Diddums

Fair enough. Just for the record, I support your cause 100%, the NSA is taking the pass and there's nothing we can do about it. They seem to operate outside of the law, and the us government just sits there and let's it happen. The NSA have been caught so many times with their pants down and they seem to think it's all just a big joke and we're just here for their entertainment. It would be tragic if someone were to raze the place.

Yep. Too many people seem to think that TOR is this top secret, impenetrable network when it's not at all. Basically your pc connects to a node which shreds all your data and sends it in tiny little packages to the node you want to connect to, but sends them via different servers all over the world. Sounds great, right? Well, the way the system chops up your data is random. It doesn't recognise text, names, email addresses, etc etc. It lays your data on a block and chops it up. If your email address happens to be between two cuts, it's sent across the network as is and can be easily decrypted. TOR is awesome if you don't mind going back to dial up speeds and know how to use it, but too many people think that because they use it they're invulnerable. Just because the NSA can't decrypt everything, doesn't mean that they're not there. They're there alright, and the second they pick up anything about you on the network, you're on the grid. Even more so than the regular net because so many people on TOR are hiding shit.

That's a rabbit hole I really can't be bothered going down. This software has all sorts of anti-DDOS protocols implemented which would have to be circumvented as you're signing in from weird IPs from all over the world that the site isn't familiar with. Another aspect is that if the site suspects dodgy connections, it terminates them. TOR is often too slow to function like a normal internet service so the site sees it as a potential security risk and shuts down the connection. I also hope you're not typing in any passwords over TOR. That's very, very risky. There's more NSA monitoring TOR traffic than regular internet traffic, and if they pick up a password or email address that's not encrypted (happens all the time) then you can bet your last dollar you'll have eyes all over your emails.

Right, I've done some research and homework. First off, I'm looking into organizing something that's totally independent from the marathon, an event which people can attend and maybe have competitions, bring along some of the guys the charity support and have a good time for all of us. I approached my forum representative within BT (not internet forum, an actual forum) and she sounded positive about the idea and mentioned that it fits in perfectly with the BT brand. Provided that BT is willing to help us out with a venue, I'd then start looking at getting sponsored by companies like Monster, Relentless, Red Bull, maybe approach some companies for catering, speak to the likes of GAME, Scan, Overclockers, etc etc, maybe get some PCs lent to us, consoles, whatever we can get to turn this into an awesome event for these guys and hopefully raise as much cash as possible. My wife and I will organize everything once we've got a go-ahead from BT, she'd be great for this what with her outstanding management skills, so I'm feeling quite confident that we will in some way or another manage to organize an excellent day out. I'll also be exploring options to accept virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and perhaps most importantly Dogecoin, the following of which recently gained press coverage worldwide by helping raise $30k to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics. In short I'm exploring every avenue possible and will be reaching out to many companies to help us get this off the ground. If anyone has any other ideas please drop them in this thread and let's turn this idea into an awesome day of fundraising and awareness for those less fortunate than ourselves, so that they may enjoy the games we all take for granted. Thanks for reading, and as always, stay classy FG!

Not sure how that happened either, bit odd. Did it copy and paste the post? If not it's nothing to worry about, you need to be a verified member to see the PPRs.

Sounds like a plan Dave. I'm not sure about the Italian though, maybe Mike would prefer a proper English pub dinner? Just an idea, he's travelling the furthest so I think it's only fair that he has dibs on what we eat.

Can someone take charge of arranging a meet in April then please? It gives Tam, Euan, and whoever else a bit more time to save up for tickets or whatever. Obviously I'm all over this but it'd be nice if we could turn it into a proper meet. Mike have you got any dates yet?

Or forgotten to exist? Or breathe? Maybe he's been chasing a butterfly for the last week? You never know with that kid.

I'm already throwing some huge ideas around, but the time scale is too short. I'll update this as I go.

