I got an Avalon that initially appeared to be a lemon. cgminer would not start through the web interface. It could only be started from an SSH term using a start - ctrl-C - start - ctrl-C ... sequence until the units were coaxed into hashing properly. Otherwise I'd get "FPGA contoller mess up" "Avalon initialized" messages looping over and over. Once started, hashing at 282 MHz was a little unstable with the hash rate bouncing around a little.

After reading some of the comments in the other thread, I replaced the supplied Corsair GS700 PSU with a Fortress 750W Platinum I had lying around. This solved the cgminer  starting problem and the unsteady hash rate. In fact, when I switched the clock to 300 MHz it now hashes perfectly at a steady 71.5 Gh/s with the somewhat upgraded PSU.

You might want to have look at your power supply if you are having these problems.

Amir should really tone it down a couple of notches. He is making Bitcoin look like some kindergarden plan to overtake the world.

I think the big difference between the "bitcoin elites" and the existing financial system elites is the "bitcoin elites" are working really hard to distribute our power.

We're getting there, but it will take time. I really hope in a year or two there will be at least three or four different bitcoin implementations all producing blocks, validating transactions, etc. And in ten years there will be a dozen or more.

That is a natural progression; I was around when NCSA Mosaic was the one web browser and the NCSA server was the only web server, and there have been a couple cycles of certain browsers / web servers becoming dominant and then fading. I expect to see a similar evolution for Bitcoin infrastructure software.