This is a different situation. Trades involving moving Bitcoins from one person's wallet file to another's can not be reversed. That's what happened in the case of the dude who lost the 500,000 BTC. In this case, Mt. Gox stores all of the Bitcoins in their wallet file. Bitcoins can be bought and sold on the Mt. Gox exchange, but they aren't actually moved anywhere until a user requests a withdrawal to his or her wallet. The rollback proposed by Mt. Gox would just revert ownership of dollars and Bitcoins to their original accounts just prior to the hack. Any coins withdrawn from Mt. Gox to users' private wallets can't be rolled back, however. In this case, Mt. Gox will have to eat those costs.

A lot of people seem to hope for it to become a PayPal replacement, at least for now.

Same thing we do when data measured in bytes gets very large (kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, etc), but the other way: uBTC (microbitoin), pico bitcoin, or whatever else.

This is the most exciting news story I've read in a long time. Why?

I have a medical condition where I have seizures under fluorescent lights, including CFLs. I also live in the state of California. With the laws banning certain wattages of incandescent lights here (eventually leading to their ban), that's very bad news for me. I've written to just about every politician, called, emailed... nobody cares! The seizures I have under CFLs are so bad that I can't work, do my own shopping, etc. No, dark sun glasses do NOT help (everyone suggests it). Sometimes I can't even go outside because a lot of outdoor lights are now fluorescent and people leave them on during the day!

A ban on incandescent bulbs would prevent me from living in my own home since they're the only lights I can use. LEDs are directional and not bright enough, halogens can also cause the kind of flicker that disables me, etc.

Nor am I the only person with this health problem. After talking to hundreds of Democrats, the general argument I've been hearing is "Your health problem only affects about 1% of the population. The ban is good for 99% of us, so you have to understand." No, I do not have to understand. This ban effectively constitutes tyranny of the majority. There are other ways to cut back on energy consumption. The lights in your house make up a relatively small percentage of usage. Worst case, why not impose a tax on energy usage if a certain level is exceeded? People could stay below the level by switching to CFLs if they choose. As for myself, I don't use air conditioning or televisions, so I should be able to keep my incandescents.

Fortunately, this will only lend more power to Assange's cause. Polls show that 70% of Americans approve of the leaks, and he is very widely considered to be a hero by many people. Imagine what would happen if that insurance file of his happens to be huge news, like evidence of 9/11 being an inside job or something. Just sayin'.

I was arrested 3 years ago because my roommate had drugs in the dorm room. Three years after being found not guilty, the police contacted me via Facebook to inform me that they wanted to return the evidence they seized from me, including nearly $500 in cash. After calling the officer who contacted me, I was mailed a check for the amount. Pretty interesting stuff, although if someone had made a fake Facebook profile under my name, they might be the one with the money...

It is rather frustrating. I can't be under any sort of fluorecent lighting either, even the compact fluorescent bulbs which supposedly flicker too fast to cause any problems. This basically keeps me from going out most places.

Neurologist is unsure at the moment, but his initial guesses, based on symptoms, are photosensitive temporal lobe epilepsy or basilar type migraine. MRI and EEG both showed nothing, but that's true for a relatively large percentage of people who have problems. Neurology has come a long way, but still has a long way to go.

Would this be flicker-free? The article talks about refresh rates, but I'm not quite sure what this means in this context.

I have neurological problems and will lose consciousness if I look at any sort of flickering display, including CRTs. For some reason, plasma screen TVs also affect me (despite not "flickering" per se), and currently the only type of display I seem to be able to safely look at are regular LCD TVs/flatscreen monitors, with LED-lit screens giving me the least amount of trouble.

Even for people without serious, disabling problems like mine, displays that have (even imperceptible amounts of) flickering can cause various headaches, eyestrain, etc during prolong use.

My job involves web development and I'm a bit worried that some day the only display technologies available will be ones I can't safely look at.

> But what will it really take to beat or match the iPhone

An apple logo. seriously, that's it.

Being an iPhone owner myself, I must admit -- it's a pretty great device. . .if you jailbreak it. Unfortunately, however, most people who own the iPhone don't really use it as much more than a status symbol. Sure they'll put a few apps on there, but they're not using it for much beyond what most of the other smartphones could do.

As soon as I gained employment at my current job (which is a design job), I fit right in instantly because I had an iPhone and so did everyone else at work. Things went amiss quickly however, as the new Macbook Pro came out and everyone that had an iPhone got one of those. . .except for me. I chose a Lenovo Thinkpad because personally I'm not a huge fan of Apple Inc. and the Thinkpad I customized was more powerful for a better price. Soon people at work began to snicker, and I was in the out group again.

Yes, the iPhone is nice, but even if something nicer comes out. . .there's a very large number of people who won't buy it because it's not made by Apple. Possibly enough to prevent anything from "killing" the iPhone.

I play a lot on emulators, using my PC. Does that count as PC?

1) Drive down to house with unsecured wifi, somewhere away from where you live
2) Spoof mac address
3) Use tor
4) DBAN hard drives
And see my previous comment for how identity thieves online can and do transfer that amount of money around. A quick google search will pull up all kinds of information on this kind of activity. If there were no way for it to securely be done, it wouldn't be happening every day.

More than likely he will have them send the money via Western Union over the course of a bunch of transfers and pick it up with a fake ID or several, from a (the stupid, less secure way) from many random and differing locations, OR use WMZ or another digital currency, bounce it around via several accounts, have it cashed out in a random east european/asian county, convert it to a different currency, and then deposit it into an offshore bank account of some sort.

There are plenty of secure and anonymous ways to transfer money. I'm sure he's not stupid enough to do a direct bank transfer using a legit bank or have them give him probably marked paper money.

Replace current Captchas with P = NP problems. That'll keep 'em busy!

Since piracy is not the only way to get the game for free (eg. I could share a friend's legit copy when he's not playing it -- because it's not like there are so significantly few sales that you can't find someone who has it), I would still say it holds true that piracy isn't hurting sales.

Even if there were a magic bullet to end piracy, there are ways to easily avoid paying, and therefore I highly doubt that 90% of revenue is lost due to piracy.