China Alleged To Use Prisoners In Lucrative Internet Gaming

SoyQueSoy pointed out an article that reveals it's not all fun, but forced games for some Chinese prisoners. It is alleged that after a day of hard labor some inmates are forced to work through the night as gold farmers. "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labor," [prisoner] Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

Comments

Seriously

[mms3k]

China? The article talks about prison bosses, not the Chinese government in general. And frankly, I would seriously choose farming gold in World of Warcraft over the hard labor on mines. Just clicking away seems like a breeze compared to that.

American "researchers" crying over this is quite stupid anyway. Having lived long periods in different Asian countries, the 12 hour working day is not unusual at all. It's the norm. I had a ladyboy girlfriend who worked at clothing store and her day started at 8am and lasted until 8pm. Still the pay wasn't that good, but it's nowhere. Especially not working in the farms. Farming virtual gold is actually one of the things that pay really well. So unless you want to help increase the total wealth and income in the countries, there's nothing to do about it. The people are seriously hard working tho, and if they choose to farm gold as job, it's their decision and they do it because they get paid well.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep reading 'ladybug' in every one of your posts. It's because the word shapes are so similar!

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

lol. did you introduce her by saying "hi, my names mms3k, and this is my ladyboy girlfriend ________

Re:Seriously

[rax313]

They were made to do it at night AFTER a day of hard labor.

Re:Seriously

[rhook]

I guess you missed the part about them being forced to gold mine all night after a long day of hard labor. Are people skipping the summary now too?

Re:Seriously

[blair1q]

In a country where you can be jailed for bitching to the government, do you really think that the bosses of the prisons are at all independent of the power structure?

And the fact that exploitation of human desperation is common does not make it right, in or out of prison. China's brand of socialism is bullshit. It's plain fascism, where workers are cattle and the government gets all the value they add.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Right because working for nothing or with no breaks for half-day shifts is never cruel. And if you think welfare (which actually refers to many programs) is so great, maybe you should go on it. I'd love to see how long you'd last on $200 a month (for no kids or medical situations, not elderly and zero income and no unemployment).

Re:Seriously

[pla]

I guess you missed the part about them being forced to gold mine all night after a long day of hard labor. Are people skipping the summary now too?

No, just ignoring the parts that make no sense whatsoever.

If I have you as a slave, and you can make me $100/12hrs doing manual labor or $500/12hrs goldfarming... Do you seriously think I'd waste half your income-generating day having you fill potholes?

The "after" makes no sense when they could farm gold for both shifts and make their jailers 66% ($600 vs $1000) more per day.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

No one said anyone had to work half a day with no breaks. We're talking about doing more than sitting on your ass. And unless you can cite your source that it's 200 dollars and nothing more I call bullshit because I know plenty of able bodied turds that are living on welfare and there is no way 200 covers the rent and the food. So you're a fucking retard and a liar.

Re:Seriously

[rhook]

They still have to answer to their superiors when China's projects are not being completed with slave labor.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Had to google ladyboy girlfriend as I wasn't sure it was what I thought it was.. and sure enough it *is* what I thought it was... no thanks :)

Re:Seriously

[captain_sweatpants]

You're assuming they have a 1:1 ratio of slaves (inmates) to computers. A 1:2 ratio or more would be optimised with half/labour half farming days. Also, there's nothing anyone outside China can do about the labour, but the forced farming should be stopped if possible.

Re:Seriously

[LordLimecat]

Just clicking away seems like a breeze compared to that.

Lets see what the article says...
"If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things,"

Yea, sounds super easy.

Re:Seriously

[countertrolling]

It's plain fascism, where workers are cattle...

Well, you wouldn't have 'Everyday Low Prices' without it..

Re:Seriously

[Compaqt]

How about hiring people on the side to fill potholes who weren't smart enough to get into Apple's Foxconn iPod factories? $500-$100=$400.

Re:Seriously

[228e2]

Unemployment is about 30% of what you made the past year.
For some, its $200. For others, more or less. But the point is, making 30% of what you used to make (and not always right away, there may be gaps where you get no money) is hard to live on if you earn say . . . the average american paycheck.

Source: being unemployed for 7 months, and only receiving unemployment for 6 months.

Re:Seriously

[nomadic]

Really? Where do you live? Just about every grown up I know is working hard, sometimes 2 or 3 jobs. People with graduate degrees are busing tables, college graduates are working retail, people who used to make easy money are taking what they can get.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is your source: Benefit estimator If you plug in the info I gave you, you get:

Based on the following information:

Number in household: 1
            Amount Result
Monthly Net Income $0 Within limits
Assets $0 Within limits
Federal Gross Income $0 Within limits

The estimated monthly SNAP benefit for your income and household size is $200.

Re:Seriously

[grub]

They were made to do it at night AFTER a day of hard labor.

Oh, come on. Making iPads isn't that hard.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

America, fuck yeah!

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you talk about ladyboys on every single post you make? If you like crossdressers just keep it to yourself. Get out of the closet.

And it's not a "girlfriend".

It's your boyfriend.

Re:Seriously

[antifoidulus]

What makes you think the guards are sharing anything with the state? The guards could just be keeping the gold money for themselves,which would go a long way towards explaining why they are doing both hard labor AND gold farming, the labor is what is required by the state, the gold farming profits all go to the guards. If the state was really making more money off of farming they would probably have more people skip the labor and just do farming, esp. ones that were good at it.

Re:Seriously

[SanityInAnarchy]

Why do you talk about ladyboys on every single post you make?

Because someone challenged him to.

Get out of the closet.

He seems very much "out" about what he likes -- and I see no reason why someone who likes "ladyboys" is also required to like any other men, so no, it's not the same thing as homosexual.

I can see the response now -- "If that's what you have to tell yourself..." Except I'm actually straight (and would not like a ladyboy), just a little bit more educated about these things. That, and why should anyone be ashamed of homosexuality, either? It's not a matter of trying to pretend he doesn't like people with penises (so long as they also have breasts and look like women), I'm just trying to clarify things a bit. For instance:

And it's not a "girlfriend".
It's your boyfriend.

There is a difference between gender and sex. While the two most often coincide, there's no particular reason that someone's gender identity has to match their physical body.

Re:Seriously

[yndrd1984]

Isn't that just food stamps? What about other programs?

Re:Seriously

[yndrd1984]

Unemployment is about 30% of what you made the past year.

If you're talking about "welfare (which actually refers to many programs)", you can't just cite one of them.

Re:Seriously

[Hojima]

China's brand of socialism is bullshit. It's plain fascism...

China is a de-facto capitalist country, I hate how people still call the country socialist/communist when they have less industry regulations than the US. Also, Communism has nothing to do with despotism. It's the polar opposite in fact, with the elimination of capital gain to remove the accumulation of power (which is why Karl Marx had en element that could accumulate power removed from each stage of governmental principal).

Re:Seriously

[Ethanol-fueled]

Slavery, fuck yeah!

Oh, wait. They make 23 cents an hour. Guess those Chinese do have it tough.

Re:Seriously

[Surt]

The articles says 300 prisoners made $500+/day. That's enough for one (or maybe two) new computer(s) per day, so in half a year they'd have erased your 1:2 ratio and doubled their profit simply by being minimally non-stupid.

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

it's impossible to make communism work without despotism. the state dictates the entire economy

yes, in capitalist countries, wealth accumulation corrupts the government. but corruption exists in ALL types of government system, even communism

finally, simple corruption is a lot different than "we are in charge and tell you everything that happens in the economy, we dictate. and this status is directly prescribed in your government's constitution"

if you fight that, you are fighting the entire government. if you fight corruption, you are fighting something that is a poisonous infection, not an idea which is celebrated and embraced and supposedly a good thing (and worse than simple corruption)

Re:Seriously

[mobilebuddha]

1 take away though: it's not the Chinese government that has a policy that stated: all prisoners must do physical labor during day and gold farm at night. I'm sorry, but the summary made it seem that way. Horrible title if you ask me.

That's like saying if an American prison guard raped a prisoner, the title would be "USA Raped a Prisoner". Misleading.. right?

Re:Seriously

[artor3]

No, it's because he's a highly successful troll who knows most slashdotters are too dense to read the entire post they're responding to.

Also, gender and sex are the same. This modern idea that they're different is just psychobabble intended to make crazy people feel better about themselves. You might as well say that race and species don't have to match, and if I think I'm an antlion, then by golly I am!

Re:Seriously

[Fizzl]

"If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things,"

Sounds like typical raid leader behaviour to me...
Competition at the top is TOUGH!

Re:Seriously

[walshy007]

I sometimes wonder why US companies outsource labour to china, when some jobs in the US have minimum wages as low as $4/hour. Most sane countries are at least triple that so people can you know.. eat and live.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

In a country where you can be jailed for bitching to the government...

You mean like this?

Re:Seriously

[purpledinoz]

This prison boss is just a greedy bastard using his position for profit. This story is not unique to China.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, man, where can I make 500$/day? I'd like to make that kind of money.

Re:Seriously

[Eivind]

Agreed.

Socialism, in the more pragmatic forms, such as it's practiced in the scandinavian countries for example, can work quite well, but communism, the utopia, is bullshit. Having a single answer to all questions is bullshit regardless of what that answer is, actually. (there's some people who claim "the market" is the answer to ALL questions, and that's -ALSO- bullshit)

Reality is complex. We need more than one answer. A *balance* is the trick.

Re:Seriously

[pyrosine]

I think you meant to say $200 a week

Re:Seriously

[jpapon]

The notion of gender and gender roles is a societal construct, and purely in the mind. The notion of sex is a physical, observable state.

I see no reason why the two have to match. As for your analogy, it makes no sense. You say race and species, and then say 'antlion'... But regardless it doesn't work, because both race and species are physical things. A more sensible analogy would be between a mental identity and a physical identity. For example, a Christian Dwarf.

Re:Seriously

[xnpu]

They can answer with hard cash, half-assed finished work, cute prostitutes or a combination of the three. It's China.

Re:Seriously

[wisty]

I'm guessing that NOBODY makes 5000 RMB a day gold mining. That's almost $1000 US! Or 1 month's salary for a skilled professional, or a semi-skilled worker in a dangerous job.

5000 a day may have been for a large team. 60 prisoners making 85 a day? And the boss gets 5000. It could have been a lucky day when some guy found a +100 sword of ass-kicking. No idea, really.

But if you could make 5000 a day gold farming, I'd do it, and I hate those soul-sucking games. Cruel and unusual punishment, indeed.

Re:Seriously

[wisty]

Well, that's been eliminated in the US. And been replaced with a much friendlier justice systems, that fails to discourage criminals. It's actually quite safe to walk down the streets at night in China.

I'm just sayin'.

Re:Seriously

[definate]

Though it's not quite that bad, and certain degrees are worse than others.

However the GP's main problem, I all but guarantee, is due to he doesn't see what "people do these days" as work. I've heard the same thing over and over again from luddites, who want to force us back to an agrarian society. It's fucking insane.

Re:Seriously

[repapetilto]

So are the shoes a gender thing or sex thing? I've never been outside of US and Europe so just wondering... I think yahoo answers, my usual source of info, has a selection bias.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070407112648AAB9WHV

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

I am am working as a professor at a medium-sized university in China. I didn't come here for the money (don't really need it, but it is a way of keeping score), I came here for the experience and the visa that would let me stay long enough to start building up a consulting business.

If I could make 5000RMB/day gold farming (even if that required a 48 hour shift), then have the other 28 days off a month because I already made the same as I am making as one of the highest paid professors (non-department head) in the college. The free time would make achieving my other goals so much easier.

