oldbloke's mutterings

1.
I mentioned the eBay phishing mails.
Yesterday I went into My eBay, just to make sure all was well.
Noticed the email address was the old-style Uni one, so thought I'd change it.
Today, couldn't sign in to eBay.
After much to-ing and fro-ing, used the Live Chat facility to talk to their support guys - no sign of fraudulent activity, temp pw generated, will arrive by mail in a couple of hours.
Probably something broke when I was doing that update yesterday and left the account in limbo.

2.
(a)
Apparently one of the big online poker sites had a superuser account, for testing stuff. Logged in with it, you could see all the hole cards. And somebody found out about it and started using it...
This may be the truth of the 'fake security patch that sends your hole cards to somebody' rumour
(b)
Also the winner of a major online tournament got Dq'd, prize removed, for playing more than one account in it. This was something like half a million Euros!
(c)
Some of the medium sized limit games online are apparently little more than a playground for bots.

Just found PaddyPower are running a dead pool!

First to be extinct?
Singles Only. Settled on the first of the listed below to be declared extinct or extinct in the wild by the IUCN after Sept 13th 2007. Bets void should none of the below become extinct by Sept 2010.
Baiji (Chinese Dolphin) 1.50
Dusky Starfrontlet (Hummingbird) 11.00
Sumatran Orangutan 26.00
Madagascar Pochard (Duck) 7.00
White-bellied Heron 11.00
Gharial (Reptile) 34.00
Cross River Gorilla 9.00
Bengal Florican (Bustard) 17.00
Sawback Angelshark 41.00
Blue-crowned Laughingthrush (Bird) 11.00
St Helena Plover (Wader) 21.00
Waved Albatross 51.00

PaddyPower are giving me a tenner. But, it has to cross the felt on some of their casino games.
My first impulse is to split it into, say, 20 50p bets and just do black 20 times on roulette.
But perhaps you have a better idea. There are an awful lot of games to choose from, from trad casino stuff to Monopoly and Cluedo. Most of it I've never heard of.

Somebody called Steve Walker (couldn't be fishboy, could it?), on the letters page:

First Worcester is flooded and now Tabasco. Can we expect to see a thousand islands under water by the end of the year?