Unless I'm mistaken, asking whether "anyone (is) taking bets" on X is not the same as actually making a bet with someone. For example:

Person A: Is anyone taking bets that Michael Jackson will be dead by the end of 2012?
Person B: I accept your bet in the amount of one million dollars. Since he's already dead, you lose and you owe me one million dollars.

Since A never actually accepted B's wager of a million dollars, there was no actual bet made.

Are mining cards any good for transcoding video? I haven't had much luck finding software to do this.

He states in a later post that the bill is issued in the landlord's name.

But if anything the person scamming the power company is the landlord. The tenant presumably pays much more than $3 to rent the place and apparently utilities are included in that. It's not really the responsibility of the tenant to ensure that the landlord is paying the proper amount to the power company, that's between the landlord and the company.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about several of your statements.

The fact is he's paying for a service, whether he's overusing it is to some degree pretty subjective unless it's spelled out in their agreement or applicable law, which neither you or I know the full details of. I guess we can safely assume it's the same thing morally and legally as burglarizing the guy's house though, right?

Nicely trolled sir.

How is that situation analogous in any way? Is talking a lot on a phone when you've paid for an "unlimited" plan the same thing as paying your bill with a stolen credit card? (It's not.)

False idols!

They have been around since at least July and a lot of people thought it seemed 'off' back then, the cards are a newer development though. If only their 'buy' price of $10.XX applied to regular garden variety bitcoins and not just to their fancy cards you could make a killing buying them off other exchanges to sell to them.

Ok, but it's not likely to be a winning sales pitch to most people at this point in time.

That may make sense to you, but the recent trend has been that bitcoin has been losing buying power much faster than most government-issued currencies do.

I spent the time reflecting on why I found this place so addictive even though most of the people here annoy me and mining is barely worthwhile anymore. I couldn't think of a good reason so I've been devoting more time to other hobbies with more profit potential.

I could be mistaken but I seem to remember the promotional material on the website advocating trying to "pass" the coins at the USD equivalent of their face value without necessarily explaining that they were not government issued currency. By early 2008 the 1 oz silver coins were being issued as $50 denominations, far in excess of the market price for silver at that time ($10-20 over 2008) and a little more than even the recently set ~20 year high of $48.XX (it's around $40 today.) It's also worth noting that "associates" got the coins for 2/3 the price. http://web.archive.org/web/20081217005130/http://www.libertydollar.org/

Imagine receiving one of these as payment for something later in 2008 believing it to be a government issued coin and discovering later that the "$" face value was essentially meaningless: the issuer was no longer willing exchange it to USD  at any price (http://web.archive.org/web/20081218121525/http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/faqs/convertibility.htm) and the silver in it was only worth $10, a fifth of the face value.

Dammit, how am I going to replace the 6.XX solidcoins I had on there?

This sounds very implausible even if you ignore the credibility of the source. Guess we'll know if there's any substance to it shortly.

I agree.

People who bought lots of them with real money and were left holding the bag when the bubble popped?

Not any more, do you still want the link?

That's a good one.

Watch it just be a hoax.