So, there's also an element of chance?

[Immanuel]

Alright, I have a cheap Pentium III 500MHz headless box running bitcoin 24/7. It's only generating 146 khashes/s. So is it correct that even though it can only process so much there is still a probability of it completing a block at anytime and I could still generate a profit through luck? How does that probability increase with more computing power?

[jgarzik]

Alright, I have a cheap Pentium III 500MHz headless box running bitcoin 24/7. It's only generating 146 khashes/s. So is it correct that even though it can only process so much there is still a probability of it completing a block at anytime and I could still generate a profit through luck? How does that probability increase with more computing power?

Probability just means it is unlikely to generate a block.  But it remains possible that the machine will hit the jackpot and generate 100 blocks in a row.

[FreeMoney]

Alright, I have a cheap Pentium III 500MHz headless box running bitcoin 24/7. It's only generating 146 khashes/s. So is it correct that even though it can only process so much there is still a probability of it completing a block at anytime and I could still generate a profit through luck? How does that probability increase with more computing power?

146khash/sec means that every second your computer checks 146,000 numbers to see if they work. Think of that as 146000 lottery tickets per second. If you had more cpu power you could check more tickets each second. To give you an idea of how bad your chances are, I've generated 9 blocks in 9 weeks with an average of 3000khash. It's worse than that though because the difficulty has gone up considerable over this time. You should expect to wait 242 days of running 24/7 on average if the difficulty does not increase. Of course about 3% of time you will make one this week.

[nelisky]

Alright, I have a cheap Pentium III 500MHz headless box running bitcoin 24/7. It's only generating 146 khashes/s. So is it correct that even though it can only process so much there is still a probability of it completing a block at anytime and I could still generate a profit through luck? How does that probability increase with more computing power?

146khash/sec means that every second your computer checks 146,000 numbers to see if they work. Think of that as 146000 lottery tickets per second. If you had more cpu power you could check more tickets each second. To give you an idea of how bad your chances are, I've generated 9 blocks in 9 weeks with an average of 3000khash. It's worse than that though because the difficulty has gone up considerable over this time. You should expect to wait 242 days of running 24/7 on average if the difficulty does not increase. Of course about 3% of time you will make one this week.

Or, in other words, you have a much better chance of getting some coins if you play on http://taabl.datlatec.com

*ducks*

[FreeMoney]

Or, in other words, you have a much better chance of getting some coins if you play on http://taabl.datlatec.com

*ducks*

It's true. But you've got to buy some at MtGox.com first.

[nimnul]

Well, with Taabl you can lose, with Bitcoin mining you can't.

Well, it depends on who pays your electicity bill

[nelisky]

Well, with Taabl you can lose, with Bitcoin mining you can't.

Well, it depends on who pays your electicity bill

Yes, that's true, you can loose. I'm the one behind the wheel and I've only lost so far :p

But mining right now, on commodity hardware, is almost a certain loss. And it's not only electricity, the cpu fans are bound to fail soo too! And running at top temp certainly impacts life span of components.

[Immanuel]

Well, with Taabl you can lose, with Bitcoin mining you can't.

Well, it depends on who pays your electicity bill

Yes, that's true, you can loose. I'm the one behind the wheel and I've only lost so far :p

But mining right now, on commodity hardware, is almost a certain loss. And it's not only electricity, the cpu fans are bound to fail soo too! And running at top temp certainly impacts life span of components.

If you have a good application of thermal paste and the CPU clocked properly it shouldn't fail within the time of relevancy.

[nelisky]

If you have a good application of thermal paste and the CPU clocked properly it should fail within the time of relevancy.

I have my Q6600@2.4G clocked properly at 3.2Ghz and the fan runs full speed, go figure I do crack an extra 50% hashes from it, though.