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101  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: KYE (Know Your Exchange): BitFloor on: August 30, 2012, 11:01:58 PM
But the most important difference is the risk profile from the customer's point of view: the sale of market-making seats on some completely opaque exchange platform. It would be completely insane business decision to buy a seat (become a market-maker) at BitFloor.
Completely opaque? The source code for the matching engine is available on GitHub. Looks pretty solid to me. I'm more concerned about someone breaking into Bitfloor's server and cleaning out the BTC balance than I am about Bitfloor screwing me over on business terms.

Maybe you don't think the liquidity rebates are a good business model. So vote with your feet and stay away from Bitfloor. You can even voice your concerns and explain your rationale, but merely saying (paraphrased), "Bitfloor cannot be trusted because they don't expose themselves to the legal risk of accepting USPS money orders," is your opinion only.
102  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 02, 2012, 10:12:33 PM
All that's really needed to get this rolling would be a hook that allows supplying a dynamically generated image to be included on the printed ticket. Support for that surely must already exist in order to support printing unique, scannable coupons for customer loyalty programs. Then the other half of the effort would be programmatically informing the system when a table has paid, which could even be implemented using FindWindow and PostMessage in the worst case.

Seems pretty doable. I wonder where I could find a copy of Aloha to hack on…
103  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 02, 2012, 09:54:05 PM
I'm curious if you could work on the NFC-POS side for linkage to Ellet or bitcoincard.org?  Bitcoincard (if they ever get off the ground) uses NFC,...I think.
BitcoinCard does not use NFC. It uses an ISM-band radio. (EDIT: NFC is but one application of ISM radio. Not all ISM radio baseband software would implement the NFC protocol, and I have to believe that BitcoinCard would not, as NFC is much shorter range than BitcoinCard claims.)

I don't have any experience in writing code for POS terminals. My OP concerned integrating Bitcoin payments into Aloha, which is a POS software solution that runs on a computer, not a customer-facing POS terminal such as you'd find at a supermarket.
104  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 02, 2012, 04:28:24 PM
I think your idea and that could coexist, though. It just has a more limited market share.
Agreed. I think it's smarter to pick off the low-hanging fruit first before moving on to solving the broader-based challenges.
105  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 02, 2012, 04:02:37 PM
Sorry, this is the one I was referring to: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88226.0
Thanks for the pointer. I personally wouldn't use that system due to security concerns. The only reason I am okay with entering my ATM PIN into arbitrary POS terminals is that transactions in the traditional banking system are all reversible. Obviously not the case with Bitcoin, so I wouldn't go around giving merchant equipment the ability to sign Bitcoin transactions on my behalf. The transaction needs to be signed by my own device, with no possibility for skimming. A smart card could only meet that requirement if it could be programmed to understand the Bitcoin transaction format and if it had some way of asking the user directly to verify the transaction destination and amount. That would require a pretty advanced smart card, and in turn that would cripple the adoption rate of the technology, probably fatally so.

I'm pretty certain that the path forward must be intercompatible with the path forged to date. It must be possible for customers to pay merchants by scanning a QR code using a Bitcoin wallet app on their smartphones or by using an SMS-based wallet service. That means the payment slip from the merchant must include a QR code, or (in the near future) the merchant's NFC-enabled POS terminal must support transmitting a Bitcoin address over NFC.
106  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 02, 2012, 03:44:16 PM
There is someone that works in CC processing that might have an inroad, although that would be with any and all machines that take credit cards, not just one manufacturer (from what I understand, it is system-agnostic).
Search around, there's a thread somewhere.
I have seen photos of a mockup/prototype VeriFone POS terminal running software that allows Bitcoin transactions. That's exciting, but, in my opinion, the fact that it is not integrated into the hospitality software will make it too onerous for staff to use in the real world. I believe our best shot of breaking into the mainstream marketplace will be to reduce operational friction to essentially zero for both the merchant and the customer.
107  Economy / Trading Discussion / Re: Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 02, 2012, 06:35:53 AM
We come not to integrate with the proprietary vendors, but to bury them.
Okay, you try that approach. I'll keep trying what I believe to be a more marketable approach.
108  Economy / Trading Discussion / Request: Know anyone who works for Aloha / Radiant Systems? on: July 01, 2012, 09:24:36 PM
Idea: Augment Radiant Systems' "Aloha" restaurant point-of-sale software to include a per-table Bitcoin payment QR code on every printed ticket and to credit Bitcoin payments sent to such addresses to the appropriate tables. Bit-Pay or Paysius would provide on-the-fly payment conversions to USD at a price less than processing a credit card, making the proposition attractive for restaurant owners. The QR code would include the payment address and the ticket total, making the transaction super easy for customers and staff.

Problem: There is no incentive for Radiant Systems to add Bitcoin functionality to Aloha.

