Topic: Old but forever new (Read 1058 times)

One can't know everything, he is not specialist then, just common knowledge owner ;P
As above, if i need to know more im always asking

Yes, if two blocks are solved basically simultaneously and broadcast to the network then there will exist, for a brief period of time (usually no more than a couple more block solves) two block chains as different nodes build on the different solved blocks.  The shorter chain isn't bad, it's just shorter, all it's transactions are valid and once the longest chain is established any tx from the orphan chain are rebroadcast and get picked up again in the longest chain.  At that time the blocks that were solved on the smaller chain become what are called "stale blocks" and they block reward those solvers received is no longer spendable (actually the block reward isn't spendable until your solved block receives 100 confirmations, and the longest chain is typically sorted out after 1-3 confirmations, so no worries there).  There's other people who can describe it much better, but that's basically how it works.  Orphan blocks happen all the time, not thousands per day, but this is an aspect of the bitcoin network that Satoshi anticipated and discussed in the white paper (which you should read if you haven't already: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) and is nothing to worry about.  You can do a bit of googling about orphan blocks and stale blocks and main chain and stuff and find more technical and accurate descriptions, I'm new to bitcoin and only have a rudimentary understanding myself.

Unbelievable. Someone pm'd me this morning offering to buy my account. WTF. I guess I better go back to low visibility mode.
I told him no, not interested. But I did say that if it was worth 4 bitcoins I'd think about it.

I'm smiling right now.  Thanks.

there's no stupid questions.. and there are PLENTY of high ranking accounts here that are only that way because of sig farming. most sig campaigns start at minimum 150 posts a month some are as high as 400! this is why total boneheads can have legendary status (I'm guilty)

the thing about forums, any forum, is that they are public. this means you get all types. some people are rude and derisive, others are kind and helpful. hang out in technical discussion and ask anything you need to. you might get called names by some pathetic butthurt basement dwellers, but you simply have to ignore them. literally. any time someone is rude, put them on "ignore"

and remember, for every assh*le who likes to insult you here there are at least 5 who will help you out. dont let the bad apples spoil the bunch.

"A truly wise man is the one who can admit he knows nothing. A fool has nothing to learn." quote unknown

I get much more of it now, but you scare me with the longest chain part. Unless some 'developer' forces a side chain, I assume there's only one chain, the blockchain. Of course we can't allow the blockchain to be corrupted. So, are these 'shorter' chains just temporary to weed out the phony, faulty, or Orphaned transactions and the valid remainder of the short chain gets absorbed into the blockchain?  I can't imagine that all transactions in the short chains are bad ones. It would probably help me if you told me these short chains are created thousands of times every day and that they work themselves out and that I shouldn't worry about it.

Funny, I seem to be able to obfuscate even good answers to my questions.

Many, many Sr. and Hero account have been sold to people for signature campaigns (as evidenced by most of the replies here that really don't say anything).  Often you can tell because someone is asking a question that, had they come up through the ranks here, they would have had to of been exposed to the answer many, many times.  Sometimes I'll look at these people's post histories and you can see that in the beginning they were an active user, then there's a period of low/no use, then suddenly a rash of signature campaign applications followed by a bunch of new posts written in a completely different tone from their post history.


If your share is greater than the network difficulty and you transmit your solution out to the network first and the longest chain gets built off your solution then you have successfully solved a block.  You get the coins after your block solution has received 100 confirmations, i.e. 100 more blocks have been solved on top of your solution.  The correct terminology is "solve", it is a very complex math problem and there is more than one solution, but the first miner to transmit that solution and have the longest chain built on it "wins".

If your share is greater than network difficulty and you transmit your solution out to the network but somebody beats you to it and the longest chain gets built on their solved block, then your solution becomes what is called an orphan block - it's a valid solution but since it wasn't transmitted first and the longest chain was not built on it you do not get the block reward.

rank here doesnt mean dick all.  if you want to learn more about btc mechanics, this free course is a great place to start https://class.coursera.org/bitcointech-001

Thank you to all. I just wish 'search' worked better for me. (don't yell at me please, the answer obviously is that I haven't done enough work).

