A couple of other technologies that people considering web services should look into are:
Castor is a free tool which allows you to convert XML to Java objects and back. If you build a servlet that returns the XML string that represents an object then you essentially have a Web Service.
Apache Axis a free implementation of SOAP and web services. Oddly enough, if you browse the source code of Axis you'll see Castor packages.
Just two technologies that wern't mentioned in the article. You might find them more useful than the ones that were.
E-books aren't popular because they are inconvenient. Have you ever tried reading in a bathtub or on your toilet seat with an e-book?
I just got back from lunch where I was reading "The Chessmen of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs on my Visor. I like the fact that I can keep half a dozen books as well as my phone numbers and appointments (and more than a few games) in the same device.
Even Robert Heinlein used this idea in his book "The Sixth Column" to cause fear and nausea in their enemies. Using sub sonics to induce fear is an old technology and an old idea.
Re:Java vs. .Net
on
Java vs .NET
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The cross platform ability of Java is more than just marketing hype. I work for a large California Bank and our on-line banking software is written using Java servlets, Java Server Pages, and Enterprise Java Beans. We connect to an Oracle database via JDBC. As you can see we're very Java-centric
The thing that really helps us is that we can develop code using WSAD (WebSphere Studio) on our Windows 2000 boxes on our desktop. We then deploy to a development sandbox made up of several Linux boxes (Same code, no recompile). Once we test it there we port it to our Development Test box which runs on IBM's AIX operating system (as do the test, stress test, and production servers).
Could we pass our code around to multiple machines with 3 different operating systems using.NET? No way. Could we toss a WebSphere server on a cheap Linux box and have a test bed up and running in an afternoon? Absolutly, Could we do the same thing with a Windows 2000 server? Not if we want to expect the same level of performance (both speed and stability) out of the same hardware. And that doesn't begin to worry about the licensing cost of building that quick and dirty test bed with Linux and Java as opposed to Windows 2000 and.NET
Nope, it's a bit too early to start reporting that Java is dead and.NET is the murderer. I think that in 5 more years I'll still be writing Java code and.NET will be sitting in a cardboard box of formerly used software in the closet along side COM, DCOM, and Active X.
If it's crappy music then why are people downloading it
Well, I'm not. The newest music out there (at least the stuff being pushed on the radio and on MTV) certainly gets my vote as "crap". For the past 2 years I've pretty much stopped listening to music radio with the exception of our local college jazz station.
But here's a bigger eye opener (RIAA are you listening?) I've bought half a dozen CDs in the past couple of months. At that rate I'd be buying 36 CDs a year. Wouldn't the RIAA be happy if we all did that? But who did I buy? Let's look in my backpack and see what's there:
Chris Thile, All who wander are not lost. The Mandolin player for Nickle Creek. A great album of "Newgrass". But certainly not part of the mainstream.
A String Cheese Incident, Live. A great jam band. But once again, not the mainstream.
Ani DiFranco, Up Up Up Up Up. If there's one that that Ani isn't then it's "mainstream".
Dar Williams, Mortal City. Great album with great music and lyrics. But you'll never hear this any of the 4 classic rock stations in this town.
Type O Negative, Life is Killing Me. Well of course you're not going to hear serious goth metal on the radio OR on MTV.
Adrian Legg, Guitar Bones. Amazing acoustic guitar player. But as "off the mainstream" as you can get.
So where did I hear of these bands? On internet radio (specifically Music Match radio). Here's a perfect example of a case where giving the customer a broader spectrum of music to listen to has resulted in music sales. Also, notice that most of the last 6 albums I've bought were not new releases. They're older CDs that are new to me because I had that broader range of music available to me via internet radio.
So don't tell me that the collapse of CD sales is because of piracy. It's because of high CD prices combined with the narrowcasting of the radio market. If all we hear on MTV and the radio is either rap garbage or classic rock or the latest Britney clone then I'm either not going to buy it or I already own it. But give me deapth and variety and I'll buy and buy and buy.
I use to work for the company Software Sorcery. One of our early titles was "Sea Rogue" A simple little game that was a blast to play.
