And some more delays in BFL shipment plans / no shipment before 14th Jan 2013

[miter_myles]

No, trolling would be what CreativeX, Frizz, etc... do.  I respond to posts with verifiable information.  Trolling would involve posting false information to incite flames.  Fortunately for me, this forum is fertile ground for refuting lies and bullshit, so I don't need to resort to trolling.  I just need to go around correcting idiots.

[creativex]

No, trolling would be what CreativeX, Frizz, etc... do.  I respond to posts with verifiable information.  Trolling would involve posting false information to incite flames.  Fortunately for me, this forum is fertile ground for refuting lies and bullshit, so I don't need to resort to trolling.  I just need to go around correcting idiots.

Fuzzy verifiable information like...I hope we can still ship in 2012? The fab's drop dead date is December 24th? The fab has delayed the chips for thirty days? Our fab is not in China?

How is anything you say verifiable?

[PuertoLibre]

Did he just overlook every time he trolled bASIC and Avalon on his company website?

Yes, he did....

Show me where I posted false information... good luck with that.

You stated that bASIC was fleecing their customers. Do you not recall?

[creativex]

I wonder where the foul mouthed BFL spokesdude has gone too. The silence is deafening. Hello? If you miss your daily quota of personal attacks and trolling accusations, this is going to reflect badly in your performance review under the "productivity" section. Please think of the children and save Christmas.

Are you so dense that you haven't figured it out yet?  I only come in here and whip up the natives when the BFL mania dies down.  Right now, it's a raging fire, you don't need my input.  The top 10+ threads in the hardware forum are all about BFL.  If things start dying down again, I'll post more.

...and they're mostly debates about whether BFL is staffed by idiots or thieves.

You are one of my best workers  I appreciate you more than you know.

Thank you! Must be nice saving all the effort of creating sockpuppet accounts yourself.

[Inaba]

I believe they are.  Starting from scratch and they are going to ship 72 GH/s at 120w in January?  Especially given the PCB renders they just posted.  Like I said, good luck.

[Inaba]

I wonder where the foul mouthed BFL spokesdude has gone too. The silence is deafening. Hello? If you miss your daily quota of personal attacks and trolling accusations, this is going to reflect badly in your performance review under the "productivity" section. Please think of the children and save Christmas.

Are you so dense that you haven't figured it out yet?  I only come in here and whip up the natives when the BFL mania dies down.  Right now, it's a raging fire, you don't need my input.  The top 10+ threads in the hardware forum are all about BFL.  If things start dying down again, I'll post more.

...and they're mostly debates about whether BFL is staffed by idiots or thieves.

You are one of my best workers   I appreciate you more than you know.

Thank you! Must be nice saving all the effort of creating sockpuppet accounts yourself.

Absolutely!  I don't believe in sock puppet accounts, I just get people like you to post constantly.

[PuertoLibre]

On second thought, don't talk to me Inaba.

Talk to me when you actually have delivered 100 [ASIC] units of a product your company sells. Until that time shooo....I disown you as a legitimate vendor. Begone from my sight!

Edit: and uh, best of luck.

[greyhawk]

On second thought, don't talk to me Inaba.

Talk to me when you actually have delivered 100 [ASIC] units of a product your company sells. Until that time shooo....

Edit: and uh, best of luck.

Now you just bit yourself. They DID indeed deliver product before. Not to spec, not in time, but deliver they did.

[PuertoLibre]

There are now 2.

bASIC and Avalon (and that project by Yojan).

(Deepbit and ASICMiner where are you?)

[PuertoLibre]

On second thought, don't talk to me Inaba.

Talk to me when you actually have delivered 100 [ASIC] units of a product your company sells. Until that time shooo....

Edit: and uh, best of luck.

Now you just bit yourself. They DID indeed deliver product before. Not to spec, not in time, but deliver they did.

Did you catch the ASIC part? I added it after I just noted I left it out.

(Look at your post, you even quoted it)

By the way, do you think this is foreshadowing the future ASIC devices?

[greyhawk]

Ah, seems that was edited in just before i pressed quote. 

[creativex]

Absolutely!  I don't believe in sock puppet accounts, I just get people like you to post constantly.

You are far too clever. Too bad it doesn't seem to help with doing your job. You are officially still the COO of the BFL circus and not their CPO(Chief Propaganda Officer) correct?

[SgtSpike]

Chinese New Year is not going to be a problem for a variety of reasons, so don't worry about that.

Translation: Chinese New Year won't introduce any unforseen delays, because we don't intend to release anything ever. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I will be heading east at some point to babysit the process, as soon as I have dates for that, I'll let everyone know.