I call bullshit (or dibs on the next spot at a wang ba to open up, I will even tithe 30% to a gold pimp!).

Re:Seriously

[repapetilto]

I should also note that as I've grown up all the girls I know have one by one started to make these loud clonking noises as they walk around. Also, if you happen to be at hospital at the right time of year you can witness whole packs of these clonk walkers traveling the campus together as they interview for medical school.

Re:Seriously

[Shoe Puppet]

The notion of gender and gender roles is a societal construct, and purely in the mind. The notion of sex is a physical, observable state. I see no reason why the two have to match

To prove this point, John Money, a psychologist, once had a sex change operation performed on a boy whose penis was accidentally destroyed in a failed circumcision. The boy never considered himself to be female, started to actually live as a boy again at the age of 15, later suffered from depression and finally commited suicide at the age of 34. His name was David Reimer.

It seems that "gender identity" is not influenced primarily by society, but rather is a result of the differences between the brains of men and women which are caused by hormons and/or genetics. Therefore gender is a physical state, too.

Re:Seriously

[Bing Tsher E]

Perhaps any system of political economy can work well in the heterogeneous, political stable, small countries of northern Europe.

But pointing at it as an example of a 'success story' for said system of political economy might be putting the cart before the horse.

Re:Seriously

[makomk]

You must be living in a different universe to the rest of us, because in this one there's a massive - and massively profitable - slave labour industry in US prisons.

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

no, eivind is correct

free market fundamentalism and communism are two opposite extremes on a continuum. the most ideal government is capitalism with social safety nets, or socialism with a capitalist engine, take your pick. size of country has nothing to do with it

moderation, in all things

Re:Seriously

[gerddie]

it's impossible to make communism work without despotism. the state dictates the entire economy

Then what is Anarcho-Communism supposed to be? Anarchist are certainly not the kind of people who would install a government, let alone a despotic one. To quote Peter Kropotkin:

"Anarchist Communism maintains that most valuable of all conquests -- individual liberty -- and moreover extends it and gives it a solid basis -- economic liberty -- without which political liberty is delusive; it does not ask the individual who has rejected god, the universal tyrant, god the king, and god the parliament, to give unto himself a god more terrible than any of the proceeding -- god the Community, or to abdicate upon its altar his [or her] independence, his [or her] will, his [or her] tastes, and to renew the vow of asceticism which he formally made before the crucified god. It says to him, on the contrary, 'No society is free so long as the individual is not so! . . .'"

Re:Seriously

[danbert8]

I don't consider busing tables or working retail to be "working hard". Where are the people going into the jobs that Mike Rowe shows around on Dirty Jobs? There is a vast need for welders, miners, industrial painters, etc that immigrants are filling because Americans want to work in a cube, a restaurant, or a store. Hard work don't have air conditioning.

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

an idea a philosophy major with no real world experience with human nature dreams up is not a valid basis for society

not that that fact will stop you. nothing ever stops the regular low drumbeat of utopianists and their half-baked ideas from appearing and flaming out over the centuries. but have fun wasting years of your life and years of the lives of the well-meaning but gullible fools that listen to you for some reason

enthusiastic dreaming and good intentions are no replacement for a solid understanding of the inescapable bad qualities of human nature. you have to learn to work with those bad qualities, because you can't avoid them, they are part of all of us. don't try to imagine a society that somehow exists in spite of those bad qualities, it can't

any idea of organizing society that depends upon people just behaving in a way that people never have behaved is a loser, son

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia

Re:Seriously

[kevinNCSU]

My guess is they have more prisoners than computers, which is why they work in shifts. No need to hire extra people to fill potholes when you have abundant slave labor.

Re:Seriously

[Kelbear]

Yeah, it's a little *meow* odd to find the word ladyboy inserted into all 6 of the posts in your profile. Is this some kind of inside joke?

Re:Seriously

[joggle]

Misleading, but to continue the analogy the source for reporting the prison guard rape would have been another guard who was arrested and sent to prison for reporting the crime. That's not a heck of a lot better.

Re:Seriously

[afxgrin]

Are you implying that Capitalist Republics have developed of method to deal with the bad qualities of humans?

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

not at all. no government system is perfect. however, trading the best we have working so far for a system clearly much worse is rather dumb, no?

i'm glad you have identified the problems with capitalism. most everyone has. now, would you mind entertaining your boundless imagination with some of the potential problems with the utopian vision of the stoned philosophy major?

Re:Seriously

[1u3hr]

My guess is they have more prisoners than computers

In China you can buy a basic PC for 1-2000 RMB. A used one for a few hundred. If the figures are correct that would be paid off in an hour's work. They'd have as many PCs as they could find room for.

I doubt the veracity of these figures. I think the income is exaggerated by at least a factor of 10.

Re:Seriously

[Win0ver]

Actually we probably would. But wal-mart founders would only be multi-millionnaires instead of bilionnaires.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere you have 300 prisoners doing the work for you.

Re:Seriously

[cffrost]

It's no joke; ladyboy are serious business.

Re:Seriously

[goodmanj]

Then what is Anarcho-Communism supposed to be?

A naive pipe dream.

Re:Seriously

[tehcyder]

I don't consider busing tables or working retail to be "working hard". Where are the people going into the jobs that Mike Rowe shows around on Dirty Jobs? There is a vast need for welders, miners, industrial painters, etc that immigrants are filling because Americans want to work in a cube, a restaurant, or a store. Hard work don't have air conditioning.

When I were a lad I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down t'mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

Re:Seriously

[Jeremy Erwin]

Governments in the United States rarely take prisoner rape seriously, which encourages guards to engage in bestial behavior.

Re:Seriously

[iluvcapra]

Well, most native American societies were anarcho-communist, as most indigenous societies are, as well as various small post-industrial communities, like Kibbutzes. Isolated small populations tend to have decreasing tolerance for property rights; its really just a function of how many people you know and how many people you don't know get to borrow your stuff, and how many people you know are starving because Grabby McRichguy won't sell his grain.

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

you're talking about agrarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarianism

agrarianism will always assert itself in some small amounts in the shadow of larger societies where people feel more affinity for a mostly self-sufficient local group than a larger society or nation. but it tells us nothing about how to run a large modern country like the usa or germany

anarcho-communism meanwhile is the preferred terminology for agrarianism by people who are urban or suburban, know more about alternative music than about growing their own food, and need a new "cool" word to describe their idealistic utopianism that will never work... unless you actually do go out in the woods and start growing your own food

so go, to the woods, good luck, please, and start your anarcho-communist collective. so i don't have to hear about this useless mental diarrhea again

you will of course lump me with the Grabby McRichguys of the world because i don't embrace your cottonheaded idealism. no, i have no love for your favorite boogeyman nor do i think capitalism is a wonderful thing. i do know, however, that capitalism works with less suffering and injustice than your loopy theories about how society can or should work

because i dislike capitalism does not mean i am eager to embrace even worse ideologies that you for some bad reason are a proponent for

Re:Seriously

[jpapon]

How does that prove anything, other then that John Money is a psychopath? I guess I should specify, gender may be a 'physical state', in the sense that the brain is a physical object. I meant that gender is not observable (currently anyways). So while you can observe someone's sex, you cannot observe their gender, as it is whatever they think it is.

Re:Seriously

[gerddie]

Then what is Anarcho-Communism supposed to be?

A naive pipe dream.

Just like flying, or putting a man on the moon, right?

Re:Seriously

[iluvcapra]

you're talking about agrarianism

You're talking about semantics. Marx's position was that small pre-industrial societies were communistic, based on their attitude toward force as it protects property rights, following from Proudhon. Besides, you can't describe a hunter-gatherer society like the Lakota Souix as "agrarian": they didn't farm.

but it tells us nothing about how to run a large modern country like the usa or germany

It might tell us a lot about how to calibrate our delegation of authority and how strongly to weight localism, given a certain level of technological development. OTOH, if you see people starving a thousand miles away on the TV, this is naturally going to prey on people's innate sense of equity.

so i don't have to hear about this useless mental diarrhea again

You have to make more positive arguments and not just throw something in the dustbin because is starts with "commu-". People like Marx, Luxembourg, DeLeon, and Gramsci had a lot to say about the world and you can't just dismiss all of 19th century philosophy by kicking a rock, Berkeley-like.

you will of course lump me with the Grabby McRichguys of the world because i don't embrace your cottonheaded idealism

I never said you were, don't be so defensive. Everybody embraces a "cottonheaded idealism," our worth is measured by how we bring it into the world; the real archfiends of history are the ones who work cheap cynicism and phony skepticism to tear down other people's cottonheaded idealism, out of vanity and envy for something to believe in.

Re:Seriously

[gerddie]

an idea a philosophy major with no real world experience with human nature dreams up is not a valid basis for society

You might want to read up on the 2nd Spanish Republic. Yes they failed because they had to defend themselves against Francos Fascists and the Stalinists/Marxists. Spartacus also failed, but this doesn't mean his struggle for freedom was wrong.

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

i embrace the struggle for freedom

but how the fuck "anarcho-communism" has anything to do with freedom is completely beyond my comprehension

oh, i have no doubt you can explain it to me. there's proponents for all sorts of half-baked ideas in this world

logical coherence is not a prerequisite for enthusiasm

(snicker)

Re:Seriously

[circletimessquare]

no, the problem is the cottonheaded idealism. did you happen to notice the experiments in communism in the last century? how much suffering that created? but you're going to trust anything communistic with some sort of hope, still? really? are you that fucking daft?

people can write a million erudite compelling passionate books about social and political organization. who the fuck gives a shit if it doesn't work in the real world. guess what: communism doesn't work in the real world, i don't care what rare subspecies you can point to as untried: it's castles in the sky built on a failed set of assumptions of human nature. it doesn't matter how many endless variations you spin off, if the essential assumptions are rotten, the whole edifice is without validity or reason, and is doomed to collapse

face it, communism is for the dustbin of history, it is no more. the entirety of the edifice of communism, and all of its subspecies, is without interest to anyone serious

i think your problem is is that what you call cynicism is actually realism. but to admit some ugly truths about this world and human nature is so depressing or painful to you, you write off some ugly but essential truths about humanity as cynicism. this allows you to instead embrace and describe as "reality" some feel-good hopes about human nature that aren't actually dominant in human societies, and never were, and never will be

you need to accept some really ugly things about humanity which are immovable, unfortunately. then you can start to say something intelligent about political and social organization. right now, you are a cottonheaded dreamer, keeping a flame for a passion alive, a passion which the world as a whole has moved past and is not returning to

"People like Marx, Luxembourg, DeLeon, and Gramsci had a lot to say about the world and you can't just dismiss all of 19th century philosophy by kicking a rock"

i am utterly dismissing it. failed experiments of history. it's 2011. stop living in the 20th century. communism and all its flavors are over and most certainly very dead and not returning. i don't care how many skulls with a little bit of dust inside you still point to as great thinkers

it's over

Re:Seriously

[uninformedLuddite]

My guess is they have more prisoners than computers,

It's not the USA

Re:Seriously

[gerddie]

but how the fuck "anarcho-communism" has anything to do with freedom is completely beyond my comprehension. oh, i have no doubt you can explain it to me.

Depends on how you define as "freedom". Besides I'd rather like to hear your argument why "anarcho-communism" has nothing to do with freedom before I'd consider explaining something. Especially, I'd like to know what you don't like about the notion No society is free so long as the individual is not so!

there's proponents for all sorts of half-baked ideas in this world

I never claimed that "anarcho-communism" is the ultimate answer to the problems we face with society, I only claimed that is proves that a communism without despotism is possible.

