Recent Posts

3301

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 25, 2013, 06:08 PM »

To get started, there are a couple things to understand first.

BITCOIN TRANSACTIONS ARE IRREVERSIBLE. YOU CANNOT DO A "CHARGEBACK" OR GET A "REFUND".

This makes bitcoin (BTC is the symbol) very much like physical currency. Once you give it to someone, you've given it to them. Done. Once the pot is swept off the poker table, it's gone to whoever sweeps it up.

This has a strong implication in that you CANNOT buy BTC with a credit card because you can reverse a credit card transaction.

So... to get started you need to get an account at a bitcoin exchange. Once you have that done, follow their instructions on how to send money, e.g. a wire transfer.

When you have completed the wire transfer, you simply buy BTC like you would with any forex account or stock/trading account.

I wouldn't worry too much about the price that you get BTC at though. It's going up and there will be corrections. This can be very stressful if you sit there at watch the market all day long. Don't do that unless you can handle it. e.g. You might buy BTC at USD $72, see it rise to $75 as you jump for joy, then drop to $68 as you head to the bathroom to vomit, and then rise again only to see the process repeated.

You cannot predict the future, so don't pretend that you can and stress yourself out. The "if only I had..." will kill you.

I know this from personal experience trading and literally getting nauseous and dizzy.

I'll continue in a bit... have to jet for now.

3302

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 25, 2013, 10:52 AM »

BFD. I know attorneys and doctors who turn twice that in an hour and do even less to get it.

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 11:38 AM)

Well, so far I'm up what your doctors and sharks turn in an hour and I've done nothing since.

Do you really care if it is a pump & dump if you can make a buck? That's just the sick system that we live in. You either make your living slaving for the system or working inside of it. I need to eat, so I'll take it where I can get it. I don't need to be proud about it, but I can certainly put food on the table and smile. 

I'll make more on this. We'll even have cake~! ;P

3303

Living Room / Re: Google data centers

« Last post by Renegade on March 25, 2013, 09:57 AM »

Not sure whether we should replace "Big" with "Scary" or replace "Data" with "Brother".

3304

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on March 25, 2013, 09:09 AM »

But, gotta wonder about the doctor that the Canadian fellow went to see...

-Renegade (March 25, 2013, 08:33 AM)

Multiple doctors and nurses. They never did any x-rays. The guy was walking around for 3 years, setting off metal detectors everywhere he went, and had no clue why. Doctors blamed it on a metal fragment in his bone.

That's one big fragment!

-app103 (March 25, 2013, 08:40 AM)

So, I take a shit on 'em, and app 1-ups me by taking a machete, gasoline, and wood-chipper to 'em~!

Nicely done! hehehe!

3305

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on March 25, 2013, 08:33 AM »

Incredibly tough guy finds knife in back 3 years after stabbing
 (see attachment in previous post)
Incredibly tough guy finds knife in back 3 years after stabbing

Any Canadians here want to one-up this.

-Arizona Hot (March 25, 2013, 12:53 AM)

Well, there was that drunken Pole that wouldn't be out done by his friend that hacked off his own foot with a chainsaw in a blazing display of uber-tough-guy-machoism... Buddy decapitated himself. With the chainsaw. He won. A Darwin Award.

But, gotta wonder about the doctor that the Canadian fellow went to see...

3306

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 24, 2013, 07:04 AM »

Another list of places to spend BTC:

http://bitcoinmagazi...spend-your-bitcoins/

Coffee, music, clothing, etc.

3307

Developer's Corner / Re: Pie chart generator script needed

« Last post by Renegade on March 23, 2013, 10:54 AM »

Dundas make excellent components, but they are commercial and not cheap. (ASP.NET) Are you looking for free or commercial? I don't know any good LAMP GPL scripts.

3308

Living Room / Re: Mid-range DSLR Camera Recommendations

« Last post by Renegade on March 23, 2013, 10:11 AM »

So, what did you go for Josh?

