Poker is not a card game, it's a people game (aka don't play the cards, play the people). It's all about bluffing and reading other people's bluffs. I'm baffled that people even bother playing poker on the internet
Except that people play a certain way and develop easily (especially for an AI) recognizable patterns. Those patterns are just as recognizable, perhaps even more so online where the number of hands played per hour is so much greater.
Players can get broken loosely (particularly for Texas Holdem, but also for other games) into a small group of profiles and their play patterned according to that.
While an academic study may be new, commercial software to do this has been available for years.
In particular Turbo Texas Holdem from Wilson software does an outstanding job of simulating different types of players and play conditions
and if you really believe that people skills and not card or math skills are all that you need, I'd invite you to come to Atlantic City and sit in any of the games I regularly attend. We'd love to have you.
Pacman as well as MsPacman and all the Pac variants like PacWorld and Pacman pinball are available as part of the pacman world 2 disc available for PS2 and Xbox.
Pacman world is a pretty cool platform game as well and is cheap (
However, the PS controller is simply not suited to these games and made them all but unplayable. I hope in these conversions they do a better job
Some of these games do not translate well to the Ps style controllers but some, Robotron 2084 in particular will translate especially well I think, using each of the analog controllers to simulate the 2 joysticks from the machine version.
Other like SpyHunter and RoadBlaster will probably translate well, provided they are set up for them, to steering controllers.
Personally I can't wait as this disc includes many of my favorite games from my teen years that I've only been able to access via MAME until now.
First off, the estimated ship date for the new machines is August. My experience with Apple is that these dates are often wishful thinking, so there is a good chance you will get to school before it is ever shipped. So since you'll likely arrive at school before your system, have it delivered there, or better yet just pick it up from a local dealer.
Second, you may wish to wait and check with your school. Many universities have arrangements with Apple as well as some other vendors. You may be able to purchase your system through the campus bookstore at a discount, and without the aggravation of shipping.
Assuming you do actually take delivery at home and then need to ship, save ALL of the original packing materials. These are good enought to ship in. In addition some carriers, UPS in particular will try to wiggle on an insurance claim if they damage your system and its not packed with the original materials.
As far as carriers go, I've used them all to ship systems as well as a variety of other items. UPS is by far the hardest on packages. I've had good results with FedEx (their ground service is just as cheap as UPS), DHL (now part of Fedex), and Airborne Express. Depending on where you are, how fast you need it, and your budget, any of these should be fine. My personal choice would be Fedex, as I've had very few problems ever with them.
Finally as has been mentioned by others, if you do insist on shipping, declare the full value on the manifest and pay the extra few bucks for insurance up to the full replacement cost of the system.
... but would linux itself really qualify as a competitor?
Who cares? You ( and just about every other poster in this thread) are missing the point. Its an insigificant order, for an even more insigificant amount of money. Is it worth even the smallest possibilty of annoying a large (probably their largest) customer over?
If this were your business would you even consider taking an order that might net you $100.00 at the risk of annoying your best customer? If your answer is yes, I'd suggest that you avoid going into business for yourself.
The reality is that they made an agreement with MSFT. We'll give you x amount of business and in exchange you don't work for our competitors. It happens every day in every industry and no one questions it. The further reality is that no one at MSFT would give a rat's ass if they printed these CD's . Just the same, for the insanely small amount of money involved, its not worth the aggravation for the vendor. Its not like theres any risk that this will develop into another major client or anything
Furthermore, when you use these systems to deploy nukes and other highly damaging weapons, do you want a stable system or do you rely on windows?
You're joking right? I can't believe you'd be naive enough to think that the military is using off the shelf software or operating systems for anything as mission critical as nukes or targeting systems.
This is desktop software used on desktop computers. The army like any other business, more so in fact than most, has a huge number of users whose only computer needs are email, a word processor, a spreadsheet, and access to a corporate database, and like it or not, the Microsoft products are the best available solution.
but I was assuming they just put, "Download this skin". How would you get the names?
You couldn't. The site operator could produce his access logs, assuming he keeps any, and they would show IP addresses. You could then try to track them back, but as many of not most of them are dynamic addresses, it would take massive cooperation from dozens of ISP's which is unlikely to happen. The even better solution would be to simply destroy his weblogs and then there is no problem.
I think it's about 2/3 of your salary with a cap at $280 a week.
When I did my six months of unemployment after my previous employer shut down their Boston operations I was given $952 twice a month by the very generous folks at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Plenty of cash to pay the mortgage and bills but not enough to play.
