Giving more money to authors isn't necessarily a bad idea in itself, but sadly enough lone authors would probably make even less money if it weren't for the support of editors to make the book better, publishing companies to make the book what it is and in the case of pre-established authors sometimes even give them an advance so the author can have food and lodging while writing.  Then there's the agents which find and negotiate the deals for the authors, and finally some publicists which make sure we hear about the book, organize the various presentations, book fairs, tv shows, etc where the author will present their book.

There's a lot of cost in making a book, and any system which reward only one of those parties isn't recognizing the hard work of the other parties.

Unless of course your website decides to buy unedited manuscripts, and you decide to do the editing, publishing, publicizing, etc yourself, then yes, cutting the need for middlemen.  But if you use the work of middlemen and refuse to pay them for their time, efforts, investments, and RISK (there's always a risk involved in publishing any book, that it might flop and not sell well enough to cover the costs), then you're not doing anyone a favor with your system.

Anyone who feels like you could just as well download the book on a torrent and send money in an envelop to the author directly.

You're welcomed, glad you enjoyed it!

Hi everyone, I created a walkthrough video on how to install a BTC wallet, and how to start BTC mining using Phoenix 1.50 in the Eligius pool.  See how you can get started in less than 15 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L9zO-VnLrY

I hope you enjoy!

P.S. my reason for choosing Windows is because I use the computer for other things also.  Linux would work just as fine for BTC mining.  I use Phoenix 1.50 as a bitcoin miner because it gives me the best hashrate on my vid card.  And finally, I use the Eligius pool because there's no fee, the system is fair (counters pool-hopping), and they have a great stats system.  Also, you don't need to create an account with them, so it's the easiest to get started with.

For anyone considering starting up mining, I created a walkthrough video on youtube on how to install the bitcoin wallet, how to install a miner, configure it, and start mining on Eligius.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L9zO-VnLrY

I hope you enjoy!

Thanks for the replies Luke, I'm glad to see the big upgrade will solve those issues.  I'll try to find the IRC channel so I can follow the discussions live.

It would be interesting to do a poll to see how much people would be willing to allow an automatic fixed cut to be.  I wouldn't mind a few % if it gave Luke the resources needed to run this full-time.

Hi Luke-Jr, first of all thank you for doing all the work you do for this pool.  As a new member who joined less than 2 days ago, I have a few questions / suggestions.

Being located in North America, I started using your US pool to do my mining.  Having a relatively slow vid card at the moment (processing around 80Mhash/sec), it took me 2 days to amass about 0.2455 BTC in the US pool before you closed it down.  Now I'm forced to mine in the EU pool and made about 0.1265 BTC so far.  I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position, but many of us would like to donate a portion of our winnings so you can continue to improve on the pool.  I'm also sure a lot of us newbies have just recently started mining with relatively slow rigs, and as such have not received any payments yet.  These current server issues is delaying our first payments even more, and until I make my first BTC, I have 0 BTC to send away or to donate.  I was hoping to get my first payment by the week-end, but with switching over to the EU server, I don't think that's going to be possible.

1. Would it be possible to combine the earnings of both pools so those of us mining on slower rigs can reach the 1 BTC cash-out amount quicker?  Or create a button on the

In the US pool, there is mention of two different metrics: value and earnings.  When I check the http://eligius.st/~artefact2/us/ website, I can only see my unpaid reward, which is basically the total of the lowest of both value and earnings.

2. Would it be possible to display both the earnings and the value in the report so I have an idea how much more BTC I can expect to gain on future long blocks?

I think one complaint people have is the lack of transparency we have in the process.  Your US pool's HDD was running out of space, so you shut it out.  You mentioned it would be good for another 48 hours, then a few moments later you shut it down anyways.  Those 48 hours would've made the difference for me and I'm sure many others of getting near the the minimum payment quota.  You gave us no ETA on when the US pool will be re-opened, which is a first step for us to begin mining so we can generate enough shares to get our first payment.

3. Would it be possible to give us an ETA of when the US pool will re-open?  Will the upgrade you are doing solve the HDD issues, or are you also waiting for a new / additional HDD before you can reopen it?  Is the EU pool at risk of closing down due to lack of HDD space also?

I understand running a pool comes at a big time and equipment expense from your part, which I'm sure is appreciated by everyone, but if you want the pool to be successful and the donations to come in, you have to help your miners be successful, the large miners and the small miners.