Then came Jutland, a WW1 navy simulation. It was much more intense and beautiful. It had streaming video cut scenes, awesome graphics (for the time) and complex game play. But was it fun? Well, unless you knew the cheat code to show the proper the angle of your guns it was a lesson in frustration. Great looking game that was almost impossible to win.
Next was Aegis: Guardian of the Fleet. This was a serious game. It simulated an entire Aegis class battle cruiser in modern day warfare. It tended to be long and boring. Again, lots of detail and great graphics, but terrible game play. Not fun.
Fast Attack was another beautiful looking game with tons of detail and gameplay that closely followed the targeting and tracking routines of a real Fast Attack submaringe. But was it fun? Well, maybe if you're a navy simulatin buff. But I got the game for free and could play test it while I worked tech support and I wouldn't even finish it. Boring and impossibly complex to play.
Then came Conqueror 1086 (which we use to refer to as Conqueror 1286, Conqueror 1386, Conqueror Pentium!) The graphics were still good, but they put much more work into the gameplay and story line. And guess what? It was fun to play. I wish we wrote better code to control the game speed. It's impossible to play on today's fast computers. The screens scroll by so fast that you can't controll it. Too bad, it's a great game.
Now we have games like Uplink that have almost no graphics to speak of and yet are really fun to play. Do you see a trend here? The 3D graphics and surround sound do not make a game fun. The STORY makes a game fun, the GAMEPLAY makes a game fun. You'd think this wouldn't be news by now, but people are still surprised to learn that lesson.
The US is going to institute a national health care program for Iraq, a nationalized educational system for iraq, govt controlled water and power monopolies for Iraq,
Well, you already pay close to 50% of your income in taxes (add it up. Federal income tax, State tax, Property tax, Sales tax, Gasoline tax, Usage tax and on and on). So yeah, why don't we just give all our money to the government so they can dish out services back to the people.
Just in case you're a democrat and think this is a good idea I should explain that this is sarcasm.
The funny thing is that telemarketing companies have gone to court to claim that this do-not-call list violates their free speech rights. Excuse me! Violates their free speech rights!? If calling me in MY home on MY phone is a violation of their free speech rights then what's next? Would hanging up on them be considered a violation?
It's sad how people seem to want to bend the constitution to their own personal needs and wishes. The law is suppose to protect the people, not be a tool to use to abuse the people.
I have a friend who performs on Chapman Stick, uses a drum machine, and sings. To fill up his sound he uses a version of this autotuner that creates backup vocals of male or female voices. He can program the key and the type of harmony he wants. It's all based off of his real voice, but it's building a set of new voices that are singing different notes. He uses it because it adds to the fullness of his sound. Nobody seems offended when he's using this device live. He even makes a joke of it:
[singer] Are you guys ready?
[5 male voices in harmony] Yeah, we're ready. Go ahead. And by the way, it sounds great.
I've also heard quite a few live singers try to sing when the monitor mix is too quiet. When a singer can't hear themselves they tend to sing flat. It's actually quite a common problem with live shows so I can see having a device like this to "clean up" those kinds of problems.
So why are people not concerned with my friend using essentially the same device to add backup vocals to his music, but they're upset about a live singer using the device to touch up their performance?
I was at the Idyllwild Jazz Festival this weekend and I heard a woman singing flat when she couldn't
hear herself in the monitors. It wasn't pleasent.
The most important question wasn't selected, or answered. Here's the only question that matters:
As a Californian who signed the recall petition I'd like to start by saying that we know why Davis is a bad governor.
The Oracle fiasco cost the state millions of dollars.
Davis said in his "State of the State" address that if he found that the electric companies were ripping us off by shutting down power stations to artificially raise prices then he'd take over the stations via emminent domain. Sure enough, the electric companies were found to be manipulating the prices. Rather than fullfilling his promise he formed a 5 year plan to buy electricity at a high rate and to pay for it from the general fund thereby bankrupting the state. That plan cost us billions of dollars.
On top of all that he increased spending by (depending which source you cite) 30% to 48%. Government spending increased roughly twice the rate of the population increase. And now he tells us the only way we can get out of this mess is to cut police, fire, and school budgets.
Because of all this our bonds have been downgraded to one level above "junk".
