I have a question on that as well. Will you still be working with Technobit when you introduce your own 28nm ASIC's?

I am frankly pretty neutral on that, more curious than anything. But I can see no real negatives from such a continued association either. Martin is good people.

Not all of us are computer illiterate. I like windows. I also like linux, but find it cumbersome for a great many things that windows is easy on. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. \

NOT having a Windows GUI based p2pool interface is a weakness of that protocol. Because no matter how much the linux and/or Mac fanboys would like this to be untrue, the vast majority of home computers are running windows. Excluding the biggest market out of prejudice or idealism is very akin to shooting yourself in the foot.

I personally like the donationware model for such things. "register for .xx and this nag goes away and I continue development" kind of thing.

Well stated. Aside from the snark, I think you've described my position fairly well. I don't think that SeanRaney is wrong altogether, but I do think he's seeing a small piece of a big thing.

All things done by living beings are done for perceived profit. Whether that perception is ACCURATE is open for debate, but nobody does something deliberately to harm themselves unless they are disturbed or defective. Even then, often, it's to profit in some manner. The cutter gains the profit of attention. The "altruist" gains the profit of adulation, and the capitalist gains tangible wealth. That is not in any way an exhaustive list. When profits are regulated by fiat and other control mechanisms, two things happen. Those with the pull and wherewithal buy the regulators, and those without either stop producing or go somewhere more conducive to doing business.

The pools themselves ARE the result of such capitalistic forces. CPU mining became too difficult, so people found a way to pool their resources. That this led to additional problems and possibilities is just the way things are. We do not invent advanced technologies in one step. It took us millennia to go from writing to computers. Every advancement creates new problems, some anticipated, some not. Free markets eventually solve the problems, as they cry out for solution!

In this particular instance, as has already been pointed out, you already have p2pool, which my knowledge of is not good. But it does address the problem of pools being centralized (to the extent that they are). If this becomes significantly a problem, other solutions or variations of that one will supplant the "pool" model, or compete with it on equal footing. As I mentioned, I do know one strength of p2pool over the poolserver model, but I do not know it's other strengths and weaknesses. I am certain, however, that it has not AS YET reached a point where the miners in general think it's benefits outweigh it's deficits. I know this because the vast majority of miners are mining from the pools.

Frankly, since the mining community at large IS aware of the issue, and because at least so far the major pool operators have proven to be honorable men, I don't see where there is much impetus to go beyond that model right now. On the other hand, with newer and faster devices coming in waves, that could change overnight. Given the talent pool that I have personally observed in this thread alone, I don't see a realistic chance of a successful 51 percent attack on the bitcoin network ever again. I am very new to mining. I am more of a student at the moment. I think I could change pools without having a failover set in CGminer in under a minute. Can't comment to the other miners because I haven't used them. While the pools have a lot of perceived power, it is illusory. A pool with no-one connected to it is a waste of electricity, nothing else. The very fact of that is a built in safety and check on the greed of the operators.

I think SeanRaney's concerns are valid, but I think they have been adequately addressed, both by his way of doing things, and by the way this market is working.

Edit for bold. Mistyped the tag. Oops.

I know that was tongue in cheek (and I think we're on the same page at least 90 percent of the time) but I would like the larger audience to think about that phrase.

"necessary evil" and "choosing the lesser evil" are two phrases that grind my gears.

I will state as a fact that while always present, evil is NOT necessary, and that if you are going to deliberately choose evil, as in elections, then you should not be a pussy. Go ahead and choose the greater evil. If you are actually trying to escape evil, arm up and don't participate in the farce known as democracy.

Since my last reply kind of came off as an attack, I will balance it by saying that I agree one hundred percent with this post.

More like 1774 to 1791. The US constitution has all the seeds of tyranny built into it, with some superficial nods to individualism and liberty. The articles of Confederation were vastly superior precisely BECAUSE they ceded very little power to the central organization.

That being said, I think I have technical grounds to take exception with SeanRaney's post. I understand the anger.

However, the large pools are still decentralized in a real sense, as they are completely dependent on miners actually going there. While I would personally rather mine in a smaller pool for many of the reasons stated, or even solo mine if I had sufficient hash power, this doesn't change the nature of the beast. If a pool operator misbehaves badly, it's a three second fix. And then the huge pool becomes no pool. Pools do not set the regulations or the limits of bitcoin, they merely aggregate the results of multiple miners. Much like "the internet" is an aggregate of every computing device connected to it. If one unit fails, many are able to take it's place.

Where I see a bigger weakness is that it is currently difficult to find detailed information about setting up and operating a pool. This in itself is not egregious, but it is frustrating. In the age of ASIC chips, I would think that "out of the box" poolservers would be a good thing, as local clubs and even some of the larger purchasers could easily set up their own pools and diversify the network very far. This in itself would quickly alleviate the perception of pools centralizing the network.

On to the more philosophical points of his post, I believe very strongly that people DO NOT need to be ruled, but DO desire it to a greater or lesser extent. I am an anarchist. I am an individualist. I actually do quite well in the absence of humans, so I perhaps have a different perspective than most.

