Bitminter still working smooth as always:
https://bitminter.com

Perhaps a good time to cash in the 150 free BTC promotion before it runs out.

A 75% drop in hashpower is different in what way from a 75% drop in BTC price? Its essentially the same thing, and a completely arbitrary number compared to a completely arbitrary baseline. But whatever strategy works for you I guess...

I said its delayed. If you've invested heavily in a mining farm, or even just a few cards, you are not instantly going to sell your hardware if profitability drops. Getting it back may cost you a lot. And even if you would make that decision instantly, you likely wouldnt find buyers overnight. Some are continuing to run their miners until they are sold.  Many wont make the decision to pull the plug until the utility bill comes it.  Some will continue running their rig for the heck of it, or to mine private anonymous coins. Some have free electricity. Some are even still profitable today. But  thats not the same as being bullish. Im still mining, but Im not bullish. People were bullish back in may and june, but hash rate still lagged price by quite a bit. The same is happening during this decline, and probably during the next bubble/rise.

Looking at hash rate is about as useful as looking at the exchange rate of one or two months ago.

Ubuntu is a fabulous OS. The only reason I have to revert to windows now and then is gaming. On my laptop(s) I have not installed windows in like 5 years. Well, except for inside a virtual machine hosted by ubuntu to test windows stuff.

Up until that line I agreed with everything you said. But hashrate is no indicator of sentiment. Its a delayed indicator of price. Ignoring transaction fees for now, its simple, if price goes down, hashrate goes down and vice versa. Through difficulty, and assuming stable cost/MH, the relationship is linear; for all the reasons you listed above, in general miners will pull the plug if they cant make a profit, regardless of their sentiment, and if there is money to be made mining, it wont take long for people to figure it out. So what deepbit is showing is simply that bitcoin price tumbled. Nothing else. And unless price goes up sharply, hashrate will continue to decline for a while, and it wont go up because of sentiment or wall street journal front page ads; it will only go up after BTC price has gone up and more miners can run their rigs profitably.

So I take it you have also been applauding the DDoS attacks on the major bitcoin pools a few days ago?
Not sure if everyone here realizes in many countries this is illegal and can lead to up to 10 years of imprisonment. Encouraging that sort of criminal behavior is not helping the reputation of bitcoin.

Right. "No problems whatsoever" expect for horrific tearing. Which btw, isnt caused by the refresh rates. Fix your clocks and the tearing will go away.

Install AMD videodrivers (called "restricted" drivers in the linux world, as they are not opensource). Just click on the ubuntu logo top left and start typing "drivers". Click on "additional drivers" and activate the recommended driver. You will have to reboot after that.

Download OpenCL from AMD site:
http://developer.amd.com/sdks/AMDAPPSDK/downloads/Pages/default.aspx

Select the appropriate package (probably 64 bit if you installed 64 bit ubuntu). Save, open the tarball (its like a zip file) and extract them somewhere, like on your desktop. IN the extracted folder there should be an installation script install-APP.sh, double click it and run it in a terminal. If it complains about permissions, you may have to make the script executable first by right clicking the file and in the properties mark it as executable, not sure if AMD set it as such. Be aware, last time I installed OpenCL the installer would reboot my PC after it installed no questions asked.

After that, you should be able to start mining with bitminter.

You may want to install this little tool too:
http://www.ubunturoot.com/2011/02/amdoverdrivectrl-tweak-tool-for-ati.html

to overclock your card and set fan speeds, monitor temps etc. You probably dont want to compile it from source, so just grab the .deb package here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amdovdrvctrl/files/deb%20binaries/

again, pick the right one for your CPU/OS. I assume amdoverdrivectrl_1.1.4_amd64.deb. Then its just double clicking the .deb and it will launch software center where you can install the app.

Aha. That would explain a lot
Unfortunately, scrypt isnt one with this miner, so I guess I need another one...
Still Im getting some accepted shares?

Username is P4man, same as forum name. Here is a screenshot:



Pool stats also look weird to me... getting 1-2 Khash on my worker page and most blocks I dont seem to get any shares, but I have no idea if thats normal or not.

Doesnt seem that impossible to me:
http://www.benl.ebay.be/itm/Sinclair-ZX80-ZX-80-vintage-retro-80s-computer-/220875782811?pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item336d38fa9b

Pool stats confusing KH/s with MH/s or is my miner lying? Im getting ~1400KH/s per core according to my miner. That almost as much as the entire pool reportedly gets 

Mostly agreed, although it would make more sense to just convert some euro's or dollars in to BTCs and use natural gas to heat your house. But where is the fun in that

nVidia disables their variant of powerplay when you attach a second monitor. People bitch about high idle temps with two monitors. I guess rightly so, but it sure beats the unbearable screen tearing you have on AMD and the incredible hoops you have to jump through to try and disable powerplay. In the end I gave up and just used MSI afterburner to fix the clocks and have dual monitor be useful. Kinda ironic how AMD markets their cards for 6 way eyefinty but cant seem to make 2 monitors work.

Sure, but shutting down your miners will do nothing to prevent achieving those goals. You are not even helping secure the network as one might think, because by keeping unprofitable miners running "for the cause", you are just driving up difficulty and driving out other, rational miners with higher efficiency or cheaper electricity.

Looks awesome.. ! Ill have to try this later. Can you somhow include hashrate from some of the popular miners too?

Thats not the worst part. Attach a second monitor and see what happens!

You dont have to wipe the hdd, you can install ubuntu alongside windows. Not sure if there is a step by step how to, but start by download it here:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/natty/

(get the AMD64 desktop ISO, direct link: http://releases.ubuntu.com/natty/ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso)

Then burn it to a CD, or make a USB stick bootable. Easiest is unetbootin:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Point it to the ISO, select the USB stick and let it make the stick bootable.

Then boot the PC from the stick (may need to go in to the bios to change boot order). Select "try ubuntu" and see if it works. No reason it shouldnt (though mining wont work, you need drivers for that). Then install it by clicking the install icon. It should propose a side by side install, giving you a dual boot between XP and ubuntu.

Once thats done, install the restricted drivers (start button, hardware drivers).

After that, you will need to install OpenCL as it doesnt come with the AMD drivers 11.04 uses by default. Ill dig up the link and explain once you get this far.

oh, do make a backup of the wallet.dat file before you start, but you should make one anyway.

While that might be true, it isnt driving hash rate unless ALL of them have free electricity or dont care. The miners that do have free electricity (or dont care about the price and act irrationally) will drive out the miners that dont have it and hash rate will still plummet.

What you are seeing is more likely a delayed response. Price plummets, miners reevaluate but dont instantly pull the plug or sell their gear. It takes time to convince them the price is going to stay that low, it takes time for electricity bills to arrive, it takes time to find buyers for their equipment. Hash rate will lag bitcoin price, but in the long run, will always correlate as long as there is a single rational miner left that actually pays for his electricity.

Because hardly anyone knows about bitcoin today. If that isnt going to change, a price drop to $1 or less is completely logical. The speculation was that bitcoin would gain more widespread use, it still hasnt happened. You rightly say miners joined this summer, expecting to make a killing by just running their computers, that bubble has burst. What will or wont drive longterm bitcoin price is its acceptance as a currency, something which hasnt progressed a lot since last year. Thats far more important than short term speculation which is driving prices currently.