1 2010-10-18 00:00:23 <sneak> hi guys
  2 2010-10-18 00:00:59 <sneak> i'm only seeing two blocks in my client, despite having 8 connections
  3 2010-10-18 00:01:12 <sneak> does getting up to speed on the network really take that long?
  4 2010-10-18 00:01:43 <doublec> it should only take 10-15 minutes depending on your network speed
  5 2010-10-18 00:01:56 <sneak> i will see "blocks" increasing throughout that time, no?
  6 2010-10-18 00:02:13 <sneak> it was 1 for ~10 minutes, and now it's been 2 for about another 5
  7 2010-10-18 00:02:26 <sneak> yet it is my understanding that the block count is a five-digit number
  8 2010-10-18 00:03:13 <doublec> it normally goes pretty fast
  9 2010-10-18 00:03:50 <doublec> if it's 1 for 10 minutes it sounds like it's actually generating rather than downloading blocks
 10 2010-10-18 00:04:04 <sneak> shouldn't it do both?
 11 2010-10-18 00:04:26 <sneak> i disabled generation, thinking that might have been the case
 12 2010-10-18 00:04:33 <sneak> it's still at 2.
 13 2010-10-18 00:06:44 <doublec> it should download all 85,598 blocks and then generate from there
 14 2010-10-18 00:06:53 <sneak> it just says "2 blocks"
 15 2010-10-18 00:08:00 <doublec> is this the standard client from bitcoin.org? What OS?
 16 2010-10-18 00:08:08 <sneak> yes, and mac os 10.6
 17 2010-10-18 00:08:34 <doublec> try running it with the -server command line option. Then do a: bitcoind getinfo
 18 2010-10-18 00:08:46 <doublec> that will list details of how many blocks are downloaded
 19 2010-10-18 00:09:16 <sneak> there is no bitcoind binary
 20 2010-10-18 00:09:51 <doublec> sorry: bitcoin getinfo
 21 2010-10-18 00:10:11 <sneak> "blocks" : 1,
 22 2010-10-18 00:10:27 <doublec> weird, definitely only 1 block
 23 2010-10-18 00:10:29 <sneak> generate is false, as well (i deleted the preferences and restarted it)
 24 2010-10-18 00:10:52 <sneak> i'm behind nat, could it be that the publically-accessible bitcoin nodes are just overloaded?
 25 2010-10-18 00:11:18 <sneak> i can only connect to nodes that are themselves connectable, as i would assume 90%+ of the network is similarly predicified
 26 2010-10-18 00:11:52 <doublec> I'm not sure. I usually connect to an non-nat'd server when behind a nat
 27 2010-10-18 00:12:23 <sneak> well, yes, everyone must
 28 2010-10-18 00:12:37 <sneak> that's what i'm saying, that the bitcoin nodes that are not natted and thus connectable might be overloaded?
 29 2010-10-18 00:12:56 <doublec> I would be surprised if that was the case but I don't know
 30 2010-10-18 00:13:16 <doublec> I run my own node on a vps and use the -connect option to bitcoin when running locally
 31 2010-10-18 00:13:39 <doublec> hopefuly someone else here has a better idea
 32 2010-10-18 00:18:06 <sneak> hrm, somehow i was running an svn build
 33 2010-10-18 00:18:12 <sneak> i thought i clicked the download link on the front page
 34 2010-10-18 00:18:31 <sneak> i have the latest one, now i'm at 1 connection and 0 blocks  (i deleted my wallet/cache/etc in between)
 35 2010-10-18 00:20:06 <doublec> you might have been running on the test network
 36 2010-10-18 00:21:01 <sneak> hrm, i am now 4 connections, 0 blocks
 37 2010-10-18 00:22:36 <sneak> hrm, there we go
 38 2010-10-18 00:22:42 <sneak> i quit and relaunched and now it's flying.
 39 2010-10-18 00:22:54 <sneak> oh, only up to 102 apparently
 40 2010-10-18 00:22:58 <sneak> this is odd.
 41 2010-10-18 00:28:44 <doublec> has it got past 102?
 42 2010-10-18 00:28:53 <sneak> i had to restart it a few times.
 43 2010-10-18 00:28:58 <sneak> it's going well now.
 44 2010-10-18 00:29:25 <sneak> erm, stopped again
 45 2010-10-18 00:29:43 <sneak> if i had to guess, it's only getting blocks from a small number of the peers to which it's connected
 46 2010-10-18 00:29:50 <sneak> i wish it had more visibility
 47 2010-10-18 00:29:52 <sneak> azureus-style
 48 2010-10-18 00:30:48 <doublec> let it run for a while and see if it improves
 49 2010-10-18 00:31:29 <sneak> also, while the functioning of the network is still decentralized, it probably can't hurt to put a web request to the bitcoin.org server to get a rough estimate of the current number of blocks, to indicate if you are probably up to sync or not
 50 2010-10-18 00:32:01 <sneak> unless i had poked around on the wiki i would have no idea that i am shooting for 80k+ blocks in total
 51 2010-10-18 00:32:10 <doublec> yes true
 52 2010-10-18 00:32:21 <doublec> bitcoinwatch.com gives an update of how many blocks there are
 53 2010-10-18 00:32:43 <sneak> that's a great site
 54 2010-10-18 00:34:19 <sneak> where can i buy bitcoins for paypal?
