I think that Bitcoin has a huge head-start that will allow it to crush any future alternative chains.

Let's take your example of Amazon or Google starting over and using "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to create "better infrastructure instantly." No matter how much money Amazon or Google pour into their new chain, as long as they control over half the network their currency will be untrusted by anybody. It isn't a matter of how much money they have, it's a matter of how they can get people to start using their currency and trust that the clients Amazon/Google/etc provides aren't wired to cheat the system.

I think that this alone will keep Bitcoin safe from commercial competitors. A viable alternative chain must not be controlled by anybody for anybody to use it, and not only is it difficult for the commercial entity to give up control, why would they want to? Once the chain isn't their anymore, why not just use Bitcoins?

Running a brand new 2011 iMac I get around 90Mh/s. Not perfect, but not too bad either given I didn't plan on mining when buying the machine.

It was a joke, but good to know!

At the moment I'm not sure what the community at large will do. MtGox obviously used to have a lot of trust from the community, and it's not hard, maybe understandable, to accidentally leave a small security hole in your system. However, at least one accusation has been brought against MtGox [1]. And I completely agree with knivesngunz [2] when he says it is better for the bitcoin economy to have no centralized place of failure.

I personally will be sticking to doing my trading at #bitcoin-otc [3]. I trust the web of trust much more than a server run by people I don't know dealing with an unknown number of attempted hacks per day.

To be honest I'm disgusted by the number of people who are panicked over this hack. Yes, I'm sorry you might have lost money (time will tell with the rollback), however did you really have all your money tied up in day trading? Do you use none of your coins for contributing to the economy AT ALL? Let's not create the world's biggest ponzai scheme, only for it to all come crashing down later. We have a chance to make the world a better place, to make anonymity and freedom a little bit easier. Please talk to your local businesses or friends, make bitcoins your default action for any transaction, and start offering [4] services [5], no matter how trivial.

[1] http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20207.0
(Ignore the weasel words in this post. They are a mockery, he is clearly accusing MtGox of fowl play here.)
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i4cqw/mtgox_is_a_sore_reminder_that_driving_the_bitcoin/
[3] http://bitcoin-otc.com/
[4] http://www.bitcoinclassifieds.net/
[5]http://bitgigs.com/

(Disclosure, I have 1BTC tied up in MtGox)

If you only recently started using bitcoins, you should know there is a "warm-up period" before you can use your client. It will be downloading information from the network in order to be able to redeem the transaction. You can tell if this warm-up has finished by looking at the part of the client that says "x blocks." As I write this there are 131378 blocks in the network. If your client indicates 131378 or more then this is not the problem you are experiencing. However if the number your client indicates is lower than 131378 please be patient, in a few hours everything will be sorted out.

You're absolutely right that it needs to be much easier to acquire and use Bitcoins. I've already started working with a friend on a few concepts for UIs and workflows that'll be much better than the current system of run all over the internet looking for information then cross your fingers while websites take your money. While from an aesthetic point of view things would look cleaner if everything was nicely separated, I'm convinced the biggest hurdle we're facing right now is usability. Revamp the client, revamp the exchange.

On that note, do any of you have any suggestions outside of "more usuable?"

We have ideas ranging everywhere from trying to hide ugly addresses to an escrow using zero-knowledge proofs that never actually touches your money.

For Android there's a similar app, "Mt Gox Bitcoin Widget."

https://market.android.com/details?id=st.brothas.mtgoxwidget

It's sad that the 0.01 from the faucet is only enough to cover a single transaction fee. All that hard work (of typing into a box) for nothing!

I had the same problem. Exchanges are very wary of PayPal for the reason that it does *nothing* to protect sellers. You should look into http://bitcoin-otc.com/ , #bitcoin-otc on freenode. It is a p2p marketplace where you can probably find someone willing to sell to you. Careful though, usually the prices for PPUSD are quite high, exactly because of the risks involved.

If you still can't find anybody, PM me in a week and we'll figure something out.