and earns fees from each transaction, returning those xrps back to the mother ship.

It's back up now.

LOL not BTC-TC is down, same thing. Why do Crypto currency websites seem to drop like flies lately?

By requiring ripple accounts to have at least 200 XRP for it to be functioning, OpenCoin Inc (who I feel is hardly open) is creating an artificial demand for the premined XRP (Ripples). This is akin to tax required in the nation's fiat currency to artificially create use cases for that currency.

UGH I wish you hadn't shown me that

Bye bye TrollFortress

That's not how trust works in Ripple. The trust line only exists for the instant the payment is made. Otherwise, each extension of trust is independent of every other one.

If you trust B, presumably it's because you entered into an agreement with B such that they have an obligation to settle their debts with you. What interaction they have or don't have with C is none of your business. Either B makes good or they don't. If they don't, then they are betraying your trust. Nothing C, D, E, or F does has anything to do with it.

It's like if I send you a check for $50, you deposit it in your bank, and then your bank goes out of business without paying you. It's not my problem. I only chose to trust *my* bank. Once you take the $50 as payment, how you settle with those you chose to trust is your issue. (When you set trust, you are essentially setting what you are willing to accept as payment.)

There's no such entity as a "Bitcoin" that can choose whether or not to block or not S.DICE transactions.

Any blocking would be done by individual pools.  It would only take one large pool to actively be hostile to S.DICE to make them unable to allow zero-confirmation bets at all.  If a pool discards S.DICE transactions but intentionally allows competing transactions from same source to process then the pool only needs a few % of network power for anyone to profitably attack S.DICE by trying to double-spend any losing bets - the few % of times the pool includes the double-spend (and cancels the losing bet) then outweigh the house edge on the rest of bets.  You underestimate the extent to which some are opposed to S.DICE (not me - obviously).

No, it's not a great point. If you dislike the motives behind Ripple, I'd understand, but people seem to be upset with a lot of things that aren't really big issues. A promise of being paid one dollar sure is not the same as one dollar in your wallet, but this is just the same in real life. In real life, you "solve" this by dealing with banks. In Ripple, you will probably deal with gateways having a role very similar to banks. It's a bit of stretch imagining Ripple gateways becoming as large and trustworthy as banks (well, if you really consider banks that trustworthy), but the concepts are in essence the same.

To most people "scam" does not mean what you think it means.

- Ripple developers are a group of smart guys who know what they are doing

- The Ripple software will be released as Open Source very soon: 2 to 3 months according to Jed. Probably longer. This year more than likely.

- The Ripple system with withstand rigorous mathematical scrutiny

- Ripple founders gave themselves all 100 billion of the XRP, which functions perfectly as a currency

Since the NAV is higher than .1, won't BTCINVEST be losing money each time you trade?

I think those people all have their email set to be public in their profiles.

Nope, this isn't an auction thread. You guys should just buy from Jutarul.

The block size issue has the possibility of crippling satoshidice.

Unless they start doing things more efficiently the network will act to defend itself one way or the other against the SD "attack" whether through increased fees or blocking SD transactions altogether. SD may have to invest in its own mining equipment if it wants to continue its wasteful ways.