.

Bitcoin is already backed by a million USD of buys on the MtGox order book. The price is dynamic, but the USD are real.

There's no special meaning, just quoting the subject of the stories.

Basically you propose to automate a 51% attack, by which 51% of people make and violently enforce rules for the other 49%.

If you want to improve society, there are so many ways you could work towards a more pluralistic, less confrontational and less violent society. Trying to improve the efficiency of a defective system is missing the point.

Here's why this type of backing doesn't achieve anything:

If the "natural" exchange rate is higher than the backing price, there's no need to have a backing price. And if the "natural" exchange rate is lower than the backing price, everyone sells all their bitcoins to the backing organization, and Bitcoin fails.

Well the "$30 spike" stories are only going to stop after the price has been stable above $30 for a while.

Warning: The viewing software for this device runs on Microsoft Windows only. Perhaps the file formats used are readable on other operating systems, but the formats don't seem to be documented in the specifications.

Before Satoshi disappeared he removed crippling by alert messages. Now they just display the message.

More details here:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2228