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Cherry, Cherry, Blue Screen Of Death
Falrick writes "Microsoft, the company that has its fingers in inumerable pies, decided to follow suit by also placing their toes in them with this anouncement yesterday that they will also be moving into the embedded chip market. While the article doesn't say that Microsoft will actually be producing chips, they are apparantly licensing special versions of WindowsCE for use on a variety of chips including those made by Intel, ARM and MIPS. On the upside, though, for those of you who would like to get back those licensing fees, or Microsoft Tax, that you paid on that shiny new system a few years ago, MS may also be partenering with Bally Gaming & Systems to put WindowsNT into their casino slot machines. Now, what's the payoff on three blue-screens in a row again?"
Now Bill Gates can get even richer: just trojan NT and play slots all day.
"Yeah, for most people the odds are 13 to 1. For me, they're 1 to 1".
Let me guess.. you geeks love the idea of a slot machine chip with embedded linux.. what a revolutionary idea.. but you hate the ones with Microsoft.. what else is new.. ramble on geeks
Look for a book called "Beat the Dealer", by Thorpe. He gives a strategy that would enable a player to beat the odds (until the casinos changed their rules shortly afterwards). There's a simplified strategy that doesn't require counting cards, but it has a slightly negative payoff.
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100% pure freak
If anyone does see a slot machine blue screen, I want a picture.- ---------------
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And have my refrigerator blue screen on me?!?! No thanks!!!
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
I love you, and I want to bear your children!
Look around you. Do your remote controls look all the same? Do all the locks on doors look the same? Do monitors have the same interface for changing "aspect ration" and stuff? Even on the Internet the web pages don't look the same. If people should have the same GUI all around, just make a standard. But look around, and see which devices have the same UI. Telephones? Maybe. I guess you can't write an email with my cellular phone.
People shouldn't think the windows UI is the best and standard, and all the others are crap. People should know that, as in real life, computers also have different interfaces, and you should adapt yourself like when you buy a new TV, CD player, car, etc.
because microsoft produces poor quality software?
because microsoft has conditioned the average person into accepting said poor quality?
because that mindless acceptance now bleeds into other areas?
nah, it must be because microsoft have 9 letters in their name.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
"This gambler has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down."
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I can't even type that without laughing. I've been watching my employer slowly bleed to death
For weeks now the switch has been up ... down ... partially disabled ... unreachable ... unuseable. It just goes on and on and on.
Despite the little 'five nines' posters in M$ colors that are up all over Los Angeles I don't think they're there yet - we should be making a 'three sixes' banner using the same colors and hanging them up around major urban areas - let the truth be known!
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Of course, the people who have won millions from the lottery or slot machines are currently laughing their heads off at your ramen noodle-eating ass. :)
Cheers,
What is your experience with embedded systems? Your post sure sounds like you don't have any at all, but since you're giving out advice, surely you must have some. Please settle this seeming contradiction.
Cheers,
Nope, because DOS is a 16-bit OS. Windows CE is a completely new (well, five-ish years old new) 32-bit operating system, written from the ground-up for embedded systems. No DOS, no legacy Windows code, no nothing. In fact, the only similarity it even shares with Windows is that it supports a subset of the Win32 API, as well as a few other Windows APIs (MAPI, TAPI, a few others).
Sheesh. Bally is on the out. IGT has the largest installed base of slot machines and video poker machines and it's going up -- they make games that cater to not just old people but a new generation of slot players, young geeky folk who earned their money in computers. Check out Little Green Men the next time you're in Atlantic City or Vegas and tell me it's not targeted at Joe Slashdot User or Bearded Guy Named Eric? :)
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Let's see. . .
- Gambling (mentioned in article)
- Prostitution (above)
- Protection Rackets (The Business Software Alliance)
- Extortion (the constant upgrade cycle)
Yep. Looks like they qualify. Move over Sopranos, here come the GeekFellas. . .From what I understand, the moment you put in your credits, until you tell it to spin, a random number generator spits out numbers. Whatever you stop it at is what you get.
What I don't understand is, how my wife can be several times better than I at this.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
While I live in a primarily MS-based company, I am one of the few (2-3 people) who has a Linux box on my desk as well as an NT box. To be quite frank, I have had NT BSOD exactly once in the last year, despite being heavily used for software development (of non-MFC, portable to several Unices & AS/400 C-language based software). The cause: a bad video driver from IBM.
(Caveat: This doesn't make me a Linux hater, it just means that FUD about windows NTs stability (in the desktop market) is usually over exagerrated. I still wouldn't want to use NT as a server due to bad experiences with NT 3.51 back when I was a SysAdmin - Three dinky NT 3.51 boxes took more time to babysit than 8 10-way SparcServer 2000's each with 800GB of disk. SHUDDER )
Of course, in the last 18 months, I have never had my Linux box crash. (RedHat 6.something, kernel 2.2.something).
Of course, I DO have to reboot the bloody NT box every time I install a freaking piece of software, and that really begins to irritate after the umpty-hundredth time.
-- John
Here's an error message that was on the arrivals monitor at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands.
Microsoft should patent the blue screen of death, stating they invented it first and no one outside the company is supposed to reproduce it.
Well, unlike amazon, I think they deserve this patent.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The problem is that the commonly used versions of Windows allow the programs to take the whole OS down with them. Win2k doesn't have this problem.
is that so..
then i must have been triping when i killed my brothers unkillable win2k box w/ my leet, game playing...
that is, i have killed win2k just by trying to play games. now im not a win2k expert, dont touch the stuff but to play the latest games, but my linux box dont EVER die like that. win2k maybe more stable but progams can still take down the whole OS.
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
The payoffs at slot machines is determined by the odds that something (say, three cherries in a row) might happen. The more likely something will happen, the less the payoff will be. So what would the payoff for three blue-screens of death be?
You might get your quarter back.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
My alarm didn't wake me this morning. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the start of one of the worst days of my life, not to mention everybody else's too.
I nearly scalded myself in the shower. The cold water kept coming and going. The kitchen was even worse. I could smell rotting food even before I entered the room. I opened the fridge (after fighting with the Fridged-X system over my password) to find most of the contents spoiled, including the items just delivered yesterday. It appears the thermostat had reset itself to actually heat the food!
I tried to make a can of hash, but the stove refused to function, saying something about an unhandled interrupt exception. I had to go out to the garage and reset the breaker to reboot the damn thing.
I finally got out of the house and wouldn't you know it, my car wouldn't start. I ended up walking to work and getting there late. The elevators weren't working, and of course I work on the 30th floor. The stairwells were crammed with people franticly trying to get to their offices.
So here I am sitting at my desk, picking my butt. I'm unable to work because the systems are down (of course). Preliminary reports indicate that an April Fools Day virus has exploited a previously unknown weakness in network-connected Windows-based systems (i.e. pretty much everything).
Fortunately for you, dear diary, my Transmeta WebPad is zipping along just fine, it's Linux OS completely unaffected. And my FreeBSD-based MP9 player works too. Will people ever learn?
- Milo Hyson
You are forgetting the fact that this is Microsoft. They don't care what the DOJ is doing. They do what they want anyways!