-tomos (March 23, 2013, 09:50 AM)

Yes! Very curious here!

3309

Living Room / Re: Newly coined term, "internet fury"? A sad article...

« Last post by Renegade on March 23, 2013, 12:16 AM »

(see attachment in previous post)

-Josh (March 22, 2013, 10:51 PM)

Pure awesomeness~!  

3310

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 23, 2013, 12:05 AM »

But the price will continue to go up no matter what. Will there be retracements? Sure. But they will always rebound. This is a mathematical certainty.

-Renegade (March 22, 2013, 11:39 PM)

Sounds more like a declaration of religious faith rather than a mathematical proof to me...but ok. If you say so.

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 11:50 PM)

Just look at the math. Difficulty factor increases. Check the chart. It certainly looks like difficulty factor is at a very minimum strongly correlated with BTC value.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

http://www.thinlined...in-mining-explained/

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

Get a bitcoin miner and join a pool, e.g. BTC Guild. You'll see just how slow mining is on desktop hardware (CPU & GPU). The new ASIC hardware out there is incredibly fast. Orders of magnitude faster. And... You CANNOT buy the stuff. It's all sold out & pre-ordered. Waits for ASIC hardware are worse than for the Raspberry Pi.

Is it a gamble? Everything is a gamble! Nothing in life is certain. The question isn't whether or not it is a gamble, but whether or not it is a good one. With so many people so heavily invested in BTC, I think it's here to stay.

I'm not a fan of bitcoin in any real way, but I'm deadly curious to see what does happen with it.

-tomos (March 22, 2013, 05:05 PM)

I sat on the fence for a long time. I'm on board now.

3311

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 22, 2013, 11:39 PM »

@Ren - So ok. Next week I need to: buy some hardware for a client project, get a new set of flatwound bass strings (Daddario Chromes!), pay a few utility bills, pick up some groceries, buy another friggin' tank of gas, and pay my GF's car tax. Assuming I had $3000 in a Bitcoin account - could I use it for any of the above? That's what I mean by "for mainstream purposes."

My earlier question wasn't meant to be a challenge. I'm just seriously interested in where you can use botcoins for non-geek types of products and services. Because if I'm going to introduce an additional point of potential theft, fraud or failure into my financial life (to complement the risk I already have using my country's banking system and legal currency) then I'd like to at least be able to use it on a day to day basis. That's all.

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 11:38 AM)

Well, it isn't everywhere. Yet. But it is becoming more accepted all the time.

Places to use bitcoin? Well, yeah, mostly geeky stuff at the moment. But, there are others:

Buy gold & silver with bitcoin here: http://coinabul.com/

A LARGE list of places here: https://www.spendbitcoins.com/places/

A lot of geeky stuff there, but also some surprises. Guitar lessons, an architect, and others. Mostly small places, but that just shows that it is a grassroots uprising against the totalitarian control of fiat currencies by central banks.

Many places ONLY accept bitcoin. Those are often bitcoin related though, like ASIC hardware manufacturers, bitcoin mining companies, etc.

So, for the moment... nope. No gas, milk, or slurpees. But I dimly recall an article about bars in Spain taking bitcoin for beer and other libations.

As for governments clamping down on it... well... it's a bit too late for that. It's P2P which pre-empts the possibility of the obsessive central control that authoritarian governments so crave. The power of the bitcoin is in the network. Pandora's box has been opened. There is no going back. This is the same thing as 3D printing an AR-15 lower receiver - the information is out there. It's too late. The cat is out of the bag. Game over. The control freaks lost.

Will they try to control it? Hell yes! Can they? No. TOR. VPNs. Strong encryption. P2P. Anonymous networks. Just some of the reasons that they will fail.

Mainstream purchases are still a ways away, but with the dark forces of the IMF, Angela Merkel, and their other central banking criminal friends trying to steal money from bank accounts in Cyprus... Well, they have exposed their intentions and permanently undermined faith in banking. It will only get worse. They will try again, and there will be runs on banks that spiral out of control.

