Bitcoin Forum

There's no good reason to mine on deepbit.
It's the pool with the highest fees for proportional AND PPS. Don't like high variance with smaller pools? there are plenty of pps (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27101.0) pools (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56119.0) with zero fees. That's right folks, zero variance, AND you don't pay fees. crazy, right?

inb4 diablo locks this for being off topic.

lots of posts and you can't count that (100 - pool tax % - reject rate %) * uptime of deepbit is bigger than pool X

fast connection ping <20ms

We have cookies ! :)

aww :(

after many discussions with [Tycho] and other pool operators from both large and small pools I find your sig fascinating... you of course have some proof to back this up?

FACT: deepbit and slush charge fees to be in their pool. there are plenty of other pools that have no fees whatsoever.
FACT: it's mentioned in satoshi's paper that the network is vulnerable if an attacker has 50%+ of the hashing power. Hashing power of deepbit+slush is more than 50%.

FACT: miners choose to mine on Deepbit, slush's and many other pools that charge fees.
FACT: deepbit+slush could do all the "togethering" they like, but miners choose to mine on Deepbit and slush's, if they chose not to ...what happens?
None of the above is a fact that shows Deepbit to be an enemy of bitcoin - thats in your sig...

So I see no FACT:s presented to show your sig is anything but libel...

BTW I am fully aware there are fee free pools..... I run  one...

Gee, I've never heard this before.  I find it so insightful, helpful and informative, NOT!

People have the right to choose.  Get over it.

If you can do a better job than Deepbit or any other fee based pool, then just do it.  Let the free market prevail.

Just my opinion,
Sam

Deepbit: Most resistant against the Common DDoS attacks (altough i just KNOW someone's gonna jump in and say something like P2P CANT BE DDoS'D!)
Deepbit: Tycho, Seriously... The fees are quite annoying, could'ja put it to 2.5%?
Slush:Multipool, So i run away.
BTCguild:I personally get alot of stales when mining there, Regardless of chosen server

Reason as to Why i have to Chosen something else?

Variance...If your dealing with it, Then just go solo... NO FEES AND AND CAN'T BE DDoS'D ENNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGNNNNNNNHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Who the fuck wants to see a block solved once every three hours....Gawd...

The most painful thing that happened to me was that i had Shared 5 blocks into Deepbit, When i had only mined out about 120coins.. 5x50 =/= 120 So i chose to stay untill i got close to breaking even.

So i fear that if i goto P2Pool then im gonna fucking drop in a block, and mine out 5coins. I personally HAAAAATE when i find a block and i aim it into a pool.
So if im going to have variance (p2pool) Then why the fuck dont i just go solo and earn more?

no shit. but that's not the point of this thread. I'm just wondering why people would choose deepbit over other pools.
double spend attack. not necessarily by the pool owners, but by potential hackers.


Wow, that is so informative. Let me summarize what you just said:

Free markets assume that the players in those markets are trying to get themselves the best outcome.

People aren't always doing that. People will make arbitrary choices and then stick with them out of habit or automatic loyalty.

In order to unseat that, you can't just be "better". You have to either proselytize (this thread, I guess), or be so ridiculously better that it overcomes people's intellectual inertia (and if you're up against entrenched infrastructure and capital, well, good luck with that).

I mine on deepbit because it's the only pool where I haven't had a bad experience.

Tried BTCGuild, but I had to wait 120 confirmations before I had access to my funds, the interface was unclear as to how many coins I was making, it had no MH/s estimator, and it didn't tell me how many BTC I had generated in the last 24 hours.  Also, stale rates were higher that deepbit, and they weren't reimbursed like they are at deepbit.

Tried BTCMine (which I think is now defunct), and I had tons of stales.

Went back to deepbit, and everything's been fine ever since.

IMO, I am fine with a 1% or so average actual fee for the benefit of mining at a pool that hardly ever goes down.  It's a "I don't ever have to mess with it" proposition.  When I was younger, and had more time, I loved to mess with things and eek out every last drop of performance I could.  I did that in overclocking, Windows optimizations, etc.  Now, all I want it to do is "just work", without me having to mess with it any further.  I guess that's what happens when you hardly have any free time.

P2P can't be DDoS'd.
I chose not to type everything in caps, but someone else might want to, for a bit of extra oomph.

Hmm, I find you so called points, at least, as sarcastic as my remarks.

My point is that people are free to choose what pool they mine at.  And your slander of one of those pools is only going to make people more likely to keep on mining there.  So your points and tag line are counter productive to your cause.

When mining for a set period of time at deepbit or other fee based pools with significant hash rates I make more BTC then I do with smaller pools that don't charge fees for the same period of time.  Several 0 fee pools have already gone under.  So what is better for Bitcoin and the community?  Successful fee base pools or failing 0 fee pools?

There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Sam

If you don't like pools just do solo mining, it will take forever and you won't get any coins in worst case :P or maybe you are lucky and find 300 btc in just 1 day

Man, how is it that so many seemingly intelligent people on these forums don't understand what construes libel and slander, let alone the differences between the two?

Deepbit is a pedophile rapist to a succulent teenage bitcoin. That is not libel, nor slander. Call the internet police.

She said she was 18.

Slander - a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report.

DEEPBIT = ENEMY OF BITCOIN

Maybe I can't prove that this statement is slanderous.  But I doubt that he can be proven to be true.

I've never said anything about libel nor being "seemingly intelligent" either.  :)
Sam

That statement is in print, making it libel.





Point proven.

Tycho is smart and he should never lower the fee.
People behave like flock animals and will concentrate to whatever is the biggest pool "because it must be good if it's popular".

Only an imbecile would, in his position, try to be "competitive" by taking away the astronomical fees. He is profiting from the stupidity of other people's "choices".

He doesn't need to 'compete' because the pool status is a self fulfilling prophecy.
It's big so it will keep being big, because new miners want to be in a "big pool". People actually willing to pay 10% for mining.

Only extended downtime could bring it down, and I believe some have tried it (DDoS), without success. So it's not going away for a long time if ever.


Doesn't work that way, it's popularity was already established when mining became common.
Nobody or nothing can surpass it anymore (without, once again, extended downtime of the pool)

You can't make a new deepbit any more than you can make a new Microsoft or Apple.
Those market positions are already filled by the biggest player and can't be surpassed without either illegal means or misfortune.

