They can have $.99 when I can download a non-lossy format free from DRM in an open format that I am allowed to use how I see fit. As long as it is fair and I do not re-distribute. That is what I had with CD's.
Then why are you pirating, and not buying CD's? Seriously, if you want to pay for your content, and you want it to have all those qualities, why aren't you buying a CD?
Again, I'm not against piracy; I'm against your rationalizations. Your misrepresentation of the thoughts of the average pirate do as much damage to the cause of copyright reform as the misrepresentations of the RIAA.
Unless we are all honest about the causes and results of piracy, we'll never be able to have an honest debate about copyright.
You're assuming that everyone pirating, or even just a significant percentage of them, would have purchased the music otherwise.
No, I'm not. The GP was.
He implied that the majority of pirates only pirated in order to obtain a DRM-free copy of the music. The iTunes example provides ample evidence that it just isn't the case.
I'm not against piracy. I'm only against the rationalizations of many who engage in it.
We want the right to purchase digital music ONCE with the ability to transform that single digital copy into any media or format we choose... and purely for personal use.
Then why hasn't music piracy disappeared since iTunes went DRM free?
The probability of success is an inverse of the number of people involved in criminal enterprise.
And yet organized crime still exists, in the US and abroad. If this is a pump-and-dump type scheme, it's almost certainly being financed by an organized crime syndicate somewhere. It takes money to make money, in this instance.
You are correct that these schemas are difficult by simply viewing trading transactions, because the missing piece of the puzzle is communication between the participating parties, directly or otherwise.
The only thing the attacker needs from the victim are the login details(username and password) to their brokerage accounts. After that, the criminals can access those accounts from anywhere in the world. Or, they can use the rootkit from the virus to originate those transactions from the victim's own machine.
The many to one relationship means we can eliminate small purchases of the useless stock, and at some point near where the stock price crests, we have a list of who the sellers are.
These stocks may be sold in many countries all around the world. US stocks can be traded on exchanges in Europe and Asia. Even if the victims accounts were used to purchase stock on the US market, the criminals can sell on dozens of different markets around the world. So you have to get lists of sellers from many different exchanges in many different countries. That makes it much harder.
And that's the crucial flaw -- they have to sell, and yes, several people will sell in the target window of opportunity -- but how many of them will sell who fit the profile of the criminal we're looking for?
What profile are you looking for? The sellers could be anyone. And because they could be anywhere, you now need the cooperation of dozens of different governments.
Think about it: The actual criminal mastermind could be a Russian mobster. The seller of the stock--who is working for the Russian--could be in Estonia, using an British broker, and selling these stocks on the German exchange. Where do you start?
Forget tracing back through the network -- find out where the money is going. You have a many-to-one relationship, it's unlikely this guy is smart enough to launder money effectively -- the entire attack scenario points to someone new and inexperienced, and is acting alone hoping this will reduce his risk exposure.
I would imagine the guy who wrote this isn't working alone. Most of these kinds of attacks aren't meant to directly transfer money from the victim's brokerage account to an account controlled by the attacker.
They use the hijacked accounts to purchase large quantities of a low-volume penny stock. The attacker, or the group he works for, already have a large position in that stock. The huge increase in demand pushes the price for the stock up. This causes all kinds of people to sell--including the attacker. And they make a tidy profit, while the victims are left with a large quantity of over-priced stock.
The hard part about catching the perpetrators is sifting through the list of all the people who sold the stock at the inflated prices. A bunch of people make money from a scam like this, but only one is the criminal.
When ALL carriers pass on these taxes, where are customers going to go to avoid them?
Why drop Sprint when ATT will charge you the same?
People won't switch carriers. But some, who were previously able to afford a cell phone, won't be able to pay the increased cost. They'll simply not have a cell.
In these transactions, the buyer and seller are both agents who are making transactions in fiduciary trust to the people they're managing the money for, e.g. The Investors.
Yes, that's certainly fraud. But, such fraud can only exist in the absence of a transparent and liquid market. The OP was arguing against the use of markets to determine prices, and for the use of complex models to determine the "correct" price.
My point was that determining a price by the use of models, instead of the actions of buyers and sellers on an open market, is what allowed this massive mis-pricing of assets to happen.
If both the buyer and the seller partners in an elaborate fraud where the asset is sliced, diced, repackaged and the ultimately sold for 10 times the orignial value, I would say the final price is incorrect!
