Topic: [Archive] BFL trolling museum - page 97. (Read 69394 times)

Its funny, because you make a statement indicating you don't want to ship small orders, but then turn around and ask if the community wants you to ship small quantities.  That's what is upsetting.

I suggested that back in July : adjust the 1st production run to the number of pre orders so you can fill them all

Thats what pre orders are for

But that idea was not deemed possible back then, a lottery made more sense

Hence I did not order ;-)

Don't forget the old lady with the soldering iron ... she has to put them together and QA them all ... that takes a while for one person
(also why the QA up until now has not been very good)

Ship all per-orders at once and anything after the pre-order cutoff (I am assuming that might be October 1st) in a FIFO fashion.

Surely it isn't too hard to do considering ASICs tend to get manufactured in larger quantities, right?

It looks like orders are going strong at BFL...~100/day based on my recent orders 4 days apart.

I would consider enough units to cover the first two days' orders to be sufficient for a first shipment (or maybe less), but without talking on what a "small quantity" and a "large quantity" means, it's hard to say what my opinion on that would be in direct relation to the way you asked the question.  I know you have to be vague with the information you can release, so I tried to give a specific answer.

A new question for you Josh - and BTW, I do very much appreciate you addressing questions and concerns promptly on the forum here - what will be the order for the 1/3 of converted orders?  If I requested that my 5/25 order be changed to SC singles on 6/25, but then someone else requests their order from 4/25 be changed to SC singles on 7/25, who would be in front of who?

Yes please - I hope you have mining turned on and ready to go on easyminer before the first SC hits the ground. One of my concerns is spending hours and hours trying to get some software to mine with the SC gear. A complete turn-key solution would work for me. Tune and Mine  - either solo or pool would be awesome.

There are so many expertly crafted software solutions, but many of them require very complex setup. I just want to mine, I don't want to compile binaries. That is why I use bitminter. Double click... Push start and voila Mining.

I think the testnet idea is a good idea.  I'm against a select few getting units to 'prove' BFL and getting to whore the low difficult on mainnet, thereby getting a jump on the 1/3 people.  I'm certainly not against devs getting the hardware before hand to actually make sure the mining software works well with it.

Given some of the crap that's come out in response, I'm surprised he hasn't switched more. Some of these people need to be torn a new asshole for spewing out that BFL is an evil, lying, horeshit company when they aren't even doing what they're being accused of.

The 1/3 plan was out a while ago, this isn't news, and now that it's old BFL shouldn't change it or they will piss people off (I expect this did help keep sales up through the first month at least).

All Josh came on to ask was if the community had any suggestions about how to help add some transparency to the random lottery system (which still only counts as 1/3 of the first shipment). To me however, it sounds like they can't release enough information to make it transparent as even the number of orders is guarded information.

Now on to my opinions:
As for demo units, definitely stick to jalapenos only if they'll be released ready to mine, and I'd suggest keeping it to a VERY small number (say 3-5). If however, you can get agreements signed to mine exclusively somewhere for show you could easily demonstrate your full line of products, even to professional mining operations. For example, send the unit off to whoever under the agreement they can only use it on the testnet until one month after everyone else gets theirs and require them to meet a proof of work quota for that whole month (please do clear it with the devs before you drop 1TH/s on the testnet though, this is just an example. You may need to use a different, possibly custom, chain to keep everything from interfering or getting onto the main chain. If you create your own chain you should release proof that it was not pre-mined to forge the timestamp.)

As for the random shipments. If you want to do things transparently you'll have to publish some proprietary information, I can't see any way around this; you do not need to release any personal information however. My suggestion is to release a list of SHA256(SHA256(Order number + email + order date)) so that anyone can verify the hash of their order but everything else is hidden, then just use a random hash in each consecutive block starting from a block you choose at least a week ahead of time (random means the block hash probably wouldn't work, I'd suggest the merkle root or the hash of the generate transaction, or both XOR'd together).

As for how many units to stock for the first shipment. I'd definitely suggest waiting until you can fill the first day's worth of orders with the 1/3 dedicated to order date priority, and probably until you can do the same for the first 4-7 day's worth of orders.

IMHO:
I would prefer to see orders filled by the order in which the money was *received* by BFL.
If some one put in an order on the first day but took a month to pay I don't think they should be ahead of some one who paid in full on the second day.

As for batching shipments, if it was possible:
First day orders get on same first day
Second day orders get on second day (Or second shipment date?)
Sixth day orders get on sixth day (Or sixth shipping date)

That might be asking allot based on the number of orders submitted on the first two days.

Well, IMHO, the overwhelming majority would be people who weren't early adopters when bitcoin came out in the first place, and so already have a negative attitude towards early adopters in general. It isn't based on any specific thing, but just the impression I get.

My choice is just to do FIFO, of whatever size. Picking 1/3 at random just doesn't seem right, but that wasn't your question.

