How is it against the law? You stole from them! You didn't earn that money, and no matter how clever you were in screwing the system, cheating is cheating. Doing it in a slick, uber-cool way doens't make that any less true. In their eyes, what you did is more or less the same thing as a thief breaking into a safe.
Because, the law is what's agreed on by legislatures, not what the casino owner decides it is. If it were the latter, they'd just take the money from anybody who left with more money than they came with.
It's a game. You know how to play the game really, really well. Better than anybody else. Your knowledge and skill give you an advantage over all the other players, including the house. There is no game in existence where that is considered cheating. In fact, in every game I know of, there are groups of players who will endlessly practice in order to get to that state, and those players are widely celebrated and even looked up to.
Just because there's money involved doesn't make it any less of a game. Just because the rules of the casino say that you can only play if you're bad at their game doesn't mean you've broken any law passed by a state legislature.
OTOH, taking your money definitely IS breaking a law. They couldn't do that even if you broke a real law. There is this little thing called 'due process'. They can only get the government to take your money and give it to them after hauling you into court and giving you a trial. That's how it works. The casinos are no more allowed to be vigilantes than you or I.
If being good at their games WERE against the law, you can be sure that casinos would haul those people in and get them jailed, and get their money back. But, contrary to your ardent belief, it isn't, so they can't.
If you want to call being good at a game cheating, be my guest. I don't think you'll find many who agree with you though.
Oh, yeah, really easy. Is it even documented in any of the dialog boxes that talk about things like desktop background or screensavers? No? I didn't think so. Nobody's ever going to figure it out, and nobody will remember it even if someone tells them.
That's a geek answer to the problem, not an answer for a normal human being who has stuff to do besides hunt down and remember arcane keyboard combinations for things.
The system is set up to encourage a company to find the shortest path to greatest profitability, and that's the way it will likely always be. Is this bad? Depends on what you want companies to accomplish. If you want them to achieve economic growth, increasing efficiency, etc, then they are ideally groomed to do this (as our economy has demonstrated over the past decades).
This system encourages a company to make the greates amount of money with the least amount of effort. It doesn't encourage them to do anything useful or helpful to anybody else in the process. Economic efficiency often translates into things being better for everybody, but I don't have much faith that it always does. In fact, in Microsoft/Dell/etc... case, it clearly does not.
Cut & Paste is handled very differently in X, and it's much easier to handle someone trying to paste evil things into your application. Cut & Paste is largely a set of agreements on how setting various window properties should be interpreted. X has no 'built in' cut & paste mechanism.
Also, X clear labels events that are from other processes, and not from X itself. So, in X, it's pretty easy to ignore events that are generated by other programs, not by the system.
Also, Motif, Xt, etc. all don't get the addresses of the callback to call from the X server. They look at the event stream from the X server, and decide which callback needs calling. A application that posted internal addresses to the X server and expected to get them back intact would be nieve in the extreme, and clearly poorly written. Whrereas that technique is the accepted way of doing things in Windows.
I happen to know where all the meetup locations are, so it won't be happening in Minneapolis. I don't like the Rock Bottom Brewery very much, but, oh well.:-)
I don't like capital punishment in the US much. But, at least there's due process involved. A real trial, or at least, as good a trial as the accused can afford, which is better than what a Fulan Gong member would get in China.
I'm aware of many of the problems with our own system. But, it's not anywhere near as evil or broken as China's is.
China routinely tortures and/or murders its citizens on the whim of an official or policeperson. While we are not anywhere near as discerning as we ought to be in what nations we choose as friends, our country does not treat it's own citizens with that much savage brutality.
I've heard that pathetic argument from chinese friends of mine. I won't take it from you either.
Except, what they're telling their guards to do is what they ought to be doing anyway. Now, if they chose to have a moratorium on doing things over the phone for their techs for the time of the conference, that would still be a cheat, but I could see it as it being a reasonable temporary measure.
