Which purchase the cat food?  No it comes on a schedule I just forgot totally about it.  I saw UPS box and my mind jumped to "server arrived early".

...  was expecting our company new server from UPS but it wasn't scheduled to arrive until tomorrow. 

I mean Super Micro, remote access via IMPI, 16 DIMMs slots, dual Xexon socket 2011 capable.  24 bay 2.5" drive SAS capable backplane.   Dual 1020W redundant power supplies.

Came how to see a giant UPS box on the porch.   I gleefully drag its inside (heavy), grab a box cutter and slash it open to see.... two giant bags of cat food.

We use http://petflow.com (good service by the way but not high end SuperMicro server good) That was rough and I just felt the need to share ...

Good to know.  I didn't see it in their list of supported currencies but I am glad they added BTC.  Now if they add PM it would be perfect.  In the meantime the csv at runtogold will work.  Long term that site is a really nice resource.  I hope they keep expanding and improving it.  If you have a donation address I will send a tip your way.

I hope you didn't spend too much time on it. I didn't ask anyone to write anything for me.   I am not found of screen captures because they are fragile and for the application I am looking at if it broke and reported incorrect data it could be costly.

Awesome.  Just tracked it today and it was within 0.5% of so of realtime throughout the day.  We have a winner.  Hopefully https://openexchangerates.org adds PM to their lineup but this will work in the meantime.  If you have a donation address I'll throw you a tip.  It is very hard to find even 10 minute quotes on PM in text form.

Miners don't just find hashcodes.

Miners solve blocks.  They take unconfirmed tx, validated them, pack them into a block and then find a hash which "solves"* the block.  As part of the block creation they are allowed to add a special coinbase tx which mints a certain number of new coins (it was 50 and now is 25) called the block subsidy along with any tx fees included in the tx which are part of the block to an address the miner/pool controls.  This serves two purposes, first it provides a financial incentive to keep the network secure and second it slowly increases the supply of coins.  Once a miner solves a block it broadcasts the block to other nodes who validate it and add it to the blockchain.  Miners then start working on the next block in the chain including more unconfirmed transactions and looking for a solution to that block.  The process never ends.  Miners ARE transactions validators.  Not only do they validate that transactions are valid the blockchain they produce provides a record which prevents someone from spending the same coins twice. The network is designed so that no matter how many miners there are one block will be found roughly once every ten minutes.   M ining is intentionally difficult to make it very very expensive for someone to try and rewrite history.  Without miners the coins would have no value.   People could spend the same coin over and over and over, not just twice (double spend) but hundreds or thousands or millions of times.  If you could spend the same dollar bill a million times you likely wouldn't need any more money.    If everyone could do that then a dollar would be worthless.   Without miners there are no blocks, without blocks there is no blockchain, without the blockchain the coins have no value.

TL/DR version:
Miners secure the network.  Miners validate transactions and create the permanent record (the blockchain) which prevent double spends.



* By "solve" the miner must randomly try hashes to find one which is smaller than the target which is based on current difficulty.  difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks in order to make the process of solving a block harder or easier and thus keep the generation rate roughly stable.

Uh no it's spaceman spiff.

I am just waiting for something worth $21,056,760 to spend them all at once (and pay the miners 0.0005 BTC ).

Like other indicated it was a guestimate and the number of coins (and discrete units) is totally arbitrary.  Personally the only thing I wish was different is 1 use full 64bit (21M BTC * 1E8 =2.1E15, 64bit ulong = 1.84E19) for units and 2 make the subsidies base 2 so there would be a "clean" generation (i.e. 64 BTC, 32 BTC 16 BTC, 8 BTC ...  2 satoshi, 1 satoshis 0). 

Probably the only parlay which makes sense.

I sent his some tips but he is his own person I don't want to tell him how to run his operation.  Some of the things I recommended may have actually caused a red flag.  I told him no need to form a business entity until you are sure there is enough money to make it worthwhile.  I advised him to hide his whois until he has a business address or PO Box.  I wouldn't give most people my home address either.  Give him a couple months I figure he will either be be looking professional or left the bitcoin scene (without scamming anyone).

As far as the website (SSL, improved host, etc) I agree with those points but I don't think that makes it a scam though.    Lots of people do business only on this forum and it doesn't make them any less legit.  CPC has a pretty fancy looking site and it is pretty much guaranteed a scam.

I'll take that bet.  How much?
Let me know the terms and the amount.  How about 100 BTC and you win 2:1 if he gets a scammer tag in the next 60 days?


(PS I know him personally and he could have already scammed me out of $800 and didn't so I am pretty sure I will win.)

None of that made any sense which is likely why you didn't get a response.  It would be like saying the road moves at 60mph for increased car prices to infinity ... 2030.

It is hard to guess what you do mean but:
a) price drives difficulty, difficulty doesn't drive price.  Never has, never will. 
b) difficulty is based on global hashrate.  if global hashrate doubles then difficulty will double.  If global hashrate declines by 50% then difficulty will decline by 50%.
c) difficulty can't be projected as it is based on the global hashrate.  difficulty in theory could decline for a decade in row inf the gobal hash rate keeps declining.
c) difficulty can't go to infinity and not sure what you mean by "in 2030".

It is a futile effort.  PayPal has no financial incentive to change anything neither does VISA or Matercard.  Someone using one of those and operating behind TOR dealing only with intangibles (no physical address) is essentially undetectable.  This is why it was naive to accept PayPal as a payment method despite the stickied warning in currency exchange.

