It would be branded for a specific industry, and wouldn't be meant to compete with other cryptos like LTC etc.

This wouldn't be a coin to trade on exchanges, but to trade between people for goods within said industry. Its purpose would also be to educate younger kids about BTC and crypto currencies in general.

If a new coin was created for a specific niche industry (industry has approx $250 million in annual sales), what would be good parameters as far as total coins, reward/block and seconds for a block to be found? It would be scrypt.

Most of the people mining and trading the coin would be a younger gen, say 15-35 in age.

Lol

I ordered a Coincraft Desk in the Jan batch #2. Upon my last email communication (12-18-13) with Bitmine rep R Vogel, my "goods are foreseen to be shipped in calendar week 02/2014."

Doesn't "Jan batch #2" mean it was supposed to ship in the 2nd half of Jan?

Bitmine hasn't specified how they are shipping internationally (I'm in the US), what carrier etc. How long does shipment take?

We'll see, but I would not be shocked at all if by April 1 I still hadn't received it. Of course the difficulty will be so high by then, rendering the machine all but useless. I may just dump it straight to eBay to ROI, which I suspect many will be doing.

I really can't see how any of the ASIC companies can stay in business much longer. Smallish machines are becoming a joke in relation to difficulty. Soon you're gonna need a $250k+ server room full of machines to mine anything worthy.

RonPaulCoin wallet won't sync. There is a .conf file you have to d/l and manually add to c:/users/**yourcomputername**/AppData/Roaming/RonPaulCoin, which I downloaded and added but it still won't sync.

Here's the contents of the .conf file as downloaded from http://ronpaulcoin.com.

rpcuser=rpcuser
rpcpassword=123
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
rpcport=9026
port=9027
daemon=1
server=1
listen=1
gen=0
addnode=149.210.135.33:9027
addnode=108.61.83.36:9027
addnode=71.94.45.245
addnode=93.185.192.72
addnode=84.28.132.1011
addnode=24.7.226.120
addnode=71.94.45.245:56112
addnode=93.185.192.72:61404
addnode=84.28.132.101:50649
addnode=84.28.132.101:56580
addnode=84.28.132.101:58050
addnode=93.185.192.72:1099
addnode=93.185.192.72:26125
addnode=24.7.226.120:49259
addnode=68.84.252.138:58386
addnode=24.7.226.120:57973

What exactly goes in the top lines for username and password? Do you have to change this, or leave as is? This is unclear, and I can't seem to find the answer anywhere.

Bitcoin difficulty has skyrocketed and mining BTC with a home computer is not doable, much less with a laptop.

You need a specialized ASIC machine that only does one thing: mine BTC.

Getting a machine is another story altogether. Machines with any real power are backordered for months, and some of the companies are shady as all hell. Unless you can drop some serious cash on a super fast machine or machines, are willing to pre-pay and wait for months in a queue, mining is pretty much futile.