most people active in any one church tend to have similar points of view
While I agree with most of what you've said, it's important to note that this is true is many groups.
e.g. State schools will often reflect the views of the community they servce. As will private schools. A school in a small "redneck" town will have an over abundance of "redneck" views. A church run school will exhibit the same characteristics as the church. The kids in the ballet class tend to have white middle-class parents. etc. etc.
The important thing is to have children mix in a number of circles, be they church, school, sports, work, or (extended) family.
The probability of a particular card coming out is exactly the same (as you point out), but:
The issue is: (number of favourable hands)/(number of hands played)
Adding more decks makes a single shoe last longer, and that has more impact on the denominator than the numerator.
In terms of probability, the more random the better
Maybe, but you don't beat blackjack via randomness.
Having a non-random shuffle has two advantages.
You can track the cards.
Often, counters will watch a few tables looking for a hot deck. Once you find one, it's in your best interests if it still hot (i.e. has lots of 10s in a bunch just after halfway) even after a shuffle.
A deck with 10s distributed evenly thoughout is useless. If a particular means of shuffling can help prevent that, then it's in the player's interest.
I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make.
You seem to be suggesting (correctly) that the game favours the house more often than the player. (And of course, it must do, otherwise they wouldn't offer it).
However this comment: such as the dealer must play past 17, goes the other way. That part of the rules is what allows the player to beat the game.
You probably know what blackjack works for the dealer, but it took me a bit of time to work it out (I'm just slow sometimes), so for the interested few, here it is:
The rules for playing blackjack are basically the same for player and dealer, with 3 exceptions.
Specifics about the pay-out, and handling of a blackjack (natural) (including insurance, where offered)
Who wins in a bust situation
When you are allowed to hit/stand
Mostly, the player can mirror the dealer's rules if he wants to. He can play a strategy of hit on 16 or less, and stand on 17. However, the house still wins, because if the player goes bust, the dealer wins, no matter what. (Exception no. 2)
If the dealer + player both get 17, then the player "pushes" and gets his money back. Same for 18,19,20 and 21 (unless it's a natural, in which case house rules will apply). But at 22 and above, the dealer wins.
The house wants you to go bust. That's their easy money - if you go bust, then it doesn't matter what the dealer draws. And the odds are in the house's favour because of that fact.
However, card counting uses the 3rd exception (and parts of #1) to reverse that.
The dealer's rules (hit on 16 or less) are designed to be a good strategy that leaves the odds in the house's favour on average.
But, at some points in the game, the makeup of the deck(s) will be such that the odds are significantly in the dealer's favour, and at other times they are in the player's favour. If you can pick the latter, and focus your bets during that period, then you can beat the average.
Basically the house will still win more hands than you, but you're more interested in the money than in winning the hands, so you put more $$ down when the chances are best for you, and capitalise on the hands that you can win.
If you're interested, I can forward you some hot stock tips I've been getting.
I'm told they're only being sent to a select group of people, but you seem nice enough.
They're definately going to go up, someone called
Juliane Delsol gave me some really good advice.
Seriously, I use GVim for all my text editing on Windows (and other platforms too). Never had a stability problem at all. Some features haven't worked 100% out of the box (mostly things that assume unix stuff) e.g. I had trouble getting:make to work correctly (using ant).
However the benefit of being able to use the same excellent editor on all platforms far outweighs some of the minor annoyances of Gvim32
I'd also plug Pepper, since I also own a license for that, and have found it to be quite a nice editor.
... thats not a real project. If your loosy SCM cannot scale past 200k lines of code, then what good is it?
Well it would seem it's perfectly good for 199k lines of code. Although in the case of VSS the limit seems to be somewhere between 1 and 10 million lines of code (based on anecdotal evidence - I don't use VSS).
Seriously - if a team of 5 VB developers want to use VSS to manage their 50k LOC project, what problems will they face?
On the topic of current Nvidia cards:
Do not buy a GeForce4-MX for Doom.
