Anyone betting a lot can be asked to make a declaration of their income. Part of this is to ensure that it's "legit" but also that their betting is not in excess of what would be "reasonable" for someone of that income.
It's fairly ineffective though as a) It is done on a per-bookmaker basis not cumulatively and b) It doesn't take a detailed account of your liabilities - so someone who is single and someone who has kids etc. are treated the same.
Because of the restrictions on betting in America, US readers may not be aware of how it is over here.
Adverts for betting are prevalent, particularly in the advert breaks in the middle of a televised sporting event. The adverts will commonly offer promotional odds for a particular bet which they may expect to make a loss on in the expectation of future custom.
These bookmakers may decline or restrict service to particular individuals if
a) They believe them to only be taking advantage of promotions and not doing enough "regular" (i.e. profitable) betting. or b) They are winning "too much". This is more likely to happen where their wins cause the bookmaker to make an overall loss on particular events (i.e large long odds bets on unpopular events).
Once a restriction is in place the bookmaker will attempt to identify the individual through a number of methods including tracking cookies on their PC (Google for "iesnare"). UK legislation to combat both money laundering and problem gambling has made this easier for bookmakers by allowing them to require passports/proof of address etc. before processing withdrawals.
Part of the BBC Documentary "Britain at the Bookies" was about one such individual who had had their accounts restricted for being "too good" at identifying value in the advertised odds.
Personally I think there should be similar legislation to that around loans/credit where if a particular rate of interest is advertised it must be offered to the majority of applicants, with the same applying to odds in advertisements.
Unfortunately I can't find the article (possibly something about Atul Gawande) but it said that a typical doctor does most of their learning at the start of their career and that consequently it can take a generation before new best practice is adopted. If this is true then it could be that the older the doctor the more likely you are to be treated using outdated techniques.
The outcome of this is that manufacturers were required to add a small sticker saying this was the case.
*Fruit Machines are similar to Slot Machines but a difference is that they're compensated not fully random. This basically means that the more money has gone in the more likely it is to pay out and visa-versa.
"Why are you tracking all the users and generating a huge 'haystack' of noisy data when you could track the 'needle' instead?"
A possible scenario is that Joe Bloggs is arrested for say drug dealing. They find that Joe Bloggs has 3 mobile phones and 1 ADSL connection. They contact those providers for a list of domains/times/IPs which messaging services were accessed. They use those details to make a request to the messaging providers for access to their messages to see who he contacted.
I imagine this would be cheaper/quicker than trying to forensically examine the devices. It won't catch any savvy criminals but that also wouldn't have been the case with phone records if they used pay phones or "burners".
The other, less positive explanation for why they think this useful is that they really are interested in monitoring the haystack to see how many people are visiting the sites of certain campaigns or political parties.
Unless they're directly buying votes, then that remains true. I'm not sure why we're equating advertising dollars with votes, because they aren't the same thing.
The point I think is that once elected representatives are more likely to legislate in favour of their donors than their constituents.
I don't get the power saving thing though - that sounded very snake oil like. I mean, if your system isn't compromised, what CPU operations is it reducing exactly?
There is a bit in the linked PDF which says...
"Abatis Hard Disk Firewall, was also tested using the same standardised environment and shown to block applications and background processes from executing; saving energy from a baseline configuration."
What they seem to have done in the test is taken a standard system and measured the power consumption. They've then tested that baseline with one of 3 3rd-party AV products and recorded the power consumption go up. They've then installed tested it with their kernel module that blocks I/O and unsurprisingly noticed that a system which isn't using the disks uses less power.
It also says...
"Between best case, HDF and worst case, AV Product 2 there is a potential annual cost saving in excess of £12 at server level, this scaling up to £125,000 in a data centre with 10,000 servers."
I would have thought that if you had 10,000 servers and wanted to avoid power I/O costs you wouldn't have specced them with physical storage in the first place and would be network booting them instead.
