Prize for importing private key [WON] - page 2.

riX

sr. member

Activity: 326

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Quote from: Binford 6100 on February 21, 2011, 07:43:35 AM

Quote from: Mike Hearn on February 21, 2011, 07:39:46 AM

Yeah, we need to do a better job of explaining the mechanics of Bitcoin to a non-technical audience. It's important if only so more people can learn to trust it. Right now unless you're fluent in computer science Bitcoin is a black box and the existing explanations boil down to "trust us, it works".

http://prezi.com/tbpky5fm7qbl/bitcoin-new-p2p-currency/

what do you think of this ^^ presentation?
suitable for lay men? still too complicated? where/how would you modify it for non-techies?
audience for that presentation was a local hackerspace meeting. mostly tech savvy folks.

Very nice, you should make a new thread, people will miss it here.

Mike Hearn

legendary

Activity: 1526

Merit: 1129

Quote from: hendi on February 21, 2011, 09:25:49 AM

http://hendi.name/bitcoin/ Like that?

Yes, very close!

There's a small bug. If there are empty lines you generate qrcodes that contain only "v=1" and nothing else. That's not a valid .bitkeys file going by my totally informal specification.

The format it prints to is not quite what I had in mind, it includes all the GUI stuff. You might want to make it hide the text area and button after the button is pressed, so when I print I only get a sheet of QRcodes.

Fix those two things and I'll send you 50 coins.

Hal

vip

Activity: 314

Merit: 3853

Quote from: Hal on February 20, 2011, 09:06:46 PM

I'm kind of surprised that Mike's transactions didn't show up in my wallet. Instead it still counts that address as having a positive balance. Granted it is non-standard for payments from my wallet keys to originate elsewhere, but there are other ways it could happen, involving restoring from backup.

Well I just looked at the code, and it does only watch for transactions that pay me. However it looks like the new release will rescan the block chain on startup; that will probably fix it. I wonder how costly it would be to watch for outgoing transactions all the time.

I just upgraded to 0.3.20, and while it didn't find Mike's transaction automatically, I ran with the new -rescan switch and that picked it up. Only took 10 or 15 seconds on my Macbook Air.

hendi

newbie

Activity: 57

Merit: 0

Quote from: Mike Hearn on February 20, 2011, 06:06:28 PM

I'll also throw in 50 of my own coins for a web page that, in JavaScript, accepts such a file (copy/paste into a text area), formats a file like the above into binary and then generates a QRcode using the html5 canvas library available here:

http://www.cipherbrain.be/qrcode/

In other words, I should be able to take a .bitkeys file, copy/paste it into a web page and without any network traffic be then able to print my keys out onto paper. Don't cheat and use your own server side code or Google chartserver - I want to be able to trust that the keys never left my computer. HTML5 app because that way it'll work on everyones systems.

http://hendi.name/bitcoin/ Like that?

You paste your .bitkeys file into the textarea, then for each key a QRcode is generated. Each generated code is labeld with its heading, so you can print everything on paper and then cut out individually keys. If you decode an QRcode, each restores to a valid .bitkeys file, i.e. starting with the v=1 line, then including the key and comment.

Binford 6100

hero member

Activity: 504

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PGP OTC WOT: EB7FCE3D

Quote from: Mike Hearn on February 21, 2011, 07:39:46 AM

Yeah, we need to do a better job of explaining the mechanics of Bitcoin to a non-technical audience. It's important if only so more people can learn to trust it. Right now unless you're fluent in computer science Bitcoin is a black box and the existing explanations boil down to "trust us, it works".

http://prezi.com/tbpky5fm7qbl/bitcoin-new-p2p-currency/

what do you think of this ^^ presentation?
suitable for lay men? still too complicated? where/how would you modify it for non-techies?
audience for that presentation was a local hackerspace meeting. mostly tech savvy folks.

Mike Hearn

legendary

Activity: 1526

Merit: 1129

Yeah, we need to do a better job of explaining the mechanics of Bitcoin to a non-technical audience. It's important if only so more people can learn to trust it. Right now unless you're fluent in computer science Bitcoin is a black box and the existing explanations boil down to "trust us, it works".

This is a well discussed problem. It's just a case of how to do it.

alikim

member

Activity: 80

Merit: 11

instead of speaking Chinese here, you'd better help normal people to understand in plain English how bitcoin wallets work... Sad

bitcoins will never be popular if it will be a toy for a bunch of programmers

myrkul

hero member

Activity: 532

Merit: 500

FIAT LIBERTAS RVAT CAELVM

After WWIII, Whenever or IF it should come, any survivors are NOT going to be using bitcoins. They'll be using the next best thing: precious metals, or failing that, straight barter. Or perhaps something that the world lacks the production capability to make any more, such as bottlecaps, to make a game reference.

