Here's a semi-urgent request. I introduced the RPOW project last year on this list, rpow.net. It provides a sort of play-money form of digital cash, an implementation of Nick Szabo's concept of "bit gold".
I am giving a talk at CodeCon, www.codecon.org, on this system, in about an hour(!) and I could use some help from you. One of the things I have done to demo a possible use is to make a patched version of BitTorrent, the widely used file sharing program, that exchanges RPOW data objects in order to reward people for uploading and seeding files. In exchange, people with RPOWs can get priority on future downloads, so by seeding today you can get a better download tomorrow. That's the concept, although at this point it is just an experiment. What I need is to have a dozen or so people doing regular BitTorrent downloads of a file I will offer during the demo, which will be at about 5:15 PM Pacific Standard Time, 8:15 PM EST, 1:15 AM GMT. That's 1 hour from now. You don't need to use any special RPOW software, just the regular BitTorrent client. If you have a BitTorrent client and know how to use it, could you start up and leave running a download of the following .torrent file: http://www.finney.org/~hal/ArkyMovie.mpg.torrent This is fully legal, it's just a home movie of my dog Arky playing on the beach with his brother. Nothing will happen with the download until I start the demo after 5. But if you could start up your BitTorrent client before then and just leave it running, it would be a big help for me. If you are able to do this, please send me an email when you start up your BT client, at [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you've never used BT, don't bother to try downloading and figuring it out. I only really need a minimum of 4 or 5 people doing it, but as I said a dozen or more would be great. Sorry about the last minute notice; I know that most people won't see this until too late, but if anyone sees it now and you know how to use BT I'd appreciate your help. Thanks! Hal Finney