Quick Question About Keyhotee:
You said one of the factors of increasing your reputation is to mine blocks for your account, but can you also buy these mined blocks for your account?

My malware software just blocked an outgoing process to:

IP-BLOCK   218.7.152.6 (Type: outgoing, Port: 50540, Process: protoshares-qt.exe)

It's just reacting to protoshares trying to update itself when it's trying to reach the nodes.

random proof of human punishes guys like this. Not so good an idea.

  I've only seen this picture in my dreams before

I think it is confirmation taking longer with new difficulty changes

Quote

While some people may not like the effects of cloud mining, at least it was equal opportunity for anyone who can follow the instructions laid out in the forums.  Unfortunately there is another class of attack, the botnet.  Botnet operators steal computing power and electricity from other people so they can mine and as a result they can bring thousands of computers to mine for the network.   Botnet operators are generally looking to make a profit and therefore have little incentive to see a currency destroyed, but they still manage to make it more difficult for honest individuals to 'fairly' mine shares.  There are opportunity costs associated with running a botnet and so botnet operators generally dump the mined shares immediately. 

Still there could be botnets interested even if the reward is going to happen 6 months later.

For avoiding this, I have an idea that you can consider:
Most botnets are Windows infected machines. So release your miners only for Linux, and make sure that porting to Windows is difficult. Of course, the clients are available for Windows too, but with no mining capability. For those using Windows machines, they could install easily an Ubuntu virtual machine in their Virtual Box.
This alone should stop botnets for some time, and would reduce the number of them in the long term, but also will encourage that supporters of your project are technically knowing what they are doing, so at the end this would stop both botnets and noobs who come only for the money.

First off, I don't believe discriminating against miners who are less technologically-apt is a healthy choice to spread the idea of Bitshares. Second, your idea  would work to the extreme benefit of cloud miners as they use cheap linux boxes for mass mining. You can't protect against all the forms of mass mining but at best you can mitigate it, and that's what the idea of vesting period is attempting to do.

Lastly,

and noobs who come only for the money.

We are investors in this currency, most people are here to see a return on their investment.

I would like to start by saying I am completely for the 6 month set vesting time, it would allow for all the aspects you listed earlier (and reduce the ability for cloud miners and botnets) but I have a few concerns about the other ideas you had recently mentioned:

I personally do not see the reason why Bitshare needs a random vesting period? It would allow more botnet/cloud miners to recoup their losses if they mine enough and it would make it more frustrating for regular miners. Most of the miners are smarter than the average "powerball player" and are not interested in a .000001% chance for any payout. I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather have less randomness than absolutely needed, all these random vesting periods and block amounts would frustrate me and ultimately cause a lot less people to mine this altogether. The powerball idea also poses problems in my mind as to if a few people win the few giant coin prizes, the bulk of the coins will ultimately end up in the hands of a few people. Bitshares are your main project so I hope you won't try too many different concepts than needed that could possibly jeopardize the integrity of the project as a whole.

I found 2 blocks on my first ~3-4 days of mining Protoshares, but nothing in the last week or so, but ah well, I can't complain, especially with how the value is doing already