 55 2010-10-18 00:34:33 <doublec> I can give you an ip for one of my nodes if you want one that's unlikely to be overloaded. You can use the -addnode switch to add it.
 56 2010-10-18 00:34:42 <doublec> bitcoins via paypal has been problematic lately
 57 2010-10-18 00:34:50 <thrashaholic> sneak, #bitcoin-otc :)
 58 2010-10-18 00:34:58 <doublec> due to scammers doing chargebacks on the sites that accepted it
 59 2010-10-18 00:35:22 <doublec> sneak, have you got your free bitcoins from the faucet?
 60 2010-10-18 00:35:28 <doublec> ;faucet
 61 2010-10-18 00:35:29 <bitbot> faucet is https://freebitcoins.appspot.com (Free Bitcoins) courtesy of gavin
 62 2010-10-18 00:35:35 <thrashaholic> or there :)
 63 2010-10-18 00:35:56 <sneak> doublec: i have
 64 2010-10-18 00:35:58 <sneak> but i don't have all the blocks
 65 2010-10-18 00:36:00 <doublec> and as thrashaholic pointed out, #bitcoin-otc is where people arrange private trades
 66 2010-10-18 00:36:00 <sneak> so i can't see them yet
 67 2010-10-18 00:36:01 <Kiba> Tuesday, MtGox will return to partial normacy
 68 2010-10-18 00:36:08 <Kiba> Bitcoinmarket is undergoing major upgrade
 69 2010-10-18 00:38:55 <sneak> if every trader in bitcoin had to be on the network to use it, it would be disaster 'cause while the underlying scheme is nothing short of brilliant, the implementation is still super-rough
 70 2010-10-18 00:39:08 <sneak> but it's great that it still works even without end-users doing their own crypto, via proxy webapps etc
 71 2010-10-18 00:39:14 <sneak> this is an exciting time
 72 2010-10-18 00:39:25 <doublec> yes, the user friendliness of the clients could be improved
 73 2010-10-18 00:39:38 <sneak> i've relaunched mine 5 times and i'm up to 1300 blocks :)
 74 2010-10-18 00:39:40 <Kiba> clients are for advanced users
 75 2010-10-18 00:39:49 <doublec> it'd be nice to have a libbitcoin written in C for people to write clients against
 76 2010-10-18 00:39:51 <thrashaholic> yeah, most people are going to be using a web client
 77 2010-10-18 00:40:04 <Kiba> there are bounties for a web client in chrome
 78 2010-10-18 00:40:07 <sneak> what's cool is that the network still works, even without most people ever touching it directly
 79 2010-10-18 00:40:21 <thrashaholic> how much is the bounty?
 80 2010-10-18 00:40:23 <sneak> i recently implemented hashcash in javascript
 81 2010-10-18 00:40:40 <doublec> nice
 82 2010-10-18 00:40:44 <doublec> is the code public?
 83 2010-10-18 00:40:48 <sneak> javascript crypto performance is horrible, it might even be too slow to do the necessary verifications
 84 2010-10-18 00:41:04 <sneak> it's not, but it's not complex enough to be public
 85 2010-10-18 00:41:17 <sneak> it's just incrementing a nonce and checking an sha1 for a certain number of leading zero bits
 86 2010-10-18 00:41:30 <thrashaholic> i thought it might be too slow, but it could be doable in v8
 87 2010-10-18 00:41:35 <Kiba> well, most people are not going to be generating bitcoins
 88 2010-10-18 00:41:49 <sneak> Kiba: i was just talkign about verifying the chain.
 89 2010-10-18 00:41:59 <sneak> not minting
 90 2010-10-18 00:42:01 <thrashaholic> i'll have to do some benchmarks one day in node
 91 2010-10-18 00:42:13 <doublec> Mozilla's kraken JS benchmark has crypto code as one of the tests. So things will improve.
 92 2010-10-18 00:42:34 <sneak> i was getting 4M sha1/sec in the c implementation
 93 2010-10-18 00:42:44 <nanotube> sneak: just wait - i remember it taking me about an hour to get all the blocks when starting from scratch, back when block count was in the 60k range
 94 2010-10-18 00:42:48 <nanotube> sneak: so just be patient.
 95 2010-10-18 00:42:48 <sneak> on the fastest javascript engine i could find it was like 12k/sec
 96 2010-10-18 00:42:59 <sneak> nanotube: i'll leave it overnight
 97 2010-10-18 00:43:03 <sneak> thing is, it's not going up
 98 2010-10-18 00:43:18 <sneak> it only goes up if i quit and re-launch (and presumably connect to different nodes)
 99 2010-10-18 00:43:42 <Kiba> sneak: takes time to download everything
100 2010-10-18 00:43:42 <nanotube> sneak: how long have you waited before re-launch?