With the way people are, you just know that they're going to go back to the same level of vigilance they had before the conference after the conference is over. The memo does not advocate any systemic changes, it merely advocates adherence to supposed existing practice.
What were the settlers doing there in territory that Israel doesn't rightly own anyway? To me, the settlers in the occupied territories are the only valid civilian targets for the Palestinians.
This whole "Linuxs on the desktop" thing is going in a very strange direction, IMHO. Why do people choose UN*X as a desktop system in the first place? I for one don't care about newbie-friendliness that much, all I want is a powerfull, efficient, open and stable system that is a pleasure to use and doesn't treat me like an idiot.
If I were a CIO who had bought into the ideas of why Open Source provides enormous benefits to my business, I'd want an Open Source desktop I could stick in front of any random administrative assistant and have it work. If you don't want such a beast, then don't use it.
Also, Linux on the server is doomed, in the long run, if Microsoft continues to control the desktop. Microsoft will use that control to do everything they can do makes things difficult for Linux on the server. Eventually people will just give up and switch to NT because it's too hard to run a Microsoft Windows network any other way.
Face it, as a business strategy, keeping your OS a newbie unfriendly 'l33t' OS is dooming it to failure. It's much the same problem as trying to sell high-end servers when you have cheaper alternatives that keep getting more and more powerful. You keep being pushed into higher and higher niches in the market until your pushed so far into the stratosphere that you only have 5 customers and end up going out of business shortly afterwards. In this case, the cost is the learning curve, not the cost of the hardware, but the principle is the same.
A breeder reactor is defined by function, not by the elegence or scientificness of its construction. He was using the neutrons emitted by some of the decay products of one nuclear reaction to turn other isotopes into more radioactive ones, which many would define as a breeder reactor. He even largely knew what he was doing, even if he severely underestimated the danger.
Well, sodium chloride has a similarily high melting point, yet I can pour liquids containing high concentrations of sodium chloride through coffee filters. Perhaps he used a solvent?
Ahh, so the fact that the constitution forbids slavery is also a restriction on freedom? Or, perhaps property law in general, that seems to restrict freedom.
IMHO, the GPL is a framework the preserves freedom. Yes, it means that you can't guarantee that you are the exclusive source for the software you produce. But, it also means that software can never be taken away from you. I think the BSD liscense (not much more than public domain) does more to harm freedom than preserve it for this very reason.
I think it's still quite useful to know exactly how Open Source provides business benefits for IBM. Both so the model can be replicated, and so IBM's involvement can be better understood. If you know why your business partner wants to do something, it will help you make better descisions as to how to make their involvement work well for you too.
Oh grow up and get a life! Why be so oversensitive about GNU/Free/Stallman Sheesh.
Because freedom is important.
The current fashion in thinking (perhaps the only common fashion in thinking through the ages) is in the intellectual laziness of deciding that political choices are too hard, or unimportant. That, somehow, despite our choices, things will continue on, and our freedoms will not be taken away. Even small things are worth getting your knickers in a twist about if that have wide ramifications. If beige suddenly became the color of the Christian Right party, I would try to get my townhome association to paint our houses purple or something, and would search for non-beige computer hardware. Suddenly, a nitpicky little choice like what color something is would have wide and important ramifications.
Similarily, arguing over the subtleties of language when referring to the founder of the Free Software movement is a nitpicky little detail with similarily wide ramifications. Something can be said for humor and satire, but the choice of the word 'Stallmanism' is neither.
It is an attempt to associate the entire movement with a corrupt and evil government headed by a paranoid and bloodthirsty dictator who murdered 20 million people. Somehow, to me, that seems worth paying attention to.
I think you need to grow up and stop taking the easy way out. Or, you need to reveal your true colors, and tell it like you think it is. If you are in the latter category, admonishing the opposition for talking about things that you also think are important (even if you think differently about them) is hypocrisy of the worst sort.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the 64 kbit format could be called a hard-boiled ogg.
