Quote from: dscotese on May 31, 2016, 12:20:59 AM

I bet you didn't read this part of my post:
Some decisions miners make are reflected in the blocks they solve.
Or perhaps you don't believe that's true. However, Slush mined both https://blockchain.info/block-height/414056 and https://blockchain.info/block-height/414072 which have different version numbers. The difference in version numbers is a result of the owners of the machines having made some decisions which differ. If I have $1,000,000 that I want to use to encourage people to use one of those versions instead of the other, then I DO need to know who solved the block. I could rely on the pool operator to tell me, but in the spirit of bitcoin, I'd like to do it in a way that I can verify.

I understand that the creeps who want more control over others frown upon the person-to-person communications that support bitcoin as well as widespread sharing of occulted information, both of which are slowly destroying the oppression on which those parasites live, but that only makes such behavior more attractive to me.

I trust that you now understand me better, so perhaps you can help me improve my writing. Is there something in my initial post that I could have written to make what you didn't understand any clearer?

Thanks!

It seems you don't really understand pooled mining. That decision is STILL done at the pool level. The miner only chooses which port to mine at with the pool if they want to make a decision. The mining hardware and miners are completely and utterly controlled in what they mine by the pool they choose to mine at. The only time there is choice is with solo mining which hardly anyone has enough hardware to afford doing by themselves any more. p2pool mining offers a tiny bit of control but it's still mostly done by the overall pool design.