Question: Does anyone know if Aloha supports third-party plugins? Does anyone here know anyone who works for Radiant Systems?
109  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Tomasz Kaye will make a Bitcoin Video on: April 09, 2012, 10:13:03 PM
If this project does need any custom narration to fill in some gaps, Stephanie Murphy, host of Porc Therapy on the Liberty Radio Network, does voice work for about 10 BTC per minute of finished audio.
110  Bitcoin / Project Development / Re: StripCoin.com on: April 02, 2012, 03:54:17 PM
Hooray! I've finally been released from newbie hell.

I've been wanting to share a killer idea that could extract lots of BTC from horny net guys (and put it into the wallets of hungry cam girls). It would function like this:
  • Each visitor to the site sees a unique Bitcoin address into which they are to deposit BTC.
  • The site is otherwise a pretty standard camgirl-type site, with a thumbnail index of all the girls currently online waiting to give shows.
  • Upon entering a "room," a visitor can watch the girl for free until she turns on the "premium" switch. (Still standard camgirl stuff.)
  • Once the room goes premium, viewers see a meter (thermometer style) along the edge of the video. The meter represents their current credit.
  • There is a button labeled "Fill: 1 BTC," which deducts 1 BTC from the viewer's unique address (into which they've already deposited some BTC) and adds it to the meter.
  • The meter slowly drains as the viewer watches the show. When it gets low, visual cues alert and encourage the viewer to click the "Fill" button to continue viewing.

There would be much less friction for the customer because he doesn't have to give away any personal information to put credits into the system.  There would be much less friction for the site operators because they don't have to deal with credit card processors.  And there would be much less friction for the girls because they don't have to have bank accounts or pay exorbitant fees to receive and cash checks.

I don't know anything about Flash, and I don't particularly want to deal with the legal regulations surrounding this industry, but the opportunity is there for someone (Tuxavant?) to firmly establish Bitcoin in yet another mainstream Internet industry.
111  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Whitelist Requests (Want out of here?) on: April 02, 2012, 12:17:11 AM
Okay, this is really getting ridiculous. I have an idea to share in the StripCoin.com thread, but I'm still only at 2 hours 27 minutes of logged-in time. Would someone let me out of this jail please?
112  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Hyperdeflation, own half the world by headstart - don't you care at all? on: March 31, 2012, 05:51:32 AM
Eventually (100+ years, probably) this would lead to a loss of fungibility of BTC, and the smallest unit of coin would end up buying more than the smallest items you would want to buy.
I'm surprised no one else seized the opportunity to correct this false logic. Bitcoins are infinitely divisible. That they are presently divisible only to 8 places after the decimal point is just an implementation detail of the current protocol. It would be trivial to adjust the software so that, after a certain block number is reached, the decimal point becomes shifted for all blocks after that (until the next time a shift is needed). Some day, the Satoshi will not be the smallest possible unit of Bitcoin. We will have milli-Satoshis and perhaps even micro-Satoshis eventually. The beauty of a digital commodity is that it is infinitely divisible with perfect accuracy.
113  Economy / Web Wallets / Re: Blockchain.info Unconfirmed Transactions on: March 31, 2012, 05:06:22 AM
0.0005 is the standard fee, regardless of the amount sent. Larger amounts of coin sent (>1) might not require a fee at all depending on the coin's age.
See, that's the thing. I know the age of the input is a factor in the formula. Say I want to send 0.5 BTC. Should I pay the fee or not? I've never paid a fee using Bitcoin to date, and I've sent amounts as small as 0.1 BTC. I tend to sit on my balances for a while, though, so I'm probably satisfying the age requirements. But my point is, I don't know when I've met the requirements for sending a transaction without a fee. The client does not provide any visibility into which unspent inputs it's going to pick to construct a new outgoing transaction.
114  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Hello there on: March 31, 2012, 05:03:31 AM
Yay! I'm not a virgin anymore! see you guy's out there!  Grin
I'm going through the motions of shaking off my newbie status specifically so I can comment in the ongoing GirlsGoneBitcoin thread.

Really, it's pretty embarrassing that this forum has this restriction. This is Bitcoin we're talking about. Why not have new users send a security deposit to a Bitcoin address, which activates their forum account, and if they're good forum citizens (not spamming), they get their deposit back after X number of posts. No need for board restrictions. No problem with spam (too expensive for spammers). And no aggravation for legitimate newcomers.
This would be a problem for someone who has problems getting their first coins.
There could still be the 5 posts / 4 hours thing, but "posting bail," as it were, would be a nice option for people well-established in Bitcoin who just haven't joined BitcoinTalk until now. I run Bitcoind 0.6.0 RC5 on Gentoo Linux and have a couple hundred BTC in my possession. Certainly there should be ways for total newbs to get started on this forum, but there should also be ways for established members of the Bitcoin ecosystem to get started without being treated like newbs.

