Exactly right. It's pretty difficult these days to win with card counting, especially with six deck shoes, infinite shuffles, or two deck games that only deal out 2 hands before reshuffling.
The casinos are not going to kick you out for dumb luck, and they aren't going to kick you out if you seem to be card counting but aren't doing it very well. On the other hand, they will kick you out if they see perfect play (and remember, everything you do at the table is seen by the eye in the sky. It's not just the pit bosses who are reviewing your play).
Of course, it might have changed since I used to play a lot. Back in '00-'01 I'd go to Las Vegas at least twice a month, and I'd count cards. I wasn't perfect (I'd lose the count every so often), but I still generally won more than I lost. No big amount; it was just for fun.
Only once did they say anything, and that was a night at the Tropicana where I turned $80 into $1,300 (playing flawlessly, and getting a good chunk of luck to boot) Around 4am, the casino was mostly empty, and the pit boss seemed very interested in my table. I could see him looking at me and talking on the phone to . . . someone.
Eventually he came up to me and suggested that I go back to my room and get some sleep. That was all they said. I don't know if that really meant anything or not, but I was smart enough to get the hint. I said "You're right. I'm very tired", blacked out and left.
But at the level I've played at, I've never seen any real repercussions from the house. I've played a number of times at the Tropicana since then, and nobody has said anything to me.
Are you saying that the cute bartender, the one who laughs at all my horrible jokes and cleans up after me after I get really drunk and spill my beer everywhere, the one that I constantly tip very well . . . are you trying to tell me that she might not actually be into me?
The MS logic seems to be "Let's make a pretty stable OS, and then let's release a really crummy one". XP was pretty good. I had no problems with XP. I liked XP. Then Vista comes out and nothing seems to work right. I've been using Vista on a few boxes for a year now, and wonder "What's the point? Why would anyone want Vista? A more fancy UI and some nifty media enhancements? Sorry, it just doesn't make sense".
Vista seems to be Windows ME part 2. A really crapy OS to replace a somewhat stable one. I don't see how a service pack could make things any worse.
The republicans make all white house information inaccessible to the Freedom of Information Act and require citizens to log their every move with the government, who is protecting us from the enemy.
I always wondered "Who goes on Slashdot and spends all of their mod points modding stuff down?" I've never modded anything down; it seems pointless. I'd rather build up a good (or funny) comment than destroy something I disagree with, and could never understand the psychology of people who do as such.
It's all starting to make sense now. It's Apple users. Perhaps its the inferiority of their computer of choice that compels them to live so negatively. Perhaps its the knowledge, buried deep in their subconscious, that they support a platform that nobody in the IT world takes seriously that causes them to act out in such counter-productive ways.
"Ha ha!" The Mac user says. "I have mod points. I will protect the Slashdot community by searching out 'first post' comments and modding them as trolls! The world is safe for another day!".
I've always been of the opinion (oh, and how the negative mod points will fly here!) that Macs are a girl computer. Or at the very least, the computer favored by homosexual men. Not that there is anything wrong with girls or homosexuals, I just find it curious that these two segments of the population seem to be predisposed to use and sing the praises of Apple products.
My wife seems to love her G5 desktop, and won't listen to any negative criticism about it, despite the fact that it won't do 90% of the things its PC counterpart sitting next to it on her desk ("I only have the PC because I need it for work. I *heart* my Mac!!"). She's obsessed with her iPod (which is filled with episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, incidentally, is filled with Apple products). She hopes and prays I'll get her an iPhone or, better yet, an Airbook for her birthday (hint: I'm not going to waste the money).
I tried using an iPod nano for a while. I found it unusable. Let it sit for a few weeks and the battery and of of its contents die on you. Oddly enough, I can leave my digital camera off for months and the contents of its SD card will still be intact. I just don't see the point in spending all that money for sexy technology that isn't very accommodating. The friends I have with iPhones seem to gloss over the fact that the battery life sucks ("Can I see it?" "Sure. But don't play anything . . . the battery is almost dead")
Apple makes some neat products, for sure. But being realistic they aren't that great in the grand scheme of things. Yet if one were to point this out it's as if you were committing the worst kind of blasphemy in the minds of the Apple faithful.
I find it amusing that the rest of the world sucks up as much American culture as possible, from our music, movies and television shows to going in droves to our crappy McDonald's that are popping up all over the world (hint: McDonald's sucks. Stop going).