If both the buyer and the seller are parties to the "fraud", then who exactly are they defrauding?
And a market would be very nice, but one cannot simply rely on the market to find prices, otherwise there will be nothing pressuring the prices towards their correct values.
If the "correct" price of an asset isn't what the buyer and seller agree upon, then what is it?
Whether the shopkeeper or glazier spends the money is irrelevant to the economy.
No, it is very relevant. Actually, it's the whole point of the parable. If the window had never been broken, the shopkeeper would have spent the money in a more productive way: investing in capital goods, hiring a new employee, or saving the money and reducing his prices. Instead, because of the broken window, he is forced to spend that money less productively.
Sure, the money gets spent either way. But, before the window was broken, the economy as a whole, had a window and the money. After the window breaks, the economy is down one window.
The real issue is why would any politician vote for a law such as this which has already been shown time and again to be an automatic failure then waste money defending the failed law.
Because that way, the politician can say he "did something" about the issue. When stupid angry parents write letters to the legislator, he can assure them he's working hard to protect their poor little children.
They may find themselves liable as accessories to a crime. I'm in the U.S. where, like in most places, viewing/possessing child pornography is a crime. If I were to verify one of the sites listed on the blacklist and it did, in fact, contain child porn, I'd be guilty of a crime. By providing me the link, the IWF may find themselves in hot water too.
Easy way around that. Just have the IWF throw up a web page where you can type in a URL, and it'll tell you if that site is on the list. You don't have to give out the entire list to anyone. Everyone can check that their sites aren't being wrongfully blocked, without giving away the list of known CP sites.
Your process will lose it's integrity because some moe thinks that step 2b isn't necessary.
That's exactly the wrong attitude. Procedure documentation is useless, if it doesn't accurately reflect what the people who are doing the job, actually do.
Procedure documents are like comments in a piece of code; over time, the code tends to "drift away" from what the comments describe. You have to make sure that even the lowest level peon feels comfortable changing the document to reflect what he actually does. Without this kind of participation, you'll always be playing catch-up, trying to keep the documents relevant. And, irrelevant documentation is unused documentation.
With a wiki, you're able to track changes. This allows you to easily see problem areas--where what the workers are doing, and what you want them to be doing are two different things--and target them for further training. If the workers have "bought in" to the documentation system, you won't have to change it to reflect the new procedures; they'll do it themselves.
It doesn't matter what the other players do...it is only YOU against the dealer. It matters not what they play, the only thing that concerns you about them is what cards they play (regardless of if it is BS or not), so that you can keep a count of what the deck is.
No, I'm not saying that other players' actions effect my EV; only that other players' actions effect the average EV of all the players at the table.
If the count is such that the EV for any BS player at the table is positive, but some of the players at the table are deviating from BS, it could well be the case that the casino still maintains a positive EV for the table as a whole.
My point was that the casino may still have a positive EV, even if the count were very high, because the "average" player is deviating from BS. If I'm playing BS and you're playing very badly, and the count is very high, the amount I win may be less than the amount you lose. So, for the casino, it is still profitable to continue play.
If that's not cheating, I have no idea what it could be.
You're right, that is cheating. But what it is not, is a systematic and coordinated effort by the casino to cheat the gambler. It's not a rigged roulette wheel, loaded dice, or a shorted blackjack deck.
I can almost guarantee that if the pit personnel had seen what happened, the dealer would have been fired or arrested. Even if the dealer had been cheating in the house's favor, he would have been fired. A casino is simply too profitable, when operated without cheating, to risk losing its gaming license by cheating the gambler.
If the count is such that basic strategy is -EV for the house, then by definition they are losing money on those hands. It is true that *in general* they want more hands played, but they do not want more hands played when the odds are against them.
While that is true if all players at the table are playing basic strategy, I wonder how many deviations from BS it would take for the house to have a +EV, no matter the count. Does the guy at the table, who never splits his eights, reduce his EV enough to drag the EV for the whole table down? Does "average play", not basic strategy, ever have a +EV, even with a good count?
I guess even if the EV never became positive for the players, it could get less negative. So, it would benefit the house to reshuffle in a high count.
But, I have never seen this type of thing happen at any of the casinos I have gone to. Granted I haven't played much in the major markets (LV, AC). I just wonder if the casinos have thought of this, researched it, and decided that it wasn't profitable enough to offset the fewer hands per hour and player dissatisfaction.