I've seen what the "real existing socialism" was all about since I was born in East Germany (no, it wasn't communist) and I now can experience capitalism. What I learnt from this is that both ways are not the answer. Finding a new model for society requires to look at half-backed ideas because the models that were thoroughly tried so far always resulted in societies were people are suffering.

News at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Prisoners in a Chinese work camp not allowed to share in on profits.

Re:Oh, the horror....

[santax]

Not if one part of your workday consists out of 12hr shifts,swinging a pickaxe at rocks... RTFA! The guardian has the story.

Re:Oh, the horror....

[OverlordQ]

^^^

Danger, goatse

Re:Oh, the horror....

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING: Don't click on the parent's link! Damn goatse! The first I experienced, no less.

Re:Oh, the horror....

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is link to goatse.

Re:lizard skinned flesh lights

[santax]

Please do enlighten me your great AC-ness.

Re:Oh, the horror....

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate your guts.

One of these guys

[immakiku]

Is going to know the master character's password, dig a tunnel through the sewage, and get the warden arrested!

Damn Whiners

[Dyinobal]

Damn Whiners they could have it worse, just like this guy! http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/8/11/

5000-6000 rmb a day

[prakslash]

5000-6000 rmb a day =~ $850 a day!

I am in the wrong business! If this is exploitation, chain me to the PC!

On second thoughts though, that number is probably not a "per prisoner earning".

Re:5000-6000 rmb a day

[Plekto]

That's 300 prisoners making ~$850 a day. Or about $2.85 a person, per day. That doesn't sound like much, but multiply it times a few hundred thousand people and you're looking at a good extra bit of money for the government to keep running their work camps.

Re:5000-6000 rmb a day

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't :)

US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/pris-m08.shtml

"There are presently 80,000 inmates in the US employed in commercial activity, some earning as little as 21 cents an hour."

"In addition, during the last 20 years more than 30 states have passed laws permitting the use of convict labor by commercial enterprises. These programs now exist in 36 states."

"Prisoners who refuse to work under these conditions are labeled “uncooperative” and risk losing time off for “good behavior,” as well as privileges such as library access and recreation."

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

This is the ultimate sad truth, that white america (hey that's me!) allows the laws of this country and the will of racism to subjugate and enslave people, NO DAMN DIFFERENT THEN ANY SAVAGE ERA.

I've seen the dark side of this, and let me tell you, arm chair nerd reading this, that YOU are guilty of supporting slavery. YOU are complicit in the wonton inhumane and completely barbaric treatment of beings as human as you..

and you'll make some joke about how its "PMITA" prison and say it could never happen to you.

How wrong, how totally and sadly wrong, you are.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[mirix]

That has been deemed fine, as the powers that be decided that only hard labour is cruel. Sewing for a few dollars a day is apparently fine. My real problem with it is the loaning to commercial enterprise, seems like a conflict of interest for a few parties involved, which can lead to, yeah, you know... If it's truly voluntary and not benefiting to private outfits I think it's fair enough. or if working for private enterprise, the outfit they are contracting for pays market wage, and it goes to a charity if they don't want the prisoners to collect. That way there is no advantage for the outfit, no kickback to the prison, etc.

Wouldn't mind seeing hard labour come back for violent offences myself, at least for recidivists. Some folks you just can't reach and all that.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[NoobixCube]

I'm much happier thinking some rapist, pedophile, or insider trader (oh wait, they're too rich for jail...) was worked to death for my materialism than I was thinking some hard working average guy in China worked a year of 18 hour shifts.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

but they are NOT some rapist, some pedophile. See how programmed you are. It's people just like you, when the cops want to meet their quota, when they don't like you, when they just had a bay day. There are TENS of THOUSANDS of people better then you in jail, dude, believe it. But keep it up thinking everyone in jail deserves it. When it's your turn, you can tell it to yourself at night when your starving.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the ultimate sad truth, that white america (hey that's me!) allows the laws of this country and the will of racism to subjugate and enslave people, NO DAMN DIFFERENT THEN ANY SAVAGE ERA.

I've seen the dark side of this, and let me tell you, arm chair nerd reading this, that YOU are guilty of supporting slavery. YOU are complicit in the wonton inhumane and completely barbaric treatment of beings as human as you..

and you'll make some joke about how its "PMITA" prison and say it could never happen to you.

How wrong, how totally and sadly wrong, you are.

White America? WTF......
There's people with white skin in jail also.
Not all whitish coloured people are evil, just about the same percentage as blackish coloured people are.
You can't make something a persons fault if they had no involvement in committing it, it's not their job to fix others screw ups.. Thats fucking ridiculous.
Blaming anyone that's... apparently the same colour as you for the worlds problems means one thing: you're one fucked up mother fucker.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Klasanov]

Most people in jail do deserve their lot, sorry. No sympathy here for the system. It's not perfect but that doesn't mean we're enslaving innocent people just because.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe we should just let all the people who dont deserve to be in jail out...will everybody who doesn't deserve to be here please raise your hand

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

I've known people who have been imprisoned. The prisons they were at had in-prison work. However, far from being mandatory, work was considered a privilege. If you misbehaved, you could not work. Work offered a lot of benefits: 1) something to do in a very boring place, 2) ability to earn wages [of any kind], and 3) the ability to begin learning a trade skill.

It's not all ditch digging and mirrored sunglasses and "wiping it off, boss".

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because someone is in prison doesn't mean they should be slaves. Forget the obvious ramifications and simply focus on the most obvious, the person falsely accused.

Case in point: Both wife and I were jailed and prosecuted for something we didn't do. Everything eventually came out, full confession by the instigator, and we were cleared, but sadly we're not alone. This country does not, and has not for quite some time, follow the "innocent until proven guilty" method. Quite the opposite, in fact. Get accused of something sometime and let me know how everything works out for you.

In the meantime, forced labor is forced labor. You can call it what you want, but I was subjected to slave labor conditions in the past and due to my refusal to participate, I was branded uncooperative and spent every day of my sentence. And for the record, I didn't do that one either. And yes, again there was proof.

Should we have been used for slave labor? I think not.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm much happier thinking some rapist, pedophile, or insider trader (oh wait, they're too rich for jail...) was worked to death for my materialism than I was thinking some hard working average guy in China worked a year of 18 hour shifts.

Really? That average guy in China probably has two choices - work his ass off or let his family starve.
Shitty working conditions are shitty, but they tend to be a whole hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Meanwhile think about this for a while:
"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
  ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

My real problem with it is the loaning to commercial enterprise,

Absolutely. I don't think it is a stretch to say that the group of people advocating for this sort of thing is in large part the same group who tout capitalism, free-markets and laissez-faire policies. So even if they don't have a problem with forced labor, they sure are hypocrites for supporting what is essentially corporate welfare.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Krishnoid]

Cory Doctorow wrote a short story about a sort of related situation. Interesting introduction to the economic forces involved for those who don't play.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

yeah YOUR money going right into private jail corporation profits? How you like that, "moron"?

Go ahead, tell me.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

you just keep telling yourself racism isn't a problem, boy. It's all around you. Nothing fucked up about being honest -- that more minorities are in prison then white people often boils down to a perception of their "worth" by the judge. Guess who the judge think is "worth" more?

Luckily I'm not a racist, so I could care less.
You knuckleheads keep fighting with each other, just stay out of my way.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[mobilebuddha]

dude.. have you been to OUR prisons? I'm sorry.. I don't particularly wanna talk about other countries prisons and their legal/judicial system when we have such a F-ed system here. To be frank, I'm almost certain the Chinese legal system is very similar to ours.. more $ -> less chance to be jailed. Of course there's that thin line of "opposing the state/disrupt the peace etc".. but then again.. our government can detain, imprison you, me or anyone w/o cause by branding us enemy combatant of the state..

so really.. what's the difference?

PS. Sure some may say.. "but here.. we got free speech!" Yeah, have you tried to overthrow the US government with your speech? Try it. I'm not saying US is = to China at the moment.. but it's close...

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[ZzzzSleep]

He also wrote a much longer story along similar lines.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[jeti]

In conclusion, Americans are ten times more likely to deserve to be in jail than Japanese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

they sure are hypocrites for supporting what is essentially corporate welfare.

But that's what "Free Market" (TM) is all about: pretending to be some fair construct but in the end they just want unhindered exploitation of citizens.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are you wasting time posting on slashdot? If I was you and that happened to me I'd be far too busy exacting a bloody and horrible revenge upon those I deemed responsible. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. You ever see or hear the police stories where some homicide detective says "I've seen a lot of things over the years I've worked homicide but nothing prepared me for this. This was by far the worst thing I've ever seen." I'd be doing stuff that would make them say that, even if they'd said that about something before.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

As they said:
First they came for the arabs and blacks. And you didn't speak out, since you're white. (Oh wait, they already do. -> Guantamao and blacks being convicted way more easily. And *Guantanamo*! [So in-your-face unacceptable, you have to say it twice!])
Then they came for the trade unionists. And you didn't speak out, since you weren't a trade unionist. (Wait, that also already happens. -> Wisconsin proto-fascist Scott Walker government.)
Then they came for the file sharers. And you didn't speak out, since you believed in the "IP" delusion. (Also starting -> Jim Urie, president of the UMG, calls file sharers murderers of musicians.)
Then they came for you. And there was no-one left, to speak out for you.

I recommend everyone to read up, how Stalin always found a new group to define as the enemy, right when the Gulags ran out of human "resources". Used up. Very literally.

China still is worse. The question is, how long. And how long, until people stand up for their constitution, country, and freedom.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, go suck a dick, you tedious bore

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are presently 80,000 inmates in the US employed in commercial activity, some earning as little as 21 cents an hour."

Plus room and board.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

You said "wonton"....

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Inmates cost society a lot of money, why not make them earn their living like the rest of us? US inmates aren't forced to work 24h a day and I bet overall conditions in US prisons are a lot better too. I really don't see the point you are trying to make.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[m50d]

Ooh, internet tough guy. You might think that's what you'd do, but when it actually happens you'll roll over like everyone else.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Nazi Germany enslaving people for commercial enterprise. No different here... just less humiliating.

IMO, even if incarcerated people were 'forced' to work, they should be paid the minimum of minimum wage, or however much it would have cost to hire someone who isn't in prison. It's very wrong idea to lower the employment standards just because they are in prison, as this advocates that prisoners = slaves, and thus little incentive to ever reduce prison populations.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

""There are presently 80,000 inmates in the US employed in commercial activity, some earning as little as 21 cents an hour.""

OK. Give them minimum wage. Take out taxes and then charge them for food and their room. How much money would they have left then? Everyone is a victim.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Bing Tsher E]

The Wisconsin governor isn't going after trade unionists. That would imply that the people in the unions were tradesmen. No, 'the trades' are less unionized than they have been in the past. The Wisconsin governor is going after featherbedding government bureaucrat and pencil-pusher unions. You know... practically the only kind of union that is still viable in the US right now: the kind that grows like moss on the slow-rolling entity known as government, because of political patronage.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[timftbf]

YOU are complicit in the wonton inhumane and completely barbaric treatment of beings as human as you..

I'm forcing inmates to eat Chinese food?

Hint: the word you're looking for is "wanton".