I respectfully disagree.  If someone else did come up with a good and reliable pool/service with the quality of service DB provides they could do as well.  But I seriously doubt that a no fee pool could it.  And the other factor, the way everyone is talking, is that this P2Pool thing may make pools obsolete.  If that is true then it is all a moot point anyway.

I'm sure the investment, maintenance and defending against attacks cost allot of time and money.  I have no idea what kind of profit the fee based pools make but I'm sure it's nowhere near what many people may think.  And if it is, well good for them for getting a return on their investment.

Hmm, people used to say the same thing about IBM and their Mainframes.  Someone will, eventually, unseat M$.  It will take someone with vision like Gates and Jobs and can effectively implement it.  It won't happen by someone with the attitude that the "biggest player and can't be surpassed".
Sam

if somebody small tries to compete with MS, intel or something like that - they just buy him...
It takes a lot more than a good idea/product to surpass the giants

I'd be happy to switch pools, But heres the thing, They fucking suck.
I was drifting inbetween slush/deepbit during that mass ddos Era, And i FUCKING HATED slush's pool
Weeee 120blocks till you get your funds, Oh that block was invalid? Shitty. No rewards for anyones Massive amount of wasted hashing power
BTCguild 120blocks and Shit latency's (forme) Regardless of chosen server
Deebit? It might/Mostlikely has the 120block thing, But i dont see it, I dont notice it. So I say It Does Not Affect Me.

the #1 thing about deepbit? Tycho pays for invaild blocks. That shits expensive.
They also Dissaprove (dont take my word for it) of Poolhopping, Wich i dislike.
They also Dissaprove of Merged Mining, Wich i dislike.

And thats why i mine on deepbit

Merged mining=more profit

How can someone hate extra profit? Maybe fanboys...

At 245 NMC per BTC I'm sure everyone is really raking in massive profits from MM.

Right.
Sam

There are expenses for MM? You mine less BTC if you do MM? No. It's really EXTRA profit.

Avoiding extra profit? Fanboy detected.

And how much EXTRA profit have you really made from MM?  I'm not saying it isn't there I'm just saying it's negligible.  Maybe that will change in the future though.  I'm not getting rid of the few NMC's I have, but I'm not exactly excited about having them either.
Sam

And?

Having something more is better than not having it.

And about pool hopping, i hate it too, how to solve the problem? Join a pool that use anti-hopping methods (pay per share, pay per score thing etc...), problem solved.

Reasons I mine at Deepbit:

1. I'm lazy.

2. Contrary to the rest of my life, I picked what was the simplest solution at the time.

3. Their site had more features than any other pool when I signed up (still there because of point 1).

4. Mining teams, go BU.


I'm sure many of you would have some choice words for me, but it ultimately comes down to point 1 (that's why it's point 1). Deepbit was the simplest pool to use when I first started mining, and I can't be bothered to create a new account somewhere else / modify my shell scripts.

I will add though, if Deepbit were to gain 51% share (which it wont), I'd move out of it for the good of the currency (not that my 1.8GH/s would do much to Deepbits overall influence).

i dont like merged mining either, why keep useless stuff
it isnt intended to be used as a currency, and i dont need a distributed dns
if i kept anything that might have a value, my house would be full of junk

MM and NMC is no way worth the hype nor grief that it has caused.  But it is here now, by popular demand on most pools.  That doesn't mean it's a good idea.  But again that is the choice of most folks so I guess that's fine.

I have no problem with pool hoppers.  Again it is a choice people are free to make to do or not to do as it is for pools to decide if they want to tolerate them or not and a choice you are free to make by using a pool that has anti hopping measures/payout method in place.

But back to the subject of this thread, Deepbit doesn't condone Pool Hopping.
Sam

Condone or not condone?

If the pool is pay per share/per score there is no need to "condone" anything: pool hopping is useless on that pool. Problem solved.

I have several original IBM XT's, one with an 8086 even. :)

Sorry that was blatancy off topic.  I promise to try not to do it again.
Sam

doesn't condone = does NOT condone.

So you only mine on PPS Pools?  I mine on PPS pools but not because they are hopping proof.  Wasn't DB the first PPS pool?
Sam

Are you really that dense?  Tycho doesn't pay for invalid blocks ... YOU DO VIA FEES.  Lolz.

How many invalid blocks has Deepbit had in the last 100 blocks?  You are aware that a properly functioning pools has very low (like <1%) invalid block rate.  Deepbit is probably closer to 0.5%.

It would be like saying my bank charges me $20 per month for my checking account BUT I get 3 free ATM withdraws.  No way am I going to that "expensive" bank which has free checking but charges $1 per ATM withdraw.

If you like Deepbit then fine but stop providing stupid non-reasons why.

The subject line read "Why do you mine on deepbit?"

Not  "what are the stupid non-reasons why you mine on deepbit?" :)
Sam

Psh, Slush charged 2% fees, And does not pay for invalid blocks.
I'll agree that the tax that he places on his pool that i've choosen to send my hashing power at pays tycho, Who pays the blocks, érgo my money is helping to pay for the invalid block.

But i put that point down because i do not see Any other pool that uses the 'tax funds/your money' to pay for the invalid block.

because other pools dont take your money in the first place :)

Except that one of the most common defenses to libel is "reasonable belief" that the statements are true, where "reasonable belief" usually means that the idea can be entertained by a rational person.  Clearly, many here are entertaining the idea by trying to form rational arguments against the OP.  

Davinci pool has 0% fee for example, and pay per share.

Referring to "other pools that don't take your money".

1. Why are they running pools in the first place?
2. Since they have no income how do they continue to operate?
3. Do you think it's a good idea to trust someone who purposely operates a service at a loss?
4. And please give me a list of "pools dont take your money in the first place".  I don't know of a single one in existence.
Sam

1) not everyone mines for profit.
2) optional donations
3) no loss, dont worry about them. those people have a real job
4) BTCserv - 0% PPS, p2pool, if you have more than 1Ghash you can get 110% PPS . a post above you mentioned another one

I couldn't care less about the basis and defense of the claims, I was merely pointing out that for a bunch of intelligent people, few seem to grasp the difference between the two terms.

