With 26 S3s you can mine on pretty much every pool since stratum has had the bugs worked out on SHA-256.  I would use load balancing over 3 or 4 pools, choose your favorites or the 4 biggest after ghash (please don't mine there for the time being) and have CGMiner load balance across the 4 pools since you would be earning for the next 6 months.  Set auto payout on each pool to 0.5BTC so you don't get too much build up on each pool and also so you don't have tons of micro transactions.

Hasn't the US DOJ heard that email is highly unstable and that hard drives are often prone to destroying information right when a subpoena is being served?

The Antminer S3 is what everybody says is priced low enough that you might be able to make a profit.  You need to buy 2 at once and they're 0.64BTC right now, so out of your budget. You can buy part of one in a group deal but that can be risky.

I would suggest just waiting for a little dip in BTC price and buy as much BTC as you can with the $70.

Ghash has had 4 hour blocks before - that's 1/3 of the network not finding a block for 4 hours!

Last year when BTC Guild was close to 40% I think we had a 7 hour block - 40% of the network twiddling thumbs for 7 hours.

It happens - it comes under the concept of variance and Poisson distribution.

Is there a single company that has not done this? I believe dogie gave them all F for ethics in his ratings because they all are running private pools.  The sad part is some companies blatantly said they would not do such a thing as miner on their customers hardware, made promises even, and did just that.  It's one thing to steal, it's another to steal and lie about it.

None of those reviews can help you once the cloud mining company has filed for bankruptcy or even worse if they skip town.  While the same can be said for buying miners - we have learned now through the BFL saga to say no to preorders.  A miner, once it's in your hand, is a done deal except for the possibility of needing an RMA.  Cloud mining requires trust in the company for the entire length of the contract.

Cloud mining is not profitable.  If it seems like it is, the company will disappear with everybody's money after 6 months and there's nothing you can do.  After all why would somebody go through all the work of setting up miners, a website, and company so they call sell you profit?

Miners don't cost 100-200k in USD. You can buy small ones for as low as $50.  The large companies do have a benefit when buying millions though.

I see you have quite a bit of time on your hands. Could you find out the owners of BTCe and the current whereabouts of a certain Pirate?

Possibly.  For that nobody is able to say with certainty unlike cloud mining.  Pretty much the only miner that end users could make a profit on currently seems to be the S3 by Bitmain. They make good hardware, they ship more or less on time, and have decent support.  If you have free power and don't mind the noise and heat you could try.  You might make a little loss, might be a little profit.  Don't expect too much unless you buy 100s.

I haven't been monitoring AM's financial status, but are you saying that AM is in dire financial straights and has to try to make salvage attempt with their chips?  The company that was 1/3 of the network last year at this time?

Perhaps you're not understanding what we mean by 20%.  We mean consecutively each increase goes up 20%.  So first 11 days difficulty is x, then 1.2x, then (1.2x1.2) or 1.44x, then (1.2x1.2x1.2) - geometric growth approaching logarithmic scale.  That's why the difficulty is 20X what it was 7 months ago - 20X is 2000%!

Or read the 3rd post - it's the laptop's keyboard.  While he could plug a wireless transmitter on there and get past the logon that way it would be cumbersome - especially since laptops are meant to be ported.

Nah, Red Cross while having good intentions could only buy 100 blankets or 100 meals with that.

Something like this http://thewaterproject.org/ or this http://www.charitywater.org/ would help more people.

Clearly you do not live in America or recognize of the political gift system works in America.  Once you're in the country you're considered American by some.  Once you're American you're entitled to everything all other Americans are ENTITLED to.....uh oh, I said the E word.

Money from western worlds reaches the highest utilization when taken to a 3rd world country.  If you use the 1BTC to buy medical supplies or even just just potable water for people in war torn regions of African continent you would probably get the most bang for your buck.  You would have to convert the 1BTC to fiat though as the charities that do take BTC don't do that work.

I used to do medical missions but I had to take a break because of my kids.  Hopefully in a couple years I'll be able to get back to it.

Just looked at Sapce Empires V on Steam - OMG the graphics look like something out of 1997 and Win 95.  Might be a good game and I'm not all for eye candy but come on 

Back of the napkin math -
Start working 2000 hrs/yr @ 16 years old taking home $30k (assuming no taxes since with credit/deductions you can go +/-). By age 36 you make 20x$30k = $600k (skipping interest).

If you do a cardiology fellowship after medschool/residency you will have worked for 6 years making $35k/yr (salaried resident so no minimum wage bonus for you) which let's say for the sake of argument would cover your student loans (not if you went private but we'll average it out with state schools). You'll make $200k/yr take home those 3 years leading up to age 36.

So by 36 the min wage adult and the cardiologist are even. Except the min wager could have a house almost paid off (possibly might even be working on house #2). Oh and the practitioner has also studied/worked about 2.5x as many hours as the min wager.

If the med school bound idiot (yes, now he is an idiot if he goes to medical school) changes to work 2 full time min wage jobs making $15/hr (assuming work is available) from age 16 he'll almost always be ahead by age 40, and if he invested wisely will have an insurmountable lead on any physician.

I bring up $15/hr since Seattle recently decided to bump up the minimum wage to that.  San Diego is considering $13/hr.

What no mention of picture books?  Sometimes you don't need words, just the enjoyment of holding a book with your kids and flipping the pages while they ooh and ahhh at the pictures.

Actually you could sue and that's why businesses have to have umbrella coverage.  People will run in from the rain, shake their umbrella on the floor, slip and sue.

I have umbrella coverage for my house because I have a nice granite and marble walkway to the front door.  If somebody slips on that while trying to leave some solicitation on my door I can and probably will get sued.  Is it ethical and moral - not in my book.  But the lawyer would say "clearly the homeowner should have known better than to make such an inviting walkway to the front door so hazardous".

Ahh trial lawyers - giving Satan a challenge in the race for the most evil creature

Hmm, not one person playing strategy games like Civ, XCom, Endless Space/Legend?