http://betsofbitco.in/ has no restrictions on location. They're probably totally legal here as well, because except for sports gambling, and futures markets specifically, there are no US federal laws prohibiting gambling. Several laws (The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, The Federal Wire Wager Act, 18 U.S.C. 1084) prohibit the transfer of funds by wire for purposes of gambling, but gambling itself is only regulated at the state level (with the two specific exemptions above.)

They're being used quite a bit for online gambling because they allow for instant deposits, instant withdrawals, zero risk of charge-back, and for some online casinos, provably fair wagering.

Actually, that's more or less true - a number of studies have found that blue (color of food, color of room, etc.) suppresses appetite. Some molds are blue, so it's plausible that there's an evolutionary advantage to being disgusted by blue food.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulates all futures trading in the US, and does so quite aggressively. However, they can't sink their claws into Bitcoin: Try http://betsofbitco.in/ for a US-friendly idea futures site.

I don't know if the FBI is interested in scams, but banks are not. This summer I noticed a "too good to be true" Craig's List ad (a pair of brand new jet skis for $3000) and decided to see how the scam worked. I baited the scammer who wrote back with a story about being shipped off to Afghanistan and needed to sell the jet skis right away. He suggested using an "escrow agent" and sent me details for a wire transfer.

The bank for the "escrow agent" was a JP Morgan Chase branch in Petaluma (?) California. I got ahold of the branch and explained what I had done, and said "I know you can't give me details on one of your customers' accounts, but I bet there have been wire transfers into this account, and in-person cash withdrawals for the same amount from it - am I right?" They confirmed (oops!) that that was the case and put me in touch with their fraud division.

After explaining the whole story to the fraud division, I suggested they set up a sting: Make their online banking site report that I had made a $3000 deposit, let me know when that had happened, and I'd tell the scammer that I had made payment. When he shows up at the branch to withdraw the money, nab him.

The bank never called back.

If PETA thinks that Pokemon is bad, I would like to direct them to this so-called game that makes a sport out of tipping cows! I would like to encourage PETA to protest my game in the most vocal way possible, because, damn, it's tough getting free press for a gambling game. Get it on Slashdot, on Gamespy, on CNN and on Time Magazine's site. Please? PETA? I'll give you a soy cookie!

Why hasn't the above comment been rated +5 yet? Wish I had mod points now.

You know what's identical to this? Land. The reason people sell land is because human lifetimes are finite. For the same reason, never spending a single Bitcoin would be an enormous waste.

I'm curious what the penalty is for operating totally unlicensed. If accused, can do demand a jury trial? Because if I was a juror on such a case I'd deadlock that trial for a month if it meant fucking up the current system.

Well, I'll slashvertize my game: Dragon's Tale is a gambling MMORPG where every physical object in the world is a different sort of novel gambling game. Some are skill based, some pure luck. It's like Disney World for gamblers, and it accepts *only* Bitcoin. I'm also the designer of A Tale in the Desert, a game that's been covered on Slashdot and pretty much every major gaming site (back in the day - it was released in 2003) and is pretty highly regarded.

So now you know of two places that use Bitcoins. Oh, and if you look here you'll find several thousand more. (But I suppose then you could no longer say "I've yet to read about...")

I do most of the design and programming on A Tale in the Desert and Dragon's Tale and I've seldom/never needed to do an integral or solve a system of differential equations. Understanding those concepts does frequently influence game design, however, so having taken those courses was important, at least for the kind of games I do. (Giving specific examples would require that you are familiar with gameplay for each of those games, but feel free to contact me directly if examples would be helpful.)

But on to specific branches of math: You'll certainly use linear algebra doing 3D programming, and IIRC that's considered "beyond" calculus. (If you're using OGRE or Unity 3D, at least at the API level then I'm surprised you haven't run into this.) Applied Math, which is often a college freshman course for a CS decree is crucial to all sorts of programming, especially games. Combinatorics is critical for game design, though if you're just planning to be a programmer, not so much. Numerical Methods will teach you exactly when and why rounding errors to happen, how they can compound each other, and in general help you write squeeky-clean math code. The game I'm working on now is a gambling MMORPG - I probably don't even have to say how important statistics is, if this sort of thing is in your future :)

Notice how different each of the math subjects above is? A lot of this comes down to learning how to learn, and that's the one thing that in my experience differentiated high school academics from college.

Yes, but with a wiretap the undercover part wouldn't be needed in the first place. Also, in a state with an "objective" entrapment test (in this case "would a normal law abiding person have sold the drugs when begged") this would be a difficult defense. But in states with a "subjective" entrapment test ("would the defendant himself have done the crime if simply asked rather than begged") it would seem like a pretty tight defense. According to Wikipedia, 37 states use the more stringent subjective test.

Right - if they persuade someone to commit a crime that they otherwise would not it's entrapment. This happened to a friend at Burning Man a few years ago: A new guy was hanging around the friend's camp all day, drinking, smoking weed, just getting to know everyone. After several hours he says "hey, I've got some extra weed, could any of you help me turn it into mushrooms?" My friend, thinking he was doing the new guy a favor agreed. Turns out the "new guy" was an undercover cop and busted my friend for distribution; he was hauled off to Reno, spent the night in jail, the whole works. The next day he was released and charges dropped because (presumably; I wasn't able to accurately get this part of the story) the cops felt they had crossed the line of entrapment and persuaded someone who wouldn't normally distribute drugs, to do so.

So what if a drug dealer got word out that all customers must go through the following routine on each purchase:

Customer: Do you have any weed?
Dealer: Sorry, I don't sell weed.
C: Would you do it just this one time?
D: No, I don't do that.
C: Please, just do it for me.
--- etc ---

If the customer was in fact an undercover cop, then the fact that he was repeatedly begging to buy drugs makes for a perfect entrapment defense.

Oh, there's a lot of things that are now considered insensitive that didn't used to be. For instance "idiot" and "imbecile" used to be clinically accepted ways of describing people with low IQ (0-25, and of 26-50 respectively.)

My sister works in the mental health field and was horrified when I used the word "retarded" to describe a certain child. I believe the accepted term is now "differently tarded."