But then they get all prissy when we call football football. We call your football soccer, but we call our football football. It's the way we do things over here. If you don't like the names we use for sport, fine. But don't get all in a huff over it.
Pod Computer: "It looks like you're having difficulty dealing with a psychopathic computer Would you like to be put into contact with someone who has had success with this?"
You're assuming he's talking about Jesus Christ. This is Florida. He could just as easily been referring to Jesus Martinez, the Cuban man whose cheap labor made stringing all those lights up a possibility.
The thing is, they're not just going after Joe Average consumer here; they're going after the number of government agencies that have locked themselves into contracts with retailers. When a government agency wants to buy something small (a USB cable, a ream of paper, a printer cartridge) they aren't going to go through the process of bidding it out. It would become prohibitively expensive. Instead, they have contracts with particular retailers with which they can buy incidentals from. I can think of three places I have worked for or with (the California State University system, the US Army and certain Arizona school districts) who have such a contract with Staples. These government offices can not simply decide "Staples is too expensive. Let's buy our printer ink from that cheapo place down at the mall, and let's buy that USB cable for $1.50 from that Chinese company on eBay". It would violate procurement laws. Instead, they end up paying $45 for a printer cartridge, $5 for a box of 500 sheets of paper, and $35 for a USB cable because they essentially have to.
So, while it may seem that HP's bribing of Staples to the tune of $100 million to keep cheaper print cartridges out of their stores is a little ridiculous, you have to remember that tens of thousands of government agencies are essentially being deprived a cheaper alternative to ink. And boy, those government agencies do love to print stuff out.
Yes, and you touched on a pretty good point. Copying and sharing of media for non-commercial purposes (be it recording an LP or offering a song on a file sharing network) generally doesn't hurt the respective media industries, and there is some evidence that it actually helps. When I see them touting huge numbers like $16 billion in "losses", I really have to wonder what the heck they are thinking.
What I'd really like the various IAAs understand is that there is a marked difference between sharing media for free with a network of people and true all out piracy for cash. If you're making money (selling a pirated DVD on the street corner with none of the proceeds going back to the studio), that is bad. That is theft, plain and simple. If a copy of that same movie happens to be on your computer, and it is available for other people to download, that is something that is quite a bit less threatening.
Then again, I think they might already understand this. Perhaps they are fighting it because they see it not as a threat to their potential profits, but as a threat to their ability to control the distribution of media. Since they can't seem to figure out how to adapt, they just attack anything that threatens them.
No, you're not wrong. The writer of the article doesn't seem to understand what causes "bubbles" and what the real impact is when they burst. What made the 99-00 "bubble" burst so dramatic was due mostly in part that lots of people lost lots of money. If "the next big thing" pops, people will lose money but it won't be nearly as bad.
That's exactly why, when I first read about this, that I thought that the appeal of high speed wireless would mostly be on the consumer end. Most businesses are bound to see the potential security risk of wireless and stay away from it, regardless of how fast it is.
As I don't manage any data centers, I'd love it. Mostly because the wife has forbade me from running CAT5 through the house and I'm stuck with 802.11g connections. It's annoying to try to transfer a large file from the office upstairs to, say, the HTPC downstairs and have it go down so slowly, especially knowing that both machines are capable of gigabit transfers over a wire.
Granted, most home consumers don't really need that kind of speed over their networks, wireless or otherwise. But it'll play well in the marketing to say "this is faster!"
Your exactly right. Personally, the design and durability of a phone is far more important than the software bells and whistles.
I want something small enough to fit in my pocket that won't die on me when it's in my shirt pocket and lean over the pool or toilet (both have happened) and it falls in.
Other than that, I really don't care. Sure, the camera feature is neat and I do find myself spending time playing sudoko on my phone to kill time, but I don't text message, I've never seen the need to read email on my phone and the like.
Just give me a phone that will stand up to anything that doesn't look retarded, and I'd buy it.
I don't think this is special because we're seeing any "new" technologies here. It's special because of how the technology is implemented. Yes, at its core it's just a $5-10k computer with a large display and a multi-touch interface. But how they've managed to take various techs and put them together, it's pretty dang cool.
I think that's the question everyone who uses MS products is wondering. I, for one, was very disappointed with the Vista BSOD. If this thing runs Vista (which I'm guessing it does), people are going to be awfully upset with the way it looks when it crashes.
Probably someone inside AmeriTrade is selling customer data to an outside spammer
That would be my guess. There's probably not a whole lot Ameritrade (or any company) can do about it other than figure out a way to deeply restrict access to the email addresses. But when you need customer service/marketing/administration departments to have access to customer's email addresses, it can get a little hairy.