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[LurkerXXX]

Oh, I didn't say I liked private jails. But claiming we are all guilty of deliberately 'enslaving' folks in prison is a crock. Slavery is a way to get extremely cheap labor. We aren't getting that. There are some individuals taking advantage of the system to make money, but claiming we are all guilty of enslaving folks is just dumb.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[NoobixCube]

Well, the city I'm in is causing my misanthropy to act up, again, but I'm currently of the opinion all people are scum. Pretty much everyone I know is a terrible person who should be in jail, for one reason or another.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the ultimate sad truth, that white america (hey that's me!) allows the laws of this country and the will of racism to subjugate and enslave people, NO DAMN DIFFERENT THEN ANY SAVAGE ERA.

I've seen the dark side of this, and let me tell you, arm chair nerd reading this, that YOU are guilty of supporting slavery. YOU are complicit in the wonton inhumane and completely barbaric treatment of beings as human as you..
 

You're quite right, I/we are. What's your point?

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Please provide examples of "non-savage" eras in human history.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

GODWIN.

This is pretty stupid, since actually almost everyone is opposed to racism, quite a lot of people here like trade unions, and Slashdot is full of file-sharing apologists who don't believe in "imaginary" property.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[vipw]

Inmates cost society a lot of money, why not make them earn their living like the rest of us?

Because that is slavery.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[epine]

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

Yes, but that predates the invention of chat rooms. We're supposed to be geeks here, but the mental style "1, 2, 3, many" is being trotted out in numerous posts suggesting American prisons are on some comparable tier with Chinese prisons.

By the standards of a free society, the state of the American prison system is a travesty beyond words. We're not judging Chinese prisons by the standards of a free society. Unfortunately, there's not much room for nuanced thought after the needle swings to "life is cheap". I attended an all-candidates meeting recently where the tough-on-crime incumbent was asked "out of the additional spending on prisons, what will be done for the people in prison suffering from mental illness?" The word "pedophile" was uttered in his leading phrase. That's that, then. This is a code phrase for "after you get voted off the island, you're human garbage". Life is contingently cheap. But don't worry, right-thinking people know where to draw the line, and no one has ordered shipping containers full of Chinese machetes (that we know of).

If I were a cartoonist, I'd be drawing a patient waking up in the outskirts of a well-sourced, opulent OR after a successful liver transplant musing to himself "I feel a sudden urge to indulge in petty economic activity".

We should feel a lot more collective disgust at the state of incarceration in America (coming soon to a Canadian province near you). Nya nya nya pedophile can't hear you. Happily, the incumbent went down in flames, but not every election ends on a high note.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Dunbal]

When it's your turn,

Funny, I've heard this line before. From a prisoner I was attending to at my hospital. Sometimes the inmates get it into their heads that they need a quick vacation to an emergency room and decide to give themselves superficial wounds on their forearms. Anyway he seemed certain that one day I too would end up in jail. There's a slight problem with that logic - I don't break the law. But someone with borderline or anti-social personality disorder will never recognize that it's their behavior that has landed them in jail, no, it's always someone else's fault.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Dunbal]

It costs us taxpayers about $60k/year to keep each of them in jail. That's a lot more than they'd be paid to do the same work at those low end jobs on the outside. So we aren't exactly saving a lot of money

Right because there is no economic cost involved in letting them rampage through society doing whatever the hell they want.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget that, in the US, a lot of prisons are private.

This means that they are corporation with making money as their objective.

The rest just follows.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies employing prison labor should only be allowed to do so if they commit to hiring those same prisoners when they get out of jail.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[guruevi]

Funny since your sig alone could be proof enough that you should go to jail for a minor offense. There are many that get convicted to the death penalty and then either before or after their death get exonerated eg. by better DNA processing or a discovery of mistakes being made.

It's not because you did something wrong that you would go to jail. It seems like you're a doctor or a nurse or somebody in the medical field. You could go to jail for giving or by no fault of your own (eg. computer error if you're a programmer) allowing the wrong person to get the wrong prescription. You could go to jail when a homeless guy jumps in front of your car while you're driving. You could go to jail for simply exercising any of your amendment rights if you live 100 miles near a US border.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[kellyb9]

"There are presently 80,000 inmates in the US employed in commercial activity, some earning as little as 21 cents an hour."

Well, they do get free room and board.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Hint: the word you're looking for is "wanton".

I thought it was "wonton".

Dammit, now I'm hungry...

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[tacokill]

Wait a minute. If "earning your keep" (for lack of a better term) while incarcerated is slavery, then why don't we treat the fact that you are incarcerated as slavery? In other words, being incarcerated is just fine by you, but the minute an inmate is forced to do ANY non-voluntary work, all of a sudden it's slavery? That defies my common sense.

Isn't there a middle ground? When you are incarcerated, you no longer have the right to the "liberty" part of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and it seems reasonable to expect convicts to "chip in".

To your point: it's needs to be monitored very closely because a work system is obviously ripe for abuse. However, that does not mean it can't and shouldn't be done.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Khyber]

*every pot smokers' hand shoots up in the air*

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Nemo's Night Sky]

but they are NOT some rapist, some pedophile. See how programmed you are. It's people just like you, when the cops want to meet their quota, when they don't like you, when they just had a bay day. There are TENS of THOUSANDS of people better then you in jail, dude, believe it. But keep it up thinking everyone in jail deserves it. When it's your turn, you can tell it to yourself at night when your starving.

Now THIS is truth! Well said.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Shenanigans.

We are not talking about a bogus speeding ticket for driving 56 in a 55 zone, which is rare in most locales, merely annoying, and involves a trivial fine. People whose lifestyle involves criminal activity or hanging out with those who are criminals would like to believe that it is "bad luck", and not their own behavior, that got them where they are in life. Boo. Hoo.

People who make a positive habit of staying well away from crime very, very rarely have this kind of "bad luck". The exceptions would be a few labor organizers or other civil rights activists, who seek out opportunities to step on the toes of the powerful. While most such persons are laudable, they are obviously outliers that have little to do with what you are insinuating about our legal system.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[brit74]

Glad we're referencing reliable sources like the "World Socialist Web Site". I've seen some truly ridiculous news articles on there. I especially like how they always rush to defend North Korea's actions and paint everyone else as nasty aggressors. (Seriously, do those guys at wsws think that any communist country is ever guilty of anything? Or do they think communist = "good guys no matter what". Because I've never seen them criticize a communist regime for anything.)

It's also worth mentioning that 80,000 inmates is 3.5% of the total prison population, which is not that common. It's also not terribly profitable, considering how much money it costs to hold someone in prison versus the amount of money they generate from their labor.

"Prisoners who refuse to work under these conditions are labeled “uncooperative” and risk losing time off for “good behavior,” as well as privileges such as library access and recreation."
Yeah, I'd really believe the wsws's word when they make that claim. Like I said, only 1 in 30 prisoners are involved in prison labor, yet the wsws talks, they make it sound like everyone is forced to work. It's not clear that "80,000" doing prison labor means working full-time. For all we know, they work a few hours a week.

There's also a difference between slave labor (where prisoners are forced to work, especially when it's 12 hours/day) versus work programs that are voluntary and allow prisoners to earn money which they will have when they are released from prison.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[sjames]

If you REALLY want to reform people, first you have to show them that society isn't the enemy. Poor conditions in prison and forced labor of any kind don't just give them the impression that society is their enemy to be attacked and exploited before it attacks and exploits them, it makes it true.

If you really and truly believe that a person cannot be taught and cannot be reformed, then any punishment you mete out to them beyond isolation from those they would harm is just you proving that you have a sadistic streak that needs to find an unsympathetic target to take it out on. If they can't or won't learn, it can serve no other purpose. That is, you reveal yourself as the sort of person we put in prison for the good of society.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the group of people advocating this is the group of people that want to see inmates not sit around watching cable at the taxpayers expense. These "forced labor" situations are all earning minimum wage, then the jail takes a cut to offset the cost of providing the inmates shelter, food and TV.
This has nothing to do with free markets at all, and the companies arent really getting any "deal" from this. Your accusation that capitalists are all hypocritical is as unfounded, and as unsuported by the issue at hand the following accusation: Anyone that doesnt think that prisoners should work is liberal that is almost as out of touch with reality as they are with real social issues.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[TheCouchPotatoFamine]

THAT'S A LIE. and i'm proof. I've had two "all charges dismissed" cases that landed me in prison for a stretch. Get that? Charges completely dismissed! Why was I there? Once because a cop couldn't read (the courts own orders!) and didn't like it when I tried to explain.

You know why I had to stay in prison? Cause I didn't have anyone to call in that state with the 500 dollars it would take for bail. So I suffered, I was harassed, I lost money and a job, all because a cop couldn't read and wanted a bust *more* then he wanted to leave me alone. That's it; THAT'S your sacred belief that the crime fairies only take away the bad people. bullshit.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[vipw]

Maybe slavery isn't quite the right word for it, because that includes the connotation of a person being property. Although, to the one forced to toil, the social construct in which they are viewed doesn't seem very relevant. Nonetheless, I should probably call it what it is, involuntary forced labor. Keep in mind that, likewise, slavery isn't actually the right word for the forced labor camps used in some totalitarian regimes. I don't find one to be especially less repugnant than the other. Maybe the word slavery pricks ears better.

What is the inherent difference between a political prisoner and a thief being sentenced to forced labor? A cynical part of me observes that they are the same, except one is a Jew and the other a Negro.

What truly defies common sense is for their to be a prison population so large that the cost of it is a significant drain to the society. It is like taking painkillers for a toothache instead of seeing the dentist.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

dude.. have you been to OUR prisons?

I think you misunderstand Dostoevsky's point.

Re:US employs 80,000 prisoners for labor

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. I work for my food and keep and i'm NOT a criminal. they should make the ones who don't want to work fight eachother for every mouthful of food and televise it. thin the prison population and entertain us law abiding citizens.

Anybody seen people doing the Master Cylinder?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll know this is really a problem when we see WoW characters doing the Master Cylinder dance. ;)

Re:Anybody seen people doing the Master Cylinder?

[NoobixCube]

"He says he has a car in China..."

In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

Landmines are green. No inferior capitalist, bourgeois, GOLD landmines in worker paradise.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bryan1945]

I can't even count how many ways you butchered that.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

In Soviet Russia butcher count YOU!

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bryan1945]

touche

Some people never learn

[lucm]

So that former prison guard is in jail for being a whistleblower, and now he is whistleblowing again. Tsk tsk.

Re:Some people never learn

[VocationalZero]

I thought you were kidding but then I read the article...

Re:Some people never learn

[PPH]

Five'll get you ten that he's going to be doing time at the high stakes table for that.

Re:Some people never learn

[syousef]

So that former prison guard is in jail for being a whistleblower, and now he is whistleblowing again. Tsk tsk.

Stop playing with whistle. Whistle not worth anything. Sword, shield, axe and crown are good paying items. Get back to work!

Re:Some people never learn

[Anonymous Coward]

Now....., What we have here is a failure to communicate....

Strange.

[Anonymous Coward]

The is not the sunny picture of gold farming entrepreneurs that a certain recent novel has led us to believe...

Prison Income scheme

[VocationalZero]

I suppose this is at least a step up from organ harvesting. If the prison bosses give kickbacks to the party, which seems likely, its not a huge leap in logic to think that the state may begin to arrest "undesirables" for the sole purpose of earning an income, unless of course the operating costs outweigh the income (IANAPB).

Either way China is going to torture you.

[Anonymous Coward]

So if your addicted to the Internet China tortures you, and if you're a prisoner in China they use the Internet to torture you.

WoWoWoW

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm opening a ticket as I type this.

Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

We should do this in America as well, especially with gang-banger scum. If they are forced to play video games 14 hours a day, the ACLU can't say they are working under unreasonable hard labor conditions. The money they make can go to a fund to pay victims of their crimes, they won't have any time to continue the work of being the losers that they are, making new contacts, continuing gang activities in prison, etc, and for once will provide a positive benefit to society.

Where's the down side?

A variant of this happens in Nevada

[straponego]

This is according to a friend of mine who used to tend bar at a Reno casino. I don't know how much has changed since then; maybe a local can tell us more. Slot machines in Nevada are regulated and required to pay out a certain percentage over time. This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon. Once a casino got to the point where a payoff was probable, a bus would pull up full of compulsive gamblers, all wearing the same windbreakers. They'd sit at every machine in the casino and play until someone hit the jackpot. These people were not allowed to keep their winnings (or not much of them), but their habit was paid for.

Since they never tipped, the bartenders hated them. Whenever they saw the bus pull up, they'd place drinks at the slots to reserve the spots.

Anyway, wherever there is money you will find corruption. Rule of law (applied equably), transparency, and cultural values are all that mitigate this. The only reason this doesn't happen in American for-profit prisons is that the money isn't good enough, yet. But the dollar continue to drop. Your kids might gold-farm for the Chinese.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[19thNervousBreakdown]

what

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friend is full of it. Poker machines are random. They are no more likely to pay out next time than last time. Even is someone was stupid enough to operate such a scheme, it is unsustainable and they would go broke in the long term. The longer you play a poker machine, the closer your chances of losing money approach 100%.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

Your friend is full of shit, slot machines pay out consistently over time due to math. It could literally jackpot 10 times in a row or never in the machines lifetime, it's just freakishly unlikely.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

False, false, false, false, true.

Thank you, come again!

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

best post ever

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't make sense. If the house is paying less to them than they'd get from them when they gamble normally, the gamblers would gamble instead. If the house is paying more, it's losing money on the deal.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[TheRealMindChild]

Actually, no. If a machine hits jackpot twice even like that, they would yank the machine from the floor.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Obfuscant]

This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon.

It is for exactly this lack of comprehension of odds that the casinos put up the "recent numbers" boards at the roulette tables, and people bet based on what numbers or colors haven't shown up for a while.

Casinos make money when you gamble stupidly.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just plain incorrect. I know people who work in programming slot machines. They're all connected to a massive ethernet network, and a central server network determines when a win is "due". There is, of course, a lot of randomness involved, but if the same machine jackpotted twice in a row, there would be a serious investigation as to why.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Twinbee]

I always wonder why these types of slots don't work on a purely random basis. Yes, there's variance to consider, but over time (even if the advantage is 0.1% or less), the tide will always go to the weighted side (just like a roulette wheel).

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, for roulette, but slot machines are PROGRAMMED. They are purposely programmed to pay out a certain percentage of the time. You ever notice how many "near misses" the machines give out? They do that on purpose. Roulette, blackjack, powerball, etc are actually random. Scratch tickets and video slot machines are not random, they are programmed to look random. Machines can glitch, and you can effect the odds of it glitching under certain conditions. That couldn't happen if they were actually random.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

And I can sell you an exclusive deal on the brooklin bridge and the eifel tower scrap metal...

Anybody understanding the real math of gambling machines would know that it does not work that way...

And any half smart casino owner knows that it makes more money for him (or her) to pay out the jackpot and make some publicity around it than to try to get it through the backdor.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

You call betting on red when it's hit black ten times in a row stupid? Yeah, me too..bet on black again!

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

Well, yes, i suppose it would be prevented from happening because they might yank it, but not due to any of its internal programming.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

It may well be rolling a die on a central server, but I guarantee you that server doesn't have logic like, "if machine #2222 wins, don't pay out to #2222 (or anybody) again for x spins". It would be super illegal.

And you're right, in the hypothetical freak scenario where a machine jackpots twice or 3 times in a row, they will investigate it, much like I"m sure they'd investigate a guy who won the lottery jackpot back to back, legitimately, even if he was truly just lucky enough to win a 1 in quadrillions sort of shot. My point is that the machines aren't programmed to prevent it, that would be illegal.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

They do, the original poster is just full of shit.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed several key points in your friend's story. There are progressive slot machines where the jackpot keeps going up based on the amount of play. If the jackpot has not been hit in a long time it is possible that the jackpot amount is enough that the odds of hitting the jackpot are in the players favor. It it costs you $1 to play and the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 100, then as soon as the jackpot goes over $100 the odds of you hitting the jackpot before you spend more than the jackpot are in your favor. When there is an entire bank of slot machines hooked up to a single progressive jackpot and the jackpot is in the players favor, professional slot players will form a team and play the entire bank of slot machines. Usually there is a banker who finances the players. The players usually get an hourly wage and a bonus if they hit the jackpot with the rest of the money going to the person who bankrolls the operation.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[rossdee]

Somebody failed statistics/probability 101

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Except with roulette, someone who spins the wheel and ball with a fairly consistent amount of force can actually get the ball to land on a specific section of the wheel slightly more often than chance, so there's some slight merit to betting on what's come up recently (usually not enough to beat the house edge due to the 0's and 00's though). With a slot machine, the only thing that might make sense is on one with a progressive jackpot, if it gets high enough due to random chance, there would be a slightly better than even return expected. So if a casino had a progressive machine that was limited by connection to maybe 2 dozen other ones, it would be possible for the tour bus scenario to work, but highly unlikely.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes and no. The odds don't actually increase that it will hit within X number of attempts, but it (the process, the chips that run the machines, etc) is/are regulated by the gaming commission to avoid the obvious issue of rigged machines, at least in Vegas. (Who knows what they do abroad...)

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I guarantee you that server doesn't have logic like, "if machine #2222 wins, don't pay out to #2222 (or anybody) again for x spins". It would be super illegal.

FWIW, packs of lotto scratch-cards DO work exactly like that:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/02/why-liquor-store-clerks-often-win-lotto/70786

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it works quite as you understood it from your friend.

Some years ago, on at least some machines where I'm from, a small slice of each coin is set aside into a jackpot pool, and when the jackpot goes off you get paid from that pool as well as whatever the machine thinks it's worth.

Normally the payout from a jackpot is managed to try to discourage professional players (at least, to make it unprofitable to pay people to play for you), but there were regulations requiring that money in the jackpot pool could only be paid out on the same type of machines that collected it, and that they couldn't simply use it for other purposes; when time comes to retire those particular machines any money still in the jackpot pool has to be paid out first, which can mean uncapping payouts and potentially grossly shifting the odds in favour of professional "players".

Over time (assuming the jackpot doesn't go off in the mean time) the payout for a jackpot rises - the odds of getting the jackpot remain the same, but the average return on just pumping money into the machines hoping to get the jackpot rises. Eventually, it can become positive (i.e., average payout exceeds investment) and at that point, people who've done the maths (or, more likely, people in their employ) may suddenly descend like a swarm, doing their best to monopolize all of the affected machines until the jackpot goes off - if they aren't playing essentially all of the machines, the risk that they'll lose out when some outsider gets the jackpot is too great.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a company that built software for slot machines. The exact details of how the results are generated are different from location to location due to the different rules of the gambling commissions. In the particular software I helped develop, the result sets were generated for a specific game and a given number of plays. For example (all names and numbers ficticious, but representative), Jackpot Madness Extreme!, for 5,000,000 plays of $1, with a payout of $4,750,000. The results were kept in a central database. As each slot machine playing that game needed a result, the next available one was queried and marked as used.

The number of jackpots at each level is predetermined when the result set is generated, so the payout is calculated to the cent in order to meet gaming commission payout rules. Some places will do automated analysis of the result set to make sure that there isn’t a clump of major jackpots close in time, but other than that it is a random set of results.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

They do, the original poster is just full of shit.

Here in Scotland it's a legal requirement for slot machine to have a minimum of a 78.2% payout

  i know this as my father had a small amusement arcade with a fair few machines in it plus some pool tables.

  there is a label on each machine to certify that it's programming complies with this legal requirement

  also every now and then some dude from the council would come along and with a piece of kit check the machines settings (only ever saw that once in 8 years though)

  but Rallin(the company we leased the machines from) were VERY VERY keen to make sure all was above board as the fines for non compliance were horrendous.

  even with a 78.2% payout the money those machines is unbelievable and .. and the time the maximum payout was only £3.00 GBP, anything above that was paid out in "tokens" , as if it was cash we'd have had to have a different type of amusement license from the local council(more a casino type)

it was a requirement though that we HAD to offer "alternative prizes" in Exchange for the tokens so there was an array of shitty soft toys for them, no-one EVER asked for an exchange.. people seemed to just want to thrown their money in them.

  put me off any form of gambling for life seeing people waste their time having themselves so absorbed into playing them and having their money absorbed along with it.

  so in essence funksoulbrother you might find that you are just plain ignorant of the legal requirements of those machine... YMMV with the payout percentage in your local area but as a rule of thumb they are required to pay out a majority of the takings.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Pax681]

oops forgot to log in so posted as AC above

They do, the original poster is just full of shit.

is he now?
however funksoulbrother check below, there's even a link.
i would further point out that ALL gaming machines regardless of what type HAVE to have this pay out percentage.. end of...

Payout percentage Slot machines are typically programmed to pay out as winnings 82% to 98% of the money that is wagered by players. This is known as the "theoretical payout percentage" or RTP, "return to player". The minimum theoretical payout percentage varies among jurisdictions and is typically established by law or regulation. For example, the minimum payout in Nevada is 75%, and in New Jersey, 83%. The winning patterns on slot machines – the amounts they pay and the frequencies of those payouts – are carefully selected to yield a certain fraction of the money played to the "house" (the operator of the slot machine), while returning the rest to the players during play. Suppose that a certain slot machine costs $1 per spin. It can be calculated that over a sufficiently long period, such as 1,000,000 spins, that the machine will return an average of $950,000 to its players, who have inserted $1,000,000 during that time. In this (simplified) example, the slot machine is said to pay out 95%. The operator keeps the remaining $50,000. Within some EGM development organizations this concept is referred to simply as "par". "Par" also manifests itself to gamblers as promotional techniques: "Our 'Loose Slots' have a 93% payback! Play now!" It is worth noting that the "Loose Slots" actually may describe a very few anonymous machines in a particular bank of EGMs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine#Payout_percentage in nevada

boo and yah br

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

I can attest to this, I saw this in action when I worked for an auditor.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

I thought I was on Slashdot, where a majority of people understood probability and statistics. I suppose it's not 1999 anymore. I'm literally a comp sci dropout and this isn't that hard for me.

Did you read the text of that Wikipedia article? I'll highlight the important words:

The winning patterns on slot machines - the amounts they pay and the frequencies of those payouts - are carefully selected to yield a certain fraction of the money played to the "house" (the operator of the slot machine), while returning the rest to the players during play.

Suppose that a certain slot machine costs $1 per spin. It can be calculated that over a sufficiently long period, such as 1,000,000 spins, that the machine will return an average of $950,000 to its players, who have inserted $1,000,000 during that time. In this (simplified) example, the slot machine is said to pay out 95%.

Notice where no one programmed the thing with any logic about when to pay out? They are relying on math to handle the payouts. The machine IS truly random, they just structure the pay table in such a way that it pays off x% of what it takes in OVER time.

Consider I offer you stupidly simple slot machine. It "spins" a fair six sided die. One dollar per spin. If you get a 1,2,3,4 or 5, you lose. If you get a 6, you win the jackpot, $5.

