Actually it's a cheap to run currency. How much do you think is spent on printing, securely transporting, validating, and counting banknotes? Or on the VISA or Mastercard networks? Or on the various costs banks have running and stocking ATMs, websites, call centers, and so on?
How much electricity does the conventional banking system use? And computer games? And street lights?
BTC mining will be profitable on transaction fees once the coin generation stops. Miners will drop out until it's profitable thus making all remaining miners more profitable. The sliding difficulty scale doesn't just go up you know.
The ledger and the mining process are not separate things. Each ledger entry has a generation of 25 coins plus a long list of transactions affecting existing coins. You need to generate a hash within strict conditions in order to create a valid ledger block and the difficulty of that task adjusts to ensure a consistent block generation rate.
The original paper will explain all this better than I ever could.
Bitcoin doesn't really work like that. A bitcoin is a generation event plus a chain of transactions, it's not a chunk of self contained data. You can read the original paper for the details.
You are quite correct. However they should be criminal activities, or at a minimum taxed in such a way they are not viable ways to extract money from markets.
That sounds like a play on US anti-communism brainwashing. It just sounds like deranged ranting to someone who doesn't support communism but actually knows what it is. You have no argument, rational or not.
The thing that pains me is that we can't trust journalists either. They will outright lie to get a good story and their motivations are always suspect.
The only way to get information out is to torrent it and let the world dig though it.
I've heard that belief that the US is rich and the rest of the world is poor very many times. I've travelled to a few countries and can tell you without a doubt that although there are plenty of poorer places there are plenty of richer places too. There are lots of countries with better infrastructure and better standards of living.
The US has a very positive self-image. That's a great thing. But sometimes it can cover up things that are wrong and could be fixed.
Uhm, so Google read the email of one of its employees? Gosh!
Google read the email of a third party that that one their employees sent an email to. Google have the ability to, and willingness to, read private email of people who use gmail who are not otherwise connected to google. Gmail isn't to be trusted.
So, essentially it has nothing to do with facts to you, but rather image. I guess they just need to call it Bitcoin 13.04.
You are exactly right, but don't underestimate the effects of image. Why not just add a 1. to the start of the number? Sun did pretty much that with their Solaris version numbers.
There's not been a single theortical attack against bitcoin, never mind a practical one
LOL... our hypothetical currency is theoretically secure, so we'll pretend that the actual thefts didn't happen in practice and the BitCoin itself is still secure, unless you try to actually use it??? Is this a perfectly spherical cow?
That's just like saying cash in a bank vault isn't perfectly secure because you might take it out and give it to con men. It's perfectly safe to use bitcoin, it's not perfectly safe to give it away to snake oil merchants who make empty promises. You have to check who you are dealing with in any matter that involves anything of value. Anyone can setup a respectable looking website.
One pound coins are unsafe and have been for some time, the level of risk is normally acceptable though. Faking physical money has been going on since coin clippers would clip off the edges of roman coins to melt down and make new coins. Don't forget all those fake dollar bills out there? Not seen them? Oh yes you have, you just didn't recognize them.
That kind of thing is mathematically impossible with bitcoin.
Version numbers mean different things to different projects. You might use major.minor.patch_level but you are going to get very confused by a lot of the major projects out there. It's an arbitrary number that increments, anything else is project specific.
Have you seen the current banking system? Credit cards have the same username and password. It's written in big numbers on the front of the card. Checks only need one easily faked signature. PIN numbers on bank cards are only 4 digit numbers. Magnetic strip bank cards can be easily copied with cheap equipment. Identity theft is rampant due to insecurity everywhere. North Korea has been printing US dollar notes for years now, the copies are so good US banks can't even tell the difference.
BitCoin, or something like it, has strong advantages over the current insecure mess. It actually uses hard math instead of trivially faked or copied nonsense.
Right now, Bitcoins are exceedingly un-useful besides speculation.
That just isn't true. I brought a nice meal with bitcoins earlier today. You can also buy all sorts of legal things from some really huge suppliers like overstock.
Bitcoins have essentially no banking costs unlike the huge costs involved with accepting VISA or Mastercard. They are the perfect tool for small merchants who can't afford to have their entire profit margins eaten by banks.
You can buy lots of nice things with Bitcoin right now, I do all the time. Food, computer parts, bed sheets, all sorts of things. Bitcoin allows sellers to sell without getting robbed by banks. Obviously you should get the reviews of people you deal with in any currency.
If you give cash, bitcoin, gold, or anything else to anonymous drug dealers or shady investment manager snake oil merchants you will be robbed. Don't do that. This isn't something that only happens in the bitcoin world.
Are you fucking kidding me? Bug fixes for a currency? Why? The Federal reserve calls these "Quantitative Easing". We've had three major patches in as many years, along with quite a few minor updates to those outside the normal update release cycle.
Thats nothing like the same thing. The Fed prints more money to bail out their irresponsible friends. Bitcoin adds features that do something useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it's a cheap to run currency. How much do you think is spent on printing, securely transporting, validating, and counting banknotes? Or on the VISA or Mastercard networks? Or on the various costs banks have running and stocking ATMs, websites, call centers, and so on?
How much electricity does the conventional banking system use? And computer games? And street lights?
BTC mining will be profitable on transaction fees once the coin generation stops. Miners will drop out until it's profitable thus making all remaining miners more profitable. The sliding difficulty scale doesn't just go up you know.
