As I continue to explore -BitCoin, I've starting to wonder -what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws -and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
- -One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are -verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction -is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been -published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is -possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to -that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for -all transactions. There I can see that my address -15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b -have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the -1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3 -address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address -1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt -of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and -every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The -fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given -address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to -generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told -there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or -organisation without the person or organisation revealing it -themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
- -In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and -regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border -without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting -laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin. -If the Skolelinux foundation -(SLX -Debian Labs) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to -normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted? -Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or -not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate -should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay -income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in -BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
- -For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and -accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to -the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be -easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get -access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really -a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin, -so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I -would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs -and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time -if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby -to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they -will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which -probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I -believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming -currencies.
- -The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is -CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is -competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles -to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get 50 -BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to -join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins, -by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines -and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50 -BitCoins. Check out -BitCoin Pool -if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a -machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones -own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining -yet.
- -Update 2010-12-15: Found an interesting -criticism of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought -it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be -equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
+The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
+the
One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language +handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all +reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the +receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be +able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers, +it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports. +I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers +of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the +submitter to specify which language the report is written in. +Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical +methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to +know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect +some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.
+ +A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided, +which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I +run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for +each category. The specification do not state that the identifier +should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers +here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each +category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name +as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle +it.
+ +The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet +differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description, +while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not +quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet +report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the +open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API +should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.
+ +The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems +near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to +use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification +should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon= +and range= options.
+ +The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle +several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem +to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a +report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories +available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how +to best handle this. I've noticed +SeeClickFix added +latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not +solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified. +Will have to investigate this a bit more.
+ +My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues +up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email +list available via Gmane to use for +discussions instead of only +a forum. Oh, +well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've +also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one +seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just +fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not +work like the free software project communities I am used to.