A couple quick thoughts on this.

Any law like this is going to be very specifically directed at cash because it is virtually unenforceable otherwise.  You can't really prohibit barter if nothing in question is not directly valued in currency terms.

The value of a currency is dependent on the ability to use it in transactions.  If you limit people's ability to use currency you have essentially destroyed its value.  People will switch to something else, whether BTC or even Tide laundry detergent, just to pick a ridiculous example that, nevertheless, people have actually used.

However, even if you make the law very clear as to what is prohibited, people will probably just ignore it.  People involved in illegal activities will just ignore it because they generally ignore laws.  Normal people will ignore the law because it is stupid.  There are places like restaurants and clubs where people like flashing around money.  So it will basically piss off wealthy people and damage service industries.

So you basically drop a bomb on the legitimate economy without touching the illegal activities you're supposedly trying to stop.  There is also no shortage of countries who would love to have their currency used in any kind of economic activity and will not hesitate to fill the breach.  Like the United States, which never objects to dollars being used anywhere.  Nothing spends quite like greenbacks for those CIA black budgets.  Though as BTC continues to catch on, I wouldn't be surprised if you see it replacing some of this kind of use of cash.

Something like an update might be nice.

Bueller?  Bueller?

An update by PM from someone who can't yet post.


Gosh, I wonder who could possibly be doing that.  The morons who claim to be from Russia perhaps who attacked Seals?  Or someone we know perhaps.   

Yep.  I've tried in UDP and TCP.  Seems to be down.

Anyone else having trouble connecting to the server or just me?

There are two tournaments in the lobby, including the Monday PLO, that are in the past.  There is no Monday PLO scheduled for tonight, even though it's Monday.

Good thing BTC isn't cash!

The site is still good, and one of its strengths is that the management, when there, is top notch.  Only in the past couple weeks has there been an absenteeism issue, because of the ICE conference.  The issue is the lack of delegation of authority when there is an issue.

When Di is around, the fact that bitcoind is more than a bit flaky (and bitcoind just is flaky across the board) is not an issue, because it's back up in a couple minutes.  Cashouts, unlike most BTC gambling sites, are basically instant and hit the blockchain within seconds of a cashout.  While the site has recently instituted 1 confirmation deposits, any site not run by idiots has done that too.  Though I suppose it is reasonable to have 0 confirm deposits if someone only gambles against the house and cashouts are handled manually, doing it when people play against each other creates an accounting nightmare if even an accidental double-spend happens.

So the problem isn't that the site is bad in general, but that there is no delegation.  There needs to be.  When the main guy is out of town, calling a guy who calls a guy who calls another guy is not a solution.

I hate to post publicly to trash a site where I've played for well over a year and that is one of the few truly unique BTC gambling sites, but the last several days of absentee administration have been ridiculous.

Bitcoind has been down over and over, generally only staying up a few minutes at a time.  However, the client still gladly clipboards people's BTC addresses so they can make a deposit, which will not show up until the daemon is restarted.  This has really impressed the few noobs who have tried to make deposits, seen them on the blockchain, and then not seen jack in-game.  "This happens every day" isn't a really impressive response either.  Considering this is a routine occurrence and you knew you'd be out of town (purportedly to promote the game), wouldn't having a plan for this make sense?  (And "wait for someone to call me on my cell phone every couple hours" isn't much of a plan.)

Then, the Feather Tree game comes up dying.  Wouldn't checking this before leaving for days on end have made sense?

And nevermind soldiers.  That's a whole other issue.  It doesn't affect me much, but noobs showing up are not going to be impressed with no soldiers, and then not being able to deposit or cash out.  First impressions are worth a lot and this kind of shit doesn't make good ones.

Seriously, some delegation of responsibility is in order for situations like this.

Thanks for a good game at most times, but the last few days have been an exercise in constant frustration.

Don't believe so.  I haven't seen the error again, but then, I also haven't finished a video and then let it sit for a couple hours before entering the captcha.  Haven't had any other glitches.

Just got this oddity after entering the captcha.  I had forgotten it and let the system idle for probably an hour between finishing the video and entering the captcha, though, so it might have expired or something.  Still shouldn't give a message this bizarre.

I think Micon's behavior will equal Josh's when he collects a bunch of money in advance for a nonexistent product then has no rational explanation (unless a stream of obscenities and insults is rational) for where it's all gone.

Anyone who doesn't think this is sketchy probably also still thinks pirate is paying off any day now.

This can't be trusted until the legality is brought up to OVER 9000!

This is the page I see and yes, it always goes past it when I click.

I see that screen every time I log in, even after blowing away my cache.  Not sure what's up, but assume it will go away eventually.  I don't get it in Firefox, which I never used to log in.

Try http://193.107.84.5/

And/or

https://193.107.84.5/ (preferable)

It may just be a bit slow.

A bit ago, I deleted cache and tried to load the site.  Got the CloudFlare page saying it was down, with a button to try again in the middle of the page.  Clicked that, site came up.  Logged in.  Clicked Play.  Got an odd error from Safari, saying the browser didn't recognize the IP address.  Hit refresh, it came up.

There are now 4 of us online.

Anyone who has tried to connect during the outage might need to blow away their cache, reload, or otherwise get past leftover cruft from the downtime.