diogenysos: Be aware though, that that is a valid and accepted strategy in real-life games - making complicated or surprising moves to have your opponent time out. The point here is more that there is an arbitrary 1 - 10 minute extra time before time-out, which makes it random. It could even happen that your opponent has -9 minutes and you have 0 minutes, and just when the demon comes by, it is your move, so you *lose*. And a malicious opponent could even use that - if you watch the timeouts taking effect in the system, you can time the demon's arrival up to 1 or 2 seconds, so you could make a move right before that...
I agree with you that a game where seconds count should have a more exact time control that ~10 minutes.