Beenz vs Bitcoin

[Gabi]

Very easy, beenz was created in 1998. How many people had a connection to internet back then? Or better, how many people had a computer?? Or better, how many people knew what a computer is in 1998? (like oh it's the thing they have in universities and in nasa)

Do you realize that the image technically prove my point?  

Sure, i too had a computer with windows 95 (and before 3.1) but no internet connection.

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[evolve]

How many people had a connection to internet back then? Or better, how many people had a computer?? Or better, how many people knew what a computer is in 1998? (like oh it's the thing they have in universities and in nasa)

what the fuck are you talking about? almost everyone i knew had internet back then....sure it was aol, and on a 28.8 or 52k modem, but it was internet nonetheless....

lol, i almost miss getting aol disks in the mail every other week.



i had a computer over a decade before that:



here it is in all its glory; a tandy 1000.....


oh the '80s....you were awesome

[Gabi]

I got it like in 2000

and it was 56k so i used it only like 1 hour a day and not everyday

[the founder]

could you imagine downloading the blockchain on your first startup of the client on 28.8 or 14.4 ...  or 9600... or gulp 2400 baud... or with the first modem I had .. 300 baud..

It would take on a 300 baud modem about 6 months to 1.5 years .. maybe longer...  as if a modem would stay connected that long...  


regardless it was unfeasible then...  bitcoin even if invented then wouldn't stand a chance because the technology was too immature...  technically it would have worked (IE: the internet was available) but it would be so freaking slow it wouldn't be useable.

regardless however,  the same problem that was with Beenz is with bitcoin.. because it's not a technical problem.. the problem most likely resides in Washington DC,  Paris,  London, Moscow, Beijing, Warsaw, Tokyo and any of the other capitals,   lawmakers don't like it.

They might not really care AS MUCH if there was some IRS (in the US) guideline on how taxes should be used.    Internally we treat it as if it was a Precious Metal like Gold or Silver.. and account for it that way and pay taxes as if it was.

Not sure however if we are doing the right thing.. we are however trying our best to comply with non-existent guidelines. 

[the founder]

this was mine:



10 print "I am so cool with a computer"
20 goto 10

[BitVapes]

This thread is now a "post your first computer" thread


Here's mine, cartridge BASIC and wireless chiclet keyboards ftw

IBM PCjr

[greyhawk]

Mine. Not kidding. Yeah, I'm old as fuck.

[Boussac]

That tilted space bar is drawing tears of nostalgia from some of us  

About beenz vs bitcoin : I believe the cash burn rate is much in favor of bitcoin.

Beenz was like a proprietary version of micromint, no ? Or a failed combination of today's Paypal and Flattr.

Bitcoin will live because it's a transaction processing network on top of being a currency.
It can fail as a currency and succeed as a tx proc network: I have posted this humble opinion ever since I am trolling around this forum and yet I keep seeing the topic of an imminent demise of Bitcoin.
Can anyone of the many Paypal-sponsored trolls explain to me HOW bitcoin would fail ?
I have read many bogus reasoning like contention of "shrinking" activity (just not even factual).

[rampone]

Mine. Not kidding. Yeah, I'm old as fuck.

shit, am I old, becuz my dad let me play some real hardcore 3d reality games (....) on that machine when i was about 3 years old..?

with 4k Ram you would need a huge cluster of PETs for the blockchain

[bosschair]

This thread is now a "post your first computer" thread


Here's mine, cartridge BASIC and wireless chiclet keyboards ftw

IBM PCjr

Motherfucker, is that a 128k upgrade I see on the side?  You rich bitch!

(PC Jr: me too)

[cbeast]

Not my first computer, but my first marital problem.

[payb.tc]

i got one of these as a starting point:



couldn't afford a monitor and at the time my parents only had a small black & white tv to use it with.

i was a bit late to the internet compared to my friends because i had to get dragged kicking and screaming away from my favourite bbs's.

[Rassah]

I don't think centralized v.s. decentralized matters much. My first thought:

Beenz - Small group of guys at the top REALLY hyped about it, trying to get a larger group of "common" people out here hyped about it as well.
Bitcoin - HUGE group of random common people REALLY hyped about it, trying to get a smaller group of guys at the top hyped about it too.
Basically, one was an idea trying to spread from a few at the top to the many below, while the other is an idea built from the bottom up. Beenz can fail if the small group of people doesn't convince the larger group of people. Bitcoin succeeded simply because it's already a larger group to begin with.

[julz]

I don't think centralized v.s. decentralized matters much.

I think that aspect is absolutely critical.  It's why I don't care to get into facebook credits, ven, or whatever wallet system/currency google starts peddling.