Back in 2010 I thought about dumping some money into BTC. Had I have done that, sigh... I'd never work again... hind sight is 20/20. Oh well. It's still pretty much ground floor.


As for investment vs. speculation... I really don't care what term is used.

I think it more accurate to characterize it as giving Bitcoin the spotlight rather than credibility. The simple fact its valuation is zooming up so rapidly is a positive indication (to me at any rate) that the arbitragers, always out to make a quick buck, have scented an opportunity (i.e. money + publicity + amateur investors) and are starting to move in on it. If I'm correct, bitcoins will continue their rapid rate climb for a few more months before it all tanks when the pros suddenly cash out en masse.

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 03:18 PM)

There is always market manipulation. That's a given. Stocks/bonds/funds/commodities/equities/whatever - they are all manipulated.

But the price will continue to go up no matter what. Will there be retracements? Sure. But they will always rebound. This is a mathematical certainty.

This is an overlay of the price of BTC and the difficulty factor. As you can see, there is a very strong correlation. You can find those charts out there then go check yourself to see the correlation. Difficulty factor is constantly increasing, as is the price of BTC.



Now, the most recent spike has illustrated not a relationship to difficulty factor, but has illustrated accelerating adoption and faith in BTC. (It spiked with the Cyprus "haricut" announcement.)

So, we have 2 fundamental factors affecting the value of BTC:

1) Difficulty factor
2) Faith & adoption

Looking at the overlay before Cyprus, I initially thought that BTC was overvalued last October/November/December. However, I'm not so sure of that now. It looks more as though BTC has simply been undervalued. In other words, the difficulty factor is the minimum valuation factor for BTC, which it has pretty much followed to date, and that the market valuation has mostly relied on difficulty factor, but with accelerating adoption the difficulty factor will play less of a role as social factors take over. Difficulty factor will remain the baseline though, and the level that it will not fall through. i.e. Difficulty factor provides strong support, while skepticism or slow adoption provides the basic resistance.

The notion that just because market manipulators cash out or make money isn't really any kind of a valid argument against BTC (or anything) as the market simply continues. We've seen lots of market manipulation in the past, but it simply is a part of the market and you can still look at technical analysis with a good degree of faith. i.e. Market manipulation doesn't preclude the opportunity for other people to hop on board and make money. You simply need to be aware of what is going on and plan ahead.

If BTC drops by half, I'm not really worried as the difficulty factor will still kick in and push it up. The introduction of ASIC mining hardware will accelerate the price of BTC as well.

3312

Living Room / Re: Newly coined term, "internet fury"? A sad article...

« Last post by Renegade on March 22, 2013, 10:46 PM »

What a disaster. All for a simple joke? Sheesh. People need to stop being so bloody thin skinned and overly sensitive. I'd almost say that she got what she had coming, but it's the same kind of idiocy - more PC overly sensitive nonsense. Poetic justice? The irony is only overshadowed by the silliness of the whole thing.

3313

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 22, 2013, 11:00 AM »

^Out of curiosity - exactly where and how do you spend them?

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 08:32 AM)

Lots of places, and in exactly the same way as anywhere else.

From what I've personally seen, there isn't much I'd be all that interested in I could use them for.

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 08:32 AM)

Really?

At least so far. But I don't do much in the way of transactions I'd feel the need to stealth, so maybe I'm just not part of that demographic where 'buyer anonymity' seems to be the major selling point.

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 08:32 AM)

Ah yes... Now I understand your point. You want every merchant you deal with to keep track of every purchase.

How much milk do you buy?

What brand of toilet paper do you buy?

etc. etc.

Yes. It's a great thing to have zero privacy in your normal purchases.

(In case you haven't noticed, this is a ball-busting post. )

So I'm genuinely curious...just how usable for mainstream purposes are they as of right now?

