did the accounts page just get modified? I no longer see any namecoin info, and it does not seem to show the difficulty/suggested difficulty anymore...?

We knew NMC was going away. It looks like Slush decided that since he is Autoadjusting dificulty anyway, He'd get rid of the selectable default. Kind of makes sense to me.

can someone sacrifice some newborn babies or something, this block is getting too long lol

I thought a virgin works better.

We had one over 11 hours not too long ago.

Well, I experimented with pool load sharing with CGMiner just a few days ago. Maybe I'll turn it back on. Slush's pool had good luck while I was trying it out. So if the luck goes thru the roof later today...

I'm not "pool hopping", I've setup CGMiner to split my 12 Gh between Slush and (currently) BTCGuild.  So I'm currently still mining with Slush with roughly 6 Gh and roughly 6 Gh going towards BTCGuild. 

Is this a viable way to run one miner? Who knows for sure....

In my experience split mining, i make crap on BTCGuild regardless of the situation or hash rate.  if you want to use a backup pool, I recommend 50BTC.  I wish i'd mined 50/50 last night, but its best to throw 100% at a pool and stick with it to help increase the pools luck.

If luck is equal, you'll make more on BTC Guild counting NMC.  If luck is not equal, obviously it depends on which pool was lucky and which wasn't.

Also, Guild has _NO_ penalty on payouts for shared hash rate or failover.  PPLNS does not penalize you if you leave, unlike exponential score where shares become worthless shortly after they're submitted in long rounds.  Once the share is submitted, it's paid just like every other until it expires (after it leaves the 'N' window).

Also:  If you submit a share, it continues to get paid for 8 hours, rather than only getting paid once (or not at all due to exponential score on slush).  It seems nobody ever factors this in when comparing payouts.  The math shows quite clearly Guild will beat slush (NMC + paid Orphans will pay better than a 1% fee difference).

10:53:24. So. Is this the future? Will we see more and more of these ungodly long blocks, as the terra-, peta- and quexa-hash farms come online? Is the difficulty just not bad enough?

As a test I am mining on three different pools, with the same hash rate on every pool 24/7. Two with pps, one with DGM (Slush). So far I have a 10-15% higher payout from slush for the last month. It is quite evident where this comes from: pool luck in the last 30 days is above 100% and therefore I have received a 100% pay out of block fees and Transfer fees (which actually do add to the income!!!) On the other hand some pools calculate my income 25btc difficulty - fee. So I consider this quite greedy and my loyalty will not be endless.

Obviously there is a psychological effect with the long blocks. If you are lucky and mine 10 blocks in an hour you are happy for an hour. If you are unlucky and gain nothing for ten hours you are unhappy for ten hours. I kind of have the Feeling that People get overwhelmed by there ffelings in a situation (mining bitcoins) where only logic counts. So if you are bored go and watch Television or talk to somebody, but dont stare at the stats or the block chain. This may kill your rational. Better look at your email accounts and also look at the 30 day pool luck.

Personally I kind of feel pitty with the pool operators as a whole. Transfer numbers increase, so should costs, but the income from blocks remains equal (at least in btc). As far as I understand Slush is constantly figuring out something, so lets wait and see.