Is there a nice easy to understand video that explains what a share is and what a block is and how the get work function and ask rate tie into that?
Why are the chances of getting a stale block higher with a get work every 60 seconds? How does a block become stale? What are we calculating the hashes of?
I read the wiki and bitcoin site faq and it still doesn't answer a lot of questions. I'd like to understand the generation of bit coins in much more depth. Thank you.
I don't know of a video, but I'll try to explain it here as easily as I can... These are not in-depth answers by any means and are significantly simplified for the sake of explanation.
Block -A large portion of encrypted data that, once solved, awards the individual or pool who solved it 50 BTC. Blocks are used to carry all transaction data for the bitcoin network.
Share -Credited to a miner in a pool who finds a hash for a getwork. Your total number of shares submitted vs. the number of shares submitted by the entire pool determines your payout when the pool solves a block.
Getwork -A 2^32 chunk of the block hash with the midstate already solved by the pool server. A much smaller piece of data that allows the miner to generate hashes (shares) for the pool at a faster rate. Any getwork could potentially result in the "answer" for the block itself.
How does a block become stale? -A block doesn't, however a getwork can become stale when the current block the network is working on has advanced before the miner processing their current getwork has finished and asked for new work. Our pool (Bitcoinpool.com) still credits miners for anything from the current block, or previous block, so stale work in this case does not affect the individual miner.
What are we calculating the hashes of? -As a miner in a pool, you're calculating hashes on getworks, which the pool server then uses to try and solve blocks. As an individual, outside of a pool, you're trying to accomplish the same thing, but by yourself. Think of it like a brute-force cracking an encrypted piece of data. More people working together means faster iteration through all the possibilities.
I hope that helps to at least some degree.