I don't think MS is going to merge, but I do think this is an attmpt to hit Linux. I am sure Microsoft has been paying attemtion to the scalability of Linux. Especially the Linux watch that IBM created.
If they can create a chip with Windows CE on it, the can further push there windows OS. I want to see them try this. Microsoft code is bloate and bad. I wouldn't buy a product with a windoze chip in it.
Anyone know how many companies are working on a Linux chip?
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Actually, I'm not flaming Linux or BSD at all, in fact I actually really like BSD.
I've just found that often times people are quick to constantly crash their Windows system in exactly the same way, performing the exact same steps, and then, rather than perhaps spending some time to diagnose the problem they write Windows off as unstable and LIVE with the crashes. True, the system shouldn't go down becaues of one application. I couldn't agree more. But a good users adapts and learns.
And I also agree that sometimes you have almost no choice at all but to run a very specific application, but this is true regardless of the platform. Some platforms are just more fault tolerant than others (and Windows happens to be pretty intolerant.)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I did not say that the only stable Windows box is one with all of the features disabled. I was pointing out that seeing a bunch of default settings is a sure sign that some retard can't figure out how to maintain his own system, much less work around problems that might crop up.
You've obvoiusly missed that point.
OEM systems are notorious for shipping with nasty configurations, buggy software, and outdated drivers for the included hardware. Of course Windows is going to crash on such a system operated by an idiot.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Then they could sue all of their users each time they produce a BSOD.
.NET
They should included an automated micropayment system that charges users on a pay-per-use basis.
Blue Screen of
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
It's the classic "When Windows crashes it's somebody else's fault." When your server crashes, do you think your customers will accept this excuse?
When Windows crashes, it normally IS some errant program's fault.
If your sever crashes due to some software you've got running maybe...
A>. You shouldn't be using that software.
B>. You should learn how to set it up.
or, more likely...
C>. You shouldn't be the admin of a server in the first place.
...
It's not hard to avoid running shit softare that brings down a Windows box. What's often harder is figuring out WHICH one is the one causing the instability. Having a bunch of Windows options installed that aren't used doesn't help, either.
There are SO MANY things that can be done to make a Windows machine pretty stable, but when I walk up to a Windows machine and see Active Desktop Enabled, Icons all over the Desktop, File Extensions hidden, and the screen running at 640x480x256 on a 19" monitor, I pretty quickly guess that none of them have been done.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Bull. Five nines is very, very expensive. I actually looked into 5 nines on HP-UX. Thats five minutes of downtime a year!! The cost of the hardware, infrastructure, and support was mind boggling.
For the standard hardware and support I have gotten three nines out of my current HP Equipment, and much the same for my NT Stuff, oh and for Linux running on older hardware as well. Most places don't need 5 nines (not when they see the pricetag).
No as to embedded devices, Microsoft's downfall will be that they will charge for every single install. Linux will be free for every single install. And don't get me started on how you need staff that knows NT, or WINCE or whatever. Embedded programmers are smart people they will pick up, and by necessity tweak their systems to the hilt. The cost factor will hurt Microsoft in this area.
Also, from what I've heard, embedded NT has a huge footprint for an embedded OS. This will hurt MS as well. Cost is a big issue with embedded systems, if you can get by on 8MB of flash memory for the OS instead of 16MB you can save millions of dollars over the life of an embedded product.
Lets see.
2 DNS Servers
1 Database (Development) Server
1 Web server
And I'm not even a corprate office, I'm at a remote site. That's 20% of my servers running Linux.
What's the matter? Did your MS stock drop?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Can you somehow sue, under the assumption that that particular pull of the slot machine lever could of possible hit the grand prize?
Nope, sorry. Most (if not all) slot machines have a disclaimer that in the case of an error, all spins are void. Even without MS getting into the fold, slot machines occasionally fail (walk around a casino sometime while they're fixing one - absolutly fascinating). I'd be pissed if I was going to win and there was some error, but there's nothing you can do about it.
The Good Reverend
Um, well no.
Windows generally means WIN32 API.
Many embedded devices running CE don't have a GUI. It might suprise you to know that there are quite a few embedded control systems that run CE without a UI.
DOS was not multithreaded.
It did not have APIs for audio, networking, telephony etc etc.
Windows 9x is not 'just' DOS + GUI. Windows NT certainly isn't and Windows CE is most definitely not.
I thought the most interesting part of the article (and the part I mentioned when I submitted the story) was that Microsoft would let the chipmakers modify the WinCE source to use with their chips.
According to the story, selected developers have been able to see source before (naturally) but have never had permission to modify and redistribute their own versions of it.
A>. You shouldn't be using that software.
Not always an option.
B>. You should learn how to set it up.
I thought ease of setup/use was the whole reason for running Windows.
or, more likely... C>. You shouldn't be the admin of a server in the first place.
It's not hard to avoid running shit softare that brings down a Windows box.
Well, sometimes it actually is. If the software you need is not available anywhere else, do you really have a choice? When it crashes, wouldn't it be nice if the rest of your system didn't go down the toilet?
The point I made originally is that when your application crashes and if it brings down your Windows system, your users will blame YOU (not application developer X) for their system being down, and it will be YOUR fault for not choosing a more robust OS (assuming you made the choice). There are OS's out there with very good fault tolerance built in. I'm sure someone on /. can point you in the right direction :)
I'm not trying to flame Windows. It does some things very well, and it certainly has its place in IT. I use it at work and occasionally at home. However, when it comes to serious reliability and fault tolerance, in my experience Windows NT just isn't up there. I have not used Windows 2000, so I can't really comment on it.
It's the classic "When Windows crashes it's somebody else's fault." When your server crashes, do you think your customers will accept this excuse?
All one-armed bandits in Germany, which can be found in practically every pub and fast-food establishment, are covered in swathes of legal small print wedged in between the pretty flashing lights. In amongst these, it is stated quite explicitly that the wheels are weighted, even giving a probability for each wheel coming up with a cherry or whatever.
I'll never forget the shock I got once when I was gazing idly at a Photoplay (touch-screen quiz/skill game, not for money) and saw it reboot itself, connect to the internet and upload something before rebooting again and going back to the game program. And yes, it booted through DOS.
Then there was the one I saw in the middle of a shopping centre with nothing but a black screen and little Windows dialog box in the middle saying: "This program has performed an illegal operation..." I wouldn't be surprised if MS software doesn't already run a fair few fruit machines, as well as the majority of pub video game machines. Worth checking out.
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
From NTK: you kids and your new-fangled Amigas!
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
Why exactly would anyone hook up a slot machine to the internet? There is no reason for it. They have always worked fine as stand alone units that can only be opperated by the person in front of it. What about plyaing remotely? no way, it would much much easier, and cheeper for them to just slap up a few server like the ones used for internet casinos now. The only possible reason for networking a slot machine now that i can think of would be for the casino's LAN, they could tell when someone won, or when the machine was geting low on money. But i can see no reason to have it on the INTERnet.
i think this one is from an airport.