It should be relatively simple to see that on average, you'll put $6 into the my machine for every $5 you pull out.

6/5 = .0833333 -- I'm paying out 83% on every dollar wagered, making money hand over fist, yet my machine is still dumb as a brick and "purely random", just like Twinbee suggested in the post I was replying to.

In the short term you might roll a whole bunch of sixes and kill me, but in the long term, my casino full of thousands of these machines will make me a millionaire.

Can you see now how that is truly random, yet I can confidently post an "83%" without rigging the machine to do so?

Real slot machines are just variations on the above, with more intermediate prizes, way more combinations, and a lot of bells and whistles.

boo and yah. linebreak.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Phronesis]

Actually, no. If a machine hits jackpot twice even like that, they would yank the machine from the floor.

Why? Wouldn't a machine that happened to hit multiple jackpots in a row be a huge draw for customers? My impression is that Casinos want flashy payouts to get more people to come play because they damned well understand the law of large numbers.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

So are you claiming that for your project, if there was one jackpot in the 5,000,000 generated spins, and the very first gambler got lucky and won that jackpot, and then the next 4,999,999 plays would be spun by gamblers for months with no real shot at the jackpot?

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Casinos make money when you gamble.

FTFY.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[coaxial]

Slot machines in Nevada are regulated and required to pay out a certain percentage over time. This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon. Once a casino got to the point where a payoff was probable, a bus would pull up full of compulsive gamblers, all wearing the same windbreakers.

I call bullshit. Why? Because that's not the way the universe works. The spins of a fair slot machine (and they are fair, are independent, identically distributed.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that slot machines are programmed to win if there was no winner for a long time. There is no odds about it. Roulette tables are not programmed like a slot machine. If you were going to "win" on a slot machine, but there was a winner recently, the slot would just skip to the next number depriving you of your winnings, and it is all legal.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[bryan1945]

Which are pre-determined. We're talking about machines that are required by law to be as random as possible. Now, the reality of this...

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[bryan1945]

That is the dumbest thing I've heard today. And if that is actually true, they are even dumber. There is a reason why casino do not go out of business.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

They do, the original poster is just full of shit.

Wow, that's awesome. Please post your link to your Nobel Prize for figuring out a way to generate a truly Random sequence, as opposed to the Pseudo-Random sequences in use by all computer systems on the planet.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak for the US but here in the UK there is a mix of purely random and compensated (that is machines where payout is affected by previous play), random is fine if you're running a good number of machines in a casino as your operation is big enough to absorb the odd statistical fluke. On the other hand if you're running a couple of machines in a pub then it's preferable to have a dependable revenue stream that stands no chance of paying out 3 jackpots in a day and ruining your bottom line for the month. Additionally with compensated machines if people see someone put a large amount of cash in and not win they tend to get the impression that it must be about ready to payout and put a few quid in. I'm reliably informed that it's not that good of a strategy as, in general, compensators work over a much longer period (I work in the industry, but not with compensated machines)

As a point to a poster above when random machines were first introduced in the UK there were instances of them being yanked by the operators who thought they were broken when statistically unlikely things happened, but these days operators tend to know what they are dealing with.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon.

It is for exactly this lack of comprehension of odds that the casinos put up the "recent numbers" boards at the roulette tables, and people bet based on what numbers or colors haven't shown up for a while.

Casinos make money when you gamble.

ftfy

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

That "somebody" is he who applied statistics and probability to a non-random computer-controlled slot machine...

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's talking about machines which have a cumulative jackpot. When it resets the machine pays 50c for every dollar and sets 1c aside for the jackpot. As the jackpot builds up (as more losers play), the expected value will rise until it is more than $1 for every $1 inserted. That's when the real gamblers show up and throw as much money as they can at it until they hit the jackpot and get it all back + profit (or get booted out by the manager, which is a risk factor in the calculations).

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

How do YOU know?

You're as every pseudoskeptical, full og pseudoarguments..

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats how a jager bomb thinks

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes, i suppose it would be prevented from happening because they might yank it, but not due to any of its internal programming.

Still not quite true. The problem is that even the best pseudo-random number generators are not truly random. While it's true that over a long enough period of time they will average out properly, the issue is that Regulations require them to maintain a specific payout level per period of time.
In order to compensate for this, they pre-calculate number strings generated by each seed, and throw out any seeds that show unusual trends to help prevent the possibility of a longer-than-allowed winning or losing streak.
Then, the machines are audited, and if the machine does not fall within the payout guidelines for the time period, it is pulled and replaced. Some machines will even keep track on their own and if they stray too far out of the Regulated payout level will auto-generate a machine error, thus preventing further play until it's serviced.

Overall, it's not really mathematically random, but statistically it's close enough to not really matter. So the idea that a machine "is ready to pay" is still not completely true, but not completely false either.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Adrian Harvey]

You need to understand that Slot machines, unlike roulette wheels, are not purely random. They contain logic that pre-decides where the wheels will spin to and discard outlier values that would take the machine outside programmed min and max payout rates (as well as do other things designed to hook and encourage play). These payout rates are frequently set by law. Thus if a machine is reaching the low point there actually is a higher chance of a win as the machine discards more losing combinations.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon.

It is for exactly this lack of comprehension of odds that the casinos put up the "recent numbers" boards at the roulette tables, and people bet based on what numbers or colors haven't shown up for a while.

Casinos make money when you gamble stupidly.

Odds only work in a theoretical environment. In real life, and particularly with games of "chance", their IS a certain degree of non-randomness.

For example, in roulette it can be demonstrated that variances in the physical equipment can cause the ball to fall more frequently on some spots on that specific table and less frequently on others. The casinos take great efforts to ensure these deviations from theory are small enough to not matter or be taken advantage of, and when they spot equipment which starts to trend away from randomness they replace it.

The same is true of electronic machines as well. The difference being that instead of physical variances, there are variances caused by the use of the pseudo-random number generators.
In other words, just because something is not easily predictable does not make it truly random . And what Casinos rely on is not true randomness, but Unpredictability. And yes, this can cause a Math major to positively foam at the mouth.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason it can't be true. Let's say that over the long run (the period of a particular jackpot), 95 cents of every dollar put into the machines is paid out. It doesn't matter to the casino that there actually is someone other than the casino making more money than that particular individual (or group) put in; their sole concern is the profit margin, through whatever criteria they are playing by: paying out the minimum required by law, the minimum required to beat the competition, or whatever other purpose the slots are on that floorspace for.

Parasites upon parasites, as it were.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's because even with a setup like that, the amount the machines pay out will NEVER exceed what they take in. It's fixed that way. Hard to go out of business when your machines are fixed to pull a profit so long as someone is actually using them.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[tgd]

No, you are full of shit. Slot machines are not random, in any sense. Modern ones are networked, and vary their payouts based on the playing patterns in the machines around them. Play slowing down? People moving between machines (ever wonder WHY there are slot club cards?), the computers will dole out various sized jackpots to keep people in their seat. If an entire row is full of people who aren't moving around and are cycling a lot of money? Payouts will drop.

Its all totally legal, as long as the slot machines meet the local laws' requirements for payout percentages.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[tgd]

Decades ago, they did. These days they're sophisticated, networked computers calculating odds across the entire casino to keep the payout percentage *exactly* at the state mandated minimum while adjusting payout patterns to keep slot players in their seat.

So you are wonderning why they aren't random? When you take in a billion in cash, and the state mandates you pay back 97% of it, you're talking about a change in statistics shifting 30 million dollars in profits. Missing that percentage by .01% is still $300k. Going under, you are breaking the law. With millions of dollars at stake when skating that line, no one is going to leave it to random chance.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason why casino do not go out of business.

You're right, there is: all of the non-professional people who pump in money the other 90% of the time.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Dunbal]

What's the point of having your casino full of people if you are broke? People will go to casinos regardless. Gambling addiction is a recognized pathological condition, according to the DSM-IV.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[js_sebastian]

This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon.

It is for exactly this lack of comprehension of odds that the casinos put up the "recent numbers" boards at the roulette tables, and people bet based on what numbers or colors haven't shown up for a while.

Casinos make money when you gamble stupidly.

Casinos make money when you gamble. Remember that green 0 on the roulette?

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Dunbal]

No, casinos make money because they hedge the odds. You may think that choosing red or black is a 50-50 call, and you completely forget the two green "0" and (depending on the wheel) "00" slots on a roulette wheel. The odds are slightly less than 50-50. You may think that if there are 36 numbers on a roulette wheel but really there are 37 ("0" again), and oddly enough the casino pays 35 to 1, not 37 to 1. The house ALWAYS wins, even if you gamble smartly.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Phronesis]

What's the point of having your casino full of people if you are broke?

What casino would go broke from five or ten slot-machine jackpots? They actually do understand the statistics of payouts. That's why I mentioned the law of large numbers above.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Dunbal]

Er actually computers have been using real random numbers for some time now. Yeah ok using the rand() function in Visual C++ will still get you the garbage pseudo-random number generator, but I invite you to look at all the cryptography functions that use hardware on the chip specifically designed to return real random numbers by sampling thermal noise from hardware. This feature has been "built in" on Intel chips since the Pentium III. While some of your games might still use the old pseudo random number generators, there really is no excuse anymore. EVERYONE has a true random number generator on their PC or laptop.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an urban legend that perpetuates the gambler's fallacy. In reality, Nevada gaming laws prohibit gaming algorithms which alter the likelihood of payout from pull to pull. Gaming machine algorithms must be written to average a certain payout percentage over the life of the machine, but those percentage chances must by law be independent of any previous plays and cannot be changed remotely or more often than a certain amount of time. IIRC they can only be changed a few times per day, and must be designed such that altering the chances requires they be shut down and modified directly by a technician onsite.

The truth of th matter is, if a machine isn't paying out, that means it's payout percentage is likely low. That means until it has been serviced it is LESS likely to pay out and will remain so until serviced. If a machine appears to be paying out more often it will likely continue to do so until serviced since this is an indication that it's payout percentage has been set higher.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Twinbee]

But roulette wheels obviously have to stick to the random model....?

By the way, according to this post, slots in the UK often use the random model still:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2186094&cid=36248404

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[dylan_-]

Notice where no one programmed the thing with any logic about when to pay out? They are relying on math to handle the payouts.

I can't comment on the USA, but in the UK this simply isn't so. They *could* rely on maths to handle the payouts, but at least some of them go with pre-determined ones. See this for example.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

I think you're right, and that's a completely valid and real world scenario.

His description of "This means that the longer one type of slot at a casino doesn't pay out, the higher the odds are that they will soon."

is just 100% incorrect. Every pull is an independent trial.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

Pedantry.

Just because it uses pseudo-random numbers, doesn't mean that the past spin (or the past 1,000,000 spins) has any impact at all on the current one, which was the point of this whole derail

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

That's just false, every spin is an independent trial. At least in the United States.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[SockPuppetOfTheWeek]

Yes it does. A pseudo-random number generator is just a very large state machine.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Xoltri]

Casinos make money when you gamble.

Fixed.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

The universe, and all the roulette balls and dice in it, are also a very large state machine.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[LunaticTippy]

I won about $600 on a slot machine, and the attendant came over to cash me out. I won a similar amount a bit later on the same machine, and they said the machine had malfunctioned and refused to pay it. I tried to complain but no dice.

I was dirty from a road trip, so maybe they just wanted me to leave. I was buying drinks and tipping, so that wasn't it.

