Yet another newbie/wannabe geek is confused

[ConfusedEnthusiast]

Hi everyone! Newbie questions follow, so my apologies in advance. (I've looked at existing posts but still not quite clear).

Firstly, I went to the https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/ site to claim my five free generous BCs, but I've not yet received them. This was nearly 24 hours ago; I had to turn off my computer soon after doing it, but if I understand BitCoin right (big if!) that shouldn't matter. Scrap that, I just received it a smidgin short of 24 hours after the event. Why did it take so long?

Secondly, I can't get this port 8333 forwarding thing sorted: my wireless router and I aren't on speaking terms, the bloody thing. Does that matter? The BitCoin client shows a few (6-8) connections anyway.

Thirdly, I've not generated any coins yet. I think this one is ok; it's a random process, and it does it in blocks (right term? :s) of 50 coins, so can take many days of CPU time before I generate them: a combination of being a random process, and being a random process with a large period because 50 coins is rather a lot.

Fourthly: no question here, just a big thumbs up. Interesting idea, this BitCoin, not that I understand it yet. Even if it perhaps just acts as an experiment for a later currency, I'm intrigued. Big well done, guys.

[1714077239]

1714077239

[1714077239]

1714077239

[XaviorPenguin]

I have some questions too as well regarding the amount of connections I can acquire.
Machine Specs:
OS: Windows 7 32bit
khash/s: 700 to 900
Connections: 8
Current Blocks: 25K and rising
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.53GHz 2.54GHz
RAM: 4GB

I am only getting 8 connections at the moment and was wondering how do I need to go about getting more.  Port has been forwarded as far as I can tell properly, will check it again upon request.

I saw this on Slashdot and figured I would give this a try and am very interested in this concept and will do what I can to help.
I do like P2P/Distributed Computing concepts and this one seems to work for me at the moment.

Thank you for your help.

[ConfusedEnthusiast]

I think I have an answer for my first question. Looking at the nice new wiki intro, it said that no generation could take place until all the blocks were downloaded. Well, how could the block with my transaction be downloaded, if perhaps the client was still downloading previous blocks? I've just bought some BitCoins and that transaction appeared within minutes at most  

[ksd5]

I'm new too, but I think I have some answers for you guys.

You don't need to forward port 8333, but it helps. It gives you a slight edge on coin generation, and it probably lets you get more than 8 connections.

Coin delivery from the Faucet is limited by several factors, including demand on the server.

[Gavin Andresen]

Transactions with "0 confirmations" are transactions that your client has seen, but haven't been put into a block yet.

Here's what happened when you bought the bitcoins:

Seller:  "Hey Bitcoin Network!  These here Bitcoins are getting sent to that there Bitcoin Address!"

Your client, listening in on all the payment network messages:  "Wow, spiffy, that's one of MY Bicoin Addresses!  I'll add that transaction to my wallet, and show that transaction as 0/unconfirmed in the UI."

Then your client goes on its merry way downloading the 66,241 blocks in the block chain.

In the meantime, some lucky soul generates block number 66,242, and includes your transaction in that block.  When your client connects that block up to the block chain (which it won't do until it gets all 64,241 previous blocks), it'll show it as "1/unconfirmed"

Then 2 confirmations when block 66,243 gets generated, etc.

Wonky things can happen if two nodes generate a different block 66,241 (especially if one of them included your transaction and one of them didn't, you can go from 1/unconfirmed back to 0/unconfirmed for a little while), but after a couple more blocks get generated everything sorts itself out.

[ConfusedEnthusiast]

Thanks for the replies, all three of you, that makes a bit more sense to me now. I'll read up on it more, now I have some more intuition for it.

I think I was just worrying too much, which considering that at the time I'd spent no real money is pretty ridiculous of me :p.

[XaviorPenguin]

That is cool.  I was just wondering about all of that.  I just wanted more connections to help out is all.