I'm curious, how does the Bitcoin network resolve conflicting transactions? I looked for this in a FAQ, but couldn't find details on exactly how the network chooses which of two choices to believe, when given conflicting choices.
This could either be done intentionally (flooding others in an effort to induce lag, hacking the Bitcoin client to disable consistency checks, generating false confirmations, intentional double-spending, connecting a large network of your hacked Bitcoin clients in an effort to steal traffic from the existing network, any other ways) or accidentally (connecting to the Test network instead of the real network, running offline for a while then reconnecting later).
Which determines the winner? How does the network know to discard unwanted transactions, provided that those unwanted transactions are not totaling enough to constitute a 51% attack?
It makes sense that Bitcoin would still be vulnerable to a 51% attack. A corporation is vulnerable (convince 51% of shareholders to vote your way, or just buy 51% of all shares, and you can appoint yourself CEO and do whatever you want), and a democratic government is vulnerable (convince 51% of voters to vote for you, and you are President). Evidently that's pretty much how the world works, nothing can really be done about that
Josh
