Get rewarded for mapping Created 13 years ago2011-07-02 08:56:17 UTC by Striker

This is not a thread for those who can't suffer reading more than 2 lines. I'm sorry.

I have recently thought of an idea that could actually flourish and mean a total refresh of the mapping community.

Have you heard about the BitCoin economy? Watch this video to get started.
It's basically a relatively new virtual currency( I think it was released in 2009). It's a rather utopian system, but it works. You can think of it as the bittorrent of money.
Since 2009, when a bitcoin was worth a few cents, it has evolved to the current state of 1btc valuing about 15-17$.

I can't explain much because I only just got the basic idea of how this system works yesterday. I was a bit thrilled at first, but you know, everything that seems to good to be true isn't.

So the main thing you have to know is that this currency isn't actually created from nothing. It's based on mining 'blocks' of cryptographic codes. It's basically using your CPU//GPU power to have the chance of finding the "winning" code or something like that... There is a fix amount of blocks existing in the system( this, I think, is a simulation of the real world case of fix amount of gold resources), each one valuing 50btc( and yes, you CAN transform them into real money).
Of course, a lot of guys saw this as being extremely profitable, but there's a catch: the difficulty of finding such a block is increased every 2 weeks. In short, using a powerful computer to generate such a block could take months. That's why a lot of people with money invested in mining farms: basically lots of computers that work for the same account, to mine blocks. A good server farm can find several blocks per week. But I only see this profitable if the electricity bill is cheap, or you use solar panels or other means of producing electricity for your own.
There's also an alternative. It's called a mining pool, and it's what most of the regular/poor guys do.
You join forces with other people donating processing power for finding a block. This is way fast than taking this task on your own. I think a new block can be generated every few hours from what I've seen until now.
This way you get a lot less income, but it's steadier and you know it's coming. It isn't profitable if your pc isn't efficient in power consumption though. You can do it for fun.
If you want numbers, I can tell you that I am making about 0,002btchour with my Amd Radeon 4850( ~66Millionhashs). It's simple: more power=more shares from mining=more income. The income slightly differs from one mine pool to another(mine pools are actually sites where you have to register, create your "miner" account and then put it to work using your GPU power)

There's a simple analogy for all this, if you play minecraft. Just think of mining gold. Gold is rare. Mining for gold on your own takes a lot of time. But if you create a team of gold miners, the chance of finding a gold block increases. Once a block has been found, it is proportionally with everybody, taking into consideration the amount of work done to find it.

Don't take this as a childish game. In fact, this is just a minor part of the bitcoin economy. The part I just explained is targeted only towards enthusiasts. This economy was rather created so that transactions are much simple to make, and it can be used just as real money is. Just watch the video I linked before.

Not only that it's extremely fast to set up a bitcoin account, it's also very simple. It's actually like cash money, but it's virtual: you don't have to sign in anywhere. You download a program from their site(Official Bitcoin client), and install it. The program automatically creates a "wallet"- some kind of encrypted code with an "adress"(this is public and is used to send/receive money) that represents your cash money. What this means? This means that only YOU have access to it, but it's also extremely dangerous: if you loose this code, or give it to somebody, it's just like loosing cash in real life.

Anyway, the thing is that it's so super easy to send and receive money, that's why this technology is so cool.

To start making some bitcoin money, check out this page.

Finally, I can get to the main idea of this post.

The idea is simple: posting our wallet address together with the map description, so we can receive donations(it's child's play to send money through this system).
Because the actual methods of making bitcoins result in a very small income, donations will probably be only tiny amounts of btc. Or you could exchange some real money for bitcoins, but I don't really see anyone from here doing that(although if the btc exchance rate keeps increasing, that's ...profitable...and risky as fuck).

The bottomline is that using this simple technique of "rewarding" will create a stronger motivation for each of us mappers.
And hey, it is fun!

so how exactly you get coins for mappin?

By donations if I got it right. I mean, since it's free then why not but I bet nobody would actually donate.
Never heard of this BitCoin business before. Sounds interesting :>

There's probably more people using Second Life money.

You got the wrong view DiscoStu. It's hard to explain, you'll just have to read on their site to understand what's this about.
I read somewhere that it has been called the most dangerous project on the internet, actually.

Wish i was an IBM Super server network admin right now.

I read somewhere that it has been called the most dangerous project on the internet, actually.

This makes sense. In a way, its like adding and minting money. Take the american dollar for instance, if I were to counterfiet money and use that money to buy something, the overall result would be a depreciation in the value of the dollar as a whole, with more money in play being spread throughout the system it's value would decrease. Supply and demand, you know?

Now this bitcoin thing (while obviously not counterfieting) is adding more currency to the system, not on a national scale, but a GLOBAL one, and while at first the depreciation will only be a minute and insignifigant fraction, it may grow large enough to set back currency value quite a bit everywhere. That is to say if we DID use it in conjuction with our currency.

Your post made absolutely no fing, sense what the hell does this have to do with mapping?

Skals, please stay away from discussions that require reading. Your contribution to TWHL lately has been only about small responses. You rarely exceed a line of text, and you piss off through your responses.

As I said:

This is not a thread for those who can't suffer reading more than 2 lines. I'm sorry.