I can remember back in '99 going to work for a rather large ISP. My first day there they created an email account for me. After four days of orientation and I started to actually do work, I checked my email and found it loaded with spam. This account had been on no mass mailings, has had nothing sent out, and had received no communication from within the company. The name wasn't anything close to what you'd find in a dictionary. As far as I could tell, the only way spammers could have gotten their fingers on the address was if someone inside the company was selling the address out.
In my experience, most Christians (educated Christians, at least), don't contest the scientific reading of the origin of our species. Instead of putting their head in the sand and sticking their fingers in their ears, they make an attempt to translate the scientific reality into a religious context. As such, we've come to a comfortable state where evolution and creationism are not mutually exclusive.
The more educated a person becomes, the more he or she is able to put fact into the context of their religious beliefs. Educating Muslims on the reality of the holocaust carries the promise of having those Muslims develop a more tolerant perspective towards the Jews. It won't happen for everyone, and it won't happen overnight, but it does make the possibility of that happening all the more possible.
A reason for teaching of history's atrocities is to show people what horrible things can happen. It's so we don't repeat our mistakes, and that the educated citizenry can identify trends that could lead to a repeat and (hopefully) do something about it.
Could something like the holocaust happen again? Sadly, yes. But the likelihood of it happening is diminished with education.
"Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance".
I think that's a perfect statement here. To me, this situation is unbelievable.
"The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'."
By that logic, schools in the US shouldn't teach about slavery, fearing a confrontation of an 'anti-black' sentiment among racist hicks.
I don't think any reasonable person could argue that the holocaust didn't happen. If there's a strong anti-Semitic view in the mosques of England, I suppose there's nothing we can do about that. But that doesn't erase the fact that the holocaust happened and school children should learn about it.
Slashdot Mirror
So . . . perhaps we shouldn't aim our antennas at it. Perhaps it's a Cylon base. Perhaps we are all doomed. DOOOOMED
That's a darn good analogy, and it makes sense to suggest that solar systems like our own are likely to be more common than ever imagined.
Exactly right. It's pretty difficult these days to win with card counting, especially with six deck shoes, infinite shuffles, or two deck games that only deal out 2 hands before reshuffling.
The casinos are not going to kick you out for dumb luck, and they aren't going to kick you out if you seem to be card counting but aren't doing it very well. On the other hand, they will kick you out if they see perfect play (and remember, everything you do at the table is seen by the eye in the sky. It's not just the pit bosses who are reviewing your play).
Of course, it might have changed since I used to play a lot. Back in '00-'01 I'd go to Las Vegas at least twice a month, and I'd count cards. I wasn't perfect (I'd lose the count every so often), but I still generally won more than I lost. No big amount; it was just for fun.
Only once did they say anything, and that was a night at the Tropicana where I turned $80 into $1,300 (playing flawlessly, and getting a good chunk of luck to boot) Around 4am, the casino was mostly empty, and the pit boss seemed very interested in my table. I could see him looking at me and talking on the phone to . . . someone.
Eventually he came up to me and suggested that I go back to my room and get some sleep. That was all they said. I don't know if that really meant anything or not, but I was smart enough to get the hint. I said "You're right. I'm very tired", blacked out and left.
But at the level I've played at, I've never seen any real repercussions from the house. I've played a number of times at the Tropicana since then, and nobody has said anything to me.
Wait . . .
Are you saying that the cute bartender, the one who laughs at all my horrible jokes and cleans up after me after I get really drunk and spill my beer everywhere, the one that I constantly tip very well . . . are you trying to tell me that she might not actually be into me?
The MS logic seems to be "Let's make a pretty stable OS, and then let's release a really crummy one". XP was pretty good. I had no problems with XP. I liked XP. Then Vista comes out and nothing seems to work right. I've been using Vista on a few boxes for a year now, and wonder "What's the point? Why would anyone want Vista? A more fancy UI and some nifty media enhancements? Sorry, it just doesn't make sense".
Vista seems to be Windows ME part 2. A really crapy OS to replace a somewhat stable one. I don't see how a service pack could make things any worse.
The republicans make all white house information inaccessible to the Freedom of Information Act and require citizens to log their every move with the government, who is protecting us from the enemy.
Hint: Right now, the "enemy" is the government.
I always wondered "Who goes on Slashdot and spends all of their mod points modding stuff down?" I've never modded anything down; it seems pointless. I'd rather build up a good (or funny) comment than destroy something I disagree with, and could never understand the psychology of people who do as such.
