bitcoin holdings?

Do you understand how a ponzi works?  Obviously Pirate didn't run off with the first couple BTC "invested" either and "amazingly" he also paid interest on time.  That means he was legit right?

It is called trust building. In a couple weeks when he has 100 or so scammer shills (or honestly stupid patsies) like you, and weeks of profitable "investments" he will announce that due to unprecedented demand the cap will be raised to 10 BTC.  Then sometime in the next couple months disappear with a lot more than 1 BTC.  The more shills/dupes he can get get early on the larger the base and the more than can be stolen.

So you are either:
a) an idiot
b) a scammer how know it is a ponzi and trying to build it so you can profit at the expense of everyone who comes in later and loses.

Claims of "genuine" are simply a cover for a or b (could be either).  So which is it?  Idiot or scammer?

A solo miner needs to ensure they always attempt to hash unique block headers also (no duplication of work).  However that is handled by the bitcoind (for solo mining) or the pool server (for pool mining).  The mining software is relatively dumb.  If bitcoind or pool server asks it to hash the hash block header 1000 time it will despite 999 of those being duplicated wasted work.

Right about what? 

No what he is talking about applies to nothing.   It is a "simple" mining algorithm.  No mining software uses.   Production mining software use optimizations like being loose with timestamp, using ntime rolling, checking for more than one share per nonce, nonce-range splitting (to improve response time - GPU are non-responsive while hashing a nonce range), etc.  All of these are used regardless of if you are solomining or pool mining.

Real code is far more complex.  What as presented was just a simplified version.  It would work but it isn't optimal.

You seem to think solo-mining is different than pool mining.  They really aren't.  In solo-mining you are communicating directly to your bitcoind but you still request work and return found blocks.  In pool mining you are making the same communications but with a pool server and you also return "shares" (low difficulty hashes) which acts as proof of work in addition to any found blocks.

Well that is a "simple" hashing procedure, no current mining software works that way.  Part of the blockheader include the timestamp.  The timestamp doesn't need to be exact so there is no reason to not run the entire nonce range and return any found shares.

With X-Roll-NTime the local miner software can increment the timestamp for a period of time further reducing the number of getworks needed.  In theory if X-Roll-NTime was set to say 300 sec, the local miner could continually update the block header until it gets a longpoll (notification of change in blockheader -usually because new block is found).  IIRC most pools use a more conservative n-time-rolling value of say 10-30 sec.

Well a good 70% of that is related to the failed (but very profitable) war on drugs.  The US non-drug inmate population is comparable (albeit still higher) than many other first world countries. 

You got to remember that there is lots of money in domiciling non-violent drug offenders, harden criminals not so much.  The ROI% on profit-prisons is much higher (as a % of inmate population) the more non-violent offenders you can pack in.

1)
Avg hashes per block = (difficulty ) * (2^32)
right now difficulty = 3,304,356 so that is ~14.192 quadrillion hashes per block.

2)
100% of time.  The nonce field is only 32 bit (why Satoshi?  64 bit nonce would have made things so much more elegant).
32 bit = 4 billion values = an average GPU will complete a nonce range in about 10-30 seconds.  A major pool (~1TH/s) will collectively attempt 232 nonce ranges per second.

3)
There is an extra nonce field in the coinbase.  It is simply arbitrary data.  It can be incremented to produce an infinite number of block headers with otherwise identical information.  All of this is handled internally by either bitcoind (solo mining) or the pool server (pool mining).

The US could pay off its debt tomorrow.  Simply hyperinflate the dollar 10,000% and that national debt which is 100% of GDP becomes 1% of GDP.   No secret currency is needed.  If the USD maintained purchasing power, and the government lived within it means BTC represents no risk to USD.  If the USD2.0 doesn't mantain purchasing power and the US gov2.0 doesn't live within its means then history will simply repeat itself.

If the US doesn't repay its debt (and it won't) in a manner which makes creditors whole (i.e. avoiding hyperinflation) then the US will be blamed regardless of how/why.   We are talking the court of public opinion here.     The US govt is a sovereign there is no legal remedy if they simply don't pay it back but it won't be without consequence.

Nothing.  What would prohibit the US from reintroducing slavery?  Or making ownership of all foreign products punishable by public stoning?  Or requiring a $20M license to have more than 1 child?  Or sterilizing criminals? etc.  You either trust your govt or you don't.   You resist tyrrany by one of the "boxes" (soap box -> ballot box -> jury box -> ammo box).  There is no other option.  

This applies to all governments on all issues.  I mean governments are "magical" they are simply a set of rules agreed to by the people.  It all comes down to people.  People can do bad things therefore governments can do bad things.   When someone says the government will arrest you they really mean people working for the government will arrest you.  When people say the government engaged in genocide they really mean people engaged in genocide while the government wasn't able or wasn't willing to stop them.

