Once I check in the script fixes, you will be able to write scripts to do this stuff, if you want. The entire API (including markets) should be accessible from the scripts.

-FT

Imagine that you are performing a financial transaction.

For example, perhaps you are sending 100,000 grams of gold to Alice.

When you initiate such a transaction, a PASSWORD DIALOG will pop up on your screen. It might say, "Are you SURE you want to send 100,000 grams of gold to Alice? If so, enter your passphrase: "

NOW: How do you know FOR SURE that this is really your password dialog? How do you know it's not some FAKE DIALOG that a HACKER created, so he could TRICK you into entering your passphrase?

Because eventually when OT has a real install process, part of that process will force you to choose a PASSWORD IMAGE -- one of your own choosing. Perhaps you selected a picture of a goat that was dear to you in your childhood. Every time the passphrase dialog pops up, for you to enter your passphrase, that goat picture will appear on the dialog.

A hacker trying to impersonate your passphrase dialog will be very unlikely to guess the exact goat picture that you chose for yours, and thus will be unable to trick you into entering your passphrase into an imposter dialog. Without this security precaution, the hacker could make a fake dialog that would look correct to thousands of people.  But WITH this security precaution, the hacker would have to guess the individual password image used by each and every one of those thousands of people (and it's extremely unlikely that he could do that...) When his fake dialog pops up, any near-victim would immediately see that it's the wrong dialog, since it does not feature the unique password image that person chose when he first installed OT.

I hope that clears it up.  I'm sure da2ce7 will contact you soon to help figure out the issue you are having.

I just wanted to point out, this is the final step before having an actual Windows install program.

da2ce7's package doesn't actually install software, but it does come with all the necessary components pre-built, so you don't have to compile anything at all, just copy some DLLs and you are ready to run.

I understand this version comes with working builds of the OT localhost Server as well as the Moneychanger test GUI, meaning that you should be able to actually run the server right there on your Windows box, and then pop up the client, and play around with cheques, cash, etc.

It's a pretty momentous day! We're getting closer and closer to click-of-the-button installs. I hope that many of you are able to download the package and play around with it, so da2ce7 can get the feedback he needs to refine it.

-FT

I do remember you asking if I could work on it with you, and I said I don't have time to build it full-time but that I'd give you any support you needed.

If you want me to work on it full-time I suppose that is a possibility but I want equity+salary+slave girls.

-FT

You never asked me for any help with any problems a year ago.

Maybe there weren't problems at all.

:-)

Maybe you just configured it wrong and then didn't ask me.

-FT

On Windows, it's our responsibility to ship the redistributable package that our software is built for, the same way that you are planning to add OpenSSL DLLs to future builds.

At some point soon we will have a "RoboInstall" project (or similar tool) for creating the Windows install, and that project will have the OpenSSL DLLs, the Windows redistributables, etc. All of that will build into a single install .exe and when that time comes, there will probably be a lot more people "kicking the tires" so I'm happy if that comes together slowly because it's been giving us time to test, debug, and strengthen the software. The testers we already have, have definitely kept my hands full for the past couple of months.

Open-Transactions is network-protocol-agnostic. It uses a callback and you can run it over any protocol you want that supports request/response. (Like web protocols, or TCP, etc.)

The current prototype of OT uses ZeroMQ, which you can read about here:  http://www.zeromq.org/

Markm was referring more to the application protocol, which I have been working on lately to improve OT's auto-synchronization, and its ability to handle network problems (missed messages, timeouts, etc.) The most recent check-in was the result of a couple month's work in this area, and I've still got a few hiccups left to correct before I'll be fully satisfied with it.

-FT

I think a digital cash integration with Tahoe is one of the most important projects that needs to be done, regardless of which digital cash system is used to accomplish it.

(I would use OT and Bitcoin together but if you have a better suggestion I'd love to see it.)

How much time do you all think you have, that you can sit on this forum gossiping like a bunch of old women instead of coding something so important?

Yes, you have to install boost in order to build chaiscript.

FYI, boost is NOT a dependency of OT itself, other than chaiscript.

It's really easy to swap out the script language for a different script interpreter, if you're interested.

Just look in the code for a class called OTScriptChai, copy it, rename the copy, and customize its methods so they use your new script interpreter, instead of Chai.

(But then none of the existing scripts would work, obviously, but the Java GUI will still work just fine.)

to install chaiscript:

git clone git://github.com/ChaiScript/ChaiScript
cd ChaiScript
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

I just wanted to point out that Open-Transactions could work as the accounting system for a Tahoe-LAFS integration, and in fact such a thing is why I wrote OT in the first place.

