Quote from: res on April 05, 2013, 11:16:15 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on April 05, 2013, 05:53:30 PM

More people have access to the Internet via cell phones worldwide than have access to a flush toilet.

Untrue. I know there is a dailymail article which made a similar claim, But there is a flaw in the article and your statement is not the same as dailymail's.

First of all, It's true that there are 6 billion mobile subscription in the world. But it does not necessarily indicate that 6 billion people held each subscription.
In case of United States, There are 321.7M wireless subscriber as of JUN 12. And guess what? There are only 313,914,040(est) people in the US as of 2012.
And It's not a rare event. In Hong Kong, There are over 13 million wireless subscriber(2011) but the population of Hong Kong barely exceeded 7m(2011).
Therefore, The number of actual phone holder must be quite lower than 6 billion. It could be lower than 4.5 billion which is the number of people who have an access to flush toilet.

Really? So your logic is that, since there are non-zero percentage of wireless subscribers in the United States and Hong Kong (many of which are held by regular business travelers, not residents) then it's reasonable to assume that enough common Africans with a cell phone maintain more than one phone number? Do you maintain more than one cell phone subscription?

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And most of 6 billion phones are not even smartphone. A cumulative smartphone sales figure won't pass the 2 billion bar in this year. In other words, there are at best 1-1.5 billion people who have a smartphone and internet connection service provided by network operator. Plus, there are some people who has a phone but not a computer especially in underdeveloped countries, but computer owners usually have a phone nowadays.

I'm not worried about that either, the trend is obvious. There are likely to be older model smartphones by the time that Bitcoin is truely mature anyway. And even if that wasn't so, M-Pesa ran on normal cell phones. A service similar to BitcoinSpinner could run on just about anything, if the service provider was interested in doing so.

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Therefore, a number of flush toilet user must be 2-3 times higher than a number of internet users.

Must? My wife doesn't use a smartphone, and her phone cans still surf basic web pages.

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Quote from: MoonShadow on April 05, 2013, 10:47:05 PM

Quote from: res on April 05, 2013, 08:07:20 PM

Quote from: Gabi on April 05, 2013, 02:58:39 PM

Fiat currencies are suiciding, we don't have to defeat them, they are already ruining themselves.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168176.0
Most fiat currencies issuers have at least 5 more ways to destroy bitcoin completely.
If they want to destroy it, Bitcoin will be done. Bitcoin is alive because they don't care for now and that's because bitcoin is nothing for now.

False.

Read the link.

I did. It's false.

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Quote from: MoonShadow on April 05, 2013, 10:57:36 PM

Stop and think, young man. 5 volts at half an amp, or 2.5 watts. A standard bike headlight is about 3 watts, whatever shall we do???

It's not widely accepted. Can you make a claim that most of the people who doesn't have an access to electricity have those kind of bicycle-powered charger?
Of course you cannot. Therefore, there are still electricity related issues out there.

Issues, sure. You think small.

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Quote from: MoonShadow on April 05, 2013, 10:57:36 PM

some people have made a business out of using a solar panel to charge phones for others.

Think about cell tower. It's very common that people don't have an access to electricity because their closest electricity line is at least 20 miles away. And in this case, There will be no power to activate the cell tower they need. Powering it up by solar panel? Hello? Their governments don't have money to spend on electricity line.

If you're waiting for governments to provide for infrastructure, you'll be waiting a long time. And yes, a minimalist cell tower could be powered by solar alone, but most of them usually have a small genset at well. If you want to see how wireless communications can actually work in distant places, do some research on how the US miliatry does it. I used to build these things. It's not trivial to establish and maintain a 100 kilometer link, but nor is it beyond reach.