Ooooh yeah. Been there, explained that. Best case scenario with 5% of the hashing power is dropping 6 out of every 7 transactions on the ground. And it'll take a hell of a lot longer than 2 weeks to get 2016 blocks.
But, you know, I'm waiting to see how they cope with Berkeley Database 4.8, and OpenSSL version 1.01k, and how things are going to fail when google changes the format of its protocol buffers, and how other things are going to fail with the next revision of boost, and .... well, ALL of that stuff I keep pointing to and saying we need to fix? All of the stuff that, until it gets fixed, is going to give us occasional maintenance jobs, some of which are emergencies?
When software depends on a property of a library which is not important to the main purpose of that library and which may be changed at any moment, it is vulnerable to version breaks. And right now, Bitcoin has several version breaks.
Berkeley Database is one that happened a while ago but we've never cleaned it out of the code. OpenSSL broke just last month. Protocol buffers and Boost haven't broken yet, but the people who maintain them WILL change them eventually. Protocol buffers, in particular, are going to be a semi-emergency when it happens (same as OpenSSL was) because we have a dependency on the binary form of the data; if it changes, our signatures break, so we can't just convert data.
But hey, if you're committed to never changing the software? I guess you never have to build it either. Just static-link that sucker and wait for the next Heartbleed bug....
+ 1 insightful post that reflects the difference between who develops code and who doesn't. This is exactly why I am sincerely warning them to prepare their hardfork and start getting their dev team ready. I am not doing so to mock them or strike fear in them, but sincerely rooting for them because some of them are showing signs they have absolutely no idea what to expect. Part of me wants them to be ready and survive the transition as it will sure be an interesting experiment.
it would be easier for them by making a reward program where mp sends coins to any coinbase (miner-address) which does not advertise it'll make bigger blocks.
thats the best way i can imagine to prevent a fork - not that i want them to do that...
Another brilliant idea... but how long could such bribery last?
A bit sad that we are left formulating strategies for them because they have no answers besides sticking their heads in the sand(with exception to tvbcof and one or two others who has been giving some well reasoned posts I can respect)