Ah. Thought that might be what you were getting at. I'm a fan of British humour, but sometimes it gets by me. We Yanks are a bit literal minded

Getting a bit tired of the whole thing myself. But a "pre-order" that stretches over a year's time should be viewed as an inadverdent investment.

Ok, I'm sure that's sarcasm, but how you mean "mentalist?" Certainly no way to read body language, and we ain't got no Uri Gellar's in here that I'm aware of...

Aside from that, agreed. I would pay the premium for protection, at least first time out. After that I would likely be reinvesting my Bitcoins into more machines for a time.

Just did. Only .01 BTC, but I'z poor

To my extensive knowledge their has NEVER been a monopoly that was enforceable absent a state. Going clear back to Babylon.

If you look to more recent history, before they butt raped him, Andrew Carnegie supported the various tarriffs for the STATED SOLE PURPOSE of protecting monopolies.

JMK was not exactly noted for his accuracy, even by his admirers. Charm, wit, and bravado, certainly. But not accuracy. Menger, Von Mises et. al. have won this one by being accurate. Which doesn't make them popular, as their analysis doesn't condone nor call for monopolistic interventions on the part of regulators.

it's under "contact us" on their website.

1800 Wyatt Drive, Suite 15, Santa Clara, CA 95054

Generally collectivist refers to those who view everything as common property. Your view above, cooperation, is more along the lines of voluntaryism. Other than that I largely agree with your conclusions here.

Except one thing. The decentralized nature of Bitcoin is potentially subversive, simply because it is nearly impossible to be centrally controlled.

Godwin is not god. The comparison is just, and if you are as old as you claim, you know it. This country is not the one I grew up in. It barely resembles it. And I'm only 44.

In the US it doesn't matter, except you might have to pay sales tax and certainly would have to pay import tarriffs. I don't know about individual cc policies, however. Everybody got to do their own research.

Normal VC behaviour is like 'normal' weather. Completely unpredictable.

I can see why crowdfunding is more and more popular, because I have watched a number of startups fail because their investors decided to stick a wrench in the works just to watch the pretty sparks. It's hard to get a venture capitalist to let the engineers do their job. VC's know money, and power. Very few of them know the nuts and bolts of what they are backing, and fewer yet have the wisdom to keep their fingers out of the machine.

I'm honestly squarely on the fence. I just got a little irritated that y'all seem to think ALL startups, regardless of their actions, are trying to screw you. Granted, there have been many reasonable voices as well, but there is a hard core of people on this forum that seem to WANT the ASIC companies to fail. I don't think all of that lot are invested in ASICMiner or Avalon, so I don't get the hostility.

Yes, KnC has done some awkward and potentially shady things. They have also responded to most of the concerns, legitimate or not, posted here. As previously noted, these people are engineers. Not necessarily the best batch of people to assign p.r. duties. It's not their forte. They could have developed everything without any announcement, and then a lot of you would complain about that!

Personally, I'm not investing any money until someone is actually shipping. I really don't have a choice in that for reasons of my own tight vice like margins. But if I did have money to gamble, I probably would gamble on this company. They aren't the only one, and I'm a guy that likes to bet the spread where possible. Unfortunately, at the moment I don't have that option.

Ok.

All marxists that I have ever interacted with do this, and unfortunately a lot of anarchists who ought to know better.

So here's the deal.

Capitalism is NOT a political system!!!

Let me repeat that. Capitalism is NOT a political system!!!

Fascism is a political system whereby capitalistic enterprise is allowed to exist, but regulated by a central authority.

Communism is a political system that INTERNALLY makes all capital common property (still capitalistic at it's root, but that's a story for another time.)

Modern democracy is closer to fascism than communism. The big problem, aside from the dehumanization of the individual, with communism and it's derivatives is and always has been NO realistic means to figure out exchange. Sure, absent allergies you can figure out food, but anything non necessary but desirable cannot be evaluated without TRADE, which is the root of capitalism.

A free society is necessarily based on production and trade. A totalitarian society (which communism MUST be unless limited to extremely small groupings) still needs to trade, but it's rulers can make the value decisions. Poorly.

Capitalism is an economic system whereby PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS own the means of production and trade freely amongst themselves. In a truly capitalistic system, money is just another commodity, not some magical "declared to be of value" piece of promissory paper.

BTW, for all of you socialists and statists, the corporation is the primary economic basis for fascism. Mussolini's fascist party, for whom the term "fascist" came into common usage, described their system as corporatism. While the organizational structure of a corporation is legitimate in some ways, the "juridical person" of a corporate entity is BY DEFINITION a 'person' created by the state. Without states, there are no corporate persons, thus the shield against personal liability by corporate officers goes away.

Absent the state, free trade does and always has existed. Through most of history, barring external events, prices start high on new goods and trend downward as competition enters the game, thus in the long run benefiting everyone involved. Yes, there is fraud in the marketplace, and there always will be. But there is LESS fraud when the penalties are market based than when you can "insure" against them with "public" monies. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand at work.

To some extent, every system of polity from the most totalitarian to the most anarchic has some element of capital accumulation and trade. This is NECESSARY unless you want to be a wild animal, subsisting solely on what you find that day and at the mercy of the elements, since even basic tools and clothes are capital. The basic derivation of the word basically has the meanings of wealth or things of primary need. If it can be used and possessed, it IS capital.

