Strange as it seems - Windows Vista was absolutely terrible when it was first released, in my case my notebook seemed 100x slower than it would’ve been with XP installed - the hard disk was always thrashing, while just about any software seemed to hang forever.  I lost count of how many times I thought about throwing this notebook through the window…

Fortunately for some of us, a few leaked beta copies of Vista SP1 found their way onto the Internet, and one of these made my computer tolerable, at least until now.  Yesterday you read a bit about the hassles I encountered when installing SP1, but you’ll be glad to know that once I removed the Nokia drivers, things went smooth as silk.

So today is a special day of sorts - next year I’ll be able to proudly mark March 21st as the day my notebook began to act like a notebook should.

But did it make things better for casino software? Read the rest of this entry »

Mickey.. er.. MicroSoft hasn’t changed its ways one bit.  Despite providing us with Windows, and giving us Word, Excel, IE, and a ton of other stuff - it still hasn’t learned to be friendly to anyone but their own geeks and nerds.

I’m sure all of you have experienced the frustration of the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), or else some error which keeps one of your programs from working properly - and all you get is a cryptic error message like “Error 0×80073712 - Get Help”.

Read the rest of this entry »

After a day of messing around with some new scripts for a different project, I decided to take a look at the jackpot database to see how busy the jackpots were - and did a double-take.  Note the time of this post, however, as numbers do fluctuate according to time and markets.

The most interesting piece of data I came across was that, at this particular moment, Playtech’s jackpots have an increase rate which is more than all other jackpots combined - needless to say “all other” includes Microgaming and Cryptologic and all the other major software manufacturers. Read the rest of this entry »

…why there haven’t been any posts in the last couple of days, I’ve been tied up trying to gather additional information for Awesome Jackpots as well as trying to write a bunch of code for AJ as well as my hotel booking site.

A couple of software platforms have yet to respond to my requests for information - kind of strange considering it’s essentially free promotion for them - but I’ll keep knocking and either I’ll get the information from the horse’s mouth or I’ll get the information from a bug on the wall of the stable of the horse - one way or another I get what I want, so if you’re reading this and have received a request for information from me, might be a good idea to give me the official version… Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Mr. Spitzer, at least you did the right thing.  Quite a fall from grace, methinks - from the Emperor’s Club to just plain old Mr. Spitzer.

Good bye.

Good riddance.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, lest you be charged for damaging public property as well.

I nearly spit my Crystal Lite all over my notebook when I saw the Breaking News from CNN… New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, formerly NY’s #1 enemy of online gambling as NY Attorney General - has admitted that he was involved in a prostitution ring.

I guess even tenacious bulldogs who bark and bite and never let go sometimes latch on to the wrong thing.  But this particular instance has completely startled New York citizens, not to mention a number of other high-profile personalities and people. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been moving servers, upgrading scripts, and playing around with themes for the site, so on occasion you may discover that the site is down or looks different or acting weird (like its owner).

Rest assured it’s not you, you’re not imagining things.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience… everything should be back to normal this week.

The Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (iMEGA), a group of people formed to challenge the legitimacy of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), saw its challenge shot down in flames in a court decision rendered on March 2.

iMEGA challenged the UIGEA on a number of issues, including the right to free speech, the right of states to regulate gambling, and the inconsistency of the UIGEA with the foreign trade obligations of the US with respect to its membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Read the rest of this entry »

I was cruising around one of my favorite haunts, Casinomeister, when I happened on a post which asked, What about your Privacy & Security?.

It turns out that a player is claiming that a casino asked him for the usual ID documents for their own records - but when asked by a payments processor for those documents, they were provided by the casino - NOT the player. Read the rest of this entry »

Most online casinos offer bonuses of one type or another to try and attract your custom. Quite often there’s a large bonus available for opening an account, followed by weekly offers to keep you active.

However, there’s no such thing as a free lunch - every bonus has conditions, of which the most common is a minimum playthrough. For example, if you deposit $100 and get $100 in bonus, you may be required to play the entire amount ($200) through X number of times - quite often this can be 15x playthrough or about, meaning you will need to wager $3000 before being permitted to cash out. Read the rest of this entry »