Difficulty   3275465
Estimated   3458370 in 1127 blks

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg30ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Where exactly are you seeing this? What point of it do you think we're in--beginning/end/breakout?
Maybe we're not looking at the same thing. I don't see it at all.

Pennants, which are similar to flags in terms of structure, have converging trendlines during their consolidation period and they last from one to three weeks. The volume at each period of the pennant is also important. The initial move must be met with large volume while the pennant should have weakening volume, followed by a large increase in volume during the breakout.



http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pennant.asp#ixzz2KXO3RFfo

It's not a perfect formation but it's there throughout.

Are we going to take the hands of the Federal Government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?

You and I know perfectly well that if we completely abandon crop control—I don't care whether it is the present method or, let us say, the McNary-Haugen method, because, after all, that is a Federal method, too—if we are to abandon Federal relationship to any national crop, we shall again have thirty-six-cent wheat. You can't stop it. Under present world conditions we will have five-cent cotton. That is obvious.

Well, uhh, nice username? 

As the rules are now people can enter their own timestamp on a block up to some distance from other nearby blocks. Over 2016 blocks inaccuracies of an hour or so don't matter, but it would be severe if we changed the difficulty every block. There are even blocks with timestamps before the blocks that they come after, what would difficulty be then?

It checks every block, but adjusts only every 2 weeks. Good averaging requires a significant sampling size (>1000).

However, it could also be a running averaging. See the difficulty adjustment for ppcoin.

The difficulty determines the expected amount of time. The actual amount of time to produce a block is random. So, even if it were feasible, adjusting the difficulty every block would not ensure that the blocks are produced exactly every 10 minutes.

I joined the foundation to basically monitor their activity (or lack of it as the case may be).  Over the last four months it seems they don't really do much as far as I can tell.  They voted to not publicly disclose their finances.  I don't think the bitcoin foundation members had any say in this, i.e. a vote.  They don't seem to have any plan for work, at least that I can see or that has been made known.  No milestones have been eclipsed.  

The foundation seems to function more like a charity, a charity in which the people handling the influx of bitcoins, distribute whimsically among themselves.  Add to that what Matthew wrote above, and we, as the bitcoin community are starting to see a bad pattern here, which is initially what I was afraid of when this foundation was announced.  In the extreme case, it could be argued that this is simply another scam that uses social engineering under the auspices of a "foundation" to separate people from their bitcoins.

It is wise to remain vigilant in the next few months to see if the foundation accomplishes anything of any import.  I hope I am wrong about this organization and that they can do some useful work as employees of the bitcoin community in the next few months

Now it is possible my words are much too harsh, and I simply do not have all the facts.  Unfortunately this foundation seems to function more like an elite and secret group (much like The Fed) with no accountability (hence, it is hard to get the facts).  A very unwise move by the person(s) who set the organization up.

My advice to prospective members at this point is to stay away.

They shot up ANOTHER truck with no connection to this guy...more "tragic mistaken identity":

48% of the Americans are ignorant enough not to know tha the crysis as of now is already bigger than the so called Great Depression ('29).

The rampage began with a double homicide in Orange County on Sunday, in which two people were found dead in their car. One of the victims was the daughter of a former Los Angeles police captain Mr. Dorner had named in his manifesto. The police believe that then, very early Thursday morning, Mr. Dorner shot and wounded one of the police officers guarding one of his intended victims. And later Thursday morning, the police said, Mr. Dorner ambushed two police officers waiting at a traffic light in Riverside, killing one and severely wounding the other.

“The Riverside officers were cowardly ambushed,” Chief Beck said. “They had no opportunity to fight back, no pre-warning.”

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants-TJ. This quote is not directed toward the US government which I fully support 100%. This is toward the LAPD who can not monitor itself. The consent decree should not have been lifted, ever.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A pair of big, blimp-like craft, moored to the ground and flying as high as 10,000 feet, are to be added to a high-tech shield designed to protect the Washington D.C. area from air attack, at least for a while.

The bulbous, helium-filled "aerostats" - each more than three quarters the length of a football field at 243 feet - are to be stitched into existing defenses as part of an exercise of new technology ordered by the Defense Department.

The coming addition to the umbrella over Washington is known as Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS. Raytheon Co is the prime contractor.

"We're trying to determine how the surveillance radar information from the JLENS platforms can be integrated with existing systems in the National Capital Region," said Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
NORAD, a binational command, is responsible for defending air space over the United States and Canada, including the Washington area with its many pieces of important infrastructure.

The most significant air attack in the area took place on September 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda militants hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, and crashed it into the Pentagon.

To expand the time available to detect and defend against any future attacks from commercial aircraft, major changes were made under Operation Noble Eagle, combat air patrols begun after the September 11 attacks.
Airspace restrictions were extended. U.S. Army Sentinel radars for low-altitude radar coverage and short-range Stinger/Avenger missile batteries were deployed.

Washington is currently guarded by an air-defense system that includes Federal Aviation Administration radars and Department of Homeland Security helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on alert at Reagan National Airport to intercept slow, low-flying aircraft.

EXPECTED BY END OF SEPTEMBER
The JLENS craft are expected to arrive in the capital area by September 30, according to Kucharek, who is also a spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command, which coordinates the Pentagon's homeland defense role.

A "capabilities demonstration," as the test is called, is expected to last as long as three years. Its location is being withheld, pending notification of lawmakers and others.

JLENS craft work in a roughly $450 million pair, known as an orbit, each tethered to mobile moorings. One of the aerostats carries a powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles. The other carries a radar used for targeting.
Operating as high as 10,000 feet for up to 30 days at a time, JLENS is meant to give the military more time to detect and react to threats, including cruise missiles and manned and unmanned aircraft, compared with ground-based radar.

The system is also designed to defend against tactical ballistic missiles, large caliber rockets and moving vehicles that could be used for attacks, including boats, cars and trucks.

A success in the U.S. capital area could give a boost to the JLENS program, which has been scaled back sharply along with the Pentagon's other 15 or so lighter-than-air vehicle efforts.

Blimp-like craft offer several advantages compared with fixed-wing aircraft, including lower cost, larger payload capacity and extended time aloft. However, their funding is to fall sharply as Pentagon spending shrinks to help pare trillion-dollar-a-year U.S. deficits.
Peter Huessy, a consultant on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, said the system would compliment current U.S. missile-defense capabilities.