It's all starting to make sense now. It's Apple users. Perhaps its the inferiority of their computer of choice that compels them to live so negatively. Perhaps its the knowledge, buried deep in their subconscious, that they support a platform that nobody in the IT world takes seriously that causes them to act out in such counter-productive ways.
"Ha ha!" The Mac user says. "I have mod points. I will protect the Slashdot community by searching out 'first post' comments and modding them as trolls! The world is safe for another day!".
You're right, of course.
I've always been of the opinion (oh, and how the negative mod points will fly here!) that Macs are a girl computer. Or at the very least, the computer favored by homosexual men. Not that there is anything wrong with girls or homosexuals, I just find it curious that these two segments of the population seem to be predisposed to use and sing the praises of Apple products.
My wife seems to love her G5 desktop, and won't listen to any negative criticism about it, despite the fact that it won't do 90% of the things its PC counterpart sitting next to it on her desk ("I only have the PC because I need it for work. I *heart* my Mac!!"). She's obsessed with her iPod (which is filled with episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, incidentally, is filled with Apple products). She hopes and prays I'll get her an iPhone or, better yet, an Airbook for her birthday (hint: I'm not going to waste the money).
I tried using an iPod nano for a while. I found it unusable. Let it sit for a few weeks and the battery and of of its contents die on you. Oddly enough, I can leave my digital camera off for months and the contents of its SD card will still be intact. I just don't see the point in spending all that money for sexy technology that isn't very accommodating. The friends I have with iPhones seem to gloss over the fact that the battery life sucks ("Can I see it?" "Sure. But don't play anything . . . the battery is almost dead")
Apple makes some neat products, for sure. But being realistic they aren't that great in the grand scheme of things. Yet if one were to point this out it's as if you were committing the worst kind of blasphemy in the minds of the Apple faithful.
I find it amusing that the rest of the world sucks up as much American culture as possible, from our music, movies and television shows to going in droves to our crappy McDonald's that are popping up all over the world (hint: McDonald's sucks. Stop going).
But then they get all prissy when we call football football. We call your football soccer, but we call our football football. It's the way we do things over here. If you don't like the names we use for sport, fine. But don't get all in a huff over it.
I always thought HAL was running VMS
You've forgotten the logical conclusion to this.
Pod Computer: "It looks like you're having difficulty dealing with a psychopathic computer Would you like to be put into contact with someone who has had success with this?"
You're assuming he's talking about Jesus Christ. This is Florida. He could just as easily been referring to Jesus Martinez, the Cuban man whose cheap labor made stringing all those lights up a possibility.
The thing is, they're not just going after Joe Average consumer here; they're going after the number of government agencies that have locked themselves into contracts with retailers. When a government agency wants to buy something small (a USB cable, a ream of paper, a printer cartridge) they aren't going to go through the process of bidding it out. It would become prohibitively expensive. Instead, they have contracts with particular retailers with which they can buy incidentals from. I can think of three places I have worked for or with (the California State University system, the US Army and certain Arizona school districts) who have such a contract with Staples. These government offices can not simply decide "Staples is too expensive. Let's buy our printer ink from that cheapo place down at the mall, and let's buy that USB cable for $1.50 from that Chinese company on eBay". It would violate procurement laws. Instead, they end up paying $45 for a printer cartridge, $5 for a box of 500 sheets of paper, and $35 for a USB cable because they essentially have to.
So, while it may seem that HP's bribing of Staples to the tune of $100 million to keep cheaper print cartridges out of their stores is a little ridiculous, you have to remember that tens of thousands of government agencies are essentially being deprived a cheaper alternative to ink. And boy, those government agencies do love to print stuff out.
Yes, and you touched on a pretty good point. Copying and sharing of media for non-commercial purposes (be it recording an LP or offering a song on a file sharing network) generally doesn't hurt the respective media industries, and there is some evidence that it actually helps. When I see them touting huge numbers like $16 billion in "losses", I really have to wonder what the heck they are thinking.
What I'd really like the various IAAs understand is that there is a marked difference between sharing media for free with a network of people and true all out piracy for cash. If you're making money (selling a pirated DVD on the street corner with none of the proceeds going back to the studio), that is bad. That is theft, plain and simple. If a copy of that same movie happens to be on your computer, and it is available for other people to download, that is something that is quite a bit less threatening.
