A little off-topic from saving the NAV and such but...

I really enjoyed the the two interviews you (usagi) did with gigavps and Garret about their respective mining ventures. (These interviews can be found on the BMF website: http://tsukino.ca/bmf/ )
It was an insightful look as to how "the pros" mine Bitcoins.
Thank you very much.

I hope that you will be able to continue to interview more of the operators of the securities that BMF has a stake in. It helps me (as an investor) to know that there are real people behind the ticker symbols.

This sounds like a job for...
Nefario

I don't understand the problem.
The website clearly states: GLBSETime
Technically, the clock can be whatever it wants to be. 

If the hash rate is increased by double, then I say just do a 2 for 1 stock split. Double the number of shares outstanding.
Everyone who owns 10 shares now has 20 shares, etc.
This seems the easiest way to issue additional hash rate while keeping each share at 1MH/s.

Would love to see the current price in the "portfolio" view.

Ticker | Balance | Reserved | Current Price

And there was much rejoicing.

I don't know.  9,600 BTC invested does not sound to far fetched to me. With a few people putting 300+ BTC, even more putting in 100+ and everyone else, it could easily add up.
Look at it this way. Do you think the scalper has had at least 1000 deposits?

I would rather it not. The scalper simply does arbitrage, which a computer can do fairly safely.
Playing at different currencies involves many more variables that puts our money at higher risks. This would be an interesting separate service.

No, it does not play the different currencies. The scalper only play the different prices of BTC at different exchanges.

Example: If mtgox price is 5.00.  And Tradehill is 5.15.  It will buy and sell across those exchanges, taking advantage of the price difference. This is called arbitrage.
It will then send the extra BTC it earned back to our accounts.

The earnings in your account are updated when the "Live Counter" on the front pages is updated. So, I assume it's "live."

I think it should be a matter of how often the majority of the miners get paid. With difficulty ever increasing, it could take weeks for Joe Miner to ever see any coin if the minimum is raised too high.

Aww, I use plain old btcguild.com to connect. I guess I'm not special. 

I do not get Tonal at all. Is it just hexadecimal?

I just realized this question was off-topic, but I'm posting anyway!

For people who donate 2.5%+ they can still have instant payout, right? Even with a 1 hour stats delay, the website would show confirmed rewards from an hour ago. But when the Instant Payout button is pressed, all confirmed rewards can be paid. The end user would see a slightly higher payout then expected.
Then the user's confirmed rewards would remain at 0.00000000 BTC until it "catches up" with the one hour delay again.

I think as long as you have a message explaining "You just received a payment -- confirmed rewards will show after stats delay," you won't have a problem.

Using anything other than a standard Bitcoin wallet that is run on your own computer is risky. Eligius pays out via Generated transactions. These are not the normal "hey, I'll send you some Bitcoins" transactions.

Most other pools Generate the coins and then send them to you in a "normal" transaction. Eligius skips this step and has your address Generate the coins directly.
In fact, I am very curious if using any type of "online" wallet (mtgox or other) would even work with Eligius' Generated transactions..
If anyone is doing this successfully please let me know.

If you can test both, then mine at both for a 24 hour period and see what works best for you. But if you want me to pick one for you, I say mine on... <flips coin> us central.

Everyone should be using a different password for every website. Period.

But it's so hard to remember all those passwords.

Then don't. Use a Password Card:

https://www.passwordcard.org/en

A password card is a randomly generated, card of characters that can be used for passwords.
It looks like this:





The password card is something that you can print out and keep next to your computer, or on your person so you can use it to keep track of all the passwords for all of your web sites.

Use it like a crossword puzzle. Just pick a character to start and continue for 8 or more characters. All you have to remember is what row or column you started with and the card takes care of the rest.
For example, I can start with the character and go from top to bottom for my online bank password. The password it created, "v9PQHCvm" is strong, 8 characters and includes uppercase, lowercase and numbers.
Next I can use the Heart symbol and start with the cyan colored row (row 8 ) and go across until I each 8 characters... or 10, or more. As long as I remember heart/cyan, I will always have the password.
As you can see the possible combinations of passwords on one card are huge.

When you load up the password card web site, it generates one for you. Click the Reset button if you want a new card randomly generated. There is also an option to include special characters to make your passwords even stronger.

Now there is no longer an excuse. Separate passwords for every website!

I'm sorry Bitcoin just doesn't work that way.
Everyone in the entire world is always working on the same block. If you are not working on the current block your submitted shares are stales.

The thing you have to remember about Bitcoin block is that there is no "percent complete." A block is never 45% or 75% solved. It's either solved or not.

Here is a refresher course I wrote a while back.

This post will help people new to Bitcoins get up to speed. Everyone else can skip it (or read it for a refresher).

