Quote from: RHorning on November 26, 2010, 07:17:25 PM

This is why I'm suggesting that it ought to be a separate but strongly recommended download for new users instead of something combined in the normal distros.

Sorry, I misunderstood you.

Quote from: jgarzik on November 28, 2010, 02:33:29 AM

We have the hashes for genesis block through block 74000 hardcoded (compiled) into bitcoin, so there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to automatically download a compressed zipfile of the block database from anywhere, unpack it, verify it, and start running.

I suppose you are referring to the checkpoints? If so, as I understand it, they are only applied while verifying a block which has been downloaded. The contents of blk0001.dat and blkindex.dat are never checked by the client, because the client is designed to check that data before it gets written to those files. As satoshi indicated in this thread,

Quote from: satoshi on November 25, 2010, 05:51:39 PM

Doing your own verifying and indexing is the only way to be sure your index data is secure. If you copy blk0001.dat and blkindex.dat from an untrusted source, there's no way to know if you can trust all the contents in them.