Translation: I'll soon be smoking cigars and drinking champagne from the navels of exotic beauties in Havana, Cuba, suckers. I'll be posting pictures of lighting my cigars with your dollars.

Doubtful.  If it was a scam, they would have left a long while back.  They are getting more refunds than orders at this point, so if it was a scam, by continuing to sit on it, they'd be losing money.  What would be the sense in that?

[Fjordbit]

Your defense of them seems to be that they're dishonest, naive idiots, but not scammers. Have I summed that up about right?

This isn't an attempt at a defense for BFL, it's an accurate accounting of what is going on so that people can use good information to make their business decisions. The problem with a lot of the comments in this topic, is that there is no temperament to reality. It's "BFL are scammorz, har har" which doesn't help anyone.

I think that the two key words in the quoted section are dishonest and naive. BFL has shown themselves to be dishonest through ommission about their delivery dates, allowing customers to continue to believe that chips would be arriving in late November when they knew that they were making clock buffer adjustments that would delay at least until mid-December. Because of the competitive environment for ASICs, it is understandable why they would do this, but it's important to know that they did this when deciding whether or not you can trust them regarding future statements. Essentially, if BFL says on January 8th that the chips will arrive soon, this aspect of dishonesty justifies a person to ignore the information until there is provable evidence that the chips are in BFLs hands. I would even go so far as to say the chips need to be integrated into a working prototype, and yochdog and the other guy go there and see it and report positively. Only does it makes sense to plan around a promised BFL shipping date.

The other word is naive and it does seem that they have some experience to gain with respect to business relationships. This is pretty normal for a new company though, and as such I think it is overboard to label anyone there as an "idiot". From what I've seen, the people at BFL are pretty smart.

As far as being a "scammer", I still feel it is highly doubtful that the intention here was to collect preorder money and then run with it with no product. However, I still feel a scammer tag is warranted and I've laid out the case for that here.

It has previously been established that one of BFLs managers is convicted for running a scam defrauding little old ladies for 20 million USD.

I read those documents and I think you may have misunderstood what they said. Sonny was just part of an illegal lottery. People were still paid out. It seems that some people focus on the idea that they didn't buy tickets, but that was a strong feature of their lottery. If they bought tickets from the government, then the highest payout they could expect is half of what they put in. This is because government lotteries are not used as wealth redistribution, but for funding government programs (typically schools). So, instead, they offered tickets with a higher payout that would be validated by the government lottery. The people got paid as according to their voluntary agreements, and they actually got paid much better than if they participated in the government sanctioned lottery.

However, the government HATES it when you muscle in on their turf. The business model is essentially the equivalent of selling book orders in Bugsy Segal's backyard. The fact that they were giving people a more fair game while cutting out funds that should have gone to the public treasury was pretty much infuriating to the AG. That's why the hammer fell. The fraud argument from the government is that Sonny's company was supposedly representing themselves as a sanctioned government lottery. Maybe they were, I don't really know because the document lacked evidence, and the government's motivation is suspect. But this has nothing to do with defrauding little old ladies.

[creativex]

Chinese New Year is not going to be a problem for a variety of reasons, so don't worry about that.

Translation: Chinese New Year won't introduce any unforseen delays, because we don't intend to release anything ever. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I will be heading east at some point to babysit the process, as soon as I have dates for that, I'll let everyone know.

Translation: I'll soon be smoking cigars and drinking champagne from the navels of exotic beauties in Havana, Cuba, suckers. I'll be posting pictures of lighting my cigars with your dollars.

Doubtful.  If it was a scam, they would have left a long while back.  They are getting more refunds than orders at this point, so if it was a scam, by continuing to sit on it, they'd be losing money.  What would be the sense in that?

...umm capturing a market they couldn't have captured honsestly? By repeatedly lying about shipping dates they've increased their share of the ASIC market dramatically while locking in pre-orders to them that would otherwise have gone to competitors.

[creativex]

Your defense of them seems to be that they're dishonest, naive idiots, but not scammers. Have I summed that up about right?

This isn't an attempt at a defense for BFL, it's an accurate accounting of what is going on so that people can use good information to make their business decisions. The problem with a lot of the comments in this topic, yours included, is that there is no temperament to reality. It's "BFL are scammorz, har har" which doesn't help anyone.

I think that the two key words in the quoted section are dishonest and naive. BFL has shown themselves to be dishonest through ommission about their delivery dates, allowing customers to continue to believe that chips would be arriving in late November when they knew that they were making clock buffer adjustments that would delay at least until mid-December. Because of the competitive environment for ASICs, it is understandable why they would do this, but it's important to know that they did this when deciding whether or not you can trust them regarding future statements. Essentially, if BFL says on January 8th that the chips will arrive soon, this aspect of dishonesty justifies a person to ignore the information until there is provable evidence that the chips are in BFLs hands. I would even go so far as to say the chips need to be integrated into a working prototype, and yochdog and the other guy go there and see it and report positively. Only does it makes sense to plan around a promised BFL shipping date.

