Bernice: How many merchants with no PayPal problems you actually know? Of course, since their policy is to attracts as many customers as possible, people who only pay usually don't have any issues.

Gouwe gozer: Well, I already have a couple of bank accounts and BrainKing has a wire transfer option. Or do you mean something else?

Stingette: Why should it be a "challenge"? Since I opened an AlertPay account, I accepted almost 500 payments and nobody ever complained about any problems or complications.
I cannot bring back PayPal because, unfortunately, it turned out to be the worst option for merchants (although it might look like the best option for customers). There is no point to accept payments if they can freeze your account anytime and for any reason. Which means, you would be able to pay but I won't be able to get the real money.

rod03801: I could not explain it better myself.

AbigailII: I never heard of anything like that. Please send me a message with your MoneyBookers account email address and I will try to ask them for an explanation.

Bwild: That's easy, my friend. The PaidMembership page shows only new subscriptions, not the renewed ones. And since it really can be confusing, I will remove that list too.

Artful Dodger: That's correct.

Snoopy: No problems at all. But it sounds like a cookie issue. Make sure cookies are not disabled in your Chrome or blocked by a firewall etc.

Doris: 2-game match, 1:1 score?

RGroszkiewicz: It is allowed.

pauloaguia: Hmmm, alphabetical sorting? Or sorted by user ID instead of BKR.

Snoopy: Looks like it doesn't hurt to reboot the machines at least once a year.

rabbitoid: I think I can activate it tomorrow, after everyone has a chance to play their games.

furbster: Anyway, I've just stopped timeouts, just in case. I know how people can be sensitive to such issues.

furbster: Looks like the servers need a little tuning or whatever. We'll look at it soon.

Pappy: I guess you don't want to know it. And Google Translator is your friend.

If someone still thinks that BrainKing is slow for them, please send me a private message with your traceroute output. On Windows, open the command line (Start / Run ... / cmd), type "tracert brainking.com", copy and paste the output and send it to me. I will pass it to ISP, so they can analyze it and find out which of their routers is malfunctioning (if they didn't fix it yet).

AbigailII: Good idea. I will add it to the User Agreement for the new BrainKing version.

southafrikanse: Yes, that's how the web works. I've just made a connection speed test again and all tested nodes (about 60) are showing less than 1 second response time, except 3 or 4 anomalies.

By the way, something strange might be going on in Dallas (Texas, USA). The test includes two nodes in this location. One of them shows 0.89 seconds and the other one 10.17 seconds. Quite a big difference, huh? I would not be surprised if they have routing problems as well.

Snoopy: Since no serious problems have been detected today, there is no need to stop the time.
However, this timeout system is starting to bother me and I would like to find a better global solution. Sometimes I regret that I ever created a site with timeouts. If I could start it over today, I would not do it again.

AbigailII: It is started now.

Hello folks,

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that if you experience a speed problem, it is not caused by BrainKing and not even by you. The site itself is fast as always and the servers show no unusual behavior.

I've made some tests that prove that the problem is in the network, most likely in some nodes of our ISP. When I check the line speed from different parts of the world, it is very variable - from 0.4 (very good) to 4 (slow) seconds. It is usually caused by a packet loss - some data are not fully delivered to your browser, so they are automatically send again etc., which results to a delay.

There is not much we can do about it, except asking the ISP to do something about (which is what we are doing). Anyway, even if BrainKing is probably a little problematic to use for some people, it is still working and usable, although it may take a longer time. I am continuously monitoring the average activity of BrainKing users and it is not as bad as it might look at the first glance.

By the way, the upcoming version of BrainKing will count with such situations and solve them by reducing the amount of transferred data to the least possible minimum. Our implementation of Texas Hold'em Poker is a good example.

Pason69: I am sure that both AlertPay and MoneyBookers accept MasterCard.

I tried to start my Firefox 3.5 in a safe mode (all add-ons were disabled) yesterday, in order to test if the mentioned performance problem (related to the browser, not BrainKing) would happen again. Now, after more than 24 hours, everything is still very fast and Firefox does not consume any system resources when it is idle (compared to 50% before).