:)
id love to make a photo gallery of pics of these, as they become more common in today's world.
i think ive seen a pic of an ATM that had crashed too. when will people learn?
no
ZF Linux Devices, Inc.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
They're hidden using free encryption Internet programs set up by privacy advocacy groups. The programs scramble the messages or pictures into existing images. The images can only be unlocked using a "private key," or code, selected by the recipient, experts add. Otherwise, they're impossible to see or read.
Privacy advocacy groups are to blame for terrorist activity. Get 'em! Get 'em all! Let's wage a media war on privacy advocacy!!
Lord, I love this weak minded electorate and the media that caters to them......
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I saw an ATM that had crashed once, and it was running Microsoft OS/2. This was about 5 years ago I guess.
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
What is this "friend" thing you speak of?
Not everyone deserves a 320i
I went gambling for the first time this weekend with my girlfriend. We went to Niagra's casino. I lost $30 in roulette and $5 on the slot machines. It was fun. While I was there, I imagined the entire house as one huge money making machine. Of-course I did not know that M$ also had the same image.
It should not surprise anyone that M$ is going for the jackpot. Buying PCs with Windoze instead of specialized gambling machines probably would save casino's money in the short run, however I have all reasons to believe that it would be a big mistake for casino's to buy into the short term savings deals. Hacking into a slot machine that is connected to the Internet would become the ultimate goal for thousands of hungry hackers all over the world! And knowing what we know about M$ - it aint gonna be 2 hard.
You can't handle the truth.
I remember seeing these on the tv guide channel not so long ago...
Good imagination! I actually read the article instead of using my imagination:
Chip makers [...] will be able to make the chips for devices running versions of Microsoft's Windows CE software, the paper said.
Probably not as much fun as enjoying an active imagination, though.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
oops, my bad :-/
Guess I should have said I _skimmed_ the article.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
From the article:
Ballmer will also talk about plans to use the company's Windows NT software in the casino slot machines of Bally Gaming & Systems, owned by Alliance Gaming Corp
I have a win2k adv. server box at which I sit (I wanted terminal services on it.) Unreal Tournament crashes it sometimes. Quicktime Player crashes it (seriously, the OS halts, or at least the GUI does.) And sometimes I'll come back from lunch and it's just frozen for no apparent reason. Folding@Home manages to lock it up sometimes, too.
The hardware is all known to be good; name-brand PC100 SDRAM, intel SE440BX-2 motherboard, 3com 3c59x NIC of some sort, Creative TNT card (this is my work box), onboard yamaha DS1 audio. SCSI is provided by Adaptec 2940U2W. It's all pretty reputable.
Whistler (which I run at home) actually crashes on me less. My home system is a first gen Athlon 700 with 256MB of CAS2 PC133 on a Asus K7V. I have a no-name GEForce 2MX card, which when I play games on WinME, is OC'd to 200/200MHz (GPU/Memory clocks.) It also has a 3c59x-based NIC, an Adaptec 29160N, and a SB Live! Gold (which was later renamed platinum.)
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The uCsimm is a SIMM form factor board with 2MB flash, 8MB DRAM, 10baseT ethernet and RS-232, as well as an LCD panel driver which will do "QVGA at a resolution of 320 x 240" or mono 640 by something or other.
This is a complete hardware solution for developing embedded solutions with linux. The system is fairly speedy, but unfortunately has no memory protection, so programs can step on each other freely, if you're not careful.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
An MSCE certificate?
Ha! I kill me!
Apparently, someone actually did this in Las Vegas! The story about it is available here - it details two separate cases where people with access to the source code were able to match the generated numbers and determine when the jackpot would be paid out. (The first is in Atlantic City, the second one occurs in Las Vegas.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Do you really think Microsoft will merge with one of the leading chip makers while under the watchful eye of the DOJ? I don't think so.
That's what we all thought about AOL merging with Time-Warner.
---
Check in...OK! Check out...OK!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Not sure where, but I know there is a file you can screw with to customise the colour of the BSOD.
Just download BSOD Properties. [Check out the banner on top of that page, it's hilarious]
---
Check in...OK! Check out...OK!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
or do some simple card counting at blackjack
Damn Rainman, you do realize casino's run 5-6 deck games, right? You have about as much chance at successfully counting cards in a blackjack game as you do....well...hitting the jackpot on a slot machine I suppose.
Oops, never mind, reread Yahoo article and found the relevant paragraph.
Hahha... it seems that its watchdog timer is on the fritz and keeps rebooting it. Have had that happen to me before in an embedded device ;)
Jay
"What's this script do? unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep Hint for the answer: not everyth
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Only problem I see with the placement of an OS such as NT, or even CE in embeded devices is its inherent complexities. TV's and VCR's and Amp's all have some kind of system integrated with them, and there is no quote-unquote standard between all of them, but to change the channel, I'm pretty sure the channel up button will do the trick. The problem I see is, outside of PDA's or other such devices (saw some talk about microchips in toasters, kill me if it actually happens) there is no NEED for such a massive underlieing OS. So again, just the age old debate of which is the right tool for the job. Revelations 0:0 - The beginning of the end.
"Software giant Microsoft Corp.(NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) will announce plans to allow several semiconductor makers to modify its software to make customized embedded chips,"
Granted, it's only the source code to WinCE, but Microsoft will be letting some developers (maybe this time not even the huge expensive clients of theirs) to get their hands on the source for a Windows product.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
The only conceivable reason I can think of for spending $400 per slot machine on the os, is if they think they can save $$$ by developing the software in VB (or Delphi?)...
Last I checked (vb4 or 5, don't remember) the period of the rng is just over 10000. (It repeats the sequence every 10000 trials). I doubt its been updated in vb6.
The selection/price-browsing kiosks are just picturepad-driven machines bringing up lists from the supermarket's web page in IE.
;)
So yeah, I guess I could attribute that to the designers of the software doing a shitty job... but you said it, not me.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
I can go see BSOD'ed machines or illegal op popups with no means to click "ok" at my local supermarket. Kiosks and cash registers are not supposed to fail so often that I can see at least one out of order in that supermarket at any given time on any given day.
:p
That "make your own music compilation CD" machine is down more than it's up.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
.. Well kinda open sourcing CE, read on in this article on InfoWorld
TastesLikeFriedHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
I remember a conversation I had with someone with connections w/the cruise industry; as this is a foaf type story, take with a grain of salt. Anyway, the best time to play the slots on a cruise ship is right after the ship gets into international waters. That's the time they turn the machines on, and the first few minutes they're on, it's pretty easy money.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
The flashy UI, which would be under the control of NT, responds to signals from this hardware and sends back the user's commands as to how many credits to play, which widget was selected, and so on.
Don't worry about whether NT will make anything to do with money insecure. It won't.
Now, you might be able to make some headway with the slot club processor.
Not A Sig
Sorry, move along folks...nothing to see here. It looks like she's stable.
It seems that these days Gates cares little about the home desktop market. All of Microsofts resources are going into Win2k and WinCE. Millenium was seemed like an afterthought released because end users would demand an upgrade, but wouldn't shell out for 2k. Is Gates trying to kill the home desktop market? If so why? Sure its probally not going to be there 20 years down the line but now its lucrative. It seems odd to me.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
First - the announcement is that several manufacturers will be able to develop processors for customized versions of the various M$ embedded OS versions. I've read a lot of the posts and responses about them and it seems like half the people haven't even read it and are assuming this is about M$ installing Win2k on a slot machine. ARM, Intel and MIPS will be doing so, but isn't this really just a way for M$ to free themselves from their current architecture needs in regards to those platforms? Hardly scary news since they've been struggling to grow out their marketshare here anyways...
