Thank you kindly, sir. That loop optimization looks great with one less comparison to make.

...and before you guys post, no the patch doesn't contain a list of alt-coin targets ...although it could increase the attack rate by 0.4% 

Mind you the biggest doesn't always mean best.
Your network round trip time (ping time) to different pools will vary by location and ISP.

The PPS value for a 0% fee PPS pool is current_per_block_reward/current_difficulty
Currently, that's 0,00004130 BTC.

Examples:
ABCPool pays 0.00003837 BTC per share, at BTCGuild the reward is 0.00003797 BTC.
Eligius is a SMPPS (that's a variation of the PPS scheme) pool paying 0,00004130 per share.


Azrael_PT, your answer was straight misleading.

We really need that "Bitcoin for dummies" manual ASAP.
Should bitcoin gain traction at the CES it's gonna get crowded here in the Newb Central.

Don't lose your temper, Kokjo, nor the professional smile 

Let's quote from the page you're linking to: In Mask attack we know about humans and how they design passwords.

Mask attack is NO BETTER than a traditional brute-force attack. You're breaking your own (I sure hope so) WPA key faster only because it's a shitty key.
Attempting to break a sufficiently random passphrase, like RU8wNkg4R2uTQ0tAx will only mean that you'll have to try most of the possible passphrase-space.

I regret to say, the example you posted (breaking a dictionary-based WPA passphrase) is completely orthogonal to bitcoin mining.

Once again, the PRIMARY source of bitcoin nodes (CLIENTS the same as yours) is the already downloaded block chain.
The SECONDARY source is by querying the DNS service.
The TERTIARY source is a hard-coded list of well-established bitcoin nodes. This list can be updated from version to version.
Should all of that fail, your client will try to interact with other nodes via IRC.

There are NO central servers.

Way to go ozcoin! I love that pool for abandoning proportional system already

Bitminter has also had tremendous luck lately but for the non-techie users I must point out that such information is of purely historic and statistical value.
The same goes for a pool which is hit with a lot of bad luck - the bad luck has already happened and basing the pool choice on luck makes absolutely no sense at all.

Naturally.

Oh quit your doomsday rambling, Kokjo  

I'm well able to imagine the counter examples. My point was, that scenario us extremely unlikely to happen.

The whole DNS system going down (and staying down) would result in a cataclysmic internet outage.
Routing problems at/below the ISP level can put any application to a screeching stop anyhow, there's no helping that.

I'm guessing a new user connecting for the first time during World War 3 outbreak might be unable to purchase their alpaca socks, poor bugger

Blowing your own horn there, Goat?
BTW, I say that's a pretty oversized "Goat" in your avatar ^^

There is, almost by definition, no universally best pool. Here's a couple of reasons why:
   1. User requirements differ wildly: pool hoppers are interested with proportional pools (which non-hoppers should best avoid unless they know what they're doing), some users are
      merged-mining hostile and might avoid merged-mining enabled pools. Some users prefer low variance in their earnings while others don't mind the variance at all.
   2. The network round trip times to the pools vary on location and ISP basis. Greater round trip times result in more stale shares.
       A pool which works for me in Europe might suck for an American user.

The pools I've had good experience with include Eligius, BitMinter, Eclipse and BTC Guild. A few great pools have fallen (MMC, Minecoin), others have declined (ArsBitcoin).
Take a good look here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=41.0

At least three five methods can be used:
1. Provided the block chain database exists, there is information about other bitcoin nodes seen on the network stored inside.
2. DNS is used to locate a list of nodes connected to the network.
3. There is a list of hard-coded addresses compiled into the client itself.
EDIT:: 4. I forgot to mention the IRC connections: the clients are able to connect to a specific IRC channel (much like it's being done with botnets BTW ^^ )
EDIT:: 5. Should all of the above fail (how on Earth would that happen?), the user can input the IP addresses manually using the -addnode parameter.

Here are a few Bitcoin facts in a nut shell:

THERE IS NO CENTRAL SEVER.
THERE IS NO TRUSTED THIRD PARTY FOR YOU TO TRUST.
YOU DISTRUST EVERYONE EQUALLY.

