FTFY

To repeat about six hundred answers, no.

Though if I had anything to bet, I'd guess that they have working prototypes by now, or they wouldn't be putting solid dates on shipping.

stats from the brady foundation are highly suspect, but that aside, even in their logo they show HANDGUNS!!!

Not military style rifles. Rifles are for hunting or serious military/paramilitary operations. They are not particularly easy to conceal and require significant skill vs. a handgun. Yet they don't go after handguns.

Why?

Too many people have handguns and they HOPE that the collectors and hobbyists will buckle under, even though such weapons are used in LESS THAN TWO PERCENT of crimes involving guns.

I like this post. Aside from the technical and philosophical reasons I'm involved in bitcoin, I like playing with hardware. Well said!

Well, most of the time. See the TNG episode "Darmok" for an exception. They have a universal translator that actually works. Lovely how we can do that with fiction, eh?

It works for me! I'm fairly certain I can afford that by the time it matters. Couldn't get in on the first bunch, but with the price reduction I can probably get into the game as more than an advocate and observer this time around.

I certainly wouldn't go the suicide route.

But I would run for the hills, and keep my powder dry. If the SHTF and the civil government breaks down completely, the cities are going to be horrible places. I'm a country boy at heart, and the mountains and forests are my friends. I would encourage anybody to learn outdoor survival as a hobby and a mode of preparedness in the event of massive breakdown of the existing order. It's "power" is based on subtle threat and a great deal of propaganda and outright lies. It can't stand. No Empire ever has, and this one is vastly overextended. I'm not overly concerned about these assault rifle bans, as they are absurd. Most criminal gun violenc is commited with handguns, as are most defensive shootings. The PTB go after military style rifles for basically two reasons. One, they elicit a visceral response. They look mean.  And two, even though they account for so little of the crime rate as to be negligible, in a guerilla war, they would be incredibly useful to the opfor. For those woh think that government exists to protect us, WE are the opfor in their eyes and most of them don't even bother to hide it any more. If you are my age, you will easily recall when cops were not outfitted like light infantry, because they were not intended to be an army of occupation. Now they are, and now they are. In the event of a general break down of the ruling apparatus, and it's resultant crackdown, the citizen is not going to be battling the army, but the police. The Armies are already spread so thin on so many fronts that they would not be able to recall them in sufficient force fast enough to matter.

Guns are only a small part of the equation, and if the need arises for me to have a fully automatic weapon (not a semi that looks cool), I'm sure there will be plenty of the lying on the ground. In the meantime, it would be nice to have a couple of the semi auto versions of the AK simply for practice, both in teardown and shooting. It pays to be familiar with the weapons you may have to use.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I've had many discussions with tankers about what they fear. Almost to a man, it's a guy with a HE grenade sneaking up on them. NOT other tanks, NOT artillery, and NOT RPG's. No army can stand for long against an angry, armed populace. Yes, they can and likely will kill a great many of said people, but in the end they are savagely outnumbered, and they know it. That is why they put so much effort into raising non issues and downplaying real ones. It's called "engineering consent".

Historically, and by meaning even here in the neo-roman empire, Nation and State mean the same thing. Japan is a STATE. The use by FirstAscent has unfortunately become rather widespread, I suspect by design of some seriously warped people, but is still incorrect. The STATES within the United States charter are supposed to be the sovereign entities, with the Confederation headquartered in mordo... I mean the District of Columbia being just that: a confederation of free states. This was essentially the case before the massive treason by Abraham Lincoln's government.

In modern times, despite a fair amount of lip service to a dead letter known as the United States Constitution, The United States of America has become an Empire with 50 provinces and numerous colonies and garrisons.

I agree, in the exchange ratio sense. This experiment has to be multi pronged or it's going to fail. One way that is already organically evolving is as a reserve currency, which makes mining important in both the near and long term. Right now the world has basically three reserve currencies (0ne of them is a category), and two of the three are on precarious grounds. Those three are The US dollar, the Euro, and precious metals. Of the three, given current economic conditions, precious metals are the least liquid but the most likely to retain their perceived value.

Bitcoin is poised to be in this category, as demonstrated by Cyprus. People in that crisis perceived the bitcoin to be safer than dollars or euros due to it's inability to be easily confiscated by a central "authority". This should be capitalized upon.

However, for that to be valid, it ALSO needs to become more widely used. I also think LiteCoin is well positioned in this as well, for smaller purchases. The many and various altcoins besides these, while interesting and possibly profitable in their own right, are at least currently peripheral to these two.

Rising value against fiat helps this, but the wild roller coaster does not. The more things that are INITIALLY priced in BTC or LTC, the less of a roller coaster it will be. A relatively steady deflation is good for the currency, a rocketship parabola is not.

I do not profess to have all the answers. Not even many of them, just a good knowledge of how hard currency and soft currency has performed historically. Bitcoin is a different species of currency, with elements of both the hard and soft, therefore it is well positioned, with enough backing, to replace or seriously compete with existing currencies IF we can get more people to accept it. Both as exchange for goods and service and as a store of value. The fact of it's scarcity, even though artificial, helps both sides of this equation.

Well put.

In economics, EVERYTHING has to do with time preference. Credit and currency bubbles are driven by it. Your next purchase, whether food or non essential, is driven by it. http://mises.org/books/economics_in_one_lesson_hazlitt.pdf

This.