I like Tycho, he seems intelligent and industrious...but I would never point my power at deepbit. It is just too counter-intuitive to the reasons I am here. If I set up rigs again any time soon, p2pool will be it, with a voluntary donation to support its development.

1. Mining and running a pool are two different things.
2. A donation is still a fee.
3. Just because a person has a day job would justify running a pool at a loss?
4. If Davinci and BTCserv really "dont take your money in the first place", how do they stay in business.  I haven't checked these pools but I would assume they have a default donation level set that most people don't change.  But I don't know for sure.  But if so that is still a fee and they are taking your money in the first place.  And there would be nothing wrong with that.
Sam

Edit: Davinci AKA NMCBit currently pays PPS .0000373109824026.  If there he were not charging a fee he would be paying .0000382342505475.
Sam

I also dont understand why DDoS resistance is an issue. Use a miner with failover capabilities like cgminer. If your pool goes down for whatever reason, it just switches to a backup pool, or p2pool or even solo if all your pools are down.

they are not making you pay anything
i think that on BTCserv the default is 0% donation. anyway you can change it. try asking tycho not to pay him 10%
good luck with that
they are not operating at a loss. if you want to know how - ask them, not me.
this is also a hobby, some people run those servers on their private PC's - so it doesnt really cost them a thing.
you are welcome to stay at deepbit since it seems you only trust people who demand you to pay them for something that you do.

The point is they are taking money, they have to, even if it is truly just a hobby and they're running the pool on some old idle PC they  have laying around, which I doubt, it still cost's.

Just because DB or any other fee pool tries to calculate the cost of doing business and a profit margin and charges a hard fee for it doesn't make them "evil" or bad or wrong.  I wouldn't dream of asking Tycho to reduce his fee, which is 3% by the way, 10% is their PPS fee and I doubt very much that there are very many Mh/s being used on DB PPS side.

The something I do is mine.  I can solo mine or I can use a pool.  The pools are a service and they cost money to run.  Try posting to ask for help with solo mining and see how many people tell you how stupid your are.  Now we use a pool and we are being told again how stupid we are.

Just can't make some people happy. :)
And I am continuing to use DB and other pools.
Sam

Nope. But it begs the question why the miners are mining there. It does no good for their revenue, and it does bitcoin no good to have a few mega pools dominate the scene. The only one benefiting is Tycho.

if you have ~20Ghash or more solo is a good option
IMHO deepbit's service isn't worth the 3%/10%
and except loosing money by paying the pool's fees you also give up on the core ideas of bitcoin
currently ~3 people control the network. i dont think this is how a "decentralized crypto currency" should work
and after hearing from miners like you i cant blame tycho for this either. for some reason miners are attracted to whatever is the biggest thing right now.

exactly
trust no one
especially not me
:)

^When i was a bitcoin noob, I straightup thought that biggerpool=more coins. Reason? More shares (Dont bother explaining something, I know how it works now)
So, Yeah, Noobs flock to the big pool, No doubt, Can you change that? Prolly not, Why? Noobs are noobs. They just have to Learn to Switch.

On the topic of Variance, People fear smaller pools due to the possibilities of one day they earn .5, The next day they earn, 1, The next day .2, So they get spooked and goto the Lowest Variance pool, Wich is deepbit, (correct me if im wrong) Majority of people need to SEE stable income to feel safe when leaving some "valubles" at ANON's (tycho/slush/pedo) "House", when they see an unsteady flow of funds, They think somethings wrong, Or that they could do something to Steady it, Wich makes them feel 'Insecure'.

I sure as fuck didnt want to point my hashing power aaaaaaaaaanywhere when i first started, I thought bitcoins were some Police related "IMA CRACK YOUAR HDDS WITH YOUR OWN COMPUTING POWER" type of dealio.
So i ran solo for Daaaaaaaays with NoShow, swaped to Slush, Didnt want to wait 120blocks just to touch my funds (and when i saw an INVALID i panicked and ran thinking slush had stolen a full block, Again this is NOOB behavour) So i went to deepbit. Loved it, So i went looking for something better, Found BTCguild, thought the idea of multiple servers was Swag... Untill the DDoSing started (pretend your a noob, You dont know wtf a DDoS is and you dont know WHY your hashing power is all failing when aimed at a Specific spot) So, Scared again, I ran back to tycho's pool, Wich had active chatter in the thread about the pool being down and that the admin was "fixing it". And he did.. So since then, I have had Little reason to leave.

Noob=Run to deepbit
Learner=Experiment with pools, Will prolly choose a 0% one like BTCguild or Eligius
Experianced dude= Might chose Bitclockers (1%,prizes,livesupport) or perhaps something todo with Merged Mining
Guys who know what they're doing=P2Pool,Solo,Poolhopp
People who dont like variance=Deepbit/Slush/BTCguild

EDIT: So i just went around testing pools. And deepbit has the best latency for me, That alone is reason enough for me to stay.
 

Really? Why? This isnt an FPS competition. See how many stales you get, even with a slightly higher ping. Ill eat my shoe if you get 3% stales on a decent pool.

Better latency means easier headshot!

Actually BitPenny was the first one, but he gone bankrupt later.

I call double bullshit on this.  Deepbit servers are going over a transatlantic link for you, there is absolutely no way you get better latency to Deepbit than some other servers.  Or did you mean you only tested ones that go over transoceanic links?

I shall start pinging again and post results, Because i have clearly made people mad...






hmmmmmmmmmm.... Clearly i am wrong.... I suppose i fucked up on my earlier testing? Somehow?

Edit: the dude below me stated where he was from, So i mayaswell do the same so that the two sets of pings can be compared.
From Canada!