Second - it seems that ANY announcement by M$ will inevitably bring out any idiot from the woodwork to mention the BSOD, M$ controlling something, or how this is just another example of the man trying to keep us down.
Please, it doesn't matter if M$ donates $500M to charity or if they plan to port Office to Linux, there's always some damned *bigger* plot behind it. Yes, M$ is competitive, but it begins to sounds like whiny children after a while that need to go to the bathroom. Even worse, most of the jokes are endlessly recycled and brought up again and again.
What implication does it REALLY have for M$ to have more manufacturers for their embedded products? CE/PocketPC hasn't been a huge success (in terms of market share) in handhelds, so why is M$ being bashed and not Palm or Handspring? M$ doesn't lead in databases, so shouldn't it be Oracle that we're bashing?
Of course not, it's always M$ even though they only dominate consumer platform dekstops. Hell, we should be bashing Sun for dominating servers, right? What about bashing Sun for it's death-like grip on Java and not allowing it to be controlled by a body like ECMA?
Let's not be paranoid...
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies?
...tada.wav
BSOD!
windows has detected a fatal exception error at 000575777:988899 Milliondollarpayout.Vxd. please depost three quarters to continue. Any previous winnings will be lost.
--
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
For a second there, I thought that M$ was going to trademark the term Blue Screen of Death and sue everyone that made use of that term.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The law aside, the courts tend to look unkindly at gamblers. The judge will find some way to say "tough luck" and throw you out on the street. In the same way, courts aren't going to help you collect on a gambling debt, even for a legal wager.
the funny thing to watch would be, if Microsoft merges with AMD, and the DOJ comes in and splits up the OS/Software company, which side will get to write software and make chips?
I don't know, maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but if you strip the GUI off windows and rewrite it to give more IO control to the developers.... don't you have ..... DUH DUH DUH.... Dos?
Just my thoughts though
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
MS must have a lot of faith that the new powers that be at the Attorney General's office will not pursue their antitrust case as agressively as Reno's Rangers did.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
?????
I thought DEC was bought out by Compaq? Did a division get sold to Intel?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
I do have some such systems, am going to build an MP3 player from one, and have a catalog on embedded systems in my backpack here at school RIGHT NOW! Any questions?
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
WinCE is an OS developed for embedded devices and is meant to have a GUI reminiscent of that for Win9x.
Yes, there ARE other embedded systems on the market. I've heard nothing bad about them, but neither have I heard anything good since I haven't worked with them.
Windows is just what I call it indeed. And the server versions are mearly workgroup fileservers. Read above.
Yeah, read above for NT. 2k is an attempt to make NT better that ended up going backwards in my mind and those of many people I have worked with (and they even swear by Windows).
I don't hate M$ - really. I just believe that they have a very flawed development strategy.
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
I think the slot machine concept fits into Microsoft's vision of client access licensing via a coin slot. The slot machine just may be the first of many. I just hope the X-BOX team doesn't get wind of this concept.
With MS hardware, will the market have to ignore the sound advice of avoiding critical deployments until the first service pack is out?
As far as blue screens in embedded systems, I find it heartwarming to see the occasional guru meditation when the Amiga running my cable guide crashes. I doubt those running Vegas casinos will be as forgiving as I. That's what all those holes in the desert are for. If the deployments don't work, have two ready for Gates and Balmer.
I was part of a small team that developed a WinCE product a couple of years ago. We also had a VxWorks version that was far superior. Our salespeople went around asking customers if they were willing to pay twice as much for a product with half the speed and a fraction fo the capability and reliability, but had the Microsoft imprimateur. Amazingly, most said yes! Marketing is everything!
My managers are a fairly computer illiterate bunch though they do pour a good beer. All they know is that they have to reboot the machine at least once a shift and cop all associated flack from angry customers who want to be reimbursed for a bet they couldn't place. They are now against all computers and I even overheard them advising other local businesses that it wasn't worth investing in a computer system.
If Microsoft start to dabble in say toasters with their currently shoddy system the average joe bloe is not going to differentiate between the M$ toaster and the deluxe penguin model, they will be exposed to shoddy technology and therefore assume that the whole industry is a joke.
Not working in the IT industry, most people around me don't even have a very good concept of what an OS is let alone that there are alternatives to Windows. They assume that since their computers cause them constant trouble any computer they get will. Then they tell their friends over a few pots what a pain it's been getting the thing going and now it wont run for more than two levels of wolfenstein.
Are we concerned about this? Or do we just wait for this breed to die out still disgruntled with every aspect of the IT industry simply because they didn't know they had another option.
finding three linux machines that aren't web servers at a corporate office, though the blue screens would no doubt pay off a lot more often.
Reality bites, doesn't it?
The Game Guy
Because this site is mostly viewed by linux people that can't see the real world hanging out in front of their face. They'd much rather rant about the latest compile of their linux than see the value in products like Kylix or give M$ ANY credit.
Funny thing is, this is the only place I EVER feel compelled to defend Microsoft. Usually, I'm bashing them - but I work in Windows, so I feel justified when I run into a real problem. But it's just annoying to see a bunch of people that don't use windows or actually have corporate jobs bashing something simply because it came from Microsoft. You should all be ashamed of your narrow-mindedness. But I've come to expect that as the norm, especially from taco. I find it totally amusing and have come to stop by here everyday for a chuckle at the monkeys in the cage.
See ya!
The Game Guy
With 3rd party software, a real time NT kernel is possible. I use a SteepleChase software for process equipment. The programs run completely in memory. It uses something called Intime as its real time component. It's possible to crash NT and rip out the hard drive without effecting the program's execution. The GUI is still handled by NT so it dies, but any I/O that is going on continues to operate.
BTW, I am not pitching SteepleChase. It does its job but I don't like some of its quirks. For example, its program editor (programs are graphical/flow charts) is poor.
Oh please. The odds may be worse (may) at the slots than your bullshit methods, but either way is still just the slow, methodical loss of money. A very few people come out ahead long-term in gambling, but the rest just contribute to the development of the casino.
If you want to have fun, go to a casino. If you're trying to make money, invest.
While I agree that using Windows NT as an embedded OS is a strange choice, I think your assumption that it will crash regularly is flawed.
M$ just doesn't support this - It's only real use is in the home as a gaming machine.
You obviously have no experience whatsoever with NT. Sure, Win9x crashes all the time. It's a piece of crap. But stick NT in a box with controlled, well-tested hardware, controlled, well-tested software, and very limited I/O, and you're looking at a "five-nines" system.
Believe me, casinos aren't going to mess with something they think has a significant chance of crashing.
I can see it now:
Geek in the corner: fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty . . . Excuse me ma'am, I need to use this machine right now.
Pointy-haired lady: SECURITY!!