However I would point out things like the SR show the limits of the governments ability to enforce its will.  Many people refused to participate in the forced sale of gold in the 1900s.  Many today would refuse to participate in the prohibition of virtual currencies.  Outlawing napster didn't make p2p go away.  Outlawing pgp (yes our govt tried to outlaw pgp) didn't make encryption go away.  You can't outlaw ideas.

1) You don't have any secrets.

2) A hash doesn't give anything away.  It simply acts as "proof".  By taking a hash of your secret you can publish the hash.  People can quote it and later you can't change your "secret" to fit whatever the market does.   You can either reveal the secret or not but you can't change it to suit the facts.

I think you are still trying to think of it in terms of value and not in terms of inputs.  It is impossible the the input to not be 1 BTC because the output of the prior tx was 1 BTC.   The tx can be in the same block it won't cause a problem.

Remember there is no such thing as "value" you are simply passing prior outputs as inputs.  Nothing more.  Don't try to think of it as once the network confirms it this output suddenly becomes "worth" 1 BTC.  That is a fallacy.  If you receive a 1 BTC output it is worth 1 BTC.  It doesn't matter if it isn't included in ANY block.    The purpose of blocks is simply to prevent an alternate form of the tx from being accepted by the network.  The block doesn't suddenly make the tx have value.  It just records it to ensure someone can't use that 1 BTC output as an input for a different transaction.

How exactly is this a scam?  I mean is it stupid?  Yup.  Is buying advertising space a horribly bad idea?  Yup.

Neither of which make it is a scam.  Thread should be closed.  If everything is a scam then scam means nothing.

Update 11/12 - Still out of coins today (and possibly tomorrow).   

We had a large buyer pre-purchase our entire inventory (five figures BTC) for this week.  FC4B is doing volume ahead of projections so we may fulfill this order soon and re-open for general sales.

Yes we can do custom sales more than $5,000.   The use of a bank wire is required and it often requires funding over multiple days.  If interested just send an email to info@tangiblecryptography.com.   Generally speaking we don't allow very large custom sales to new buyers without extensive trading history.

Or sell them to someone who wants children?
Or use them for slave labor?
Or havest them for compatible organ replacements?

The idea than any human being owns any other human being at any point for any reason is an utter abomination.   I would have imagined that we would (collectively) evolved beyond such thinking by now.  

I would point out that even the state disagrees with the assertion that parents "own" their children.   Until the age of majority parents acts as guardians, acting (hopefully) in the best interest of children but they never own them.

bitcoind crashed last night.  You should be able to order. If you haven't provided PayPal info it will show as unavailable and request you update your profile.

That is not possible.  To avoid check fraud we use Electronic Positive Pay and there are certain restrictions on how we can print and issue checks. I  can't discuss details but there are printing characteristics which if missing or different from the EPP file would result in a fraud hold.

An alternative would be ACH.  Our overnight ACH service is very fast, and much cheaper than a bank wire.

However generally speaking abracadabra is correct.  MICR toner is no longer a requirements.  Virtually all banks support optical scanning and any check printing software should be able to print optically valid checks.

My wife has one.  She won't be willing to part with it (book websites use them for logging books) but I could do some tests if you want.

Well not exactly.  The FED expansion or contraction of the money supply can be completely independent of the deficit of the govt.

When the Federal govt has an imbalance (receipts < projected outlays) it issues debt just like any company or person does.  People, companies and countries purchase the bonds and pay for them in Federal Reserve Notes such that Federal Receipts + Funds from Debt Sales = Current Outlays.

The US govt can issue all the debt it wants (or issue no debt at all) and it doesn't require changing the money supply a single penny.  The Federal reserve is a private cartel of banks who changes the money supply for the stated goal of "controlling inflation" and "maximizing economic output".  Those goal (IMHO) are dubious but they exist and the FED will expand or tighten as needed regardless of what the federal govt does.

TL/DR: The federal reserve is a private cartel of corporations and just about as federal as federal express. The only difference between federal reserve notes and disney dollars if the former is issued by corporations who has the forsight to get the Congress to bestow it wil rights as legal tender.

1)
Pools don't normally split nonce ranges.  They send a unique header to each worker and the worker completes the entire 2^32 nonce range returning found shares & blocks.  Pools (and solo miners) can create as many headers as they need because the block header has a coinbase field which can hold arbitrary data.  So 10,000 miners in the pool, the pool puts a unique value in the coinbase field for every miners, computes the block header and sends a UNIQUE block header to each miner.

2) The block hash only solves a specific EXACT block.  Part of the block is the coinbase transaction where the minted coins are sent to a unique address.  Yes as you stated that address goes to the pool operator.  At most a miner could simply withold the found block hash (hurt the pool) they couldn't profit from it.

3) You need to trust the pool operator.  They can (and some have in the past) walked away with the coins.  The established pools with months of history have put significant work in building, improving, and promoting their pool.   Another option is p2pool which has no pool operator.  Block headers and computed in a decentralized manner and validated by other pool participants.  The reward is directly split between the members of the pool based on the history of found shares (over the last couple days or so).