I'm unsure what this offers that you can't do with SELinux or similar.
I also don't see how it can work without white listing of some kind unless they're just blocking access to everything which seems impractical and is something you could do with drive mount options anyway.
3. Everyone in the EU has export prices to other parts of the world hampered by the strong euro, it's one of the reasons why the UK is looking at it leaving
I agree with the point but the UK isn't part of the Eurozone so doesn't suffer from this. Our issue is around tariffs and regulations.
Free movement works well enough in the states. The difference between some states is not far off the differences in the EU. It just needs to be worked out, not abandoned.
I suspect that the effects are quite a bit different due to the lower being less "socialist" in areas such as health, education and out of work benefits. Reducing benefits for migrants is one of the things the UK is trying to agree as a condition for remaining but it goes against the idea of all "EU citizens" being equal.
Pray tell, explain how Germany is responsible for Greece's insolvency, other than not being happy to continue to pay for it?
Greece had problems before it joined but it does now have the additional problem that because it is part of the same currency union as Germany its currency is valued higher than it would otherwise have been, given the state of its economy which hampers both exports and investments. Germany on the other hand is in the opposite situation, relative to how its currency would be judged on its own.
The biggest mistake the EU ever made was listening to the Americans (what a surprise) to let in all the ex soviet satellite states. The dire situation we have in EU today is a consequence among many others of that stupid and short sighted policy.
This was partly also a British thing as we thought the more countries were included, the more it would slow down any attempts at integration. I don't think it's worked out quite as planned...
There is the argument though that by being in currency union with states which have a weaker economy such as Greece the currency is kept at a lower cost than it would otherwise have been which boosts exports.
Compared to what? We've got the 2nd largest european economy after germany (we overtook france recently) and one of the highest employment rates in europe, so I'd be interested to hear what your definition of "strong" is.
There have also been some stories in the mainstream media recently about how UK productivity is 30% lower than for the equivalent worker in Germany. One of the comments was that the current rate of immigration and depression of wages for manual workers meant that capital investment was currently less attractive. The hopeful scenario if we left the EU would be that capital investment increases hence per-capita productivity and hopefully living standards.
The UK is actively blaming all kind of issues on short sightedly on the EU, like immigration problems. But last weeks report of an alltime high immigration of 350k/year points out almost half of the immigrants are non EU citizens (over which each country has full control on how to deal with them).
Except in cases where they invoke the Human Rights Act to prevent deportation.
If the UK was actually more interested in ties with the rest of Europe than its ties with the US, I'd agree.
I think you're correct but for other reasons than the one you suggest.
The UK is closer culturally to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and to a lesser extent the US than a lot of places in Europe. This is also particularly true legally where we're probably the only EU country (except Malta?) to use Common Law.
There were economic reasons for joining the EEC when we did but I wonder if things would have gone smoother had we pursued a union of equals with our former Dominions.
Most rational people recognize Britain should be part of the EU.
The polls vary but generally they seem to be quite close. You did also say rational people but I think in a similar way to the Scottish independence referendum this is an issue which is as much about how people feel as the economic arguments.
3) Since it depends upon the eurozone for at least half of it's exports. The toll barriers resulting from a Brexit would induce British business to move significant portions of their production into the common market area.
Britain is one of the few countries within the EU that exports more to countries outside it than to ones in it, albeit by a small margin. One of the arguments for leaving is that the regulations required by the EU (which may have protectionist origins) make it harder to compete outside of it with faster growing world economies.
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK - kind of.
Anyone betting a lot can be asked to make a declaration of their income. Part of this is to ensure that it's "legit" but also that their betting is not in excess of what would be "reasonable" for someone of that income.
It's fairly ineffective though as a) It is done on a per-bookmaker basis not cumulatively and b) It doesn't take a detailed account of your liabilities - so someone who is single and someone who has kids etc. are treated the same.
Because of the restrictions on betting in America, US readers may not be aware of how it is over here.