Nvidia has really made a mess of the naming conventions here. I always
thought it was bad enough that GF2 was just a speed bumped GF1, while GF3 had
significant architectural improvements over GF2. I expected GF4 to be the
speed bumped GF3, but calling the NV17 GF4-MX really sucks. GF4-MX will still run Doom properly, but it will be using the NV10 codepath
with only two texture units and no vertex shaders. A GF3 or 8500 will be
much better performers.
You can find other reviews out on the net, but tech wise, a GF4MX is just a faster GF2.
Apple isn't forcing or coercing anyone to buy or use certain products based on the fact that they own the whole ball of wax.
You sure?
Apple is selling Jaguar, as "look at all these new features and apps that come free". Steve Jobs says you're paying $1 per feature. Their justification for the totally absurd price of $129 (for an upgrade!) is that you get all these cool apps.
Will you be able to get the fixes to MacOS X without the apps? Probably not. So, what is actually happening here, is you have to pay apple for a whole lot of new apps/features in order to stay current with your OS.
They most certainly are coercing people to buy the apps.
When I was sold an iBook, part of the package was "free access to iTools" and "free updates as they become available". Nothing there said it was temporary....
Well, nothing said it was permanent either. You were never promised "lifetime access to iTools." And again, iTools access was not a specific part of your iBook purchase; it was simply an added benefit for Macintosh owners. Or to put it another way: If you buy a computer that says, "Lets you access your favorite web sites!", and then your favorite web sites disappear, are you going to complain to the computer manufacturer that those web sites were "part of the package"?
But it's not like that. Often when you buy a PC, you get X month free with an ISP (I think if you buy a Mac in Australia right now, you get a month free with iPrimus). The iTools thing to me, looks like that.
I'd liken it to having a deal which was "Get the first month free, and then pay $20 per month access", and then 2 months in, they up the price to $50. It's unreasonable to expect that the price would never change, but you should be able to assume that deal had some reasonable lifetime. I'll let other people argue as to whether the 2.5 months warning they've given is "reasonable lifetime".
The whole announcement has made me rethink my plans to buy an iBook. If apple is going to start charging all its customers full price everytime it does an upgrade, and suddenly start charging through the nose for services it previously advertised as free, then I'm not sure I trust them enough to commit to their products.
Depends what you want. If you're just trying to stop your mail address from changing, then the domain is the best option, because you can move it around if your current providor screws you, but you can still do it cheaply.
Gandi will register your domain and forward the email for 12 Euro per year. They also do web page redirections, which might be useful to you.
The OSI Logo is copyright. Putting it on something that isn't certified will cause the OSI Lawyers (Mrs ESR?) to threaten you with big long words and fancy looking documents.
Apple decided to make thier next release run on a unix core, and voila, for the first time in 20 odd years, a damn fine user environment for Unix!
And that's exactly the point. OS X is MacOS with unix underneath, not Unix with a GUI on top.
It's a different approach. Apple doesn't really care whether OS X is a great unix, as long as it is a great user experience. I don't believe that KDE wants to truly hide the fact that it is running on *nix.
OS X is 20 years of MacOS/NeXTStep experience with 10 years of unix (NeXT) experience underneath. KDE/Linux is 30 years of Unix experience, with 10 years of GUI experience (X) on top.
(Yes, the numbers are a bit wrong, but close enough)
Well, in Australia it is illegal to leave a motor vehicle unsecured. So, to push the analogy, attaching an unsecured computer to the internet should be similarly viewed.
Microsoft loses 20,000USD every time. I can't see how they'd like this aspect much.
Because PS2 is killing them in terms of sales.
Even if 50% of people buying the XBox are getting it as a cheap linux box, MS still doubles the total sales of the XBox.
Yes, it costs them some amount (say $100) for every sale, but they loose that no matter what the person does with the console.
We know they're willing to sell the hardware at a loss in order to make a profit on the games. They might also be willing to sell it at a loss in order to create (a perception of) market penetration.
The flaw in all this, is that software sales will not increase, and any smart market analyst would pick up on that.