I will support anyone who uses OT to do this Tahoe integration.

Yes but what I'm saying is, to the RIGHT of the 0, we should see only one line (the prediction) whereas to the LEFT of the 0, we should see two lines (two colors) with one color showing the historical data for each data point while the other color shows what the prediction had been for that same data point.

That we can can see not only the historical data, and the prediction data, but we can see HOW THE prediction data measured up against the historical data WITHOUT having to compare to other images or data sets.

I have started to hear of this Peter Thiel character over the past year or so, and I have been impressed with his intellect and his focus on issues that our dear to our hearts, here on this forum.

Clearly he has not yet grasped the full impact, if he is still thinking of Bitcoin and Gold as competing things, instead of thinking of Bitcoin as a new technology that will someday be used for transferring gold. The Bitcoin community and the digital gold community are going to merge. The whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. Both commodities have important roles to play in a larger picture of things. Those who still think that it will be "one community or the other" have not yet grasped the full implications of what is happening.

However that is no matter, because soon everyone will come around, and probably Mr. Thiel sooner than most.

As for Bitcoins and gold, it's important to keep in mind that neither has "intrinsic" value.
Rather, both are valued by men for their unique properties.

Gold is:
-- Divisible.
-- Fungible.
-- Value dense.
-- Recognizable.
-- Durable.
-- Zero counter-party risk.
-- Stable in supply, yet minable.
-- Liquid.
-- International.
-- Non-manipulatable. (Non-centralized.)


By comparison:
-- Diamonds, while valuable, are NOT divisible, nor are they fungible.
-- Water, while valuable and divisible, is not value-dense enough to compete with gold as a form of money, on the free market.
-- Food, while valuable, is not durable.
-- Dollars, while liquid, do not represent zero-counter-party-risk (rather, they are debt-based.)
-- Dollars, while recognizable, are not stable in supply (inflation is a worry).
-- Dollars are also not minable. (Production is available only to a monopoly cartel, versus gold, which anyone can produce.)
-- Food, which anyone can produce, is not liquid, especially in comparison to dollars or gold.
-- Dollars, while you can hold them in your pocket, a board of bankers still has the power to reach into your pocket and manipulate its value. (This is not the case with gold.)


Soon it becomes very clear that gold was never "declared" to be a form of money by any "authorities" but rather, became money due to natural market forces.
If gold became money strictly due to natural market forces (as a result of its unique properties) then clearly the only reason it has been supplanted by dollars is due to artificial restraints imposed on the market by government force. (Such as legal tender "laws", tax "laws", money laundering "laws", etc.)
Such forces must be constantly active, otherwise, natural market forces would immediately resolve back to gold again as they have for thousands of years.


Now let's consider Bitcoin's unique properties:
-- Divisible.
-- Fungible.
-- Value dense.
-- Recognizable.
-- Durable.
-- Zero counter-party risk.
-- Stable in supply, yet minable.
-- Liquid.
-- International.
-- Non-manipulatable. (Non-centralized.)
AS WELL AS:
-- Non-confiscatable.
-- Accounts cannot be frozen.
-- Anonymity is possible.
-- Electronically transferrable.


As you can see, Bitcoin's unique properties are similar to those of gold, although it adds new properties due to its ethereal nature.

Those new properties (non-confiscatable, non-freezable, pseudonymous, transferrable electronically) all serve to route-around the artificial forces that are currently being used to supplant gold with the dollar. After all, the various immoral, legal-tender legislation in place today uses the force of a gun to impose fiat money onto an economy that would otherwise resolve to gold by natural forces. That artificial force depends on the government's collusion with banks and their collective monopoly on the ability to issue, store, freeze, confiscate, track, and transfer dollars.

What happens once Bitcoin destroys their ability to do so?

