Actually most new users don't know this.  If you get 0.00098765 in dust from 50 transactions you would need to pay a transaction fee of 0.001 or more currently.  It would be like getting 50 pennies and then having to write a cashier check for $0.50 - economically it doesn't make sense.  If you end up adding the dust to your main wallet when you empty your wallet you'll be loosing money (at least until fees come down).

Save your energy and just work for BTC.

Ask in the marketplace.  Put in your rough location and ask if somebody nearby has some for sale.

A USB miner would be a cheap way to go about learning how to set up a basic miner, understand share submission, stratum protocol, etc.  It won't be making any money, it would be more like a BTC tutorial you have to pay for.

I did faucets back in 2011 when the amounts given out at that time were much larger, sometimes even 0.001 BTC per day.  Considering most are only giving a few satoshi at a time it's not worth it considering you'll never be able to spend the dust online (you would have to swap it offline with current fee rates).

Yep.  She was easiest to spot in about 2 seconds of scanning.

And if that was the TSA lineup, I would be ingesting BBs to set off the metal detector, wand, pat down, search....  

What's that, a hot asian girl for my Avatar 

Oregon Trail
Bard's Tale
Leisuresuit Larry
Ultima 3-6
Civ 1 (5 is decent)
DOOM
Master of Magic
Master Of Orion
X-COM
Counter Strike
BF1942
C&C
Age Of Empires
Sins of a Solar Empire
Guild Wars 1/2
Endless Space

If a million dropped in my lap I would spend 1/2 on charity in a 3rd world building schools and the rest I would use to buy another house someplace cooler (damn these miners make me sweat).

You mean like Civ 5?

The guys who did Endless Space are making Endless Legend which is like a mix of Civ and Fallen Enchantress.  I'm playing the polished Alpha (Steam) and it's pretty good.

If not Karma then the SEC.... or maybe Death himself... yes that will do.

Dead or alive you're coming with me.

I can't imagine anybody wanting to donate to his defense fund. 

Having volunteered at JPL (dad worked there a bit) I'm pretty confident it was real.

Plus the Russians would have totally called BS back then.  If they're willing to put nukes on Cuba calling out the US on worldwide press would be like a birthday gift 

Even worse, those of us mining during the hot 2011 summer to earn those $1 coins who sold for a measly $5.... ***raises hand ashamedly***

Proudhon, you forgot to mention the "Winter is Coming" of 2011/2012 when I watch the few BTC I had at the time drop from $15 to $2 and eevrybody including me was considering jumping ship.   I held onto my coins but but dumped at $5 for the quip profit - and got trampled by a bunch of bulls... 

Probably more coins were destroyed during reformats, reinstalls, and wallet corruptions than HDs tossed into landfills.  How many of us nerds actually toss HDs.  I end up pulling them apart and my job has nothing to do with PCs

isn't that like finding $1000 on the street and running into a casino and gambling the money away until you have 0 

If you can say that you feel comfortable mining for 1 year and paying for electricity during that time and acknowledging that your balance may very well be 0 at that time then you can consider solo mining.

If you would get sick in your stomach from that, then just join a pool and enjoy the little satoshis trickling in every day.

Regardless of whether the entity in ownership of 50% the hashing power has good or bad intentions Bitcoin will suffer due to a perception of centralization.

Buy an S1 now for learning purposes, make an excel chart calculating daily or weekly returns, and then after 3 months you'll see it was ultimately a net loss (assuming static BTC price).  During this time keep reading and understanding the concepts of difficulty increases and more efficient miners being released.  Then in a year or 2 when it might actually be worth buying hardware you'll be ready.

Once the machine costs more to run than it can mine it will be essentially worth nothing except for it's basic metal recycling value.

Your best bet would be to sell it as soon as you get it to somebody who has cheap electricity.

You're not mistaken.  This is what happens when you have a idiot for governor (Gray Davis) followed by a pseudo tree hugger (Arnold driving around in a Hummer) followed by a governor nicknamed Moonbeam.  I'm surprised we still have any tech companies left in Silicon Valley because there definitely is no room for anything electric to function in this state.

I'm with SCE too and the rate hike was approved by the CA public utilities commission.... which as you noted is lobbied by SCE. SCE's parent company does power on the East Coast and their rates are 1/4 of what we pay, and SCE provides the majority profit for said company.  Bascially we are subsidizing the parent Edison customers on the East coast because CA is run by a band of thugs.  Nothing you can do except maybe move to Seattle (which I am considering).

I have 4 XFX 6870s (some of my last 6xxx series cards) that have been mining nonstop since 8-2011.  They only put out 233kh/s due to heat issue but could do more if I wasn't in Cali-itsfrickinghotoverhere-fornia.

I have had more PSU failures than card failures, and of the 6 cards that have failed me, 3 were brand new R9 280X Sapphires which all failed within 1 month of mining.  The new R9 cards do indeed suck.