Casinos routinely will ban people who are good gamblers, and the gaming money geyser controls state legislature so don't expect house unfriendly laws.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[spire3661]

Why wouldnt they? At the very least inspect it to make sure its not malfunctioning. Its trivial to pull a single machine and inspect it compared to the risk of it paying out more jackpots erroneously . The law of large numbers has nothing to do with possible technical problems.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[spire3661]

Many posters above you disagree, often with more knowledge. Post more relevant info to back up your claim or hush.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[spire3661]

I have an ARM laptop you insensitive clod!

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[sjames]

Or, it means that corrupt prison officials aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer (shocking!) and based on their poor grasp of statistics they believed the odds improve through a dry spell.

To understand someone else's behavior, you have to know what they believe, not what is true.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

But the slot machine had to be seeded and the machine can't violate laws that specify certain payout rates, which means that if any particular random seed resulted in a too-low or too-high payout rate that random seed value would be thrown out.

As far as we know, there are no seed values for the universe that would cause it to violate the laws of physics.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

Fair enough question. I think this should put to rest the mostly AC poster who are claiming that slot machines aren't independent trials.

Regulations of the Nevada Gaming Commission and
State Gaming Control Board, Regulation 14.040 Minimum standards for gaming devices (I apologize for the incoming wall of text, I'll bold the stuff of relevance to this discussion)

14.040 Minimum standards for gaming devices. All gaming devices submitted for approval:
1. Must theoretically pay out a mathematically demonstrable percentage of all amounts wagered, which must not be less than 75 percent for each wager available for play on the device.
(a) Gaming devices that may be affected by player skill must meet this standard when using a method of play that will provide the greatest return to the player over a period of continuous play.
(b) The chairman may waive the 75 percent standard if the manufacturer can show to the chairmanâ(TM)s satisfaction that this requirement inhibits design of the device or is inappropriate under the circumstances, the device theoretically pays out at least 75 percent of all wagers made when all wagers are played equally, and the device otherwise meets the standards of subsections 2 through 6. A waiver will be effective when the manufacturer receives written notification from the chairman that this standard will be waived pursuant to this paragraph. A waiver of this standard pursuant to this paragraph is not an approval of the device.
2. Must use a random selection process to determine the game outcome of each play of a game. The random selection process must meet 95 percent confidence limits using a standard chi-squared test for goodness of fit.
(a) Each possible permutation or combination of game elements which produce winning or losing game outcomes must be available for random selection at the initiation of each play.
(b) For gaming devices that are representative of live gambling games, the mathematical probability of a symbol or other element appearing in a game outcome must be equal to the mathematical probability of that symbol or element occurring in the live gambling game. For other gaming devices, the mathematical probability of a symbol appearing in a position in any game outcome must be constant.
(c) The selection process must not produce detectable patterns of game elements or detectable dependency upon any previous game outcome, the amount wagered, or upon the style or method of play.
3. Must display an accurate representation of the game outcome. After selection of the game outcome, the gaming device must not make a variable secondary decision which affects the result shown to the player.
4. Gaming devices connected to a common payoff schedule shall:
(a) All be of the same denomination and have equivalent odds of winning the common payoff schedule/common award; or
(b) If of different denominations, equalize the expected value of winning the payoff schedule/common award on the various denominations by setting the odds of winning the payoff schedule in proportion to the amount wagered or by requiring the same wager to win the payoff schedule/award regardless of the deviceâ(TM)s denomination. The method of equalizing the expected value of winning the payoff schedule/award shall be conspicuously displayed on each device connected to the common payoff schedule/common award. For the puposes of this requirement, equivalent is defined as within a 5% tolerance for expected value and no more than a 1% tolerance on return to player or payback.
5. Must display the rules of play and payoff schedule.
6. Must not automatically alter paytables or any function of the device based on internal computation of the hold percentage.
7. Must meet the technical standards adopted pursuant to section 14.050.
8. Except for devices granted a waiver pursuant to subsections 1(b), or 8, each gaming device exposed for play in the State of Nevada by any gaming licensee, including an operator of a slot machine route, must meet the standards a

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Slots payouts are programmed, not truly "random" like you assume they are.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[FunkSoulBrother]

No they aren't:

http://gaming.nv.gov/stats_regs/reg14.pdf

Section 14.040

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at a casino I won't name as someone who repaired the machines and I can lend this insight:

- The machines pay out a % over the life of the machine (a few years). They could go 2 years eating everyone's money and then spend a whole year paying out constantly, but that scenario is awful unlikely.

- I also experienced these sniper gamblers. They'd call weekly asking what the progressive was up to on this small but old ring of machines, and they knew they paid out around a certain rate probably due to a flaw. However, the machines still made the casino money, so why dump them? Anyway, they'd fly in from the coasts and play that machine for 3 days until it paid and then leave. I have a theory they followed those exact machines all around the country.

- There's no special magic to slot machines, just some simple math with odds in your favor. A modern machine shouldn't exhibit any traits that tell you when it's going to pay out and the casino can't magically make them stop paying or force them to pay. There are laws and regulations about those settings and they have to be watched by security and auditors when those changes are made and it's all documented very, very well for the state.

- A lot of the newer machines from the majority of the gaming companies run Linux (hooray!) and I noticed they load a kernel module on startup for scrubbing memory for errors and there was another kernel module I can't remember. These machines are also the only implementation I've ever seen of APNGs, as some games are pretty much comprised entirely of APNGs for graphics. Weird......

- The games that ran Windows crashed very often and it was so annoying to make the customer wait 20 minutes so they could cash out after it rebooted and go to another machine....

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

odds NOT in your favor....... great typo and proofreading skills I got here....

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Anonymous Coward]

Given now, that the machines are controlled via network, they can't be yanked - there is no need. The "machines" now run in a datacenter.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Dexter Herbivore]

You may think that if there are 36 numbers on a roulette wheel but really there are 37 ("0" again), and oddly enough the casino pays 35 to 1, not 37 to 1. The house ALWAYS wins, even if you gamble smartly.

37 total numbers is 36 to 1, not 37 to 1.

Re:A variant of this happens in Nevada

[Dexter Herbivore]

It works, believe it or not. It's a math game, and it's why most casinos have switched from progressive to random jackpots.

What's missing from this article?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much gold they are pulling in...

Everything's online these days!

[SteveFoerster]

So basically, they're mining digital blood diamonds? I guess everything really is available online these days!

what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No tron comments yet?

FARMING for gold? How 2008ish!

[SeaFox]

Any minute now we'll get the BitCoin tie-in for this article.

Any minute now...
I'm waiting for it.

Re:FARMING for gold? How 2008ish!

[mythandros]

You must be immune to irony.

Re:FARMING for gold? How 2008ish!

[Anonymous Coward]

BitCoin requires beefier computers than goldmining games, playing on the lowest graphics setting.

Re:FARMING for gold? How 2008ish!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea! If they would force them to calculate bitcoin hashes with pen and paper they could earn more.

Re:FARMING for gold? How 2008ish!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmmm

Bitcoins... Tasty!

well, they ARE prisoners

[superwiz]

I can think of worse things that prisoners could be forced to do. Heck, even stamping license plates or cleaning trash on the sides of highways seems like it would be more work than playing WoW. Isn't the whole problem for whoever wrote that article that the prison officials are making money off of it? That's always the case with prisons though... While I can see how this is weird, I don't see why anyone would be pissed off about it.

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly didn't read the article or you'd be more upset. Or really upset at all.

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the prison employees are making the money, not the state. when prisoners make plates, theoretically they are saving money for society (the taxpayer) and thus paying a debt to society. These guys are just lining the pockets of their keepers.

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[Ash Vince]

I can think of worse things that prisoners could be forced to do. Heck, even stamping license plates or cleaning trash on the sides of highways seems like it would be more work than playing WoW. Isn't the whole problem for whoever wrote that article that the prison officials are making money off of it? That's always the case with prisons though... While I can see how this is weird, I don't see why anyone would be pissed off about it.

Did you read the bit about the guards beating the crap out of you with rubber hoses if you did not live up to your days gold quota. I think that would probably make me pretty pissed off.

Then there is the fact that this is as well as the hard labour, not instead of. This sounds like something the prison bosses have thought up as a way of making cash on the side, the prisoners still have to do the hard labour of digging trenches in an open cast coal mine all day.

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[superwiz]

According to Aleksandr Soljenitsin's "Achipelag Gulag", 100,000 prisoners were dying every month from being overworked and exposed to the elements during construction of a canal in the Soviet Union. That's "hard labor." Long shifts behind a computer is not. Guards beating prisoners with hoses is abuse, but I am still not convinced that this is anything more than a few guards getting out of line. And for all I can see, the living conditions of the prisoners are still better than those of prisoners who have to dig ditches during their incarceration. It's not club med. It's prison.

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[CCarrot]

According to Aleksandr Soljenitsin's "Achipelag Gulag", 100,000 prisoners were dying every month from being overworked and exposed to the elements during construction of a canal in the Soviet Union. That's "hard labor." Long shifts behind a computer is not....the living conditions of the prisoners are still better than those of prisoners who have to dig ditches during their incarceration.

I think you missed the previous posters' point there, specifically:

Then there is the fact that this is as well as the hard labour, not instead of.

So, they are digging trenches all day for the state, then being forced to 'play' WOW all night for their keepers. Rinse and repeat.

Yes, it's not Club Med, but enforced lack of sleep coupled with the ongoing physical demands during the day would definitely count as cruel and unusual punishment.

Unfortunately, the article isn't clear about exactly how it typically works. If their '12 hour shifts' were split between labour and farming, then yes, you are right, the farming wouldn't be such a hardship. The implication seems to be that this is done 'on the side', though, so the farming is probably in addition to whatever labour they were allotted for the day.

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[sjames]

You missed the part that they are forced to do this for 12 hours AFTER they have already put in a day of hard labor and that they were beaten if they didn't make their quota. Note that that wouldn't leave time for eating and sleeping. Yeah, real cushy!

Re:well, they ARE prisoners

[mhajicek]

The problem is in rewarding the system for convicting people. The more people are convicted and imprisoned, the more almost free labor the companies get, which gives them an unfairly high profit margin when compared to their competition. They then give kickbacks to legislators to be "tough on crime" and support legislation that results in a higher conviction rate and longer sentences with no regard for true justice or what's actually good for society.

farm it harder!

[Anonymous Coward]

i like farming for softness inside my juicy pumpkins

12 hours a day?

[bl968]

Amateurs, I do that before Breakfast...

Re:12 hours a day?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do it after hard work in real-world mines. Now who's the amateur? :)

Petitions

[Dyinobal]

I wonder if we can get any petitions from these guys. "Help I'm being forced to pick herbs, If I don't get 5 frost lotus an hour I get the whip. Please help me, I need 30 more before I can sleep.. help"

hmm

[nomadic]

What I have never understood is the appeal of buying gold with real money for a game. I mean, what's the point?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people want to be "better" then everyone else at any cost. They want to be able to show off their thousands or millions of gold (depending on the game) or show off items which they bought with the gold. The problem is that they don't want to work for it.

But as you said, personally, if I haven't spent the time getting the items, I am not gonna go spend real money to buy some imaginary items to show off. To be completely honest, if I don't think its worth the time to acquire then I am not going to go waste money on it...

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It's obviously so that you do not have to actually play the game in order to get good loot, duh.

