Doubtful.  Firstly we all know BFL's track record.  If they say ASIC release is 12-16 weeks off you can read that as early 2013.  BFL is in business to make a profit, so regardless of what BS is posted now, the units will NOT be inexpensive.

Secondly, for FPGA mining to "turn off", the difficulty will have to be so great that it costs more to mine in electricity then btc you can generate.  Spartan 6 based miners are very efficient (and next generation even more so).

Thirdly, even if that electricity/btc point is reached, you can repurpose your FPGA miner.  Worst case scenario is you can sell off the board to a third party to salvage the FPGA.

Lots of people said FPGA will kill off GPUs and you can clearly see that market is still flourishing.

FWIW I only saw debit cards, which makes sense.

Wow, I wish all I had to do to prove my identity was take a photo of myself writing a name and show a credit card with the same name.

As a farm operator who is mining on dozens of 5970s and 6990, continuously, with the fan speed manually forced at 100%, and with my oldest cards mining for as long as 18 months, let me tell you this claim is rubbish! (My fan bearing mechanical failure rate is 6%, which is low and expected.)

The claim that "running fans harder than 80% kills them" is spread by paranoid teenager geeks who covet their expensive gaming hardware without an understanding of the electronic and mechanical engineering work to control failure rates.

When a fan datasheet says it is designed for a lifetime of X years of continuous operation, it assumes a 100% duty cycle. In other words, it assumes the fan running at full speed. Fan manufacturers don't build fans and say "don't run it at full speed, or else..."

For example, if the datasheet says 2 years, running the fan continuously means it should last at least 2 years; running it every other day means you can prolong its lifetime to 4 years; etc. At 50% duty cycle ("50% fan speed"), the PWM voltage alternates between 0 and the nominal input voltage, the fan should last somewhere between 2 and 4 years (but much closer to 2 years because the bearings are still moving when the voltage is 0, just not quite as fast as full speed.) At 80% duty cycle, the fan should last between 2 and 2.5 years (but closer to 2 years).

To significantly improve the operating lifetime of a fan, you would have to run it at such a low duty cycle that it would be a bad idea for high-end graphics cards, because the cooling would be so much reduced that the high temperature would start seriously reducing the operating lifetime of all the other components on the PCB (capacitors, VRMs, GPU ASICs, etc).

Bottom line, fans are designed to run at 100% duty cycle. And there is no significant difference between 80 and 100%. Some people choose to run at 80% because it does not significantly decrease cooling (for the same reason that it does not significantly increase lifetime), but because the fan consumes 20% less power (and the fan is just a tiny fraction of the overall power consumed by the card).

(I choose to run at 100% because I pay a fixed price per electrical circuit, and the tiny extra power consumption costs me nothing.)

No AV here, haven't used one in 8+ years. Last time I did, it didn't like the contents of my file server and never used one again.

Windows security is irrelevant, they are looking at market share. That's why osx was "secure" and is now trickling to becoming "unsecure."

Security by obscurity is delusion many people don't acknowledge.

I've downloaded literally 10's of terabytes of stuff of the internet. I've never lost my identity, never got hacked, never had toolbar problems.

A good nat router is simply amazing against penetration for the money and skill level needed to install. I used to browse in a VM. That become a pain. I just turned off all the potential problems (flash, java, active-x). Problem solved. Last time I checked... html doesn't ruin your day.

A1BITCOINPOOL's scammer tag has now been removed, as he has successfully paid the last remaining person he owed.

bulanula, what will your excuse be now?

Is this project and/or thread dying out?

BTC value has gone up.  That increases the price they pay to buy btc to pay to people.

Ad-hominem attacks do not change the validity of his claims.

As I've said in the other thread, research shows that lower temperatures (a result of increasing fan speeds) results in longer bearing life.

If this is a fact, there would be proof/evidence of it. Please cite.

AFAIK, bearing life is related to temperature and running a fan higher tends to lower temperatures when you're trying to cool a 150-200W device.

That comment was only in regard to the jokey comment ...


I would expect significant assistance from GLBSE should any verified asset owner behave in a similar fraudulent manner as Tawsix did.

Personally, I wouldn't risk much at all in any unverified asset owner unless there was an extremely good justification for why they are unverified - for example the pot growing asset being discussed.

While my own financial loss from investing in SIN was minimal, I am extremely annoyed by the damage it did to investor confidence in Bitcoin, GLBSE etc ...

Tawsix has to be punished for that and actively prevented from repeating his behaviour.

The optional verification process should prove to be an excellent guard against such - hopefully we won't need an acid test.

I am curious which specific assets Sukrim was referring to, though my appetite for mining related investment is minimal to non existent at this time.

Zhou is not taking responsibility cuz he sold it and did not tell anyone (until after people who trusted him, asked him to act).

I do not think they can use fiat for legal defense, but honestly I think there is little we can do about them using the bitcoin.

Really what can we do, go to our local cops and say yeah, this company in New Zealand or where ever stole our imaginary crypto currency?

People who are missing dollars can file criminal claims, people who only had BTC are shit out of luck unless I really do not know what I am talking about.