amount and speed of ram do not matter. If anything, less is better (tiny power savings).

But keeping it, or redirecting it back to the thief is ok?
A pool can make its own rules, no contract is signed between the pool and the miners (or bot net), I dont see the problem. A pool could donate my share to a charity, if I dont like that, I can only switch pools.

Im curious what you are doing about the botnet?
Just blacklisting wont do much, whoever is running it will direct its bots to another pool (assuming those machines are rooted too). Anyone think it would be a good idea to keep it mining, but send the payouts to some charity?

Price of BTC is purely supply and demand. What generates demand is trade in BTC and speculation. At this moment a whole lot of speculation and relatively little trade.

Wake me up when you posted that video on youtube.

No, the extremely uncertain prospects (in either direction) of bitcoin causes volatility. A growing economy that its at no more than 0.00001% of its theoretical potential does little to change that. The spread between speculator expectation would remain huge. A little uptake could be interpreted as the beginning of a new world currency to some, it could mean nothing to others. And those opinions could change and swing on every snippet of news.


Im not proposing anything like that, where did you read that? Im just telling you this volatility is something you will have to live with for a long time to come. Its not impossible to handle volatility. We have price volatility in oil and so many other things, its not a problem, you handle it.

Thats actually not true, not as such. If it drops to $2 and everyone stops mining because its not worth it, difficulty will drop and it may become marginally profitable again. Likewise even if bitcoins rally to $100, its possible within a short amount of time there will be so many people mining that difficulty goes up equally and its still not profitable.

Obviously there is a delay between bitcoin price and difficulty, and there is an upper limit (there is only so many AMD cards out there) and a lower limit (Im sure some people will continue mining no matter the price), so all this  probably means that at $2 it wont be worth it for at least a while, and at $100 it will likely be lucrative for a while, but in the long run, BTC price doesnt really matter.

Or he is now monitoring VRM temps with GPU-Z and running some other app, and encountering what I did, the GPU voltage shooting skyhigh randomly because of those apps (or buggy bios or whatever the root cause is that makes this happen). See my post above.

The only reason I even considered it not being a dead card, was that it ran flawlessly under ubuntu for weeks, and within minutes of using it in windows  I was cooking my card. Thats the only reason I even googled on it (and found the cause) otherwise I have bet my entire bitcoin wallet on it being a damaged VRM.

You can calculate your revenues here:
http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php

Please note, difficulty is variable, as more people mine it goes up (and vice versa). Obviously bitcoin value is very volatile too.

Bottom line is, unless you have very cheap (or free) electricity, its not likely mining will be economically viable, particularly not when you have to account for hardware purchases. Its simple market dynamics, if its profitable for you, its profitable for others, and so more people will mine, driving down your revenue. Unless you have a competitive advantage over most other miners (free electricy, spare mining rigs, FPGAs, ..) , you will in the long run only be marginally profitable (or not, depending how many people dont mind mining  at a loss).

 Today even mid term expectations range from bitcoin becoming worthless  to bitcoin becoming the next paypal (some like Bruce Wagner even thinking it will become the next dollar/euro) and everything in between.

Price stability will only be achieved if speculators' expectations of BTCs future value are more in line with each other and do not change with every minor event. Bitcoin being hacked/outlawed or for whatever other reason become useless could achieve that.  National banks buying bitcoins as reserve currency could achieve that. A slightly growing bitcoin economy will not achieve that, as both opposites of the spectrum of expectations will remain plausible, or at least possible.

? Yes obviously.


Not sure what you mean. The current price is speculation. But its very uncertain if bitcoin will ever become more mainstream, which puts a cap on its price. If that really begins to happen, if bitcoin gains traction,  speculation will increase manyfold. Imagine newegg or something begins accepting bitcoins, you would see a spectacular rise in bitcoin value that is wholly disproportionate with the trade bitcoin will achieve on newegg.

No. I would guess 99% of the current bitcoin price is speculation, 1% trade. But if bitcoin would gain considerable traction, you can imagine what that would do to expectations, and therefore price. IT will go off the charts, before plunging down again. Rince repeat.

I think thats more a result of our current financial system than anything else. but thats another discussion.

You realise a growth in bitcoin economy will lead to anything but stability? Ignoring speculation it would cause a constant rise in the value of bitcoins. But anything that rises will invite speculation causing bitcoin's value to go all over place with bubbles and bursts. Stability is not going to be achieved until bitcoin is as commonplace as euro's or dollars.

Willing,  yes, in theory, but I think this was a good idea that got rushed and poorly prepared.
I think the legal issues should be cleared up, at least to some extent.
I think Bruce, for the sake of this project, ought to step down as "escrow"
I think some other issues should be clarified, like what happens when we dont meet to goals, or no charity accepts the offer etc.

If there is a second attempt to this right, Id be more than willing to donate. As it stands, sorry but no.

The OP is probably from France. Please dont assume everyone is the from US or that law are equal everywhere.

Its more like gold than traditional currency. Whether thats good or bad for a currency depends on your economic views. Keynesians think no, goldbugs think yes.

Are you running an app to monitor voltages, like GPU-Z or everest? This can cause the voltage to skyrocket (to 1.65v on my 5850!). At least on 58x0 cards, but maybe 57x0's too. Close all monitoring apps, except Catalyst, and see if the problem persists. More info here:
http://www.battle-fields.com/commscentre/showthread.php?23435-Beware-of-using-Everest-GPU-Z-Afterburner-with-a-radeon-58xx-!

A retailer just have has to implement a merchant tool that automatically converts his dollar/euro/whatever price in bitcoins, and on top of that can protect him from exchange rate fluctuations. Check out for instance bit-pay.com

Just open an account at Mt Gox or any other exchange, and buy your bitcoins there. Thats the safest for both you and a potential seller.

I like this idea. Just a suggestion, while a $2 markup may be reasonable if buying 1 bitcoin in a hurry, perhaps you'll want a give (substantial) discount when buying more. Or better, charge a fixed fee and a small percentage.