The five nines was to illustrate that you could design a self-contianed system that would crash, for all practical purposes, never. NT's crashes are nearly always from bad software or poorly written device drivers. If a system is properly tested, it could easily be stable enough to operate a slot machine. The power would most likely go out more often than such a box would crash on its own.
Two types of machines are vulnerable to this:
- Machines that allow non-administrative users to interactively log on. Workstation and terminal servers typically do allow this, but, per standard security practices, most other machines only allow administrators to interactively log on.
- Machines that allow remote users to submit arbitrary programs for execution. Servers such as domain controllers, line of business servers, application servers, print and file servers and the like typically do not accept arbitrary programs for execution. (from here.)
Any shop that is vulnerable in this way would not have done it any better with *nix.
Oh, and I almost forgot . . . there are patches available. Y'know, like for all those Sendmail vulnerabilities.
You mean a driver for the train?
That's scary!
Ni!
Having the same GUI for everything definitely wouldn't be a good idea. The last thing I want to do when I go up to an ATM is have to go to navigate Windows (and get the BSOD when it finally becomes time to give me my money). Windows also wouldn't make a very good interface for a GPS. Specialized devices should have intuitive, specialized interfaces. Why waste the time with windows when it doesn't map well to the problem?
While you can't get reembursed as if you had won the jackpot or really legally get reembursed at all you do have some recourse. You can simply ask for a slot manager / technition to look at it. Casinos are built on the idea of you having a good time and if you are soured on an experience you will tell your freinds and generally not patronize their establishment anymore. So if you complain (legitimately) they will generally give you your money back and sometimes more.
Case in point at the Flamingo Hotel I had a machine where I did win but no money was registered on the credit balance. I complained and not only did I get my coins back they played 4 coins for me which won, I ended up with my original 4 coins and 8 more to boot. Belive me this is 100% buisness strategy that works.
Are you lonely? Hate having to make decisons? Meetings, the practical alternitive to work.
Wouldn't it be nice if a patent was awarded for the Blue Screen of Death outside of M$. This would either force M$ into bankruptcy in order to pay for all the royalties or to produce stable code. It's a WIN-WIN situation either way!
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Microsoft making gambling devices? Not only will you be taking a chance to see if you can win, you can now bet on whether or not the machine won't crash in the middle of playing! Woo hoo!
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Is it possible microsoft just wants some embedded hardware support for their Secure Audio Path? It seems to me they should know that system won't work well with software alone. So it's possible they are going to try tying windows to their own hardware. Because of AMD, microsoft doesn't have it's previos wintel cartel so maybe their creating their own hardware controls.
Maybe the people on the west-coast will have an easier time. "Eastern Eggs?".
My pro-gambler wanna-be friend tells me there is a method for making money at video poker. You have to check the odds listed on the machine, as not all are the same. Then you basically try and get a royal flush, but keep your eyes open for easy money along the way. Add to this the fact that you are getting points on your casino club card, plus free drinks...
Call your bookie and see if they have odds on the slot-machines getting the BSOD.
m.mmm..myyy
The "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" game cabinets run NT, as do a bunch of the other touch-screen based ones in British pubs nowadays. I saw one guy mucking around in the innards of one a few weeks back (looked like a service engineer), but there didn't appear to be a keyboard anywhere. It's probably just got a big reset button somewhere (like the power switch ;-), and the pubs have to pay £££ per minute to have some guy come out and tell them to switch it off and switch it on again when it bombs...
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
Well it seem's the worlds largest monopolizing geek has to get his *censored* wet in anything that possibly can hold an O/S. As of yet thier is no word of a toaster that will hold an O/S so we can all continue having out toast the way we like it. But when that day comes, you better get used to burnt toast.
EOU
Not sure where, but I know there is a file you can screw with to customise the colour of the BSOD.
Seriously.
If voting could really change the system, it would be against the law.
Uuuhhh, no actually. A couple of years back our state-owned casino business (Holland Casinos) tried to ban a group of blackjack players who were using a card counting method that was accessible to everyone with slighty above average intelligence.
I don't remember the outcome of the suit (I believe the gamblers won), but card-counting is definitely possible, you don't have to be Dustin Hoffman to do it.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Our local cable co. used to run the local access channel scrolling ads with an Amiga... For years, once every other month, the ol' Guru would be flashing, but then one day, they changed, it became an almost daily barrage of GPF errors and BSODs, usually when nobody was there to reset it. My heart sank and I wondered why they gave up on the old reliable Amiga and switched to an unreliable piece o'junk...
The Windows Embedded Strategic Silicon Alliance (WESSA), which will be officially unveiled Tuesday at a Microsoft developer conference in Las Vegas, allows member companies access to the source code of Windows CE 3.0.
The 10 charter members of WESSA are ARM, Alchemy Semiconductor, Cirrus Logic, Hitachi, Intel, MIPS Technologies, National Semiconductor, NEC, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.
You can't stop the battle, you can't win the war.
Of course Slots will run Windows. Linux can't afford too. I mean that money wise. Linux users need to take a good piece of advice.
"Never fight a computer war against Microsoft!"
more famously known as...
"Never fight a land war with China!"
It is a losing battle and now that the blue screen has become less and less common. All of you are getting just a tad scared. You may deny it, but it is gonna happen.
Open$ource will always be around. There is no denying that. However, Linux will never overpower the reach and the power of the most powerful computer company in the world. For that I laugh in your faces... HA HA HA!
If there is any merger though, it will be MS/Intel. However maybe MS is going for the big blue. Hardware and software. Think about it.
~AdmrlNxn
~Admrlnxn
"I got your mom in my trunk"
I don't know if anything to this effect has been posted thus far or not... I just moved to a little town right outside of Vegas, and according to what I've seen in the news, it is a felony to be caught with "devices" that "affect" the performance of a slot machine. Any winnings from such endeavours that are converted (from coins to dollars) in a casino is considered money laundering. Click here for an example of what I mean.
128 MB RAM 1 GB hard drive Pentium III @ 400 Mhz ... all to tell you are out of eggs? Will the handle be replaced by a "Start" bar? Will it use DHCP?
And of course, will it run Linux, imagine a Beowulf cluster of appliances, etc.
Ding, ding, ding. Jackpot!!
Seriously though, with all the security cameras, plainclothes security people, etc, I doubt anyone would be able to even sneeze on a machine before the casino got supicious. But I still would hate to be in charge of security during the Las Vegas Comdex if my machines ran an OS such as Windows, which isn't known for its security and is a favorite target of hacks.
=-=-=-=-=
"Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Maybe when they get these slots in, I should take a road trip to Vegas with some various software "tools."
Ding, ding, ding. Jackpot!!
=-=-=-=-=
"Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Simple, putting the standard Linux vs Windoze arguments behind. For embedded systems, ie: Something controlling valves, switches, and reading meters. Typically sitting in a shed somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I don't need a GUI... And I definately shouldn't need a 100Mhz processor just because the GUI OS requires it. Embedded Linux (Free), QNX (tried and true), or some other RealTimeOS is significantly more reliable, cheaper to maintain and cheaper to install. I can't tell you how many times my buddies Dreamcast crashed (stopped couting at two dozen one day). And I definately don't need a GUI to operate my 64MB MP3 Player.