Well... I would switch to BTCguild.. But they are Merged Mining,

from germany:

EclipseMC (for me longest ping times but still got most hash out of it; for me pool with least possible stales)
ping -c 5 us.eclipsemc.com
PING us.eclipsemc.com (208.110.68.114) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 208.110.68.114: icmp_req=1 ttl=50 time=122 ms
64 bytes from 208.110.68.114: icmp_req=2 ttl=50 time=122 ms
64 bytes from 208.110.68.114: icmp_req=3 ttl=50 time=133 ms
64 bytes from 208.110.68.114: icmp_req=4 ttl=50 time=122 ms
64 bytes from 208.110.68.114: icmp_req=5 ttl=50 time=122 ms

--- us.eclipsemc.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 21349ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 122.574/124.811/133.226/4.208 ms

DeepBit (Provider: Hetzner)
ping -c 5 pit.deepbit.net
PING pit.deepbit.net (46.4.121.118) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from static.118.121.4.46.clients.your-server.de (46.4.121.118): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=17.6 ms
64 bytes from static.118.121.4.46.clients.your-server.de (46.4.121.118): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=18.5 ms
64 bytes from static.118.121.4.46.clients.your-server.de (46.4.121.118): icmp_req=3 ttl=55 time=17.1 ms
64 bytes from static.118.121.4.46.clients.your-server.de (46.4.121.118): icmp_req=4 ttl=55 time=17.0 ms
64 bytes from static.118.121.4.46.clients.your-server.de (46.4.121.118): icmp_req=5 ttl=55 time=18.1 ms

--- pit.deepbit.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4006ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 17.005/17.695/18.540/0.606 ms

Eligius (Provider: Hetzner, i7 sponsored by MtGox for feeless transations)
ping -c 5 mining.eligius.st
PING ra.mining.eligius.st (78.47.187.252) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ra.mining.eligius.st (78.47.187.252): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=18.4 ms
64 bytes from ra.mining.eligius.st (78.47.187.252): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=29.5 ms
64 bytes from ra.mining.eligius.st (78.47.187.252): icmp_req=3 ttl=55 time=17.9 ms
64 bytes from ra.mining.eligius.st (78.47.187.252): icmp_req=4 ttl=55 time=16.5 ms
64 bytes from ra.mining.eligius.st (78.47.187.252): icmp_req=5 ttl=55 time=16.9 ms

--- ra.mining.eligius.st ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4002ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 16.517/19.883/29.549/4.882 ms

P2Pool (my instance; Provider: hetzner)
ping -c 5 pool.k1024.de
PING pool.k1024.de (78.46.35.155) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from pool.k1024.de (78.46.35.155): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=18.3 ms
64 bytes from pool.k1024.de (78.46.35.155): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=16.8 ms
64 bytes from pool.k1024.de (78.46.35.155): icmp_req=3 ttl=55 time=17.7 ms
64 bytes from pool.k1024.de (78.46.35.155): icmp_req=4 ttl=55 time=17.2 ms
64 bytes from pool.k1024.de (78.46.35.155): icmp_req=5 ttl=55 time=17.3 ms

--- pool.k1024.de ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4006ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 16.890/17.507/18.353/0.525 ms

Some months ago we had US server too, that may explain your first results.

So you have Eclipse at 83ms and Bitclockers at a phenomenal 43ms and your solution is to switch to BTCGuild at 127ms?  How does that even work out?

You can mine at EMC and turn off MM if you dislike it.  I'm not sure what Bitclockers policy is on MM.  But in all honesty, at your latency, it doesn't matter too much to begin with.  So the latency argument for mining on Deepbit is pretty much bunk due to transoceanic connections.  There may be other valid reasons and I'm not discounting them, but latency isn't one of them.  For Flower, though, it may make a slight difference, since he basically lives in the Hetzner datacenter :)

how can you steal on a 100% pps pool with no fees? you can even calculate the pps yourself and see if it is correct.
maybe they can set the share difficulty higher than 1, but you can see that as well.

If the pool has been around long enough, a statistical analysis will let you know if the op is stealing blocks as well.  Not that I think Tycho would do anything of the sort, but how does your reasoning not apply to Deepbit as well?

This network latency argument is laughable.

Lets assume a terribly bad 500ms latency. There is a longpoll on average every 10 minutes (im ignoring merged mining which you seem to despise anyway). So there is a 1/1200th chance your share will be stale because you missed the LP due to network latency. That is 0.08%. Okay maybe more if you run several miners, but somehow you think its worth giving 3% in fees to lower that number?

But its even more nonsensical than that. There is not even a direct relationship between latency and stales. If you mine at a large  pool that has to send 5000 longpolls to its miners and you happen to be the last one served, a 10ms ping isnt gonna do you any good.  It might still take 200+ms before the pool serves you.

The most sensible metric is measured stales. But guess what, unless you are mining PPS, even that is not all telling. An efficient pool will send an LP to the fastest miners first, as that will increase the block creation rate a tiny bit, so you stand to gain from being served later if you have a low hashrate.

TL;DR Use pings to choose your BF3 server, use your brain to choose a pool

Oh? I did not know that one could disable the MM half, I assumed all MM pools were "strictly" set as MM (i assumed it was somekind of coding forcing it to behave in a non alterable manner)
Clearly. I have made an idiot out of myself.

Quote "How does that even work out?"
Well. Inaba your correct for asking that question, It does not "work out", I just went "oh hey i used to mine at BTCguild!, ima go back there!"

Now, As to the argument around Latency=Stales, I agree--That the amount is (most of the time) Neglegable in situations <200ms

Funny, I was Half typing what you were while you were typing. Ima just Restate that last part, I couldnt agree more
TL;DR Use pings to choose your BF3 server, use your brain to choose a pool

Man, I admit i wasnt there for a month, I ran it for a week (yeah yeah short window for such a small pool) and had significantly less rewards than deepbit

-_-" Please notice the 8mintue up time... I was testing different miners around that time, With the 'new' cgminer that i had gotten, i had started to test features on it, And start to understand the program itself, Like in the post, I was confused about the effiecency I was also seeing what miner would work the best, And weather or not p2pool would work properly with phoenix (for the sake of a gui)

I mine at deepbit - so what.  It works so it saves me pissing around and spending my time making other things work.  My time is worth something.

If I pay 3% on a couple of coins/day for the last six months that I've been mining (on and off) that's 11 whole coins ($50-$60) - I'm unexcited by that as it's trivial.

Making other things work? Are you fucking kidding? So, fifteen minutes to set up an account and point miners at it isn't worth $60? You really value your time at $240/hr? I would bet my life that you have no skill worth that much, save maybe whoring yourself out to fat chicks. Even that is a stretch.

Thanks Randy.  Actually, for the work I do my charge rate is 250.

I should have also observed that keeping computers running well on something for six months or a year takes more than 15 minutes, I found that in terms of what i spend my time working on, it wasn't a huge overhead.

