I think that's the general message here. People are not entirely rational.

Version numbers mean different things to different projects. You might use major.minor.patch_level but you are going to get very confused by a lot of the major projects out there. It's an arbitrary number that increments, anything else is project specific.

Have you seen the current banking system? Credit cards have the same username and password. It's written in big numbers on the front of the card. Checks only need one easily faked signature. PIN numbers on bank cards are only 4 digit numbers. Magnetic strip bank cards can be easily copied with cheap equipment. Identity theft is rampant due to insecurity everywhere. North Korea has been printing US dollar notes for years now, the copies are so good US banks can't even tell the difference.

BitCoin, or something like it, has strong advantages over the current insecure mess. It actually uses hard math instead of trivially faked or copied nonsense.

That just isn't true. I brought a nice meal with bitcoins earlier today. You can also buy all sorts of legal things from some really huge suppliers like overstock.

Bitcoins have essentially no banking costs unlike the huge costs involved with accepting VISA or Mastercard. They are the perfect tool for small merchants who can't afford to have their entire profit margins eaten by banks.

You can buy lots of nice things with Bitcoin right now, I do all the time. Food, computer parts, bed sheets, all sorts of things. Bitcoin allows sellers to sell without getting robbed by banks. Obviously you should get the reviews of people you deal with in any currency.

If you give cash, bitcoin, gold, or anything else to anonymous drug dealers or shady investment manager snake oil merchants you will be robbed. Don't do that. This isn't something that only happens in the bitcoin world.

Thats nothing like the same thing. The Fed prints more money to bail out their irresponsible friends. Bitcoin adds features that do something useful.

Software gets updated now and then for enhancements and improvements. Don't you know anything about software? I thought this was slashdot.

I'm not sure it's 90% incompetence. More like 45% incompetence and 45% actively pushing any sensationalist BS that will sell with no regard for the truth.

Now we have the internet with it's easy access to information it's become obvious just how must rubbish professional journalists spew.

I don't think that's actually true. Even if they did have 51%+ of the mining power they could not alter transactions that had already been made and they could not steal coins. The only thing they could do was to not include transactions in the block chain, effectively stalling them forever.

There were and are better places to change BTC into EUR. Bitcoin.de has bank approval and follows every regulation it can find. Kraken.com also pays EUR and is well respected. Btc-e.com pays in EUR too but it's run by anonymous Russians so be careful there.

The transaction (mining) fee is absolutely tiny. The cost to transfer to and from fiat varies but it can be done fairly cheaply.

Have you seen what western union charge!? It's one hell of a lot.

You know the FDIC insurance isn't free money don't you? That money comes from devaluing the dollars everyone else holds. If your bank fails I bail you out and I don't have any say in the matter.

By that reasoning cars could not exist without horses. It doesn't prove anything.

What failed was the whole idea of trusting random websites. Naive people are going to get ripped off for BitCoin just like they have always been ripped off for dollars. Sad but true.

I thought the definition of a fiat currency was one that was backed by a government and government provided laws. I didn't think a currency backed by the immutable laws of math counted as fiat.