Hello there,

Just took the time to read what bitcoins are all about. Got to say I like the idea.

I understand most of it, except what exactly are we calculating? Hashtables creating blocks, but of what? Just useless hard to find mathematical proofs to dispatch the new coins introduced in the market randomly? If it's the case, why does powerful computer should be advantaged? Shouldn't it be randomly decided? Otherwise, does the processing power is sold for real money to medical research and stuff and it get converted to bitcoins?

Questions that should be on the Bitcoin's main page FAQ:
-Does the Bitcoin client use any processing power on idle mode? What about network usage?
-Miners of course use your processing power, but what about network usage?

Problem encountered:
I used Bitcoin client + GUIMiner (as recommended on a random pool I picked). It worked fine, but when clicking on "Stop" in GUIMiner the computer completely shut down unexpected (fans stop and everything). Bad GPU call?
I try to enter the Bitcoin client again, and all I get is a "Error loading blkindex.dat" error message. Already corrupted my data after one run? Not very fool proof. How can I resume? Will re-install loose my address and progress?