So we know why he's a bad governor. What we want to know, what we need to know, is how do you propose to fix this mess? Don't tell me how other people have failed, don't give me some generic line about how "special interest is running this state". Give me specific points of your plan to fix our financial problems.
She didn't answer the question at all. I mean, come on folks. "Boxers or Briefs"?? Who the hell cares!? This is serious shit! How are you going to keep my vehicle fees, gas taxes, and property taxes from tripling? That's what's important.
Computer programs have shown (after testing with hundreds of thousands of simulated hands) that the player has a slightly better chance of winning if there are more "Big" cards in the deck. Remember, the dealer has no choice. He has to hit to 17. If there are more big cards then he'll bust more often.
Big cards are: 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace
Little cards are: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
At the end of each hand keep a running total. For every little card think "Plus One". For every big card think "Minus one". So if a lot of little cards come out of the deck then the "running count" will go positive. If a lot of big cards come out of the deck then the "running count" will go negative.
Running count is not in itself a perfect indicator. It depends on how many decks of cards are still in the shoe. If you have a 6 deck shoe and it looks like there are about 4 decks left then divide your running count by 4. So if the running count is +8 and the number of decks in the shoe is roughly 4 then the actual count is 8/4=2. This is why you see dealers shuffling when the shoe is only half empty. A +10 with 5 decks is only a +2 actual count. A +10 with only 1 deck left in the shoe is a HUGE advantage.
How do you use the actual count? If the actual count is 0, 1 or negative then you bet the minimum amount. If the actual count is 2 or better then you multiply the minimum bet by that number. So if the minimum bet is $5 and the actual count is 2 then you bet $10. If the actual count is +4 then you bet $20.
ALL of this is also dependent upon you playing perfect basic strategy. If you have 15 and the dealer has a 4 showing what do you do? You need to know that strategy and play it perfectly every hand for card counting to give you any advantage at all.
There are many more systems that are more complex than this, but you have to trade off the increase in complexity with the increase in odds that benefit you. This basic Hi-Lo system will give you the most bang for your buck.
As with all issues in this country it all comes down to the money. Blackjack tables are the most profitable gaming tables in a casino. Slot machines are the main profit source, but as far as table games BlackJack is the big money maker.
By federal law the all games that are allowed in a casino must be "games of chance". However, if you are a good card counter then you can consistently turn the odds very slightly in your favor (you give yourself about a 55% win rate. If you just play perfect basic strategy then you're running about 48% win rate)
That means that if you are a card counter then the game is now a game of skill, not a game of chance. Casinos don't want to risk having their most profitable game being legally declared a game of skill and thus lose the right to have that game in their casino. Hence, they ban card counting.
Now remember, the casino is not your friend. They don't give a damn if they're taking your rent money, they don't care if you're unemployed, they don't care if you have a gambling problem. They just want your money. They will change rules and use high technology to make darn sure that you can't win in the long run. Casinos will tell you that card counting is "cheating", but it's really just a more intelligent way of playing the game. After all, if I spend many many hours studying poker books and playing with poker game simulation software before a poker tournament am I "cheating"? Or am I just preparing my skills to give myself the best chance in the game? If I study chess books and practice with a computer before a chess tournament am I "cheating"? Of course not. But if I hone my skills and pay attention to what cards everyone else has already been dealt in BlackJack then I'm somehow suppose to be cheating.
So what this really comes down to is money. Just like every other issue in this country. Just follow the money.
As a Californian who signed the recall petition I'd like to start by saying that we know why Davis is a bad governor.
The Oracle fiasco cost the state millions of dollars.
Davis said in his "State of the State" address that if he found that the electric companies were ripping us off by shutting down power stations to artificially raise prices then he'd take over the stations via emminent domain. Sure enough, the electric companies were found to be manipulating the prices. Rather than fullfilling his promise he formed a 5 year plan to buy electricity at a high rate and to pay for it from the general fund thereby bankrupting the state. That plan cost us billions of dollars.
On top of all that he increased spending by (depending which source you cite) 30% to 48%. Government spending increased roughly twice the rate of the population increase. And now he tells us the only way we can get out of this mess is to cut police, fire, and school budgets.
Because of all this our bonds have been downgraded to one level above "junk".
