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.
+In the +discover-data +package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information +about the running hardware for use when people report missing +information. One part of this script that I find very useful when +debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module +to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel +module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see +the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run +/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1. The relevant output on +one of my machines like this:
+ ++loaded modules: +10de:03eb i2c_nforce2 +10de:03f1 ohci_hcd +10de:03f2 ehci_hcd +10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel +10de:03ec pata_amd +10de:03f6 sata_nv +1022:1103 k8temp +109e:036e bttv +109e:0878 snd_bt87x +11ab:4364 sky2 ++ +
The code in question look like this, slightly modified for +readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:
+ +
+if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
+ echo loaded pci modules:
+ (
+ cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
+ for address in * ; do
+ if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
+ module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
+ if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
+ address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
+ id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
+ echo "$id $module"
+ fi
+ fi
+ done
+ )
+ echo
+fi
+
+
+Similar code could be used to extract USB device module +mappings:
+ +
+if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
+ echo loaded usb modules:
+ (
+ cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
+ for address in * ; do
+ if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
+ module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
+ if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
+ address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
+ id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
+ if [ "$id" ] ; then
+ echo "$id $module"
+ fi
+ fi
+ fi
+ done
+ )
+ echo
+fi
+
+
+This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as +well.