Why you filthy blasphemous heathen!  You are probably going to tell us that the Emperor has no clothes next I suppose

When I say 'trust' I am talking about 'counter-party risk'.  If you think I proved your point, you probably didn't understand much of what I said (and are likely not alone...)

As for some magic crystals to keep my secret keys safe, I'll pass.  Relatively speaking, and from the standpoint of someone who is proficient with basic computer security methods, it is not that difficult to reduce the risk of theft and loss to near zero.  Mostly just tedious and inconvenient.  Not unlike dealing with gold in fact.

A glance at that reddit indicates that that guy is on a whole different plane than I in pretty much all ways (not to sound to conceited or anything

Of course I don't treat all of my coins in the same way, but my main stash is completely inaccessible even to me unless I go to a bank and lock myself in a room.  Alone.  On top of that, I was super careful that even if my secure workstation (a BSD box) got hit with a hot-disk attack by someone who knew how to us dd, it still would not be possible to retrieve my secret keys.  My biggest danger is probably that I could be tortured to death by someone trying to get my stash, but at least they would fail.

As for PM's, ya, they are an expensive hassle to acquire and dispose of.  As much as possible I engineer such an events to be 'several times per lifetime' affairs for that reason.

If I'm getting paid, buying trinkets, etc, etc I'm perfectly happy with fiat, checks, Visa, PayPal, etc.  In fact I prefer them to Bitcoin in a lot of cases since I can do charge-backs or use the court system if I get ripped off.  Sacrilege here on the forum, I know.  That should earn me at least one more 'ignore'

Buy PM's from a reputable dealer who's been in the biz for a long time.  I pay the premium for the piece-of-mind of having technical work done by a professional just like countless other services.  No biggie.

As a computer geek I can managed the risk associated with Bitcoin theft with as much precision as I need to make it vanish.  An Achilles heal of Bitcoin is indeed that this has proven fairly challenging for ordinary people and many BTC have been lost to thieves.  It is not the only system which undergoes such a 'transfer of wealth' though.

To summarize, both gold and Bitcoin allow me to trust myself rather than to need to trust others.  I like that.

Next time you run one of these (if you are not so burnt out that you'll swallow glass first), think about a policy where the shipping queue is organized based on the order in which people paid up when the call for funds went out.

If I were doing one of these, I'd be tempted to see if I could leverage some automation of some sort.  Google Forms comes to mind but that's only because I've seen it.  There are probably other such things, or one could possible roll one's own.

  http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87809

Yup.  If blowing the estimate by three X was the worst mistake that BFL has made it would be a much happier world for their 'customers'.  I mean how big a deal is power usage in production-level mining-land anyway?

If there is actually a reliable betting site in the Bitcoin ecosystem these days someone should do a bet on whether the chip in the devices BFL has shipped is actually 65nm.

I could see logic to having them loose.  I plan to have mine heatsinked, but I suspect that many/most people will not.  Probably the less screwing things on and off the pcb, the better.  I'm glad to hear that there will be an option.  And I never thought of the utility that they may have in shipping

I would not be to concerned about the chip per-se.  I figure they are given some amount of testing in fab and packaging.  The biggest concern I would have would be mechanical on the PCB.

That reminds me, was there any discussion on how/if the heat-sink is to be included?  None?  Loose?  Attached?

I think I would rather receive my unit untested rather than have it run under-current.  I'm not an EE...which is probably part of the reason I am paranoid about these sorts of things.

Also I worry a little bit about the time it might take to get the cgminer or whatever software figured out for these brand new devices.  I'm sure you will be keeping us informed of progress through the time you crack open the big box.  In the hopeful case that we get that far at any rate.  If everything goes smoothly and seems to be working, it would be nice to have the optional QA.

BTW, has ~friedcat mentioned anything one way or another about any QA they might do at the shop?  I've not spotted it in any of his posts.

Interested.  Watching.

I seriously doubt that they would ever get prosecuted, and even if they did it is unlikely that such a thing is even legally a problem.  I mean specs change all the time.  In the very best of circumstances the specs, appearance, timing of the units are going to be way off of the originally projected item.  Nobody is going to sue anybody over that. Or at least they are not win anything until the distant future.

BFL could just deliver some unit at some point after the 1/2 million Avalon chips get glued on to an open-source board for $10/ea and get  the legal monkey off their backs.  Or at least put it in a cage for 10 years.  BFL has check-mated their 'customers'.  Time to suck it up and move on.

600nm.  Super-size me baby!  You know our moto in America: "Bigger is Better!"