So we know why he's a bad governor. What we want to know, what we need to know, is how do you propose to fix this mess? Don't tell me how other people have failed, don't give me some generic line about how "special interest is running this state". Give me specific points of your plan to fix our financial problems.
They're a government agency, they're here to work for US!
Oh what a beautiful world it must be where you live. Sometimes I wish I could live naively believing this was true, that our government really is by the people and for the people. The only thing keeping us from staging a revolution is ignorance and apathy.
Our government hasn't worked for us in years. The list of examples is too long to list here.
Hi, I'm Blind Melon Daquari from the band "Blind Melon Daquri and the Contenental Breakfasts all star blues review" I just sold half a million CDs. But am I rich? No I'm not. And why is that? It's because of music piracy.
I get $1.20 off of every CD I sell. With 12 songs on my CD it means every time you pirate a song it cost me 10 cents. For every hundred thousand of your downloads I lose $10,000 !
Of course, my record company gave me an advance of $100,000 that I have to pay back. And then they made me pay for the recording studio where I recorded my own music. That was another $100,000.
Oh wait, They also made me pay for their mid level marketers to pay that money-that-looks-like-but-isn't-really-payola to Clear Channel to get my songs on the radio. That was another $200,000. And of course I have to pay the rest of the band. Not to mention the cost of going out to tour to support this new CD.
Oh yeah, and I don't even own my own songs any more, or my voice, or the recordings of those songs, or the cover art, or anything. In fact, my music is now legally known as "Work for hire". And if I don't like how I'm being treated I can't leave my record label without their permission.
Oh, and the record company that sold those albums? They made about 3 million dollars of profit.
So how am I suppose to pay off my $400,000 debt to the record company if you keep pirating my songs? So stop it. mmm-kay?
$40 is Steep? You must be joking. For less than the price of set of guitar strings and a tuner you can distribute your music. That's amazing.
I love the idea of indie bands telling their audience We have CD's for sale here tonight or you can just go to CDBaby and buy them there". It's an easy to remember web site that the customers can still remember after a few beers.
Great idea. I hope CDBaby makes millions (which means the bands they represent will make tens of millions. That's kind of a nice change isn't it?)
He's making the exact same argument as the comment about two comments down entitled "EFF wants alternatives to the current system ".
If saying "Stealing from the artist is bad and there are alternatives that work" is considered a troll then Slashdot needs to reasses it's politics.
I really don't see how the net is so special that things you buy over it shound't have tax on them.
The thing is, mail order has been exempt from this forever. Ordering online is the same thing as ordering over the phone from a catalog. So there is a long standing precedent of not taxing people from outside of your state with your sales tax.
Now, being a Californian I have another point I'd like to make. When Davis came into office we had the biggest surplus in all of Californian history. At the end of his first term we now have the biggest deficit in our history. Were did all that money go?
It went two places: First, in typical political short sightedness our government started spending spending spending on various new government programs. How soon they forget the lean times.
Secondly, we deregulated our utility companies. However, they were deregulated without adequate competition. Deregulation was suppose to make prices go down. But since the same companies owned both the electricity generating companies (Like Sempra Energy) and the delivery companies (Like San Diego Gas & Electric) the greedy bastards took advantage of this new cash cow. The companies that use to make a profit when our electric bills were $75 to $100 a month tripled our electric rate (sometimes higher). My personal electric bill went from $78 one month to $224 the next.
So what does our governor do? Does he take over the generating plants like he threatened to do? No, he makes a deal with the electric companies to pay them off via the state's general fund.
So our huge surplus of ca$h went not to civil programs, not to a savings account that would generate interest for future lean times, not to tax rebates for those of us who paid them the money, it went back to the electric companies who were screwing us in the first place.
So thank you so very F*cking much Mr Davis! You've taxed us, you screwed us, you got in bed with the electric companies and screwed us again, and now you're going to tax us some more.
And when you click to download a file, it is either a.RPM or.DEB . . .
One of my pet peeves is that I can install a program by double clicking on an RPM file, but then I don't know where it was installed or what the entry point program is. An RPM installer should allow you to add a menu item to the newly installed application so you could at least use it. As much as I enjoy developing code in Linux this is a point where even experienced users get frustrated.