Adverts for betting are prevalent, particularly in the advert breaks in the middle of a televised sporting event. The adverts will commonly offer promotional odds for a particular bet which they may expect to make a loss on in the expectation of future custom.
These bookmakers may decline or restrict service to particular individuals if
a) They believe them to only be taking advantage of promotions and not doing enough "regular" (i.e. profitable) betting.
or
b) They are winning "too much". This is more likely to happen where their wins cause the bookmaker to make an overall loss on particular events (i.e large long odds bets on unpopular events).
Once a restriction is in place the bookmaker will attempt to identify the individual through a number of methods including tracking cookies on their PC (Google for "iesnare"). UK legislation to combat both money laundering and problem gambling has made this easier for bookmakers by allowing them to require passports/proof of address etc. before processing withdrawals.
Part of the BBC Documentary "Britain at the Bookies" was about one such individual who had had their accounts restricted for being "too good" at identifying value in the advertised odds.
Personally I think there should be similar legislation to that around loans/credit where if a particular rate of interest is advertised it must be offered to the majority of applicants, with the same applying to odds in advertisements.
https://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=60754&cid=5736634/
You could install the Plesk App on them and use it to remote control a RaspberryPi (or similar) that's acting as the front-end.
Unfortunately I can't find the article (possibly something about Atul Gawande) but it said that a typical doctor does most of their learning at the start of their career and that consequently it can take a generation before new best practice is adopted. If this is true then it could be that the older the doctor the more likely you are to be treated using outdated techniques.
Best buy a paper copy...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07...
In the UK there was a campaign about a related issue that Fruit Machines* would offer a gambles with a pre-determined outcome.
See http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/fairplay/fruit/fruit1.htm
The outcome of this is that manufacturers were required to add a small sticker saying this was the case.
*Fruit Machines are similar to Slot Machines but a difference is that they're compensated not fully random. This basically means that the more money has gone in the more likely it is to pay out and visa-versa.
"Why are you tracking all the users and generating a huge 'haystack' of noisy data when you could track the 'needle' instead?"
A possible scenario is that Joe Bloggs is arrested for say drug dealing. They find that Joe Bloggs has 3 mobile phones and 1 ADSL connection. They contact those providers for a list of domains/times/IPs which messaging services were accessed. They use those details to make a request to the messaging providers for access to their messages to see who he contacted.
I imagine this would be cheaper/quicker than trying to forensically examine the devices. It won't catch any savvy criminals but that also wouldn't have been the case with phone records if they used pay phones or "burners".
The other, less positive explanation for why they think this useful is that they really are interested in monitoring the haystack to see how many people are visiting the sites of certain campaigns or political parties.
Unless they're directly buying votes, then that remains true. I'm not sure why we're equating advertising dollars with votes, because they aren't the same thing.
The point I think is that once elected representatives are more likely to legislate in favour of their donors than their constituents.
I don't get the power saving thing though - that sounded very snake oil like. I mean, if your system isn't compromised, what CPU operations is it reducing exactly?
There is a bit in the linked PDF which says...
"Abatis Hard Disk Firewall, was also tested using the same standardised environment and shown to block applications and background processes from executing; saving energy from a baseline configuration."
What they seem to have done in the test is taken a standard system and measured the power consumption. They've then tested that baseline with one of 3 3rd-party AV products and recorded the power consumption go up. They've then installed tested it with their kernel module that blocks I/O and unsurprisingly noticed that a system which isn't using the disks uses less power.
It also says...
"Between best case, HDF and worst case, AV Product 2 there is a potential annual cost saving in excess of £12 at server level, this scaling up to £125,000 in a data centre with 10,000 servers."
I would have thought that if you had 10,000 servers and wanted to avoid power I/O costs you wouldn't have specced them with physical storage in the first place and would be network booting them instead.
I'm unsure what this offers that you can't do with SELinux or similar.