Then rather than learn from that you jump off tilting at windmills.  Bitcoin commerce is safe, we did over $3M in transactions last year and I hope to triple that this year.  Your grandiose claims are off putting.  There isn't anything insecure about Bitcoin, there is something insecure with how YOU chose to do business.

At the time of writing the website shows $13.57 as the last price.  Not only was that not the last trade there hasn't been a trade north of $13.50 in the last 30 minutes. 

So does it just randomly pick a number?

Stephen nailed it.   The larger thing to take away is that everything in life is reversible.  Everything.  Bitcoin is reversible under certain conditions (0-confirm double spend, finney attack, sybil attack, 51% attack, etc).  Bank wires can be reversed (no you can't hold a gun to Warrent Buffets head and make him wire $40 billion to your bank account and then say "sorry bank wires are irreversible").  Even cash can be "reversed" (counterfeit bills or someone hits you with big wrench and "reverses" the money back into their pocket).

So thinking about things as reversible or not reversible as if it is black or white, true or false, is a good way to get scammed.
Think about things in terms of HOW DIFFICULT IS THIS TRANSACTION TO REVERSE (because remember EVERYTHING IS REVERSIBLE)

On a scale of 1-10 (just my opinion)
10 - Multiple confirmation Bitcoin transaction
 9 - Bank wire, 1-confirm transaction, cash deposit
 8 - cash paid MoneyPak w/ receipt, 0-confirm Bitcoin transaction, cashier's check (after 7 days)
...
 5 - ACH (and ACH based transactions like Dwolla, Popmoney)
....
 1 - PayPal, other credit cards

So if you think of the "RISK OF REVERSAL" as a scale you can compare it to the scenario (do you know the person? do you trust the person?  how much does the person have to lose?  how large is the transaction?  have you completed other transactions in the past?  are they still inside the reversable window?)

As an example, when we sold wireless refills for Bitcoin we accepted <gasp> 0-confirm transactions from repeat buyers.  Oh noes 0 confirm can be double spent. It was a calculated risk.  Repeat buyer, someone I know, a small value transaction and the risk is still lower than a CC.  On the other hand I am not going to accept a 0-confirm tx as sufficient security before handing over $20,000 in gold Bullion in person to person transaction with someone I don't know (who has his getaway car engine running).    

"Anytime soon" is all relative.   Also there are at least five companies working on ASICs.  Even if some are scams, and some have overpromised eventually someone will deliver a product and it will almost overnight render everything else obsolete.  Like I said even if you were production ready (as in 10,000 FPGA boards sitting in a warehouse 200% more efficient than anything on the market, ready to ship out the door today) nobody would buy them.  

The break even point is likely well beyond the most optimistic scenario before ASICs explode difficulty so high as to make your FPGA as obsolete as mining on a Pentium 4 CPU.  This is because ASICs are the "end of life" for everything else.  So someone buying a FPGA today would need to be confident they can mine enough (after electrical costs) to cover the cost of the FPGA plus enough of a profit to make the risk worthwhile.  With current mining rewards and FPGA raw chip costs that is something 6-12 months.  Nobody is going to bet that nobody will release an ASIC chip in the next year.  It is a foolish bet one with huge downside (your investment becomes worthless in 20 days) and very very limited upside (you make marginally more coins until someone does release an ASIC).

Well not exactly.  With 51% of hashing power an entity has two large attacks but they can't change the rules.

a) The entity could prevent new transactions (create all empty blocks, and reject blocks from the 49%).
b) The entity could double spend transaction it created (spend coin X to address A, then recreate the block and spend it to address B)

Anything outside of that would be seen as invalid by existing nodes even if the entity had 100.0% of hashing power.

To help dispell this myth with 51% you can't:
a) change the minting rate
b) control the coins of anyone else (steal, delete, transfer them)
c) create coins out of thin air
d) modify the blockchain prior to the last checkpoint
e) (limited by amount of hashing power) replace very deep blocks above the last checkpoint.
f) approve invalid transactions
g) create invalid blocks

Bitcoin is decentralized?  Why isn't your mining pool? p2pool - Decentralized mining since 2012

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With some color and "false link underlining" to ensure the user realizes it is clickable

Bitcoin is decentralized?  Why isn't your mining pool? p2pool - Decentralized mining since 2012

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Don't you love your pool's high fees and delayed payouts? If you like getting paid 100% of what you earn then try p2pool?  (p2pool support)

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Nice collection of links. Still I think governments will try they are just slow to react.  Governments are better at putting things into boxes then they are at creating a new box.  Hey what is this new ETF thing gaining popularity? Well it looks like a stock so lets put it into the "securities box".    What is this new "PayPal" thing?  Well it looks like an online Western Union so lets put it into the money transmitter box.  Hey what is this "Bitcoin thing"?   blank looks.  um it doesn't fit in any of our boxes (and we have about 20,000 boxes).  Lets pretend it doesn't exist for a while, while we figure it out.

Sadly "doomed to failure" hasn't stopped governments in the past.  Any "war on a noun" is likely doomed to failure ("war on drugs", "war on terror", "war on poverty") but it hasn't prevented govts around the world from flushing trillions upon trillions in futile attempts for decades.  I mean obviously in the US marijuana should be legal.  Even people who don't intend to use it understand that now.  Spend trillions (you can't afford) fighting the impossible   or tax, regulate, and monitor it?  A no brainer but even this no brainer likely will take another 6-10 years to happen.