E.g. in another thread someone asked for the structure size (110, 130, ... ? nm) of BLFs ASICs.
Why is not even this information publicly available? I mean it's only two more weeks until the scheduled launch date.
Because no company is actually required to give you any of this information, you're just spoiled by the radical transparency of most Bitcoin ventures. BFL isn't doing anything that Samsung, Intel et al wouldn't do.
From, for example, Intel we have this information years in advance: Haswell will be 22nm, then Broadwell with 11nm, then Skymont with 10nm. Do its competitors (e.g. AMD) gain any benefit from this information? No!
Sure they do, but they only gain whatever information Intel is willing to let them have. A timeline/roadmap for the future of a well-established product isn't a lot of information, the nm process of a brand-new never before seen product is a hell of a lot of information. If you were running BFL wouldn't you want your competitors to be fully entrenched in potentially inferior processes before you released data about which process you're using?
I mean it's like back in July 1969, two weeks before Apollo started heading for the moon. Imagine if NASA would have said: "No, we can't tell you how many astronauts we put in that spaceship ... (because with this information the Russians would be able to build their own rocket in just one weeks - and win the race to the moon)". Ridiculous.
Except that NASA is a taxpayer-funded entity explicitly designed in such a way that all of their records, discoveries and processes are to be public information (with exceptions made for national security etc of course, it's the government, whaddya expect?). BFL isn't, they're a private company and as such are under no obligation to give you a thing. Hell, what they've given you is already more than what most companies would give you for an unreleased product. Did Apple release PCB renders of the iPhone 5 prior to release? Hell no, they barely gave out STATS let alone pictures of a running device or half the things people are demanding of BFL.
So please, BFL - give us something. And not just rendered pictures of a Jalapeno (aka black Apple TV device).
They've already given you quite a lot. The similarity of their case design to Apple TV doesn't really speak to anything besides perhaps a lack of uniqueness in either Apple's design or a tendency for the industry to copycat successful products, can't say which but I've got a dozen products in my home that look more or less like an Apple TV (including an actual Apple TV).
Here's what it boils down to:
Traditionally when you create something, as a business, you have two ways to secure that invention. Either you patent it, in which case your product and processes become public knowledge in return for granting you a period of enforceable exclusive profit or you keep your data a trade secret and the period of exclusivity lasts for as long as you can keep that secret out of your competitors hands. Many companies choose column A, examples being... well, just about anything you can find a patent or trademark for. Other companies choose column B, one famous example being KFC's secret spice recipe - not trademarked or patented, just flat-out secret. If someone got their hands on it and leaked it to the world it'd be open season on their secret spices.
Column C, chosen almost exclusively by Bitcoin businesses and Bitcoin businesses alone, is radical transparency. Tell everyone everything in as much detail as they'll listen to. Enough data to compete with you, to the point of copycatting a process you'd never have been able to mimic otherwise. You've become used to this for some reason, despite the fact that absolutely anywhere else it's not the norm. Walk into any normal tech company and start making these same kind of demands - you'll be removed by security. I'll never understand how a community that grew up around what is essentially a crypto project decided that having secrets and the right to protect those secrets is a bad thing. I understand you like your software and hardware open-source, but out here in the day-to-day tech world FOSS is the exception, not the rule.
If you don't like any of that, you're welcome to vote with your wallet, just don't buy BFL products if you disagree with their methods. Go support bASIC or AvalonASIC or something, competition is good for the marketplace and I'm sure that while BFL, like any company, would love to have a monopoly, the existence of alternatives drives all competitors to create better stuff. There is in fact something you can do about this if you feel slighted, so perhaps stop whining and just do it.