That is your interpretation of Bitcoin, money, value, and etc.  And it is fine.  Other people look at things differently and come to different conclusions or at least different ways of describing the same conclusion.

I view fiat, Bitcoin, and gold as nothing more than 'accounting systems'.  Each have their own properties, strengths, and weaknesses.

When the Krugerrand hits my hands, it's a chunk of metal with the inherent simplicity (and thus, reliability) that I mentioned.

The fact that it took some effort to get it into my hands is a factor in the 'store of value' aspect that I expect of it.

---

As an aside, Bitcoin is similar in a way in that a relatively short string of numbers is the analog of a Krugerrand.  Even if the transmission system failed there would still be a set of entries in the block chain which have value to me and me alone.

In that case, though, actually extracting value from the blockchain would be somewhere between extremely challenging and impossible (unless one had wisely broken their holdings into multiple wallets before-hand...hint,hint...) whereas the pool of market participants with which one could exchange gold or silver coins would be much more expansive.

Hehe.  Ya, he just didn't mention that what they are delivering are monetary losses.  BIG-time losses if one factors in the rise in BTC valuations.

I carry a small leatherman.  Handier than hell.  I am pretty careful about alarming people at work when I use it though.  Different cultures have different sensitivities about such things.

There is no earthy excuse for fucking around with a knife when some perspective customer stops by to chat.  By Occam's, it seems strongly likely that the guy hoped to leverages some childish intimidation thing (or the OP is flat out lying.)

BFL has always leveraged juvenile fantasies.  It permeates their marketing material.  I remember one of the countless examples being Josh linking to some action/adventure car chase film as a representation of transferring material from the bumping facility to the factory.

Whether the BFL perps are of a juvenile mindset themselves or simply hope to appeal to their target victims (that is, people who are juveniles in mind at least and often in body) is unclear.  What is crystal clear is that they are anything but trustworthy business partners on any level.

We are far from out of the woods, but I to am blown away by how well things seem to have gone so far.  I never would have guessed that this high a percentage of participant paid up this quickly.  And it looks from what we can tell from my vantage point like Arklan and JohnK have been performing well.

Looks like the biggest risk point now is Friedcat coming trough, but he seems like the kind of person who gets things done.

Another big risk point is caprice on the part of the authorities when it comes to shipping.  Bitcoin is, I'm sure, ever more on people's radar, and that likely includes customs agents.

Lastly, there will be a point (I guess) where Arklan has box with $100,000 worth of equipment under his control.  Someone elses' $100k.  He could walk off with it at that point.  I very much doubt it, particularly as it is a pretty blatant and physical world crime, but at a systems level that is a weak point.   He could always say 'I was robbed.'  In fact, he could be robbed for that matter.

I've not seen and 'bonding' show up yet, but I'm guessing that someone who had done a couple of these deals successfully could obtain a $100k bond for a reasonable price if/when some person or organization specializing in bonding in Bitcoin-land evolves.  Or $1M.  More and more I'll be looking for such a thing as bonding to cover the system level loose ends in deals like this.

If the sales of the Block Erupter mining device are brisk at known rip-off prices (and most of my fellow buyers on the group-buy I'm a participant in seem to agree with this assessment)  I'm very hopeful that sales at realistic prices will be through the roof.  I'm hopefull about the competition from the Avalon chips bringing prices of this class if mining rig down, and if Avalon really does dump half a million 280 MH/s chips on the market there should be plenty for this kind of duty.

I'd not seen ~friedcat's earlier message when he mentioned selling these a month or two ago, but he seems to also be of the opinion that it would be good for the distributed crypto-currency world to get hashing power well distributed.  It's really good to see someone who has the ability and gumption to make real things happen also have his general sense of the ecosystem seem to align with my own.  As opposed to, say, 'dreaming' about it.

And you didn't offend me at all.  Mostly you just confused me with the 'community' and 'my comments' line of exploration.

Ya know, I'm surprise BFL isn't selling quantum computing miners already.  I'll bet a dime to a donut that they would sell the shit out of them.

My point about the Block Erupter  is that group orders filling as they are and people paying as they are IS the community speaking for themselves.  Speaking with their Bitcoin wallets.

Even most of the people on this forum probably have no clue that these little things are (hopefully) just around the corner.  I would expect a lot more interest...and action...as awareness grows and they are demonstrably hashing away for people.

I honestly am a little baffled about what you mean with your "ask the community" thing.  I mean, is there someone who has some magical power to speak for everyone?  I've got my own opinions and I stated them.  I never tried to and never did indicate that I spoke for anyone else.