Well, if the ICO smart(?) contract/shit tokens start becoming prolific; (They seem so easy to copy/paste, so I don't see why not.) ETH might just be able to have it's bloated ass bolstered for 2 years or longer. I voted dead coin, since I'm hoping enough people drink the KoolAid and go away. 

   No wonder none of the proposals for the DAO are anywhere near the 20% quorum needed to even count. Most are just checking out POLO & Bittrex, hoping for the next ETH/DAO pump so that they can unload their tokens on the next sucker. They don't want to use their tokens to vote on stupid proposals, which is what they were supposedly intended for. They want to see some whales pump up ETH to some god awful value, and hope the DAO leech tokens follow suit.
   Oh well, I'm probably being a hypocrite anyway, since I am doing the same thing.   However, I refuse to shill this shit, anymore, in a pathetic attempt to escape my poor judgement in this case.

   The DAO isn't a coin. It is a smart contract that resides on the Ethereum blockchain. People sent ETH to the contract address which created tokens. The intended purpose of these tokens is to give the owner voting rights and possibly income generated for the investments the DAO approves. The tokens are not really a currency since the primary purpose for them is not to buy goods and services or to pay debts.
  If my suspicions are correct, the DAO was a smashing success. I personally think it was just a scheme to get people to buy up Ether tokens on the market, and pump up the price on ETH. Then the ETH is basically locked away in some "fund" that cannot be easily liquidated. Everything about the DAO is designed to delay liquidation as much as possible. Even the obvious suppression of it's price on the market, which is below the ICO price.

Thanks for your inspirational advise. I guess that you just had to create a whole new account so that you could bestow your awesome wisdom and be venerated by the masses. I am sure those that bought DAO for 1.5 ETH for 100 will be thrilled to wait years for them to start generating a few wei. Also, if those same investors want to "move on", I'm sure they will be absolutely ecstatic to suffer a 33%+ loss. Thanks for spreading your inspiration and hope.  

You can vote right now with your DAO. Just know that when you vote, your DAO tokens are frozen until the voting commences. Yet, another way to lure bag holders into this additional form of paralysis. Maybe they should rename the DAO, Medusa tokens.

   No, it's a token on the Ethereum blockchain. No more DAO tokens will be created by POS or POW. The Dao tokens entitle you to vote on proposals. If a proposal succeeds, the contractor then gets some of the ETH held in the Smart Contract to fund their project. The contractor then returns a share of any profits back to the DAO in the form of  ETH. Then the DAO holders are given reward tokens(which are different than DAO tokens.) I believe these reward tokens can be redeemed for ETH, but I am not sure.
   Quite frankly, I don't think any of this will come to pass. I think this was just a grand scheme to pump up the price of ETH. (Which happened when people where buying the DAO tokens during the ICO creation period.) Now, the ETH is all tied up, so the pumpers have less of a supply of ETH that could flood the markets. Slowly and surely, some of the ETH in the DAO will become liquid again once people succeed in splitting and getting their ETH back. Unfortunately, this process takes at least 48 days or so, and someone could launch a stalker attack on you while you try to do this, and indefinitely tie up your ETH.

Sometime between never and an eternity. 

Well, it seems that I was able to set this up on Firefox without a hitch. Now just waiting for the tokens to be sent to me. Can't wait to see what I can do with these "hot potatoes."  

  But it is down. It is consistently worth less than the ETH that backs it up. Some would say the discount comes because of the illiquidity, since it would take a minimum of 48 days to get your ETH back, if you successfully went through the split process. There is a flaw in this process that would allow someone to stalk you, so you could not get your ETH back.
  I personally think this is all by design. I think the ETH notables, many who are now listed as curators for the DAO, wanted to find a way to pump up ETH and then tie up a good portion of the ETH indefinitely. That way they have less ETH available to flood the markets, and it can make their pump and dump a little easier.
  I think it is interesting that it has been almost two weeks and we have yet to see an official proposal from slock-it. They were supposed to be one of the first true proposals.
  What we see instead is soon after the DAO launched, out comes a paper pointing out all of the security flaws. Now we have a proposal that wants to put a moratorium on any proposals until they can fix these flaws. Although this proposal is not backed up with a smart contract to enforce it, I'm sure the currators will be more than happy to comply with the "suggestion." Why? Because the DAO was designed to tie up the ETH as long as possible, so it won't hit the market.
  I think it will be a mighty long time, if ever, that we will see a proposal that actually distributes ETH to a potential contractor. Happy bag holding until that happens. Don't hold your breath though.

I haven't seen people start complaining that they cannot withdraw their Bitcoin, yet. (Although their payout for the signature campaign has not been operational for a couple of days.) So, I don't think they are hiding a "hack." I do think that they do not have the servers and staff necessary to maintain over 300 wallets. I don't think they will ever acquire the necessary staff or servers either.

The Dao isn't a coin. It is a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. The smart contract does have tokens that are tradable and allow you to vote on proposals. However, you are probably correct. After 6 or 7 months it will probably be split all over the place and depleted by a bunch of proposals that don't earn anything or are scams.

     The DAO is a smart contract... One that I had the misfortune of becoming ensnared in. So far, my experience with both ETH and the DAO has been unsatisfactory. I'm surprised there are not a whole lot more of these tokens/smart contracts coming out of the woodwork. With such few lines of code needed to implement a smart contract, I would think these scam tokens/"smart??" contracts would be multiplying like cockroaches. These poor DAO people. Now every time they want to vote, they have to make sure their coffers are filled up with ETH for the gas. They can't even use their DAO to pay the gas, like it works with any regular cryptocurrency. They must buy ETH. No wonder most of the curators of the DAO are also big names for the ETH.
     For me, I think Bitcoin will always be ahead of ETH. Pretty soon, there is going to be s great deal of smart contracts bloating the ETH blockchain. The vast majority of these smart contracts/tokens are going to be absolute shit. It's going to be a bloated mess that will be in desperate need of an enema.

I don't even see instructions on what someone is supposed to do once they send the BTC, so they can confirm they are the sender.  

Quoted and verfied with coinig.

Yes, we are just like when MSNBC airs an obvious Republican superpac ad. Although MSNBC makes some weak efforts to be neutral, everyone knows they are strongly biased to the left.