They will never build enough hash power, not with this suicide goal of killing both ETC/ETH.
True. They might build enough to kill ETC though. And if they never get there, that means .25% payouts non-stop. w00t. Think I'm gonna try mining there to see how it goes.
Finally manage to split the ETH and ETC balance into fresh account manually.
I tried it myself using Poloniex as a pass-through and I got "interesting" results. Check this action out:
First thing I did was go to my alternate login under Win10 and "installed" a fresh copy of Mist/Ethereum Wallet (latest version). I fired it up and said "No" to the question of whether or not I wanted to support the hard fork. It came up and showed me my old balance from before the hard fork. That's my ETC.
So I sent all the currency from that client to my Poloniex ETC wallet address. Lo and behold, Poloniex deposited that amount in both my ETC and ETH wallets. Hmm!
I went back to my main login, started up Ethereum Wallet (post fork, latest version) and found that I only had the ETH remaining that I had mined post-fork. So I sent that to my ETH wallet address on Poloniex. It got added just fine, with no bump to my ETC. I then sold my ETC on the exchange and bought ETH (and a bit of XPB for teh lulz). Then I withdrew all my ETH from Poloniex and sent it to a brand new Ethereum Account created using Ethereum Wallet (post-fork) and whammo, mission complete.
Some of you might not want to use Poloniex, but using it is pretty easy, and it appears as though they are still splitting ETC and ETH for you, even if you go the "proper" route and send currency from the correct chain. You will only pay fees for selling the ETC to buy ETH - if that is what you want to do. You will not pay fees for the transfers into and out of your Poloniex ETH wallet address. Only downside I see if that getting your transfer limits up high enough to accommodate all of your ETH may be a hassle. It might take a few days to move all your ETH out of Poloniex.