Thanks for all the thoughtful debate,

I have come to think of it as information and a right tracking system monitored through mathematics and validated on a P2P system confirmed by all users.  And the process we are going through now is an attempt to couple that system to represent economic contributions and withdrawals, so from our current perspective it helps to think of it as property but it is not in fact property, but more a participatory stewardship right.

I was moved by the understanding that Bitcoin's functioned as stewardship right more than a form of property, and as a right you can use it and give it to someone, but it can also die with you going back to the community as a whole.  

BFL Über Alles!

To be precise, in the real world, nothing really gets destroyed - just disassembled - maybe into atoms.

This isn't an attempt at a defense for BFL...

This isn't an attempt at a defense for BFL, it's an accurate accounting of what is going on so that people can use good information to make their business decisions. The problem with a lot of the comments in this topic, is that there is no temperament to reality. It's "BFL are scammorz, har har" which doesn't help anyone.

I think that the two key words in the quoted section are dishonest and naive. BFL has shown themselves to be dishonest through ommission about their delivery dates, allowing customers to continue to believe that chips would be arriving in late November when they knew that they were making clock buffer adjustments that would delay at least until mid-December. Because of the competitive environment for ASICs, it is understandable why they would do this, but it's important to know that they did this when deciding whether or not you can trust them regarding future statements. Essentially, if BFL says on January 8th that the chips will arrive soon, this aspect of dishonesty justifies a person to ignore the information until there is provable evidence that the chips are in BFLs hands. I would even go so far as to say the chips need to be integrated into a working prototype, and yochdog and the other guy go there and see it and report positively. Only does it makes sense to plan around a promised BFL shipping date.

The other word is naive and it does seem that they have some experience to gain with respect to business relationships. This is pretty normal for a new company though, and as such I think it is overboard to label anyone there as an "idiot". From what I've seen, the people at BFL are pretty smart.

As far as being a "scammer", I still feel it is highly doubtful that the intention here was to collect preorder money and then run with it with no product. However, I still feel a scammer tag is warranted and I've laid out the case for that here.



I read those documents and I think you may have misunderstood what they said. Sonny was just part of an illegal lottery. People were still paid out. It seems that some people focus on the idea that they didn't buy tickets, but that was a strong feature of their lottery. If they bought tickets from the government, then the highest payout they could expect is half of what they put in. This is because government lotteries are not used as wealth redistribution, but for funding government programs (typically schools). So, instead, they offered tickets with a higher payout that would be validated by the government lottery. The people got paid as according to their voluntary agreements, and they actually got paid much better than if they participated in the government sanctioned lottery.

However, the government HATES it when you muscle in on their turf. The business model is essentially the equivalent of selling book orders in Bugsy Segal's backyard. The fact that they were giving people a more fair game while cutting out funds that should have gone to the public treasury was pretty much infuriating to the AG. That's why the hammer fell. The fraud argument from the government is that Sonny's company was supposedly representing themselves as a sanctioned government lottery. Maybe they were, I don't really know because the document lacked evidence, and the government's motivation is suspect. But this has nothing to do with defrauding little old ladies.

NO INTERNET FOR YOU, PIRATE@40.

Per the new contest rules (as of week 10), the FPGA is no longer part of the giveaway. Only a little single sc will be awarded (once available).

I'm definitely in the running for gold in the cheapest cheap whore Olympics and I won't advertise for anyone so cheaply. If I did I'd expect to take a credibility hit when my statements appeared to be in defense of the company that had bought my signature.

It may help your claim to be a non-biased non-emotional logical thinker if you remove the paid BFL ad in your signature. Just sayin'.

Define "our" in this context? The majority of your posts are so pro BFL slanted I haven't a clue what you mean with this pronoun.

What does BFL have to do to claim for instance that BFL_Jody made false or erroneous statements other than say...hey BFL_Jody made false and erroneous statements, that don't represent BFL as a company?

Can you see how this will not work with regard to the company faq? No? n/m

 

...and how do you prove that? More importantly how do you disprove a claim by BFL that those statements were made erroneously?

You either fail to grasp what I'm saying or you're intentionally ignoring the topic, so I'm going to try one last time.

BFL as a company(not a group of individuals) is responsible for the contents of the official faq


This has nothing to do with what we're discussing. Though a BFL whistleblower would be most welcome just now, it seems highly unlikely if the list of employees is as short as I believe it is.

Your assessment of BFL's actions is very charitable(calling them fuckups). For myself I fail to see how they could possibly believe they were going to ship finished products in 2012, yet as recently as last week Josh and others(Debbie) were still advising potential customers that they either still had a chance to ship in 2012 or that they had "scheduled shipments" in December of 2012 and January of 2013.

Given what we now know(which is only what BFL reps want us to know) I fail to see how this behavior can be labelled a "fuck up", but your millage may vary.  

Let me put it this way. Let's say for instance BFL_Jody is fired tomorrow. Is BFL now responsible for what she's said in the past? How many customers have based decisions on what this one rep has said?

You started posting in earnest on December the 2nd. What do you know about "this community" and what it supposedly believes in?

What do you know about the quite extensive history of doxing on these forums and how the results were used time and again to implicate and warn against scammers way, way before their scam ever paid out? (didn't stop people investing in them, but that's another story)