The techno-crypto stuff, how miners work, etc, is definitely not something I would discuss with the masses.  But what makes it hard to "make a sale" of the whole bitcoin system, is the technical knowledge required to do even the simplest transaction.

Lets say that I want to open up a bank account and deposit 100$ in it.  I go to the bank, they make me sign a few papers, I hand over the 100$, they give me an ATM card, and I'm all set to do transactions.

With Bitcoins, I have to install the bitcoin wallet myself, then transfer some money using obscure methods to MtGox or some other exchange, then buy BTC using an interface similar to buying stocks, then wait a bit for the BTC to show up on my wallet, then finally I am ready to do a transaction.  Currently most stores don't accept it, so if I want to use my BTC in the real-world, I have to jump through the same hoops.  And while BTC transactions themselves don't have, a lot of the ways to cash out do have fees, whereas many of those that don't have "real" fees will not give you fair rates for your BTC.

So for the typical user who doesn't buy online normally, it's not a very convenient currency yet.

Yes, democratizing the concept of Bitcoins will be a major challenge for BTC to progress.  I've managed to explain it successfully to many technically-inclined individuals, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to explain it to someone like my grandfather who never used a computer.

I liked Eligius at first, but they left a sour taste after they disabled their US server earlier today, which is the one I was using.  That wouldn't be that bad if the EU and US contributions were combined, but they're not, so I'm now stuck with 0.25 BTC on their US server, and 0.013 on their EU server.  I'm keeping faith that they will re-establish the US server soon so I can continue working towards my first BTC, but it did leave a sour first experience.  Not to mention that they had us "bank" some of our credits on yesterday's short blocks which they will pay us back on long blocks in the future, which can only happen after they re-enable the US server.

There are bound to be kinks in the beginning of any tech project, and the bottom-line question is whether you have enough faith / trust in the pool admins to get things back into shape.

Think of mining like rolling a dice with billions of faces.  The chances of the dice rolling in your favor is very low, even if you have a very fast rig.  If you join a pool, instead of your 1Ghash/s+ you will have many others helping you roll the dice also.

If your rig can find an average of 1 block every 2 weeks, you will need at least 30 to 60 weeks for your luck to even out.  Any less than that and you risk the chance of being normally lucky, very badlucky, or very lucky.

In either case, the Expected Value of each option will be the same, but by joining a pool you can normalize your luck within a few days to ensure a constant predictable flow of money.

I have an i7 940 running at 2.93Ghz which I bought about a year ago.  I can up my Mhash/s production by about 19-20 if I use the CPU to mine also, and my power usage goes from 320 Watts to 436 Watts.  That's a difference of 116 Watts, or 0.116 kW.  Multiplied by 24 x 30.4166666, (30.4167 being the number of days per month on a non-leap year: 365/12) that gives 33.872 KWh for a month.  My electricity cost is 0.0985$/Kwh, so it would cost me about 3.34$ / month to run my CPU at 100%.

19-20 Mhash/s would probably pay more than the 3.34$/month, but I find the amount of heat generated a bit troubling, and I honestly don't know how long that CPU would last running at 100% like that 24/7.

So money-wise it's probably worth mining with a good CPU, but it would be much slower to pay-off than a GPU, and generate a whole lot of heat which you need to dissipate somehow (fans, A/C?).  Next winter, though, I might switch over to a computer-powered heating system for the apartment

1. There is very little you can buy with BTC at this time.

2. While BTC transactions are free, anytime you try to convert your BTC into real-world currencies, people take a huge commission.

3. In the traditional credit card payment system, the fees are assumed by the vendor.  Using BTC, both parties are charge fees to transfer real-world currency into BTC, and then BTC into real-world currency.

4. It is technologically complicated to buy and sell BTC.  Most exchange sites only deal in money orders, wire transfers and other methods which are costly, take a lot of time, and are insecure.

In conclusion, before BTC can become a mass-market currency, it will have to be much simpler to buy / sell BTC.  You will need local branches of exchange sites such as Mt Gox all over the world.  You will need a card system which people are familiar with that looks and feels like a credit / debit card.  And finally you will need a larger amount of vendors that accept BTC, especially the large multi-nationals where people spend billions of dollars in.

Since I'm currently running a single miner I haven't bothered with it, but in the past I've had some luck remotely monitoring things using a remote desktop protocol (RDP).  There are many softwares which enable you to have full GUI access to another computer remotely.  Windows comes with a Remote Desktop client, there's also real VNC, vmware, etc.  I'm sure you could find one of those who offers a linux server and mac client.