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Romanian Bitcoin Entrepreneur Steps In To Pay OpenBSD Shortfall
New submitter MrBingoBoingo writes "Recently it was announced here on Slashdot that OpenBSD was facing an impending shortfall that jeopardized its continued existence. A sponsorship to save OpenBSD has been announced, and it wasn't one of the usual culprits that saved OpenBSD, but a Romanian Bitcoin billionaire."
.... he's not going to want the attention, lest he get kidnapped.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
It's still better than someone who gave nothing but cheap hot air.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Interesting....
I hope it works out for OpenBSD, but the proof is in the pudding.... or the check clearing.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
In Canada that actually should be rather easy.
How about we be a little more careful with twitter links, K?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
He sells futures, which he refuses to honor if he loses.
He steals from people.
OpenBSD should refuse his donation, the funds are the proceeds of crime.
Te mekkora egy fasz vagy, b*meg.
In Canada that actually should be rather easy.
So people keep saying. Let's see it *actually* happen.
Cheap hot air is actually great if you have a gas turbine and a generator and can sell the resulting electricity.
Ezekiel 23:20
How is this modded +2?
Coinbase.com makes it trivially easy. For people who are willing to put in some legwork, there's localbitcoins.com
I haven't tried bitpay.com but I understand that it works just as well as coinbase. Stop spreading FUD and educate yourself.
A bitcoin story with .. ah, who cares with what - IT IS BITCOIN AND IT HAS SAVED THE DAY !!
From personal experience, I've had no trouble converting ten times that to Euros.
He is definitely a gypsie...
it has been done in more difficult locales before.
The word you're looking for is "xenophobic". Also, you should learn to spell "chauvinistic" in case it actually is the word you need at some point.
Really? How do you know his nationality? The Roma minority is 3.3 % in Romania. He would have better changes of being hungarian..
an interesting blank box...the summary says "romanian bitcoin billionaire". so is he romainian by nationality, that is, he was born in the state of Romania, or is he romanian by heritage (i.e. gypsy) meaning that regardless of where he was born, his parents are of romanian heritage.
We aren't talking about more difficult locales, we're talking about Canada.
Stay with us, here.
That sort of an electrical bill is a crap explanation in my opinion to support the development and deployment of OpenBSD developers and users.
Poor management is more likely the explanation.
I mean, for example to not watch the cash flow, and all of a sudden require a huge cash intake is something I don't understand.
This sort of problem should have been apparent YEARS AGO, anyone managing the infrastructure could have seen coming and there should have been PLENTY of time to correct the issue.
Am I missing something here people if so please do explain.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Well, Canada is an easy locale to turn a lot of BTC into local cash. An example of a hard locale would be Somalia.
Before you accept anything from this criminal, make sure you read bitcointalk.
This guy is a bad news.
Is OpenBSD really sure they want to be associate with this guy? I hope not.
I was going to post about nobody using BSD... but... there is that one guy in Romania... Hmmm... But there is still that question... Is this even newsworthy...? Check this out... http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/ o_p
Daily 12.000.000 usd worth of bitcoin is converted on biggest exchange ( http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/btceUSD.html ) Converting 20.000 usd is triviall.
Great! You can use that electricity to generate Bitcoins, then you can sell those to get actual money!
Even local bitcoins would do it: https://localbitcoins.com/buy-bitcoins-online/cad/ Or just set up account with mtgox, btc-e or any of various other exchanges, and get money wired to your bank account, what is the problem?
I did that in November, worked fine for me.
I sold 25 Bitcoin for $23,000 with CaVirtex. It took me a couple of weeks to get my account verified, but I did get the money out.
Mircea Popescu is very nice person, thank you for saving OpenBSD. Now, why are some a-holes here bouthmouthing one person that did something to help OpenBSD's problem?! And jumping to conclusions and all. Jesus Christ that will teach any future milionares to sponsor FOSS.
You would get actual money from selling that electricity too and it would be much more efficient deal for you. In most cases you can just push the electricity back to the grid, and the energy company will pay you.
This is trivial.