Bitcoins are created by "solving a block." A "Block" is just a collection of Bitcoin transactions that have been hashed and added to the official chain of Bitcoin blocks. The "confirmations" the you get when you send or receive a transaction is the result of your transaction being hashed and included in the block chain.
Since solving a block is so difficult, you get a reward for doing so... 50 Bitcoins.

How do I solve a block?
To complete a new block your computer running mining software tries to guess the hash of the new block based off the hash of the old block. You aren't really computing the answer to an equation per say. You are just making a guess.
In fact, it helps to look at this like buying lottery tickets. The chances of winning the lottery are low, but  you can increase you odds if you buy more tickets.
Your miners compute hashes against the current block and when it thinks it has a potential winner, it submits it as a share. Hashes are generally measured in number of Mhases/sec or Ghashes/sec. This would be millions of hashes per second or billions of hashes per second (respectively). For example an Average ATI 5770 video card can compute roughly 150 to 200 Mhash/sec dependly on how you configure it.
The share you submitted is sent across the entire peer-to-peer Bitcoin network. All peers must agree if a share is the winner.

It's a lottery.
The percent chance that a single hash will be the winner is currently: 0.0000000000000001489590023.
This changes about every two weeks and is expected to get even tougher.
Even though the odds are so high, there is a potential for two clients to submit a winning share at the same time. When this happens, the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network choses the definitive winner. The loser's block is then declared invalid. Invalid blocks are a rare occurrence, but it does happen.

Mining Pools
Since the probability of the average home computer to find the correct hash is so slim, people have started to "pool" their resources together--in much the same way an office might buy several lottery tickets together.
You along with all the others in the pool submit shares. When a block is solved among one of the pool members, the 50 Bitcoin reward is split among all those who submitted shares during that block. The more shares you submit, the larger your portion of the reward.
Pools are operated by groups, or individuals and are kept alive by taking a small cut of your profits (usually a fee of about 3%).

Bad Things - Stale Shares and Idles
When you belong to a pool, you are trying to solve a block that the pool has relayed to you:
The Pool gets the current block from the Peer-to-peer Bitcoin network.
It sends your miner that information.
Your miner works on it.
Your miner submits shares it thinks will be potential winners.
If a block is solved elsewhere on the Bitcoin network, the pool must tell you miner to stop what it is doing and start work on the new block.
If your miner does not get this new block information, it will continue to work on submitting shares for the previous block. When this happens, your shares are stale and do not count for anything.
If the pool does not send any block information to your miner, it will become idle and not do anything (not contributing).
The best way to fix any of these problems on the miner end is to stop--and restart the miner software. It will then submit a new request for new block information from the pool.

BTC Guild
To keep this on topic.....
The BTC Guild mining pool was created (founded?) by eleuthria. He has committed countless hours and many of his personal resources to bring the fastest growing Bitcoin mining pool in the world.
Of of this writing it is also the second largest pool in the world.
eleuthria has made numerous enhancements to the pool in the short months that it has been in existence. However, most of his time lately has been trying to keep up with the explosive growth of the pool. And when I say "explosive" I think one of his early servers has actually melted. (I may or may not be making up that last statement.)
The number one reason the pool is so popular is that the fee is optional. You can choose how much or how little of a fee to pay.
That's right, you can join the pool for absolutely free if you want to. However, you get perks for paying a fee. And the higher the fee, the more perks you get! 
Get all the perks for paying a fee of 2.5% or more. This is still a great value compared to other pools.
At 0% fee (the default) you can join the pool and get paid based on the number of shares you submit. When the pool solves a block, you get paid your portion after 120 confirmations.
At 2% you can setup Idle miner email warnings. If you miner(s) stop submitting shares for some reason, you can be notified by email.
At 2.5% you get the above. AND you get paid immediately when a block is solved. You don't have to wait for 120 confirmations. AND you get paid even if the block later becomes invalid.
It's the best pool I have seen. The community is great and the maintainer, eleuthria, is extremely active. You can reach him right on this discussion in the forum, or on IRC chat (#btcguild on FreeNode).

Luke beat me to it, but I was about to say "It's no of our business who that is." That's one of the cool things about this pool.

However, if someone has that much power, I would consider solo mining... Even if it took a week, it would be worth finding a block all to yourself.

It is frustrating. Everyone in the pool is experiencing the same bad luck as you. BTC Guild has had some very fast rounds in the past.... eventually it all evens out.
I don't mean to sound rude, but you are free to mine at whatever pool you choose. In fact, I am mining at 3 different pools right now (the other 2 are mostly for backup). If you mine at several pools at once, you spread your luck around even more.
This happens because if a pool is having bad luck, it means the other pools make up for it and vice versa.