Wow, rates have changed and it's basically no longer possible to fund your Ripple account for 0.1 BTC. The price of BTC has fallen and the price of XRP has gone up.
A lot of people here are perma bulls / bears. They are advertising their views all the time. It would be interesting to be able to have a votable indicator for that. Then you would immediately know what's going on and be able to properly judge their posts.
Bitcoin mining is safe but i wouldn't remortgage the house to get into it as once Butterfly labs release their ASIC mining kit the difficulty will go way up and make GFX card mining redundant.
While there is money to make with bitcoins it's about to get very expensive to get in on the for profit side of mining.
Even if site offer you a free bet you may try to resist the temptation lest you feel the urge to deposit your own money. Please dont give in to temptation.