Inaba, can you at least tell us if you have had one batch of chips already come through, and they didn't work out, so you're waiting on another batch?

My speculation is that they didn't know their ship date would be pushed out until their first batch of chips failed.  That's when they had to push back the ship date significantly.  Midway through October, they were still very confident about meeting the early November deadline (pushed to then from late October due to miscellaneous parts not having arrived yet).  They were also ready to bring out two prominent members to view the prototypes right after they built them in early November.  Unfortunately, the new chips didn't work out for whatever reason, and all they could do is put them on the boards and show us pictures, while they wait for the new fixed batch of chips to arrive.

The language of the postings from all members of BFL definitely shifted late October.  It seems as though they were fully expecting to be able to ship them out in early November, then something happened and they realized they could not.  My bet is that "something" that happened was something wrong with the chips, especially since someone pointed out the bulging on one of them in the pictures.

They did say right from the start that they expected to ship late October provided there were no unexpected delays.... well viola, unexpected delays!  I don't blame them for things beyond their control.  I always viewed October as a best-case scenario, since they pretty well stated as much that's what it was.

EDIT:  I will be sorely disappointed if they are unable to ship them out before other ASIC vendors begin their shipments, but I made my bet, and I'll deal with the consequences of losing it.

If the rightful owner can be proven, however, then there would be a case against the one who has stolen the funds.  Rightful ownership could potentially be proven by showing a transaction with another person.  For example, if I sold a laptop to someone, and they sent the funds to 18tkn, then I could prove that those funds sent to 18tkn do indeed belong to me.

I guess the argument you are attempting to make is that a court couldn't determine who stole from who, or who originally owned the private key.  I'd say that some sort of "first use" doctrine could become a standard for that sort of determination.  If I can prove that I used a particular address before someone else, then I am the proven owner of that address.


Again, that is a far cry from "there's nothing you can do".  It's like saying there's nothing a store owner can do when someone steals cash from their store.  Well, sure, they have a lot they can do.  They can look at the evidence (fingerprints, security camera footage, etc), potentially find the perpetrator, and prosecute them.  Same thing if someone steals your Bitcoins - look at the evidence, find the perp, and prosecute.

If the perp is good at covering their tracks (which most are), THEN there's nothing you can really do, but saying there's nothing you can do as a catch-all to all Bitcoin thefts is plain wrong.

I read a little while back that idling a modern car typically uses 0.2 gallons/hour.  So, if you consider that the minimum, then you're looking at at least $0.70/kwh.  It is possible to achieve full draw on an alternator at idle, so I think it is reasonable to assume you could get 700w out of the car at idle.  There would be a nearly negligible increase of load on the engine.  $0.70 / 700w = at least $1.00/kwh.

If you upgraded your alternator to allow for more load, then you might need to also increase the default idle speed to ensure the engine does not stall, which would mean more fuel usage.

EDIT:  Now if you're talking about running it on a car that is moving, I'd say the electricity is virtually free.

Quite easily.  Your typical alternator can push out 50 amps @ 14v, so 700w.  Certainly, some of that is used for other electrical items (lights being a big user), but a large part of that amperage goes unused.  It needs the extra overhead to be able to recharge batteries drained while the car is off, so using that overhead for other purposes is entirely possible.

I'm the opposite.  I like the nothing-held-back approach as opposed to the cookie-cutter sunshine-laced BS you usually get from company representatives.  The world is too politically correct, and people are too easily offended these days (and companies are too willing to cater to their whims to avoid bad PR).  I appreciate someone who is not worried about whose feelings he might hurt with what he says, and I appreciate it even more when a company holds the same attitude.  Josh stands his ground for what he believes in, regardless of what other people think or how other people treat him, and Butterfly Labs obviously cares little about maintaining a fake, rosy-looking PR image, and I like them both for it.

Call me weird, but that's my opinion.

Blockchain.info is better to start with, unless you're talking about holding thousands of dollars worth of BTC on it, in which case I might be disinclined to use anything but armory and a computer disconnected from the internet to hold my BTC.

It's good to have options.

Blockchain.info is the only web wallet I think anyone should trust (as evidenced by the mybitcoin debacle), and they don't support other cryptocurrencies.  If someone wanted to make a blockchain.info counterpart with the ability to manage all cryptocurrencies, then I think they could be very successful.

