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The Real MIT Blackjack Mastermind

Posted by samzenpus on from the king-of-counting dept.

Wade Roush writes "21, the top movie at the box office last weekend, has everyone talking about the real identities of the MIT blackjack team members fictionalized in the movie and in the 2002 book, Bringing Down the House, on which the film is based. Last week a number of stories pointed to former MIT student and Las Vegas resident John Chang as the model for the Micky Rosa character, the club mastermind played in the movie by Kevin Spacey. But Boston-area Internet entrepreneur and real estate developer Bill Kaplan is saying that if anyone is the basis for Micky Rosa, it's him. Turns out Kaplan now battles the "e-mail churn" problem as CEO of Newton, MA, startup FreshAddress, which helps companies correct the outdated e-mail addresses in their customer databases."

7 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What kind of job is that? by houstonbofh · · Score: 2, Funny

    From one scan to another... At least he is consistent.

  2. Re:What kind of job is that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    But, but.. he went to MIT! He can't be evil!

  3. Isn't it obvious? by Idgit · · Score: 5, Funny

    The real mastermind is Keyser Soze.

  4. Re:But at least the first one by kclittle · · Score: 4, Funny

    /. should allow for a special "Holier Than Thou Anonymous Coward" by-line to make folks like the parent AC feel more welcome...

    --
    Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
  5. Re:What kind of job is that? by Erpo · · Score: 3, Funny

    I see a remarkable parallel between them and the *AAs, actually. Both are large monolithic companies who make a rather large amount of money with archaic business practices and are reliant on their customers being ignorant.

    I agree. Casinos and the *AAs would work much better if they were made up of distinct processes that communicated via message passing rather than function calls.

  6. Re:What kind of job is that? by nephridium · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe in a hundred years "luck" will be an outmoded concept and gambling will been seen properly as "entertainment" but until then, most every idiot who goes to a casino is a mystical moron who thinks he's going to get lucky and win.
    Wanna bet on that?
    --


    And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
  7. Here's how you get a free traffic from Slashdot by ingo23 · · Score: 2, Funny

    1. Pick a movie from the top box office list
    2. Mention that you looked like a main character when you was in college
    3. Provide a 2 page detailed description of your business
    4. Profit!