What do you do for $250/hr?

Currently (this week) doing risk management software audit for a retail company (it's a bit dull) and advising on risk parameters/policy for a wholesale company (more interesting).  Next week - don't know.  Maybe I could rub your tummy for you?

While i do understand your desire to stop arguing... I would like to remind you that i said i would be sending 1gh/sec to P2Pool, That readout is from my desktopgaming computer, Not my miner, Yes, I did fuckup and say 8minute up time@ a 11hr run, Fuckups happen, I see U:8.76/m and think "up8.76share/minute", And when i quickly glaced at it, Thats not what i thought and fuckedout a scentence

So, in reality, you bill at $250/hr, are self employed and have plenty of overhead wrapped into that figure. Maybe I am arguing semantics, but as a small business owner, I can confidently say that isn't the same as a wage of $250/hr.

What's the ticket on a belly rub?

Using an usual pool instead of the P2Pool is like being fan of banks instead of Bitcoin.
You are hitting your foots ::)

Quite right, I actually work for someone else and my deal is I get 60%.  I would prefer not to work, but it helps fill in the day and pay for my hobbies.

I'm actually quite honored to have elicited such an interesting response from you.

As for the belly rub?  Probably about the same as when I had to cut my father-in-law's toe-nails.

Edit: sorry this has gone off topic.  Why deepbit?  It'll do for now

So you don't keep some of your regular currency in a bank?
Sam

Yes, because I'm forced by the actual situation, but that doesn't make me a fan of the banks system.
So my statement is still true, no one is forced to use the old style pool.

So you found a liquor store that accepts BTC?

Maybe I should have said legacy currency?
Sam

Sure for storing wealth it may well be prudent to use other things of value for savings.  But most of us need to keep a certain amount of our local currency liquid for immediate needs.  I use a bank/credit union for that purpose.

Maybe one day BTC will be used for immediate needs as well which is why I'm acquiring them.  With the current economy of the world it makes sense invest in an anti-inflationary currency.  But right now BTC cannot take the place of local currencies nor banks.
Sam

Regarding the issue of noobs flocking to the biggest pools, couldn't that be prevented by building a P2Pool miner into the standard client instead of the solo mining feature?
Or at least offer it as a built-in alternative?
Just add gen= 1 and P2Pool=1 to your bitcoin.conf and voilà, you're mining on P2Pool.

I truly believe that we should seriously consider adding that to the client to restore the distributed computing aspect of bitcoin.

+1
Does anyone have a better idea? This is Exactly what we need

+1 Gavin already said he would include it in bitcoin client.

but i guess its to early right now - i would wait until p2pool is a solution für really small AND really big miners (forrestv already thinking about it; atm with an p2pool around 150GH/s everybody can use it with relatively low variance)

EDIT
Searched for gavins post on bitcointalk but can't find it anymore. a few days ago a link to it was mentioned on #p2pool (freenode) - maybe its just too old to be found. Sorry

So guys. Lets start a bounty so that we can all get this Awesome feature implemented?
Generate coins-> GPU/CPU? "gpu" ->Please select mining software  "i choose cgminer" Okay, to run cgminer with p2pool, Add these ___ ____ ___ arguments to the miner.
the blanks being like the RPC info and the port

*(repost)

The main reason why people keep mining at deepbit  :
DeepBit play on wording and lies to hides it's users how much they're being ripped off. (since most don't do the math from PPS to %.)

DO YOU SEE THIS ? :  

(deepbit homepage)

0.00003823425 / 0.0000344108160 = ~10% FEES

 (Sorry for size/caps, I am really pissed.)

"Slightly" : The term is meaningless and is being abused hard in this case.

"Competitive price" : The claim is totally false. (not a single pool have higher fees)

Why are you pissed?  Because the PPS fee is 10%?

Everyone knows DB has the highest PPS Fee.  It may not say 10% , but, it does give the actual price per share which every PPS pool, that I've seen, post's as well.  So it is easy to compare one PPS pool against another, even for ignorant noobs.

Sam

Why annoyed?  How about envy?

Deepbit has created a site that allows it to generate income where other pools struggle and fail.  Their success is therefore a target to some.

No one is forcing you to mine there, or pay a huge fee.  Same as no one is forcing you to play roulette and lose 3% (european) or 6% (american) of your stake on average.

You'd be surprised how small is the % of people who compare PPS value, since most pool (80%+) post their fees in %.

This was the rest of my post on Bringing decentralization back to the Bitcoin network. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60492.msg706628#msg706628 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60492.msg706628#msg706628)

Lying is bad and that thing about decentralization of a decentralized currency.

Edit : WTF ? Did you just say the other half of hashing power (pools) struggle to generate incomes ?

BTW : Extremely low variance is moth as an argument because nobody actually need their 0.00001 bitcoin every next minutes.

I'd wager that the vast, vast majority of deepbit users are NOT doing PPS.  And when stales and invalid blocks are counted for the non-PPS model, the actual deepbit fee is closer to 1 or 1.5%, a fee which I am happy to pay for a service without complications that never goes dark.

I agree that Bitcoin needs to continue to trend towards decentralization, and I'm not entirely happy that deepbit holds as much hashing power as it does, but I haven't found a pool that I like as well as deepbit.  *shrug*

You call a pool posting exactly what they pay per share a lie?  I call it full disclosure.

If you think people are too lazy or too stupid to compare prices that is hardly something to get upset with DB about.  Actually I think that says more about what you think about your fellow Bitcoin enthusiasts.

I don't disagree with idea that the large pools are centralizing too much power in what is supposed to be a DEcentralized currency.  But that is hardly something to get pissed at any pool about.  What do you expect a pool to do?  Tell paying customers to go away?  That's ridiculous.
Sam

...

The only thing the lying part was about.

Maybe it was not big/bold enough.

I didn't say anything about any other pool.  I was observing that someone making money (or doing something well) attracts attention.  I find the emotion tied into the arguments entertaining.

Also, if a user of any service doesn't bother to find out what it costs, is that always the supplier's fault?  Maybe people should change to cheaper ISP/telco/insurance/gas providers - obviously anything above minimum would be unreasonable in some people's eyes.

Ok, now, That thing about False advertising.