IMHO, crimes are not made by laws, my comments in the article about card counting not withstanding. :-)
Because, the law is what's agreed on by legislatures, not what the casino owner decides it is. If it were the latter, they'd just take the money from anybody who left with more money than they came with.
It's a game. You know how to play the game really, really well. Better than anybody else. Your knowledge and skill give you an advantage over all the other players, including the house. There is no game in existence where that is considered cheating. In fact, in every game I know of, there are groups of players who will endlessly practice in order to get to that state, and those players are widely celebrated and even looked up to.
Just because there's money involved doesn't make it any less of a game. Just because the rules of the casino say that you can only play if you're bad at their game doesn't mean you've broken any law passed by a state legislature.
OTOH, taking your money definitely IS breaking a law. They couldn't do that even if you broke a real law. There is this little thing called 'due process'. They can only get the government to take your money and give it to them after hauling you into court and giving you a trial. That's how it works. The casinos are no more allowed to be vigilantes than you or I.
If being good at their games WERE against the law, you can be sure that casinos would haul those people in and get them jailed, and get their money back. But, contrary to your ardent belief, it isn't, so they can't.
If you want to call being good at a game cheating, be my guest. I don't think you'll find many who agree with you though.
Oh, yeah, really easy. Is it even documented in any of the dialog boxes that talk about things like desktop background or screensavers? No? I didn't think so. Nobody's ever going to figure it out, and nobody will remember it even if someone tells them.
That's a geek answer to the problem, not an answer for a normal human being who has stuff to do besides hunt down and remember arcane keyboard combinations for things.
This system encourages a company to make the greates amount of money with the least amount of effort. It doesn't encourage them to do anything useful or helpful to anybody else in the process. Economic efficiency often translates into things being better for everybody, but I don't have much faith that it always does. In fact, in Microsoft/Dell/etc... case, it clearly does not.
Actually though, X doesn't really have this flaw.
Cut & Paste is handled very differently in X, and it's much easier to handle someone trying to paste evil things into your application. Cut & Paste is largely a set of agreements on how setting various window properties should be interpreted. X has no 'built in' cut & paste mechanism.
Also, X clear labels events that are from other processes, and not from X itself. So, in X, it's pretty easy to ignore events that are generated by other programs, not by the system.
Also, Motif, Xt, etc. all don't get the addresses of the callback to call from the X server. They look at the event stream from the X server, and decide which callback needs calling. A application that posted internal addresses to the X server and expected to get them back intact would be nieve in the extreme, and clearly poorly written. Whrereas that technique is the accepted way of doing things in Windows.
I happen to know where all the meetup locations are, so it won't be happening in Minneapolis. I don't like the Rock Bottom Brewery very much, but, oh well. :-)
Ahh, so you wanted it under the LGPL so you could make money and Trolltech couldn't. How very well-spirited and thoughtful of you.
Now that was funny. :-)
Amnesty International is the top on my list of good charities. The top three are Amnesty International, the EFF, and the ACLU. :-)
I don't like capital punishment in the US much. But, at least there's due process involved. A real trial, or at least, as good a trial as the accused can afford, which is better than what a Fulan Gong member would get in China.
I'm aware of many of the problems with our own system. But, it's not anywhere near as evil or broken as China's is.
Oh, shut up.
China routinely tortures and/or murders its citizens on the whim of an official or policeperson. While we are not anywhere near as discerning as we ought to be in what nations we choose as friends, our country does not treat it's own citizens with that much savage brutality.
I've heard that pathetic argument from chinese friends of mine. I won't take it from you either.
Except, what they're telling their guards to do is what they ought to be doing anyway. Now, if they chose to have a moratorium on doing things over the phone for their techs for the time of the conference, that would still be a cheat, but I could see it as it being a reasonable temporary measure.
With the way people are, you just know that they're going to go back to the same level of vigilance they had before the conference after the conference is over. The memo does not advocate any systemic changes, it merely advocates adherence to supposed existing practice.
So, my opinion holds. It's still PR security.
Only be secure when the world might be watching, and at all other times be lax. Sounds like a fantastic policy to me.