A QR-code would be good, but you wouldn't want to QR-code your wallet. You WOULD want to QR-code your address, though.

Mike Hearn

legendary

Activity: 1526

Merit: 1129

XML isn't a good format to use for storing large, binary data structures which is what BitCoin is based on.

As to the idea of passing BitCoins around on bits of paper, well, I still think that without the internet Bitcoin is pointless so that doesn't hold a lot of appeal to me. You'd be much better off using existing currencies which have a lot of time invested in making the paper hard to forge ...

[Tycho]

hero member

Activity: 742

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on February 20, 2011, 04:39:54 PM

Though fun I don't really understand the point of this. For backing your wallet you can just shut down the software and make a copy of wallet.dat. For moving coins between different wallets you can just send them as regular transactions.

Is there a use case for exporting private keys I haven't grokked yet?

It would be funny to have the possibility of taking bitcoins to base reality.
Like printing on a paper and giving to someone or making a QR-code.
Also they can be embedded in files like pictures and so on - mostly for fun, but not only.

P.S.: After Wolrd War III, when there will be no internet, we will have to consider other ways of bitcoin exchange.

jgarzik

legendary

Activity: 1596

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Quote from: theymos on February 20, 2011, 10:38:57 PM

Berkeley DB is quite common on Linux -- certainly more common than xSQL. It's also easy to compile, and it has no dependencies of its own.

BDB is common on Windows, too, but nobody sees it because it's embedded in your applications.

And because BDB is embedded (linked) into your application, no external server is required (unlike MySQL).

theymos

administrator

Activity: 5166

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Quote from: pla on February 20, 2011, 10:28:05 PM

That explains why we don't use a roll-your-own binary format. It doesn't explain why we don't use something a bit more common, such as XML.

_{You could also turn that argument around - By using a relatively uncommon DB, we've still "rolled our own" with the negative of having an external build dependency. Even if we want insist on FOSS, why not connect to a "real" DB like MySQL?}

XML offers no reliability guarantees.

Berkeley DB is quite common on Linux -- certainly more common than xSQL. It's also easy to compile, and it has no dependencies of its own.

pla

member

Activity: 65

Merit: 10

Quote from: jgarzik on February 20, 2011, 09:13:51 PM

Because it's a database, and thus easy to use, compared to building your own file format.

That explains why we don't use a roll-your-own binary format. It doesn't explain why we don't use something a bit more common, such as XML.

_{You could also turn that argument around - By using a relatively uncommon DB, we've still "rolled our own" with the negative of having an external build dependency. Even if we want insist on FOSS, why not connect to a "real" DB like MySQL?}

jgarzik

legendary

Activity: 1596

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Quote from: pla on February 20, 2011, 07:46:36 PM

Out of curiosity, why does the wallet use an external dependency (Berkeley DB, now "owned" by known-open-source-killer Oracle) in the first place, rather than something ubiquitous like XML (or if purely flat, even CSV as you mention)?

Because it's a database, and thus easy to use, compared to building your own file format.

Hal

vip

Activity: 314

Merit: 3853

I'm kind of surprised that Mike's transactions didn't show up in my wallet. Instead it still counts that address as having a positive balance. Granted it is non-standard for payments from my wallet keys to originate elsewhere, but there are other ways it could happen, involving restoring from backup.

Well I just looked at the code, and it does only watch for transactions that pay me. However it looks like the new release will rescan the block chain on startup; that will probably fix it. I wonder how costly it would be to watch for outgoing transactions all the time.

LZ

legendary

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P2P Cryptocurrency

Only Satoshi knows.

pla

member

Activity: 65

Merit: 10

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on February 20, 2011, 06:49:17 PM

The format should be a CSV file (unix line endings) that looks like this:

Out of curiosity, why does the wallet use an external dependency (Berkeley DB, now "owned" by known-open-source-killer Oracle) in the first place, rather than something ubiquitous like XML (or if purely flat, even CSV as you mention)?

Binford 6100

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on February 20, 2011, 07:08:02 PM

Actually I changed my mind, deletion of the keys will have to be a requirement, otherwise exporting them will render your wallet useless as bitcoin will try and spend those coins and you can't stop it ....

that is a valid point
but "delete" only when export returns OK (the key is written somewhere)

i can imagine to click esc on the export dialog (lack of coffee?) and the key could be lost

LZ

legendary

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P2P Cryptocurrency

Quote from: m0mchil on February 20, 2011, 04:25:57 PM

If anyone's interested I can easily add import method using just private key.

Yeah, it will be good.

Mike Hearn

legendary

Activity: 1526

Merit: 1129

Actually I changed my mind, deletion of the keys will have to be a requirement, otherwise exporting them will render your wallet useless as bitcoin will try and spend those coins and you can't stop it ....

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