Can anyone tell me what the effects of running a darwin system on the iBook would be? (dual-booting)
I would expect that avoiding the GUI would improve your battery life.
Does darwin have proper power management?
Does apple's JDK run under darwin?
I'm thinking about getting an iBook, and most of what I need it for could be done entirely in on a command line. Is darwin useful enough, and does it give better battery life?
United Linux cannot go after Cheap Bytes when they release a $2 CD of UL's $800 product
If the CD is GPL'd, then sure.
But, I don't think it's going to be that simple.
It will most likely contain some non-GPL'd pieces. It might only be some UL documentation, but I suspect there will be something on the CD that is not free to be copied.
They might try copyrighting the CD image the way the OpenBSD does.
Cheap Bytes will be able to rip all the Free binaries from the CD and put together a distribution which is compatible with UL, but it won't actually be UL.
The "See terms and conditions" note on the box covers this
I haven't seen the NWN box, so I can't comment on the specific case, but most boxes just say:
Subject to the terms and conditions within
You don't know the details of the contract before you enter into it, which, from a legal point of view may negate it entirely
You generally have no way of returning the product if you don't accept the conditions of the contract, which may have some bearing on the legality, and I certainly consider it unethical.
You don't actually agree to any of the terms at the time of purchase, the box may state that they exist, but there is nothing requiring you to read, or assent to them at the time of purchase.
The sale takes place between you and the vendor, when you hand over your cash, and they let you take possession of the product. There is no indication that you have entered into any contract, other than an exchange of goods for payment.
This is somewhat like the the Ford having a sticker on it that says "You agree to abide by all terms and conditions as found the glove box", when the glove box is locked, and you don't read them, or sign anything regarding them at the time of purchase.
The legality is questionable, the ethics more so.
In this case BioWare has done the decent thing of making the EULA public so can review it before you buy. But you don't actually sign it, and you don't need to assent to it in order to purchase the product, so for those who don't read the BioWare forums, it amounts to conditions imposed after the purchase.
It's common practice in software, but that doesn't make it (necessarily) legal, nor does it might it right.
The CD + Manual, etc are yours. You can do what every you like with them as long as you do not infringe the author's copyright.
BioWare (et al) rely on the belief that the software is useless to you unless they grant you specific rights regarding copying. i.e. They hold that you can't run the software without copying it (into memory) and you don't have the right to do that unless you agree to their licence.
There have been arguments (and precendents, I believe) on both sides. Some argue that loading a program into memory is fair use - e.g. If you purchase a magazine, then it is illegal to make copies of th articles and give them to your friends, but it is legal (fair use) to photocopy an article so that you can make notes on it.
The upshot is that you don't have to agree to the EULA, but it's not entirely clear what rights you possess until you do.
And, no, I'm not sure what this has to do with Ford contracts any more:)
Slashdot Mirror
by The Pi-Guy on 22/08/02 1:34 (Score:4, Funny)
NO, VI 0WNZ EMACS
by The Pi-Guy on 22/08/02 1:39 (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds about right to me :)
Aren't indentity columns what you're looking for?
While I agree with most of what you've said, it's important to note that this is true is many groups.
e.g. State schools will often reflect the views of the community they servce. As will private schools. A school in a small "redneck" town will have an over abundance of "redneck" views. A church run school will exhibit the same characteristics as the church. The kids in the ballet class tend to have white middle-class parents. etc. etc.
The important thing is to have children mix in a number of circles, be they church, school, sports, work, or (extended) family.
The probability of a particular card coming out is exactly the same (as you point out), but:
The issue is: (number of favourable hands)/(number of hands played)
Adding more decks makes a single shoe last longer, and that has more impact on the denominator than the numerator.
Maybe, but you don't beat blackjack via randomness.
Having a non-random shuffle has two advantages.
- You can track the cards.
- Often, counters will watch a few tables looking for a hot deck. Once you find one, it's in your best interests if it still hot (i.e. has lots of 10s in a bunch just after halfway) even after a shuffle.