Oh I get it,.NET works on Windows 2000, or Windows XP or even Windows NT and possibly even Windows 98.
And here I was thinking that "cross platform" meant it had to run on something non-Windows based like, I don't know, how about : Linux, Mac OsX, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris.
I'm not going to trust my personal finances to a company that refuses to release their code under the GPL
Quicken and MS Money both send their data to the financial institution as XML is a format known as "Open Financial Exchange" or simply OFX
Since OFX is an open standard and the data is encrypted via SSL then all this product is doing is taking data you enter via a GUI and converting it to an OFX message. I say "only" but in fact that's quite a lot of work.
I've been involved in writing the receiving end of this software at a major Californian bank and it's kind of nice that most of our work is aimed at meeting the OFX specification. If your product can work with that spec then certifying it with Quicken and MS Money is not too difficult.
BTW, on a funny note, while Intuit has quite an extensive QA process that we must go through to get our software certified to work with Quicken, Microsoft's certification consist of "Do you work with Quicken? Great, you're certified"
Slashdot Mirror
- Castor is a free tool which allows you to convert XML to Java objects and back. If you build a servlet that returns the XML string that represents an object then you essentially have a Web Service.
- Apache Axis a free implementation of SOAP and web services. Oddly enough, if you browse the source code of Axis you'll see Castor packages.
Just two technologies that wern't mentioned in the article. You might find them more useful than the ones that were.I just got back from lunch where I was reading "The Chessmen of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs on my Visor. I like the fact that I can keep half a dozen books as well as my phone numbers and appointments (and more than a few games) in the same device.
Even Robert Heinlein used this idea in his book "The Sixth Column" to cause fear and nausea in their enemies. Using sub sonics to induce fear is an old technology and an old idea.
The thing that really helps us is that we can develop code using WSAD (WebSphere Studio) on our Windows 2000 boxes on our desktop. We then deploy to a development sandbox made up of several Linux boxes (Same code, no recompile). Once we test it there we port it to our Development Test box which runs on IBM's AIX operating system (as do the test, stress test, and production servers).
Could we pass our code around to multiple machines with 3 different operating systems using .NET? No way. Could we toss a WebSphere server on a cheap Linux box and have a test bed up and running in an afternoon? Absolutly, Could we do the same thing with a Windows 2000 server? Not if we want to expect the same level of performance (both speed and stability) out of the same hardware. And that doesn't begin to worry about the licensing cost of building that quick and dirty test bed with Linux and Java as opposed to Windows 2000 and .NET
Nope, it's a bit too early to start reporting that Java is dead and .NET is the murderer. I think that in 5 more years I'll still be writing Java code and .NET will be sitting in a cardboard box of formerly used software in the closet along side COM, DCOM, and Active X.
Well, I'm not. The newest music out there (at least the stuff being pushed on the radio and on MTV) certainly gets my vote as "crap". For the past 2 years I've pretty much stopped listening to music radio with the exception of our local college jazz station.
But here's a bigger eye opener (RIAA are you listening?) I've bought half a dozen CDs in the past couple of months. At that rate I'd be buying 36 CDs a year. Wouldn't the RIAA be happy if we all did that? But who did I buy? Let's look in my backpack and see what's there:
- Chris Thile, All who wander are not lost. The Mandolin player for Nickle Creek. A great album of "Newgrass". But certainly not part of the mainstream.
- A String Cheese Incident, Live. A great jam band. But once again, not the mainstream.
- Ani DiFranco, Up Up Up Up Up. If there's one that that Ani isn't then it's "mainstream".
- Dar Williams, Mortal City. Great album with great music and lyrics. But you'll never hear this any of the 4 classic rock stations in this town.
- Type O Negative, Life is Killing Me. Well of course you're not going to hear serious goth metal on the radio OR on MTV.
- Adrian Legg, Guitar Bones. Amazing acoustic guitar player. But as "off the mainstream" as you can get.