This is closer to right. The cap in N.J when I looked last year was $480.00 week paid bi-weekly
Why is it a bad thing? I mean, saying your access will be cut off if you go over a limit is one thing, but charging you in proportion to what you download/upload seems perfectly reasonable to me
It would be a perfectly reasonable thing if that was what was advertised and that was what I purchased. But it isn't. The ISP's in particular the cable and DSL isps advertised unlimited hi speed internet, in order to lure customers away from their old dial up providers. Nothing wrong there except now they want to change the rules midstream. Now they have the users.. The users are using the system they advertised, as they advertised it, and they wish to up the rates.
If they'd advertised a metered plan, and I CHOOSE to purchase that, then fine.. but thats not the case. Those who remember the old Hughes DirectPC program may remember that they did exaclty this. Advertised unlimited service and then started limiting bandwith for high volume users. A class action suit ensued (which Hughes lost) forcing them to buy back the system of any (that was all of them) dissattisfied customer
In addition, do you think they will drop the rates for low volume users? Remember it doesn't cost them any more to operate, its just a question of who uses how much. No, this is simply a ploy to juice the rates, and as a result juice their profits.
Speaking for myself, I'd visit a site that used something so incredibly annoying exactly once. It shouldn't take site operators long to notice that no one ever clicks more than one layer down into their site and realize why.
The trouble is, these "fish" can be hard to play against, because they think they're playing video poker, and call way too often. When I'm holding Cowboys, and the flop comes suited 4-6-A, if a guy bets heavily into me, I put him on A-something, or maybe a flush draw (which he should have mucked anyway) . . . so I'll muck more often than not. But when it's some noob holding crabs, hoping to river the straight . . . and then he does (!) it throws the game off
If you're having this problem too often you either need to evaluate your game or your choice of tables. If you want to get away from these players it's easy.. get up from the 2-4 table and sit down at the 20-40 or 30-60.
Personally I LOVE these players, because even though they will suck out a hand on me occasionally, and as a result my variances will be slightly wider, the money will in the long run always be moving from their side of the table to mine. If you find this is not the case, the problem is not these players, it's your game
Tape needs to be located somewher also, and there's no requirement that the HDD array be at the same location that the backed up systems.
Except that keeping the drive array offsite adds exponentially to the cost. First off you need to have a site with all the features of your primary data center (ie Power, cooling, security etc).
In addition you need to have some means to transfer that data.. 1 TB per night over a t-1? I think not.
Tapes on the other hand just need to be thrown into a van and driven somewhere. Whether you choose to use a data storage facility like Iron Mountain, or whether you store them in your basement at home can depend on the value of your data, but in either case is vastly less expensive than trying to back up a huge array to another array off site.
This has always been GW policy. Several years ago I owned and operated a hobby shop that had both a B&M and internet prescence. GW would not sell to me if I told them that I would sell their products online. They also have difficult restrictions on minimum orders and such.
The simple solution was just to buy from a wholesaler. GW is one of the few manufacturers that will sell direct to a retailer anyway. Almost all other lines are purchased via wholesalers. The benefit to dealing direct was a slightly better discount. (MSRP -%40 vs MSRP - %30 if my memory serves me). In all likelihood online dealers will still be able to buy thorugh wholesalers, they will simply be forced to either charge a little more or accept a little bit thinner margin on these products
Um no.
Tivo (at least DirectTV Tivo) does 35 hours on a 40G hard drive with no loss in quality. So that would be 70 hours on an 80G drive. With some minor improvements in the compression algorthym it's easy to see how this could be feasible.
using a sledgehammer to kill a cockroach. There are lots of utilities out there that will do this that will boot off of CD or better yet floppy, without the overhead of a full distro.
Try using partition magic from powerquest or some other such thing, you'll save a ton of time.
How about BIC lighters? Each one containes enough butane to make a nice little bomb!
First off.. not nearly enough butane to do any damage. Second they are already restricted. You maye carry up to two (2) butane style lighters on board an aircraft. The complete list of what is/isnt allowed can be found here
http://cryptome.org/tsa021403.txt
The relevant text is:
(9) Lighters (maximum of two, fueled with non-refillable liquefied
gas (Bic-type) or absorbed liquid (Zippo-type).
(10) Matches (maximum of four books, strike on cover, book type).
Most people's number skills are so poor that they probably won't understanding or trust it.
WHo cares? People don't need to understand this system in order to use it.. Do you think the average consumer understands the intricacies of the Federal banking system? How about automatic transmissions? All they need to know is that it works, and they need to trust that it's secure.
The actual details are inconsequential.
Oh please. The guy was using another corporations logos and trademarks without permission. Of COURSE he is going to get a C&D. This kind of thing goes on all the time. The practice predates the internet by quite some time. This is not a "stifling effect" issue.