I could literally convert this and have it in a bank account within 15 minutes.
I will perform a demonstration if someone would be kind enough to send 20 BTC here:
1NeWBRsxxU9wSENoNRGkBA7Qi1ka5nkJAB
Romanian != Roma.
Romania is a country whose inhabitants are called, in English, Romanians. The name of the country (and therefore the people) comes from Rome. The Roman Empire. THAT Rome. Romanian--like French, Spanish, and Italian--is a romance language descended directly from Latin. Some even argue that it's the Romance language that today most closely resembles Latin!
Roma, on the other hand, is a name for a minority population of people that most probably emigrated from South Asia over a thousand years ago. AKA gypsies. The word Roma comes from some Roma dialect and has no connection to Romania or Roman other than as homonyms. Good example of a false congate--they sound alike, but there is no connection.
Admittedly, the conflation is a common mistake to make, especially since there is a very large (comparatively speaking) Roma population in Romania.
Here, here. Where was Tim Cook? Where was Steve Wozniak? WHere was the Oracle douche Ellison? Missing. What was here for the Open Source Movement? An mysterious Bitcoin Billionaire who likes young women nude in public.
Cheap hot air is actually great if you have a gas turbine and a generator and can sell the resulting electricity.
So can we fit one to the capitol building? Lots of cheap hot air is going to waste there at the moment.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I'm sure you'll fit in here just fine. Has anyone told you what happened to John Katz yet? Oh, yeah. We Don't Talk About That.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
You know most man like young women. More NEWS AT 11: most man like sex and many like beer. But keep on being hater, instead appreciating donations.
I never meant that as a negative.
Yes, very easy.
http://buttcoin.org/easy
What does it mean to be a bitcoin billionaire?
To own a billion bitcoins? Since there will never be more than about 21 million bitcoins, by design, this is obviously not meant.
Maybe he owns a billion satoshi? Well, a satoshi is 10^-8 bitcoins, therefore a billion bitcoins is 10 bitcoin. That's about $10000, if I'm not mistaken. Which certainly is not nothing, but also not an extraordinary large number.
You hear with your ears. The exclamation is 'Hear, hear!"
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Romanian--like French, Spanish, and Italian--is a romance language descended directly from Latin. Some even argue that it's the Romance language that today most closely resembles Latin!
I'd say it's the language that most closely resembles Italian. You can really confuse them, at least with your eyes closed. Of course, if you open your eyes again, you will easily spot the Italian: It's the one constantly using his/her hands to make gestures. Italian is probably the only language that doesn't leave out deaf people. You can essentially *see* everything that's being said. And of course, even if your hearing is somewhat impaired, you can also still hear it. At the other end of town.
This assumes that 20,000$ worth of bitcoins can be converted to real money.
This assumption is correct.
The point is, there are no BUYERS. It will not happen. No one is going to pay $20k of REAL money for bitcoins.
I don't know WTF are you talking about but converting bitcoins to 20k USD is non-issue on most existing exchanges like coinbase, bitstamp, mtgox or btc-e. Just go and see their daily trade volume.
Unless you assume the bitcoins to grow in value over time, as the general trend is, in which case keeping those bitcoins may give you a better benefit than the interest a bank may give you for keeping the real money in it.
Not if you are Cockney.
Cheap hot air is actually great if you have a gas turbine and a generator and can sell the resulting electricity.
So can we fit one to the capitol building? Lots of cheap hot air is going to waste there at the moment.
Hell, just strap a mask onto Al Gore and collect his hot air. Maybe that + Congress would solve all of our energy needs!
He is the "MP" in MPEx, the major bitcoin exchange. Unfortunately, it's not a completely unique name and there is a few others with the same name...
OpenBSD already accepts Bitcoin donations:
http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html
Just sent 50 CAD worth, easy peasy. They get converted on the fly to the local currency by BitPay.
Are you from 2010?
Wouldn't it have been so much better if it were "A Bulgarian Bitcoin Billionaire"
Watch this Heartland Institute video
So can we fit one to the capitol building? Lots of cheap hot air is going to waste there at the moment.