Ok, I've shared it on a few forums and will be posting it on Twitter shortly. I've actually got some very large ideas regarding this although this is very short notice.

Well a Peltier, in an environment like that, is like lighting a firecracker and then trying to make it not destroy itself. They're an incredibly clever design but without a proper environment to regulate them in, they'll burn out before you know it. I can guarantee that no more than an hour of running that fan, the peltier would've burned out. They can power small devices like in the vid. At a guess I'd say about USB power at most, so a weak phone charge or similar. You could probably boil a cup of water if you had the required equipment to keep the temps stable, but you'd be looking at a considerable amount of time for it to boil. To be perfectly frank, you'd be better off with a solar panel and a rechargeable battery for darkness.

Looks like I've got some promoting to do. This is astonishing, thanks for sharing James!

These spackers have to pay for a train ticket. That's it. Maybe 20 quid for booze. The rest is provided. Food, accommodation (although the room is rented out, so Tam will have to sleep on a couch or something), the lot. Train ticket. That's it. Don't make your problems my problems.

The Peltier is pushing it a bit. Who the hell has that kind of kit in a mcguvery situation? Very cool, but not very applicable IMO.

Euan you're a wbanker. Fleece some taxpayers or something. Hell, hold out a hat at a train station and collect money for the poor gingers. Fuck, this is happening again, isn't it?

COD in "it doesn't work" shocker. I still don't get the whole Facebook thing. I wonder if Google wanted royalties to use YouTube.

My 30th is on the 15th of March you filthy bastards.

This thread is pure awesome. For the battery fire, you can also use wire wool.

Not just drugs, but guns too. Rumour has it that at one point you could put hits on people too. Dunno how true that is though. Isn't it amazing how much tech comes from shady practices? Take a look at what the porn industry has given us, it's insane.

This article explains it better than I could, but I'll have a go anyway. Basically, all mining is is confirming the transactions made by others. Say I give you a bitcoin, from my wallet to yours (we have digital wallets), that transaction gets an ID. Loads of these IDs are rolled into blocks. Blocks are sent to miners to get confirmed. If your wallet has an ID of x and mine has an ID of y, then there will be miners all over the world confirming that I sent one bitcoin from wallet x to wallet y. If someone tries to get funky, those blocks won't match and the transaction will be void. In those blocks are Bitcoin rewards. Not all of them have rewards, which is why some people create "pools" and share the rewards if they find a coin. Still with me? The number of coins hidden in blocks is reduced every so often, so technically speaking we will never hit the cap of 21m coins. We'll get close, but the rewards will be halved over and over until there's almost nothing left. What happens then? When the miners have no incentive to confirm blocks? Well, that seems to be anybody's guess, but this quote makes sense: As for requirements, the way that the coins are kept valuable is by making it exponentially harder to "mine" them. The first Bitcoins could've been mined with a device no more powerful than a calculator. Now, you need some serious hardware to even consider it, and people are investing in this hardware. I don't mine Bitcoins. As silly as this may sound, I mine Dogecoins. These were initially started as a joke but took off like a house on fire. Their value at the moment is fairly high, so I mine them and then exchange them for Bitcoins. I'l also hoarding Worldcoins at the moment because in February a company called Scharmbeck is going live which allows people to buy Worldcoins directly using their bank accounts, which is eliminating a lot of hoops which you currently have to jump through to buy other currencies. Once this service goes live, myself and many others are hoping that the coins value rises. I think it will, provided Scharmbeck don't fuck it up.

That fucking duck sank my ship, the bastard.

