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In Christianity, in some parts of Europe there are a few people who are a bit too much in love with Mary (for my taste), that wouldn't have happened if there were no pictures of her around.

You think Europe's bad? I can't imagine it could be any more Mary-obsessed than Mexico, or at least that part of the Mexican culture on display in Texas. The image of La Virgen de Guadalupe, borne on a cloud by a little dark-skinned angel, graces everything from cathedrals to car windows to the Bandana of Catholicism I got from Woot.

(Of course, being Protestant, I never quite understood the whole thing of praying to someone other than the Big Guy himself...)

What right does paypal have to fine people. If its against the terms of service they could shut down the offending account, but fine them?

Actually, I noticed that you can't even get to the Acceptable Use Policy without being a PayPal member. Of course, you can't be a PayPal member without accepting the AUP. I'm sure there's a link buried in the signup process, but this is the sort of thing you want to think about for a while before you jump in. They're counting on you *not* stopping to think.

So if anyone would like to stop and think, here's a page I put together based on the info I can read because I am signed up with them.

http://www.littlecutie.net/paypal.html

I've been a PayPal user for years now, but not as a real stream of income. This really shows why anyone in business would do well to get a real credit card merchant account. How can you run a business if you never know whether your revenue conduit is going to suddenly dock your account for $500 at a whack?

Here's a quickie link to the test examples. The month's almost over, and I've got plenty of bandwidth to burn. (Famous last words...)

http://www.littlecutie.net/temp/slashdot/

Has anyone been tracking Firefox/Mozilla in the User-Agent stats for a large site to see if it is truly pulling browsershare from IE?

Well, when I linked to a little-viewed page on my site (during a discussion of poker, really!), the stats showed a surprising number of non-IE visitors. It seemed to be about half IE, half Opera, Mozilla, and the like. An awful lot of visitors weren't using Windows, either.

That means either 1) Slashdot visitors use alternate browsers and OS's, or 2) Slashdot visitors like to modify their browsers' User-Agent strings. With this crowd, I'd think both are equally likely.

However, if your site is about Luxury cars or expensive network equipment, you will most likely much more money per clickthrough. As I mentioned in another post, I get $1 to $7 per clickthrough, however, I'm lucky if I get one or two clickthroughs per day. The demand just isn't that high for stuff like that. Now if I was running pr0n banners on a site that served pr0n, I'd probably get a ton more clickthroughs, but probably a fraction of a cent for each one.

There's the rub... the price Google pays depends entirely on the amount Google can charge. The AdSense ads on my Dixie Chicks page bring in 4-6 cents a click, because they're for CD sales -- not a high-margin business.

Compare that with a single 41c click on an ad on my Video Poker page! If I had something useful to say about Viagra or Credit Repair, I bet I could get even more per click. But I haven't yet figured out how to work those subjects in to my Dixie Chicks site yet.

But I've *never* gotten a $1 clickthrough... much less a $7! Looks like I need to create a "Dixie Chicks NetScreen" page... as soon as I figure out WTF NetScreen is.

I've never understoood the appeal of standing in front of a video poker terminal*, feeding in cash and pushing the little buttons, when I know that the odds are against me. But I have spent many unproductive hours with handheld poker games, and was inspired to come up with a system to lose less often. At the risk of slashdotting my new host, here's my geeky take on How to Lose Less at Video Poker.

It got mixed reviews a year or so ago when the topic came up in a previous Slashdot story, but it still seems to hold up for me -- at least, when there's no real money involved. The main criticism, IIRC, was that my method is very conservative, reducing the chances of a Big Win. Since I'm not the type to plug fifty bucks into a machine in hopes of a Big Win, I'm still happy with the method as it stands, but I'm receptive to comments.

I was hoping to try it out on a trip to Oklahoma, but when I stopped in the so-called Indian Casino in Okmulgee, I found nothing but a bingo parlor (with touch-screen monitors in place of ink daubers) and a couple hundred video 8-liners. Not one real video poker machine to try my luck. I'll have to hit the truck stop in Louisiana again... last time I was there, I played two 25c hands, lost one, won 50c on the other, and cashed out.

* Spending several hours plugging quarters into Pac-Man, however, is another thing entirely.

Thats why I play Poker when I gamble in vegas. Low limit tables ($2 $4) usuaully have beginners or drunks.

Good point... for all my ranting about mathematics, I still like to play the ponies on occasion, for the same reason. There is a large enough mass of people who play based on the horses' names, random numbers, or the color of the jockey's silks to overcome the house and state's cut.

In fact, I could be accused of not having a dog in this fight... I've never been to a casino! The closest I've come was playing Video Poker in a Shreveport truck stop (put in two quarters, lost one hand, won two quarters on the next, cashed out). Who knows, I may go in, be seduced by das blinkenlichts, and join the other beginners at your table...

Only if the order matters. If you can get them in either order, the chances are 2/52 * 1/51.

On your page there are some (rather large) errors.
Keeping a kicker when drawing to a pair is, well, crazy. Your chances of making two pair are slightly higher, but your chances of making trips and especially quads is greatly reduced.
Also, on a "normal" draw poker machine, it's not correct to go for an inside straight rather than keep a high card. In fact, it's so wrong that it's better to throw away your whole hand rather than draw to the inside straight.
I haven't closely looked at the rest of it, but you close with the statement "You will lose." On a "9-6" machine (full house pays 9, flush 6) with perfect play you'll lose less than half a percent. If you figure in casino incentives (cash back, comped meals and rooms) it's a pretty good deal. There are even some wild-card video poker machines that with perfect play yield slightly greater than a 100% return.

I have never been any good at poker... in high school, playing nickel-ante poker, I lost about $25 to just one of my friends. Typically, after about 15 minutes of play, everyone was playing with "my" money.

But recently, I spent some quality time with a hand-held poker game, and played the "hundreds or thousands" of games as described in the article. Not enough to become an expert, but I did come up with a technique to make my 100 credits last longer.

I hacked away as much complexity as I could. The heart of my method is to forget about the effect of getting two cards you need. The chances of getting two specific cards is something like 1/52 * 1/52 = 1/2704 -- too small to care about. So the entire method is about the next card.

Of course, I put it online: How To Lose Less At Video Poker. At the risk of slashdotting my own server, I'm curious if anyone can find any obvious flaws in the method.

I found this Java-based tutorial that purports to generate the "optimum payout" -- it often disagrees with me, presumably because it's trying for big payouts. My method doesn't promise profit, only smaller losses.

An important disclaimer: I've never used my method with any non-trivial amount of actual cash. Here in Texas, there are video poker machines in every Quickie Mart, but I just don't see the appeal. Now, if they would put in a Pac-Man machine...

Since chess moves are limited to a certain domain, what *would* be a good game for creating and/or testing an AI computer system?

You would think that Poker would be a good choice (real poker, not Video Poker). You don't win just by playing the odds -- you have to gauge your opponents' playing style and determine when they're bluffing and when you should bluff. I know how tough that is... I lost $40 to one guy in high school playing nickel-ante poker (do you still have that watch, Ted?).

But so much of that kind of poker depends on body language... setting a CRT in one of the chairs just wouldn't be the same.

Now, when they make a computer that can play An Enchanted Evening, I'll be impressed! (And maybe a little creeped out...)