Well, that means that it must be one (or more) of Firefox add-ons that causes the mysterious CPU load. The only problem is that I use about 15-20 of them, so it can take some time to find out the source. But I will try.

Anyway, if you still have problems to use BrainKing with Firefox 3.5, either try to start it in a safe mode or use another good browser (Google Chrome, for instance).

Hrqls: The system is to be rewritten anyway, so I would not take it as a big issue. However, it can make problems if someone changes the weekend days because the system does not remember previous settings, of course.

I think the main problem is that the vacation system is already too complicated, as a result of attempts to satisfy all requests of improvements in the past (and some of them had been kind of ridiculous, so to speak). The system is planned to be a little easier in the future - for instance, it is not absolutely necessary to make the weekend days adjustable, so they will be probably set to Saturday and Sunday for everyone.

MadMonkey: I am afraid there is something strange with Firefox 3.5 because it happens to me too. No matter which web sites I visit, after a couple of hours the browser starts to consume 50% (or more) CPU even if it is idle. A Firefox restart usually helps, until it starts again.
It never happened with previous versions of Firefox.

MadMonkey: If that is really how the site is going to be run now , i think you will find ALOT of people leaving - Ian, pleeeeease! You are a smart guy and you know it is not true.

Imsoaddicted: It happens when BrainKing is being restarted, due to small changes or upgrades. Such downtime usually takes only a couple of seconds and the site is not available during this time period.

Imsoaddicted: What is "a page outside of site"?

El Cid: http://brainking.info/archives/20-About-feature-requests.html

alilsassy: That's another thing to be improved in the new BrainKing.

Gouwe gozer: That's more like it.

Czuch: You cannot mean that seriously.

rabbitoid: More features always goes along with more bugs.
I am not superstitious.

MadMonkey: Only 38 games to play at this moment. It should not be a problem. After that, all times should be synchronized.

pauloaguia: I think the one that caused your problem is already fixed. This one is probably a consequence of the recent short downtime and BrainKing's automatic attempt to compensate the time loss.
Well, it's another thing to improve for the 3.0 version.
Anyway, it is always recommended to change vacation days after playing all games, not before.

Czuch: I don't like Twitter.

For those who do not read BrainKing.info blog. I have started a BrainKing page at Facebook and it is the recommended place to join our discussion about the upcoming new version of BrainKing. Everybody is welcome to add own suggestions or opinions.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BrainKing/113831815814

By the way, BrainKing works fine with Firefox 3.5. I would say it is even a little faster.

beach: It's a side effect of the recovery system in case of temporarily disabled timeouts. It tries to balance the time left but does not count with weekend and vacation days.
It will be self-fixed when you make a move.

I think that I will announce the BrainKing Facebook page soon, because I want to use it for instant and quick messages of this kind.

Due to a broken optical link (somewhere in Prague) BrainKing is currently not accessible for the most users outside Czech Republic. Game timeouts have been stopped until the problem is solved.

MadMonkey: I will delete it.

It should be fixed for all future tournaments.

MadMonkey: Heh, that's funny. And it's interesting that nothing like that happened when I was testing byes before releasing them. Well, BrainKing is already too complex and even a small change can cause unexpected problems.

I'll look at it soon.

joshi tm: There is a table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_ranks_and_ratings#Elo_Ratings_as_used_in_Go

Czuch: That's a good start.

nodnarbo: Switch to small pieces at your Settings / Backgammon game.

rod03801: Your belief is confirmed.

rabbitoid: Maybe statistically, but it is logically possible.
But you can blame Sun: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Collections.html#shuffle(java.util.List)

On the other hand, I am not sure if I reset the start position if multiple invitations are created at once.

rabbitoid: No, that's another issue. BrainKing is programmed to be triggered by PayPal (a secure HTTP request) just when the payment is received, so the whole process is fully automatic. However, this is still a PayPal-to-PayPal transaction, so I don't actually have the money yet.
What I am talking about is the PayPal-to-bank transfer (so the PayPal funds are converted to real money) which usually takes 5-7 business days to complete.