[runn1ng]

Also, the computing power is computed from the percentage of successful transaction blocks. Noone knows how much computers you had or anything, they just saw that 15% of the blocks were confirmed by the same PC.

The confirmation task can be easily paralelised - therefore, what is usually done is creating a whole pool of computers that together work on the transaction confirmation task, then the main computer announces the confirmation and is remembered in the blockchain. That's what these so-called mining pools do.

You can browse the blockchain by yourself here http://blockexplorer.com/

There is always at least 1 transaction in the block with the amount 50 - that's the "new" bitcoins that the person "mined" - those weren't previously in the system, you got them for the confirmation. Someone is cheating the system by creating empty blocks with only this transaction.

[palish]

Whoa, that's bizarre: http://screencast.com/t/TA5fF8CDf3

And look at the timestamp on #171618: http://screencast.com/t/Kzzwiyi9Mz ... The timestamp reads "21:35:01". But the timestamp of the previous block is "21:35:35". So it's "in the past, by half a minute". What's up with that? I mean, I could understand a timestamp uncertainty of a few seconds when discovering new blocks ... but that's a discrepency of over half a minute. (Maybe this is a totally insignificant observation -- I have no idea. I'm just pointing it out.)

Bigger question: what's up with those "1-transaction blocks"? Could you talk a little bit more about that / why that's an indication that someone is cheating? Also, do you have any idea why they're doing this / what the benefit is?

[runn1ng]

I don't understand that much about it, but I believe that's partly what the original article talks about.