ok, finally changed on my pool as well.  Was starting to worry a bit but the hash needs to stabilize some and BTC-E to pick it up.

How long does it take for the difficulty to re-target?   The Diff has been 11.5ish since early yesterday when the network has was 3+ GH... we are now at 1.6 GH and have been for the past 12 hrs.   CNC's has yet to retarget and its hash fell off of the world over a week ago, wasn't WDC supposed to have licked that problem with short re-target times?

MtGox has made several miscalculations.  The first is not having a good infrastructure in place or planned when the bit hit the fan for lack of a better pun.  The second was not following through on the Coinlab deal.  The third was not paying attention to paper work they submitted to Uncle Sam and ran afoul of our wonderful regulatory environment.  Other than that, I guess you can say they are behind the times on other crypto currencies but that is a contentious issue with some.

LimLims, I would think that most people hold that information close to the vest.   There are some simple API's and Bots out there but they are very limited.  One can be found at https://github.com/alanmcintyre/btce-api... It looks safe enough but Im no programmer so I couldn't tell you if it had something hidden in it.   My partner is the programmer in our group and yes... we don't just rely on the API.

Check out this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134179.0.  Its an updated list of all coins.  All the coins on that list other than Bitcoin are Altcoins.

Any creative types out there?  I think this forum needs its own newbie song in honor of all who have walked the newbie zone mile.  

Im assuming your are the manager of this fund and that this is a new fund.. .yes?   There is no historical data on the site, as the fund manager what can you provide to potential investors to show you have a sound strategy that at the very least would give them a hope of a return?  At best you offer a binary betting system that is already dubious in the minds of many.   Hedge funds in the world of crypto haven't had the best of luck for various reasons.

I dont believe the mining option in the Qt wallet will do GPU mining... I think its only CPU.  The better way is to set up QT as a server and then attach cgminer or similar to it.  If you are running multiple machines then you will need some private pooling scripts running like http://poolserverj.org.

You can find instructions on setting up the QT wallet for solo mining here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83371.0

Pools are still a better bet.  You may loose a little in fees but you can see some payoff for your work almost instantly.   http://www.litecoinpool.org is by far the best pool but I believe registration is still locked.  You can join chan #litecoinpool on http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#litecoinpool and ask pooler if he will let you in.

Yes sir, the list is definitely growing 

LTC currently is the only accepted alt-coin.  The other coins were mine and whines for those that didn't sell immediately.  LTC will continue to keep its current pace with BTC .025 to .033 ratio till it is accepted at some retailers.  (Yes some retailers accept LTC but they are very few compared to BTC).