I will take it a step further and try to appeal to that same greed, but with some thought behind it. You want these devices to be profitable longer? Find ways to make bitcoin more generally accepted. Right now it's a niche. A rather big niche, but still small cap stuff. Greed is not all negative, but it has to be moderated by thought and principle. At current exchange rates, the lifetime of these devices is pretty short. Not due to hardware failure, but due to diminishing returns. But if the value of the bitcoin doubles in that same period, it will significantly extend the life of the miner. If more things become priced in bitcoin rather than traditional fiat, it will extend even further, as the marginal value of a bitcoin becomes much more than simply it's fiat exchange rate.

For the purpose of full disclosure, I currently have no skin in the game and have not decided which company to go with when I do jump in. KNC is my first choice so far, but there are others that interest me. Bitfury is their closest competitor in my estimation, as they have already delivered and are clearly on track for October with their big unit. I do not expect to catch the leading edge, and I'm good with a 10 to 20 percent ROI over the near term, so long as it allows me to build capital in bitcoin for the next generation of miners (or to buy up large quantities of this generation as the prices drop. I have extensive knowledge of power generation, so If I'm making that sort of return, I can invest in that as an adjunct)

I would have to say this depends on how long your time preference is.

Personally, I'd like to see dollars measured against the bitcoin someday, rather than the other way 'round. If that were to occur, $250/BTC would be chump change. Were the Federal Reserve and/or the FDIC to pull the kind of stunt that the EU central bank and the Cypriot banks pulled off, that would cause a mass exodus from the dollar, and the Cypriot example is still fresh in the mind of people with a much wider focus than bitcoin. Sure, the massive runup on the price of the bitcoin went back down, as bubbles inevitably will, but the hedge against the confiscation of funds WORKED for a lot of people who otherwise would have lost a lot more than they did. Cyprus is pretty small, but the example still stands.

While I still see gold as a more solid investment for those with a long time preference, it has some weaknesses that bitcoin don't. (that sword definitely has two edges). One of the strengths of Bitcoin, perhaps it's only valid one against precious metals, is that it's damn near impossible to confiscate an encrypted wallet. That's what made it a safe haven for the people of cyprus, and that is part of what makes it attractive as a growth investment.

I see the biggest problem of bitcoin primarily being general acceptance, which all of us should be exercising our brains and talents to change. Else mining will become useless. There needs to be more and easier ways to use it DIRECTLY as money, not just a few vendors and a few services. It needs to become as ubiquitous as VISA. There are some technical hurdles to this, outside of internet sales, due to the time of confirmation and some other things, but I am confident that the talent pool represented by this community is capable of overcoming them.

Actually, part of the grading process is how long it was aged. Fresh slaughtered beef is much less tender and more bland tasting than aged beef. The longer it's aged, the higher the grade. I actually liked your analogy, though, just because I have worked with cattle (the bovine sort as opposed to the the two legged sort) and quickly came to realize that most of a cow's value is after it's dead That being said, it's unlikely that these devices will stop working that quickly. If they make breakeven, then the diff would have to continue to skyrocket for well over a year even by that ridiculous 66 percent per month increase before the electrical cost outstripped the income to a detrimental degree. And that also assumes that bitcoiin remains stable or declines in value. Over the term we have been able to observe, neither condition seems likely.

pfft. I knew I should have known the name. I love the song "Stigmata". See what happens when you post in your sleep?

Not me, but I'm certainly down with the finished product!

Noted. I come from a management background, and the precise use of the terms is important in that context. The way it's used here is a bit confusing. Obviously I did get it, though I still don't understand the people that want to breakeven the day they get their machine. Ok, I understand the desire, I just don't see how they can reasonably expect it. Early adopters, maybe, but those days were gone before I ever investigated bitcoin. Which is unfortunate for me, but it's my own ignorance and or lack of due diligence about three years back. I am not actually in the race on the first ones shipped, as I was unable to raise the money. I might be in for their November price drop, though, and I expect a fair ROI pretty quickly, with a breakeven within a year even reinvesting my earnings into more mining equipment. And that is even under the assumption that the hashrate and difficulty continue their parabolic climb for some time.

I want to be in this for the long run, as I find Bitcoin to be immensely interesting and possibly even to be a new way of exchanging goods and services outside of the ever present bankster/Government Cabal that currently drives business models. I think it has the potential to lead to a great deal of decentralization of small entrepreneurs and of money itself. I'll never see it as equivalent to precious metals as a store of value, but as a means of exchange and easy liquidity, it has pretty fantastic potential. It is my hope to make sufficient gains in both standard fiat and precious metals over the course of a year or so that I can start to use BTC as my primary means of acquisition of goods and services. I also hope to be better involved in promoting that very thing, thus creating wider acceptance of bitcoin. It's not a hobby, per se, but an extension of my agorist leanings and dislike of central authorities. I see bitcoin as very subversive to the established and decaying order, and therefore think it worth accepting even if there are short term losses.

That being said, I think most everyone who gets a large scale ASIC device is likely to make a profit in a very reasonable time frame.

I've also been awake for better than fifty hours, so I apologize if this is a bit disjointed

I really should know that name. But it's not coming to me Several people have told me I look like Tommy Shaw, and I'm good with that! 

Well said, sir! +1

actually Theory of Games is where the term comes from. That's the theoretical underpinnings of military intelligence, as well as most advanced games, Chaos (Complexity) Theory, and several other useful data models for modeling and loosely predicting wide scale events.

My knowledge of English is exhaustive, and yours is pathetic. You should not step into a battle of wits unarmed, as not all of us are gentlemen enough not to accept the easy victory.