Your client connects directly to other running bitcoin clients.
The connections are as follows: BTC -> other BTC.

You have a copy of the entire block chain on your machine⁽¹⁾. Changes to the block chain occur as a series of new blocks.
As far as data integrity is concerned, the cryptographic hash of the first block (genesis block) is hard-coded into the client. For a new block to become accepted, it must have the correct hash of its predecessor⁽²⁾.

Anything else I can do ya for?

Notes:
(1) Supposing you are a Windows user the block chain data resides in:
      - for Windows Vista and later: c:\Users\Your_user_name\Application Data\Roaming\Bitcoin
      - any older version of Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\Your_user_name\Application Data\Bitcoin

      Using Windows' environment variables, you can access that directory via %AppData%\Bitcoin in a universal, path- and version-agnostic manner.

(2) If someone's stored block chain has been modified (whether by accident or on purpose), the hashes in the transactions they send will be invalid and they will be ignored.
     Should that happen to you, the transactions you send will be ignored (won't get any confirmations). To fix this, bitcoin needs to be launched with the "--rescan" parameter which tells it to carefully check and fix the stored block chain.

As to running miners in the background... will this be close enough?

Grab virtual desktop utility by Sysinternals Microsoft here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881

Microsoft provides Desktops totally free of charge, it requires no installation, no admin rights, and weighs just 60 kilobytes.

Run it, move all the miner windows out of your main desktop and you're good to go!

But they do. Seen the tri-slot ASUS cards? The problem is, whether you're doing air- or water-cooling, you do have to dump the huge amounts of heat somewhere. If you're running AC in your house, it will have to deal with the additional thermal load raising your energy bills.
You'd best plan for the summer now. I'm dumping the heat outside using air ducts. Doesn't look pretty but is extremely cost-effective.

Using GPUs ,there can be no talking about bitcoin rig set-top boxes. However hard you try you can't beat thermodynamics.

At present there is no such thing as a BFL FPGA rig, no one has ever seen one in the wild. Perhaps in, uhmmm... 4 to 6 weeks? :>

Well, speculative buying and selling is a zero-sum game: if you earn some money they have to come from someone else's pocket (another less lucky/skilled speculator?).

Speculation surely has its dark side: the speculators thrive on market volatility. High volatility is what businesses detest.
As a trader selling some services/goods for bitcoins which do you think is better: a month of stagnation or price roller coaster? What if you were to receive your wages in bitcoins?

I haven't bothered with speculative selling-buying as I do believe it is harmful to the whole bitcoin universe in the long run.
Anyone disagreeing with me is hereby invited to post their rebuke

Jolly good.


Luke, I have a technical question totally non-related to the recent snafu.
I get great ping times to your pool (50 to 70 ms) but somehow I often manage a stale or two during LP notifications.
What algorithm does the pool use when sending LP messages? Biggest miners first? Random?
There must be some heavy magic being used at Bitminter, they have higher pings but hardly any stales.

On Windows, every miner is a little crap - it must be the contagious crappiness of Redmond-based software that's causing that

I recommend running the text-mode miners on a separate virtual desktop do they don't get in your way.
The problem is, Windows isn't quite up to speed on multiple desktops, to say the very least.
You can grab a free utility by Sysinternals Microsoft here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881⁽¹⁾
Run it, move all the miners, putty, vnc and what-not windows out of your main desktop and you're good to go!

Notes:
(1)   While you're there, do notice that the desktops utility requires no fancy installer and is just 60 kilobytes in size. That's how coding is done! Microsoft eventually purchased Sysinternals to obtain all their utilities.

Roger that, just follow P4's advice and never look back. One program will take care of mining, overclocking, and thermals.
One miner to rule them all, so to speak

... or better yet, just disable Windows

DAT, please be sure to hose the drive completely with zeroes using dd. If there's some damage to the flash chip itself, dd might fail at the faulty address. Then, partition the drive so that the failed sector is unused. I'm assuming that's a cheap cost-effective drive without wear leveling. If there is wear leveling, you'll never know what's really going on below the write remapper.