Courts are good. In a Voluntarist society there will be courts. But courts backed by violence are bad. In a voluntarist society there will not be courts backed by violence.

If someone invokes the force of the state, they strengthen the power of the state by doing so, and they must not be surprised when that power is turned against them (or against Bitcoin) in the future.

If people focus their energy on dispute avoidance, the power of the state is diminished and the force of the state is less likely to be turned against them in the future.

I'm with kiba on this.

Why don't you make use of your new-found knowledge about Stevenbucks to see if this is enough to persuade him to repay you?

It seems to me that Bitcoin has passed the point where it needs promotion. It is now growing from its own momentum. Enjoy the ride!

And: with a low-reputation user, insist that they deliver first before you send bitcoins.

Then, there's no need to find out where people live.

Toshimoto Corporation

I doubt you'll be able to design anything much simpler than OpenId. Most of the complexity of OpenId is hidden behind library calls anyway.

And OpenId provides a seamless path towards decentralization. The masses can start by using their Google- or Facebook-issued OpenId, then later can set up their own independent OpenId.

Seconded.

People worry a lot about company names, yet in the long run they matter very little. What really counts are the business operating names and the trademarks.

For example, few people know or care that MtGox is operated by Pongamia Cultivation Institute SA. To its users, the service is "Mt. Gox".

And companies with random sounding names do just fine. "IBM", for example. Or even "International Business Machines".

So I think Chaordic Ventures is perfect!

But as you want alternative suggestions, I'll offer "Agoramatic" and "Gaia Peer".

Sure. So the focus should be on getting rid of the coercion. But not everyone is ready to accept that the dominant coercive force is the state.

I don't think Satoshi ever posted anything to suggest that he mined with anything other than a CPU.

There are some interesting points being made in those tweets.

(1) The claim is made that most of the audience are old men who take notes with pen and paper. The implication is that those people won't be the agents of change.

(2) The claim is made that 30% of the Gross National Product of Kenya is now transacted through the mobile phone system. That's more than I would have expected.

(3) The claim is made that the poorest tenth of the UK population spend more money than each of the next two tenths. The implication is that those who are officially poorest are more likely to be agoristically-inclined.

(4) The claim is made that supermarket chain Tesco's loyalty card data is being used to detect tax evaders. If you spend more at Tesco than you declare to the taxman, expect a visit.

Bitcoin is in some way related to, or relevant to, each of these.

It's not one of the references listed at the end of Satoshi's paper.

The EFF is a registered nonprofit, that publishes annual reports (although the latest I see at their website is for 2009). If will be interesting to see if/how they report their bitcoin donations.

There's no urgency to convert the bitcoins into fiat currency. It would be cooler if they wait until they want to buy something that can be paid for directly with bitcoins.

Quality, not quantity, is what should be encouraged. I love the way that vBulletin has a "Thanks" button beside each post, and you can see which posters contributed the most useful material to the site.

I gotta agree with them on that one. Any time you change an API, you mess up people who are using the old API, so you end up having to support both APIs for a long time, which clutters up your software.

Of course we all like the APIs to be tidy, consistent, and easy-to-use. But the time to fix that is when a new API is being written anyway because of some other pressing need.

Refactoring an API for purely aesthetic reasons is rarely worth it.

I suggest to not hassle the EFF about this. I'm sure they have enough people who know about the bitcoins. The EFF staff have better things to do than to read, digest, and reply to long letters.

The video of Rainey mentioning Bitcoin is great!

Even if the wording of the UNLICENSE file its legally inadmissable, its presence obviously gives an implied license. The concept of implied license is recognised by courts in the US, the UK, the EU, and most Commonwealth countries, and probably most of the rest of the world too.

So go ahead and copy the unlicensed code.

If baron really has engaged a lawyer as he claims, the lawyer will want to be the one doing the talking. I doubt baron has engaged a mute lawyer.

Even if baron hasn't engaged a lawyer, he surely has a friend or family member who could help him to speak with Jed.

Here is Satoshi's announcement for Bitcoin v0.1: "Windows only for now":
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html