You're right. :-) I've thought this for a long time. That won't stop me from being quite unhappy about the Chinese police state though.
What were the settlers doing there in territory that Israel doesn't rightly own anyway? To me, the settlers in the occupied territories are the only valid civilian targets for the Palestinians.
Actually, it is precisely like that. It's just the "The Man" may be a bigger and more powerful entity than some people think.
This whole "Linuxs on the desktop" thing is going in a very strange direction, IMHO. Why do people choose UN*X as a desktop system in the first place? I for one don't care about newbie-friendliness that much, all I want is a powerfull, efficient, open and stable system that is a pleasure to use and doesn't treat me like an idiot.
If I were a CIO who had bought into the ideas of why Open Source provides enormous benefits to my business, I'd want an Open Source desktop I could stick in front of any random administrative assistant and have it work. If you don't want such a beast, then don't use it.
Also, Linux on the server is doomed, in the long run, if Microsoft continues to control the desktop. Microsoft will use that control to do everything they can do makes things difficult for Linux on the server. Eventually people will just give up and switch to NT because it's too hard to run a Microsoft Windows network any other way.
Face it, as a business strategy, keeping your OS a newbie unfriendly 'l33t' OS is dooming it to failure. It's much the same problem as trying to sell high-end servers when you have cheaper alternatives that keep getting more and more powerful. You keep being pushed into higher and higher niches in the market until your pushed so far into the stratosphere that you only have 5 customers and end up going out of business shortly afterwards. In this case, the cost is the learning curve, not the cost of the hardware, but the principle is the same.
Are you sure you aren't some kind of Scientologist?
A breeder reactor is defined by function, not by the elegence or scientificness of its construction. He was using the neutrons emitted by some of the decay products of one nuclear reaction to turn other isotopes into more radioactive ones, which many would define as a breeder reactor. He even largely knew what he was doing, even if he severely underestimated the danger.
Well, sodium chloride has a similarily high melting point, yet I can pour liquids containing high concentrations of sodium chloride through coffee filters. Perhaps he used a solvent?
20 million, 35 million, it's a nitpicky little detail. *big grin*
Ahh, so the fact that the constitution forbids slavery is also a restriction on freedom? Or, perhaps property law in general, that seems to restrict freedom.
IMHO, the GPL is a framework the preserves freedom. Yes, it means that you can't guarantee that you are the exclusive source for the software you produce. But, it also means that software can never be taken away from you. I think the BSD liscense (not much more than public domain) does more to harm freedom than preserve it for this very reason.
I think it's still quite useful to know exactly how Open Source provides business benefits for IBM. Both so the model can be replicated, and so IBM's involvement can be better understood. If you know why your business partner wants to do something, it will help you make better descisions as to how to make their involvement work well for you too.
Because freedom is important.
The current fashion in thinking (perhaps the only common fashion in thinking through the ages) is in the intellectual laziness of deciding that political choices are too hard, or unimportant. That, somehow, despite our choices, things will continue on, and our freedoms will not be taken away. Even small things are worth getting your knickers in a twist about if that have wide ramifications. If beige suddenly became the color of the Christian Right party, I would try to get my townhome association to paint our houses purple or something, and would search for non-beige computer hardware. Suddenly, a nitpicky little choice like what color something is would have wide and important ramifications.
Similarily, arguing over the subtleties of language when referring to the founder of the Free Software movement is a nitpicky little detail with similarily wide ramifications. Something can be said for humor and satire, but the choice of the word 'Stallmanism' is neither.
It is an attempt to associate the entire movement with a corrupt and evil government headed by a paranoid and bloodthirsty dictator who murdered 20 million people. Somehow, to me, that seems worth paying attention to.
I think you need to grow up and stop taking the easy way out. Or, you need to reveal your true colors, and tell it like you think it is. If you are in the latter category, admonishing the opposition for talking about things that you also think are important (even if you think differently about them) is hypocrisy of the worst sort.