Cheap!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Here, here.
Where was Tim Cook? Where was Steve Wozniak? WHere was the Oracle douche Ellison? .
Fuck that, where was Steve Jobs!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Some languages reverse tje use of the period instead and the comma. The French definitely do it. Makes it a bit confusing I suppose, but the the groupings of 3 0s is a good indicator.
Yup, if you look at the 3 big exchanges that deal with USD, you'll see $1.4 BILLION USD changing hands in the last month for bitcoins. It isn't rare to see a couple million $$$ change hands in small handful of trades.
At least he has a better excuse than the rest.
Actually I'd say it's the English language countries who reverse the use of the period and the comma. ;-)
But joking aside, it makes more sense to me that the more visible character is used for the more significant meaning. The comma is more visible than the point. And while omitting the thousands separator doesn't change the meaning, omitting the decimal separator completely changes the meaning.
The dollar sign goes in front for US currency: $20,000
Actually he is correct - shovinistic is based on the Hebrew word Shova which means intolerant. AFAIK the etymology of Chauvinist is not related it to this, it is just a weird coincidence that they sound the same.
Just because someone uses a word you do not know which sounds like a word you DO know, does not mean they spelt it wrong.
Do you feel embarrassed now that you've been humiliated in front of those of us more educated than yourself, who you previously considered as peers but now realise that we are actually your superiors?
I am very glad to see these projects funded. I like a diverse ecosystem of operating systems and ideas as opposed to a homogeneous realm of only one flavor of GNU/Linux or BSD. The more things being tried, the better. Despite the bitterness expressed here with the OpenBSD team and the way they run things, I admire their dedication. They produce some lovely stuff like OpenSSH. I am not a fan of Godaddy, but was pleased even they sent a cheque for development of OpenSSH. It is a worthwhile goal. The more operating operating systems out there, the better. Especially ones focused on security. My understanding is some hospital and other critical infrastructure use OpenBSD.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
There might be something we're not being told about this transaction.
Italian is probably the only language that doesn't leave out deaf people.
We're on Slashdot. Deafness not an issue here. Uh... let's see.. what else could a deaf person communicate in, besides typically audible languages with a written variant: sign languages, braille... nope, can't think of anything a deaf person could use!
How can you get to a bank account in 15mins? I can convert instantly but two business days are required to get it to my bank.
From what I understand, the build servers are absolutely archaic beasts that had they been replaced long ago would not have led to such astronomically high bills. /p>
There are a variety of of build serves. There are ones for SPARC (and SPARC64), MacPPC, SGI/MIPS, VAX, etc.:
http://openbsd.org/plat.html
One of the reasons why this is done is help expose bugs. Some issues are only exposed on non-mainstream architectures, and if everyone only uses certain CPUs, then they won't be found (as easily). Back in the early 1990s, not many people used DEC Alpha, but by supporting it (both in the BSD and Linux world), it kept kernel developers "honest" when it came to supporting things besides 32-bit Intel. When AMD64 came along (and then Intel's uptake of it), the code was a lot cleaner and able to better support it with a minimal of fuss (Linus has himself so stated).
Similarly if you supported RISC-y processors like 68K, MIPS, and SPARC, you would be better prepared for when ARM came along in the mainstream. Similarly support for big- and little-endian CPUs, and CPUs that are bi-endian, keeps kernel folks honest for things like alignment issues.
This is why I also think that userland developers should developers should try running their software on non-Linux systems in at least a perfunctory fashion. When Debian made the switch from Bash to dash for /bin/sh it broken a lot of things. If developers had tried some simply tests of their software on (say) a BSD, they would have learned quite quickly that they had used Bash-ism and needed to either change their code, or simply explicitly used a shebang of /bin/bash.
The computer world is not homegenous, and any developer (kernel or userland) who thinks otherwise limits themselves unnecessary and is asking for pain when their assumptions are proven false when reality changes (like the rise of amd64 and ARM, and with Debian's change of /bin/sh).
Well, since you can donate the bitcoins directly, it really doesn't matter.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Digital Money may not be popular but there is money in it!
