Oh please, you want to ban smoking now? Just let people kill themselves as much as they want! Jeez...


If that's really so, why don't we just stick with ethics then? It's plain simple, logic and straightforward: you don't get to use violence against someone who's not using violence against anyone. Somebody merely bearing a gun isn't causing harm to anyone. Nobody should use violence against him only for that.

I assume they are not suicidal, and that politicians don't want to trigger a potential revolution. Probably the eviction would have happened regardless of people having guns or not, but they wouldn't have done it so brutally, passing bulldozers over the neighborhood, doesn't even giving time for people to take their furniture, belongings and pets out. People were even ran over and killed by those trying to run away from police bombs. Even the police captain admitted that police used excessive force in the operation.

If the population was partially armed, such an attitude from the police would potentially turn an eviction into a mini civil war, potentially sparkling something much bigger. Politicians definitely don't want that - what was done was already enough to put a lot of pressure on them, if a mini-war happened, things would get much more serious. No wonder why politicians all over the world want to take guns out of people's hands. Even in the sole nation I'm aware of where there's an explicit and clear constitutional amendment forbidding that, governments do it nevertheless.

Sometimes the general case of "defense against state abuses" is quite relevant, even if we're not talking about revolutions.

For ex., some months ago, maybe an year already, the state of São Paulo in Brazil proceeded to evict hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, living illegally for years in a land they apparently didn't own. Putting aside whether they were legitimate owners of those houses or not, it is a fact that police brutality during such eviction process was shocking. Among many atrocities, some people even got killed by the police if my memory doesn't betray me. It was on the national news for a while.

I bet with you that, if 20% of those people had guns in their homes, at least the eviction process would have been conducted in a much more civilized manner. The police wouldn't dare to do it the way they've done it.

Say that for yourself.
I have several friends who have been threaten by armed criminals. Friends who had armed criminals entering their homes, robbing them on the street during daylight, flash kidnapping them at night. I have multiple friends who have been the target of guns multiple times in their lives. When I was in high school I was robbed by a criminal with a knife, in front of the school. And my mother once was surrendered by criminals that waited her get back home, put a machete on her throat and demanded her money.
And important remark: all this happened in a country with draconian gun laws. A civilian bearing a gun on the streets is always illegal. And even civilian legal ownership of firearms is extremely difficult to obtain.

I bet that if my mother was allowed to bear a gun with her all the time, those criminals wouldn't have dared to threat her like that. At most, they would try to break into the house while nobody was there. Same thing's valid for most cases.

Sometimes I make a comparison that's not very popular, but IMHO it makes some sense: individuals bearing guns are comparable to states which have weapons of mass destruction. No single state with such weapons has ever been military attacked. India and Pakistan used to make war, once both got nukes, both got "calm". I bet the cold war wouldn't have remained cold if it wasn't for the fact that both sides had nukes. Going to war against a state which has weapons of mass destruction is almost suicide, even if you're also a state with such weapons. Trying to assault/rob/etc somebody with a pistol on his waist is also very dangerous, potentially suicidal, even if you also have a gun (okay, okay, I know ambushes and alike remain possible but these are premeditated murders, not general for-profit aggression... it's more rare).

OP, I used to be against armed civilians for years, probably due to all the propaganda I used to listen to.

But once you dig more into the subject, you understand that not only there's no conceivable ethical justification to the use of violence against someone that's merely bearing a gun, as there are also studies showing that a society gets safer once it gets more armed, and get less safe once it gets less armed. Instead of comparing different societies with several different variables that may influence in violence rates, if you compare the same society before and after a legislation change that decreases or increases the amount of guns in the hands of civilians, you'll probably reach the conclusion that "More Guns, Less Crimes".

Security. Dedicated devices are a much safer way to access your "savings accounts", as it's extremely unlikely that a dedicated device gets compromised by malware.
The same thing cannot be said about a generic computer, either desktop, laptop or smartphone.

Thanks apetersson for the clarification.

This looks very promising.

I also wonder the same thing. Why is their server involvement necessary for the backup process? Can anybody tell?

If the server holds the btc private keys, that's awful. But that would go against what's said in the same post:


So, why is the server necessary? Does the server hold a specific key in which the device trust, and the device would both require the signing of challenge by that key as well as physical intervention (pressing buttons) before releasing the private key for backup?
Although that would considerably decrease the danger of the server having its key hacked, as the key alone wouldn't do much, I just don't see the point in such architecture...

Btw, will the device be able to use deterministic wallets?

This is silly. GMail allows me to see every IP I use to log in to their service. Facebook makes me go through extra identity checks when I log with an unusual IP. Why can't MtGox do the same?

Btw, saying "file a police report" to me is like saying "you got screwed and we won't help you anyhow, move over". I've seen police being utterly useless for much more serious cases.

Even if we were to take items (1) and (2) for granted, you still cannot conclude (3).
When you say "this bill X is backed by Y", you're stating that there is someone (normally the issuer of X) who is contractually obliged to redeem your X bill for Y at reception. He must give you Y if you give him X, otherwise it would be a fraud. So it doesn't make sense saying that something is backed by "the entire economy", as such contract wouldn't even be possible.

A "money backed by something" is not "base money", it is just a "money substitute".  By definition, base money cannot be backed by anything. And bitcoin, as gold and government money for that matter, are all base money (= the component(s) of the monetary base, or M0).

If I understand it correctly, it is a federal law to allow states to force producers to put a particular label on their products in some cases.
Any consistent libertarian has to be against forcing people to do things they don't want to do with their property. Rand Paul's vote is as expected.

About entitlements and taxes in US, I'll just leave this here: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/entitlement-america-head-household-making-minimum-wage-has-more-disposable-income-family-mak

That's not very accurate as comparison since these billionaires you talk about don't hold >60 bi USD in cash or in their bank accounts as money. They hold an enormous amount of assets which, when quoted in dollars, reach such value. But these assets are not USD and could very well be quoted in BTC for example.

OP's BS nevertheless.

Detlev Schlichter gave a good talk during the Prague Bitcoin conference. He has written about bitcoin before.

Scarcity is definitely a requirement for something to have value, thus, it's a requirement for something to be a currency. It is not enough, but it is a requirement.

After you find an alternative (if you actually do), isn't a lawsuit against Dwolla applicable, like what TradeHill's doing?
I mean, their lack of will to cooperate is causing harm to you and your customers.
Doesn't their TOS establish a minimum time for transfers or something that could be used?

As this question is normally asked by goldbugs, my answer normally is: "Bitcoin is backed by the same thing that backs gold, that is, nothing."

No "base currency" is backed by anything btw. People that say: "I don't accept a money backed by nothing" don't really know what they're talking about. Base money is by definition not backed by anything.

I don't see this proposal adding any rule to the protocol. Miners are already free to try not to build on top of any block they don't want to. They should just be conscious that if they implement such thing as a "hard rule", they'll actually be forking the chain. So it'd better be a "soft rule".

There's no way to enforce miners to build on top of the longest chain.

Adding to what Serith already said, one of the clauses of the contract could contain a limit of how many blocks deep the double-spend is. If it's deeper than X, then the miner would stop trying to counter it.

Please keep in mind that the "valid block policy" only concerns blocks with "illegal" contents (double-spends concerning previous blocks, wrong signatures, syntax problems etc). There's no policy concerning which transactions a miner will accept, or on top of which block he'll mine.

Splits happen from time to time, that's not working against the network. Plus, why would you generate a block and pay the majority of the miners to overrun it? You'd be throwing away all the reward of the block by doing so.