This quote I added is almost heart wrenching for me, all in good humor please.

I have a corner of a room 'piled, OK I stacked them' with  3 S2's, about 9 S3's, 4 S1 to S3 upgrades, a box of 63 give or take Block  
Erupters, 2 black widows what ever they are (scrypt), around 8 'really sweet' 7970's and a few of whatever the next generation ones were called (R9? and a single original off the line Drillbit systems fury thumb V1.2.

I run 2 Sidehack sticks for a total of about 27 Ghs.  My question about mining is simply because I don't know the answer and I'd like to.

Thank you kiyoshi for you're inspiring comment

Welcome back to the forum, person who in which I have never met!

Agree, no one born with full knowledge, we have always to ask , read, to learn everyday, no matter the rank here, this forum is created to help the Bitcoin's fans so let's do this kindly

Rank in this forum is not prove if you more experience or not.


You means you have a lot ghs? i think yes, you can earn bitcoin when you have a lot hash and can solved the block when you have greater than network difficult.

This is exactly right and should be the moral that we all live by!

Seniority doesn't matter. Rank is an equation of time and posts, not the expertise of bitcoin. People could be posting about politics, economics, or gambling...none of that provides expertise about bitcoin. The only bad question is one asked out of laziness. There are a lot of answers that are readily available on this Forum (from all the smart people) but some of us choose not to read for those answers, but yet ask them in a new thread. That's simply lazy. Everything else is a great question.

I'm sure there are huge gaps in the knowledge of established members. Everyone's got their own little patch of interests. I know borderline sod all about the actual mechanics of mining. If I wanted to know I'd just ask.

Just ask questions mate. There are no stupid questions. And forget about the rank and everything else. Even legendary members sometimes ask stupid questions or write stupid comments. No embarrassment. We are here to help each other, and to help Bitcoin reach its potential!

I don't think your rank is of any importance to what question you ask. Its just a badge that show your activity on the forum, not how knowledgeable you are. If you feel too shy to ask questions because you are "Full Member" then just make a new account and go post on it.

But i think there's some self-esteem issues here somewhere because nobody cares about your post count or know your IRL identity. At least they should not.

Just keep asking, and keep getting answers. I'm sure many will be glad to help.

Just a thank you to all. When I first came here, ck taught me how to mine. I was a slow learner, probably took me two weeks to get my first 7970 to actually generate shares.  So much for the past.
This and here and now is an equally excellent adventure and I feel the same sort of enthusiasm I had at the start. So, thank you to anyone and everyone who shares their thoughts and ideas.

I'm thinking of opening a new account under the screen name "village idiot" (if it hasn't already been claimed).
The premise is that even folks with elevating rankings don't have all the answers they need, I'm what, a full member, and I don't know squat.
I swear I've seen senior or hero members asking essentially how to use a power supply cable . There's topsy and there's turvy.

I envision a 'thread' where no ones identity is revealed, yes your ranking would be useful to tailor the responses a bit. I personally wouldn't be giving any answers unless I felt competent to do so. Anyone who responds to a question would be ethically responsible, and obviously we're not going to ask for your trading secrets.

I'm thinking about 'stupid stuff ', the things you're embarrassed to ask.

e.g. when mining if I get a share greater than the network difficulty, does that automatically mean I found, won, solved, a block?.  Do I get the coins?  And now that I got the coins, the question remains..did I find it, win it, or solve it.

On the other hand, there may be questions like 'will my 12 volt power supply be enough to run my 5 volt usb hub'.
 
So there you can see, there are those of us in the 'middle'.

I can't answer the first question but I know the answer to the second (you need a 5v PS with as many amps as you can afford to run what you're dreaming of).

Just a thought, pretty much the only one I've had today.