Quote from: da2ce7 on February 28, 2013, 02:42:57 AM

Except it isn't just me, there are hundreds of users (and owners of bitcoin) like me, who signed on to a system that we thought would have LOWER relative costs to verify in the future. That one day every, even the cheapest computer, could become a full-node.

That may well be, but what does that have to do with the network management policy that currently requires blocks be less than 1MB? I silently read the forums daily and only decided to post more recently when some vocal people decided that this network management policy should be set in stone when people started asking "should we increase the limit"? The network management policy is very unlike all the other "fixed" points that make Bitcoin. It only extends Bitcoin's capability while hopefully not exposing Bitcoin to the attacks retep identified. I'm normally happy to stay on the sidelines and watch what solutions people come up with. I like to hear some thought and pause about increasing the limit, I'm a bit disturbed that anyone seriously thinks it should be fixed and that aspect of Bitcoin is perfect just the way it is. The amount of thought that went into that limit was clearly crude and haphazard compared to all the other fixed points.

By all means the community needs to explore why it needs to change, what changes need to be made, how the changes will be implemented and when the network will accept the change. I feel that anyone that seriously explores those topics will see there will be a need for a change. Maybe they will conclude that we won't need to see that change in anyone's lifetime, but I would like to see some better evidence on why they think that.

Going back to your example for the moment, I don't think the goal is necessarily valid. Assuming it is though, even the cheapest computers today can handle being a full node indefinitely even with a block size increase. The only question is how high can it go if that is the goal. Bitcoin can always choose to make trade-offs between things like fast, cheap, and good. Even if we choose all three, there is still room to increase the limit. I would hope we would trade-off a little bit off the cheap side, and increase network requirements a bit more than others might like, but I can live with modest changes if the reasoning has legs. Regardless, I want the decision to be continuously re-evaluated like every other part of Bitcoin.

It is hard to understand how anyone can want Bitcoin to stay in the dark ages forever. Anyone that says it changes the social contract hasn't been paying enough attention to all the other changes that have been happening to the code base that makes the social contract. This change should be less controversial than P2SH or overflow bug. Software is meant to evolve and Bitcoin already has.

Open Transactions is fine, but please do not conflate what it does with the block size limit and why it is there. Anyone can use whatever version of Bitcoin they want. I hope you've never upgraded. I'm sure it will continue to work just fine like all the other alt chains, until the 32-bit time stamp issue runs its course. The Bitcoin you are using now will look like a quaint dinosaur in 50 years. The "real" Bitcoin will be whatever everyone agrees to use.