The other word is naive and it does seem that they have some experience to gain with respect to business relationships. This is pretty normal for a new company though, and as such I think it is overboard to label anyone there as an "idiot".

As far as being a "scammer", I still feel it is highly doubtful that the intention here was to collect preorder money and then run with it with no product. However, I still feel a scammer tag is warranted and I've laid out the case for that here.

If you search my posts you'll find that I've repeatedly stated that I expect BFL to ship ASIC products eventually. That is I do not expect they'll "Vleiside" everyone that's pre-ordered with them and not received a refund yet. I do believe however that they deserve a scammer tag for blatantly and repeatedly lying about shipping dates...or "scheduled shipments" or whatever other word game they're currently using to deceive.

[Fjordbit]

If you search my posts you'll find that I've repeatedly stated that I expect BFL to ship ASIC products eventually. That is I do not expect they'll "Vleiside" everyone that's pre-ordered with them and not received a refund yet. I do believe however that they deserve a scammer tag for blatantly and repeatedly lying about shipping dates...or "scheduled shipments" or whatever other word game they're currently using to deceive.

I think I may have misunderstood the tone of the message I quoted. I've removed "yours included".

[SgtSpike]

Chinese New Year is not going to be a problem for a variety of reasons, so don't worry about that.

Translation: Chinese New Year won't introduce any unforseen delays, because we don't intend to release anything ever. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

I will be heading east at some point to babysit the process, as soon as I have dates for that, I'll let everyone know.

Translation: I'll soon be smoking cigars and drinking champagne from the navels of exotic beauties in Havana, Cuba, suckers. I'll be posting pictures of lighting my cigars with your dollars.

Doubtful.  If it was a scam, they would have left a long while back.  They are getting more refunds than orders at this point, so if it was a scam, by continuing to sit on it, they'd be losing money.  What would be the sense in that?

...umm capturing a market they couldn't have captured honsestly? By repeatedly lying about shipping dates they've increased their share of the ASIC market dramatically while locking in pre-orders to them that would otherwise have gone to competitors.

They didn't lie, they had unexpected setbacks.  There's a difference.

But what I mean by my statement is that they aren't leaving to Cuba, or anywhere else for that matter.  If they were planning to leave with customers' money, they would have done so long ago.  Right now, they are issuing refunds, probably in greater quantity than any additional sales they are making at this point.  Which means it wouldn't make sense to stick around, since they would be losing money.

[elux]

Quoted for future reference at 29 October 2012, six weeks after the original date of this post:

Have you considered that you may be (knowingly or not) be furthering a scam?

Yes, and either the scam is so elaborate that we have shipped product and spent a ridiculous amount of money on the development of ASICs as to be almost unimaginable or we are actually legitimate.

Can you provide any convincing argument to the contrary?

 

Yes, check back with me in about 6 weeks.

pause to note that this should be trivially easy if ASICs are anywhere close to being shipped.

They are, however, you seem to be under the impression that the investment in this venture is trivial.  
It's not.  We will not be giving away free strategic information to our competition as to our business plans, technology, etc...
As much as you want it (and the competition wants it), it's simply not going to happen given the amounts of money involved in the development of our ASIC products.

If any of the whiny allegations are unfounded, you are hereby cordially encouraged to demonstrate it by directly confronting them.

Again, I will in ~6 weeks.  When we ship the ASICs can I expect a public apology from you as well in these forums or are you going to slink off with the rest of the people and try to forget what complete asses you've been?

Use this opportunity to crush the "crying whiners" under the heavy heel of the truth!

Then we can stop shouting, go about our business, and everyone will be happy for it.

Do you seriously believe this?  There is literally nothing, nothing I can post short of shipping out free ASIC devices that would satisfy the people of this forum.  Not a single thing.  If you believe otherwise, you are exceptionally deluded.

As it stands, I think you are lying, or being lied to, or some combination thereof.

Come clean.

Great, come the shipping of the ASICs I expect a public written apology to both myself and BFL.

It's now been - twelve - weeks.

[abeaulieu]

On second thought, don't talk to me Inaba.

Talk to me when you actually have delivered 100 [ASIC] units of a product your company sells. Until that time shooo....I disown you as a legitimate vendor. Begone from my sight!

Edit: and uh, best of luck.

Wonderful PuertoLibre, does this mean you will leave this BFL thread and go to the actual ASIC vendor's thread? We will be deeply saddened by this loss.