If your quote was a stand alone statement your interpretation would be true.  But you have ripped it out of context.  Here is the complete quote

"We pay a competitive price:

    * Pay per share: 0.00003441081600403 BTC per every submitted share"

Since you/we/others may rightfully quibble about what constitutes a "competitive price" (subjective), having the actual price listed there does constitute full disclosure (objective).

Sam

False advertising - that's the use of the term "slightly" right?  I thought (generally) that advertisers were professionals at over-reaching the limits of words.  Out of interest I went to the deepbit front page and noticed they have changed the words since I first signed up.  It used to be clear the fee was 10%, now it's just the BTC/share.  I'm not sure how much a share is worth (presumably 50/difficulty) and not especially interested as mining is only a part of what I do.

I feel inspired to make a pool that charges a 20% or 50% fee, as I'm sure there will be some people that might stupidly sign up.  I could write all sorts of crap over the front page that might not be strictly false, but could be misleading.

I agree,

For my part I have been lurking at all pools for quite a while and only lately been able to figure out what % deepbit fee was for PPS.

There is little info for comparison, there are a few other pool that display their PPS instead of % and I guess it is not obvious for most what the formula to get real value of a share is. (50 Btc / difficulty) that is : 50 / 1307728 = 0.0000382343...

I don't know why "only lately" you have been able to figure you that DB charges a 10% PPS fee.  Tycho has posted several times to DB customers that the fee is 10%.  So the information in % was and is freely available to DB miners.  And the actual price has *always* been available on the main page.

I haven't mined PPS on DB in months.  But I do still mine proportional there when the luck is good.  Like today.
Sam

I do not care how obvious it was for you to find it among the various comment on this forum, (are you serious ?)

I am not personally feeling mislead, I'm just pointing out that The information provided on the main page is intentionally misleading and it is obvious a large part of DB miners don't know about it.

Ps: There is no way to tell when luck will be good...(are you serious ?)  F... why even bother ..

If people telling the truth is misleading to you then you need to go back on your meds.

And you can tell what the luck is, albeit after the fact, it is a gamble on weather it trends up or down and I understand that you can't tell what the luck (I really don't like that term) is going to be from one round to the next.  But today it was pretty good on Deepbit and Ozco.

I'm going back into my timeout corner now. :)
Sam

I don't want to read anything that isn't unreadibly bolded.

Solution to the 10% PPS. Mine proportional, it's what I have always done.

I have switched back to Deepbit because I don't think BIP 16 and 17 are ready for the real world bitcoin network.

What is mildly depressing is that I looked at the advanced settings and apparently I have found 1 block. I only received 6BTC as payments since that's all I earned proportionally at Deepbit while I was there before. I was extremely lucky but it looks like that luck went to the users and operators of the pool. If I were to attempt to solo mine now it would be months before I found a block. Sigh.

I'd rather die.

One of the other mildly depressing things is looking at the alternatives.  Some other pools charge 7% and then progressively to zero.  Proportional is lower, but then you have other factors like the reward system and size of pool.  I popped over to Eclipse and their current block was up to 14 hours (6 million shares), and that's one of the larger 2nd tier pools.  Even smaller pools have even more (in my opinion) stupid rules or features. 

Evaluating a pool takes different factors into account.  For me (and just me), it has good stability, availability, discourages large hopping rip-offs through hash stability, moderate fee (they take 0.001 coins per block from me).  For others, those might not be good characteristics.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

How many invalid blocks had Deepbit had in the last 1000?  1? 5?  Invalid blocks shouldn't be more than 0.2% of total for a properly running pool.  With good pool server, LP, and proper miner stales are <0.3%. 

So you are paying 3% for 0.5% in cost.  If you like Deepbit and like a centralized Bitcoin that is fine.  It is a free network you can do as you please but don't try to rationalize it.  You are paying 2.5%+ for the privilege to centralize the network and add a point of failure.  When you include the fact that Deepbit doesn't pay transaction fees or merged mining it is >3.5%.

You sir, bring up some good points.   ;)

I might not have understood what you meant. But recently I moved from Deepbit to P2pool with just a little bit of hassle. It was fun and now I am in control. It feels really good now.

It seems more people have joined P2pool. The hash rate has gone up to ~157 GH/s from ~150 GH/s from couple of days ago.

I've been through it, alot, lol.
Had the P2Pool window running for about 25-35mins, Then i aimed CG at it, Let it run for only about 10mins.... Im sucha Goat when it comes to getting Spooked by things xD.

Are you talking about some form of minishare/datapacket to keep track of things?, Or are you saying that some shares are so small that i do not see them being accounted for(nay)

The main thing that bothered me was that i wasnt Getting any work to Work on..
Low work, I expect.
One PEICE of work per 2mins... That cant be right.... That leaves me with 1min59secs of wasted hashing time...

Just let it run for some time. No "hashing time" is wasted. Here you work in your own pockets !  ;)

I don't see anything wrong, i too use cgminer.
Remember that share difficulty in p2pool is now 355 so that mean that on average for every 355 normal shares, you get only 1 on p2pool. And that's fine.

When you find a good share you will see

"Recent : 0.00% >0H/s Shares: 1 (0 orphan, 0 dead) Peers :10"

and so on. Sure, it can happen a orphan share too, not too hard since pool stale rate is 9% but it's different from stale in a normal pool!

Variance or pool uptime is not a good reason to pay 3% at deepbit. Just use backup pools for the downtime. If variance is a real concern then split miners up on different pools.

I mine on Slush's simply because when I started mining, his was the first I saw.  So without any research or anything, I blindly jumped in and don't regret it at all.  I did try btcguild at one point, but it "felt" like I wasn't making as much, so I switched back (but still use btcguild as a backup since I have miners set up on there anyway).

Over the past 9 months, I have test-mined at well over a dozen pools...many 'top-tier' and some not so much, but regardless of what they boast as being their strong suit, or what sets their specific pool apart from the rest, 99% of them end up on the FAIL list having been nothing but a waste of time and I find myself returning back to the first pool I ever mined at as well - BTCGuild (although Slush's pool is a close 2nd for very similar reasons as listed below).

Say what you will about fees (blah blah blah....) BTCGuild is worth every bitcent that it costs to mine there.