So where did I hear of these bands? On internet radio (specifically Music Match radio). Here's a perfect example of a case where giving the customer a broader spectrum of music to listen to has resulted in music sales. Also, notice that most of the last 6 albums I've bought were not new releases. They're older CDs that are new to me because I had that broader range of music available to me via internet radio.So don't tell me that the collapse of CD sales is because of piracy. It's because of high CD prices combined with the narrowcasting of the radio market. If all we hear on MTV and the radio is either rap garbage or classic rock or the latest Britney clone then I'm either not going to buy it or I already own it. But give me deapth and variety and I'll buy and buy and buy.
Then came Jutland, a WW1 navy simulation. It was much more intense and beautiful. It had streaming video cut scenes, awesome graphics (for the time) and complex game play. But was it fun? Well, unless you knew the cheat code to show the proper the angle of your guns it was a lesson in frustration. Great looking game that was almost impossible to win.
Next was Aegis: Guardian of the Fleet. This was a serious game. It simulated an entire Aegis class battle cruiser in modern day warfare. It tended to be long and boring. Again, lots of detail and great graphics, but terrible game play. Not fun.
Fast Attack was another beautiful looking game with tons of detail and gameplay that closely followed the targeting and tracking routines of a real Fast Attack submaringe. But was it fun? Well, maybe if you're a navy simulatin buff. But I got the game for free and could play test it while I worked tech support and I wouldn't even finish it. Boring and impossibly complex to play.
Then came Conqueror 1086 (which we use to refer to as Conqueror 1286, Conqueror 1386, Conqueror Pentium!) The graphics were still good, but they put much more work into the gameplay and story line. And guess what? It was fun to play. I wish we wrote better code to control the game speed. It's impossible to play on today's fast computers. The screens scroll by so fast that you can't controll it. Too bad, it's a great game.
Now we have games like Uplink that have almost no graphics to speak of and yet are really fun to play. Do you see a trend here? The 3D graphics and surround sound do not make a game fun. The STORY makes a game fun, the GAMEPLAY makes a game fun. You'd think this wouldn't be news by now, but people are still surprised to learn that lesson.
Well, you already pay close to 50% of your income in taxes (add it up. Federal income tax, State tax, Property tax, Sales tax, Gasoline tax, Usage tax and on and on). So yeah, why don't we just give all our money to the government so they can dish out services back to the people.
Just in case you're a democrat and think this is a good idea I should explain that this is sarcasm.
You can use PayPal if you like.
It's sad how people seem to want to bend the constitution to their own personal needs and wishes. The law is suppose to protect the people, not be a tool to use to abuse the people.
[singer] Are you guys ready?
[5 male voices in harmony] Yeah, we're ready. Go ahead.
And by the way, it sounds great.
I've also heard quite a few live singers try to sing when the monitor mix is too quiet. When a singer can't hear themselves they tend to sing flat. It's actually quite a common problem with live shows so I can see having a device like this to "clean up" those kinds of problems.
So why are people not concerned with my friend using essentially the same device to add backup vocals to his music, but they're upset about a live singer using the device to touch up their performance?
I was at the Idyllwild Jazz Festival this weekend and I heard a woman singing flat when she couldn't hear herself in the monitors. It wasn't pleasent.
As a Californian who signed the recall petition I'd like to start by saying that we know why Davis is a bad governor.
So we know why he's a bad governor. What we want to know, what we need to know, is how do you propose to fix this mess? Don't tell me how other people have failed, don't give me some generic line about how "special interest is running this state". Give me specific points of your plan to fix our financial problems.
She didn't answer the question at all. I mean, come on folks. "Boxers or Briefs"?? Who the hell cares!? This is serious shit! How are you going to keep my vehicle fees, gas taxes, and property taxes from tripling? That's what's important.
Content of this interview == null
Big cards are: 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace Little cards are: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 At the end of each hand keep a running total. For every little card think "Plus One". For every big card think "Minus one". So if a lot of little cards come out of the deck then the "running count" will go positive. If a lot of big cards come out of the deck then the "running count" will go negative.
Running count is not in itself a perfect indicator. It depends on how many decks of cards are still in the shoe. If you have a 6 deck shoe and it looks like there are about 4 decks left then divide your running count by 4. So if the running count is +8 and the number of decks in the shoe is roughly 4 then the actual count is 8/4=2. This is why you see dealers shuffling when the shoe is only half empty. A +10 with 5 decks is only a +2 actual count. A +10 with only 1 deck left in the shoe is a HUGE advantage.
