The most common auditor being the very well-respected accounting firm of Price-Waterhouse-Coopers. Would you accuse them of being paid to lie? I doubt it.
One of the *main* things looked at, in these casinos, is the payout rate. You don't analyze every single game and audit the code, but rather, look at how much is gambled -vs- how much the house is profiting. The common average for online casinos is around 98% payout I believe. The audits show exactly how much.
If they were cheating, you'd know.
Though I have no personal proof, I am fairly certain that if this is true, they are making the 'free' game easier, to attract players, rather than cheating on their live gambling. Again, I have no proof of this, but it makes sense.
The fact that you can consistantly win should tell you something; unless you are a card-counting prodigy, you cannot consistantly win.
We tend to switch languages not because something is 'better' in some way.. there will *always* be some new language that is 'better' than the previous one. We switch through necessity.
Example: People started using perl because it was better and more convenient than sed/awk/shell. Then came the internet, and cgi-scripts... perl just happened to fit in there nicely. Other developments followed as it gained in popularity, and now it's used for tons of stuff. Lots of work has been put into speeding it up; embedding it into web servers for faster execution of code. Lots of supporting work and material out there. CPAN. Etc....
Then Python. Python is unique enough to warrant a good following; OSS, elegance, nice OO language. Doesn't stop people from using perl though, although some people switched because they like OO better.
Now Ruby. What cna I say about Ruby? I don't know much about it.. but does it offer an order of magnitude more flexibility than perl and/or python currently offers? I doubt it. Sure, it may be nicer, more elegant.. but perl and python are rather elegant at doing what they do.
I don't call that getting off scott free.
Heck, even when my users do something like that, against policy, I don't request to have the fired.. perhaps I would if they repeatedly and blatantly ignored me and did it, and were jerks about it.
Yes, they aren't his computers; that's obvious. Yes, he should have know better. And as you and everyone else agrees, 15 years in prison and a million bucks (or whatever) is friggin rediculous.
Remember,though, it has to go to court, where it won't be hard in this day and age to make them show how this cost them so much.
The casinos do everything they can to make it out to be 'illegal' or 'bad behavior'.
Though I can fully understand how they can't afford to let these people play blackjack forever, as they will always, statistically, take more than the house, it's silly to paint them as 'bad' just because they can beat you at your own game.
'Come play our game! Win Win Win! Unless you actually CAN win, then we don't want you here!'
ALso, they don't necessarily shuffle when there is only one deck left; they shuffle at a fairly random point when the pile gets a bit low. If memory serves (and it may be exaggerating on me) she reshuffled when there were about 4 decks left,l and they were playing with about 10 or 15 decks (but as I said, my memory could be playing tricks on me)
As far as I know, at least the reputable online casinos have code audits/verifications frequently; if it got out you were fixing your games, goodbye ALL your customers.
How do the 'odds' of poker change from place to place?
You made my point for me, I wasn't very clear.
If it's offered as a free download, it's reasonable to assume you can use it. It's also reasonable to assume that it's copyrighted, and that you can't modify it.
What I'm saying it, it doesn't mean that your stuff is automatically public domain if someone doesn't see the license but uses it anyway.
In the US, there is some law (or something like that) that prevents any commercial power generating reactor from generating (or at least, providing) any material for the weapons programs.
THe end result? You have to build extra reactors.
No, the point is, what about packages that do NOT prompt you to read the license, you don't even know if there IS one until you look.. but you know the download was free.
The silly part is, assuming they can say they didn't see the license, what gave them the right to use the software then? They should know it's copyrighted...
how in the US (and Canada) the drivers license has become so much more than just that. IT's the universal ID card; we punish people for non-driving related crimes.
Would we consider taking away someone's fishing license because they were charged with assault?
Get real.
A drivers license should be nothing more than your licence to drive a vehicle.
Why does a driver's license need a picture, even? Heck... my fishing license doesn'thave one.
The only reason MS would hold off, it seems to me, is out of fear of reprisal from their customer base. They need people to upgrade constantly, to keep revenue steady.
I get the feeling that the number of 'unnecessary bloated forced upgrade uprchases' a-la office2000, winME, etc, are starting to annoy normal people as well as us geeks... I know the whole office upgraded to office 2000 due to 'compatability' with other offices and document formats.. but nobody really had a reason for actually switching to office 2000 based on features.