Why I like BTCGuild:
- Good Control Panel/Front End (just the right balance of eye candy and functionality).
- Top Notch Security Features (anyone here is welcome to have my control panel password because the ONLY thing you can do is mine for me....my funds are locked SOLID).
- Instant Payouts (no confirmation delays).
- ROCK SOLID performance (the best I have experienced in the community to date, although YMMV).
- Attentive and knowledgeable Pool OP.
- Constantly moving forward with both hardware and software upgrades.

Unfortunately the best things in life are not free and often more times than not, you always get what you pay for.

I bet the bulk of Deepbit's Russian/Eastern Euro Miners feel the same way about Tycho's pool ;)

Yes but P2Pool is better in anything you said.

And is really free. Because YOU host p2pool. No need to waste money on servers

Do they have a 24h BTC mined counter yet?  That was one thing that bugged me big time when I tried using them... I love being able to see exactly how much BTC I have mined in the last 24 hours.

The other issue was that they went down numerous times while I was using them.  I'm sure they've used that time period as a lesson and have improved since then, but it turned me off for the time being.

BTC Guild has always had a 24 Hour Earnings counter since I have been mining there, even before they were PPS.
Sam

It actually disappeared briefly when switching from Proportional to PPS.  But that only lasted a week I believe.

Ok, good to know.  Maybe I'll give them another try down the road.

I'm not about to sit here and argue the merits of P2P mining vs. Pool Mining because we all know that decentralization is best.

NOW, in saying that, it's a wonder why more of the BIG miners (25 GH/s and larger) have not switched over to P2Pool yet. I mean, it's not due to the fact that they don't know what they are doing, because ANYONE who is able to maintain a mining farm larger than 10 GH/s obviously knows what they are doing.
What could the deciding factor be then ?....that keeps miners such as these still tied to the large pools ? Well, in short ? PROVEN PERFORMANCE.

Perhaps once P2Pool gets a rock solid 6+months under it's belt as a top 10 pool, more miners will find their way there, but for now, with an investment that is as sizeable as some have (again, the LARGE miners) it makes more sense for them to keep a solid income stream coming in from a proven side of the technology and let the smaller miners with alot less to loose, be the 'Beta Testers' for new technologies such as P2Pool.....Sound reasonable ?

As an example, the current top 10 miners at BTCGuild could easily/effectively DOUBLE the current P2Pool hashrate, but they still choose to mine at a pool to protect their investments and seem to have no problem PAYING for the privilege to do so.......

I only have 6 GH/s under my belt, as I sold off a bunch of equipment after the crash a few months ago and am now replacing with more efficient hardware, so I am a perfect candidate for P2Pool, yet I still choose to pay to have someone else ensure that my BTC income stream is guarded and remains coming in as usual.

Unless you have as much to loose, it's easy for a sub-10 GH/s miner to call the bigger miners with tens-of-thousands invested into hardware, IDIOTS for giving up profits for the opportunity to mine at a fee based pool.....but put yourself in THEIR shoes and see how your views might change.

nonsense

Why the world don't use bitcoin? Why it's so small? Maybe paypal and dollar is better after all. But then why we are here?

Also, p2pool is open source, nothing is hidden. Performance? It's the same of a normal pool. No need to trust anything.

So since they are big they must be right? Then we are better uninstall bitcoin, we are small.

Is it safe to assume, judging by your 'English as a second language' reply, you may have missed the simple point I was trying to get across in my post above and only picked up on certain points, but completely out of context ?

Yup, english is my second language. Maybe i shouls start write in my language and use google translator, who know...  Maybe i should translate it like 4-5 times between other languages for increased randomness...

Your point is that the "big guys" stay on other pools instead of moving to p2pool, and thus you try to imply that it's somehow p2pool fault. Problem is this is not true. It's a fact that they are NOT on p2pool. But it's also a fact that p2pool is better than a pool with fees. P2pool works, there aren't "game-breaking" bugs, payouts are received and mining work without problems.
P2pool is small but isn't so new, it has been around since a lot of time, and no one report "my btc vanished, help me" things.

My comment wasn't meant to be an insult ;)


I just think that the 'big guys' will move away from pools once P2Pool has MORE of a track record, that's all.
I should have said it more simply, but that was the point I was trying to make.

Let the 'smaller guys' with less equipment 'test' P2Pool, because moving a big mining farm and having to watch over it to ensure everything is working properly can be alot of work ;)

Having a better interface and less things active would be better.
Normal pool: you start the miner and that's all
P2pool: you need also bitcoin and p2pool running and hope none of them crash  :-\ (and bitcoin QT client is prone to crash with p2pool... but not bitcoind as far as i know)

I had the same problem when I tried P2Pool (QT crashing), so I just ran cmd line BitcoinD rather than the wallet GUI, then used Safebit (html RPC app) for wallet functions when mining.
Problem solved.

I image the large miners like features like sms if a miner goes down. I stopped checking my miners a long time ago. I only check the hash rate once or twice a day and that's it. A free non prop, merged mining pool with sms is the way to go if you ask me. What else do you need?

I have a 20GH/s farm and use p2pool.  However like many large farmers I need to hedge my bets.  So I started w/ one rig and then a couple.  Currently I have 10GH/s.  In time I will move my whole 20 GH/s.  There is no rush.  I imagine there are many miners in the same camp.  Slowly p2pool GH/s per user is creeping up indicating the hashing power per user is rising.  Either small miners are getting rich and adding cards or it is accounts like mine where every couple days another rig gets moved over.

As far as p2pool crashing.  Use it with bitcoind.  I don't know any conventional pool which runs pool server of GUI wallet.  It is asinine to even try.  Also IF p2pool client goes down which is never has in my 30 days of testing any smart miner is using cgminer w/ failover so rigs redirect to backup pool.

Im still on deepbit because i Fucking hate having Three Open Windows just to mine.... rather than One, just like D&T had stated earlier...

We need to Pack all these multiple things into one gui!, Then P2Pool could actually spread!

While I mine at a smaller, fee free pool... I don't hate Deepbit.  In ANY game, there is going to be a boss.  Deepbit is the boss hog in the bitcoin game.

Don't be mad because he has a shitton of money!!

Deepbit's website recently stated that it had reached 1M BTC mined.  They take a 3% fee, so 1M is 30,000 BTC, or about $150,000.  I wouldn't be surprised if half of that was taken up by hosting costs on anti-DDOS servers and refunding people for rejected shares and bad blocks.  So I don't think Tycho has a ton of money from this.