How do you use the actual count? If the actual count is 0, 1 or negative then you bet the minimum amount. If the actual count is 2 or better then you multiply the minimum bet by that number. So if the minimum bet is $5 and the actual count is 2 then you bet $10. If the actual count is +4 then you bet $20.
ALL of this is also dependent upon you playing perfect basic strategy. If you have 15 and the dealer has a 4 showing what do you do? You need to know that strategy and play it perfectly every hand for card counting to give you any advantage at all.
There are many more systems that are more complex than this, but you have to trade off the increase in complexity with the increase in odds that benefit you. This basic Hi-Lo system will give you the most bang for your buck.
By federal law the all games that are allowed in a casino must be "games of chance". However, if you are a good card counter then you can consistently turn the odds very slightly in your favor (you give yourself about a 55% win rate. If you just play perfect basic strategy then you're running about 48% win rate)
That means that if you are a card counter then the game is now a game of skill, not a game of chance. Casinos don't want to risk having their most profitable game being legally declared a game of skill and thus lose the right to have that game in their casino. Hence, they ban card counting.
Now remember, the casino is not your friend. They don't give a damn if they're taking your rent money, they don't care if you're unemployed, they don't care if you have a gambling problem. They just want your money. They will change rules and use high technology to make darn sure that you can't win in the long run. Casinos will tell you that card counting is "cheating", but it's really just a more intelligent way of playing the game. After all, if I spend many many hours studying poker books and playing with poker game simulation software before a poker tournament am I "cheating"? Or am I just preparing my skills to give myself the best chance in the game? If I study chess books and practice with a computer before a chess tournament am I "cheating"? Of course not. But if I hone my skills and pay attention to what cards everyone else has already been dealt in BlackJack then I'm somehow suppose to be cheating.
So what this really comes down to is money. Just like every other issue in this country. Just follow the money.
- The Oracle fiasco cost the state millions of dollars.
- Davis said in his "State of the State" address that if he found that the electric companies were ripping us off by shutting down power stations to artificially raise prices then he'd take over the stations via emminent domain. Sure enough, the electric companies were found to be manipulating the prices. Rather than fullfilling his promise he formed a 5 year plan to buy electricity at a high rate and to pay for it from the general fund thereby bankrupting the state. That plan cost us billions of dollars.
- On top of all that he increased spending by (depending which source you cite) 30% to 48%. Government spending increased roughly twice the rate of the population increase. And now he tells us the only way we can get out of this mess is to cut police, fire, and school budgets.
- Because of all this our bonds have been downgraded to one level above "junk".
So we know why he's a bad governor. What we want to know, what we need to know, is how do you propose to fix this mess? Don't tell me how other people have failed, don't give me some generic line about how "special interest is running this state". Give me specific points of your plan to fix our financial problems.Oh what a beautiful world it must be where you live. Sometimes I wish I could live naively believing this was true, that our government really is by the people and for the people. The only thing keeping us from staging a revolution is ignorance and apathy.
Our government hasn't worked for us in years. The list of examples is too long to list here.
I get $1.20 off of every CD I sell. With 12 songs on my CD it means every time you pirate a song it cost me 10 cents. For every hundred thousand of your downloads I lose $10,000 !
Of course, my record company gave me an advance of $100,000 that I have to pay back. And then they made me pay for the recording studio where I recorded my own music. That was another $100,000.
Oh wait, They also made me pay for their mid level marketers to pay that money-that-looks-like-but-isn't-really-payola to Clear Channel to get my songs on the radio. That was another $200,000. And of course I have to pay the rest of the band. Not to mention the cost of going out to tour to support this new CD.
Oh yeah, and I don't even own my own songs any more, or my voice, or the recordings of those songs, or the cover art, or anything. In fact, my music is now legally known as "Work for hire". And if I don't like how I'm being treated I can't leave my record label without their permission.
Oh, and the record company that sold those albums? They made about 3 million dollars of profit.
So how am I suppose to pay off my $400,000 debt to the record company if you keep pirating my songs? So stop it. mmm-kay?
