Probably.  It's just gambling.  The only long term winner is the house.

Same here.  I only registered when I wanted to reply, and then found out I couldn't make a reply.  If this site wasn't "the" place for crypto currency communication and news, then I probably would've left due to the restrictions in place.

There has to be a better system for handling bots... :/

What is "reveive" supposed to mean, anyway?

Personally "newbie status" prevented me from making several helpful posts in the past.  The threads weren't in the "newbie" section, and thus I wasn't allowed to post.  The problem with "newbie status" is that it relegates honest users to the kiddie pool.  It certainly has value in stopping spam posts, but I'm sure there are other ways to go about doing it.

Plus, if someone wanted to spam, they would have no trouble creating an account, waiting 4 hours, making 5 spam posts, and then proceeding on to spam the rest of the site.

"The defendant shall not engage, as whole or partial owner, employee or otherwise, in any business involving loan programs, gambling or gaming activities, telemarketing activities, investment programs or any other business involving the solicitation of funds or cold-calls to customers without the express approval of the Probation Officer prior to engagement in such employment."

I emboldened the important part.  Butterflylabs is not any of those.  You might say, "Well, it's an investment program!"  You'd be wrong.  An investment program is more like, "Give us money and we'll give you more money back after some amount of time."  Butterflylabs is providing a product that you're paying for.

As for the "omg it's fake, Butterflylabs doesn't actually have the units they say they do," again you'd be wrong.  They have already shipped to roughly a dozen paying customers.  These are customers with no affiliation to Butterflylabs.  Plus, we know what the boards look like due to the videos and screenshots we've seen.

In summary, I suppose you'll have to wait and see.  However, I'll be enjoying my Jalapenos in a few months time.