Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/docs'

docs/manifesto/social_networking.md

@@ -1105,6 +1105,44 @@ people will start Sovcorps. So to get a foot in the door, we have to cherry pick
 and snipe little areas where the big network is failing, and once we have a foot
 in the door, then we can get rolling.
 
+### failure of previous altcoins to succeed in this strategy
+
+During the last decade, numberless altcoins have attempted to compete with
+Bitcoin, and they all got crushed, because the differences between them and
+Bitcoin really did not matter that much. 
+
+They failed to differentiate themselves from bitcoin.  They could
+not find a niche in which to start.
+
+Ether did OK, because they  supported smart contracts and bitcoin did not,
+but now that bitcoin has some limited smart contract capability,
+they are going down too, because bitcoin has the big network advantage.
+
+Being the biggest, it is far more convertible into goods and services
+than any other.  Which means ether is doomed now that bitcoin is
+doing smart contracts.
+
+Monero did OK, because it is the leading privacy coin.  It has a niche, but
+cannot break out of the not very large niche.  Because its privacy mechanism means it is
+a worse bitcoin than bitcoin in other respects.
+
+And the cold start problem means we cannot directly take over that niche either.
+
+But our proposed privacy mechanism means we have a tech advantage over both
+Bitcoin and Monero - better contract capability than Bitcoin or Ether, because
+a snark can prove fulfillment of a contract that without burdening the network
+with a costly proof of fulfillment, and without revealing everything to the
+network, and without the rest of the network needing to know what that 
+contract is or be able to evaluate it.  Because of its privacy mechanism,
+Monero cannot do contracts, which prevents atomic exchange between Monero
+and Bitcoin, and prevents Monero from doing a lightning network that would
+enable fast atomic exchange between itself and other networks.
+
+So if we get a niche, get differentiation from Monero and Bitcoin,
+we can then break out of that niche and eat Monero, being a better
+privacy coin, a better Monero, and from the Monero niche eat Bitcoin,
+being, unlike Monero, a better Bitcoin.
+
 ### Bitmessage
 
 The lowest hanging fruit of all, (because, unfortunately, there is
@@ -1124,8 +1162,8 @@ a little closer to the faint smell of money.
 So we create a currency.  But because it will be created on sovcorp model
 people cannot obtain it by proof of work - they have to buy it.  Which
 will require gateways between bitcoin lightning and the currency supported by
-by the network, and gateways between the conversations on the network and
+by the network, supporting atomic lightning exchange
-nostr.
+and gateways between the conversations on the network and nostr.
 
 # Development sequence
 

docs/manifesto/sox_accounting.md

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ themselves ever going near the stuff, or knowing anything about the stuff.
 And, as ponzi scams tend to do, need to do, they grew and grew and grew,
 resulting many excited investors buying Enron shares.
 
-And some people wondered, “where are these mighty profits coming from.  How
+And some people wondered, “where are these mighty profits coming from?  How
 can you create value without ever getting anywhere near anything that actually
 has value?”.  To which Enron replied “financial wizardry”, which was, in a
 sense, true.
@@ -99,11 +99,13 @@ Accounting is the art and science of making sense out of the books, and
 making sure the books make sense.  In the aftermath of the Great Minority
 Mortgage Meltdown, a whole lot of entities went belly up, and when the
 creditors went through the books, they found all the mortgages the entities
-supposedly owned, but were frequently unable to find the people
+supposedly owned, but were frequently unable to find the physical people
-supposedly responsible for paying these mortgages, or the properties that
+supposedly responsible for paying these mortgages,
+and were sometimes unable to find the physical properties that
 were supposedly security for these mortgages.
 
-Sox books just tend to not track value very well, being designed for a
+Sox books just tend to not track value very well, because they
+just don't track physical reality, being designed for a
 different, more complex, and difficult to define, task.  Sox books tend to
 track official reality and disregard the reality of the ground beneath your
 feet, the things in your hands, and what is before your eyes, with the result
@@ -128,7 +130,8 @@ startups trying to go public, since the potential investors know that the
 books do not accurately tell the investors how the business is doing.
 
 What established businesses do instead is prepare one set of books for
-Sox compliance, and another set of books for management that do not comply
+Sox compliance, and another illegal and forbidden 
+set of books for management that do not comply
 with Sox but which actually do reflect the movement and creation of
 value, but a startup is not allowed to tell potential investors about the
 real books that actually reflect the movement and creation of value for the

docs/rootDocs/README.md

@@ -93,7 +93,8 @@ which should be in a repository that only allows signed commits.
 
 Git now has a bunch of hooks that are accessed through config entries
 starting with `gpg.` that potentially allow us to supply zooko names
-for git signed commits.〕
+for git signed commits.〕You can sign a file or a commit, and
+`https://github.com/USERNAME.keys` is a central name authority.
 
 This may be inconvenient if you do not have `gpg` installed and set up.
 

docs/setup/contributor_code_of_conduct.md

@@ -261,25 +261,4 @@ speaks the truth under their true name.
 Web of trust was designed for a high trust society - but in a high trust
 society you don't need it, and in a low trust society, the name servers were
 too vulnerable to enemy action, and died, leaving the Web of Trust user 
-interface in every installed copy of gpg a useless obstacle to people
+interface in every installed copy of gpg a useless obstacle.
-trying to use gpg.
-
-Never `‑‑sign` any Gpg key related to this project.  `‑‑lsign` it.
-
-`gitconfig` disallows merges unless you have told `gpg` to trust the
-public key corresponding to the private key that signed the tip of
-the root.  So part of the pull request process is getting the puller to
-trust your public key, and you will not be able to pull updates
-unless you tell `gpg` to trust the key that is in the root directory as
-`public_key.gpg`.
-
-Never check any Gpg key related to this project against a public
-gpg key repository. It should not be there.
-
-`gitconfig` disallows merges unless you have told `gpg` to trust the public
-key corresponding to the private key that signed the tip of the root.  So part
-of the pull request process is getting the puller to trust your public key, and
-you will not be able to pull updates unless you tell `gpg` to trust the key that
-is in the root directory as `public_key.gpg`.
-
-`.gitconfig` also imposes a whitespace style.