Good luck in your future endeavours Dave.

The only company which has ever been going to produce large quantities straight up is BFL.  Even assuming that you thought they were going to deliver before the reward block halved, you still weren't going to be able to order every unit in that batch.  If I remember rightly, BFL also had a stated policy of limiting the amount of hashing power they would sell to any one user initially as well.

I should probably clarify.  I'm OK with allowing Tom some dignity if doing so means he'll actually wind down bASIC properly rather than just walking away and leaving this clusterfuck in limbo. 

I'm definitely not OK with ridiculous things like the post which announced that the project had secured new funding and was back on track being deleted.  That post originated on Tom's forum and I'm not going to buy any story that someone hijacked Tom's account over there and was posting untrue shit and Dave was somehow unaware of this.

I'm not OK with the fact that Tom is now basically refusing to communicate with his customers and all communication will now be one way, at his whim.

I remain extremely unimpressed that Tom has repeatedly said that the bASIC project was backed by members of this community and that those people have remained silent throughout this.  Were they all members of the "lenders syndicate" who lost money to pirate - is that why they can't be named and why they won't show their faces now?

Take it with a grain of salt.  His dream's been shattered, he's overwhelmed, and he's not yet had any time away from the drama to develop some perspective.  It's probably a bit too soon to reasonably expect him to be able to take an objective look at what went wrong and why.

I think he's probably a bit hurt that when he announced the project was back on track he wasn't showered with support.

Only if they didn't cash out the Bitcoins.  The fact that he said they'll have to buy BTC to make the refunds suggests they weren't holding large Bitcoin reserves.

You know what, I'm OK with that.  It's better that Tom gets a "community save" and is able to wind bASIC down in an orderly manner or hand it off to someone else to wind down than it is for him to become so totally disconnected from reality due to stress that he becomes paralysed and everything sits in limbo indefinitely.

I hope that the unseen people behind bASIC will help Tom with this process.  It's not an easy one to undertake when you've invested your hard and soul in a dream.

Also to the unseen people behind bASIC, if you are going to try to salvage this project, it will take more than just money - you need to bring in an experienced trouble-shooter to assess whether the project can be salvaged and to take over project management if it can.  Don't try to do it yourselves unless you have experience in salvaging projects - employ someone who knows what they're doing and let them do their job.

This is where it gets weird.  It may or may not actually be stuck in customs.  I've had orders delivered when the tracking information assures me it still in customs awaiting clearance.  I've also heard of routine orders from Amazon apparently being stuck in customs for long periods but when the order is actually tracked (as opposed to someone taking the information on their screen as gospel), it's somewhere else entirely - sometimes returned to its point of origin for no apparent reason.

Sometimes companies assume that the paperwork necessary to export something from their country will be adequate at the receiving end. That's not always the case.

Large companies pay customs agents to make sure that all of the relevant licences are obtained and that the paperwork is in order for both the country of origin and the recipient country.  Small companies can't afford that and it can be frustrating trying to get the destination paperwork in order for multiple countries which have different import requirements.

They were using "name" facilities for manufacturing so it's entirely possible that it's part of Fujitsu's facility.

And yeah, everyone needs to realise that customs issues can bring shit undone at the final hurdle.  When the first unit arrives in a customer's hands, people can relax a bit - although you can still have customs issues with specific countries.

And yet you just said that you had enough BTC to refund everyone and buy 100 Avalons...

This kind of shit is why you no longer have any credibility in this community and people would rather cancel their orders - which your millionaire friend should have anticipated was exactly what would happen when you closed your forum and provided no evidence whatsoever that the project was back on track - than take your word for it that you are capable of delivering ASICs in March.

You need to walk away from this project, Tom - for your own well-being, if nothing else.

Now that's funny.

I think you probably need to make a decision soon on whether or not to release the documents.  Some people are going to review them objectively and some aren't - there's really nothing you can do to control that. 

I'm in the same country as Russell Crowe.  Does that mean I should have his phone number so I can talk to him when I buy pre-order tickets to his next movie?

Like it or not, it's not usual for customers to have access to the non-customer service staff in most businesses.  Avalon was never really intended to be a retail-type vendor marketing their product to get sales and providing direct customer service.  They're not trying to get as many sales as possible and gain market dominance - that's never been their vision. 

You don't get to talk to the designers and the engineers when you buy a car - not even when you buy a fleet of cars.  You sure as hell don't get to talk to the design teams or upper management when you buy an Apple product. 

Personally, I'm often amazed at the sense of entitlement to the ins and outs of a duck's ass being displayed by ASIC purchasers in general.  I accept that sense of entitlement stems from them feeling like they've been made unwilling investors in the various ASIC projects, but again - you don't get unfettered access to the design team or management at Apple just because you're a shareholder.

We've already seen a lot of Bitcoin enterprises reduce their interaction with this community and focus on providing support to their customers through other means.  As long as this community behaves like entitled, whiny brats, I see no reason why any Bitcoin enterprise should regard these forums as the best way to interact with their present or potential customers.

The conflict between these two statements should be readily apparent.

In the case of this forum and the ASIC threads, it's more a case of technology fan-boys being the soccer hoodlums of the internet. 

Bulletin boards and usenet were somewhat gated communities and there's literally nothing stopping anyone from creating gated internet communities now.  I guess the question of why any given online forum feels the need to throw membership open to everyone is an interesting question in itself.

Yep, and the print media is pretty much the same, with a massive amount of space being devoted to "lifestyle" and "human interest" stories. 

Given that this appears to be a gang-related shooting and that no-one died, does it now lose it's appeal for the tabloid media or does a debate start about how to deal with gang-related violence?

Does the media pretty much pack up and move on at this point because gang members aren't sympathetic victims?

I can go months without watching a TV news bulletin or hitting the website of a major newspaper.  On the occasions when I do tap into the mainstream media, I'm inevitably disappointed by the quality of reporting - I might as well have read someone's blog given how badly written and shallow most news reports are these days.

I don't really think I miss out on much because we no longer need to sit around and wait for news to be delivered to us.  I don't need to wait for the next news bulletin or tomorrow's newspaper if there's something happening about which I want more information.  The internet means that I'll be aware it's happening - and often before it even hits the mainstream media - and I can actively seek out further information in real time, often from people involved in the events rather than reporters looking for a "hook".

I think that we suffer from information overload and the general impact of that is negative - its skews our perspective in the same way that the prevalence of instant communication methods skews out perception.  We're more connected than ever before but I don't think we've learned to manage that in a healthy way yet.

Scumbags works for me.

Incidentally, I liked Amanda's response.


After which Justin persists in trying to get her to talk to CNN.

If there was ever enough time between shooting sprees to let them become a distant memory, then I would agree with you.  Unfortunately, there isn't.  There's never going to be a "right time" to discuss the merits of gun control because you never have a guaranteed period of 3 or 6 or 12 months before the next shooting spree happens.

I've seen this happen many times.  The number of media people who hit the FB and Twitter accounts of witnesses/victims is amazing and their persistence is pretty awful.


It's only the location which makes it newsworthy.  I'll guarantee that many large US cities have incidents every day in which two people are shot but it doesn't make the news because it's so common and "just another Friday night in Chicago" type stuff.  It's when strangers are shot in a location where violence isn't expected that the media - and by extension, the public - gives a damn.