I just paid for school supplies with my bitcoins, though I would have rather used dollars had I any available.

You can buy anything on the internet that takes a credit card for bitcoins by using someone else to purchase it for you. Those people exist within the Bitcoin community. Make use of the Web-of-Trust and GPG authentication tools and always keep learning.

Dude, you made my day by mentioning those two things in the same post. I worked on the really early Cue:Cat stuff (don't worry, it wasn't my idea!) and I'm like, totally into BTC now. :-)

Just wanted to add that I am a fan of http://btcvps.net

They are a relatively new VPS operation but they have knowledgeable admins available in their IRC support channel at all hours of the day. The servers have been fairly reliable as they are hosted in very solid datacenters.

If you have a need for a VPS where you can pay pseuodononymously using Bitcoin, they seem to be one of the easiest to work with.

p

The mining difficulty has been dropping in relation to the number of miners that have been leaving the network. This is exactly how the system was designed, and it's a good thing, because now I'm making more coins than I was before. :-)

Lots of folks have mining hardware that was paid off in the $30 days and now they still run for free at work or wherever. Not everyone is paying for electricity.

Eh, you geeks may scoff but some of us are pulling in 20-30% profits *PER DAY* trading these "silly" Bitcoins.

It really is the ultimate geek fantasy project: a completely open ended, sky-is-the-limit, world political structure changing, disruptive open source software technology.

Anyone that hates without backing it up is just trying to feed you disinformation. Bitcoin directly challenges TPTB because it puts trading power back in the hands of the people.

I worked at Oracle's large (at the time) flagship datacenter in Texas. The guards there were all armed inside of the building, which was protected by embassy-grade security. I only lasted a few months because the environment was so horribly repressive. I did *not* appreciate having my eye scanned or feeling like I was being watched (by armed guards) all of the day.

Thank goodness I found better. :-)