Kano, I don't want to badmouth Tom or his accomplishments but honestly, his offering is not really competitive to our products.  Our price and performance are far superior in every category so it's not really an issue. I'm glad he's putting out his offering to give people a choice though, but in the end, it all comes down to money and profit for the majority of miners, not ideology.  Do you really think $230 is worth losing over 30% of your hashing power and consuming an enormous amount of power in the process?  You might think so, but most people won't.  Heck, you'd probably make up that $230 in the first few months in power savings alone.

But I am, once again, trying to reach out and mend fences but you keep throwing it back in my/BFL's face.

Kissing ass has never been on my agenda.  However, what is on my agenda is a) not blind hatred far exceeding the cause and b) an complete disregard for the fact that I have been trying to make changes for the better with regards to community relations and yes developers are part of that community.

With regards to our discussion, you made a blanket statement that we "needed" (as in, it was a requirement to have mining software and that there was none since no developer would work on it) and I corrected you that we have EasyMiner, so that statement was not true.  Would we like to have cgminer support?  Sure, but is it required?  No, our devices will mine just fine without it.  So nothing has changed since that, we are still in the same position.  We have the backing of basically all the popular miners except (apparently) cgminer... that being the case, why would we want to support a miner that doesn't want to support us?  This is not really a rhetorical question, because I would like to hear your answer to this. For the record, we planned on supporting you/cgminer anyway regardless of what you respond with, but I would like to hear why you think we should support someone who clearly does not want to support us and has only begrudgingly done so up to this point?

Well, I'm not sure I want to really get into the discussion with Kano et al with regards to hardware access.  But here's the simple truth in a nutshell:

For the development of the FPGA, as evidenced by our shipping times (not counting the past month or so), we simply did not have the hardware to spare to just send out.  Everything, literally every single piece of hardware that was assembled and functioanl got shipped out immediately (after a burn in of course).  We did not keep any hardware back for testing, development, etc... we shipped everything.  Stripped the whole place bare.  I kid you not... this is one of the reasons EasyMiner was so delayed - we had nothing to test it with.  We are catching up now, and hence we have been able to put some resources into continuing the development of EasyMiner. 

Personally, I would have been happy to send a unit to Kano at some point when there was hardware available... but lets look at the facts - our shipping time was delayed and we take a constant beating in the forums both then, now and we will likely take it into the future.  Where was that hardware to come from?  Someone's order?  Then we'd have the same issue, just someone else that was unhappy.  Then on top of that, as much as I respect Kano's work, he's constantly badmouthing BFL on every count so it makes it really hard to justify showing the love at this point.  I'm not saying it couldn't happen or shouldn't happen.  If I were overseeing that sort of thing back then, things would have probably played out a bit differently, but I wasn't and there's nothing I can do about it. 

What I can do is fix things going forward, but again, it makes it really hard when Kano does not appear to even want to reach out and let me fix stuff and mend fences, but just keeps bad mouthing BFL at every turn.  What's kind of funny is we (BFL) have been working on a plan for showing the love to the developers, but it's not something we have discussed (or plan to discuss) publicly as of yet, since the details aren't entirely nailed down and we are working really hard to get the ASICs out the door on time.  Yes, even Kano was included in that.

I did not.  I changed the post from Inaba to BFL_Josh.  So again, please provide some evidence that I have ever strategically deleted or altered a post after the fact.  If your only evidence for this is that I changed the post from Inaba to BFL_Josh, then once again, there's nothing to the claim that I somehow strategically change or delete posts.  I'm honest in what I say and if I mis-speak or change my mind or am just plain wrong, I own up to it, I don't hide it.

l
Absolutely I want to take that position.  That accusation is pretty serious, please provide a link where I strategically deleted any information I've posted as either Inaba or BFL_Josh.  Once again, people are acting like it's a secret that I have two accounts; It's not.  In my capacity as a representative of BFL, I post as BFL_Josh, for other things, I post as Inaba.

But in both cases, I don't hide what I write or strategically delete/alter anything.  I've been accused of that in the past by certain members of this forum, but when the chips were down it was shown those individuals lied and any accusations they made were completely fabricated just to support their weak and untenable position.  There's a feature of the forum if you use the default skin where it says when the message was last edited... so please be careful what you accuse me of, because I can prove you wrong if you are just making things up.  If there some place that I strategically deleted something, please point it out as I have no recollection of it and it would be an error on my part.

No.

Yes.

October 13: Unlikely, but not impossible
November 4: Possible


This is correct.

Who has deleted posts before?  Certainly not me.

I don't recall anyone stating that there would be a secondary power supply just for the coffee warmer; I'm not saying someone didn't say that, but I don't recall it and it's not true.  The coffee warming aspect is completely secondary to actually mining, so no it probably won't really keep your coffee all that warm.

There will be no secondary power source for the Jalapeno.  In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have associated it with a coffee warmer, but it is flat and you can set your coffee on it.  It gets warm. 