I can't serve you all the information adapted to your own way of reading and understanding. For the sake of respect, you'll have to make some research yourself.

I know it's difficult to discuss complex things that need reading when we all like to be lazy, but with a bit of effort and ambition we could actually transform this idea into something funny and REWARDING. And that is most of the time all that matters. Not how much somebody donates. It can be just a minuscule amount. It's just that warm feeling when you see somebody cares about your work. And our eyes like to see increasing numbers.

I should add that your response was a grammatical fail. Not that I'm good at English, because I lack a lot of English skills, but I expect more from you.

I read your whole fucking thread as well as a couple pages on bitcoin so fuck off.

I don't believe many people truly have the attention span of reading a entire tom clancy length chapter for something that requires them to sign up for something and F@H.

Having a bitcoin wallet requires no sign-up. Making bitcoins on different sites presents this problem.
I also force no one. I felt I couldn't keep this idea for myself, and I heartily wanted to start some fun in this community.

It's up to you to react seriously, and not spontaneously.

Having a bitcoin wallet requires no sign-up.

Just shows how much I read. Seriously your entire post is 78 lines long, you couldn't include any form of a summary?

I've read this three times and I still don't see how this even remotely relates to mapping. The members on a mapping forum, sure, but mapping itself?

I was referring to being rewarded for the activity of mapping. Like you, as a mapper, work for a map and you expect a reward. Don't tell me you don't, because that would probably be a lie.

A reward can be anything, as in appreciations, reviews(like Archie did, and I salute him), or this. And this is just a little bit more fun.

I tried bitmining about a week ago. I made very little and it used up my GPU power and slowed down my computer so I quit. I also had (and have) moral issues with it, since the BitCoin system can be used to evade taxes.

Bitcoins are doomed. Enjoy your soon to be worthless currency.

Why's that, SpaGhetti?

So... when your computer is running this program, you make money. What does the program do exactly? Is it like your offering processing power for copious science experiments in Sweden and being paid for it?

Also, I don't see how this is related to mapping. At. All.

I know there is an online illegal drug market that is powered by bitcoins. Its funny, but I think anonymous money will be found to break laws soon enough. The idea is great in principle though.

Also, I don't see how this is related to mapping. At. All.

Make an effort reading what's under the green text at least. I was talking about donations.

It's like this: Somebody posts the map and a description. In the description they also include the adress of their bitcoin wallet on their computer, which looks something like

 14e23rrfbvASDr4367tyhfFf436fdsDS 

(you get the idea, it's longer or shorter, anyway).

Now, the willing person to award the mapper some bitcoins (like 0,001... as I told you, this can mean only fun, not means of making lots of money) inputs this adress into the bitcoin program. Which looks like this:It's like handing you some cash irl. There's no other stuff involved, just some copy-pasting and clicking the send button.

or...and get money that's actually acceptable at places.

So your proposition is essentially the same as being given Second Life money. You can be given an indeterminate amount in an unofficial virtual currency and of which the exchange rate is probably ridiculously low. So it's pretty much the same as someone coming along and typing "good job - have a cookie".

he mentioned the exchange rate being high in the original post. i really don't understand why people who clearly haven't even read the relevant information are even bothering to post. you're contributing nothing.

that said, i think you're more likely to get small paypal donations, just in terms of people using the service. maybe not on twhl, but sites like cstrike planet and fps banana which have a far larger user base might make it a wise idea to include a donate button.

Posted by Archie at 08:52am from Android

So it's pretty much the same as someone coming along and typing "good job - have a cookie you can't eat".

Fixed that for you.

he mentioned the exchange rate being high in the original post. i really don't understand why people who clearly haven't even read the relevant information are even bothering to post. you're contributing nothing.

O RLY? you refer to the 14 paragraphs striker wrote in the first post as the "relevant information"? Anything requiring this much explanation is unclear to say the least; Striker say himself he still doesn't completely understand how it works. =|

the only "relevant info" i care about is if it's going to drain my gpu/cpu power, i don't want a thing to do with it.

For Pete's sake, have you ever read a book or something? Entire team is babies!

Paypal is too "serious business". That's why I thought of this.

Interesting. But the reward to mapping is increased creativity.

Thus more success when your an architect/ video game designer/ whatever. Equaling more "real" money.

I cannot believe this. You can actually buy real things with bitcoins now: link...

[EDIT] And they accept international orders. I think I'm getting hyped about this. If I'll spot one site that sells electronics (transistors, resistors, capacitors, stuff like that), I will get high.

Congratulations! After wasting 200$ worth of electricity, 2 weeks of computing power, and brinking on the edge of insanity, you can get ONE penny, in only 5 years, you could have a mousepad worth two dollars!

This is like getpaidto, only automated and it wastes tons of energy.

Also considering that site uses a fake pseudo nonofficial internet currency, instead of a secure, governed currency, I can somehow see it open to exploits. And that's actually pretty concerning considering they're selling real, physical items.

Oh boy. You got it all wrong...

This is just an attractive currency, that makes transfering those bitcoins fun and easy. Nobody said you have to join pool mining.

For the poor guys who don't have good video cards, it's a waste.