Thank you
I love the idea of indie bands telling their audience We have CD's for sale here tonight or you can just go to CDBaby and buy them there". It's an easy to remember web site that the customers can still remember after a few beers.
Great idea. I hope CDBaby makes millions (which means the bands they represent will make tens of millions. That's kind of a nice change isn't it?)
That makes more sense.
He's making the exact same argument as the comment about two comments down entitled "EFF wants alternatives to the current system ". If saying "Stealing from the artist is bad and there are alternatives that work" is considered a troll then Slashdot needs to reasses it's politics.
But there appears to be more bugs surfacing daily.
Sorry, that was gross.
The thing is, mail order has been exempt from this forever. Ordering online is the same thing as ordering over the phone from a catalog. So there is a long standing precedent of not taxing people from outside of your state with your sales tax.
Now, being a Californian I have another point I'd like to make. When Davis came into office we had the biggest surplus in all of Californian history. At the end of his first term we now have the biggest deficit in our history. Were did all that money go?
It went two places: First, in typical political short sightedness our government started spending spending spending on various new government programs. How soon they forget the lean times.
Secondly, we deregulated our utility companies. However, they were deregulated without adequate competition. Deregulation was suppose to make prices go down. But since the same companies owned both the electricity generating companies (Like Sempra Energy) and the delivery companies (Like San Diego Gas & Electric) the greedy bastards took advantage of this new cash cow. The companies that use to make a profit when our electric bills were $75 to $100 a month tripled our electric rate (sometimes higher). My personal electric bill went from $78 one month to $224 the next.
So what does our governor do? Does he take over the generating plants like he threatened to do? No, he makes a deal with the electric companies to pay them off via the state's general fund.
So our huge surplus of ca$h went not to civil programs, not to a savings account that would generate interest for future lean times, not to tax rebates for those of us who paid them the money, it went back to the electric companies who were screwing us in the first place.
So thank you so very F*cking much Mr Davis! You've taxed us, you screwed us, you got in bed with the electric companies and screwed us again, and now you're going to tax us some more.
That's why many of us are trying to recall the Bastard.
You know, everybody seems to be asking how the nation can afford another tax cut. But nobody ever ask me if I can afford another tax increase.
One of my pet peeves is that I can install a program by double clicking on an RPM file, but then I don't know where it was installed or what the entry point program is. An RPM installer should allow you to add a menu item to the newly installed application so you could at least use it. As much as I enjoy developing code in Linux this is a point where even experienced users get frustrated.
- Sword/thunder sound effects during opening cuts : Lord of the Rings
- Girl in shiny skin tight leather : Matrix
- And black trench coat : Matrix
- Shooting straight armed in subway with tiled walls : Matrix
- Bad guys running into hallway with guns and aiming at empty wall : Matrix
- Girl on top of building surveying the city : Ghost in the Shell
- Surveying the GOTH city : Vampire Hunter D
- Same girl jumping off of tall building : Ghost in the Shell (except she has clothes on)
- And landing hard and walking away : Just about any Anime.
- Wolf things crawling on walls : Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Straight arm face hit which flips the opponent 270 degrees : Matrix
- Character running way faster than humanly possible : Matrix
- And jumping on a car and stabbing through the roof : Many movies. Didn't they do that in Blade?
The only thing missing is the slow motion dive away from the expanding fireball. Looks like a typical Hollywood movie.And here I was thinking that "cross platform" meant it had to run on something non-Windows based like, I don't know, how about : Linux, Mac OsX, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris.
Silly me, my bad.
Quicken and MS Money both send their data to the financial institution as XML is a format known as "Open Financial Exchange" or simply OFX
Since OFX is an open standard and the data is encrypted via SSL then all this product is doing is taking data you enter via a GUI and converting it to an OFX message. I say "only" but in fact that's quite a lot of work.
I've been involved in writing the receiving end of this software at a major Californian bank and it's kind of nice that most of our work is aimed at meeting the OFX specification. If your product can work with that spec then certifying it with Quicken and MS Money is not too difficult.
BTW, on a funny note, while Intuit has quite an extensive QA process that we must go through to get our software certified to work with Quicken, Microsoft's certification consist of "Do you work with Quicken? Great, you're certified"