I dont know WTF you are talking about but actually getting your USD *out* of those exchanges is what the issue is.
Converted maybe, withdrawn? Hell no. Withdrawing USD from any of the exchanges is next to impossible.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I am SUPER CEREAL GUYS MAN BEAR PIG we have to fill the cave with MOLTEN LEAD.
No one is going to pay $20k of REAL money for bitcoins
Right, but many people will pay $20k of the "money" issued by the Federal Reserve.
Your sentiment is quite correct. I should have made it more explicit that I know nothing of Popescu except that he has made this generous donation to a worthy project, and my assumption was purely for the sake of argument.
That said I should also say I know absolutely nothing about his "niceness" either, the quality appears to have no particular correlation with either generosity or alleged criminal behavior.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But then wouldn't it be " 'ear, 'ear", or should that be " 'ere, 'ere"?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
any proof that this isn't just someone typing into IRC?
where is the announcement from Theo?
Till this is confirmed by Theo, this is nothing more than rumour, which might actually harm the project.
Mircea Popescu a billionaire? Guys, this guy is lying about everything for at least 8 years. He spreads false rumors all the time. At least this was a good joke.
Racist. Not all Romanians are gypsies, and "gypsy" is a term with negative connotations anyway. I don't think they even self-iedntify as Romanian. Way to post anonymously, coward. And I wouldn't worry about OpenBSD being tainted by bitcoins. Bitcoins are fine, and OpenBSD is better alive than dead, no?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It is actually quite easy with OKPay. Also Bank of America supports transfers from the largest exchanges... do some research...
I'm in this branch for about 10 years and until last year I did support a FreeBSD running Apache and being used to host a site. So I was that lucky?
Curiously yours, crip.
Dude 20K is 20-40 bitcoins. That gets sold every few minutes on the exchanges. How about you remove your head from your colon long enough to have a look around?
And being a grammar nazi when someone is pointing out bigotry is rather hypocrite. Fscking fascist.
Please just let it die so those programmers can focus their efforts on something more relevant.
Don't Bogart that joint, dude.
only mtgox
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
It matters to those of us who use bitcoin regularly. Also, the plural of bitcoin should be bitcoin not bitcoins. Whole units have no significance when handling bitcoin since there are no physical bits and you rarely hold or exchange even whole units.
Admittedly I'm not dealing with sums anywhere near this magnitude, but so far I was able to withdraw every single cent of my proceeds from VirWoX (for a total of something approaching $1.5k over the last couple months). I'm using it because it was the easiest to set up, as they withdraw directly to your PayPal account, so all you need is to have one.
I don't know about instantly getting it into the bank account, but I can instantly have it in my PayPal account. From there to the bank then takes the usual 2 days, but I can spend it immediately in places which accept PayPal, which is quite a lot of them.
> Romanian (i.e. gypsy)
These are different things. Perhaps you are confusing 'Rroma' with 'Romanian'?
The saddest poem
> Romanian (i.e. gypsy)
These are different things. Perhaps you are confusing 'Rroma' with 'Romanian'?
did you read my post? obv not. btdubs the plural of roma is Romanian. it's different than the country! pay attention!
I did read your post, and as a guy who speaks Romanian and has been to Romania and lives in a neighbor country - I am pretty confident in the fact that I understand this matter.
The plural of 'Rroma' (also spelled as 'Roma') is 'Romani', not 'Romanian'.
The saddest poem
Romanian isn't a language. It's called Cyrillic. No stars!
At this point I'm not sure if you're fooling around or are just misinformed, I will assume the latter.
Romanian is a language, and Cyrillic is a form of writing. You can write Romanian using a Cyrillic alphabet if you really want to, but that's not how Romanians themselves do it.
If you read the first paragraph of Wikipedias's articles on {Rroma, Romanian, Cyrillic} - you'll figure it out.
The saddest poem
Lol
until you realize none of that is getting physically paid out. The USD sits in mtgox forever, because they literally can't get it paid out. You'd have to be retarded to miss that fact.
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