Are you still buying? I have a small amount I need to sell.

Should I maybe try installing it on C:\ and then just copying over the wallet from the flash drive?

So I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks, but I'm still having the same problem.

124703 blocks, 8 connections. Hours later, no new connections.

Okay, so how do I address this? (And if the answer is "port forwarding" I'm going to need a total idiot's guide to do it.)

Also, why didn't I have any trouble when I first started bitcoining a couple of months ago?

I'm using the new client. It's still stuck at 8 connections. 

Not necessarily. Agorism is counter-economic activity consciously geared towards a libertarian goal. As such it implies things like reinvestment of counter-economic profit into the counter-economy rather than the mainstream economy. But a counter-economic actor need not provide defense against state coercion in order to be an agorist. On the contrary, such things are only enabled by prior, simpler counter-economic activity. E.g., a farmer could be an agorist if he would sell his produce under the table, and then would consciously choose to hire a fellow counter-economist to fix his farm equipment rather than taking it to John Deere for repairs. He would be more of an agorist if he chose a counter-economic repairman whom he knew would do likewise - in that way, trust built around a mutual opposition to the mainstream economy is established, and on that trust such things as agorist insurance, dispute resolution, and protection (against the state and other criminal elements) can be founded.

SELL SELL SELL!

Or was it the other thing?

I've lost track at this point.

Yeah, that's a good point. I'd probably wait until the inexplicable attack gets explicked before I decide. 

Yes, just as if I were arrested and jailed for a long time for an act of civil disobedience, I would engage in a similar act after getting out. It's not about my personal finances (and even if it were, I have diversified my non-fiat savings). It's about supporting a technology that I believe can change the world.

I have no problem with it. I'd donate if I weren't bit-poor.

Government is the real religion of the USA. Americans refer to "the government" in the same way that Christians refer to "God" or Muslims refer to "Allah". There is no government but The Government, and the President is its prophet.

...Halp?

Okay, it's up to 123758 blocks, and down to 5 connections.

I'm investing in both. It's foolish not to diversify.

It's taking forever. 114832 blocks now. 

Okay, here's what happened in detail.

I installed Bitcoin on C:/ with a normal installation. I made several transactions to and from the address generated by that original wallet.

Later I decided I wanted to run Bitcoin exclusively from a flash drive for security's sake. I copied the files from the data folder in Windows' Application Data, including the wallet, and pasted it in the Bitcoin folder on the flash drive.

Since then I have been running Bitcoin with the switch -datadir=[folder on flash drive] from a shortcut.

After the trouble started I uninstalled Bitcoin and installed the newer version of the client, saving only my wallet and the shortcut.

Currently, I'm running the program with the switches -datadir and -rescan. It's sitting on 8 connections and 114138 blocks. It's adding blocks VERY slowly, but the connections haven't changed in about an hour.

Same thing, stuck at 5 connections, no confirmations. Oh, and the client isn't picking up my most recent credit of .5 BTC.

No... how do I do that?

If they knew that, then why did they make a self-buggering currency in the first place? I'm pretty sure they're all about getting while the getting is good and then waiting out the consequences in a very luxurious bunker or something analogous to that.

"They" would only want that if "they" can control it. You think they give a wet fart if people starve to death?