I believe you need to be active on the site.

as far as I know, asics can only handle the crypto they were made for, sha256 only in the case of the ones being released. But fpgas can be reprogrammed to scrypt or another crypto.

am glad I read this post now

hurray

Would 7950's not be better, like the OP originally stated?
Seems to me the 50% saving on hardware cost would outweigh the benefit from the 7970 cards. You could afford 6 x 7950 for the price of 4 x 7970

I too think they are not a scam. The previous generation (fpga) shipped, and so will asic.
But I do think may be 'testing' them for longer than necessary...making as much as possible from each one before shipping.