My understanding is that this is not correct (your comments on the difficulty of programming an RNG notwithstanding.)
If you can assume a magical perfectly random algorithm for a moment, you simply have to design a slot machine as follows (simple example):
Machine takes $1 bets only. Machine "rolls" a virtual ten sided die. On the number 10, a jackpot of $9 is paid. On any other number, the bet is lost.
This machine would make $1 profit for every $10 wagered, over time, "guaranteed" (by mathematics, not rigged programming) and would never need to be 'overdue' to hit or any other such nonsense. A customer could get lucky and hit 10 jackpots in a row, but the odds would be fairly astronomical.
Incidentally, such a machine would be a pretty bad bet compared to most Vegas slot machines, but I think still a high enough payout to be legal in Nevada. I think it would be roughly comparable to the odds on the bad machines in the McCarran airport...
If you start winning sufficiently large amounts, this doesn't work. The casino might not know where all of its $500 dollar chips are, but it damn well will have a record of all of the $5,000 chips and there is scrutiny when cashing them in.
If you're deliberately cashing in stacks of 1000 at a time in order to avoid scrutiny over $10,000 in chips, that is called 'structuring' and the Federal government doesn't look on it too kindly. But they would have to notice, and I'm sure they miss plenty. I guess it's a risk/reward calculation we all have to make (should we be lucky enough to find ourselves in possession of many thousands of dollars in casino chips...)
I really have nothing more than speculation to go on here so I could be wrong, but judging the state of some of the places I've seen selling lottery tickets, I don't think the lottery has particularly onerous requirements in order to become a vendor.
Tiny little compact places full of small people in tiny apartments got fiber optic sooner than the gigantic US with lots of space between places that would be hooked up, and competing options for TV and data.
It seems like a bad idea because it would result in a tyranny of the majority.
Just trying to pick some things that aren't super controversial as an example here, (since bringing up religion or Israel/Palestine is going to derail this thought experiment): properly elected representative world government would probably vote to ban pornography, or marijuana, and I don't want this. Both of these things are very much legal where I live.
You could address it by writing a well thought out and intellectual world constitution and system of checks and balances though of course. I'd probably be down for one-world government if this could happen, if for no other reason than to finally escape dysfunctional (by western representative elected government standards) United States political system.
How you pick out and establish this constitution? Tell me how you would address *that* specific problem.
They advertiser can work this out with the website the same way I would have worked it out with the Miami Herald in 1955. Frankly, I'm not sure if that was trusting the newspaper's ad sales department to be not fraudulent when reporting circulation numbers, or if there was an industry group like Nielsen that verified such things or made estimates based on 3rd party polling.
Whatever the method, plenty of ad sales were made, and everyone was happy, and I know it didn't involve 100% tracking of individual readers. Alexa can either adjust the model that they have to account for the growing number of people who block their web bugs, come up with a new process or model entirely, or die in a fire. I don't particularly care. Life went on before all of this big brother tracking shit, and it will go on after it is defeated, or at least marginalized.
No question that it does present a risk, and it's fair to discuss how to mitigate that.
I propose that they can go about it the same way they do in the newspaper industry, it would be fraud for the New York Times or my local free newspaper claim a larger circulation than they really have when negotiate ad sales. I see why no reason why websites wouldn't have to present Alexa type statistics to back up their claim.
Taking out ads on some sketchy Eastern European hosted link farm should be viewed just as skeptically as calling up a Bulgarian local paper and trusting their staff to give you accurate circulation statistics and demographics about their village. i.e don't be xenophobic about it, but realize that there might be some incentive to take advantage of your ad money, and negotiate according to your risk tolerance level.
They could just host the ads first party based on CPM statistics like a god damn newspaper, but then they would have to do actual work instead of plugging in some 3rd party malware laden ad engine.
I would have thought the crossover between people who used AdBlock and knew what the hell to do with a.torrent file would have been higher. I wonder how much money they made.
I recently found out (perhaps a bit naively) that there were ads on YouTube, too. It turns out I'd literally been using AdBlock Plus so long that it predated my ever using that site (or at least whenever they introduced ads). Turns out YouTube is a real shit experience when you use it as intended, as I found on my smartphone.