And yes, I know my complaining is in direct violation of Post #1 in this board, which says not to complain about the newbie restrictions.
115  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Hello there on: March 31, 2012, 04:51:24 AM
Yay! I'm not a virgin anymore! see you guy's out there!  Grin
I'm going through the motions of shaking off my newbie status specifically so I can comment in the ongoing GirlsGoneBitcoin thread.

Really, it's pretty embarrassing that this forum has this restriction. This is Bitcoin we're talking about. Why not have new users send a security deposit to a Bitcoin address, which activates their forum account, and if they're good forum citizens (not spamming), they get their deposit back after X number of posts. No need for board restrictions. No problem with spam (too expensive for spammers). And no aggravation for legitimate newcomers.
116  Economy / Web Wallets / Re: Blockchain.info Unconfirmed Transactions on: March 31, 2012, 04:47:58 AM
I'm quite familiar with the inner workings of Bitcoin, but there's one question that's bugged me from the very beginning.

How does one know how much transaction fee to pay?

It seems weird to me that you have to basically take a guess. If you guess too high, you waste money. If you guess too low, your transaction might sit in limbo, perhaps indefinitely. Is there a science to calculating exactly how much fee to pay if you want your transaction confirmed within X amount of time?
117  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: erlang bitcoin client? on: March 31, 2012, 04:44:16 AM
In my spare time (which admittedly isn't much), I'm writing a clean-room implementation of the Bitcoin peer-to-peer protocol in Java. I figure it's always good to have multiple implementations of the protocol, competition being the free market's way of regulating.

It's not a particularly complicated protocol. The Script engine is probably the most difficult part. You can find the protocol specification here. That's what I've been going off of.
118  Other / Beginners & Help / How tyrannical is Bitmit to sellers? on: March 31, 2012, 04:40:58 AM
Probably everyone here knows that PayPal is horrible to eBay sellers, taking the buyer's side practically every time, and no amount of photographic evidence can convince them that you the seller really did ship the item purchased.

Enter Bitmit, an eBay clone that operates in Bitcoin. Does anyone know how fair the are with regards to their escrow service? How does a seller prove they shipped the item? How does a buyer prove they didn't get it? I'm a little hesitant to sell on Bitmit just because it is not nearly as established and "safe" as eBay.
119  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: I would like to buy your C++ expertise on: March 31, 2012, 04:34:39 AM
I wrote a raytracer for a computer graphics class in college and needed to write to BMP format. Here's my code:

bmpwriter.h:
Code:
bool write_bitmap(const char *filename, const char *buffer, int width, int height);

bmpwriter.cpp:
Code:
#include <stdio.h>
#include "bmpwriter.h"

// stuff from wingdi.h
typedef unsigned short WORD;
typedef unsigned int DWORD;
#define FAR
#pragma pack(push, 2)
typedef struct tagBITMAPFILEHEADER {
        WORD    bfType;
        DWORD   bfSize;
        WORD    bfReserved1;
        WORD    bfReserved2;
        DWORD   bfOffBits;
} BITMAPFILEHEADER, FAR *LPBITMAPFILEHEADER, *PBITMAPFILEHEADER;
typedef struct tagBITMAPCOREHEADER {
        DWORD   bcSize;                 /* used to get to color table */
        WORD    bcWidth;
        WORD    bcHeight;
        WORD    bcPlanes;
        WORD    bcBitCount;
} BITMAPCOREHEADER, FAR *LPBITMAPCOREHEADER, *PBITMAPCOREHEADER;
#pragma pack(pop)

bool write_bitmap(const char *filename, const char *buffer, int width, int height) {
BITMAPFILEHEADER bfh = { 0x4D42, sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER) + sizeof(BITMAPCOREHEADER) + width * height * 3, 0, 0, sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER) + sizeof(BITMAPCOREHEADER) };
BITMAPCOREHEADER bch = { sizeof(BITMAPCOREHEADER), width, height, 1, 24 };
FILE *pf = fopen(filename, "wb");
if (pf == NULL) {
return false;
}
else {
fwrite(&bfh, sizeof(BITMAPFILEHEADER), 1, pf);
fwrite(&bch, sizeof(BITMAPCOREHEADER), 1, pf);
fwrite(buffer, 3 * width, height, pf);
fclose(pf);
return true;
}
}

The buffer is an array of (3 × width × height) 8-bit samples, which are the RGB colors at each pixel in the image.  I don't remember whether BMP uses RGB or BGR ordering, so just play with it until you get it right.
120  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: Introduce yourself :) on: March 31, 2012, 04:16:47 AM
I loathe newbie restrictions, but I suppose I loathe spam more. I'm whitslack, Free Stater, computer programmer, Bitcoin hobbyist. Just discovered Bitmit today and made a listing on it.

No idea how I'm going to come up with five useful things to say in this rather meaningless newbies board so I can reply where I really want to reply on this forum.
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