The block reward halves ever ~1450 days.  So even the block reward wont drop to below 1 btc until 2032 and in the beginning of 2080 the block reward will be 0.00038147 and since bitcoins are infinite divisibility, there should always be a block reward.
That is not much but that could be worth a few dollars.  It might not be worth running the crazy dedicated rigs that some have now but it might be worth running a normal computer and hoping to get a few extra dollars each year.  This all really depends on the exchange rate at any given time.  If the price dropped to $10 / btc tomorrow and stayed there for a while, you's likely see people shutting down their rigs (those that pay for electric, at least).

The truth of the matter is that the system is more secure the more people are mining.  Right now there are properly far too few people in control of mining and deciding how things work.  Think about what would happen if 3 or 4 mining pools got together and demanded a minimum transaction fee to put a transaction in a block.  Some miners would leave the pools, but if the operators shared the fees with miners, not many would leave.

I just figured that the real problem is that no matter how tamper-evident you make a bill or coin (or whatever), someone could open it and then just remake it.

I've never used a 3d printer, but would it be possible to print a hollow cube with the private key QR code printed inside?

Here is what I found after a quick check:

Look for this code in main.cpp

and change to this:

I wonder how many people fired up vanitygen trying to find the keys for that one large address?  I know it would take millions of years, but you never know, you might get lucky.

There are ways of covering your tracks a little.  You could sent coins through services like online shared wallets or gambling sites which are basically big shared wallets.  Ideally, you would split up your coins through many different services.  The only problem is that some of these services may require a user account, but few need to actually ID you, just make sure you are using a public internet connection (like at libraries or coffee shops) to access the sites.  So my point is that if you really, really wanted to cover your tracks, you could, it just takes forethought and some work.

Yeah.  I'd say price stability is better that constant fluctuations up and down.  How can someone really invest in the economy if the exchange is always in flux.  The rising price is good in the short term but increases the likely-hood of a big sell off and price drop in the future.  That said, I would agree with shockD, Mt.Gox AML/KYC issues and also could be from lag in people pulling assets from Bitcoinica and moving them to other exchanges.

I've noticed that the timer was purely in javascript, so it was easy to override that with a Firefox extention that allows the user to execute any javascript.

Why not use the blockexplorer API:

https://blockexplorer.com/q/addressbalance/<address>

If you are using the standard client, it will prompt you to include a fee if it thinks it is needed.  It is possible to edit the code and not include this "required" fee, but then the transaction may not propagate on the network to miners.  If you see your transaction on http://blockchain.info/ than it is safe to say that it will get entered into a block eventually. (Well, 98% sure)

Thanks.  That is the problem I am getting.  When I import the private key(from old version of pywallet) I get a different public key.  Oh well.

Ok, I get that, but is there a way to convert a compessed private key to an uncompressed one?

I'm not sure what version I have, but I would love it if it could display the full on the amount of bitcoins in transactions and in total.  Any amount smaller than 0.0001 gets round off to zero.  (I download it from Apple before it was removed.  I hope you get it back in the office store since I haven't jailbreaked)

Subject says it, but does anyone know of a way to uncompress a private key?

Looking at the code a little, it might be possible that you have unconfirmed transactions.  Did you delete all the transactions in the wallet before rescanning?

If it is not that, then I'm lost.

It seems that you are just using the 'getbalance' command wrong, don't put "'*' 0" at the end.

like this:
bitcoin getbalance


You might be missing transactions so try running:
bitcoin -rescan
then:
bitcoin listaccounts

You talked about fees in the OP but does that include the MtGox fees or just the 3.99% + $1.00 listed on the site?
Also what is the "Destination account"? is that the destination email address?

the problem with .bit domains is that it is hard to access them.  I figured it out but it involved adding another DNS server, which is weird since, if I have a namecoin client running I have all the info in its blockchain and I should be able to pull the info from there.  If anyone has some experience working with firefox extensions it should be possible to make something like the TOR .onion domains extension.

Doesn't this eliminate some of the anonymity of the system by advertising who the receiver of a transaction is?

This is also why no exchange accepts credit or debit cards.  The problem with accepting only cash or money order in the mail is that buyer is now taking all the risk.  The only "safe" way to buy/sell bitcoins is to do it in person.