Who knows, it might be the only way we'll ever hear from Satoshi again. On Sep 9, 2011 1:21 AM, "Matt Corallo" wrote: > On Thu, 2011-09-08 at 07:42 -0700, David Perry wrote: >> There has been some discussion on the new Bitcoin StackExchange site >> lately about the alert protocol. A few have suggested that it might >> carry the potential for abuse (spam/DoS) and others have argued that >> it's merely deprecated. In any case, enough have voiced concerns that >> I've forked bitcoin/bitcoin, removed the snippet of code from main.cpp >> that makes the questionable call and submitted a pull request. On that >> pull request it was noted by Gavin Andresen that it merited discussion >> here and some kind of consensus should be reached before acting on >> that pull request. It was also mentioned that he thought the feature >> was still more useful than dangerous and that he would argue against. >> >> >> So I pose the question to you fine fellows: Is the alert system >> valuable, an unnecessary risk or merely a snippet of deprecated code? >> Should it be removed? > > The alert system requires a signature verification when it receives an > alert, but so do blocks and transactions so it really isn't a DoS target > (remember that the alert system requires alerts to be signed by a key > that only gavin and satoshi have). > > The alert system could prove very, very valuable. In much software it > carries the risk for abuse or simply seems wrong that the developers can > send a message to everyone's computer to notify them of something, but > keep in mind that Bitcoin is financial software. If there is an urgent > problem (like the overflow bug) there must be a way to notify people to > upgrade immediately, which is exactly what alerts provide. Since alerts > no longer carry the ability to put Bitcoin into RPC safe-mode, they are > literally just a message and I see no reason why they should be removed. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Doing More with Less: The Next Generation Virtual Desktop > What are the key obstacles that have prevented many mid-market businesses > from deploying virtual desktops? How do next-generation virtual desktops > provide companies an easier-to-deploy, easier-to-manage and more affordable > virtual desktop model.http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51426474/ > _______________________________________________ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development