The public blockchain shows that the majority of coins generated in Bitcoin's first year have not moved.

Don't forget Google as predicted in 1964 in a children's book.

I think you might have missed the point. The freedom-friendly ISP routes the connection across the near-defunct Telex network, and therefore bypasses censorship.

Of course, the websites you browse only display upper-case characters and EBCDIC Art graphics.

Making shade is the obvious solution. Anything from portable gazebos to improvised Berber tents to poles and shade-cloth. Shade is going to be more efficient than anything else at keeping people cooler.

If water can be spared, a fine mist of water in one part of the square would let people who have gotten too hot cool themselves down.

I thought the reduction in spam was just because some of the spammers are using their botnets to mine bitcoins instead.

Governments who embrace and legitimise Bitcoin will gain economic growth due to Bitcoin's speedy transactions, reliable settlement, and low transaction cost.

Governments will need to make some adjustments, for sure, but they needn't fear Bitcoin.

But how good will the new architecture be for processing Bitcoin blocks?

That's why some of AMD's current high-end GPUs are hard to find.

Amir: Suppose the government knocks on your door demanding your Bitcoin wallet (under, say, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, since you're from the UK), or demands details of people with whom you have transacted bitcoins. What are you planning to do?

Every time you mine a bitcoin, a central banker somewhere feels a little twinge.

No. You can have as many public keys as you want. Anyone who cares about privacy would use a new public key for each transaction, and the user interface makes this easy to do.