Re: Bitcoin XT - Officially #REKT (also goes for BIP101 fraud)
You are either extremely uninformed or you do not understand Bitcoin, or you are intentionally spreading disinformation. Either way this type of propaganda tactic does seem more inline with the tyranny you claim to be arguing against. What you are claiming here is simply not true and it has no basis in fact.
If XT where to add such features than people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation that has these changes. People can not be blindsided in this case and it will never be to late to turn back the clock so to speak. It seems like you might not understand the mechanism that prevents such tyranny from forming within Bitcoin in the first place. Which in part is actually the ability to hard fork away from any development team be it XT or Core. It would be better to learn to love the fork.
If XT where to add such features than people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation that has these changes. People can not be blindsided in this case and it will never be to late to turn back the clock so to speak. It seems like you might not understand the mechanism that prevents such tyranny from forming within Bitcoin in the first place. Which in part is actually the ability to hard fork away from any development team be it XT or Core. It would be better to learn to love the fork.
It's obvious you'll never come around as you are just here to promote XT. Nevertheless, I'll address this tired underlying assumptions that "people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation" somehow magically protects Bitcoin for generations to come:
False assumption #1: Everyone who downloads the program completely understands the code.
The vast majority of people do not understand the code, and most are not programmers. Most of us, even those of us who program and can read code, downloaded and ran Core without having any idea about the details of what it does. (e.g., does it log IP addresses?) The reason I take time to post on this forum about the risks of XT is so people can make a more informed decision, and if they decide to install XT, will at least hopefully be wise enough to question each upgrade. Ditto for Core upgrades. Hopefully, discussion like this help broaden awareness of the risks of new code.
False assumption #2: Those who do have a better understanding of the features of the program they download are guaranteed to understand the implications of those features.
The reality is that unless they do understand the implications, they are likely to take the purpose of the code at face value for what its author claims it will do. Undoubtedly, there are some who installed XT who feel protected from DoS attacks because of the patch Mike put in it. Unfortunately, had they read the thread with the Core devs when they rejected it, they would of known that (a) the only claim of a Tor attack was on Gavin's node with no evidence that any other node ever had an attack via Tor, (b) neither Gavin nor Mike provided logs or other evidence of the attack when the Core devs requested it, (c) the Core devs listed many reasons why most DDoS attacks are likely to come from non-Tor sources, (d) even Mike acknowledged that innocent Tor users would be harmed by it and (e) when the attack came from likely non-Tor sources, only Tor would effectively be blocked, not the DoS sources it was supposedly intended to counter. Additionally, (f) this is intended to evolve, and could evolve with enough critical mass combined with XT whitelisting to make it very difficult to unseat XT as the primary code for Bitcoin nodes.
Does the XT website discuss any of this? No. Not only does it ignore all concerns raised by the Core team, Mike has even publicly made statements about the process in which this patch was rejected by Core that very deceptively try to make the Core team look like the bad guys but conveniently leave out the truth of why Core rejected it. Fortunately, the dialog between the Core devs and Mike on his pull request is very public for those interested in reading it.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6364
I lean to your position erik, but I take the more optimistic stance that the average bitcoin user can and does understand the implication of the proposals being presented right now. The reality is that XT has proven unpopular with all but those who are dogmatically producing any argument that ends with "XT?". A large majority of users understand the debate and have rejected it for what it it, and, more to the point, want something much, much better.