The ledger and the mining process are not separate things. Each ledger entry has a generation of 25 coins plus a long list of transactions affecting existing coins. You need to generate a hash within strict conditions in order to create a valid ledger block and the difficulty of that task adjusts to ensure a consistent block generation rate.
The original paper will explain all this better than I ever could.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pd...
Bitcoin doesn't really work like that. A bitcoin is a generation event plus a chain of transactions, it's not a chunk of self contained data. You can read the original paper for the details.
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pd...
Day trading and HFT are not criminal activities.
You are quite correct. However they should be criminal activities, or at a minimum taxed in such a way they are not viable ways to extract money from markets.
That sounds like a play on US anti-communism brainwashing. It just sounds like deranged ranting to someone who doesn't support communism but actually knows what it is. You have no argument, rational or not.
The thing that pains me is that we can't trust journalists either. They will outright lie to get a good story and their motivations are always suspect.
The only way to get information out is to torrent it and let the world dig though it.
Why do you thing the NSA wants to crack huawei?
1) Because the want to find out of there are deliberate holes left by the Chinese in their equipment that they should warn their own people about.
2) Because they want a head start on cracking the equipment to spy on everyone, foreign and domestic.
I've heard that belief that the US is rich and the rest of the world is poor very many times. I've travelled to a few countries and can tell you without a doubt that although there are plenty of poorer places there are plenty of richer places too. There are lots of countries with better infrastructure and better standards of living.
The US has a very positive self-image. That's a great thing. But sometimes it can cover up things that are wrong and could be fixed.
All multinationals are hypocrites. All advertising is an attempt at making people believe things that are at best only part true.
If you give your data away you don't have it anymore. Don't give Google, Microsoft, or anyone else all your private email.
Microsoft have the strong advantage that they are no good at it. You have no privacy if you give your email to either of these companies.
The traditional slashdot approach was to run your own mail server. I don't know how common that is any more but I still do it.
Uhm, so Google read the email of one of its employees? Gosh!
Google read the email of a third party that that one their employees sent an email to. Google have the ability to, and willingness to, read private email of people who use gmail who are not otherwise connected to google. Gmail isn't to be trusted.
All world currencies and share prices are based on wishful thinking. You are not going to get the gold standard back.
That's so far from the truth on all points it's hard to respond to.
So, essentially it has nothing to do with facts to you, but rather image. I guess they just need to call it Bitcoin 13.04.
You are exactly right, but don't underestimate the effects of image. Why not just add a 1. to the start of the number? Sun did pretty much that with their Solaris version numbers.
Its a bad idea because if your money "disappears" during one of those transfers, there isnt any regulation governing "what happens now".
That can't happen. Either the transaction is accepted by the network or it's not and you can back out.
LOL ... our hypothetical currency is theoretically secure, so we'll pretend that the actual thefts didn't happen in practice and the BitCoin itself is still secure, unless you try to actually use it??? Is this a perfectly spherical cow?
That's just like saying cash in a bank vault isn't perfectly secure because you might take it out and give it to con men. It's perfectly safe to use bitcoin, it's not perfectly safe to give it away to snake oil merchants who make empty promises. You have to check who you are dealing with in any matter that involves anything of value. Anyone can setup a respectable looking website.
One pound coins are unsafe and have been for some time, the level of risk is normally acceptable though. Faking physical money has been going on since coin clippers would clip off the edges of roman coins to melt down and make new coins. Don't forget all those fake dollar bills out there? Not seen them? Oh yes you have, you just didn't recognize them.
That kind of thing is mathematically impossible with bitcoin.
So would you prefer unstable software labeled "release quality" with a version number of 9.0?
Heh. Windows users. Heh.
Are you saying that you would trust it if it was called Bitcoin 500.3?
I think that's the general message here. People are not entirely rational.
Version numbers mean different things to different projects. You might use major.minor.patch_level but you are going to get very confused by a lot of the major projects out there. It's an arbitrary number that increments, anything else is project specific.
Have you seen the current banking system? Credit cards have the same username and password. It's written in big numbers on the front of the card. Checks only need one easily faked signature. PIN numbers on bank cards are only 4 digit numbers. Magnetic strip bank cards can be easily copied with cheap equipment. Identity theft is rampant due to insecurity everywhere. North Korea has been printing US dollar notes for years now, the copies are so good US banks can't even tell the difference.
BitCoin, or something like it, has strong advantages over the current insecure mess. It actually uses hard math instead of trivially faked or copied nonsense.
Right now, Bitcoins are exceedingly un-useful besides speculation.
That just isn't true. I brought a nice meal with bitcoins earlier today. You can also buy all sorts of legal things from some really huge suppliers like overstock.
Bitcoins have essentially no banking costs unlike the huge costs involved with accepting VISA or Mastercard. They are the perfect tool for small merchants who can't afford to have their entire profit margins eaten by banks.
You can buy lots of nice things with Bitcoin right now, I do all the time. Food, computer parts, bed sheets, all sorts of things. Bitcoin allows sellers to sell without getting robbed by banks. Obviously you should get the reviews of people you deal with in any currency.
If you give cash, bitcoin, gold, or anything else to anonymous drug dealers or shady investment manager snake oil merchants you will be robbed. Don't do that. This isn't something that only happens in the bitcoin world.
Are you fucking kidding me? Bug fixes for a currency?
Why? The Federal reserve calls these "Quantitative Easing". We've had three major patches in as many years, along with quite a few minor updates to those outside the normal update release cycle.
Thats nothing like the same thing. The Fed prints more money to bail out their irresponsible friends. Bitcoin adds features that do something useful.