i thought about that also but then i thought, if he boots from the disk and makes is keypairs and then reboots his computer back to its normal partition without ever connecting to the internet, it should be fine for that purpose.
That's what I bought:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/180886304621?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649Two last questions:
1- I saw a topic, where the guy generated a key from bitaddress and when he was about to send coins he discovered it was already an address and it had 50btc on it so he could have access to them. I think the post was old though and it's really possible that the bug was fixed. Could that be an issue?
2- I tought about setting a brainwallet for my keys. What you think is better? Setting a really hard passphrase or just printing out normal keys and hiding them in safe?
Oh and one last thing
. When I shut down my computer and restart it, will ubuntu still be running or will I be able to keep using windows as before?
Thanks
1- I saw a topic, where the guy generated a key from bitaddress and when he was about to send coins he discovered it was already an address and it had 50btc on it so he could have access to them. I think the post was old though and it's really possible that the bug was fixed. Could that be an issue?
sounds like hes full of crap to me. it asks you to move your mouse around at the start inorder to seed entropy, so then for there to be an address collision like that i think he would have had to seed it with the exact same mouse inputs, which seems astronomically unlikely.
2- I tought about setting a brainwallet for my keys. What you think is better? Setting a really hard passphrase or just printing out normal keys and hiding them in safe?
brainwallets are the best way to go in my opinion but you have to know how to make a good password and that takes some knowledge. Even a long password may still be broken if it is not a good password. And even a good password thats short may still be broken. Infact you could type in an entire paragraph from a book and it would probably be broken by someone using an algorythm that searched google for known literary phrases.
you have to understand that with brainwallets if someone is trying crack brain-wallets they are simultaneously trying to crack everyones on earth. This means that it can potentially be a lot more profitable to invest resources in cracking brainwallets than any one persons password for something.
So with that being said, if you decide to go the brain-wallet route this is how you do it:
First make a high entropy password.
http://www.random.org/passwords/ can help with that. Write this down and store safely in multiple locations. give a copy to your grandma, hide a copy under the rug, but make sure it never becomes part of the public record. This part will protect you from brute forcers who are not targeting anyone in particular but all of the brainwallets in the world at the same time.
second make a medium entropy password. this is something that uses a real sentence with real words so that it is easy to remember but will never be part of the public record. For example "my pet gorilla snorts lemon powder when she thinks about her blue hair" its syntactically sound but semantically ridiculous. this part you NEVER write down or tell anyone about ever. it must only exist in your brain. this part will help to protect you against the brute forcers but also against someone who obtains the key you wrote down. so think like if the cops raided your house or something and got the high entropy password you got from random.com that key wouldnt be enough since you have this in your brain.
for the last part add something from the public record. things from the public used by themselves make very bad brainwallet passwords BUT in conjunction with things that are off the public record they can add a lot of security for almost no cost to your memory, since you dont have to remember the words themselves only where they are located. So for example you may take a common book and turn to a random page and use a short paragraph. now you may not remember what the words were exactly but you remember what book it was and about where it was in the book and what the paragraph was about and you can easily find it again.
Anyway i highly recommend this method and i highly recommend that in addition to writing down the high entropy password you work diligently on committing it to memory just incase. If you can do it right this is definitely the best way to store your btc because this way NO one can ever take them away from you. the government can take EVERYTHING away from you, your house, your bank accounts, your life savings, the contents of your safe, your clothes, they can even examine your rectum, and lock you in solitary confinement, and you will STILL be filthy rich, even after all of that. This is, more than anything, what makes bitcoins so valuable to me. You can have TRULY sovereign wealth even in a statist paradigm where the government has its slimy tentacles on every other aspect of our lives.
Oh and one last thing
. When I shut down my computer and restart it, will ubuntu still be running or will I be able to keep using windows as before?
yep it will run it on your ram rather than your hard drive. just dont install it.