I use NT all the time at work. I use linux at home. I use macs. I use amigas. Guess what? I hate NT. I hate 98. I hate 2000. They're nothing but trouble. We have to have a trained IT staff monitoring them 24/7 and they're still not working all the time. I never thought I'd hear myself say this..but, NT boxes are even less reliable then the MACs. If I had my way, we'd be running redhat.
Aren't all these M$ jokes getting a bit cliché. Unplugging a toaster once in a while isn't too much work for toast.
Blah Blah Tacos
I thought it was Excel (doom was so appropriate) BWS
My wife works for Wind River, the embedded systems market leader (Tornado VxWorks platform). She keeps telling me how Microsoft is trying to muscle their way into the embedded market but keep losing design competitions either to Wind River or players in the field. And this is just "easy" embedded stuff like set top boxes and dsl modems. Try and imagine Windows CE running anti lock braking systems or the Mars Pathfinder (as VxWorks did). MS will not make it in this business.
Leading embedded systems OS vendors (such as WIND RIVER) work closely with chipmakers to port their OS's (eg VxWorks) to each chip (I assume there are subtle dfferences in chip architecture that require tweaking the O/S code). This is the kind of front end commitment that has solidified Wind River's relationship with chip makers and now it appears that MSFT is trying to do the same. Fact isthat what MSFT wants to do, WIND has been doing for quite a while (Centers of Excellence).
I think microsoft is heading into tough times. It seems like they are moving away from their core business (operating systems and productivity software). This is a tell-tale sign of a company searching for other revenue areas. First the XBOX (gaming) now they want to build chips (that is a broad statement).
My point is, that I believe Microsoft has lost their vision. They have gone from been a monopolistic gorilla, to a monopolistic sea gull -- shitting on everything.
The problem is if they succeed they just might become the next General Electric of the world. Now there is a scary thought.
-Angreal
Duh!
...is that those moronic bastards link their slot machines into a network. I could clean out Vegas in a week!
That's hardly a troll statement, either -- Windows console security is on a par with AOL's customer service (read: nonexistant). Proof? A little program called "beadmin.exe" can be run on anything from Windows NT 4.0 to W2K Advanced Server to give full Administrator access to _everything_. Oh, and where's that 'decentralization' of administrative functions that NT admins knock "root" for? Looks like it's in the same place the rest of the security model went, right down the toilet...
On a bit more serious note, what happens when a machine bluescreens/crashes? What if I'm winning and the machine dies? Can I sue the hotel/casino/whorehouse that I almost won my Porsche at?
--
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Damn. How can we get the Eastern Eggs on that chips? =o) Serious, if they put weird things like a "doom" on the Power Point , what they can do with a chip?
Is that what people think of fully automatic?
I doubt the bosses would like that to be built into their slots.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Well, Transmeta obviously has positioned themselves as a Microserf company (why else would the company that employs a key Linux developer focus a code-morphing product almost solely on the x86 instruction set? Linux can be ported to ANY architecture, after all...). Therefore they will stay close to Microsoft.
Wasn't the original intent of Sun's Java to be built into chips they were going to sell to the embedded market??
Yeah, I'm sure Linus would be extrememly pleased to have the company he works for merge with MS$..
.sig there!
Caino
Please don't touch my
I am not a hack guru, hell I don't know the first thing about coding, however having worked for a software company that wrote software running all of several casino's slots, their security is not weak PERIOD. To the dude saying taking in a LAPTOP? You have obviously NEVER been to a casino. They have more Cameras than the XFL does in the cheerleaders dressing room. You cannot avoid being on camerain any vagas casino. Hell I bet soe have fiber optic cameras in the rooms..(damn that crackwhore night may catch up to me yet). Now the BSOD I can see happening. Lets face it other than RARE instances NT machines with even light duty use CRASH OFTEN. I recall being in a mall that had a movie theatre and the little Kiosk that youcould select the trailer you wante to see was BLUE SCREENED...All in all, I doubt the slots will be conected to a outside network, and only a select few will have access to them I am certain. For any of you that happen to get that lucky.. LETS BE FRIENDS.
Razzious Domini
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
You offer the Justice Department too much credit by enumerating the things they DID do that make them colosally moronic re: the Microsoft anti-trust case.
You could just as simply have proved the same point by listing the one thing they didn't do... they didn't convict. A stupid three year-old would not be intellectually challenged by the task of proving that Microsoft engages in predatory and exclusionary business practices that harm competition and discourage business innovation.
And regarding Ashcroft? Bill Gates is more likely to bundle Windows with GIMP over Paint than pro-business conservative-lapdog Ashcroft is to prosecute M$.
michael
/global33/
So it makes sense to have a library of things you can sorta depend upon to develop slot applications faster.
But what doesn't make sense is MS getting into the embedded market like this. I realize that they're hedging their bets, to turn a phrase. But they're also trying to dominate SO MANY markets in order to maintain world domination that they cannot possibly succeed at all of them, and being so spread out is like fighting a war on many fronts.
Can they win the server, the desktop, the set-top, the embedded, the game console, AND the PDA all at the same time, while dealing with how many million lines of code AND juggling partnership against partnership? What happens when the PDA partnerships and the embedded partnerships collide? What happens when wireless gaming comes to the set-top of game console market? What happens when a security problem shows up that manifests itself in three or four of these lines and some of that code isn't able to be patched?
Meanwhile, Linux has been adapted for use in a bunch of embedded applications, without the benefit of having to develop a "partnership". Hey, if I were in the business, I would say that such "partnerships" were a hindrance, not an advantage to doing business. This is especially true with Microsoft "partnerships", where you're just as likely to be on the wrong end of a reaming, if you read your MS history (or just pay attention).
I saw a few BSODs on my last trip to Vegas. I saw one at the airport, one in a video game (Play drums along with music... NOT Drummania, though). I've seen kiosks with BSODs (Hmmm... I wonder if the bride or the groom wanted that BSOD). Windows is creeping ever so slowly into more and more places that embedded technology used to reign.
Win2k doesn't crash regularly, it crashes hardly at all.
Win2k embedded is unlikely to be $500/unit, but more like a 1/10th that cost.
You don't seem to know what WinCE is either.
There are also other options in the embedded market such as Coherent, OS/9, etc.
But the ultimate sign of ignorance was when you claim that Windows is just a gaming machine.
Do you even know what Windows NT or 2000 is?
http://www.sodablue.org/computers/windows2000/reli ability.asp
That's my Advanced Server. My machine on the other hand is a Gateway P6-200, which makes it a known quantity.
Your problem sounds like hardware. I've had machines lock up before for a variety of reasons. Bad power supplies, bad fans, bad drives, etc.
In fact I just had such a problem with the CDROM on my home computer. Long story, but even though the computer would freeze periodically, Win2k never crashed on me.
Only vaguely on topic, but I once saw one of those enormous display screens outside a Las Vegas casino, proudly displaying a BSOD...
'Having the same GUI everywhere' is a seductive idea, but it doesn't necessarily work - this is why Microsoft's Palm-size format (now called Pocket PC) has largely failed to get much market share. They tried valiantly to get as many Windows features, and the full GUI with Start button, into this tiny form factor, then discovered that it took far too many stylus taps to get anywhere - hence they have simplified things radically in the latest Pocket PC version of Windows CE.
