What color is mine?

I didn't miss that point, I took that as evidence that he didn't understand how the p2p network actually worked, that it was in Amazon's own vendors' interests that transactions be broadcast widely regardless of whether or not there was a profit to be gained from doing so.  Thus, it would be in the vendors' own interests to undermine the cartel's goals.  Amazon uses an exclusive payment system now, but most vendors can still do business outside of that system using their own websites.  Amazon is like a huge shopping mall, some people go there just to look around, and some small specialty shops benefit from being seen there.  That doesn't mean that they don't have stores that aren't in the mall.

Mostly we just get tired of repeatedly refuting the same crap.

That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug.  There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such.  There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing.  The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril.

Then it's a problem with MTGox, and there is nothing we can do to help.  The rebroadcasting won't help.

First question, did you provide a fee?

Second question, by "does not even show up in the blockchain" what do you mean exactly?  If it were to show up in the blockchain, it'd already be done.  Do you mean in blockchain explorer?  Rebroadcasting is automatic, so if your transaction is loose in the wild, but just not in a block yet, then it'll confirm eventually.

Rassah, I think you are well aware that I understood his premise at least as well as he thinks that he understood his premise.

Usually, the bottleneck for a fresh download of the blockchain isn't the bandwidth, it's the seek rate of the harddrive.  Since each block must be checked in every way before the client will download the next block, and your CPU isn't hammered, it's probably due to the massive number of disk accesses that both checking the blocks as well as building the index require.  If you were to start with a fairly recent copy of the blockchain, from a torrent for example, and tell the client to "rescan" that blockchain, your delays would likely be almost as bad.

Agreed.  Marginal utility is a much more precise term, and has everything to do with bitcoins & gold.  Gold's marginal utility is very small compared to it's market price, so the argument that gold has marginal utility (while assuming that bitcoins do not) is of small merit at best.  Gold is, by and large, valued by the market for it's monetary uses; particularly it's store-of-value monetary utility.  Bitcoins are, by and large, valued by the market for it's monetary uses; particularly for it's frictionless-global-medium-of-exchange monetary uses.  Neither gold nor bitcoin can compare to silver for non-monetary utility, but then silver isn't really a monetary commodity in our modern industrial society, but an industrial commodity.  It's value is, by and large, set by current and near term industrial demand for silver; not by long term speculation on it's future trade value.

I could argue that the Bitcoin network has features that grant bitcoins a non-monetary utility, but I don't think that such an argument is worthwhile.

It means that a number of forum members have put him on their personal ignore list.

Perhaps a better question is what kind of hardware is on your client computer?

Normally, yes.  However any mining pool acting in a 'selfish' manner can be identifed by predictable effects.  Once the offending pool is identified, honest miners who desire to punish the selfish pool may do so, by adding a delay to the propogation of any of their published blocks, or simply refusing to forward them at all.  There is nothing in the protocol that requires peers to treat each other equally.

Yeah, that's true.  It seems to me that everytime bitcoin surges to new highs, about a week or so later it crashes back down to half or so of the high, but it never gets down to the prior lows.  So the march to infinity has been two steps forward, one step back all the way.  But the one time I bet against a still higher high, bitcoin breaks it's pattern and does a double peak within a week without the crash to half value in the middle.  Sucks to be me, but that's what happened.  The moral of the story, don't assume that there is a pattern to bitcoin market movements.

Well, I don't feel too bad really.  I didn't bet them all, just a lot.

Doesn't matter what you might agree about.  It only matters what's possible.  Someone's going to ingore your agreement.

I have to admit, I've made no progress.

Well, that guy obviously has a block with learning that there are some risks that some people can't manage.  He needs to put that money into a CD or trust, and leave it for his sister.  I lost a fortune, but I learned that I shouldn't be gambling with bitcoins like it was monopoly money.

Technically, Bitcoin will be inflationary until about 2140.  Although the inflation rate will be very, very small after about 2040.  The block reward will be under 1 bitcoin around 2033, if I did my head math correctly, but just imagine how much that will be worth by then!

That's nothing.  Back around Feburary I shorted a small fortune in bitcoins because I thought, "There's no way that Bitcoins could surge beyond $80 apiece in the next two weeks!"

I was wrong, and as a result lost a life-changing number of bitcoins.  Had I not done that one wager, I would be able to retire and move to a warmer climate by now.  And I'm not exaggerating.

If that is so, then please accept my appologies and ignore my post.