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 08:32 AM)

By "mainstream" you mean "tracked"?

There are many sources out there that accept BTC and many that ONLY accept BTC.

Who cares who is buying? If you're selling ACME rocket skates, do you really care who buys them as long as people buy? Is it important WHO buys them?

Well, I suppose in a totalitarian and dystopian world where everything is controlled... well... that's a Basement topic.

Yup. How about the people who got their accounts cleaned out in any one of several net heists successfully perpetrated on various Bitcoin exchanges? News like this or compilations like this don't exactly give me warm fuzzies...

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 08:32 AM)

Yes. Let's please tally the amount of money stolen from people in BTC and the amount stolen in other currencies. Yes. Let's do that. I have a sneaking suspicion that the amount of stolen USD only will dwarf any BTC thefts. But let's not confuse the topic of a currency with the degree to which money is protected.

*** For those not willing to read critically, I just critiqued the security of money. i.e. If I rob you at gun point, I just steal your money. There is no difference when BTC is robbed/stolen. None. Zero. Nadda. This isn't up for debate or discussion. It's a simple matter of fact for anyone that actually understands the issues at hand there.

@Ren - sorry. Couldn't resist. (Definitely have way too much free time on my hands these last two days.)

-40hz (March 22, 2013, 08:32 AM)

Hehehehe~! Me neither!

We have to have some fun aggressive banter at some point~!

Oh, and BTW, I made around $300 in a few hours today for doing jack all other than buying some BTC.

Now, I may lose later, but I really doubt it. All indicators say that I've got a serious upside.

3314

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2013, 11:04 PM »

Just to make people feel sick, if you'd have bought some bitcoins when this thread was started, you'd have 7.5x your investment.

Anyone else want to cry?

3315

Living Room / Re: Wrigley Making Caffeinated Gum - New Alert Energy Caffeine Gum

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2013, 08:17 AM »

Please! I want more GMOs and untested chemicals in my diet! Woohoo! Go mad scientists!

3316

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2013, 06:43 AM »

Lance Armstrong cycling on drugs: (see attachment in previous post)

-IainB (March 21, 2013, 01:10 AM)

BWAHAHAHAHA~~~~!!!

 

3317

Living Room / Re: Can you inagine a world without any personal privacy? Because it's here.

« Last post by Renegade on March 21, 2013, 06:39 AM »

Here's my latest disturbing realization about the emerging world with no privacy. Remember how much the poobahs like to wheel out "protect the kiddies" as a rationale for evil new online surveillance bills? Yet I just realized that the news media might not even have a clue about how what is supposed to be a "fluff piece for the week" then becomes something that could damage a kid's self confidence for years afterward!

Try it. Imagine you are an HR rep and an applicant is applying for his first job. HR Googles the name. Go on, try it: Google Josh Welch.

Yep. You get the blather story *with photo* about how his half eaten pop tart sorta looked like a gun, so his school suspended him. So his parents allowed that photo to be published ... why? And gawd help us if it was a *family photo* - where's copyright law when it comes to kids and half eaten pop tarts?

 

-TaoPhoenix (March 21, 2013, 05:28 AM)

YOU! My dear sir, have an absolutely astoundingly mega super awesome point there! 

+1 x 10^c

(Ok, I should divide by m and multiply by s, but that's just fugly.)

Has the media compensated the family for the use of the copyrighted photo that they have no right to use? Or is that a chilling effect?

3318

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Renegade on March 20, 2013, 11:01 AM »

Does anybody really miss the early 60s?
 (see attachment in previous post)

-40hz (March 20, 2013, 10:29 AM)

You mean a time when it wasn't mandatory for both parents to work just to pay the basic bills?

3319

Living Room / Re: Can you inagine a world without any personal privacy? Because it's here.

