..and you will be promoting Bitcoin as your main mission? Oh wait, we're paying for you to eat and get drunk.
Try again

then why can I not spend coins that have 0 confirmations in the official client?

Since blocks are found on average every 10 minutes, how can bitcoins be used to pay for in-store items and services when there's no time to lean back while waiting for a confirmation? Imagine sitting in the drive-thru line etc.

Off the top of my head:
- bit bills
- some trusted third party company (uhm, i.e. bank) issuing btc debit cards which can guarantee that the customer holds the purchase amount

Other suggestions, or maybe I have overlooked something fundamental?

congrats! let us know what reactions you get

I didn't read your article yet, but immediately reacted to the  "Bitcoin: Freedom or Anarchy?" statement/question.
Please restate this, as anarchy is indeed the ultimate form of freedom.
Definition: "absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual".

Edit: I discovered that the word 'anarchy' is also validly defined as "confusion/disorder", which is nonsense, regarding the original latin etymology saying an-archy = not-power/authority. It's a result of people successfully planting negative co-notations in a word, essentially to the point where it is adopted in the dictionary. Saying that anarchy is disorder and confusion is like saying that the word car means global warming and death.

You do realize that what we call 1 BTC is pretty subjective. There will technically be more than 21 million BITS(pieces) of coins, the number of discrete units will be ~2.1*10¹⁵ I believe.
So the actual number of potential base units pr world citizen is (2.1 * (10^15)) / (7 * (10^9)) = 300 000 (correct me if I'm wrong here)
Of course I see where you're heading, but when the world gets to a point where every citizen uses bitcoins, there will probably something new, maybe something backed by bitcoins, since bitcoins are too valuable to be practical for daily use.

sweet!

*bump* I'd be happy to get an answer here, what might be the reason for this? How can it be avoided in future transactions?

This is inevitable of course. The problem lies not in what currency is used, but in what parenting is being done. Since the state took over the job as a parent (mandatory schooling from age 5) I don't guess Bitcoin can be blamed for under age drug use

Nefario, what amounts are typically seen coming from "smaller investors". I'm just curious wether I should consider it as well.

omg, Google is launching Google Buzz, sell your Facebook shares!!!!111

I'm sorry for hijacking the thread. A transaction I made almost two weeks ago still has 0 confirmations in the receiving client. It's without an attached fee, but should I expect this much delay for it to be confirmed?
My client has of course catched up with the current block (126,438 as of now())
http://blockexplorer.com/t/8HRQXas8i6

Visually appealing

I think this original question makes no sense. Anarchism is all about not "handling" stuff with a top-down approach, as is contiunously proven, with the existense of states since the dawn of the statist era, not to work very well, and on top of it, being astoundingly immoral. The possibility of "emergence of monopolies" implies that consumers have no power over their economic choices whatsoever, which is a contradiction in light of a stateless society.

I had no intention of mocking you or saying that your php class was not good, it was just me thinking "why re-invent the wheel" etc. But hey, the incentive is great, and perhaps you'll even develop your script to a stage where it's really awesome!

I know I'm tightfisted with my bitcoins, and, for me, there are two reasons:

Firstly, I have quite few of them. So this one is trivial.

Secondly, and perhaps more important, what makes me comfortable about tipping someone or buying tangible goods with my fiat currency that I'm used to spending, is that I know I can earn them back later (what goes around comes around, in a positive sense).

However, with bitcoins, I feel like I'm giving them away for ever, since I don't run a business where I can accept Bitcoin (yet), and my monthly salary is paid to me in fiat currency. I assume this to be the case for many people. They treat bitcoins as they treat stock exchange shares, and not like a currency.

I don't see exactly what kind of work you did here, you copied the JSON-RPC-PHP class and changed the name of it? I'm sorry if I'm missing something.

I'd really like to get rid of pagination. It's 2011, lets use ajax infinity scrolling.

Could the client not be shipped with the first x blocks good to go? Thought I read that somewhere…

I'm willing to give up 10% of my bounty to fund translations. It's not much, but again my total BTC-holding is very low, and a big part of the incentive to work on the article was the coins. I also think the initially agreed upon bounties should be payed before you recalculate when starting a new thread. People seem to stick to this customary even for large amounts: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2072.0

To strengthen the bounty balance, I encourage the wealthier people in the community to help spread the word of Bitcoin by funding more translations.