Good thing, too. Reading my drivel induces seizures in pet rocks. 

- Zed

Not that it's any of your business, but it's the one that pays the bills, including the mortgage, electricity, ramenfood, cars, RV, etc., and allows me to play with expensive toys. 

- Zed

No, I think that is is the one where you get a visit from the Men In Black, or maybe the Man With One Red Shoe? I can never remember.

The FDIV bug is the one that allowed banks to honestly claim there was error in their spreadsheets. I know, "honest bank" sounds odd. 

- Zed

For sure. Volume and quality are amazing things. Reduce one and increase the other, and there you go. Also corporations are not so worried about 4x cost of a "minor" component. They'll just pass the cost on to the consumer of their product(s).


I'm a car guy, so that circuit is for a welder, and another for the compressor, and a bigger circuit/sub-panel for the standby generator (45kW, 240v 3-phase)  .

Wife is an artist so her circuit is for a kiln.

Good thing FPGAs are coming along. Can you imagine the heat from a GPU hash farm and the Kiln? Yikes!


Probably not, but safe is good.


I'd go with a dual use system. It's called a Dog.    But you're right, probably going to want to do something. Pity the poor thief who grabs the shiny boxes only to discover his fence looks at him like he's from another planet when trying to unload them.


Very true.

That's the cost of entry for what most would consider a hobby. 

- Zed

Uhh, Zed doesn't think so. Neither does Google Spreadsheets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqP-aJPTwJFodEhkUC1ZU3JQVGp6QkpYUHZYTTNSanc

Looks like closer to £58/month (28 days) at your £2.00/coin rate.

Are you using a Pentium with the FDIV bug for doing your math?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

Just sayin'

- Zed

Getting a 2500W power supply is not hard, it's just not as easy as driving to your favorite PC hobby supplier to buy a couple. This is because they are more of an "industrial" solution than a "personal" solution.

I am not familiar with the US National Electrical Code and applications of it in households, but I imagine that you could easily install a dedicated circuit in the electrical panel that feeds a NEMA L6-20R (receptacle) and then get a cord that converts from L6-20P (plug) to the the appropriate receptacle on the power supply, likely an IEC C19. Standard PC power supplies use IEC C13 (on cord)/C14 (on power supply).

The compute chassis' that I use in my day job have four 2500W power supplies, one of which is a hot spare. I don't have one to look at right now to check voltage range, but I know we feed each one from one leg of three-phase 208v coming off our UPS, and I know that we have fed them off 240v single phase circuits. They use an IEC C20 socket.

I just looked at some IBM x3650M2 (single quad-core Xeon 5540@2.53GHz) servers I have and the power supplies (two) are 675w and can be fed using anything from 100v to 240v. They appear to be made by Emerson and have an IEC C14 socket on them.

- Zed

Bingo! We have a winner.

J. Average User: Does it work?

J. Random Geek: Yes, blah, blah, blah, some really technically detailed stuff, blah, blah, blah

J. Average User: Umm, OK. Does it work?

J. Random Geek: Yes, blah, blah, blah, some more really technically detailed stuff, blah, blah, blah

J. Average User: Umm, sure. Does it work?

J. Random Geek: Yes, blah, blah, blah, even more really technically detailed stuff, blah, blah, blah

J. Average User: Shakes head and walks away.

J. Random Geek: fscking noobs, they are so stoopid.


- Zed

You may be right about most people, but I do. But before I give it up I'd be looking to get a reasonable return on my "invested" capital. I also understand that my capital could "magically" disappear. That's the risk. Once the code is developed I don't want the card, it wouldn't do me any good. I'd like my capital and a fair return back so I can move on to the next investment. I don't have enough cash on hand to be an angel investor.

Why don't I want the card after the development is complete? It's because I don't have the hardware and cheap enough power to run a GPU mining rig with a high enough hash rate that can pay for itself in some reasonable amount of time given the current difficulty and payout. Given my base this does not benefit me directly. I'm too late to the Bitcoin mining scene to earn a reasonable return.

This work is going to benefit the community of miners who already have extensive, and hopefully profitable, GPU mining operations and who are looking to upgrade to improve their hash rate enough to offset the costs of buying the new GPU and the power consumption. In fact those are the people I'd be approaching first. Scope all the pools and see which miners have the highest hash rates and see if they are willing to fund you.

- Zed

Woohoo, my first post as a freed noob.

Yes, you are right, it doesn't. For us.

For the masses it works just fine.

Why? Because we understand the technical details of the underlying mechanisms that make the process work. We care about those details. The masses could care less about how it works. They just care that it works.

You can be technically correct, but made completely irrelevant if the masses don't accept your view. The world is littered with technically correct, but irrelevant "new" things or views. The reason is that someone else came along and took the technically correct thing, gave it new name that made the masses feel comfortable with the new technology so they would start using it, and lo and behold, the masses followed along. Comfort level is huge with the masses. Early adopters, and we are that for sure, don't need as much "comfort" because we like new and technically interesting things and are willing to take a chance because we have a deeper and better understanding of technology. In short, we are comfortable with technology. I also would bet that your comfort threshold is lower than mine.

It has been ever thus in the technology world. Occasionally the technically correct thing sticks, but more often than not it doesn't. But it can evolve over time to become more accurate.

Think about these:

• Memory Stick
• DIMM
• SODIMM
• SIMM
• Flash Drive
• USB Key
• Thumbdrive
• Flash Card

Which ones are correct? Which ones are in common use today? Which ones are in common use in the geek world? How about in the non-geek world?

So, yes, wallet is perhaps a less than perfect reference, but it is something that most people of the world can understand and feel comfortable using. Building a bridge over a chasm one step at a time is easier, and many times better, than trying to leap the chasm in a single jump.

But, all that said, don't give up evangelizing for the "correct" thing. Every community needs people like you to keep the masses aware, so they don't forget how something works. Slowly enough of the masses will understand enough. Eventually, over time, perhaps decades, the correct thing will emerge as the masses become comfortable with the terminology and what it represents.

There was a time in the US when "two bits" was equal to $0.25 (25 cents). Today if you told someone that something cost "two bits" they would look at you funny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_(money)

We've come a long way in the physical currency world, and now we've just started down another path with a new virtual currency. The world will not change overnight, but it will change. Will Bitcoin, or any of the other crypto-currencies for that matter, really catch on sufficiently to displace physical currencies? Who knows, but it will be interesting to watch, and know that we were involved relatively close to the beginning.

- Zed

The reason for using existing terminology for new concepts or paradigms is to ease the transition for the masses who are not on the bleeding edge, nor do they care to be.

Think about it in terms of when the automobile was first being produced. They called it a horseless carriage. Some of the early models even had fake horses heads on the front. Why? to ease the transition, to make people feel comfortable with the "new" thing.

Wallet is a convenient, if not entirely accurate, description for the thing that keeps track of you newly acquired crypto currency.

- Zed

Moderators are taking a coffee break? Could be they are throwing another GPU on their miners to counteract the looking increase in difficulty.

Or maybe they decided to stop checking noob post counts for a while to jerk our chains a little bit(coin). 

- Zed

If I had known about the newbie rule when I first started reading, and before I created a userid, I coulda been a free postin' noob by now, at least in the time department.

Ah well, the education Zed continues.

- Zed

Hmmm, if they did that many, many businesses that have floated bonds (a form of IOU) as well as governments would have some serious issues remaining in operation. No?

- Zed

Signed up... Please send more email!

- Zed

Zed Z. Nova, new to crypto currencies. Have no GPU machines, so CPU mining for now on litecoins.