« Last post by Renegade on March 20, 2013, 09:52 AM »

Watch O.B.I.T. A landmark episode from the original Outer Limits. It hits the nail squarely on the head. Probably one of the first sci-fi stories to warn of the addictive and potentially abusive potential inherent in ongoing secret surveillance, conducted (and justified) under the banner of "national security."

-40hz (March 19, 2013, 02:00 PM)

Will do. It's in the queue!

On the other side of privacy, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" is a fantastic Twilight Zone as people pick each other apart. It touches on "information", but is not mainly about privacy. Still, the implications are there for anyone with an open mind.

3320

Living Room / Blank/Default NASA/DoD Passwords?

« Last post by Renegade on March 20, 2013, 09:34 AM »

This is just great! You'll get a laugh and a half!

http://ancientx.com/...m/anmviewer.asp?a=80

SK: How did you go about trying to find the stuff you were looking for in Nasa, in the Department of Defense?

GM: Unlike the press would have you believe, it wasn't very clever. I searched for blank passwords, I wrote a tiny Perl script that tied together other people's programs that search for blank passwords, so you could scan 65,000 machines in just over eight minutes.

SK: So you're saying that you found computers which had a high-ranking status, administrator status, which hadn't had their passwords set - they were still set to default?

GM: Yes, precisely.

SK: Were you the only hacker to make it past the slightly lower-than-expected lines of defence?

GM: Yes, exactly, there were no lines of defence. There was a permanent tenancy of foreign hackers. You could run a command when you were on the machine that showed connections from all over the world, check the IP address to see if it was another military base or whatever, and it wasn't.

The General Accounting Office in America has again published another damning report saying that federal security is very, very poor.

It gets worse.

And the UFO stuff is fun~!  

3321

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by Renegade on March 20, 2013, 08:39 AM »

Still no word yet on what is being done re the apparent perjury by police.

-IainB (March 20, 2013, 08:33 AM)

Laws are for us. Not for police, banks, the rich, or big corps. It's for our own good so that the terrorists and bad economy don't get us.

3322

Living Room / Re: The US Registrar of Copyright herself calls for a mixed bag of reforms

« Last post by Renegade on March 19, 2013, 10:15 PM »

  Now for some cynicism....  If congress ever even looks at it, whatever good idea's she has will be immediately ignored, whatever is troubling will be approved, and whatever requires more thought and study will automatically be included.  This seems to be the norm for our government(s), which is how we got the old saying "it's good enough for government work", and is why we're in such a pickle that we find ourselves.

-Tinman57 (March 19, 2013, 08:44 PM)

You reminded me of this:

It's hilarious!

3323

Living Room / Oldest Pirate Bay Torrent Irony

« Last post by Renegade on March 19, 2013, 09:54 AM »

This is just funny:

http://torrentfreak....evolution-os-130317/

There is some irony in the fact that a “pirated” copy of a movie about Linux, GNU and the free software movement is the longest seeded torrent. Richard Stallman, one of the key figures in the documentary, will be proud.

  

3324

Living Room / Google Glass, MAFIAA, Top 10 at Torrent Freak

« Last post by Renegade on March 19, 2013, 09:38 AM »

Just to vomit out a quick little distasteful splash of acid-soaked mush...

http://torrentfreak....-of-the-week-130318/

Ok, so we have the top 10 most pirated movies there...

Enter Google Glass... You see which direction my projectile vomiting is going in there, eh?

On The Pirate Bay you have telesync, cams, and all that. What will Google Glass do for adding to the fray? Something like instead of this:

Oz the Great and Powerful 2013 TS x264 AAC-OFFLiNE

This?

Oz the Great and Powerful 2013 GG x264 AAC-OFFLiNE

Will the MAFIAA pick up on this or will they sit idly by until they can sue someone?

3325

Living Room / Re: The US Registrar of Copyright herself calls for a mixed bag of reforms

« Last post by Renegade on March 19, 2013, 09:23 AM »

-- Off-topic - I like the images you've been adding to recent posts!  Makes your posts a bit flashier. (Not that you need it though! )