Screw that!  I'd personally build a stone pizza oven in your front yard, and cook exactly one wood baked pizza in it for your family, before taking a sledgehammer to the oven for your kids' entertainment.

Usually those kind of softeners operating on a timer, so they are set up with the assumption that the place will be occupied and water will be generally consumed while the salt is injected.  The point of the salt, is to inhibit the desolved minerals in the water from sticking to the insides of the pipes, water heater, etc.  Also, clothes and dishes, but living in one of the hardest water regions on Earth, I can say from experience that softener salts don't really do a whole lot for dishes or clothes.  I grew up on the taste of hard water, and anything else tastes weird to me, so I don't use salt based softeners.  I add TSP to my detergents, etc. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisodium_phosphate)

It's unlikely that the softener extends the life of your equiptment enough to justify it's own costs (for a whole house unit, anyway) since it's usually cheaper to replace the water heater, etc. a couple of years early than install and maintain the water softener equptment.  If I were you, I'd consider simply decommisioning the unit, and perhaps install an undersink unit for drinking water and ice.  The deposits of minerals on the insides of pipes is very, very slow.

Maybe it will be, maybe it won't be.  It doesn't matter what should be.  That said, Bitcoin's max velocity is an order or two magnitude higher than fiat currencies in the absence of a working credit system.  Credit systems depend upon faith and trust a great deal more than even fiat currencies do, and history has shown that such trust is easily lost, and economies built upon readily available credit can break down even faster than they can grow.

However, modern governments are enabled by their ability to control the nature of money.  Once they lose that capacity in any significant degree, they also lose much of what has enabled them to grow to their current state.  The US federal government couldn't have ever have grown anywhere near to what it is today without the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

I sure do.  But keep in mind that there are other costs.  I don't want the kind of socially involved governments that dominate Europe, but if you like those things, such things do cost money.  If you don't like those kinds fo things, move over here and help us keep it this way.  It's become a hard fight for the past 10 years or so.

Damn right!  You and me, brother, keeping the Bitcoin network running even if all the pools go up in smoke.

No, sorry.  It means what it says, that a new block has been detected, not that you found it.

EDIT: Actually, it could mean that.  Check the balance of your address associated with block generation.

Bitcoin broke through the $1000 per BTC price point today, November 27th, 2013 on the MtGox exchange.

Depends upon the state, actually.  Generally yes, though.

Nope, that's income taxes.  Increases in the value of an asset (such as bitcoins owned) is capital gains taxes, which is 20% MAX and normally in the 10 to 12% range in the US.

Actually, he can't.  He was finally banned with prejudice.

I'll get to the rest in a minute, but I have to ask this question.  Concerning the claim I highlighted, why can't Bitcoin proliferate without businesses paying wages in it?  How many businesses pay their wages in silver or gold?  How many businesses pay their wages with Paypal or Western Union?  You've been looking at Bitcoin wrong, I think.  It's not a replacement for fiat currencies, although it could work for that.  It's a replacement for a significant part of the financial infrastucture that presently permits online commerce.  That's a multi-billion dollar a year industry that employs tens of thousands of people to produce nothing at all.


Why?



Yes, a majority do this.  That majority is (primarily) using Bitcoin as a payment method; as a replacement for credit cards & Paypal.  That leaves a minority of businesses that do not do this, or at least do not do this exclusively.  Some people are, indeed, saving in Bitcoins.


How?


First, he's not really being attacked by the Bitcoin community.  If he didn't have any respect here, there wouldn't be so much concern for his opinion.  And while Peter does know bubbles, he isn't without errors.  He's had his own misses, although his accuracy is far greater than the average Joe.  Furthermore, I don't think that anyone here is really claiming that Bitcoin couldn't be in a bubble.  It certainly could be.  Bitcoin has been through a half dozen bubbles and pops since I've been here, one more bubble is unlikely to destroy it.  Peter's complaints are that Bitcoin has neither any "intrinsic value" nor backing by a state as legal tender.  These are both (generally) true statements, but are both mostly true with gold as well, and yet gold persists as a monetary asset.  The answer is that many people have faith in Bitcoin for very different reasons than they might for gold.  Peter is a smart guy, but he's missing this one, and he's not alone.  It's perfectly fine that Bitcoin has detractors, if it was all roses with no complaints, I'd be worried that all of us were overlooking a potential problem.  Personally, I'm happy that Peter argues against it, and that others try to change his mind.  This kind of very public debate is healthy for Bitcoin. both technically and phsycologically.

Yes.  He still comes around every now and again, but mostly has left for other pursuits.  This forum is full of noise these days, and he probably doesn't see any reason to be slumming.  He's not bitcoin broke, either.

I'm not threatened by others being aware that I have limits, and while brilliance may not be communicable, understanding most certainly is.  You could be every bit as brilliant as you seem to believe, but you still lack understanding.

It was implied, and you damn well know it.

Congratulations.  You have the honor of being one of the very few people on this forum that were able to tell me something about Bitcoin that I didn't already know.  Don't assume that because you knew this little factoid, that you really grok bitcoin on the same level as myself.  I'm not a programmer, but nor am I stupid.  I was here for years in the company of brilliant people who were actualy building the bitcoin economy; and was able to converse with these same founders before all of this useless noise infested the forum and most of those same brilliant people left the forums.  There are now more than 160K registered forum members.  I remember having these kinds of arguments with detractors when one of the arguments was, "not even 10K people have even heard of a bitcoin, it'll never even reach parity with the dollar!"  Seriously, this isn't even the same forum anymore.  It's filled with programmers who don't undertand economics, economists who don't understand human psychology, psycologists who don't understand cryptology, and laymen who don't understand any of it; while they all think they are f*cking polymaths!

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is.  Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore.  And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author.  I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell.

Well, I stand corrected.  And yes, if either of those could ever happened again, it could wipe bitcoin out.  I'll give you that.  What are the odds that either of these expoits could be used agian, do you think?

It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins.

You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible.  There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that?