As for small quantity vs large quantity, I suppose that would all depend on what you mean by small vs large to begin with. What you consider small, could be what I consider large, ya see... it doesn't mean anything because there is no frame of reference to what those terms are supposed to end up being.

If by small, you mean, the first week's worth of orders in the first 2/3 of your plan, then yeah, I'm cool with a small shipment... if by large, you mean, only the first 24 hours, then I hardly see what it matters.

If we had some idea of the first 1/3 would be the first week, or the first 4 days, or the first 8 hours, then we have something to work with. Even if it is only the roughest of estimates, it would give us an idea of what you're shooting for, and that's all I'm asking for.

Something like: We're shooting towards having all of the orders from the first 4 days going out at once, but we may end up only being able to send out the first day once we have an idea of how long assembly of each unit will ultimately take... etc

This would be something we can work with.

We know you're limited in what you can say, but please try and get someone to let you say enough of something to give a rough idea of what the goal is?

-- Smoov

edit: and I've firmed up what my issue with the random 1/3 is... if the first shipment amounts to roughly the first 24 hours of orders, or less, then the random third should still favor early orders. by early, I mean the first week, not the first month. the range of the random pick just seems too great, since it was sounding like the other 2/3 won't even exhaust the first day's worth of orders.

Large quantity would give as many people as possible,equal opportunity of course 

Make it so #1,for I am #2 

SAME HERE!

Hmm. My money cleared Paypal on the 15th (August), BFL has had my money since the 15th (August), and I still have no confirmation email from BFL with an order number or any kind of receipt other than the papal receipt. Would be nice to get some kind of verification from BFL that they got my order at least.

The power requirements for the single/minirig will not be more than the current single/minirig.

Correct.  We do have a little thing that's been in development called EasyMiner.  It's languished on the back burner for a bit whilest we try to get equipment out the door, but it's not been entirely idle and we are going to be focusing more resources on it as we get into gear.  This is one of the reasons I have taken over the customer service and shipping processes, to free up some people who's resources can be better utilized elsewhere.

I apologize for being vague, but some of the numbers I can't disclose, others we don't want to disclose because if we have to change them, it will cause more problems and yet more of those numbers we don't have a solid figure for yet.  It's not a matter of wanting to be vague, but a matter of having to be vague to give you any information at all.  It's either vagueness or nothing on some points unfortunately.  People don't like radio silence, as evidenced by this thread and I'm trying to provide as much information as I can up to this point.

Right now, we plan on shipping a mix of all three types of units and yes, 1/3 from each amount we plan on shipping.  Each class of mining hardware will be treated on it's own 1/3's balance sheet, not all lumped together. Does that make sense?

As far as what's "early" and what's "late" is going to depend on how many units we ship in the first batch.  Like I said, we do not want to ship out just a handful of orders in the first batch and trickle them out.  We want to ship a large quantity in the first batch.  

Let me ask you (and by extension everyone else): Do you want us to ship out a small quantity of units first and then a larger quantity later (thereby giving the first shipments a major advantage) or hold on to the units until we have enough (I am still going over what the "enough" is, specifically) to satisfy a large portion of the first set of orders at once?

It was my impression that the overwhelming majority wanted the playing field to be as level as possible, thus holding on to the orders until there's enough to ship a reasonable quantity would be preferred over shipping out a handful of each right away?  Is that thinking incorrect?

I think he's saying that you're wrong about them needing someone to do the free software development.

Well, since a 1TH rig costs $30,000 (or $15,000 with a MR trade in) I can't see how I can possibly be wrong with my money guestimate ...

Alright...

the problem I'm having right now is the use of vague terms and applying numbers to them...  like...

If you ordered early then you have a good chance of being in the first 1/3, and if you ordered late, probably not, and having a 66% chance of being in the first part and blah blah blah

Ya gotta define what is "early" and what isn't, and when we're talking about chances and percentages, what are they based on? The first 100 confirmed/paid orders? The first 48 hours worth of orders?

What range are we talking about here, because as long as vague terms keep being thrown out there, yer not telling us anything, and we're left being just as uncertain as before, and talking about it did no good whatsoever.

I understand there is a certain amount of uncertainty about how many will actually be ready to go out, so, what is being projected to be the amount so far? And are we talking, for the 1/3, is that all orders, or is that a portion of Jalapenos, a portion of Singles, a portion of Minis?

Like... is the first shipment planned to be X Jalapenos, Y Singles, and Z Minis, and that first 1/3 would be taken from the earliest orders of each type until you fill up those numbers?

I put off ordering other hardware, and chose to put it into ordering a Jalapeno instead (which was literally, all of the bitcoin I had been able to mine with my very weak hashrate, for half a year), expecting that being so early in the pre-order, I would be among the first to get mine, giving me my first opportunity to do more than mine for dust. My order is on day #2... are you guys considering day #2 to be "late"?

What are you guys considering "early" and "late"? And, say I don't end up making it into the first shipment... how long until you start shipping more?

We're getting all the vagueness we can stand with our elections coming up in a few months... just be straight with us please.

-- Smoov