Free market anarchism, or Libertarian Anarchism, which is commonly known as anarcho-capitalism or volutaryism, is a system whereby EVERY HUMAN old enough to live on their own is considered a sovereign person, duty bound to make their own way so long as they do not violate the Non aggression principle. Mutual trade to be carried out based upon contract and agreement, not who has the bigger dick. States, and it is my decades long consideration that a collective version of anarchy is going to be at least a minimal state, has a "middleman" at all times, taking a piece of, or frequently ALL of the action and leaving the individual to rot. Agorism, the system to which I ascribe, is inherently subversive in a way the communists could never imagine nor pull off. We aim to outcompete the state, subverting it by making it respond to us via it's own weaknesses rather than violent revolution. Bitcoin actually serves that purpose quite well. It's an intangible currency, much like their fiat, but it's decentralized nature makes it difficult to track and impossible to control. Yet coming down on it in a meaningful way exposes them for what they are, which they cannot afford unless they ADMIT to being totalitarian. And probably wouldn't work anyway, as it would just go underground. The long term goal, of course, is to smash the state. The means is to make them chase their tail so long and so enthusiastically that they smash themselves.

That would be awesome! Do keep us posted please.

I'm not saying the concerns are illegitimate. It just seems that any response they make draws fire, regardless of merit.

Give 'em a minute, willya?

This time next week I'll be in southwestern Idaho. It's a long drive, but I could do it. I'm thinking about mid July droppin' in on 'em.

Ok, I'm not a tech guy, but let me have a go here.

As I understand it, the fpga unit pretty much simulates an asic. It's a good developer platform. So, again if I understand correctly, they pretty much had to develop an fpga prototype in order to properly build their ASIC design. Initially, they were going to go to market with that. But, and I have been following this thread from day 2, they got a LOT of negative feedback about marketing what is essentially last year's gadget when we're all hungry for ASICS. I saw very little positive from any of you regarding the fpga. My own opinion was that it was a sidetrip at best, but I didn't chime in because of my above understanding of the process.

Now the dump it, probably due to overwhelming negative comments, and the same bunch of ya are bitching about that.

I begin to wonder if some of you have a vested interest in seeing them fail!

So BFL left a bad taste in your mouths. I get that. I didn't get burned, and I still get that. Not every company is BFL.

I have seen this company trying very hard to be responsive to a moving target. I don't know that they aren't a scam, but they certainly aren't acting like it.

Thanks!

You're one of the ones I'm betting on. I really hope you get to market first, cuz I could drive to ya in a day

Since a guy named Alexander was kicking around. The Hill Men have never been defeated in the long run. They understand what the American military has forgotten, even though the lesson has been thrust upon them again and again. Armies are made to fight armies. Militias are made to fight invaders.

A generally armed and competent polity is unbeatable. The goal of a militia is not to gain points on a scoreboard, like it is for two armies. It's goal is to make the invasion unsustainable.

This tactic has generally been called guerilla warfare until just a bit after September 11, 2001. Now it's called terrorism, which is only an element of the strategy to begin with. Terrorism is intended to demoralize an enemy and render them so afraid that they overreact and overcommit. For an easy modern example, look to the United States. In the name of protecting "us", by which the sons of bitches mean themselves, agencies such as the KGBDHS come into existence. The likelihood of them stopping or even slowing a determined guerilla unit is almost nil, but that doesn't stop them from oppressing the peoplesheep. The very existence of such agencies is a victory for the terrorist tactic, and neither prevents nor aids the guerilla warfare. But the heightened fear and excessive police state will eventually lead to the downfall of the targeted government.

In a more direct militia confrontation, that is a minor element. The major element is attrition. Militia perform terribly on a set-piece battlefield. Armies perform terribly against militia who are properly utilized. A man with a rifle cannot stand against an armored division. But sooner or later the people in those tanks will have to take a piss. Then that man, and his confederates, will take ONE shot. One less tank crewmember, and the militiaman has faded back into the general populace.

The Army will then escalate, committing more atrocities, but doing nothing to make themselves more secure. They further inflame the populace, leading to active recruiting to the militias without any effort on the side of the defenders. Where this is organized, such as Switzerland, the nation becomes literally uninvade-able. I cannot recall the names of the generals involved, but during World War Two, there were a million Nazi troops on the Swiss border. The Swiss general and German general spoke to one another. This is paraphrased cuz I don't feel like looking it up right now. But it's close.

"What will you do now sir, with your vaunted 500,000 man militia, with a million german troops on your border?"

"Well sir, my men will fire twice and go home."

Bravado? Perhaps. The Germans stayed on their side of the border!

But it also illustrates the point! The State soldier, while possibly idealistic, is fighting for the State's goals. I won't debate the merit of that right now, my sig should tell you where I stand on the issue. But nevertheless, the state soldier is fighting for an abstract, whereas the militiaman is fighting for his home, wife, children, and property. Who do you think is the more motivated?

And of course there is the issue of sheer numbers. You cannot defeat the entire population of an area without exterminating them. That is usually infeasable and usually political suicide. Genocide, while bandied about quite a bit, always proves unpopular with the neighbors.

Knowing the foregoing, it is wise for EVERY man to get well trained and adequately armed, regardless of the current state of his affairs and that of his current rulers. Things can and do change for the worse overnight. Fortune favors the prepared, and the most prepared tend to be individualists, the most prepared individualists (IMAO) are anarchists.

Sounded more like PR to me. Get a few working models out there for the world to see. Not sure it's a good idea, but it's certainly bold.

True, it's still young. I'm kicking myself because I had intended to mine right out of the gate. I heard of bitcoin about a week after it's launch. I had a number of personal problems going on at the time and simply FORGOT about it until much later. Sheer stupidity. I figured it would take off to some extent (not as much as it has). Trying not to make the same mistake twice.

However, yes, I think it will go large. I'm betting that it will go large. But I still think it's too soon to call it a smashing success just yet.