101 2010-10-18 00:43:51 <sneak> 10-15 mins
102 2010-10-18 00:43:55 <nanotube> when i was getting the whole block chain, there have been periods of several minutes where it'd get nothing...
103 2010-10-18 00:43:59 <sneak> is there a timeout for dropping peers if they don't send updats?
104 2010-10-18 00:44:01 <nanotube> so i'd say, just wait and see.
105 2010-10-18 00:44:24 <nanotube> peers should send what you request, iirc... but i'm not really up to speed on the implementation details.
106 2010-10-18 00:47:40 <FreeMoney> I think you can still get a lot of the chain via torrent
107 2010-10-18 00:51:55 <sneak> how big is it, in total?
108 2010-10-18 00:52:29 <FreeMoney> lemme check my chain
109 2010-10-18 00:53:27 <FreeMoney> 35MB
110 2010-10-18 00:53:35 <sneak> oh, that's small
111 2010-10-18 00:53:52 <sneak> i guess block by block in a decentralized broadcasting network that might take a minute or 100 though
112 2010-10-18 00:54:19 <FreeMoney> let me see if i have the old torrent or not
113 2010-10-18 00:54:37 <doublec> I just ran a clean client behind a nat and it's downloaded all the blocks
114 2010-10-18 00:55:04 <doublec> is there something flaky about your network?
115 2010-10-18 00:55:51 <FreeMoney> I don't have it, if you search the forums you can probably find it though
116 2010-10-18 00:57:01 <sneak> doublec: not that i know of
117 2010-10-18 00:57:28 <genjix> hey doublec and nanotube
118 2010-10-18 00:57:33 <doublec> hi genjix
119 2010-10-18 00:57:37 <genjix> and everyone else
120 2010-10-18 00:57:53 <sneak> my network does have ipv6, via 6to4
121 2010-10-18 00:58:00 <nanotube> genjix: o/ :)
122 2010-10-18 00:58:03 <sneak> will the client prefer ipv6?  if so, that might make it go slower.
123 2010-10-18 00:58:04 <genjix> bitcoins been making my mind run wild :)
124 2010-10-18 00:58:32 <genjix> i didn't mention that i used to write code and love maths
125 2010-10-18 00:58:53 <genjix> so i've been trying to come up with how distributed poker could work
126 2010-10-18 00:59:15 <genjix> i found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_poker for verifying your hands
127 2010-10-18 00:59:38 <genjix> but how could you store the money in the pot to a third party?
128 2010-10-18 00:59:59 <genjix> i assume you'd need some escrows to hold it for you
129 2010-10-18 01:00:38 <genjix> but then you're still finding 10 mutually trusted third parties to hold your cash
130 2010-10-18 01:01:28 <genjix> how do you combat collaboration or disconnects? appreciate any things i can read, or ideas
131 2010-10-18 01:01:46 <sneak> genjix: this is a Hard Problem
132 2010-10-18 01:01:56 <sneak> not impossible, but lots of thinking required :)
133 2010-10-18 01:01:58 <sneak> i like it
134 2010-10-18 01:03:08 <genjix> the only idea I have so far is semi-centralised, where each user chooses to trust 2 dedicated servers
135 2010-10-18 01:03:25 <genjix> and the money in the pot gets divided into the servers
136 2010-10-18 01:03:36 <genjix> (6 players = 12 servers)
137 2010-10-18 01:04:06 <genjix> if a server refuses to release money when they should, then their reputation metric becomes blackened
138 2010-10-18 01:04:13 <genjix> and everyone ostracises them
139 2010-10-18 01:05:49 <genjix> and by majority vote of the escrow servers, they can boot a bad server. so the only way to own the game would be to 3 of the 6 players at the table... which is perfectly possible
140 2010-10-18 01:07:19 <sneak> genjix: i am not entirely convinced that it needs to be decentralized
141 2010-10-18 01:07:36 <sneak> you could centralize it on something like a tor hidden service
142 2010-10-18 01:07:40 <sneak> then use reputation
143 2010-10-18 01:07:49 <sneak> much like how current centralized poker works, just anonymous centralization
144 2010-10-18 01:07:51 <genjix> theres very good reason to centralise it
145 2010-10-18 01:08:01 <genjix> - no rake
146 2010-10-18 01:08:07 <sneak> to de-centralize it you mean
147 2010-10-18 01:08:16 <genjix> yep
148 2010-10-18 01:08:24 <sneak> thing is, once you've opened the software, rakes will fall to basically zero
149 2010-10-18 01:08:28 <sneak> not zero exactly, but basically zero
150 2010-10-18 01:08:35 <sneak> much like minting
151 2010-10-18 01:08:37 <genjix> - no one controls your software
152 2010-10-18 01:08:48 <genjix> but how can I trust the server then if its centralised