You'll have to talk to Gavin and the others than maintain test net if you want answers to that. They have repeatedly requested that people not mine on test net because it raises the difficulty, making it impossible to test with. If we unleashed 20 TH onto test net for even 24 hours, it would make it unusable for everyone else. Feel free to disagree, but this has been an issue for a couple years now, please go research it.
Yes, I am going to shrug off this invalid point because we are not now and have not been testing ASICs on the live network, so it's an immaterial argument.
But you WILL test ASICs on the live network? Why has the information surrounding this testing only been disclosed to select persons at the Bitcoin conference? Why will you not disclose that information to everyone else?
It's not an immaterial argument just because you haven't done it in the past, when you are obviously going to do it in the future. And the fact that you refuse to give out the details of this to the community as a whole has me concerned now. What can be so bad that you cannot reveal it until it happens?
Yes, Josh. You aren't treating your customers very well on this specific point in raising visibility to the issue of QC mining on main-net.
You know what kind of response this was likely to get. And that response might have very well affected sales volume unless BFL convinced the majority why it was unavoidable to use main-net for testing.
Shrugging it off and acting like it's a non-issue and not treating the matter with the seriousness and disclosure it deserves - while there might not be an easy answer to avoiding main-net - really reflects poorly on your skills in dealing with important PR issues.
Well, at least there's competition now.
edit:
Even if the test-net dev's request that you not mine there does not preclude BFL's ability to have an isolated testing environment with a few nodes and a pool. I do not see the justification for broadcasting blocks to the production network - for every single device - just to satisfy QC concerns.