More referral spam, which is why newbies have to stay in the sandbox.

or just include starter blocks with the client: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/

I see what's I did there, the video driver is Win7 only, on other OSs it gives you no indication that it did not install a video driver (except that if you uninstall all ATI software and then install this you are still in VGA mode)

User 1 is MrSam with a slow or non-existent miner
User 2-5 is Mr Sam's buddies that pay mr sam 1% of their shares,
user 6- are suckers that pay MrSam .5% and his buddies .5% of their shares,
more users are suckers that pay MrSam .3% and his buddies .3% and the previous people .3% of their shares...

See how it is shaped like a pyramid? With the bottom 80% paying a 1% fee to enrich the top? They pay .5 BTC per round to people who don't even have to mine any more. Deepbit makes 1.5 BTC a round for not mining though, so I guess it's not tragic.

The web site says something different than the top post about the payment structure, and neither give enough detail of the payment scheme to see how pyramid-y it is.

I think you just have a lousy connection to other clients, it's just downloading now, that's all.

Miners are doing too good a job of hashing as it is, the bitcoin network has five times the computing power of the world's largest supercomputer. Big waste of electricity. It's enough of a contribution to keep your bitcoin client open, so the next person who needs all the blocks can get them faster.

There aren't going to be more blocks coming in every minute as bitcoin grows, bitcoin is designed to adjust so there is a new transaction block about every ten minutes. They may get bigger, but that's why fees are based on the size of their transfer in KB.

You can use http://blockexplorer.com/ to view the actual blocks. The first transaction in a block is the miner reward, 50BTC + the transaction fees paid for the transactions in that block. They vary depending on the size of the transactions in the block.

Less reward for mining would make bitcoins that much harder to 'mint', meaning they should be more valuable.

None of the above. http://www.ipcop.org/

That is a cool trick if you have a motherboard that can completely turn off cores. However, for those that are using their computer as a workstation, the extra cores won't be able to be used when they are needed, and idle cpu cores do still use only about 10% the power. For that dedicated mining rig, you could sell the Core 2 Quad and buy a half-dozen Celeron D's http://www.aztekcomputers.com/CEL2660D775R-INTEL-1859081.html; the most they can depreciate is $10, and that's if you throw them in the garbage.

On either chip, running them at a lower clock and voltage certainly works. I have a firewall running an Athlon XP 1700 at 600MHz at 1.0V.

You can squeeze about $2 worth of bitcoins a day out of it at the current mining difficulty and exchange rate.

You can "seed" a new bitcoin installation by downloading and copying the first 120,000 blocks from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/ Right now we are on block 134,741.

You are contributing to the strength of the encryption of the blockchain (the transaction record of all payments) when you mine. The more difficult it is to find the desired hash of a transaction block by mining, the harder it is for a malevolent actor to create a false block. The bitcoin client still participates in a p2p network that communicates information about transactions to other clients (that's where you are slowly downloading those blocks from).

The reduced mining reward won't affect things any more than the constantly increasing difficulty of mining (difficulty has doubled in a month). It is assumed that as the bitcoin network grows, increasing transaction fees that miners earn will slowly replace the 50BTC block hashing rewards.

You can't track exactly when a pool round ends by doing that. Statistics showing when a new round starts are intentionally delayed.

Deepbit pays out 48.5BTC per round. ( 341 / 1487205 ) * 48.5 = .01112052 BTC

I can't explain where the missing BTC would be, but as far as shares, guiminer doesn't and can't keep track of pool rounds. You would have to know the exact start and end time of a round (the time between pool block solves), set your computer clock to match the pool's computer clock, and have logged your accepted shares to a log file (using a command-line miner, like phoenix) to verify for yourself how many shares you submitted during a particular round.

The amount you should make mining per day: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=21541.msg272356#msg272356

If you are mining 24/7, your rewards should be very close to the above formula. If you mine for a few days in a pool and don't seem to be getting what your ghash/s says, try http://www.bitcoins.lc, where after mining for a few hours, you will see exactly how much you are estimated to make a day in your stats (and they don't take 3% of your earnings or charge you to withdraw).

That's why you build your mining rig with a low power CPU from the start, a good example would be an AMD Sempron 140, which I run in one of my rigs. While the maximum TDP is 45W, it automatically cuts the voltage and multiplier during low usage to enter a lower power state using AMD Cool 'n Quiet technology (set your Windows XP power profile to "portable/laptop" to fully enable it after installing the AMD CPU driver.) A running Windows 7 Sempron system draws 35 watts from the wall!: http://www.servethehome.com/amd-sempron-140-sargas-whs-review/.

The other factor is power supply efficiency. You need to look at the efficiency of the power supply at the actual wattage you will be drawing when mining. http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=142 is a good site for finding real-world efficiency of power supplies at different power draws. The linked review is of an 850W power supply, but it is most efficient (85%) at around 519 watts (using 611 watts AC), and above that the efficiency goes down. I picked this power supply for you because 520 watts is about what a Sempron + 3x overclocked 6850s + 1GB slow DDR + a small HDD + fans would use while mining ( 20W + 3x160W + 20W ). Overclockability is enhanced because the +12V quality is higher when you aren't using your power supply at it's maximum. Now you have 480 watts of video cards running for 611 watts at the outlet, which is about as low as it can go!

For addresses that have received payments:

bitcoin listreceivedbyaddress

for a new address:

bitcoin getnewaddress

Just set the CPU affinity to only use one core, and turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS. Then you can make your .001 BTC per day.

There is no GPU OpenCL for Intel, so I don't know why your post refers to GPU: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/opencl-sdk-frequently-asked-questions/#9

9. Does Intel® OpenCL SDK support the Intel® Processor Graphics (integrated graphics)?
This version of SDK supports only OpenCL CPU Device. Intel is evaluating when and where OpenCL support will intercept our products, including processor graphics, but no announcement has been made.

It's a hidden miner that you can install on somebody else's computer if you use it.

Why don't you just mine -testnet. You can bust a laptop CPU out on that thing and get 2700x as much in testBTC as you would in crappy regular namecoins.

Buy a broken Dell or other oem computer or case on Craigslist, often it will have a forgotten-about product key sticker on it. Microsoft probably enjoys having millions of windows licenses "lost" this way. You'll need to install off an OEM DVD (not retail box), easily available at MSDN or your favorite file sharing site.

The real question is if you can hash in fewer cpu cycles using their OpenCL as opposed to native SSE2 code, the answer is probably no.

I wouldn't use the OP's dropboxed file when the third post has the real AMD link.

This release does not include a video driver, so it shouldn't be called 11.7 anything. The 110619a-121104E.zip includes the 2.5 SDK, but also includes ATI Hydravision and an ATI TV Wonder USB driver, so be sure to use the custom install option and uncheck those.

I got the exact same performance running this 2.5 SDK vs 2.4, on top of both 10.11 and 11.6 drivers.

The stats on the web page don't mean much, they only show approximate values. I think it's because sometimes the pool website takes a 50 second long snapshot and sometimes a 70 second one, but calls them all mhash per minute. Stats are also randomly delayed, so that having good stats available can't be used against the pool. If you are mining and sending in accepted shares, then you get paid accurately for your work.