What is the duty and taxes on products purchased for bitcoin.
For example how do the chines shipp the full batch of avalon chips.
How do the customs proceed the full batch of chips. Is the price converted to USD or euro?
Or is ikt already calculated in the price you pay for the full batch of chips?

This is interesting situation.
I wanted to order from bfl too but seems like when i order today i am not having the mashine in time to get any profit of it.
So i decided better to wait and watch how will this situation evolve.

I am more interested what happend when the difficulty go up to point of no profit and there will be tons of preordered mashines , they would be worth nothing .
If any of the manufacvturers will be ready to refund anyone.

The only thing you can realy buy most asap is asicminer block erupter usb . Ist bether than any gpu at the moment.It has enough hash power compared to gpu and consume less electricity . Its good for trying bitcoin mining and to some small mining .

Any coíin is only as good as the comunity is going to suport it.
Take an example if today the possibylity to mine btc will end ppl will try to find an other alternation.
Despite the original idea of bitcoin as a digital curency , the bitcoin is only as strong as there is the possibility to make profit with the mining.
U can see that because of the perofitability of mining btc there r still growing manbufacturers willing to offer new more powerfull mining equipment.
But when the difficulty of mining reaches the top possible where u dont get any proffit of it. The btc will probably die.
And all miners an manufacturers will turn their attention on next most popular coin type.

Knc didnt shown any asic yet , there was only a demonstration of old fpga . BFL looks bether since they deliwered atliest asic mashines yet the waiting time for the product is horendes. If you want to mine assap than the block erupter usb or blade is your only option yet they r priced too high , so do not have high expectation on early profit. U can also buy an avalon asic miner but those r even more owerpriced becaus u can only buy one if some miner is willing to sell his own one.

What do you think is the near future of bitcoin  mining ??
As of my perspective of view the bitcoin will die when dhe difficulty rise above any profit unles the code for hashing will be in some way modified to allow further profitable mining.
When you look back what was the exchange rate for btc befor fpga came in the game ? A few bucks per btc. It was nearly not worth to mine and spend the money for electricity.But the reward for succesfully hashed block was 50btc and everyone was able to buy couple of GPUs and start mining. Ofcourse who wanted the real big money than he needed to make real investment . Asa same as it is now with that diferents that when u desided to mining in biger scale with gpus u just went to the next store an bough some of gpus.
Today when u deside to doo mining in bigher scale u need pre order equipoment u will get at best in 90 days and u r happy that you got it or at worst case scenario u get scamed and the seller runs with you money and you never see them again.
So at thees days it is more risky than it was a year ago.
. Now for next four years we have 25btc for succesfully calculated block .But the exchange rate rised at his highest point nearly to 200 bucks per btc (saw it somewere but cant find a reliable source for the highest rate) anyway the exchange rate waries now at 90-100 bucks per btc.And thhis was caused by asic technology entered the mining. It was again profitable to mine btc. At the begining the manifackturers where seling th e mashines for dollars only . But affter they realized that if they realy want to make profit and sell their produckt th ey need to use btc . They realized that when ppl will need btcoin then there will be also demand for mashines that can mine btc with high profitability and then for ppl  need to buy the new asics to stay profitable or even get rich . But as more asic mashines r added to the computin power of all units in to system, the difficulty rise above and byond the scale . There r lot of prediction out there that says that with all the power that is going to be deployed to the system by wariouse well known manufackturers and some new and some diy projeckts the difficulty will explode the scale.
The manufackturers r now seling mashines with significant profit so they have room to lover theyr prices for the future or just sell more powerful mashines for the same price.
But there will be an end , some prediction say that to the end of 2014 or even earlier the difficulty rise so high than not even the pools can get any profit out of the mining.
So maybe then we will need a new eqiwalent to wat bitcoin is now.
That prob means new mashines or to reset btc to point zero as this is or bether sed this was in the history the way how to save economy befor the selfdestuction.
What is the next step in technology to succefuly continue the btc ´mining.
When asics reatch their limits do we return back to fpga ? The fpga as known can use nearly any algorytm without changing hardware .Where todays asics miners can only be used to hash bitcoin.