If MS pushes things too far, they might just cause people to seek more favorable licensing terms, considering the massive change in cost.
But the point remains, the 'grid' is not an energy storage mechanism.
To a small fish generating 'clean' energy, yes, it sort of seems that way, but it's not. I'm not saying it's bad for all the guerilla power types to feed home-brew juice back into the grid; I support that completely; but it doesn't solve the problem.
It's not that touchy. So she had your number.. you gave it to her before?
Also, I don't know about you, but I don't really worry about people taking my credit card number. I mean, I don't flaunt it around, but there are a zillion ways for someone to get it if they want, I don't concern myself with it.
I'm not responsible for a dime if some yahoo uses my number, I'm only responsible for up to the $50 limit if someone *steals my card*.
If it WAS somebody new using your number (a valid concern) and they did decide to use your credit card number to order something... they'd still need to get a signature when they delivered... and you'd have no problems refuting it.
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The most common auditor being the very well-respected accounting firm of Price-Waterhouse-Coopers. Would you accuse them of being paid to lie? I doubt it.
One of the *main* things looked at, in these casinos, is the payout rate. You don't analyze every single game and audit the code, but rather, look at how much is gambled -vs- how much the house is profiting. The common average for online casinos is around 98% payout I believe. The audits show exactly how much.
If they were cheating, you'd know.
Though I have no personal proof, I am fairly certain that if this is true, they are making the 'free' game easier, to attract players, rather than cheating on their live gambling. Again, I have no proof of this, but it makes sense.
The fact that you can consistantly win should tell you something; unless you are a card-counting prodigy, you cannot consistantly win.
Like I Said... I'm going on memory. I'm not a gambler. You're probably right.
Gambling is only a sport for people who can't do math.
I don't think he's fucked. The *will* be required to prove damages....and its' quite clear this could not have cost them such a high amount.
If it did, in fact, their accounting records should show the anomaly.
We tend to switch languages not because something is 'better' in some way.. there will *always* be some new language that is 'better' than the previous one. We switch through necessity.
Example: People started using perl because it was better and more convenient than sed/awk/shell. Then came the internet, and cgi-scripts... perl just happened to fit in there nicely. Other developments followed as it gained in popularity, and now it's used for tons of stuff. Lots of work has been put into speeding it up; embedding it into web servers for faster execution of code. Lots of supporting work and material out there. CPAN. Etc....
Then Python. Python is unique enough to warrant a good following; OSS, elegance, nice OO language. Doesn't stop people from using perl though, although some people switched because they like OO better.
Now Ruby. What cna I say about Ruby? I don't know much about it.. but does it offer an order of magnitude more flexibility than perl and/or python currently offers? I doubt it. Sure, it may be nicer, more elegant.. but perl and python are rather elegant at doing what they do.
determine that from? That he didn't care?
He made a MISTAKE, as MANY young people do.
And he's not saying he didn't do anything wrong.
He's saying that having a felony charge on his record, paying a half million in fines and doing 15 years is NOT right. And I have to agree.
You attitude seems to be strange: If you break the law, any law, you should be thrown in prison for 15 years and not whine about it?
I don't call that getting off scott free.
Heck, even when my users do something like that, against policy, I don't request to have the fired.. perhaps I would if they repeatedly and blatantly ignored me and did it, and were jerks about it.
Yes, they aren't his computers; that's obvious. Yes, he should have know better. And as you and everyone else agrees, 15 years in prison and a million bucks (or whatever) is friggin rediculous.
Remember,though, it has to go to court, where it won't be hard in this day and age to make them show how this cost them so much.
How do you know it's dead?
Unless I see some obvious reason the person is dead, I *AM* going to check to see if they are alive, and do what I can to keep them that way.
"I'm sorry sir, I have to let you die, because otherwise I might contaminate the evidence"
When it comes to evidence, you cannot expect each piece to be validated 100%.
Who says the drugs the cop *supposedly* found in my car when he pulled me over weren't planeted?
Who says I was speeding? Some cop? What if he LIED?
How is digital evidence any different?
If you ask me, you're saying 'how can I give something away to people at no cost when it costs me money to do'.
You can't.
The only realistic model is to have people pay to play.
They should be able to provide it, showing your signature on the contract.