Well that's the million dollar question. This is my view on things: It's going to take off. Not as a currency, but as a payment system. Instead of linking bank accounts and paying for stuff with credit or debit cards online, you will be able to buy Bitcoins and use that, a bit like vouchers. The value of the Bitcoin is determined by demand. I see the Bitcoin as the gold or silver. It's not a substitute for something of value, it is the something of value. It's getting accepted more and more and will continue to do so. So far the largest retailer to accept Bitcoins is Overstock.com. Their sales skyrocketed in the first 24 hours, taking $130k in Bitcoin sales alone. There are loads of smaller or even much more extravagant things you can buy with Bitcoin. You can book a space flight with Virgin and pay for it with Bitcoin. Zynga, the company behind big hitting casual games like Farmville and half the stuff on the Apple store, has started testing accepting Bitcoins. You can pay for college with Bitcoin. You can go to an ATM and withdraw Bitcoin, go to a pub and buy a beer, and have a meal on the way home, all paid for by Bitcoin. You can even buy a house with Bitcoin. Obviously I'm making it sound like you can pay with it everywhere, when the fact is that you can't, simple as that. In order to carry out the scenario mentioned above, your choices of where to go, what to eat and drink and what town it'd be in are extremely limited, but it's happening. Every day more and more small establishments are accepting Bitcoin. It's happening, right now. Hell, two days ago a company announced that you can pay your taxes with Bitcoin. There are ATMs available, and some have been installed are are functional already. Canada has one. New York is getting one. Hong Kong and Taiwan are following suit. Australia. Israel. Loads more. China put a stop to as much as they can for good reason - the Chinese government only allows you to take x amount of their currency out of the country, and people were circumventing this by buying Bitcoins, sending them abroad and then selling them again. It is an unregulated and incredibly difficult to trace manner of transferring funds across borders without any tax or revenue implications. It has a huge underground following for this reason, and Bitcoins in China have hit $1k again despite the government's efforts. Similar thing with India. The locals have lost faith in their own rupees so they are using Bitcoin to pay for things. Zimbabwe... well, that speaks for itself. It's not just an alternative, in many places it's a solution. It's not going to die. It can't. There are people depending on it now and the governments know this. They also know that Bitcoin is a contributor towards their GDP. Not much, but if they outlawed the whole system the effects would be noticeable. This is an interesting read: What is a Bitcoin really worth in China and India? We're past the point of no return. This is the next thing and I get called all sorts of things for believing it it, but I just remind myself of the reactions I used to get when I told people that you could send a letter electronically from one computer to another - and look at email today. One thing I'm still struggling to get my head around is the whole Litecoin thing. It's basically accepted amongst the community that Litecoin is the Silver to Bitcoin's Gold. That would make sense, if it wasn't for the fact that Bitcoins can be split up into "satoshis", which are 0.00000001 BTC. The number of coins is finite, and that's where Litecoin might come in. Once Bitcoins are more widely accepted there value will shoot through the roof as there simply won't be enough to go around. Some people believe that one Bitcoin is going to hit $100k. I think they're being optimistic but sooner or later the US government is going to release a statement that they've discussed how to regulate and tax bitcoins, people will start having more faith in them, companies will start accepting them and the value will jump. I'm not talking about a few dollars per coin, I can see them hitting $10k easily. The UK's IRS, called HMRC over here, has already decided that Bitcoin is a private currency and will have laws applied to it. People are really starting to sit up and take this seriously. Some are optimistic, some are pessimistic, and some feel threatened. JPMorgan even applied for a patent for exactly what a Bitcoin is. This is the only article I can find on it, since JPM said that they were in no way inspired by Bitcoin, all the articles seem to have disappeared, but this was a news report on some very reputable pages, including the New York Times if I remember correctly. I'll leave it at that for now, but f you have any questions, fire away!

There are too many kids trying to be the next big thing nowadays, and although funny the first few times, trolling gets tedious as fuck. If you're looking for a decent Youtuber, Devildoggamer is pretty good. Avoid anything with Rhinocrunch in it, that dude's a class A dickhead. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3RxAc57VYc[/media]

Nah, I get your point and I often read your posts and they really get me thinking, but even if Bitcoin was started by Them, it's not having the effect they want because it's spawned too many unregulated currencies.