It wasn't really meant to "prove" anything to the critics, though.  As Avalon acknowledged, a photo provided by them proves absolutely nothing - you could get a design student to make you a mock-up which looks like "the real thing".

Once Jeff or Bitcoin Foundation posts photos of the units they receive, photos can start being regarded as "proof".

Until the recipient has a tracking number, they can't track it.  Jeff is saying he's been given no details so far regarding shipping - so he has neither the tracking number nor the shipping method at the moment.  While you'd think that Avalon would spend a little extra on ensuring that these first two orders reach their destination ASAP - even if it coat them several hundred dollars out of their own pockets - the fact that they didn't have a form up allowing users to select a shipping method makes me think that they may not have paid much attention to this part of the process up until now.

Could be, but I don't think that the partners in GLBSE are a cohesive enough group that every single one of them would lie about the authenticity of the documents. 

I presume they expected that you'd "publish and be damned".

When are you going to make a decision - when a certain date arrives or when a certain number of people vote "yes".

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=136969.msg1467261#msg1467261

Your intentions don't count for a lot really.  If you're desperate enough to be trying to borrow BTC to buy drugs now and you can't repay for a couple of weeks, chances are that you're going have borrowed in real life as well and that by the time you get money again you're going to owe people in real life who are harder to avoid than internet strangers.  It's not like 2 BTC worth of drugs is going to last long.

Seriously?  One of the first units was shipped to a Bitcoin dev.  For it not to arrive or to not work when it does arrive would do far more damage to Avalon than a two week delay would have done.

Pictures prove nothing about whether a unit actually exists or works.  They're nice to have so you can drool over something, but they don't actually prove anything.  You can pay to have clever mock-ups of stuff built - half the technology you see in TV shows and movies is nothing more than a clever mock-up which looks like the real thing and looks like it's actually working when its not.

While people can certainly still question any photos or videos posted by Jeff and Bitcoin Foundation when their units are set up, it's a big stretch to believe that they're going to deceive users about the end product produced by Avalon or any other ASIC vendor.

If you read the original thread, you'll see that people were also violently opposed to any of the ASIC vendors actually hashing to prove that their products worked, too.

They're using DHL which is not affected by when the post office is or isn't open.

Indeed, it raises the question of what the "lesson in trust" was supposed to be.  Was it supposed to be that the community shouldn't doubt people or that they shouldn't blindly trust high profile members? 

If there was an honest belief that pirate would pay, then the only intended lesson which makes any sense is that people shouldn't be so cynical.

If the intended lesson was "trust no-one", then I don't see how an honest belief that pirate would pay could have existed - rather the "lesson" seems to be about how greed encourages unwarranted trust (first in pirate and then in Matthew).

I'm still confused about nature of the intended "lesson".

It would probably be helpful if you stated which recognised data centre security standards you intend meeting.  It's obviously not realistic to expect that you could offer the same level of security as facilities such as those used by financial service providers or that you need to do so.  It's going to be cheaper to cover some risks via insurance.

That 300-500 figure every week is once they've streamlined their production process.  They've never said that they're capable of doing that right now and have explicitly said that their production capability will be affected by Chinese New Year, so there not going to be shipping 300-500 units every weeks just yet.

And yeah, you can usually get Asia>Australia same day or overnight if you're willing to pay for it and especially if you're willing to collect the package yourself from one of their service points.

The annoying as shit thing is that tracking information can be hilariously wrong.  I've had packages delivered while the tracking info is telling me that they haven't even cleared customs yet. 

The BS is going to continue until after BFL delivers.  Until then, the performance of each vendor's product can't be independently compared.

I think the final specs are part of the "surprise" they're talking about.  I know that in their situation I'd be kind of tempted to say nothing and let the first people to start using their product make "holy shit, they over-delivered" posts - as they're not taking any new orders right now, they can afford to do that.

I kind of regard everyone's first batch as proof of concept.  In a way, the first units shipped by each vendor are going to be prototypes.  Those who ordered first took the biggest risk, so I hope that all of the vendors will be willing to replace/upgrade those first units if necessary as problems are ironed out.

Those who want a given vendor to fail are forgetting that competition drives innovation.

Not really.  Their production capacity is affected by CNY.  If they shipped all 300 units today, they're not really going to be able to deliver a second batch sooner than if they wait a couple of weeks.

There's also the issue of how the first 300 perform in the wild.  If they start the production process for a second batch now, they don't have information on how the first batch has performed and risk having to scrap that run and start again if there are major issues which need addressing.  

Meh, I don't think it matters all that much if they did only ship two units last night.  The more relevant question for me would be about continuity of shipping and whether they are going to be keeping a steady supply of units going out the door daily now until all 300 units have shipped.  It would be annoying if there's now a break of a week before any more units ship, for instance, even though they've explicitly stated since October that they would ship over a two week period.

I guess it's also worth remembering that with some people ordering multiple units, the number of units shipped isn't going to match the number of orders fulfilled.  One order could be 5 or 10 units.

I think people overlook the fact that there are pros and cons for the way each vendor has planned launching their product and that initial shipping is only the beginning, not the end game.  I also expect that every single ASIC vendor which does deliver (and I believe that BFL will) will be doing a lot of post-delivery tweaking and that tweaking is what's going to determine who has the best product at the end of the day.

I pretty much agree with this.  The pre-order model for bASIC needs to be abandoned.  If they want to maintain the current order book so that people can keep their places in the queue, then that could be done by way of a token (say $50) deposit with the remainder of the purchase price being paid when the units are actually ready to ship.

They also need to unlock their forum.  These occasional hyperbolic posts from Tom are too much like "from the desk of Tom Williams" reports when all the communication is one way and legitimate questions are remaining unanswered.  To date, not one shred of evidence has been provided that there is a "new team" or that more funds have been secured.  People shouldn't be asked to take Tom's word on these things - Tom should be falling over himself to provide evidence and to answer questions about "what next".

For what it's worth, I think the attitude is going to be the same when other companies ship as well - people aren't going to be satisfied until end users are posting pictures and reports.  And that's fair enough, really.

For something like this, they may well be dropping the consignment off at DHL themselves - I've certainly done that myself in the past when it was something important.  They're able to arrange collections on weekends (as well as deliveries) but it's usually not cheap.  I wouldn't do it with a consignment like this one because the last thing you want is to think everything's fine and then find out a couple of days later that the paperwork's not in order and your consignment is just sitting there doing nothing.  At least if you drop off the consignment yourself, you're on the spot to fill out additional paperwork, fix errors, etc.

We're talking about a large amount of funds over a long period of time.  I don't think the mods are the appropriate people to be delegated that role.

He mentioned extending hardware life as one of the selling points so my guess is that he's intending to provide an optimum environment in terms of cooling, being dust-free, etc.  What that will end up costing is an interesting question.  Physical security is another interesting question.  I presume it would be at a significantly lower level than that used by financial services data centres, but obviously vandalism would cause a significant aggregate loss of revenue to miners even if each individual miner didn't lose much.