By the way, Wince already runs on many different processors, and the embedded variant is not exactly new. By all accounts, though, embedded manufacturers are not leaping to use Wince - Linux and traditional RTOSs are providing some tough competition.
I think "Windows," which basically means "GUI," is the antithesis of the requirements of embedded software.
Of course, if you knew anything about Windows CE, you'd not have said this. Windows CE was designed from the ground up to be used in embedded systems. Sure, the first real application of Windows CE was clamshell handhelds. But that doesn't change the fact that CE was designed for embedded systems from the start. The OS is completely modular, allowing the developer to only use the portions of the platform neccessary to the system. Don't need keyboard input, video output, touchscreen/mouse input, networking, etc? Don't build those modules into your platform.
One of two things happened on your cruise:
1) The machines really were random and your "system" just happened to work.
2) The machines were rigged by some cruise line that didn't have to report to a gaming commission.
In larger gambling establishments, (Vegas, Atlantic City, and even riverboats) you have gaming commisions making sure the machines are on the up and up. Ignoring gaming commisions, large casinos run legit games for two reasons. First, they can make a whole lot of money running legit games. Second, if a place like Ceasers Palace was ever caught cheating or even accused loudly enough, they would go out of business. There are a thousand places to gamble on basically the same games. If people even suspect that one is rigged, they'll go elsewhere.
-B
Actually, slot machines take between 1 and 5 percent of your money. Some of the slots near the front of major casinos lose money just to keep the lights flashing and to let people see jackpots hitting.
Last month, I won $600 bucks playing slots while waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom. It's not my preferred form of gambling, but I know a woman who has consistently won thousands only playing slots.
-B
--
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Nope ARM was design by ARM, a british company that was an offshoot of the ill faited Acorn Computers.
Many companies now license ARM, being that it was soo cool. It was also the hart and soul of the RiscPC. Ahhhhh.
This is great news! The next time you try to convince PHB-types that going with Microsoft is a gamble, you have some literal proof to point at!
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I guess M$FT could buy the settop box market for WinCe by paying AT&T $5B to use it.
The split was kinda funky. The way I understand it is that all chips/ASICs/blahblah (such as 21152 PCI bridge, 2114x-series network interfaces, StrongARM processors, etc) were bought by Intel, while Compaq bought only the Alpha architecture stuffs. There may be some other considerations, but that much i know is for sure.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Last I checked, the ARM series of embedded chips was designed by DEC, and purchased by Intel.... making Intel (of course, what's new *snicker*) the primary chip manufacturer in this realm.
It still pisses me off that Intel bought a perfectly good DEC, and has since buried many of their better technologies away from public use. </flame>
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
I actually thought the same thing some time ago, in that I figured there had to be some relatively simple scheme that would beat "hit on 16, stay on 17."
So, I wrote a quick program to run through all the possibilities of hit%. I had 0, 50%, and 100% hits at all the points where choices needed to be made (12-20, since you'd always hit on 11, and never on 21).
Ran the program, and it turns out that you get stuck by the way casinos handle player busts. If you bust, the dealer gets your cash, irrespective of whether he busts or not. The dealer's algorithm busts about 33% of the time.
The "winningest" solution was: the instant you get to a number where you have to make a choice, you're best off staying (yes, even on 12). That way, you win something like 8% of the time, and you get all the dealer's busts, for a grand total in the 44% win range. If you tried to maximize your score beyond that, you busted too often, which are automatic losses.
Given that result, I stopped researching it. There are some significant holes here (no doubling down or splitting of hands, no card counting, purely random deck, no attention paid to the dealer's up card, the 0-50-100 split of options leaves a lot to be desired), but I think it's close enough for a first pass.
mckwant.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
-Moondog
So, I'd walk in, put a couple quarters into machines that weren't being played, and then walk out. This resulted in a few dollars net win through the week.
Gaming commisions make sure they're on the up and up? ... The machines are desgined to take around 90% of your money, thats not really up and up to me.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Does that mean that if i can port msadc.pl to a blackjack table i win the jackpot?
I am !amused.
It would be nice of MS to offer new products, but we all know how it's gonna happen. They are going to buy a few nice pacages and ruin them by making sure they don't work with anything other than MS junk. MS creates nothing. They will make sure that you can not use your new toys to create your own media or "Pirate" anything without paying for it each time. Microsoft would love to embrace Holywood.
MS is not up to the task. They've not been able to make a their simple X86 stuff work in 20 years of trying. What makes you think they can do any better with 15 or so processors? Their greed headed prcactices insure that they will never be able to do this. Toasters do not need a GUI, but VCR's and TV's and other devices would benifit from some kind of common programable interface. MS's greedy inability to share a common stable interface makes them incapable of providing anything like this. They can't even keep a text spec stable.
MS reply in .doc format follows:
+-----yyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyFILE NUM, AUTHOR=;yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyy%$#yyyyyyyyyy yyyy#yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyy3>yyyyy yyyyyyyy#yyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy.yyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyy yyy/.yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyy give us all of your maoney yyyy yyy yyy yyyyy yyyyyy yyy yyyyy yyyyy yyyyyyyy yyy y#yyyyyy yyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyy yyyyy yyyyyyyy yyyy**yyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyy#@yyyyyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyy&yy yyyyyyyyyyy
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here in Louisiana the video poker machines get extra use as voting booths! Talk about rigged, whew! Florida borrowed some, but sent them back because Edwin Edwards kept winning.
It will be great if these things run NT. This way more people will be able to get in on the action. CRACK! and all the nicles fall out. Wooo - hooo! I'm rich, I'm rich!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Now, what's the payoff on three blue-screens in a row again?
Wow, even the stories are trolls now!
M$ is moving into embedded chip market
Embedded chips are moving out...
You can't handle the truth.
I love MS bashing as much as the next guy, but do we have any kind of source for the whole "NT in slot machines" part?
You're laughing, but in the old european metropole that is close to where I live, they have these little digital information kiosks & boots where you can get touristic information about the city centre. When I tried them out once, I immediately wondered why the print button was on the screen, as ofcourse there wasn't a printer to be seen anywhere.. but the joke was complete when I suddenly noticed the NT kernel bluescreen bright and shiney all across the city.. I've since lost count of how many times I've seen ntoskrnl.exe claim all it's credit..
Anyway, it's a good chance for tourists and foreigners to get to meet the hospitality of the locals, but that's a completely different story..
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I'm no lawyer, so this is a question...
What happens if you put in a quarter, pull the slot lever, and the slot machine breaks?
Can you somehow sue, under the assumption that that particular pull of the slot machine lever could of possible hit the grand prize?
If this is so, I'm going to hit vegas as soon as the NT slots come out...
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Also remember people: www.msnaoltimewarner.com is still available (*shivvers*).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Yes, but everyone knows that if I wanted a set of flamebaited replies, I would not post the original using an AC. ;)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Of course, if you knew anything about Windows CE, you'd not have said this. Windows CE was designed from the ground up to be used in embedded systems.