This will be surprising to you I'm sure, but it turns you actually *can't* walk outside in Buffalo, put a finger in the air, and say anything definitive about the weather in Tahiti or Dubai or Moscow or Los Angeles.
Sell it to me then, jesus. I'll happily pay a yearly subscription to Gmail if they remove all ads and data mining and don't fuck with the interface too much.
I'm adblocking anyway but I'm sure they are still churning away at my data.
Linking to Ken Sabet basically discredits you in any Marijuana related discussion. Things are fine here, please fuck off and stop pointing fingers at my state.
Oh don't worry, people Wikipedia articles on Slashdot almost never produce links to anecdotes like these. If you ask them directly they huff and puff about wasted time, but god forbid we peer over their shoulder to analyze their perceived grievance...
If you want to break established definitions, sure.
In other news:
-Foodies vastly prefer McDonalds -90% of film buffs are men (porn), get those films some Oscars! -The hottest song in the world is the Windows startup chime, or maybe the default Marimba iPhone ringtone
I don't buy it, with driverless shuttles/cabs all over the place there would be tons of people fucking/doing drugs/pissing/vandalizing in these (expensive) things.
You'll damn well need a user account and probably have 24/7 cameras on you if these things ever get off the ground.
I figured you were trolling but holy crap, that really might be the worst written Wikipedia article ever. It reads like a 5th grade book report thrown together at the last minute.
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding is that this is not correct (your comments on the difficulty of programming an RNG notwithstanding.)
If you can assume a magical perfectly random algorithm for a moment, you simply have to design a slot machine as follows (simple example):
Machine takes $1 bets only. Machine "rolls" a virtual ten sided die. On the number 10, a jackpot of $9 is paid. On any other number, the bet is lost.
This machine would make $1 profit for every $10 wagered, over time, "guaranteed" (by mathematics, not rigged programming) and would never need to be 'overdue' to hit or any other such nonsense. A customer could get lucky and hit 10 jackpots in a row, but the odds would be fairly astronomical.
Incidentally, such a machine would be a pretty bad bet compared to most Vegas slot machines, but I think still a high enough payout to be legal in Nevada. I think it would be roughly comparable to the odds on the bad machines in the McCarran airport...
If you start winning sufficiently large amounts, this doesn't work. The casino might not know where all of its $500 dollar chips are, but it damn well will have a record of all of the $5,000 chips and there is scrutiny when cashing them in.
If you're deliberately cashing in stacks of 1000 at a time in order to avoid scrutiny over $10,000 in chips, that is called 'structuring' and the Federal government doesn't look on it too kindly. But they would have to notice, and I'm sure they miss plenty. I guess it's a risk/reward calculation we all have to make (should we be lucky enough to find ourselves in possession of many thousands of dollars in casino chips...)
I really have nothing more than speculation to go on here so I could be wrong, but judging the state of some of the places I've seen selling lottery tickets, I don't think the lottery has particularly onerous requirements in order to become a vendor.
name and shame man
I've never found a still valid lottery ticket on the ground.
Tiny little compact places full of small people in tiny apartments got fiber optic sooner than the gigantic US with lots of space between places that would be hooked up, and competing options for TV and data.
But somehow they were still behind in Manhattan
Actually that took you 150 chars, considering your character count was part of your point. Better luck next time. [127 chars]
Ok, just change the criteria to "Once something has achieved sentience, it is no longer moral to abort/take that away".
Problem Solved?
It seems like a bad idea because it would result in a tyranny of the majority.
Just trying to pick some things that aren't super controversial as an example here, (since bringing up religion or Israel/Palestine is going to derail this thought experiment): properly elected representative world government would probably vote to ban pornography, or marijuana, and I don't want this.
Both of these things are very much legal where I live.
You could address it by writing a well thought out and intellectual world constitution and system of checks and balances though of course. I'd probably be down for one-world government if this could happen, if for no other reason than to finally escape dysfunctional (by western representative elected government standards) United States political system.
How you pick out and establish this constitution? Tell me how you would address *that* specific problem.
Fine. As well they should.
They advertiser can work this out with the website the same way I would have worked it out with the Miami Herald in 1955. Frankly, I'm not sure if that was trusting the newspaper's ad sales department to be not fraudulent when reporting circulation numbers, or if there was an industry group like Nielsen that verified such things or made estimates based on 3rd party polling.