A deck with 10s distributed evenly thoughout is useless. If a particular means of shuffling can help prevent that, then it's in the player's interest.You seem to be suggesting (correctly) that the game favours the house more often than the player. (And of course, it must do, otherwise they wouldn't offer it).
However this comment: such as the dealer must play past 17, goes the other way. That part of the rules is what allows the player to beat the game.
You probably know what blackjack works for the dealer, but it took me a bit of time to work it out (I'm just slow sometimes), so for the interested few, here it is:
The rules for playing blackjack are basically the same for player and dealer, with 3 exceptions.
Mostly, the player can mirror the dealer's rules if he wants to. He can play a strategy of hit on 16 or less, and stand on 17. However, the house still wins, because if the player goes bust, the dealer wins, no matter what. (Exception no. 2)
If the dealer + player both get 17, then the player "pushes" and gets his money back. Same for 18,19,20 and 21 (unless it's a natural, in which case house rules will apply). But at 22 and above, the dealer wins.
The house wants you to go bust. That's their easy money - if you go bust, then it doesn't matter what the dealer draws. And the odds are in the house's favour because of that fact.
However, card counting uses the 3rd exception (and parts of #1) to reverse that.
The dealer's rules (hit on 16 or less) are designed to be a good strategy that leaves the odds in the house's favour on average.
But, at some points in the game, the makeup of the deck(s) will be such that the odds are significantly in the dealer's favour, and at other times they are in the player's favour. If you can pick the latter, and focus your bets during that period, then you can beat the average.
Basically the house will still win more hands than you, but you're more interested in the money than in winning the hands, so you put more $$ down when the chances are best for you, and capitalise on the hands that you can win.
I'm told they're only being sent to a select group of people, but you seem nice enough.
They're definately going to go up, someone called Juliane Delsol gave me some really good advice.
You murderer!
OH, THE BEANMANITY!
Me too
</AOL>
Seriously, I use GVim for all my text editing on Windows (and other platforms too). :make to work correctly (using ant).
Never had a stability problem at all. Some features haven't worked 100% out of the box (mostly things that assume unix stuff) e.g. I had trouble getting
However the benefit of being able to use the same excellent editor on all platforms far outweighs some of the minor annoyances of Gvim32
I'd also plug Pepper, since I also own a license for that, and have found it to be quite a nice editor.
Well it would seem it's perfectly good for 199k lines of code.
Although in the case of VSS the limit seems to be somewhere between 1 and 10 million lines of code (based on anecdotal evidence - I don't use VSS).
Seriously - if a team of 5 VB developers want to use VSS to manage their 50k LOC project, what problems will they face?
What's wrong with isql?
(Serious question)
That's a GeForce4 MX, so don't get too excited.
To quote John Carmack's plan:
You can find other reviews out on the net, but tech wise, a GF4MX is just a faster GF2.
You sure?
Apple is selling Jaguar, as "look at all these new features and apps that come free".
Steve Jobs says you're paying $1 per feature.
Their justification for the totally absurd price of $129 (for an upgrade!) is that you get all these cool apps.
Will you be able to get the fixes to MacOS X without the apps? Probably not.
So, what is actually happening here, is you have to pay apple for a whole lot of new apps/features in order to stay current with your OS.
They most certainly are coercing people to buy the apps.
But it's not like that.
Often when you buy a PC, you get X month free with an ISP (I think if you buy a Mac in Australia right now, you get a month free with iPrimus).
The iTools thing to me, looks like that.
I'd liken it to having a deal which was "Get the first month free, and then pay $20 per month access", and then 2 months in, they up the price to $50.
It's unreasonable to expect that the price would never change, but you should be able to assume that deal had some reasonable lifetime.
I'll let other people argue as to whether the 2.5 months warning they've given is "reasonable lifetime".
The whole announcement has made me rethink my plans to buy an iBook.
If apple is going to start charging all its customers full price everytime it does an upgrade, and suddenly start charging through the nose for services it previously advertised as free, then I'm not sure I trust them enough to commit to their products.
If you're just trying to stop your mail address from changing, then the domain is the best option, because you can move it around if your current providor screws you, but you can still do it cheaply.
