That's a good start -- but with bitcoin there's the added hurdle of borh parties being able to trust the mediator while also maintaining anonymity. In the case of escrow systems, an exchange that runs its own escrow system may be naturally-biased towards whoever is paying the most fees.

Please don't get defensive. I answered that exact question and offered some additional information. You are right that it seems like too basic of a question; but i think it would be more productive to assume that maybe he meant something slightly different than what was written (ie how do I time hashes when mining on x hardware with y driver?).

This is a little unnecessarily condescending I think.

Also, check out this similar question. bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2532/… There's a link to a webapp bitcoin-tools.de

When you say "alert" can you be more specific? Send an email? have (insert specified OS or device) pop up a notification? Etc

@mikko why not make that an answer?

Although theoretically the more they stuff into a transaction, the larger it gets in bytes and therefore the fee increases.