===> What will happen is that Bitcoin will take a pre-eminent role for all digital currency transfers (for ALL currency types including gold.)
===> It will also serve as the censorship-proof "universal medium" for all other online settlements.
===> Gold will eventually revert to its status as money, due to natural market forces that will be unleashed by the technology of Bitcoin, etc. (Just as Bitcoin has enabled people to buy drugs online, meaning Bitcoin has brought natural law to the drug market, so in the same way, Bitcoin will enable people to use gold as money, meaning Bitcoin will also bring natural law to the monetary system.)
===> Of course, gold has already reverted to its status as money at the elite, national, and central-banking levels. But Bitcoin has the potential to enable this for the livestock/slaves at the plebe level as well. (The proletariat.)
===> Ripple will fill the need for credit lines and expansion, in an F2F manner. It will also enable all participants to exchange in-and-out of all other currencies, including fiat currencies, while entirely routing around all existing government-imposed bottlenecks and "money-transmitting authorities". People will easily be able to exchange in-and-out of the system by way of their own trusted friends and attorneys.
===> I believe also that small vault operators, as envisioned by Andrew McMeikan of PKTP, will have an important role to play.
===> As will various transaction servers along the lines of Ricardo, PKTP, Loom, Truledger, and Open-Transactions.
===> As well as various DGC issuers and Bitcoin voting pools.


The next time one of you gets an opportunity to explain Bitcoin to Peter Thiel, please give him more of a "big picture" view of things, and don't let him go astray down the primrose path where people still think of Bitcoin and Gold as "either-or" sort-of-things, when in fact each has unique properties, and its own part to play in a larger, overall vision.

Would be nice if the historical data contains TWO lines: the actual numbers and the predicted numbers.

If shutting down Napster resulted in Bittorrent, then what will be the result of shutting down SWIFT transfers in and out of Iran?

I have learned about Ripple. Before, I pictured that it would be a p2p protocol. But as I learned, the Ripple trades must be atomic across the entire path. You can't have only 2 or 3 of them happen, based purely on trust that the rest will. No... there must be some clearing process where ALL trades in a given RipplePay are performed atomically... or not at all.

Clearly the easiest way to do that is with a server... but that's not decentralized and p2p, is it?

Actually, in the case of Ripple--IT IS. You see what Ripple decentralizes--what Ripple makes F2F--is the functionality of being able to exchange IN and OUT between fiat currencies and digital ones without having to go through an exchange. Ripple is not P2P. Rather, it is F2F (Friend-2-Friend). It is through your friends that you can exchange money in-and-out of the system, instead of having to use an exchange such as MtGox. And you can see that Ripple enables such activity whether or not it runs on a server. Thus, the "important part" of Ripple IS distributed even when it runs on a server. And the existence of Bitcoin is what makes it possible to run Ripple servers anonymously at a profit. And before you ask, "What if the server screws you over?" Answer: That is why someday OT must implement Ripple, so you have the protection of the Triple-Signed Receipts along with the Ripple protocol.

The "miracle" already exists but people don't see the big picture yet. The solution is a combination of federated, p2p, and f2f architectures.

Earlier in this thread it was said that the exchanges are the natural "bottleneck" in the system that are likely to be targeted by "the authorities" (which is patently true.) But the purpose of these institutions is not trading, per se, but exchanging between fiat and crypto currencies--and this function will someday soon be subsumed by implementations of the Ripple protocol. (You will not need exchanges anymore, because people will be able to exchange in-and-out of various fiat currencies via friend-to-friend technology instead.)

We are standing at an epoch in history.

Normal market interactions will be processed by transaction servers (such as OT) and the security of the Bitcoins traded on those sites will be protected by multi-sign voting pools (on the blockchain) composed of federations of those servers (and someday in combination with auditing and insurance entities as well.) Systems such as OT will perform most of the actual transactions. Bitcoin/Namecoin will be the universal medium that glues it all together, and Ripple will be the gateway in-and-out of the system, which will forever eliminate any need for banks, money transmitters, monetary policy, or tax authorities. At the end of it, I expect to see precious metals re-monetized. (For the masses, I mean. Obviously it's already money for the elite.)

Here it is:  http://mo.morsi.org/blog/node/270

Maybe they told him "we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way."

Maybe he was just happy for the money, or for the reputation opportunity, or for the opportunity to reach those in the intelligence community to see Bitcoin in the most positive light.

Maybe the CIA is interested in Bitcoin for the same reason they like Tor: Because they can use it overseas, and because it disproportionately impacts authoritarian regimes, relative to "free" ones.

Maybe there are elements within the CIA who see the Federal Reserve the same way that we do.

Maybe they have interest in learning about Bitcoin, and learning how to trace BTC transactions, since there are entities in the real world who are utilizing it, and the CIA operates in the real world.

Most importantly, since we don't see the lead developers of "Beenz" and "Flooz" being summoned to the CIA, I think this portends well for the technology, as it gives an indicator that they take it seriously.

...and here is the reason why:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42114.msg712011#msg712011