There is one cheat that is more-or-less undetectable, and that is for the house to maintain its own count as the game is played. This should be pretty easy since there are multiple cameras on every table. When the deck is overly favorable to the player they can simply force a reshuffle/change of decks.
This is a feasible way for the casino to assure they always have the edge. But, unless there is some reason to think there is a counter at the table, they lose more money from pausing the play. Casino blackjack's profitability is all about the number of hands played per hour. Start reshuffling every time the count gets high, and you'll reduce the hands per hour, which means less profit per hour. And, you'll start pissing off the gamblers.
It's not that what you're proposing won't work. It's just that it wouldn't be profitable for the casino.
The other 100,000+ times they were cheating, but not caught I don't believe for a second those machines and wheels are not wired for independent control.
Believe what you want. It doesn't change the fact that you are wrong. I understand how people can think that slots are rigged, the internals of the machine are hidden and complex. But a game like blackjack takes place in full view of the gambler. In roulette, a "fixed" wheel would be spotted relatively quickly by the gamblers. Have you ever seen "system" players at roulette recording the result of every spin? They would see and exploit any irregularity or pattern. If you think craps is being played with loaded dice, bet on the Don't Pass line.
They don't have to cheat. They have the odds on their side. All cheating would do is raise the risk to the casino. It would only take one mistake by any one of the dozens of employees involved in the scam to unravel the entire scheme.
And of course if you do start winning, then they immediately assume you are a cheat and kick you out. Even if you were doing nothing wrong.
That is simply untrue. Casinos want some winners. They want people to win tens of thousands of dollars; because, at the same time, there are more gamblers watching the winner, betting more, and losing. A winning gambler is a casino's best advertising.
Each employee you come into contact with at a casino wants you to win, from the cocktail waitress, to the dealer, to the guy working in the cage. Winners tip. Winners tip well. I've payed out massive amounts of money to winners, and did it with a smile on my face every time.
I have never once seen anyone thrown out of a casino for winning. I have never been thrown out of a casino for winning, and I have had some large wins (I'm not a great gambler, but if you play a lot, you'll win sometimes). Most people thrown out of casinos are drunk and belligerent.
No, cheating conducted by the house, not an individual employee cheating to enrich himself, but actual cheating by the casino at a card game is very rare. I've worked in a casino (riverboat in Iowa) and gambled at almost every casino in the Midwest, and have only seen or heard of real casino cheating once. That was at a tribal casino in South Dakota. They were caught removing cards from a blackjack deck.
To prevent this, and assure the gamblers that the cards are all there, most casinos have implemented a strict procedure for introducing new cards in play. First, the factory sealed decks are brought to the table by pit personnel. They are opened by the pit, but the cards are removed from the box by the dealer. The cards are then spread out on the table, face down, to check for imperfections on the backs. Then they are flipped face up and counted. All cards must be accounted for before the deck is put into play. The same process is repeated for all decks coming into play. When it is time to change those cards for a new deck, the same procedure is followed in reverse. The cards are inspected to assure they are all still present, re-boxed, and set aside for possible further inspection. This is all done in front of the gamblers, who could easily spot missing or duplicate cards. They take this very seriously.
It's rare because they already have a statistical edge against the player; they don't need to cheat. They also need to make sure that the gambling public doesn't associate their establishment with cheating, and stop patronizing them. Then they wouldn't make any money. A casino jealously guards its reputation.
Card counting on your own, isn't that hard. Sure, it takes a bit of practice, but, it isn't rocket science.
No, standard Hi/Lo counting is pretty easy. Most people can even keep a separate Ace count too. All it takes is practice.
But the power of computer-aided counting is that it can keep track of each card's specific value. Instead of keeping track of only the relative number of high cards played, a computer can keep track of the number of 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, etc. A computer can process and use every piece of information known about the remaining cards, not just the ratio of high cards to low. It can make the perfect playing and betting decisions every time.
Someone who is using a computer to count cards, therefore has a greater theoretical edge against the house. Or, he can get the same edge as a traditional counter, without having to vary his bets as much. That's the real power of computer-aided counting: less detectability. (Assuming, of course, he's not fiddling with his iPhone on the table the whole time.)
Only question in my mind is, when people are filling out that ballot, are they really thinking in terms of each separate choice of one elector vs another, or do they just vote along party lines to support their presidential candidate of choice and try and get them elected?