Then again, I think they might already understand this. Perhaps they are fighting it because they see it not as a threat to their potential profits, but as a threat to their ability to control the distribution of media. Since they can't seem to figure out how to adapt, they just attack anything that threatens them.
No, you're not wrong. The writer of the article doesn't seem to understand what causes "bubbles" and what the real impact is when they burst. What made the 99-00 "bubble" burst so dramatic was due mostly in part that lots of people lost lots of money. If "the next big thing" pops, people will lose money but it won't be nearly as bad.
That's exactly why, when I first read about this, that I thought that the appeal of high speed wireless would mostly be on the consumer end. Most businesses are bound to see the potential security risk of wireless and stay away from it, regardless of how fast it is.
As I don't manage any data centers, I'd love it. Mostly because the wife has forbade me from running CAT5 through the house and I'm stuck with 802.11g connections. It's annoying to try to transfer a large file from the office upstairs to, say, the HTPC downstairs and have it go down so slowly, especially knowing that both machines are capable of gigabit transfers over a wire.
Granted, most home consumers don't really need that kind of speed over their networks, wireless or otherwise. But it'll play well in the marketing to say "this is faster!"
Your exactly right. Personally, the design and durability of a phone is far more important than the software bells and whistles.
I want something small enough to fit in my pocket that won't die on me when it's in my shirt pocket and lean over the pool or toilet (both have happened) and it falls in.
Other than that, I really don't care. Sure, the camera feature is neat and I do find myself spending time playing sudoko on my phone to kill time, but I don't text message, I've never seen the need to read email on my phone and the like.
Just give me a phone that will stand up to anything that doesn't look retarded, and I'd buy it.
Why not go all the way back to the source root of the problem and throw Al Gore in jail.
I don't think this is special because we're seeing any "new" technologies here. It's special because of how the technology is implemented. Yes, at its core it's just a $5-10k computer with a large display and a multi-touch interface. But how they've managed to take various techs and put them together, it's pretty dang cool.
I wonder what the Blue Screens look like?
I think that's the question everyone who uses MS products is wondering. I, for one, was very disappointed with the Vista BSOD. If this thing runs Vista (which I'm guessing it does), people are going to be awfully upset with the way it looks when it crashes.
Probably someone inside AmeriTrade is selling customer data to an outside spammer
That would be my guess. There's probably not a whole lot Ameritrade (or any company) can do about it other than figure out a way to deeply restrict access to the email addresses. But when you need customer service/marketing/administration departments to have access to customer's email addresses, it can get a little hairy.
I can remember back in '99 going to work for a rather large ISP. My first day there they created an email account for me. After four days of orientation and I started to actually do work, I checked my email and found it loaded with spam. This account had been on no mass mailings, has had nothing sent out, and had received no communication from within the company. The name wasn't anything close to what you'd find in a dictionary. As far as I could tell, the only way spammers could have gotten their fingers on the address was if someone inside the company was selling the address out.
Well, if the handling of the recent Suns-Spurs series is any indication of the organization's ethics, I'm sure it's going to be fair.
Which is exactly why we need education.
In my experience, most Christians (educated Christians, at least), don't contest the scientific reading of the origin of our species. Instead of putting their head in the sand and sticking their fingers in their ears, they make an attempt to translate the scientific reality into a religious context. As such, we've come to a comfortable state where evolution and creationism are not mutually exclusive.
The more educated a person becomes, the more he or she is able to put fact into the context of their religious beliefs. Educating Muslims on the reality of the holocaust carries the promise of having those Muslims develop a more tolerant perspective towards the Jews. It won't happen for everyone, and it won't happen overnight, but it does make the possibility of that happening all the more possible.
Not true. It can hurt people.
A reason for teaching of history's atrocities is to show people what horrible things can happen. It's so we don't repeat our mistakes, and that the educated citizenry can identify trends that could lead to a repeat and (hopefully) do something about it.
Could something like the holocaust happen again? Sadly, yes. But the likelihood of it happening is diminished with education.
"Let us not become so tolerant that we tolerate intolerance".
I think that's a perfect statement here. To me, this situation is unbelievable.
"The report said teachers feared confronting 'anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils'."
By that logic, schools in the US shouldn't teach about slavery, fearing a confrontation of an 'anti-black' sentiment among racist hicks.
I don't think any reasonable person could argue that the holocaust didn't happen. If there's a strong anti-Semitic view in the mosques of England, I suppose there's nothing we can do about that. But that doesn't erase the fact that the holocaust happened and school children should learn about it.