Tutorial on Bitcoins

[mokimarket]

I have ready several articles on bitcoins theory; some more illuminating than others. Here's where my understanding is at now:

The way I understand it is that each bitcoins stores a string of every transaction of every coin on the system, the system needs people to verify that the string is correct, it does this by rewarding computers (miners) that verify the system with new coins. And the larger the string gets, the harder it becomes to verify.

I know my understanding is wrong in many ways but could someone maybe point me to a tutorial that they used when they finally "got" bitcoins?

[tinman951]

http://www.weusecoins.com/

[mokimarket]

http://www.weusecoins.com/

I know about most of the "traditional" tutorials. I guess I was looking for a more academic yet readable source. I've read the original whitepaper and I guess I'm wondering if there are more articles of that sort that are floating around.

[Atheros]

I've personally written a decent portion of this:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Introduction

I also took care to take out more technical things that aren't relevant on an introduction.

To respond to some of your points:
"And the larger the string gets, the harder it becomes to verify."

No, the strings used in transactions will always be the same size. They will always be just as easy to verify. Everyone verifies them, not just miners. Miners do an additional task beyond most people: they create blocks. Creating blocks is very difficult.