[reserved]

I've been toying with this for nearly a year, drew up maps with customer clusters, and did some other research, but never had a good-enough solution to get around signal penetration problems in the forest -- but I was given an idea....!

Goal: Launch a self-sufficient tethered solar balloon to provide wireless Internet service in a hilly, forested area by 2015.
Sub-goal A: Higher range, lower costs than leasing/building towers
Sub-goal B: Sustain one-year flight without maintenance
Sub-goal C: Using WISP software paid for in BTC, launch profitable WISP in rural, forested area with a minimum coverage of 500 people.
Sub-goal D: 1mbps down, 500kbps up @ $25/mo or less, <100ms Internet ping, <$200 upfront, less than 50% over-selling, no contracts.

Components required:
Lightweight high-cycle-life battery bank (LiFePO4 or LiPo, I'd think) -- NEED
Flexible solar panels -- NEED
High-speed ISP service with sub-leasing provision -- SECURED (up to 300 down, 50 up)
Solar balloon -- MAKE
Radio/"Router" -- HAVE (Ubiquity directional for testing -- need energy-efficient omni for full launch)
Lightweight PC for QoS/shaping/etc -- NEED (Possibly have -- see if Raspi can work)
Components to tether balloon -- HAVE (high-gauge fishing wire)
Automated turrets to shoot back at the drunk -- WANT

Estimated cost for proof-of-concept test launch: Free-enough
Estimated total cost for "functional" test launch: (<$500)
Estimated total cost for first fully-functional launch: (<$2000)
Estimated total cost for coverage goal:

Contributors:
Myself (construction, battery testing, business stuff, general insanity)
Michael Brown (consulting [experience operating WISP], WISP software)
Deslok (consulting)
Google X & #bitcoin-assets (gave me the idea to use balloons instead of towers)

Roadmap:
By September, 2013 -- first FAA-complient test flight (balloon only)
By November, 2013 -- first test flight with simulated payload
By December, 2014 -- complete battery testing, decide on a bank, order all remaining components
By January, 2014 -- first test flight with functioning payload, WISP software loaded
By February, 2014 -- complete coverage testing, begin advertising
By March, 2014 -- launch two more functioning balloons to create mesh network
By April, 2014 -- complete coverage testing for additional balloons, advertise
By July, 2014 -- launch as many additional balloons as necessary to meet coverage goal.
By 2015 -- fully complete coverage testing and advertising, serving at least 200 people.

Balloon funds: $500
Balloon donations to date: 0BTC

Donations can be made to 1Ba11ooNy2b8EyPwW5F56mJnhauDK7va5Z. The first 50BTC will be put toward testing/startup expenses (this is essential to get moving). Anything additional will go either toward meeting sub-goal D by using upfront expenses to minimize maintenance costs, toward expanding service to other forested areas without decent ISP options, and/or toward low-income service subsidies.

IF: 5BTC donated, pictures will be included in future updates on balloon progress.
IF: 20BTC donated, battery bank testing sheets will be released (includes lead-acid, LiPo, LiFePO4 with mAh, mAh/lb, "voltage output under load by mAh consumed" with graph, time to charge, Wh & Wh/lb)
IF: 40BTC donated, sheets on solar panel tests will be released (unsure of what all will be included)
IF: 60BTC donated, all future balloons will have giant Bitcoins drawn on!
IF: 80BTC donated, customer management screens will be loaded with Bitcoin propaganda, with BTC payment option.
IF: 100BTC donated..... Idunno -- popular, and reasonable idea on thread implemented

Donations with stipulations accepted. Run by me, first. Currently think publicly selling equity or revenue would be too dangerous, so would instead prefer to help pass donations on to customers in the form of superior ISP service to their current options. If project is deemed non-viable, unused donations will be returned proportionally to addresses sent from. First priority is to launch in Parma, MI, as a proof-of-concept. Expertise always appreciated.

It may be within the next year or two this'll need to be more closely examined by regulatory authorities. There are a few people in the Bitcoiniverse looking to start Bitcoin-oriented pawnshops where items can be turned into coins, and it'd be the perfect place for a BTC ATM. I don't think BTC consignment shops (whether online or B&M) are far off at all.

Checking pool website would probably be the easiest solution. Make sure each computer is assigned to a different worker on the pool website to keep tabs on them. Some pools will even send you an email alert when a worker stops sending hashes. I think some may even send SMS alerts.

If the computers are only mining, you alternately might want to consider something like BAMT @ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=65915.0

All VNC software's going to have the same hash-stealing problem as Logmein, so those are probably your best bets.

Should probably be sent to Yahoo if not already.

Really? I still just get  5/29/2013 11:59:58 PM: Mtgox returned error: [object Event] spamming the page.

