If the FPGA hardcopy process was cheaper it could be an interesting alternative. However, I don't believe a hardcopy version of an FPGA would be close in power efficiency or hashing power per mm^2 compared to BFL's 65nm or even Avalon's 110nm chips. In the end I hope someone like DigiKey starts stocking the packaged chips such that creative mining enthusiasts could create some unique mining applications. When you can dump a TH/s of chips into your shopping cart at DigiKey for a few bucks then we've hit a level of network security that should secure Bitcoin until a flaw is found in SHA256.