Gavin Andresen - 2013-11-22 00:57:52

It looks like maybe some pools have reacted; the average block size is going up:
  http://www.quandl.com/BCHAIN-Blockchain/AVBLS-Bitcoin-Average-Block-Size

For those that haven't, the relevant bitcoind command-line arguments are:

Code:
-blockminsize=<n>      Set minimum block size in bytes (default: 0)
 -blockmaxsize=<n>     Set maximum block size in bytes (default: 250000)
 -blockprioritysize=<n> Set maximum size of high-priority/low-fee transactions in bytes (default: 27000)
 -mintxfee=<m.n>        Minimum  fee-per-kilobyte to qualify as fee-paying (default: 0.0001)

Adding:
Code:
blockmaxsize=500000
blockprioritysize=45000
... to your bitcoin.conf and re-starting bitcoind (or running with the command-line arguments) will really help with the transaction crunch.

I'm still hard at work (nearly done!) on making the reference implementation much smarter about transaction fees, but until wallet software gets smarter about fees we need to rely on big pools doing the right thing so Bitcoin users don't get frustrated by long transaction confirmation times.