If you're looking to download faster with a slower Internet connection, go to linked thread, skip OP, and download directly from first reply. DSL and shittier will generally benefit very significantly from a direct download. As much as I hate the damned things, I found a download accelerator making multiple ( connections can get >150kb/s (~30kb/s with a single connection) whereas p2p downloads tends to DL around 40-100kb/s. (or, at peak times, ~2kb/s multi direct, ~.8kb/s single direct, ~.1-.3kb/s p2p)

For those clicking thread with slow or capped Internet connections who still want to use qt or Armory, I suggest downloading a traffic shaping tool for applications, like NetLimiter, to quickly and easily restrict TDP and/or UDP traffic. AFAIK, QT has no toggle switch (at least, not in the GUI) to shut off seeding or limit speeds, so to get around this, you can simply limit QT's upload traffic to something like .5kb/s. To keep general Internet usage reasonable, I limit qt's download speeds to 4kb/s. This is still enough to stay up-to-date for now, though you'll want to disable the UL speed restriction when sending a transaction. QT still sucks down ~150-175mb/day (450-700MB/day before throttling), leaving it unusable for those with relatively harsh bandwidth caps, but is much more tolerable for those like me with unlimited slowness, and can allow light Internet usage if you have a cap >15gb/mo... though, you're kind of screwed the first time you want to download the blockchain no matter what if you have a low-cap connection. I find the lack of reward to host a BTC node pretty interesting... I'll be interested to see something implemented in Future VirtualCurrency -- very difficult problem to solve, technically.

As others said, though - probably not an Internet bandwidth issue OP is noticing. One-day download is super-fast. (If you have a low number of peers on qt, may be firewall issue, though -- slow peers will cause slow download)

Didn't read most of your wall of text, so hoping I didn't miss something relevant. CPUs have been made obsolete in BTC mining, except in some cases of free electricity (unless you count pissing your landlord off) -- but even then, it wouldn't be worth your time.

You want the Radeon HD 5870s. 2 5870s = ~800MH/s = ~.0331BTC/day until difficulty changes. If you can run the cards for significantly less in electricity than revenue you'd be bringing in, then yes - it's worth it.

Beats me. Unsure why it'd have a limit since default minimum bid/fee increases with size of transaction. Definitely more than three, though.

Assuming Bitcoin-QT, just click "Add Recipient" in the "Send coins" tab.

Just had a nightmarish thought.... can you imagine BFL having a public fax number? It'd just be stream after stream of complaints, accusations, demands, and gay ASICII porn with Josh's face.

Wait -- it's possible to type on these things? My big, fat thumbs are always pressing 2-3 keys unless I switch to landscape mode, and then I usually can't see what I'm typing. Whatever happened to those phones with the slide-out keyboards? 

Screw this. We need a private Bitcoin for-profit prison. Have them solve CAPTCHAs all day, pay in BTC. That's how you build an economy, guys.

All I use is Wifi Tether and GAuth.... but I can't get a mobile signal worth beans, and VOIP is unusable on low-strength 3G. Thanks, Sprint. 

.... lol, you're welcome. You would've saved hours if you didn't do what I told you to, though. 

Doubt it, but CGMiner's easy enough to set up and test if you want. Or you could try BitMinter, which is practically plug-and-play. Sorry I couldn't help.
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If your cards are <80*C under full load, don't worry about it. If you don't care much for aesthetics, simply removing the side panel like boobies suggested will often reduce hardware temps by a couple or few degrees at no cost. If you aren't too excited about that, you might want to consider "PCI" fans, which mount in the back I/O panel similar to how a GPU does. There aren't many manufacturers, and they're usually pretty flimsy, but they get the job done and they're cheap.

Not recommending this, but here's an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1470P80640

Alternately to all that, if you have the side panel open, grab a box fan laying around, put an air filter over it (super-cheap furnace filter is a great choice), and have it suck air out of the case (sometimes this might be bad.... see how your PSU and case fans are blowing air -- if you aren't conflicting with them, it's pretty freakin' effective). ETA: If all fans are blowing out, box fan should blow in.

Well... then I'll just prattle off theories that sound plausible:
*Power issue. Could be a bad molex cable/adapter, or something wrong with the PSU itself (though this seems unlikely since there's nothing wrong with the other). I'm guessing you're not in an area with frequent brownouts... I'd switch the molex cables on the 6870 with the ones on the 6970, reboot, and see if issue is solved. (or if PSU is modular, just use different molex cables for 6970)
*Your OS or BIOS is trying to switch which GPU (between integrated/dedicated) it's using for display, causing some type of software/driver problem. Obviously not the problem if you don't have an motherboard-integrated GPU.

Other ideas:
-Switch which GPU you connect a monitor to, or try a dummy plug in the 6970.
-Switch out PSU with known-good, if available. Re-test.
-Switch the position of the 6970 and 6870 on the motherboard. It's possible there's an issue with the PCI-E port on the mobo.
-If you have multi-boot PC, try a different OS and re-test. If you're on Windows and maybe don't have much Linux experience, Ubuntu's pretty easy to install with LiveCD versions.
-Take out the 6870 and see if the 6970 still drops load. If not, and other issues are proven non-issues, there may be something wrong with the motherboard itself.
-If all else fails and nobody comes in with more ideas.... try running Furmark or a similar gfx benchmark tool and see if the load drops on there, too.

I don't remember hearing anything about a new, invasive police force with jurisdiction everywhere called DHS. It didn't seem to garner as much discussion as it probably should have, considering it now handles everything from MSB compliance to cheap knock-off products in malls.

You know, though, AE -- cell phone accessories have notoriously high markup over cost to manufacture. It's in roughly the same margin class as "designer" costume jewelry. Why on Earth would any organization be worried about increasing an 80% margin? Are the "dangerous underground entities" just that greedy? Or maybe the plastic foundry (are they called foundries?) is part of the much bigger money-laundering, kill-Americans-with-unsafe-plastics scheme?