First off, once again, who is this mysterious "they"? You're quoting a Yahoo news article, not a person, as far as I can tell. Not that it's relevant to the point.
Click this:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.966882 Read the post. The "They" you're referring to is the "We" in the post I'm linking you to for the second time.
Please refresh my memory as to what point it is you're referring to?
Your claim:
You people just keep piling on more and more totally irrelevant nonsense. Anybody who has ever run a company that does any serious manufacturing knows that sub-contracting is part of the biz. BFL started out doing FPGA miners. They're not ASIC engineers by trade. So what's the best thing to do when you need a product/component from a trade you don't specialize in? Find somebody who DOES specialize in that, and hire them to design that component for you. Then subcontract with another company to manufacture that component.
Which, if we want to get into "facts", your assessment does not align with BFL's public statement.
As for the rest of your post. Who are you replying to? k9? a1pha? me?
Focus man!
Once again, you're continuing to try to play the semantics game. ASIC design is not the same thing as FPGA design. There are different specialized skills involved with developing various components. If you as a company, don't have any individuals on your staff with this specialized skill, that doesn't mean that you're forever barred from getting into the ASIC game.
You have two options. The first one would be to hire a specialized ASIC engineer onto your staff. Now, this doesn't seem like a particularly great option, if you only need to design on ASIC. Most specialized folks are gonna be wary about being hired on to do ONE chip design. Most likely, they'll want to free-lance it, because they know that once you're done with them, they're gonna have to search for another job. So specialized guys like this don't like to go to work for a couple of months at a time for every company they design a chip for. It's not prudent for ANYBODY.
So, in order to make everybody's lives simpler, and make it so that people with specialized skills have to pick up and move every few weeks, what usually happens is that a company will crop up that says "Hey, specialized engineers, we will hire you, give you long-term employment, and benefits, or whatever. You won't have to move around. You won't have to shop for work. We'll get the clients, bring them in, you do the design, and then we'll move onto the next project.
So, say hypothetically, a company like BFL doesn't have the specialized skills to design this very specific type of chip that they need. It's not in their interest to hire a full-time chip designer, just to satisfy some nit-picky little child on an internet forum. It's in their interest to get a chip designed, and integrate it into their overall hardware design. It just so happens that there are companies who already employ specialized engineers to do this exact type of work.
What should they do? How about go hire the company that already employs those specialized engineers?
BFL still gets to be the first company to design a Bitcoin mining-specific ASIC, by farming out the work to a 3rd party, and everybody wins. Being that BFL is the first company to come up with an ASIC chip for bitcoin mining, this qualifies them as an industry leader, puts them in the lead in the race for hashing power, and establishes them as the benchmark for ASIC mining going forward.
It does not guarantee that they'll continue to be the leader. It doesn't gurantee that everybody will love them. It doesn't make them the best ASIC design company. But it DOES make them a leader in ASIC design, since they're the first company on the planet to own a Bitcoin mining ASIC. THE FIRST OF THEIR KIND. That sets them apart as leaders, son. Like it or don't.
The direct full-time employees of the company don't have to have done all (or, for that matter ANY) of the work in order for this company to still be considered the leader. It's their product. They're the first to have it. They're the leader. Period. The ins and outs of who did the physical labor is completely immaterial to the discussion, and if you're latching onto that to try and play semantics, you really are running out of ideas.
Subcontracting out all or some engineering aspects of a particular product is done ALLLLLL THEEEEE FUCKIN' TIME. And it's done by 'industry leaders' all the fuckin' time. If you aren't able to wrap your head around this concept, you've got more pressing issues than your obsessive all-consuming hatred for BFL. You should probably try getting some sun.