Oh no. They are checking a box next to the Presidential candidate's name. But, they are actually voting for a slate of electors who are pledged to vote for that candidate. But the result is the same as if they were voting for each elector individually. Any rational voter would vote for their party's electors along party line. There would never be a reason to "split the ticket".
But that is a state-by-state decision. A state can pick its electors in any manner they choose. Two states do it differently. It's a vastly more complex and arcane system than a simple, nation-wide, popular vote.
Kinda seem to me that the system you've described is what would develop out of convenience to co-ordinate a nationwide election of the President, i.e. have each state vote for a couple of guys to go off and cast votes on the state's behalf for the President - the point of the system being to elect a President, not to elect a group of electors.
Yeah, the difficulty of having a nationwide popular election is one reason for the Electoral College. There are some others though. The founders also wanted another filter between the population and the President. And, it also represents a compromise between the large states and the small states; smaller states have a larger share of the electoral vote than if they went strictly by population.
As with almost every aspect of our Constitution, the Electoral College was an acceptable compromise between the states, and a compromise between the ideals of republican democracy and a fear of democratic tyranny. It's a messy document that has managed to hold up pretty well, considering that almost every choice made was a kludge.
Does the Electoral College have a role beyond selecting the President?
No. And they never actually all meet. Each state's EC members vote in their state. There is no deliberation or debate amongst them. That is left to the House of Representatives, in the event the EC has no majority winner.
So your saying capitalism requires an underclass and virtual slave labour in order to function?
No. I'm saying that having dirt cheap consumer electronics requires "virtual slave labour". And that's only because we haven't found an effective way to automate the production process.
But there is nothing about cheap consumer electronics which is necessary to the functioning, and successfulness of capitalism.
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They can have $.99 when I can download a non-lossy format free from DRM in an open format that I am allowed to use how I see fit. As long as it is fair and I do not re-distribute. That is what I had with CD's.
Then why are you pirating, and not buying CD's? Seriously, if you want to pay for your content, and you want it to have all those qualities, why aren't you buying a CD?
Again, I'm not against piracy; I'm against your rationalizations. Your misrepresentation of the thoughts of the average pirate do as much damage to the cause of copyright reform as the misrepresentations of the RIAA.
Unless we are all honest about the causes and results of piracy, we'll never be able to have an honest debate about copyright.
You're assuming that everyone pirating, or even just a significant percentage of them, would have purchased the music otherwise.
No, I'm not. The GP was.
He implied that the majority of pirates only pirated in order to obtain a DRM-free copy of the music. The iTunes example provides ample evidence that it just isn't the case.
I'm not against piracy. I'm only against the rationalizations of many who engage in it.
We want the right to purchase digital music ONCE with the ability to transform that single digital copy into any media or format we choose ... and purely for personal use.
Then why hasn't music piracy disappeared since iTunes went DRM free?
The probability of success is an inverse of the number of people involved in criminal enterprise.
And yet organized crime still exists, in the US and abroad. If this is a pump-and-dump type scheme, it's almost certainly being financed by an organized crime syndicate somewhere. It takes money to make money, in this instance.
You are correct that these schemas are difficult by simply viewing trading transactions, because the missing piece of the puzzle is communication between the participating parties, directly or otherwise.
The only thing the attacker needs from the victim are the login details(username and password) to their brokerage accounts. After that, the criminals can access those accounts from anywhere in the world. Or, they can use the rootkit from the virus to originate those transactions from the victim's own machine.
The many to one relationship means we can eliminate small purchases of the useless stock, and at some point near where the stock price crests, we have a list of who the sellers are.
These stocks may be sold in many countries all around the world. US stocks can be traded on exchanges in Europe and Asia. Even if the victims accounts were used to purchase stock on the US market, the criminals can sell on dozens of different markets around the world. So you have to get lists of sellers from many different exchanges in many different countries. That makes it much harder.
And that's the crucial flaw -- they have to sell, and yes, several people will sell in the target window of opportunity -- but how many of them will sell who fit the profile of the criminal we're looking for?
What profile are you looking for? The sellers could be anyone. And because they could be anywhere, you now need the cooperation of dozens of different governments.
Think about it: The actual criminal mastermind could be a Russian mobster. The seller of the stock--who is working for the Russian--could be in Estonia, using an British broker, and selling these stocks on the German exchange. Where do you start?
