Quote from: bambou on December 12, 2015, 02:30:41 PM

Quote from: QuestionAuthority on December 12, 2015, 01:12:49 PM

Quote from: johnyj on December 12, 2015, 08:44:26 AM

Quote from: RoadTrain on December 11, 2015, 12:03:18 PM

What you argue here (as I understand it) is that miners won't be able to 'understand' the SW patch, so they won't run it. I highly doubt both an assertion and a conclusion. I am sure it will be rolled over quite fast. But I have no real proof so we have to wait.

To migrate to a large change in infrastructure, you need to not only understand the solution, but also fully aware of the impact to the existing system and all the other systems that are dependent on them, potential security risk, evaluate its risk/reward ratio, and finally and most important, you should always be able to roll back to the old version if something went wrong

A soft fork qualify the last criteria, but still, from risk/reward point of view, I don't feel it worth the effort given the risk it involves. You change to a new untested architecture, what if after 1 years when majority of the nodes were upgraded to SW and found out that there is a deadly security hole that can not be covered, thus hackers can spend anyone's coin?

Bitcoin's value relies purely on its security model. Existing architecture worth a lot because it is robust and time tested for almost 7 years. It worth a little in the beginning, since there are too many possible security risk to break it apart, thus it must survive the test of time to gain its value. Now if you change to another untested architecture, it will basically reset its value to zero, and take equal long time to establish people's trust

This is growing tiresome. Do you fully understand the complexities of the ACH/EFT system? I bet, just like me, you have a general understanding of how it works but have never seen the code behind it. I would also bet you have or have had at least one debit card and credit card in your life because almost everyone in western society has. There were 22 billion ACH transactions in 2013 with a total value of $38.7 trillion and almost no one really understands how it works. The way the ACH/EFT system continues to operate is by government and private oversight. People make a career out of working in finance and programming who oversee the system and there are laws that govern the form of that oversight.

The users of Bitcoin believe that system is flawed. They see potential in Bitcoin and are willing to use it. That requires faith in the original architect and the developers that continue to improve it because there is no governing body to regulate its continued operation or bailout its failures as there is with ACH/EFT. That leaves two possibilities for our acceptance and use of Bitcoin. Either build up a world class understanding of at least C++, Python, Java and elliptic curve cryptography or trust the people that are doing the job for you. I've learned to trust some of the scientists that work on this project based on their actions. Others I don't trust at all. Unless a mistake becomes blatantly obvious or someone I trust decides to speak out against this change I'm going to trust it because my understanding is limited. I suggest you do the same.

So, bitcoin is about believing and trusting people?

No, not if you're a scientific genius, it's not. For the rest of us, yeah, it is.