Not Worth The Commute Today.  Hopefully Make It For The Start Tommorow.

I now know who to turn to for long range clairvoyance skills.  What is your rate?

They can argue until they are blue in the face.  I doubt that a majority people would pitch a bitch about a pool taking some time off to destroy some promising competition if there was a pretty clear cut picture that the competition was likely to diminish from the value they held in, say, Bitcoin.

I'm not even sure I would, and I do believe it is slimy, unethical, and damages the distributed crypto-currency environment that society might otherwise enjoy.

I do enjoy sarcasm and comic relief.   So, thanks!

The longer the community puts up with scammy bullshit, the longer it will be before Bitcoin is a solution which can be relied upon to accomplish real things.

This USB device is an unimportant novelty trinket for me.  A vastly more important facet of this effort is finding out who can be relied on for complex projects.

I am unimpressed and disappointed if John K's role as an operator of Friedcat's auction factors in any way into better or worse results for Arklan's group-buy (and by extension, the future of my funds.)  It would on it's face seem more ethical if John K had turned down work on one of the two projects.

Just sayin'...and I rarely hold my tongue about such things

I would say that it does not matter whether it is 'legitimate'.  The salient point is that it happens.

One of the driving force for 'paracoin' idea (sig block) was to basically let another system do the heavy-lifting.  For as long as it is able, at least.

Such a solution is actually kind of a win for everyone.  As importantly, it relaxes some of the production constraints that interfere with progress on the system development front.

Choose the winning option (less than 1 BTC/GH/s) because I don't expect to buy any for a few months at least, and by that time I am pretty sure that it will be the going rate.

I'm mostly with ya, but am pissed and disappointed that ~friedcat does not seem to be reliable and proficient as a counterpart.  Oh well.  I'm sure there will be more, and am looking forward to how closely 2nd-gen ASIC's approach a theoretical performance maximum (and price minimum for that matter.)

I also would point out that if Bitcoin undergoes another sharp price increase, economics could change on a dime.  It is worthwhile to have something which could hash, even if it is just a GPU, but it's not something I've ever felt to be a force driving me to get set up for.  Just sitting on BTC covers that corner-case.

I won't have access to a trusted machine for a few days so I'll sign this now.

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The problem would come if the order got down below 300.  I'm a participant in this group-buy effort  and definitely don't want to screw anyone here.

At this point I would like it if you keep my order, but:

If ~friedcat has not published a clearly documented policy on ordering and shipping by May-16-2013 and received our funds, and if he has not put us in the queued appropriately given that we had our money on the table some days ago:

If you have more than 300 order when the time comes to pay ~friedcat, do not include my order.
Instead, refund me, and take any fees which are appropriate to compensate you both for your outstanding work.  I believe that anything up to .5 BTC for this would be fair but am happy to leave it to you two to make the decision based on whether there are other people who fall into the same category.
Keep my funds until the end so that you may evaluate the fair costs when all is said and done.

I will sign a message pointing to this forum post if need be.
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sig: HPKz4+nWlqADzhKTwZv3vosasqSpvGMGska+liVtccxqpjnsyeljLSZHgjLPF1I9Z1NNA+o07/G0RIcKtRsRuKg=


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Although it could be edited:

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https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195052.msg2149251#msg2149251
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sig: G79kdNo0fFPR3QN7Za88iPoy8+eRwDws8zxLVTWu+1g+OgLD9S/9wMwGgcvliMNchThKQznMYuT91IDCBU98gyA=

I'll stand by my post.

If we don't see the satisfaction I want to see out of ~friedcat by the 16th, I'll cancel.

I'll let you and John K work out the details of whether and how much to re-fund me, and how/if to structure any replacements.

I shudder to think of what a nightmare this is going to be.  And I'll note that if ~friedcat where simply clear in his policies the who thing could be avoided.  Just 'clear' and not even necessarily 'fair'.  It was my bad for not taking the time to research ~friedcat and I expect to bear at least some the burden of that failure.

I'm looking at being tied up for the latter part of today and most of tomorrow.  That is why the 16th is the date for me.

The problem would come if the order got down below 300.  I'm a participant in this group-buy effort  and definitely don't want to screw anyone here.

At this point I would like it if you keep my order, but:

If ~friedcat has not published a clearly documented policy on ordering and shipping by May-16-2013 and received our funds, and if he has not put us in the queued appropriately given that we had our money on the table some days ago:

• If you have more than 300 order when the time comes to pay ~friedcat, do not include my order.
  
• Instead, refund me, and take any fees which are appropriate to compensate you both for your outstanding work.  I believe that anything up to .5 BTC for this would be fair but am happy to leave it to you two to make the decision based on whether there are other people who fall into the same category.
• Keep my funds until the end so that you may evaluate the fair costs when all is said and done.

I will sign a message pointing to this forum post if need be.