What I have seen, over and over again, is people who ought to know better clamoring for some rule because of what somebody else did that offended/frightened/titillated them. That the same rule can and will be used against them doesn't seem to occur to them. Especially given the widespread worship of democracy, this is a great argument AGAINST rulers. Rulers care not for the wellbeing of the ruled, except to the extent that said ruled are useful or useable by the rulers. They want you cowering in fear or waving a bloody flag. Resist that primitive urge to give in to the loud voice, and your life improves immeasurably. The collective good is served best by ignoring it and concentrating on your own success. That this is chaotic and full of squabbling is meaningless. Most things worth doing are going to be difficult. Liberty is not cheap nor easy, but it is rewarding.
I do not see the greed of short sighted miners as a problem, except to the miners themselves. Unprincipled greed and poor understanding of economic realities means that most of the really greedy and unthinking miners will drop by the wayside when marginal profits are on par with reality, whereas those with longer vision will ride out the hills and valleys and strengthen the network BECAUSE OF their profit seeking. While individuals will both fail and succeed, the paradigm itself will only fail if mining becomes the sole focus of the bitcoin world. If instead, it is promoted and actively used as currency, then the miners will win, the people who use bitcoin will win, and the experiment will succeed.

I too think that a lot of miners focus too much on short term positive ROI, thinking (or at least posting) things like the miners will never pay for themselves unless they breakeven in the next two weeks or two months or whatever. I think that two YEARS would be a better way to figure it, as that's pretty realistic for the level of investment we're looking at. It would also allow your plan to be more flexible, folding near term income into more hashpower and more efficient miners as they become available. This is not a zero sum game, never was, never will be. At some point, if the experiment is to succeed in the long term, then the transactional side (of which miners are a vital component) will vastly outstrip the generation of coins via solving blocks. And frankly, when it happens (if it happens) it will happen very quickly. The world's reserve currencies are openly failing. The central bankers are putting truckloads of band-aids on a sucking chest wound and hoping the patient won't bleed to death before they can come up with a new scam. It's not working, and they know it. They just don't know how to break the cycle of madness (doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results). Bitcoin, due to it's inherent properties, is one such solution. But if it's to succeed, it cannot change fundamentally, and that means that those who mine NEED to learn long term planning. That most will not doesn't hurt the experiment, but it can very definitely hurt the individual miners.

It is in Germany, and most things that the German banks do are reciprocal to some extent in the US. Also, the US has recognized it as an asset, which can be translated to dollar value in courts. I would think that you could push for it's CURRENT value if not refunded in actual bitcoin. I am not a lawyer, though highly interested in law and married to one YMMV.

Yes, I do. High noise to signal. To be fair, I thought you had posted that as well, till I looked back. I know shit about the BBB, having first heard of it with this thread. But I have seen stranger things happen, so I didn't discount it anyway. My time on bitcointalk has shown me a couple of things. One, there are some amazingly smart people involved in this experiment, and two, that doesn't do anything to discourage the morons. I don't know that there is anything short of death that discourages morons, and death has little effect since they are interchangeable and common.

Damn, dude, who pissed in your wheaties today?

Seriously, though, tiresome or not, you have done a lot for this community. Hopefully KnC reads your data (and the other brave souls who have experimented and done the dev work for these units) and incorporates YOUR research in their next batch of miners. Should resolve a lot of issues with what appear to be minor tweaks to the design/case layout.

I also hope that they throw some coin at all you early adopters who stuck your dick out and came out longer. Because of you lot, by the time I can buy one of these units, a lot of problems will already be resolved.

Thank you.

I couldn't guess what's causing the problem. But I can answer your question.

SD cards are CHEAP. You should have a few already flashed, then it's a 30 second issue.

Yep. In my opinion, this was the sole reason for organized religion to come into existence.

Probably. The Hebrews were an offshoot of Babylon, the first known empire. But whether the largely unknown authors were statists or not, the bible has been used to justify the depredations of the state for all of it's existence, even in it's primitive forms.

"God says so" is a powerful argument to the superstitious. And not subject to falsification.

This is a common misperception. Christianity has so many truly egregious things in it that this should be corrected just to clear the slate for the real stuff.

In fact, it's far worse.

According to the Genesis account, the original sin was seeking "the knowledge of good and evil" which was forbidden to them. In short, the Edenites were supposed to be brutish and stupid.

Well...

No. Not because I'm trying to pick a fight, but because it implies that everyone loves themselves. Me, I'm my own worst critic, so applying that outside myself could cause some serious problems. I think the B&T quote is better, because it implies nothing about your motivations, just your actions.

The New Testament is seriously at odds with the old anyway. The descriptions of Yahweh in the OT are of a vengeful, frightened, bully with a lot of power and little self restraint. The NT version is still vengeful and frightened, but also full of self doubt. Not a good candidate for peace.

It is. I'll tell you what it is in a minute, but first I'm going to illustrate the fallacy you've employed here. It's a really common one, and it crosses all religious boundaries and often even in to the secular world. I call it the "narrow choice fallacy", though I'm sure that it falls under several of the logical fallacies.