Gandi will register your domain and forward the email for 12 Euro per year.
They also do web page redirections, which might be useful to you.
The OSI Logo is copyright.
Putting it on something that isn't certified will cause the OSI Lawyers (Mrs ESR?) to threaten you with big long words and fancy looking documents.
And that's exactly the point.
OS X is MacOS with unix underneath, not Unix with a GUI on top.
It's a different approach. Apple doesn't really care whether OS X is a great unix, as long as it is a great user experience.
I don't believe that KDE wants to truly hide the fact that it is running on *nix.
OS X is 20 years of MacOS/NeXTStep experience with 10 years of unix (NeXT) experience underneath.
KDE/Linux is 30 years of Unix experience, with 10 years of GUI experience (X) on top.
(Yes, the numbers are a bit wrong, but close enough)
Much talk has been made of intergrating Lucene + POI to provide indexing of MS Office Docs, but I don't what stage that is at.
Well, in Australia it is illegal to leave a motor vehicle unsecured.
So, to push the analogy, attaching an unsecured computer to the internet should be similarly viewed.
Microsoft loses 20,000USD every time. I can't see how they'd like this aspect much.
Because PS2 is killing them in terms of sales.
Even if 50% of people buying the XBox are getting it as a cheap linux box, MS still doubles the total sales of the XBox.
Yes, it costs them some amount (say $100) for every sale, but they loose that no matter what the person does with the console.
We know they're willing to sell the hardware at a loss in order to make a profit on the games. They might also be willing to sell it at a loss in order to create (a perception of) market penetration.
The flaw in all this, is that software sales will not increase, and any smart market analyst would pick up on that.
The NIV says:
(emphasis mine)The King James says:
I haven't been a MacOS user in about 3 years (since the attack on the clones), but it might be time I returned to the fold.
I would expect that avoiding the GUI would improve your battery life.
Does darwin have proper power management?
Does apple's JDK run under darwin?
I'm thinking about getting an iBook, and most of what I need it for could be done entirely in on a command line. Is darwin useful enough, and does it give better battery life?
If the CD is GPL'd, then sure.
But, I don't think it's going to be that simple.
- It will most likely contain some non-GPL'd pieces. It might only be some UL documentation, but I suspect there will be something on the CD that is not free to be copied.
- They might try copyrighting the CD image the way the OpenBSD does.
Cheap Bytes will be able to rip all the Free binaries from the CD and put together a distribution which is compatible with UL, but it won't actually be UL.I haven't seen the NWN box, so I can't comment on the specific case, but most boxes just say:
The sale takes place between you and the vendor, when you hand over your cash, and they let you take possession of the product. There is no indication that you have entered into any contract, other than an exchange of goods for payment.
This is somewhat like the the Ford having a sticker on it that says "You agree to abide by all terms and conditions as found the glove box", when the glove box is locked, and you don't read them, or sign anything regarding them at the time of purchase.
The legality is questionable, the ethics more so.
In this case BioWare has done the decent thing of making the EULA public so can review it before you buy. But you don't actually sign it, and you don't need to assent to it in order to purchase the product, so for those who don't read the BioWare forums, it amounts to conditions imposed after the purchase.
It's common practice in software, but that doesn't make it (necessarily) legal, nor does it might it right.
The CD + Manual, etc are yours. You can do what every you like with them as long as you do not infringe the author's copyright.
BioWare (et al) rely on the belief that the software is useless to you unless they grant you specific rights regarding copying. i.e. They hold that you can't run the software without copying it (into memory) and you don't have the right to do that unless you agree to their licence.
There have been arguments (and precendents, I believe) on both sides. Some argue that loading a program into memory is fair use - e.g. If you purchase a magazine, then it is illegal to make copies of th articles and give them to your friends, but it is legal (fair use) to photocopy an article so that you can make notes on it.
The upshot is that you don't have to agree to the EULA, but it's not entirely clear what rights you possess until you do.
And, no, I'm not sure what this has to do with Ford contracts any more :)