Yes, I'm sorry if I confused anyone, but we are only shipping the FPGA products at the moment.  The comment above was with regards to the FPGA Singles - our helper monkeys (They are on subcontracted out from EMC) are busily creating more singles as we speak for shipping either later this week or early next week. 

We also have more than 300 boards on their way after that to satisfy current and future orders prior to the ASICs.  It will sure be nice when we have the pick and place ready to go and we don't have rely on a third party to place the components on our boards.

By Christmas I hope to have all current pre-orders shipped, not just the first batch! 

The Jalapeno's coffee warming ability is kind a secondary focus and of efficacious it might be is somewhat dubious... but it will hash, oh yes.

As far as power on the singles go, we are going with a different power brick, but your old ones should still be compatible with the new units.

And unicorn blood.  It's one of our secret ingredients.

I want to address the current issue of people purchasing others place in line, as it were, for pre-orders for BFL equipment.

Let me say up front that we don't have a problem with this.  However, we also can not be responsible if you get scammed, so you must be cautious and do your due diligence when purchasing someone elses place in line.

What BFL will do is confirm that a person has an order if you provide us with the persons name and their order number.  Beyond that, we are not a broker of places in line and as such, we can't change names on orders or anything like that (it would be an accounting nightmare).  We will simply confirm that the person has an order and whether or not what you think you're buying is what they actually have. 

That said, please make sure you verify that the person you are dealing with is honest and that they have a legitimate order.  I would also recommend that you make the details of your order sales/purchasing public on the forums, so that there is some sort of record of it.

We can not help you if you get scammed, though.

The internal PSU bit on the website was a mistake.  It's since been corrected.  It will be an external PSU.

Indeed, the bottom line is we are working to improve customer service and our shipping times.  We just shipped orders from the first of August, so we are getting caught up there.  I have been working hard on the customer service issue as well as the shipping issues.  We are also working very hard on getting the ASICs out the door on time.  We are really beefing up our production capacity and moving everything we can in house.  We've purchased a pick and place machine, an oven, stenciler and other equipment to manufacture all the boards in house.  This means we can produce as many boards as we need without being at the mercy of board manufacturers and their timing/runs. 

Our ASIC chip is 100% original IP and we will have as many chips as we need, when we need them.  We are standardizing a lot of our equipment, so we can keep massive quantities of inventory on hand (at least 6 months of production work is the goal), allowing us to crank out units - literally - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if need be.  We've hired more personnel and will be hiring yet more people as we gear up.   

The ASIC generation is going to be much less complex, as well, so there will be less steps to creating a fully functional end unit, and we will also be able to assemble/produce the much faster.  Everything you know about BFL is changing now and will continue to change.  The only thing I can do is assure you we understand the concerns and we are doing everything we can to address the past mistakes. 

Prove you wrong about what? 

Ok, lets deconstruct this a minute.  BFL has stated that our chip is a custom ASIC, end of story.  That's what it is.  bASIC is a Cell Based ASIC, which is another name for a sASIC for all intents and purposes.  So we have a parity there; we've both stated what our chip is.

Performance figures based on a prototype no one has seen and Thom has refused to give evidence of.  Now, I'm not saying he's lying, because I believe he probably does have some fashion of a prototype, but we're talking about comparing apples to apples here.  I could just as easily tell you the same thing and you'd ask me to prove it, so instead of going down that path, I am not going into detail with regards to that because I do not want to be in the same situation Thom is currently in. (or is it Tom?  Sorry, I have seen it both ways, so my apologies if I have it wrong).  I'm sure he's regretting making that statement now.

The ModMiner Quad was delivered almost a half year later than BFL and had the benefit of the trail BFL and others had already forged to work with.  It's easy to be on time and under budget when you don't have to create a device from scratch that few or no one has created before. Couple that with the fact that it was and still is the best performing, least expensive FPGA device and I think there needs to be some leeway there.

Who ordered a single that got an email that said 9 - 10 weeks?  We just shipped orders from early August today, we are under 4 weeks at this point.  But regardless, the ASIC generation is going to be quite a bit different in terms of construction and parts, so it can't even be compared.  

As far as the statement goes, I don't see how an opinion such as that needs to be qualified with anything more than has already been said to be considered reasonable.  I honestly believe he will be happy with the device(s) outright, but especially when compared to the competition.

Ok... so again, what information has he given out that we haven't?

Sorry, but a claim to a prototype and an explanation on how he came to have a prototype does not constitute additional information and definitely not WAY more information.

With regards to point 2, though, I had thought that it would be self evident in the announcement.  We have developed our own IP, it's not licensed from anyone and we have not hired our any of our work, it's all 100% original and not subject to potential lawsuits or potential licensing issues. 

What information has he given out that we haven't?  I'm honestly asking, not being sarcastic.

I can't imagine you not being happy with the product when compared to any of the competition.