Re:hmm

[iGerbil]

Well, endgame in certain MMOs (read: WOW) is highly competitive as well as extremely time and material consuming. And the time consuming part isn't the competitive part either. In order to get the gear and all the items one needs to raid or PVP competitively and be able to buy all the stuff they want/need, it takes hours upon hours upon hours of farming the in-game currency or the materials from the limited amount of in game zones that contain them. Either way, it takes time and can be quite life consuming. Not to mention there's always lots of competition for the materials, so you could spend hours farming them with very little result.

The alternative: Pay $5 for 10k gold and save yourself 3 days straight worth of farming and get on to the 'fun' parts of the game.

Not that I condone it, but I can certainly see the appeal. It saves a lot of time and frustration...

But frankly, I'm there to play the game to consume some time and take out my frustration. So spending a few hours chatting away with friends while picking herbs after work never bores me. Though judging by the money the gold farmers are pulling in, I seem to be the exception and not the rule.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok the point,
            You can spend 12hours in game getting 5k gold, OR you can spend 30min irl working to get the cash needed to pay for the gold. Then you get to spend 11.5 hours having fun.

Re:hmm

[Confusador]

This is likely because your money is more valuable to you than your time. For people who have a lot of money, that's often the other way around. So if there are parts of the game they really like and parts that they don't care for so much, they can pay to avoid it, only getting the parts that they want. Some games are set up to enable that trade, and some games regard it as cheating. Personally, I'm not a fan of games that have a grind, even though I didn't mind them when I was younger. For me, though, there's not enough value there to spend money on it given the alternatives, but for some people that's where their social life is. I'm not going to blame someone for spending the money on a video game instead of going to a bar.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Time = money.

If the tedium of something far outweighs the resulting benefit, then why not? Never purchased myself, but understand the principles of it. Say, you need "key X" in order to start doing something you truly enjoy, but it takes 20 hours of in game time to accomplish making "key X". However, someone is offering you the items needed for the relativistic cost of two hours at your job. The question then becomes: Is that 18hours worth it? Just a random scenario, but that's the general thought.
 
Hmm, this is Slashdot however, let's try a car analogy:
 
What I have never understood is the appeal of buying gasoline for my car, when I can just push it wherever I need it to go. I mean, what's the point?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"'I'm not going to blame someone for spending the money on a video game instead of going to a bar."

You don't get the point... the idea of spending money on a video game is to get time for the bar. Sad thing is that now it won't be easy to enjoy a good gintonic knowing that some chinese convict is grinding for you

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"'I'm not going to blame someone for spending the money on a video game instead of going to a bar."

You don't get the point... the idea of spending money on a video game is to get time for the bar. Sad thing is that now it won't be easy to enjoy a good gintonic knowing that some chinese convict is grinding for you

I don't get the point: why should I waste any time at all playing a video game instead of having fun with my friends into a bar?
Just to have a good feeling I saved some Chinese convicts from breaking stones and had them farming WoW gold instead?

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the same as people who cheat at games (and life itself). They want the reward but none of the work... They see the risk reward ratio as time spent. So instead of spending 20 hours getting some 'gold'. Use some real gold and buy the fake stuff... 2 hours of fiddling around and you are decked out with all the cool stuff. Instead of 3 weeks of grinding.

I personally do not do it. As like you I do not play games for the same reasons people who cheat do. Cheating to me ruins the game. Oh its nice the cheats are there and whatnot. But cheat thru a game that should take a week or two to finish and it seems like a dull suck game. Grind thru it and the same game is much better.

A variant of this happens in Bellevue, WA

[PPH]

We have a mall with a lottery ticket booth. On occasion we get a whole crew of people (old, immigrants, hobo-looking) playing large volumes of scratch tickets. The mob boss (big fat guy in a cowboy hat) sits nearby, keeping an eye on his people.

It's a money laundering operation. It doesn't have to pay back 100 cents on the dollar. It just has to be competitive with other methods of converting 'dirty' cash into clean.

One thing that makes the entire operation pretty obvious: There's a food court, Starbucks and whatnot there. In any other setting, that would be a magnet for the local cops. But not here. If they've got business in the mall, they go in quickly, take care of it and get out. Fast. Evidently, there's an agreement for them to stay out.

Re:A variant of this happens in Bellevue, WA

[seifried]

If it's a state run lottery then the bad guys are effectively paying taxes to launder their money. This may be a factor in allowing them to continue (nothing like paying a sin tax so you can sin).

Re:A variant of this happens in Bellevue, WA

[DerekLyons]

There's a food court, Starbucks and whatnot there. In any other setting, that would be a magnet for the local cops.

Not in any mall food court I've ever been in over the last thirty years. (And that includes many in the Seattle area.)

Re:A variant of this happens in Bellevue, WA

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that Crossroads?

Re:A variant of this happens in Bellevue, WA

[PPH]

Is that Crossroads?

That's a very good guess.

Re:Oh, the horror....

[grub]

Welcome to Slashdot -1. I'm grub, your tour guide.

Could be worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to be a gold farmer than a museum piece.

Obligatory

[gaelfx]

In other news, Ai Weiwei was named as WoW's greatest gold farmer for the past two months.

i'm quitting my job

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit. had i known screwing around in WoW could net £470-570 a day (usd $765-927) i would have quit my job a loooooong time ago.

so...

[Chicken_Kickers]

"It's plain fascism, where workers are cattle and the government gets all the value they add."

So... welcome to capitalism, China?

Re:so...

[goodmanj]

I've said on numerous occasions that if there's a state that's really in need of a socialist revolultion, it's modern China.

Non-Transferable Credits

[nuckfuts]

FTA:

It is known as "gold farming", the practice of building up credits and online value through the monotonous repetition of basic tasks in online games such as World of Warcraft. The trade in virtual assets is very real, and outside the control of the games' makers.

Why not simply make credits non-transferable within the game?

Re:Non-Transferable Credits

[muffen]

Why not simply make credits non-transferable within the game?

I'm hoping that's a joke, money that cannot be transferred doesn't do much good.

Think Sony (sorry for swearing) was on the right track when they created servers where they allowed selling of items for real money.

Re:Non-Transferable Credits

[Bing Tsher E]

There are plenty of on-line games where players are prohibited from exchanging the in-game currency and 'items' for real dollars. A lot of people enjoy playing said games. And their accounts are frozen if they are caught exchanging for real $$.

Re:Non-Transferable Credits

[pulski]

It's prohibited in most. Sure, if you get caught you get banned, but people still do it. If people didn't, you wouldn't have gold spammers posting every 5 minutes in different in-game channels. I tried out Rift and got my first gold spam before I reached level 3.

As for non-transferable, it just wouldn't work. You make money in those games by buying and selling virtual items. It needs to be tradeable.

Re:Non-Transferable Credits

[nuckfuts]

As for non-transferable, it just wouldn't work. You make money in those games by buying and selling virtual items. It needs to be tradeable.

I haven't played the games myself, but from the article it sounds like you earn credits by slaving away at some menial or repetitive tasks. If whatever credits or items you earn can't be transferred to another player, the problem described in the article would not exist. I don't think items "need" to be tradeable - it's a design choice.

Re:Non-Transferable Credits

[Whorhay]

That is correct, being able to trade is not a strictly required. But if players are not capable of exchanging items in game then you've created a game without any kind of economy. And it turns out economies are a lot of fun to play in and of themselves. Crafting in many games would not be feasible without player trades.

Diablo II and the law of diminishing returns....

[Anonymous Coward]

Gold Farmers, and their ilk have almost destroyed Diablo II, with Blizzards cooperation.
Most of the URLs for gold spammers trace right back to china, as a few from other nations,
and ... ( Thanks Will Weaton ), Rackspace.com in the good old U.S.A.

It becomes lucrative, because of the games sheer size. If one or two in 1k pay for something in game, and there are 30k players online, that is 30 potential customers. and 9,000,000 spams. A recent sampling of game play saw more than 300 spams. so It literally covers the screen.

They are destroying the game for any who are willing to pay.

Godwin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Facsism comparison... you are almost reaching godwin...

I see a lot of whining...

[argStyopa]

...but I don't see the problem?

They're PRISONERS. You guys do understand what that means, right?

OK, granted, I may have an issue with what China defines as prison-worthy (ie. speaking out about the government) but setting that aside, what's the problem with PRISONERS being made to perform useful tasks?

Prison costs money, and if you can make the prisoners work to recoup that cost, all the better.

In China, I'd imagine it's a damn sight better than the alternative - compulsory organ donor, or somesuch.

Re:I see a lot of whining...

[MLease]

The problem is, 1) this is in addition to their customary long hours of hard labor, not an alternative to it, and 2) it's being done for the personal profit of the prison guards, not to repay the government for the cost of their upkeep (that's what the hard labor is for). The guards have no right to make the prisoners their slaves to earn money for their personal benefit.

-Mike

Re:I see a lot of whining...

[LanMan04]

They're PRISONERS. You guys do understand what that means, right?

Yeah, it means their freedom is restricted. It does not mean it's OK to exploit them for labor. That's called a CONFLICT OF INTEREST, as it encourages the powers that be to have more prisoners. Public pays for them to be incarcerated (via taxes), but I guarantee the profit they generate with their labor does NOT go into recouping the cost o the incarceration (in China, anyway). It goes into someone's pocket.

Where would YOU draw the line between useful tasks and exploitation?

And saying one bad thing is less bad than another bad thing, as if it makes the first bad thing OK, it completely wrongheaded...

I'm for it

[Syberz]

I'm all for getting prisoners to work, however they shouldn't be exploited (by this I mean working ungodly hours, not being paid for it is fine).

FTFY

[bl8n8r]

They still have to answer to Apple when China's projects are not being completed with slave labor.

wang ba? (OT)

[taiwanjohn]

Just wondering... does "wang ba" mean "internet bar" in Chinese? Here in Taiwan they're called "wang ka (dian)" for "internet coffee (shop)".

Re:wang ba? (OT)

[wisty]

Yes. Wang Ba. . Wang () = "net". Ba () = "bar" (it's an English loan word).

There's a few other terms, I think, but wangba is the main one.

The problem of Tradition

[RobertLTux]

They want enough payouts to draw customers but not enough that it risks the casinos profit.

You do know that BACK IN THE DAY most casinos operated as a Family business and taking customers "for a walk in the desert" was actually done and God Help You if you 1 cheated 2 were staff and got caught dipping into the till

This would never happen here

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait...
Ontario Tories vow to put prisoners to work
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/canada/Ontario+Tories+prisoners+work/4843608/story.html

God dammit

You are in prison

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if people in prison are forced to do something. They have no rights, no freedom, they committed a crime. It amazes me that people sympathize with inmates. Some of them don't deserve the luxury of prison they should have been shot or hung for the things they did to people. Especially those who have hurt children. So i say you go China exploit those convicts.

Do the prisoners get Coke while playing ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean the real thing, not the high-fructose-corn-syrup laced crap we get here in North America. If they do, I'm jealous ;-(

exploiting prisoners?

[WillgasM]

That's going too far. We need to get back to exploiting children.

Every Night

[Anonymous Coward]

...they are raped to sleep by [DICKWOLVES]

Yea, Seriously

[Timmy D Programmer]

Slavery is about as evil as evil gets, even when it's a prisoner.
The Chinese Government is ultimately to blame for not stopping it: "a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for "illegally petitioning" the central government about corruption in his hometown,"

WoW Mining Today is done with bots

[R2D5]

Note that the Guardian story is in the past tense -- Liu Dali was jailed for three years in 2004 -- today most WoW gold farming is done by bots. Perhaps there is a more current story of worldwide bot coders.

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

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