BTC Guild is smaller (relative to network size) than it was months ago. The days of a public facing pool being 25%+ of the network are over, unless they have an obscenely large private farm propping it up. Private mining entities now make up ~40% of the network, leaving only 60% left to fight over. As a result, shifts are no longer setup around 15-20x difficulty, they're setup to be roughly 10x difficulty. This means bad luck shifts are no longer 8-10 blocks. A neutral shift right now is 8.75 blocks (meaning 9 blocks or more in a shift is positive luck).
I understand and agree that BTCGuild's size is decreasing in terms of network percentage, as are the other public facing pools. However, moving the average luck down to 8.75 b.p.h doesn't introduce a large margin of error on the values I stated in my earlier post.
The bottom line is the luck is shit, and has been long enough that it's actually dragged BTCGuild's "all-time" luck sub 100. I recognize that luck is out of our collective hands, so I've not come in here pissing and moaning about it. However, the sustained streak is starting to raise flags, and I find it interesting that Eligius and BTCGuild are experiencing similar trends extending from a similar point in time. I don't blame
you for the "luck" or for nefarious acts, and in the event that it's actually bad hardware I fail to see any way to counter it.