Even companies as massive as google and facebook will have trouble getting a really broad base of support across all countries - as just because you use them for one service, doesn't mean you want to use their 'banking' services.
Bitcoin stands a much better chance of growing a large and genuinely diverse base.

[Rassah]

I don't think centralized v.s. decentralized matters much.

I think that aspect is absolutely critical.  It's why I don't care to get into facebook credits, ven, or whatever wallet system/currency google starts peddling.

Even companies as massive as google and facebook will have trouble getting a really broad base of support across all countries - as just because you use them for one service, doesn't mean you want to use their 'banking' services.
Bitcoin stands a much better chance of growing a large and genuinely diverse base.

I'll boldly make the assumptive claim that most of the people out there don't actually understand money, or banking, or inflation, and thus don't actually care if it's centralized or not. To them, all their banking is already usually done from one single bank, so they are used to the centralized aspect of their finances. What they care about is convenience, marketing, and cool factor. Beenz failed with that. Bitcoin doesn't depend on that any more than Linux does (I use Windows btw).

[indicasteve]

I started with this: 



and a tape drive for serial storage.

I blew it up by trying to connect a remote control car up to the i/o port.    But it was cool cuz I got the Commodore 64 after that with a floppy drive.

We had a few computer clubs in town back then where some real enthusiasts came up with some pretty cool stuff.  Once the 386 was popular, many of us set op our own BBS and did the fidonet backbone mail thing.

Soon after that phase we got the windows 3.1 + winsock + internet thing it it all went to hell from there.

I said it before, and I'll say it again, "GOSUB FTW!"

[Cussmob_CUE]

the last page of this thread seems to have gotten wayyyyy off topic  a lot of people thinking they're normal when in fact they're merely exceptions to the rule.

look, bottom line is that computers weren't mainstream at all, i'd personally argue that computers weren't really a common thing in America until the first-person-shooter genre was really established when Half Life came out in 2000. Before then, there really was no need for a computer in most (note: MOST! just because your weird Uncle Richard had one does not make you "most people") households. For games, people mostly turned to gaming consoles (if it weren't for first-person-shooters coming out, game consoles would still be the exclusive place to find games, just like it was in the 1980s and the 1990s if you don't include CDI). For other stuff, they could use typewriters or good old-fashioned pen and paper.

Seriously, the fact that for most of this thread people have been claiming that computers were popular and "mainstream" just because they personally owned one or knew people who owned one is exactly why people often-jokingly say that this forum is full of trolls. I don't really think they're being serious about that, but threads like this make you wonder... 

[payb.tc]

Seriously, the fact that for most of this thread people have been claiming that computers were popular and "mainstream" just because they personally owned one or knew people who owned one is exactly why people often-jokingly say that this forum is full of trolls. I don't really think they're being serious about that, but threads like this make you wonder...  

if you had said 1995 i may have thought you were serious, but 2000? i'm sorry you had to grow up in that neighborhood where most households had no computer.

computers in sydney/brisbane households were most definitely mainstream by 1995.

[Cussmob_CUE]

Seriously, the fact that for most of this thread people have been claiming that computers were popular and "mainstream" just because they personally owned one or knew people who owned one is exactly why people often-jokingly say that this forum is full of trolls. I don't really think they're being serious about that, but threads like this make you wonder...  

if you had said 1995 i may have thought you were serious, but 2000? i'm sorry you had to grow up in that neighborhood where most households had no computer.

computers in sydney/brisbane households were most definitely mainstream by 1995.

Can you find a source for this? Sydney is a pretty remote location to begin with, even if it turns out that computers were popular there, I think it's safe to say that this was an isolated outlier, not really indicative of the rest of the world. I mean, the Virtual Boy was ridiculously popular in Japan, but it still bombed pretty much everywhere else, and resulted in the suicide of the guy who created it (incidentally, the lead designer for Legend of Zelda - really sad  ).

[payb.tc]

Seriously, the fact that for most of this thread people have been claiming that computers were popular and "mainstream" just because they personally owned one or knew people who owned one is exactly why people often-jokingly say that this forum is full of trolls. I don't really think they're being serious about that, but threads like this make you wonder...  

if you had said 1995 i may have thought you were serious, but 2000? i'm sorry you had to grow up in that neighborhood where most households had no computer.

computers in sydney/brisbane households were most definitely mainstream by 1995.

Can you...

no, as i just said, i don't believe you're being serious.

a lot of people thinking they're normal when in fact they're merely exceptions to the rule.

yeah actually i can think of one person that fits that description.