http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2014/12/27/The-Benefits-of-A-Contract-Free-Society/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/2qjdlx/the_benefits_of_a_contract_free_society/

http://bytemaster.bitshares.org/article/2014/12/24/Introducing-BitShares-Object-Graph/

http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2014/12/22/BitShares-Login/

http://bytemaster.github.io/article/2014/12/21/Provably-Honest-Online-Elections/

Please submit pull requests with any typo's.   

http://bytemaster.github.io/update/2014/12/18/What-is-BitShares/

Answering the question “What is BitShares?” has been one of the most difficult challenges I have faced. BitShares is so many things to different people and there are a thousand different ways of understanding what BitShares is. This post will tell you what BitShares is to me, its founder. Before getting into the long-answer to this question, let me give you the executive summary. BitShares is one of the most important tools that any community can use to secure their freedom; an idea whose time has come. After reading this post I bet you will agree.

In light of the recent events we have identified the need for more robust options for delegates to keep the network alive without software changes.   I am going to work with the team today to provide some new features including:

1) Manual Addition of Checkpoints -  this will help delegates get on the proper fork if there is a fork.
2) Manual override on the maximum number of transactions to include per block, this would allow delegates to at the very least produce empty blocks or blocks with just 1 transaction at a time until issues can be resolved.   This would have allowed the delegates to resolve the most recent bug without dev team intervention.
3) Manual override on various other params such as: block size, block production time, pending transaction queue size, etc. 
4) Manual flagging of transactions as invalid for block production
5) Manual filtering of some transaction types (in case a bug is found with them).   

With these features delegates should be able to respond quicker and there will be more work around options.  Hopefully we will never need them, but like a spare tire it is good to have just in case.

If you can think of any other features delegates would need to have greater control over block production let me know.

Aggregate Public Opinion Matters

Whether we like it or not the mob ultimately runs society.  Individual property rights mean nothing in a riot.   If public opinion turns against something nothing can resist it for long, not even the most oppressive governments.  A libertarian utopia is the result of changing public opinion and maintaining public support for universal application of the Golden Principle without exception.     

Unfortunately most people do not form their opinion based upon facts and reason, but instead defer to the opinions of others.  Each and every day people make decisions based upon what they think other people think.   Style, language, morals, religion, politics, and just about everything are heavily influenced by other peoples opinions.   When in doubt most people defer to public opinion over their own opinion and this is the heart of democracy.

Billions of dollars are spent every single year in an effort to shape and then measure the aggregate opinion of the entire population on politics alone.   There is an entire field of study dedicated to the manipulation of pubic opinion for profit.

Some of the more sophisticated techniques of manipulating opinion is by corrupting the measuring and reporting process.   If you can control the major media outlets and continuously show support of a minority opinion over a majority opinion then people will come to believe that the minority opinion is the majority opinion.   This can either be subtle or overt. 

Perhaps one of the most overt attempts to manipulate public opinion is the corruption of “scientific polling” prior to elections or the elections themselves.   As a result of publishing these scientific polls people conclude that some candidates are unelectable while others are extremely popular even if they are not.  If you can manipulate an election then you can change the very constitution of a society while facing limited opposition.

No one likes to be a minority that stands out against the majority.  They will often publicly support the majority opinion even if they privately object.  This creates a self reinforcing cycle that results in the quiet suffering and repression of the majority.

If we are to achieve a libertarian utopia it becomes critical that the market produce an actuate and fully trustworthy measurement of the aggregate opinion.   A private, incorruptible, continuous polling of the population would provide a means for people to feel safe communicating their desire to change the way society operates. 

Fortunately with the combination of the internet and modern cryptography we now have the tools necessary to produce a nearly incorruptible anonymous polling solution.   

I just added a configuration parameter to disable all database indexes not required for chain validation.  When disabling these statistics databases I see significant improvement in reindexing AND most importantly I was able to reindex the entire chain using less than 500 MB of ram vs the 2GB+ that some people have been reporting.

https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/commit/2a499e520b43a43ccd3cb458fad9a80caceef018

In the future delegates may want to run the optimized mode for performance reasons while block explorers and full nodes can do the extra indexing. 

中文翻译:
我刚刚加入了一项可以设置的参数， 可以用来禁止区块链验证所需以外所有的区块索引. 当这些统计资料库被禁止之后， 重新索引会有显着的改善， 同时内存只需占用500mb, 而不是过去某些人回报的的2gb以上.

https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/commit/2a499e520b43a43ccd3cb458fad9a80caceef018

未来的受托人会希望以高效能模式执行程序， 而区块浏览器以及完整的节点可以做额外的索引.