Oh really, that's why if you go to TweetForum, and you start posting, I pay you in BITCOINS just to hear your opinions. Yeah that's 0.25 BTC per 100 posts. I hide it "so well" that many of my members are now earning Bitcoins just for talking about Bitcoins.

That's not all I am doing that is Bitcoin related at the moment, I have several projects I am working on, with the latest one I just finished called http://bitcoincloset.com . I am a die-hard Bitcoin supported, and I can assure you that the majority of people in this thread have done way less for Bitcoin than I have...

I think I am more of a Bitcoin supporter than 90% of the people in this thread. Please...

Yes funny as hell these fools still think they are going to get rich with their wagon hitched to that idiots train.

RS has taken most of the suggestions that have been given to him by the "real" solid coin community pretty seriously.

As far as him working by himself, that's not really something he can control. He is always open for help from others, and has stated numerous times that he would like to have a team, which is part of the reason why the "tax" is going into effect. Programmers don't like working for free you know .

With a full currency being run by one person, would this be the only true solution to be able to stop a 51% attack from happening, since theoretically, that one person could stop the machine until they are back in control?

I am super over simplifying this I think, but I still wonder generally

Guys we really need to stop fighting amongst ourselves. p2p currency advocates are their own worst enemies at the moment. We need to be ready with decent, practical, dependable and non-scammy alternatives to debt based fiat money now that hyperinflation is beginning to accelerate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/15/world-banks-flood-markets-with-dollars

Gavin and co.

And I said alleged - meaning I don't have the evidence and it could be just rumor and I'm not wasting my time to search for it, but the term alleged is my honesty up front with that.... ultimately I don't care even if it is.

Good thing Bitcoin isn't being managed by a central authority and allegedly backed by a corporate sponsor.   

@deepceleron  allot of words allot of stuff

How should you choose a pool?

First, let's go here and explore aspects of each pool (this may not be inclusive of all pools):
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

Considerations:

Are you risk-averse or more likely to gamble?

Bitcoin mining and block-hash solving is like a lottery, especially with the current high difficulty. With a high-end video card, Bitcoin mining by yourself will average you a 50 BTC block-find about every six months, but it better to think of it as a 4% chance of winning 50 BTC in a week. For many, this "gambling" is not acceptable, even though it would have the highest long-term payout, since you keep all generated earnings.

Pooled mining allows users to pool their resources together for smaller, but more regular payouts, similar to the office buying 100 lottery tickets and splitting the winnings. A higher pool hashrate means more regular but smaller payments. Are you fine with only getting a payment once every few days or even weeks on a small pool, even if that payment is still proportional to your work?

Lastly is pay-per-share pools, better described as "mining-for-hire". They pay you a fixed rate for your mining and accept the risk themselves, typically with higher fee.

Will your earnings be reduced by pool-hopping

Proportional pools, and to a lesser extent, math formula-based pools, can be gamed so that strategic timing of work submission will earn a miner more than others, and at other's expense. Has a pool taken proactive and effective measures, such as delaying statistics beyond the exploitable time window required to mine 1/2 difficulty shares, detecting and banning pool hoppers with a well-disclosed policy, etc. (Search the pool-hopper threads for your pool's name and see what they say about it...) Is the payment method used by the pool impossible to game by hopping? (examples: PPS, PPLNS, SMPPS) A good way to judge is to look at a pool's hashrate graph; if it looks like a lot of miners jump on at the start of new rounds, that's bad for you. Conversely, I suppose, are you a pool hopper and you want a pool that can earn you the maximum gains for your work by being undefended or even pool-hopper friendly?

Are the pool fees appropriate for their services and competitive with others?

A block solve generates 50 BTC, plus earns transaction fees for all the currency transfers included in the block (ranges from 0-10 BTC, but averages about 0.2). Most pools keep the transaction fees for themselves, some pay them out to users. Some pools are 0% fee, some are up to 3%, only paying 48.5 BTC to users upon block solve. Some have extra features for higher donations, some encourage fixed donation percentages. You should weigh the fees against other pools.

Does the pool have extra features you want?

The simplest interface might be http://bitparking.com/pool, with http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Eligius_mining_pool a close second, where you simply mine with your bitcoin address as a password, and log in to withdraw earnings. Pool features can include multiple workers for each video card, email notifications of payments or dead miners, graphs of pool or individual hashrates, automatic payouts at certain levels, user API for retrieving statistics, etc.

Pool gimmicks

Does having features such as teams or affiliate/referral programs interest you? Does it excite you or turn you off if some miners might make more if they refer more people or have more miners working under them? Are bonus rewards for block finders sustainable - something to jump-start a new pool, or does it seem like a gimmick that should reduce the profits of others?

Reliability

Uptime and connectivity matters a lot. Look at pool forum threads and see if users have noted downtime or periods where work wasn't being accepted. Did the pool respond and rectify the downtime issue? Did it come from a network DDoS attack, is that vulnerability fixed now? Does the pool support long-polling, to notify your miner quickly to start working on a new block?

Reputation

This is up to you. I find the web page design and information, and the amount of "used-car-salesmanship" says a lot. Is the pool operator well known and informed, has the pool been around, can you easily contact pool operators or other members for support or to have questions answered? If the pool disappeared tomorrow, how much risk would you as a user be taking?

Further constructive posts appreciated, which I will canonize if beneficial.

Wasnt that the whole point of this exercise anyway (and the original post for that matter?) 

And if not, why not? 

What do I,  as a miner,  care about your hardware, software, or network failures?  I want a return on my electricity costs + margin and the rest is your problem and why i pay you a fee/donation.  I dont care about normalized statistical calculations about the probability of x and y happening if the end result is the pool  solving less blocks than expected or hoppers stealing a share of my earnings.

Judging from the growth we have seen at Mainframe,  im guessing we arent the only ones with this viewpoint.

What the **ck is wrong with people up in this once intellectual-assed thread? Man, we using organic fluid coolants up in that cascading system, not water. Some low viscosity fluid like benzine or kerosene with the PC in full immersion.

Yeah, it don't conduct heat too good, buy we exploring means of pumping that fluid and mixing it with the ambient environment to dump that excess heat.

People round hear using every muscle except the one that count.. they brain!

That is also retarded...so everyone with a fish tank is at risk for legionaire's disease? I have four open top fish tanks in my living room, about 300 gallons. They evaporate about 8-9 gallons on a summer day, being fan cooled. I don't have a nasty chicken infection, nor does anyone else keeping aquariums.