This was slightly before the craziness that is BFL. When things were more transparent. As you can see on their site, they actually had a great plan and even great buy back. It was all downhill after.
While they were certainly more reputable back then compared to today, it does still look like they had a few problems even back when they only made FPGAs:
Interesting solution you advertise here.
I'm asking like another poster did, why will the equipment be tied to your platform ? The whole idea of bitcoin is that it shall be decentralized. If you produce a lot of this equipment, and you sit with a central control (as I understand all clients can control it from the online web-page on your server), then the decentralization goes out the window.
Although I'm very sure you're working extremely hard with this, but a lot of us are freedom loving individuals that would like to be able to govern our own equipment. Why not make it possible for the users to administrate the system from his own computer, or though any interface. If you want it to be administered through a web-interface, then this could be integrated in the unit and need not have a remote central for it to be administered?
What guarantees are there except your words that once enough units are deployed that there will be a 51% attack on the network, either by you or somebody attacking the central platform (talk about juicy target).
I sincerely hope this does not come forward as too negative, but these are questions that we really need to ask. I wish you best of luck in the continued business endeavors.
I'm asking like another poster did, why will the equipment be tied to your platform ? The whole idea of bitcoin is that it shall be decentralized. If you produce a lot of this equipment, and you sit with a central control (as I understand all clients can control it from the online web-page on your server), then the decentralization goes out the window.
Although I'm very sure you're working extremely hard with this, but a lot of us are freedom loving individuals that would like to be able to govern our own equipment. Why not make it possible for the users to administrate the system from his own computer, or though any interface. If you want it to be administered through a web-interface, then this could be integrated in the unit and need not have a remote central for it to be administered?
What guarantees are there except your words that once enough units are deployed that there will be a 51% attack on the network, either by you or somebody attacking the central platform (talk about juicy target).
I sincerely hope this does not come forward as too negative, but these are questions that we really need to ask. I wish you best of luck in the continued business endeavors.
And posted in response to the above:
I was about to post this, but you wrote a much better text 
Mining with hardware that is tied to a central platform defeats the whole purpose of mining.
Mining with hardware that is tied to a central platform defeats the whole purpose of mining.It does look like they listened to the feedback and considered making it optional though:
Both - most customers (we imagine) will prefer to control the system through a nice hosted UI. Others will configure their appliances to connect to a pool and contribute mining shares without any interaction with our control panel service. There will be a way to run the appliance completely independently - we hear you, and will make sure this option is available.
It seems to have been partly motivated by licensing issues too (i.e. as a type of DRM):
Quote
As I've written in various posts, after you receive the appliance, you can either connect it to the Internet, in which case it will self-register and obtain a license automatically when you pay the balance; or, you can leave it disconnected and install the license file manually. I think most customers will take the auto-registration route for convenience. After you have paid us and obtained the full license key, there is no need for the system to contact LargeCoin central again, and you will be able to stop this from happening without having any effect on mining.