Forget tracing back through the network -- find out where the money is going. You have a many-to-one relationship, it's unlikely this guy is smart enough to launder money effectively -- the entire attack scenario points to someone new and inexperienced, and is acting alone hoping this will reduce his risk exposure.
I would imagine the guy who wrote this isn't working alone. Most of these kinds of attacks aren't meant to directly transfer money from the victim's brokerage account to an account controlled by the attacker.
They use the hijacked accounts to purchase large quantities of a low-volume penny stock. The attacker, or the group he works for, already have a large position in that stock. The huge increase in demand pushes the price for the stock up. This causes all kinds of people to sell--including the attacker. And they make a tidy profit, while the victims are left with a large quantity of over-priced stock.
The hard part about catching the perpetrators is sifting through the list of all the people who sold the stock at the inflated prices. A bunch of people make money from a scam like this, but only one is the criminal.
When ALL carriers pass on these taxes, where are customers going to go to avoid them?
Why drop Sprint when ATT will charge you the same?
People won't switch carriers. But some, who were previously able to afford a cell phone, won't be able to pay the increased cost. They'll simply not have a cell.
In these transactions, the buyer and seller are both agents who are making transactions in fiduciary trust to the people they're managing the money for, e.g. The Investors.
Yes, that's certainly fraud. But, such fraud can only exist in the absence of a transparent and liquid market. The OP was arguing against the use of markets to determine prices, and for the use of complex models to determine the "correct" price.
My point was that determining a price by the use of models, instead of the actions of buyers and sellers on an open market, is what allowed this massive mis-pricing of assets to happen.
If both the buyer and the seller partners in an elaborate fraud where the asset is sliced, diced, repackaged and the ultimately sold for 10 times the orignial value, I would say the final price is incorrect!
If both the buyer and the seller are parties to the "fraud", then who exactly are they defrauding?
And a market would be very nice, but one cannot simply rely on the market to find prices, otherwise there will be nothing pressuring the prices towards their correct values.
If the "correct" price of an asset isn't what the buyer and seller agree upon, then what is it?
You shouldn't need super-secret proprietary Ultra Code in order to price an issue, it just requires a market and the means to discover a price.
Exactly. The only reason anyone needs a model like this is because of the illiquidity and opacity of the CDS market.
Besides, I don't know why anyone would want to actually use this model to price anything. It hasn't proved very accurate.
Whether the shopkeeper or glazier spends the money is irrelevant to the economy.
No, it is very relevant. Actually, it's the whole point of the parable. If the window had never been broken, the shopkeeper would have spent the money in a more productive way: investing in capital goods, hiring a new employee, or saving the money and reducing his prices. Instead, because of the broken window, he is forced to spend that money less productively.
Sure, the money gets spent either way. But, before the window was broken, the economy as a whole, had a window and the money. After the window breaks, the economy is down one window.
So once you waive your rights, you are not allowed to re-invoke them?
Sometimes, yes. It works that way when you're testifying before a grand jury. If you answer even one question, you can't take the fifth later.
The real issue is why would any politician vote for a law such as this which has already been shown time and again to be an automatic failure then waste money defending the failed law.
Because that way, the politician can say he "did something" about the issue. When stupid angry parents write letters to the legislator, he can assure them he's working hard to protect their poor little children.
They may find themselves liable as accessories to a crime. I'm in the U.S. where, like in most places, viewing/possessing child pornography is a crime. If I were to verify one of the sites listed on the blacklist and it did, in fact, contain child porn, I'd be guilty of a crime. By providing me the link, the IWF may find themselves in hot water too.
Easy way around that. Just have the IWF throw up a web page where you can type in a URL, and it'll tell you if that site is on the list. You don't have to give out the entire list to anyone. Everyone can check that their sites aren't being wrongfully blocked, without giving away the list of known CP sites.
Your process will lose it's integrity because some moe thinks that step 2b isn't necessary.
That's exactly the wrong attitude. Procedure documentation is useless, if it doesn't accurately reflect what the people who are doing the job, actually do.
Procedure documents are like comments in a piece of code; over time, the code tends to "drift away" from what the comments describe. You have to make sure that even the lowest level peon feels comfortable changing the document to reflect what he actually does. Without this kind of participation, you'll always be playing catch-up, trying to keep the documents relevant. And, irrelevant documentation is unused documentation.