Mea culpa. The only thing I've seen with Windows CE was the UI for a little hand-held, and the interface looked identical to Windows proper.
I concede that Microsoft probably has a clue about what it's doing (they didn't get to where they are without a clue), and no doubt they'll actually do a reasonable job, much as Slashdotters like to slam M$.
But I do stand by my opinion on GUIs. In kiosks and ATMs (which I hadn't thought about when I was considering the embedded market) GUIs make a lot of sense, but in things like household appliances, I don't think they do.
Disclaimer: I don't have a clue. I just have opinions. :-)
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I know of nobody that would like to purchase a system that runs well only under limited I/O. Get that drift?
As for NT - here's what it is: A sore attempt by M$ to enter the server market in an area already dominated. Now I'll admit it is good for workgroups, but I can't find anything else...
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
Jokes like this are immature, and only show how many script kiddies post on slashdot. Even if NT isn't secure, you don't have to spam slashdot, making jokes about it.
I can just imagine windoze NT on Slot Machines. When you win it probably will play the "Tada.wav" sound, and crash. There are currently little disclaimers on slot machines say "Malfunction voids play", and I guess this disclaimer will come in handy now that microsoft software is involved.
GOD BLESS DALE...... He lived to race and died racing!!!
Aaron, a wannabe #3!!!
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
The local Sounder train system uses WinNT boxen - one of the fellows at work hacked it while waiting for a train to show up - pretty easy, Scott said.
...
But, if it's a slot machine, shouldn't it have Red Screens of Death, to go with the three cherries in a row motif?
I can see it now - "How to Hack Slot Machines for Fun and Profit"
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
They can only move on to dominate other fields using their monopolistic powers. I agree that their user interface is one of the best out there for those not into computers. A UI is a compliated thing to write. But, and this is a big but, much money is spent on training users on their interface. What was the last training class you saw advertised for the Palm OS?
They have an ongoing threat with computer manufacturers and chip makers: Help us do what we want or we will push support of your competition. That's not news, it was directly stated by M$ in their gov't trial.
Having the same GUI all around assumes that one GUI can please everyone. That's never possible. What would be best are GUIs that anyone could walk up to without ever seeing before and understand it intuitively. I'm talking a GUI with no windows at all. Alternatives have been invented, but none implemented on any platform that I've seen. It's a difficult task, but I feel an exteremly simplified GUI should exist on small, single-purpose machines.
Developers: We can use your help.
Microsoft should patent the blue screen of death, stating they invented it first and no one outside the company is supposed to reproduce it. Then they could sue all of their users each time they produce a BSOD. They should also patent its specific use on embedded systems.
I just feel like blending some of the sad corporate news together into even more amusing tales.
Developers: We can use your help.
Some things don't adapt well at all.
NT in an embedded context is one such thing.
TransCore's got this nifty little application that manages access control and billing for parking and airport ground transportation management. System was redesigned from the ground up to run on nearly any server platform, nearly any embedded platform.
As long as ACE/TAO supports it and the components have a TCP/IP connection to the other devices it'll largely compile and run. I know- I designed the beast.
There's two piece parts to the embedded portions system, a transaction processing engine and a transaction generation/lane hardware control engine. The transaction engine can reside on any server that has local or network ODBC/CLI access. The lane control portion has to control several digital I/O points and one RFID device that detects TransCore's vehicular transponder tag.
The NT units at one of the current installations at the DFW International Airport are capricious beasts and periodically need restarting (about once every two or so weeks...). Resource leaks. Not with the app as best as we can tell- Purify told us that we had a clean bill of health, but an internal function in NT was leaking like a sieve. The Linux version is on an embedded machine out at the lanes there at DFW. It hasn't needed a reboot yet. Using Embedded NT would have added about $250-500 per lane to the cost of the embedded hardware version of the system. With Linux, I saved $2500 per lane over the older, centralized design. With Embedded NT, it would have been more like $500-1000 per lane cost savings combined with needing to spend much, much more time writing the device drivers for the embedded I/O on the single board computer we used.
Adapting to any situation's good- insisting on using truly unsuitable tools to do a job ends up being a cobbled up work at best and a botch job in most cases.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I wonder now how many exploits will be tracked through bugtraq and packetstorm for exploits on slot machines .. I can only imagine.. and I still wonder if microsoft will be held responsible for these types of things??
Jimmy hacks into a slot machine when the eyes fall off of him, only to win the jackpot on every machine in the building. The management didn't catch on, because of Microsoft's continuing insistance that "those vulnerabilities are completely theoretical".
Revelation 0:0 - The beginning of the end.
The sad fact is that if you're on a low budget, you should use a free *nix of some sort (I prefer Linux of course, but BSD is also good - it's a what-you-grew-up-on thing). If you've got a high budget (and being in the field to use those, you must), then there is no reason to spend that cash on an overly expensive OS (face it: I don't want to spend $500+ for JUST the OS on each server - and not get most of the 'net tools I need).
If you've got an app that needs embedding, then what do you do? Go with an OS meant for embedded devices (NOT WinCE - that's meant for giving a nice front and back end to the person that doesn't care how the machine works, but at the expensive of precious resources. You're neither!). Most of the time Linux will suffice (bsd?). It's free and easily portable.
Fact is you just want to make sure that the public sees an always-going machine that does what it should, and the operators can do their job easily. M$ just doesn't support this - It's only real use is in the home as a gaming machine. Linux (bsd, etc.), while admitably, does take some heavy work to get setup just right (unless you want to go with the default which works for most people), but once it is up and running the way you want it, it stays!
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
Seriously, is there a better way to lost lots of money at a casino than a slot machine? I guess if you're too brain dead to run a simple progressive scheme at the roulette wheel, or do some simple card counting at blackjack, you might as well while away your money at the slot machines.
And now MS is getting into the act, hmm, they're getting involved with gambling, they're becoming more like the Mafia every day now. They've already got a handle on the racketeering, I guess other vices are next. I can't wait for compatible for Windows heroin and whores in Seattle.
I'll forgot the obvious joke about SA's using NT already gambling with their work.
Having MSWindows on embedded devices would be very useful. GUI's may seem simple to the /. crowd, but for the majority they are really not as intuitive as they are cracked up to be. It can only be good if people have the option to have the same GUI all around, everywhere. It reduces training costs at companies and the time people have to expend to learn what is, in the end, a simple tool.
Here's hoping that MS port their embedded CE to as many processors as possible.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
I think "Windows," which basically means "GUI," is the antithesis of the requirements of embedded software.
Although I do think it would be great if you wanted to turn all your appliances into something that resembles a PC.
If you never use anything but nails, all your tools will begin to look like hammers.
--
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Submitted for your approval. A man walking down the Las Vegas strip finds a quarter in the street and plays it in a Win a Free Car slot machine he had just passed. As he pulls the arm on the oversized slot machine the video display begins to roll. The first slot stops on Dodge Viper GTS as does the next slot. The third slot is about to stop on Dodge Viper and BSOD's. The man screams as his heart explodes from the emotional trauma. Somewhere in Washington, Bill Gates gets out of his Dodge Viper GTS and high fives Steve Ballmer.
You have entered The Microsoft Embedded Hardware Market.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!