The casinos do everything they can to make it out to be 'illegal' or 'bad behavior'.
Though I can fully understand how they can't afford to let these people play blackjack forever, as they will always, statistically, take more than the house, it's silly to paint them as 'bad' just because they can beat you at your own game.
'Come play our game! Win Win Win! Unless you actually CAN win, then we don't want you here!'
ALso, they don't necessarily shuffle when there is only one deck left; they shuffle at a fairly random point when the pile gets a bit low. If memory serves (and it may be exaggerating on me) she reshuffled when there were about 4 decks left,l and they were playing with about 10 or 15 decks (but as I said, my memory could be playing tricks on me)
Can you back that up?
As far as I know, at least the reputable online casinos have code audits/verifications frequently; if it got out you were fixing your games, goodbye ALL your customers.
How do the 'odds' of poker change from place to place?
You made my point for me, I wasn't very clear.
If it's offered as a free download, it's reasonable to assume you can use it. It's also reasonable to assume that it's copyrighted, and that you can't modify it.
What I'm saying it, it doesn't mean that your stuff is automatically public domain if someone doesn't see the license but uses it anyway.
In the US, there is some law (or something like that) that prevents any commercial power generating reactor from generating (or at least, providing) any material for the weapons programs.
THe end result? You have to build extra reactors.
What a waste.
No, the point is, what about packages that do NOT prompt you to read the license, you don't even know if there IS one until you look.. but you know the download was free.
The silly part is, assuming they can say they didn't see the license, what gave them the right to use the software then? They should know it's copyrighted...
how in the US (and Canada) the drivers license has become so much more than just that. IT's the universal ID card; we punish people for non-driving related crimes.
Would we consider taking away someone's fishing license because they were charged with assault?
Get real.
A drivers license should be nothing more than your licence to drive a vehicle.
Why does a driver's license need a picture, even? Heck... my fishing license doesn'thave one.
The only reason MS would hold off, it seems to me, is out of fear of reprisal from their customer base. They need people to upgrade constantly, to keep revenue steady.
I get the feeling that the number of 'unnecessary bloated forced upgrade uprchases' a-la office2000, winME, etc, are starting to annoy normal people as well as us geeks... I know the whole office upgraded to office 2000 due to 'compatability' with other offices and document formats.. but nobody really had a reason for actually switching to office 2000 based on features.
If MS pushes things too far, they might just cause people to seek more favorable licensing terms, considering the massive change in cost.
Okay. I thought you were referring to some bizarre alloy, or something.
In it's pure form, Titanium is only slightly lighter than Iron, and quite a bit heavier than Aluminum. I believe a Ti alloy is used in most cases.
Cool. I did, in fact, read the studies I claimed to. This is cool though.
I wonder what the effects of covering 3% of the US landmass with windmills will do to ground weather patterns?
But the point remains, the 'grid' is not an energy storage mechanism.
To a small fish generating 'clean' energy, yes, it sort of seems that way, but it's not. I'm not saying it's bad for all the guerilla power types to feed home-brew juice back into the grid; I support that completely; but it doesn't solve the problem.
It's not that touchy. So she had your number.. you gave it to her before?
Also, I don't know about you, but I don't really worry about people taking my credit card number. I mean, I don't flaunt it around, but there are a zillion ways for someone to get it if they want, I don't concern myself with it.
I'm not responsible for a dime if some yahoo uses my number, I'm only responsible for up to the $50 limit if someone *steals my card*.
If it WAS somebody new using your number (a valid concern) and they did decide to use your credit card number to order something... they'd still need to get a signature when they delivered... and you'd have no problems refuting it.
Titanium looks cool? I'm not sure what you mean.
It looks silvery and shiny, like most every other metal.. perhaps not quite as shiny, not ulike Al.
Where did you see charcoal black Ti?
Another fact the environmentalists miss sometimes.
We could put huge cells covering the desert, say.. in NM, AZ, etc... After all, we aren't gonna build anything there, right?
Hmm. But... that means we'll be blocking the sun from many square miles of desert.. doesn't that have an environmental impact?
A great deal of the electronics that run the US of A come from Asia and central/south america, NOT the US of A. DOes that make the US dependant?
How is this different?
Would selling them far cheaper generators and then selling them oil be better?