and do you think that pooled mining will ultimately be the end game for bitcoin mining after the difficulty gets to a certian xxxxxxxx difficulty?
Simple word of mouth is more than enough to pull in soo many miners that it will not be long before it costs more to run your rigs than your are earning from them. I'm afraid I am a good example. As soon as I found out about this, a couple of months ago, I told just about everybody I know. Most didn't bother with it, but some did. And one of those has just configured all the computers in the labs at the University where he works to run as miners overnight !!!
Just imagine the people he knows (other Universities), and if they act on this. No overheads to pay, and a shed load of hardware !!!
I bet you or he think this is a really original idea. I worked as an admin at a University, where some idiot tried to run "seti @home" on the main computational server. We caught him, and when he did it again, sent him in for disciplinary action. The lab computers are for everyones use and chewing up their resources will get noticed.
By the time he did it with Seti @Home, it wasn't original. I saw a friend of mine (dating myself here) get caught trying it with... deschall (http://www.interhack.net/projects/deschall/what.html) .