This fallacy is that when a small group of choices are presented, the one committing the fallacy hopes (or believes) that you will discard any options outside of those choices. In point of fact, there are almost always more options than are presented. As an anarchist, I see this all the time when I present an argument. I figure I have succeeded in my argument when I get someone in the same thread to call me a republican while someone else calls me a democrat. In point of fact, I'm neither. I don't buy either brand of democracy, as I believe it to be a proven false religion.

Thus, given the choices above, I choose neither. Insufficient evidence that Jesus actually existed, and I too was once a stoner, so while I understand Dank's standpoint, I don't see it as conclusive or particularly persuasive. That he has explored areas of his consciousness that most have not, I will conceed. That he is some sort of deity? I have at least as much claim to that as he does. I make no such claim, nor will I.

I always try to take the road less traveled. It leads to better or at least more interesting places. I'm sorry, but a book written around 2000 years ago, derived from sources even older than that, does not encompass the be-all and end-all of human knowledge. Especially since a great deal of it is demonstrably false. It has some good concepts and instructions in it. Along with a lot of utter garbage. Like any philosophy, one has to strain it through one hell of a bullshit filter. Once the bible is filtered, the good parts of it can be expressed in ONE sentence. Bill and Ted's sentence.

"Be excellent to one another". If we all tried to live by JUST that, the world would be a better place. Adding all the "shalt and shalt nots" makes things worse. An it harm no one, do what thou wilt.

Edit: Punctuation/spacing.

There is some truth to this. However, the scientific method is a way of doing things (and thinking) that tends to get BETTER results than most other structures.

But a scientist doesn't rely SOLELY on methodology. That methodology is used to establish theory, to be sure, but it doesn't mean that an inquiring mind can't go beyond it. It does mean that said inquiry should lead to a method of testing that does fit empirical data, or at least set up a future means to do so. In hard physics, the theory of relativity is a good example. A great deal of it remains speculative, because we currently have no way to test it. But that does not mean it fails in it's framework, only that some of it's predictions cannot yet be tested. As we progress, more of it will be testable, falsifiable, and probably altered due to falsification of some of it's axioms.

The same can be said of consciousness. Without consciousness, there would be no extrapolation of empirical data, therefore no empiricism. Those of us interested in transhumanism are quite aware of this, and are actively researching and/or thinking about HOW consciousness works and WHAT it is. Which, by the way, is probably a rather key difference in scientific vs. religious thought. Or even philosophical thought. Religion, to the extent that it's not merely a control scheme, delves primarily into the question "why?". Science concerns itself more with "How?" and "What?" with the idea that "Why" will be answered by determining the other two. Thus you can use the scientific method where appropriate, but still separately ask "why?" and perhaps find another angle.

I personally think, based on things I have observed and people I have known, loathed, and admired, find some validity to the idea that exploring your consciousness via psychedelic drugs has some validity. Steve Jobs thought so, Aldous Huxley thought so, Timothy Leary... These were not stupid men. The problem with this angle is how to set up an experimental series that can both validate their experiences AND duplicate them. Altered states of consciousness are measurable, in crude ways, but not PRECISELY reproducible at this point. We need to understand the basal mechanics of the brain a bit better. The two schools of study there need to converge at some point. I think they will.

It has long been posited that one could directly simulate a brain in a powerful enough computer by mapping all of it's connections, programming analogs of it's chemical and electrical interactions, and turning it on. One way I can see of achieving this in the possibly very near future would be to disassemble a recently deceased person's brain at the molecular level using nanomachines and recording all of the results. From that point, it's a programming project, and programmers with a goal get things done. The prerequisites for nanomachines are pretty much all in place, just takes one genius to put them together properly, so this is not necessarily a pipe dream.

I tend to be very analytical and scientific in my approach to problem solving. But I have experienced things and observed paranormal phenomena that do not fit my understanding of the natural world. Not only that, some of these things have been in the presence of witnesses, so I am certain that I was not merely hallucinating. There is a misconception in people's minds about the scientific mindset. It is unfortunately fairly well present even among those for whom the sciences are their work. The idea that current theory has explained everything.

That has never been the core of science. The core isn't that everything has been explained, it's that everything CAN BE explained. The religious viewpoint, on the other hand, frequently employs the ideation that there are things that cannot be explained. I reject that outright, as it would mean that even their god couldn't explain things, if it had the desire. Unfortunately, that paradigm is long ingrained in religious thought. The first chapter of the Christian bible (or the Torah, if you like) condemns the seeking of forbidden knowledge. It's the Christian's Original Sin. And by their "reasoning" I am most assuredly and proudly guilty of that "sin".

I wish I could disagree with you. But I can't. Since they changed the composition in '01, it don't even make a decent joint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=580GyjDTlc8

So you can read.

Can you comprehend, extrapolate, and formulate opinions? Or just spit vitriol? If the things I've said are untrue, then bitcoin is NOT a viable currency.

Just a joke, man.

It was my understanding that Luke also mines his own pool. I could be wrong, but it would make sense.