AP Visit: I'm going to Costa Rica

[teddyFBI]

WTF, did Absolute register a bunch of shill accounts to make between 300 and 2,000 posts, and then jump out of the woodwork to claim that this historic trip is somehow a victory for Absolute? GTFO!
Paul Levy, get a clue.
Chernyakov, get a clue.
All others who think that Nat's going down to somehow give them a seal of approval, get a clue.
It's easy to sit behind your computer screen and throw darts, but Nat's been the guy out there getting his hands dirty in exposing this sham, and if he goes down there and gets stonewalled, you better believe we're gonna hear about it here. Everyone who knows the guy in real life has vouched for his integrity, and god knows he's not going to let AP turn this into a PR-victory without asking them the toughest questions they've had to face since their inception.

(p.s. Nat >> I'd like to see you approach this task with a little more zeal: your repeated offers to have Andathar go in your stead, while understandable, are giving the impression of a little ambivalence...I'd love to see you give your all here, which I'm sure you will. Don't let the idiots on these forums get you down. Those of us with an ounce of common sense understand why you're going, and why this is a GREAT thing for all involved.)


And Mason -- not that we don't all owe you a debt of gratitude for helping our poker games via books/forums/etc, but the silence from your end on this issue has been deafening. I think I speak for more than a couple people here (which I believe I'm authorized to do) when I say that I would have liked to see 2+2 representatives do a little more with respect to this unfolding scandal than pop into threads to remind us of your intellectual property rights. But perhaps you have done a lot of things behind the scenes that I'm simply not aware of.

[SL__72]

Well they did provide these forums, which helped create a pretty unique online community and also provided a central location for this investigation to be discussed/carried out by said community.

Also, Mason's first post on the subject:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1
shows his position pretty well I think. It sounds a lot like what Adanthar/Nat are saying now.

[CybrPunk]

[ QUOTE ]
And Mason -- not that we don't all owe you a debt of gratitude for helping our poker games via books/forums/etc, but the silence from your end on this issue has been deafening. I think I speak for more than a couple people here (which I believe I'm authorized to do) when I say that I would have liked to see 2+2 representatives do a little more with respect to this unfolding scandal than pop into threads to remind us of your intellectual property rights. But perhaps you have done a lot of things behind the scenes that I'm simply not aware of.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry to go off-topic here, I'll end on topic tho...

I have to say that I highly doubt Mason or 2+2 has done much behind the scenes. I've seen this official "non" stance from the admins here all too often and, honestly, it sours me on the 2+2 brand to see that the people who make a living from the poker community, as well as the hosts of the largest online poker community (and one of the largest online forums worldwide) are not willing to take any sort of stand for the game we love or the people that sustain their livelihoods.

There are times I think it's a shame that this forum has to exist on the servers of a company that, truthfully, appears to do the least to help the industry and poker community as a whole. I can't recall a single instance throughout the course of the past year where poker has faced some sort of scrutiny or scandal and 2+2 has done more than issue a statement prepared by their attorney about how they have no stance.

2+2 is a publishing company that happens to be poker-oriented. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that 2+2 is going to stand up for the poker community or do things on our behalf. They can't even let a statement like Nat's slip. Mason is sure to show his face as soon as someone says they're representing this community, yet where were the statements during the times that UIGEA was passed, when Party pulled out from the US and when this scandal first started.

In the end, they just want to keep their legal costs down while book sale figures soar. That's what book publishers do, they publish books.

/rant

Nat -

Ignore the haters and do what you feel is right in this case. You've been nothing but a class act and have done a tremendous amount of work for people without being compensated for it already. There are plenty of people who will offer their opinions or viewpoints and make ridiculous statements like you should be doing this for free. You and I both know the people who would say those things are:

A - TOOLS
B - People who didn't lose anything in this scandal

I think it's a great thing for the poker community at large to have someone like yourself invited down to AP and I don't see any reason why you should forfeit your income for that period.

The one thing I haven't seen mentioned that should be of interest is how many layers of security from front-end to back-end systems and who had the ability to access and of the middle security layers as well as which ports were open between front-end/back-end, what type of communication is permitted from one server to another and is there anywhere in this configuration that allows for network scanning/packet sniffing equip.