Ummm... about that fee...

It's 3% only on proportional. It's actually 10% (TEN PERCENT) on PPS.

Right.  And I bet PPS mining on deepbit makes up a very small percentage of the total miners.

I doubt it, but I guess we won't know unless [Tycho] decides to tell us.

No one uses prop anymore unless they don't know what they are doing..All those people have small miners. The exception would be pool hoppers.

Why would a pool hopper go PPS?

Proportional is not pps

Yeah I misread... why do you say no one uses proportional anymore?  AFAIK, no one uses PPS anymore.  ???

Is this a serious statement?  ???

+1, BTC Guild is pure PPS only, and they are over 1 thash last I checked. They don't even offer a proportional option like Derpbit.

PPS is likely the final configuration of BTC pools; all other methods will most likely eventually fade away.

No longer evangelizing DGM? ;D

No, I am firmly behind DGM, but I also understand the allure of PPS for miners.  It may take quite awhile, but I don't think there's going to be anything but PPS, except with smaller "botique" pools in the somewhat distant future.  All other methods, beyond perhaps pure proportional, just seem too hard to understand for the general populous.  PPS is simple, and people are going to gravitate towards that.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881

I'm fairly sure Debian has something similar.

Some more informations about Deepbit.net here (http://organofcorti.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/21-deepbit.html). Nothing ground breaking, but it shows they're honest. Also quantifies the difference between expected rewards for PPS and prop (ignoring pool hopping).

Wow dude... all AMDhd cards come with MultiDesktop... and hydragrid

.... With your logic i mayaswell openup another monitor and drag the windows over to it, atleast that way i'll save some cpu and ram.
Seriously i dont want to Minimize, or Hide it, I want One Running Window...

Sorry, just recently started following the pool threads since I am @ ~20GH and are exploring my options.

What is wrong with prop?  I tired a few other ones (I won't single them out here) but I am still with deepbit because I don't have to worry about invalid blocks.  AFAIK, everybody else you lose with invalid blocks, which I have seen as high as 4% on some pools.

To put it very simply, reduced income is the problem. The cause is pool hoppers, which mine a certain way to maximize their profit while reducing your payout. The solution is to mine on a pool with a hopper-proof payout algorithm, or to become a hopper yourself. (In order of difficulty).

You may wish to consider p2pool for your miners, so that you aren't tied to a pool which can crash. You can keep regular pools for backup.

Thanks for the info.  How much do you think hoppers affect the prop payouts on a large pool like deepbit?

I don't think very much.  I have always been very close to my expected calculated payout on deepbit.  Sometimes over, sometimes under.

This link shows that it can be hopped, but they gain from it is probably not as much as with smaller pools. Read the numbers and make your own choice, I suppose.

Thanks for the data on pool hopping.  It's always good to have data.

I would echo SgtSpike, my payouts on deepbit has always been pretty close to what I expected.  But I will keep exploring.  It seems like every pool has its own issues, but I will check out their respective threads.

I've always liked Deepbit for the very low variance and consistent up time. However, I did switch recently to slush's pool purely because I wanted to get my hands on some Namecoins and he has the largest merged mining pool. If Deepbit implemented merged mining, I'd switch back in a heart beat.

Which pool are you currently using then?

Any you would recommend?
I tried EMC a while back, but they were having issues with high stales at the beginning of a new block from all the DGM calculations.  I will check to see if that is resolved.
P2Pool is a thought, but it sounds like it is pretty resource heavy.  Will there be a lot of network traffic compared to a traditional pool?

Once you get your hands on a Namecoin, then what are you going to do with it?  I guess you could then another 193 or so and then trade it for a Bitcoin :).
Sam

It would be a good trick to find ANY pool with a 100% up time.  I have never heard of one yet.
Sam

Deepbit is just about.  I haven't seen it go down at all in months.  That's part of the reason I'm still using them.

Doc,
Point taken ;).

But one must be aware that there is a default donation, I understand, (that isn't advertised???), and you need to disable if you don't want to pay a fee.
Sam

Cool, glad to hear it.

But you then are paying a fee, even if knowingly and voluntary.  I have knowingly volunteered to pay fee's too.
Sam

It's fixed ... block processing time was reduced from 6 minutes to 4 - 6 seconds.  Mostly due to an unindexed column in the DB, but there were some other optimizations as well.

Thanks Inaba.  I might head back your way to see how things go. 

Of course you can.  We have the freedom to not to use those pools if we don't want to pay the fee's.  I choose to pay those fee's because they provide a service that has a value to me.  Also I "donate" to another pool because that pool has a value to me as well.
Sam

One of these days I will look into P2Pool and estimate for myself the value for that software.  And if it is as good as you say I'm sure I'll be paying/donating more than the default .05%.
Sam

There is no difference between paying a fee on a fee based pool or donating on a pool that allows you to use it with no fee.  It is the individuals choice.  Being upset that Deepbit, BTC Guild and Slush are successful and fee based is kind of silly. :D
Sam

There is some overhead to p2pool but it isn't significant.

For a large farm you can use 1 p2pool node and point all your local rigs at that node.

I have a machine I use just for p2pool, then my workstation acts as a backup.  A conventional pool is the tertiary backup.  cgminer points everything at p2pool, with other two options as failovers.

p2pool has never gone down since I started using it.

Thanks for the info.  I like the fact that there is no central point of failure for p2pool.  The problem for me though is I am running fpgas with only 1 cpu/mb.  It is a decent setup: core i7 2600k, win7 on SSDs, so I think it should handle p2pool without a problem, but I don't really want to install bitcoind on that machine.

Oh you FPGA miners with your fancy toys.

Well p2pool needs bitcoind no way around that.  Alternatively you can connect to a public p2pool node.  Some charge a marginal fee (~0.5%), and some are free.

Yap, cute little toys they are  :D

Thanks for the info tho. I think I will probably switch over to p2pool eventually, just now sure when I would take the plunge.

Let me know if you need help to switch to P2Pool... I can setup your Linux P2Pool server for free!   ;)

Thanks for the offer!  I will let you know.  I am sure I have a spare mobo somewhere for a dedicated p2pool/bitcoind box.