Regardless, a desktop wallet wouldn't be a bad thing either.  It'd be a better solution than none, which is what we currently have.

Give an example of how an open transactions purchase of Bitcoins would work.  What you just said only says "yes, you can perform transactions off of the blockchain".  I want to know exactly how you picture this working.

This is the only mining pie chart I know of.
https://blockchain.info/pools

Good to know... I had heard from a couple of people that Litecoin was very intensive because of the quick blocks, and they couldn't successfully run both bitcoin and litecoin on a server.  Of course, the server had other tasks as well...

@markm - I think only Bitcoin does (Electrum), but I am not certain.  Regardless, it should be relatively easy to port Electrum (or whatever other lite client scheme develops) to other currencies, and then it's just a matter of finding people who want to host the servers.  How would open transactions help the case though?  Would people transfer coins by providing private keys through open transactions?  Seems silly and wasteful.  Is there another way to do it?

I don't see a reason to complicate things by adding open transactions into the mix... just use each cryptocurrency as it is.

I agree with mark - a project like this needs to use lite clients, not full blockchain versions of each client.  Trying to run 8 different cryptocurrency blockchains off of one HDD would pretty much necessitate a dedicated computer for the purpose, or at the very least, a dedicated HDD.  It would make more sense to integrate lite clients so that a universal wallet could be used on anyone's computer.

That said, I think such a software would be really neat, and I would certainly use it.  It would increase popularity of alt-coins too - many people probably don't bother with them because they don't want to run another piece of software, or they don't want to use a command-line-only client.  If they were already running the software, though, they might be much more likely to give them a try.

What are you talking about?  The court could order them to pay me, and that's that.  If he refuses, and his wallet is password protected or otherwise inaccessible to others, then he stays in jail until he changes his mind.

The argument might be true that you cannot force a person to send Bitcoins back to their rightful owner if they have a strong password on their wallet, but you can certainly "encourage" a person to do so, and that's a far cry from "there's nothing you can do".

As long as at least one other person is mining, no single person or entity could own the whole pie chart, regardless of how much money is spent.

In order to acquire half of the pie chart, once ASICs are released, it would take $5M-$7.5M.  To acquire 3/4 of the pie, $10M-$15M.

Of course, given that all of the ASIC companies do want to see Bitcoin continue to succeed, it is unlikely that any of them would sell enough ASICs to any single person or company to acquire this much of the pie.  The person attempting to do this would need multiple purchases by multiple aliases from multiple ASIC vendors to actually achieve it.

That's pretty dang cool, actually.  I'd subscribe to such a service.

I just wanted to remind everyone that I have an ad slot available at www.minecraftcc.com.  As of 5 days ago, I started paying people 10 satoshis for each block they modify on the server, and many people who have never used Bitcoin have signed up to receive the payouts.  What this means is, a fresh group of videogame-playing Bitcoin users are visiting MinecraftCC every day!  I just paid out to 26 different players who were active on the server within the last 24 hours and are also new Bitcoin users, and that number is growing quickly every day.

A great advertising opportunity!  Check out the ad slot at https://www.operationfabulous.com/advertiser/index.php?e=site_page&wid=158&from=0

I'd like to add MinecraftCC's "Mine For Bitcoins" program to the list.  More information is available here:  http://www.minecraftcc.com/index.php?threads/information-about-getting-paid-to-mine.4613/

No restrictions!  It's basically a faucet site that requires activity on the server in order to be paid, but the more activity, the higher the payment.

Getting some great feedback on this!  I am dedicated at least 1 BTC/month towards this myself, and will adjust payouts accordingly.  I've received 0.16 BTC in donations - thank you whomever donated.  Certainly, this is a great way to get more people involved in Bitcoin who would never otherwise touch it.  This was the most recent payout - lots of players are taking advantage of it already!


EDIT:  I would also like to get this on as many of the "get free bitcoins" lists as possible.  If you know of any that I haven't already posted on/joined, please do pass them along!

I suppose it is possible, but with the variable terrain, I think it'd be difficult to accomplish a workable bot that doesn't get stuck.  Automated play is not allowed, and if done for the purpose of increasing one's payout, that player will be banned.  We don't put up with people trying to cheat the system.