I also don't see how it can work without white listing of some kind unless they're just blocking access to everything which seems impractical and is something you could do with drive mount options anyway.
Or they didn't realise they were hacked because no log files were being written...
3. Everyone in the EU has export prices to other parts of the world hampered by the strong euro, it's one of the reasons why the UK is looking at it leaving
I agree with the point but the UK isn't part of the Eurozone so doesn't suffer from this. Our issue is around tariffs and regulations.
Free movement works well enough in the states. The difference between some states is not far off the differences in the EU. It just needs to be worked out, not abandoned.
I suspect that the effects are quite a bit different due to the lower being less "socialist" in areas such as health, education and out of work benefits. Reducing benefits for migrants is one of the things the UK is trying to agree as a condition for remaining but it goes against the idea of all "EU citizens" being equal.
Pray tell, explain how Germany is responsible for Greece's insolvency, other than not being happy to continue to pay for it?
Greece had problems before it joined but it does now have the additional problem that because it is part of the same currency union as Germany its currency is valued higher than it would otherwise have been, given the state of its economy which hampers both exports and investments. Germany on the other hand is in the opposite situation, relative to how its currency would be judged on its own.
Claiming that rich countries haven't benefited from EU is highly inaccurate. Half of the UK's exports go to the EU.
Half of Britain's exports go to countries that happen to be geographically close to us. This is unlikely to change whether or not we leave.
The biggest mistake the EU ever made was listening to the Americans (what a surprise) to let in all the ex soviet satellite states. The dire situation we have in EU today is a consequence among many others of that stupid and short sighted policy.
This was partly also a British thing as we thought the more countries were included, the more it would slow down any attempts at integration. I don't think it's worked out quite as planned...
There is the argument though that by being in currency union with states which have a weaker economy such as Greece the currency is kept at a lower cost than it would otherwise have been which boosts exports.
Not much has changed in 30 years...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxwhBNo5yeg&feature=youtu.be&t=2m18s/
and of course...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzeDZtx3wUw&feature=youtu.be&t=1m15s
"The economy of the UK isn't that strong."
Compared to what? We've got the 2nd largest european economy after germany (we overtook france recently) and one of the highest employment rates in europe, so I'd be interested to hear what your definition of "strong" is.
There have also been some stories in the mainstream media recently about how UK productivity is 30% lower than for the equivalent worker in Germany. One of the comments was that the current rate of immigration and depression of wages for manual workers meant that capital investment was currently less attractive. The hopeful scenario if we left the EU would be that capital investment increases hence per-capita productivity and hopefully living standards.
The UK is actively blaming all kind of issues on short sightedly on the EU, like immigration problems. But last weeks report of an alltime high immigration of 350k/year points out almost half of the immigrants are non EU citizens (over which each country has full control on how to deal with them).
Except in cases where they invoke the Human Rights Act to prevent deportation.
Hmm... give us douze points or we Brexit?
If the UK was actually more interested in ties with the rest of Europe than its ties with the US, I'd agree.
I think you're correct but for other reasons than the one you suggest.
The UK is closer culturally to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and to a lesser extent the US than a lot of places in Europe. This is also particularly true legally where we're probably the only EU country (except Malta?) to use Common Law.
There were economic reasons for joining the EEC when we did but I wonder if things would have gone smoother had we pursued a union of equals with our former Dominions.
Most rational people recognize Britain should be part of the EU.
The polls vary but generally they seem to be quite close. You did also say rational people but I think in a similar way to the Scottish independence referendum this is an issue which is as much about how people feel as the economic arguments.
3) Since it depends upon the eurozone for at least half of it's exports. The toll barriers resulting from a Brexit would induce British business to move significant portions of their production into the common market area.
Britain is one of the few countries within the EU that exports more to countries outside it than to ones in it, albeit by a small margin. One of the arguments for leaving is that the regulations required by the EU (which may have protectionist origins) make it harder to compete outside of it with faster growing world economies.