Unless it's for altcoin that just started out or low difficulty?
It's almost useless to mine for bitcoin unless you can fork out thousands of dollars for a special unit to do it, get a botnet, etc. I mean what are the most profitable altcoins to even start with?
I like the idea of the one pool that's trading coins to blackcoin since that seems to be pretty popular from what I've seen but really what is the use? The only way to get bitcoins it seems now is to buy them outright sell your services or do a sig campaign.

Is mining completely dead?