Whatever the method, plenty of ad sales were made, and everyone was happy, and I know it didn't involve 100% tracking of individual readers. Alexa can either adjust the model that they have to account for the growing number of people who block their web bugs, come up with a new process or model entirely, or die in a fire. I don't particularly care. Life went on before all of this big brother tracking shit, and it will go on after it is defeated, or at least marginalized.
No question that it does present a risk, and it's fair to discuss how to mitigate that.
I propose that they can go about it the same way they do in the newspaper industry, it would be fraud for the New York Times or my local free newspaper claim a larger circulation than they really have when negotiate ad sales. I see why no reason why websites wouldn't have to present Alexa type statistics to back up their claim.
Taking out ads on some sketchy Eastern European hosted link farm should be viewed just as skeptically as calling up a Bulgarian local paper and trusting their staff to give you accurate circulation statistics and demographics about their village. i.e don't be xenophobic about it, but realize that there might be some incentive to take advantage of your ad money, and negotiate according to your risk tolerance level.
Download at your own risk indeed. I was curious so I opened a VM with a fresh IE install (no Adblocking) and chose the download.com link for VLC.
Download.com is reputable enough anyway, right? Long history with cnet serving up shareware and all that?
http://i.imgur.com/l8n2ScB.png
WHICH OF THE DAMN DOWNLOAD BUTTONS OPENS ACTUALLY GETS ME VLC?!?!
Obviously I know, but my dad doesn't, and that's why I have no sympathy for online advertisers.
They could just host the ads first party based on CPM statistics like a god damn newspaper, but then they would have to do actual work instead of plugging in some 3rd party malware laden ad engine.
I would have thought the crossover between people who used AdBlock and knew what the hell to do with a .torrent file would have been higher. I wonder how much money they made.
I recently found out (perhaps a bit naively) that there were ads on YouTube, too. It turns out I'd literally been using AdBlock Plus so long that it predated my ever using that site (or at least whenever they introduced ads). Turns out YouTube is a real shit experience when you use it as intended, as I found on my smartphone.
This will be surprising to you I'm sure, but it turns you actually *can't* walk outside in Buffalo, put a finger in the air, and say anything definitive about the weather in Tahiti or Dubai or Moscow or Los Angeles.
Pic related: http://i.imgur.com/lZ7C4nY.jpg
Sell it to me then, jesus. I'll happily pay a yearly subscription to Gmail if they remove all ads and data mining and don't fuck with the interface too much.
I'm adblocking anyway but I'm sure they are still churning away at my data.
Genuinely asking: Not having tried either of these services, how did they solve the problem of vetting the drivers so the public is safe?
Linking to Ken Sabet basically discredits you in any Marijuana related discussion. Things are fine here, please fuck off and stop pointing fingers at my state.
Isn't the proper solution to then criminalize the 'acting' and violence? This way there would be no risk of Ms. Maroney being prosecuted here.
Oh don't worry, people Wikipedia articles on Slashdot almost never produce links to anecdotes like these. If you ask them directly they huff and puff about wasted time, but god forbid we peer over their shoulder to analyze their perceived grievance...
If you want to break established definitions, sure.
In other news:
-Foodies vastly prefer McDonalds
-90% of film buffs are men (porn), get those films some Oscars!
-The hottest song in the world is the Windows startup chime, or maybe the default Marimba iPhone ringtone
I don't buy it, with driverless shuttles/cabs all over the place there would be tons of people fucking/doing drugs/pissing/vandalizing in these (expensive) things.
You'll damn well need a user account and probably have 24/7 cameras on you if these things ever get off the ground.
Of course.
Vegas will do something like this.
Florida -4 -110
Louisville +4 -110
What this means is if you want to bet on either Louisville +4 OR Florida -4, you have to risk $1.10 for each dollar you'd win.
So their goal is to get something like (for example) $11000 bet on each side, guaranteeing them a $1000 profit no matter what happens.
It's just like the internet, you stop a fight with trolls by ignoring them.
I figured you were trolling but holy crap, that really might be the worst written Wikipedia article ever. It reads like a 5th grade book report thrown together at the last minute.