With a wiki, you're able to track changes. This allows you to easily see problem areas--where what the workers are doing, and what you want them to be doing are two different things--and target them for further training. If the workers have "bought in" to the documentation system, you won't have to change it to reflect the new procedures; they'll do it themselves.
Do you have any references for this?
This is from Wisconsin. Here you go: Wisconsin Statute 943.13 Trespass to Land.
Your ideals won't save your stupid ass from a beating or a bullet. Wise up.
Your beating or bullet won't save you from a civil suit or jail time. Wise up.
It doesn't matter what the other players do...it is only YOU against the dealer. It matters not what they play, the only thing that concerns you about them is what cards they play (regardless of if it is BS or not), so that you can keep a count of what the deck is.
No, I'm not saying that other players' actions effect my EV; only that other players' actions effect the average EV of all the players at the table.
If the count is such that the EV for any BS player at the table is positive, but some of the players at the table are deviating from BS, it could well be the case that the casino still maintains a positive EV for the table as a whole.
My point was that the casino may still have a positive EV, even if the count were very high, because the "average" player is deviating from BS. If I'm playing BS and you're playing very badly, and the count is very high, the amount I win may be less than the amount you lose. So, for the casino, it is still profitable to continue play.
If that's not cheating, I have no idea what it could be.
You're right, that is cheating. But what it is not, is a systematic and coordinated effort by the casino to cheat the gambler. It's not a rigged roulette wheel, loaded dice, or a shorted blackjack deck.
I can almost guarantee that if the pit personnel had seen what happened, the dealer would have been fired or arrested. Even if the dealer had been cheating in the house's favor, he would have been fired. A casino is simply too profitable, when operated without cheating, to risk losing its gaming license by cheating the gambler.
If the count is such that basic strategy is -EV for the house, then by definition they are losing money on those hands. It is true that *in general* they want more hands played, but they do not want more hands played when the odds are against them.
While that is true if all players at the table are playing basic strategy, I wonder how many deviations from BS it would take for the house to have a +EV, no matter the count. Does the guy at the table, who never splits his eights, reduce his EV enough to drag the EV for the whole table down? Does "average play", not basic strategy, ever have a +EV, even with a good count?
I guess even if the EV never became positive for the players, it could get less negative. So, it would benefit the house to reshuffle in a high count.
But, I have never seen this type of thing happen at any of the casinos I have gone to. Granted I haven't played much in the major markets (LV, AC). I just wonder if the casinos have thought of this, researched it, and decided that it wasn't profitable enough to offset the fewer hands per hour and player dissatisfaction.
There is one cheat that is more-or-less undetectable, and that is for the house to maintain its own count as the game is played. This should be pretty easy since there are multiple cameras on every table. When the deck is overly favorable to the player they can simply force a reshuffle/change of decks.
This is a feasible way for the casino to assure they always have the edge. But, unless there is some reason to think there is a counter at the table, they lose more money from pausing the play. Casino blackjack's profitability is all about the number of hands played per hour. Start reshuffling every time the count gets high, and you'll reduce the hands per hour, which means less profit per hour. And, you'll start pissing off the gamblers.
It's not that what you're proposing won't work. It's just that it wouldn't be profitable for the casino.
The other 100,000+ times they were cheating, but not caught I don't believe for a second those machines and wheels are not wired for independent control.
Believe what you want. It doesn't change the fact that you are wrong. I understand how people can think that slots are rigged, the internals of the machine are hidden and complex. But a game like blackjack takes place in full view of the gambler. In roulette, a "fixed" wheel would be spotted relatively quickly by the gamblers. Have you ever seen "system" players at roulette recording the result of every spin? They would see and exploit any irregularity or pattern. If you think craps is being played with loaded dice, bet on the Don't Pass line.
They don't have to cheat. They have the odds on their side. All cheating would do is raise the risk to the casino. It would only take one mistake by any one of the dozens of employees involved in the scam to unravel the entire scheme.
And of course if you do start winning, then they immediately assume you are a cheat and kick you out. Even if you were doing nothing wrong.
That is simply untrue. Casinos want some winners. They want people to win tens of thousands of dollars; because, at the same time, there are more gamblers watching the winner, betting more, and losing. A winning gambler is a casino's best advertising.