It's a 'golden rule' and fairness thing to me.  If I were running things I would bend over backward to provide complete transparency.

And I would certainly be running a fair and well documented delivery queue considering the time-sensitive nature of Bitcoin mining.

I don't believe that it is that hard to come up with a strategy which is fair and without favoritism or kickbacks.  Nor to I believe that should be all the onerous to communicate it and prove that it is being followed.

How Bitfountain handles this will be very indicative about whether they are noticeably separated from the likes of BFL in terms of business practices and thus what the risks are in trying to do business with them in the future.  And it is very likely that in future times they will be facing significantly more competition than they do today.

Phin,

Just my opinion, but the double-space thing is weak sauce.  It's not completely valueless in hypothesis testing, but nearly so.

As a slight asside, I think I remember from typing class (and I learned, under great duress, on a manual typewriter) that double-spaces were appropriate in separating sentences.

I actually have several distinct things to run by you so I'll break them into several responses.  And am a bit busy so it might take a few days.  (BTW, are you going to be at the conference?  I've not decided whether to stick around the Bay Area for a few extra days to hit the conference or not.)

I see 'escrow' and 'bonding' as pretty much entirely different things.

An 'escrow agent' does not risk his own money.  Mostly just his reputation.

A 'bond' person puts his own money at risk.  Using a bond provides several distinct things:

 - insurance for effected parties (since a project can move forward without a monetary deficiency in case of a lack of performance on the part of a contractor.)

 - assurance for effected parties (since the bond issuer is doing his own due diligence on various things to protect their own ass.)

An 'arbitrator' provides much better performance than the court system can, and in Bitcoin-land this is especially important since the court system is not geared for crypto-currencies at all even with a terrible time delay.  Of course agreements between the various parties can be structure to leverage the court system and probably would be in important or high-value cases.

I'm having a hard time being clear on this stuff.  It is a little complicated, and my own exposure to it is limited more to academics.  It was interesting that many moons ago when I was involved in the construction business, people used 'the size of their bond' and 'the size of their external genitalia' in a similar manner

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Although it is secondary to my immediate interest, I do hope that a formalize and solid bonding framework happens in Bitcoin-land.  Right now my cold-storage BTC stash sits underutilized in a safe deposit box.  If it could work for me as part of a bond pool, I would consider that a potentially interesting option.

Where?  I missed it.  If you can find that statement, I stand corrected and retract most of my complaints.

Note that 'taking orders' is not nearly the same thing as 'shipping'.  Obviously shipping cannot happen until the items are done.  But I do expect a pipeline process where orders are shipped simultaneously with pieces being produced.  IOW, it would make little sense to get a batch of 10,000 built and tested, and only then start taking orders and shipping.

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Look at it this way.  If I'm paying 5-star hotel prices, I don't want to have to make a special request for freeze-dried coffee.  ~friedcat's failure to act in a manner I consider appropriate to John's query, with money in hand, is analogous to walking into the hotel room and seeing a roach scurry across the floor.

There will be ample opportunity to find a Motel-6 in the coming weeks and months, and I love bargain shopping for cheap hotels, but that is not what I am interested in right now.  Mostly because it isn't an option.

Given the choice between a noisy and dangerous hotel room at 5-star prices, and sleeping in my car, I personally am inclined to opt for the latter.  It's coming into focus that that is the option we are looking at here.

IMHO, ~friedcat should take orders which are funded (as he indicated was the plan) and should deliver in the order in which he took orders.  And he should provide enough transparency to ensure that this is happening.

Further, he should make sure that procurement of this particular class of equipment is given priority on the basis of it's cost on a per-hash basis.  And again, provide info that that is occurring.

Neither of these things should be either unreasonable or especially time consuming.

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Oh, and there was not a snowball's chance in hell that I was ever going to order from Avalon.  At least not assembled rigs.

And as for BFL, I considered them a likely scam from before they missed their first delivery 7 months ago.  They are unbelievably slimy, and I would not piss in Josh's mouth if his tongue was on fire.

BTW, here's the info and where I got it.  I'm not a shareholder and cannot vouch for it's authenticity.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=204244.msg2138586#msg2138586

According to someone's post of a Bitfountain shareholders report from the 8th, the organization was 'taking orders'.

According to our escrow agent's report, our order has not yet happened in spite of noble attempts.

If we don't get queue'd up according to the order in which we got our shit together and produce the funds, or if there are any artificial delays for this vastly overpriced hardware, we are getting fucked.  And I don't like getting fucked.

That was hardly my initial intent, but it might be a workable idea.

A dis-advantage would be that it would reduce the effect of 'punishing' the supplier for failure to perform adequately in business arrangements and that is an important aspect to me.

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Arklan and John K:  Would you entertain the idea of transferring my 'stake' in all ways to another individual?

 - If so, what would be your fees?

 - Would you run an auction using this thread to communicate results?  Especially for a cut of the winning bid?