I was under the impression that their overly complex 1/3 plan was for first month orders only, wasn't the little single introduced much later anyway?
Yep, but some people upgraded from Jalapenos to Little Singles, so the 1/3 upgrade thing applies because you hold your original order date when you upgrade. No
new Little Single orders will ship in the first batch, though.
BFL will produce X number of units per type (Jalapeno, LittleSC, SingleSC, Minirig SC) (We do not yet know how many X will be).
We will then ship:
1/3 of X number of units to those that ordered NEW orders.
1/3 of X number of units to those that ordered UPGRADED orders.
1/3 of X number of units will be randomly selected, based on order number, from all the orders received between June 23rd 2012 and July 22nd 2012.
For example, if we have 27 units of Jalapeno's, 18 Units of Single SC and 9 units of MiniRig SC, we would ship:
Jalapeno:
9 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
9 units to people who made orders for an upgrade for the pack of Jalapeno's coming from a Single.
9 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders.
Single SC:
6 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
6 units to people who made orders for an upgrade from a Single, starting with the lowest order number.
6 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders for the Single SC.
Minirig SC:
3 units to people who made orders for new equipment, starting with the lowest order number.
3 units to people who made orders for an upgrade from a Minirig, starting with the lowest order number.
3 units would be shipped to a randomly selected set of order numbers placed in the first month of pre-orders for the Minirig SC.
The numbers above are all hypothetical and we have not determined the actual quantity that will be shipping in the first batch. We are still assessing how many units we are able to assemble per day and how many we will have already assembled and tested prior to our first shipment.
Some people wonder why we are doing it this way. We are shipping it this way, instead of piecemeal because the first people to receive BFL ASIC technology will have a decided advantage for a maximum of 2016 blocks. We want to avoid giving preferential treatment to any given segment of the mining community, providing a level and fair playing field for as many people as possible. We also want to distribute our technology as widely as possible so that no single entity can gain a potentially threatening amount of hashing power that may lead to an abuse of the bitcoin network or blockchain.
** Since the "Little" Single SC unit is a new product, not included in the first preorder phase, all SC orders up to and including orders placed on September 30th, 2012 will be assembled and shipped prior to shipping any NEW orders of the "Little" Single SC. UPGRADE orders will be shipping in the order received for your original order that you upgraded from, 1/2 for FIFO and 1/2 random from all orders.
Yes, it's overly complex.