Each employee you come into contact with at a casino wants you to win, from the cocktail waitress, to the dealer, to the guy working in the cage. Winners tip. Winners tip well. I've payed out massive amounts of money to winners, and did it with a smile on my face every time.
I have never once seen anyone thrown out of a casino for winning. I have never been thrown out of a casino for winning, and I have had some large wins (I'm not a great gambler, but if you play a lot, you'll win sometimes). Most people thrown out of casinos are drunk and belligerent.
You mean cheat.
No, cheating conducted by the house, not an individual employee cheating to enrich himself, but actual cheating by the casino at a card game is very rare. I've worked in a casino (riverboat in Iowa) and gambled at almost every casino in the Midwest, and have only seen or heard of real casino cheating once. That was at a tribal casino in South Dakota. They were caught removing cards from a blackjack deck.
To prevent this, and assure the gamblers that the cards are all there, most casinos have implemented a strict procedure for introducing new cards in play. First, the factory sealed decks are brought to the table by pit personnel. They are opened by the pit, but the cards are removed from the box by the dealer. The cards are then spread out on the table, face down, to check for imperfections on the backs. Then they are flipped face up and counted. All cards must be accounted for before the deck is put into play. The same process is repeated for all decks coming into play. When it is time to change those cards for a new deck, the same procedure is followed in reverse. The cards are inspected to assure they are all still present, re-boxed, and set aside for possible further inspection. This is all done in front of the gamblers, who could easily spot missing or duplicate cards. They take this very seriously.
It's rare because they already have a statistical edge against the player; they don't need to cheat. They also need to make sure that the gambling public doesn't associate their establishment with cheating, and stop patronizing them. Then they wouldn't make any money. A casino jealously guards its reputation.
Why use the iPhone....?
Card counting on your own, isn't that hard. Sure, it takes a bit of practice, but, it isn't rocket science.
No, standard Hi/Lo counting is pretty easy. Most people can even keep a separate Ace count too. All it takes is practice.
But the power of computer-aided counting is that it can keep track of each card's specific value. Instead of keeping track of only the relative number of high cards played, a computer can keep track of the number of 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, etc. A computer can process and use every piece of information known about the remaining cards, not just the ratio of high cards to low. It can make the perfect playing and betting decisions every time.
Someone who is using a computer to count cards, therefore has a greater theoretical edge against the house. Or, he can get the same edge as a traditional counter, without having to vary his bets as much. That's the real power of computer-aided counting: less detectability. (Assuming, of course, he's not fiddling with his iPhone on the table the whole time.)
Only question in my mind is, when people are filling out that ballot, are they really thinking in terms of each separate choice of one elector vs another, or do they just vote along party lines to support their presidential candidate of choice and try and get them elected?
Oh no. They are checking a box next to the Presidential candidate's name. But, they are actually voting for a slate of electors who are pledged to vote for that candidate. But the result is the same as if they were voting for each elector individually. Any rational voter would vote for their party's electors along party line. There would never be a reason to "split the ticket".
But that is a state-by-state decision. A state can pick its electors in any manner they choose. Two states do it differently. It's a vastly more complex and arcane system than a simple, nation-wide, popular vote.
Kinda seem to me that the system you've described is what would develop out of convenience to co-ordinate a nationwide election of the President, i.e. have each state vote for a couple of guys to go off and cast votes on the state's behalf for the President - the point of the system being to elect a President, not to elect a group of electors.
Yeah, the difficulty of having a nationwide popular election is one reason for the Electoral College. There are some others though. The founders also wanted another filter between the population and the President. And, it also represents a compromise between the large states and the small states; smaller states have a larger share of the electoral vote than if they went strictly by population.
As with almost every aspect of our Constitution, the Electoral College was an acceptable compromise between the states, and a compromise between the ideals of republican democracy and a fear of democratic tyranny. It's a messy document that has managed to hold up pretty well, considering that almost every choice made was a kludge.
Does the Electoral College have a role beyond selecting the President?
No. And they never actually all meet. Each state's EC members vote in their state. There is no deliberation or debate amongst them. That is left to the House of Representatives, in the event the EC has no majority winner.
So your saying capitalism requires an underclass and virtual slave labour in order to function?
No. I'm saying that having dirt cheap consumer electronics requires "virtual slave labour". And that's only because we haven't found an effective way to automate the production process.
But there is nothing about cheap consumer electronics which is necessary to the functioning, and successfulness of capitalism.