Of course it is. Satire, and parody are protected speech. This is well established and not really debatable. He has an absolute right to do so. Sadly, he probably does not have the resources to defend himself when some mega corp wields the legal sword. As a result we all suffer a little. Each time this happens it makes the next guy have to think a little harder before he creates his content. This is the very definition of a stifling effect.
It affects your rights, you mindless troll, because everytime a website operator pulls the plug on his site due to a C & D letter from some big corporation, it makes every other guy who might have created a similar site think twice.
Repeat after me the following words "Stifling effect". Say it again until you grasp it.
It would be more than cost effective. First off, unless you have a building full of Kazaa junkies a T-1 for 150 systems is probably adequate. But lets assume you need 4x that much. You have 150 users, each paying ~$40.00 for Comcast cable now = $6K/mo. T-1 service will cost ~700/line/month = $2800/mo. Factor in a small upfront cost for a router, firewall, and switch, say ~$10K and it's not only cost effective, but potentially quite profitable for the apartment operators.
But doesn't the directory design in 2000 let you organize things into nice little containers where you could then delegate responsibilities?
Yes it does. They're called OU's. They're a BASIC and fundamental part of Active Directory
And doesn't windows 2000 have a "taskpad" or something, that you could say use the delegation infrastructure to give someone close to the convienent units, embodied in the little containers, the very limited ability of modifying passwords.
Yes it does. In fact it can all be done with a wizard called interestingly enough the delegation of authority wizard
MOst companies would do just what you've proposed have one person designated for each area/department/site or whatever to just do password resets. Total cost = 0
This is really not that complicated to solve.
It is simple to assign someone the rights to change/reset passwords, without giving them any other administrative priveledges. Assign a person in each department the ability to do password resets.
You'll probably need to make it a secretary or similar, but ideally it would be the managers so they can actually appreciate which users are on the ball and which are completely inept.
You get to maintain reasonable security, you save the cost of all of those unneccesarry help desk calls, and your management gets a little more perspective on who they have working for them. Problem solved
I realize it's too late now for this guy, but renters should really have contents (or renters) insurance.
It's insanely cheap, like $50.00/10k coverage per year.
If they were spending 5 hours on each hard drive setup, I'd agree.
Most likely, one installation was done, and subsequent drives are done with an image utility.
This makes it the time worth far less, and the profit far higher
The amount of time it takes them is immaterial. The value (if there is any) comes in the amount of time it saves the end user who would otherwise have to do it himself. The vendor is obviously going to use duplicators. That doesn't mean that joe clueless newbie user isn't still going to need 5 hours, and untold frustration to install it.
I agree that for the average/. reader this pricing is insane. but for the average clueless user, its not all that crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Poker is not a card game, it's a people game (aka don't play the cards, play the people). It's all about bluffing and reading other people's bluffs. I'm baffled that people even bother playing poker on the internet
Except that people play a certain way and develop easily (especially for an AI) recognizable patterns. Those patterns are just as recognizable, perhaps even more so online where the number of hands played per hour is so much greater.
Players can get broken loosely (particularly for Texas Holdem, but also for other games) into a small group of profiles and their play patterned according to that.
While an academic study may be new, commercial software to do this has been available for years. In particular Turbo Texas Holdem from Wilson software does an outstanding job of simulating different types of players and play conditions
and if you really believe that people skills and not card or math skills are all that you need, I'd invite you to come to Atlantic City and sit in any of the games I regularly attend. We'd love to have you.
Pacman as well as MsPacman and all the Pac variants like PacWorld and Pacman pinball are available as part of the pacman world 2 disc available for PS2 and Xbox. Pacman world is a pretty cool platform game as well and is cheap (
However, the PS controller is simply not suited to these games and made them all but unplayable. I hope in these conversions they do a better job
Some of these games do not translate well to the Ps style controllers but some, Robotron 2084 in particular will translate especially well I think, using each of the analog controllers to simulate the 2 joysticks from the machine version.
Other like SpyHunter and RoadBlaster will probably translate well, provided they are set up for them, to steering controllers.
Personally I can't wait as this disc includes many of my favorite games from my teen years that I've only been able to access via MAME until now.
First off, the estimated ship date for the new machines is August. My experience with Apple is that these dates are often wishful thinking, so there is a good chance you will get to school before it is ever shipped. So since you'll likely arrive at school before your system, have it delivered there, or better yet just pick it up from a local dealer.
Second, you may wish to wait and check with your school. Many universities have arrangements with Apple as well as some other vendors. You may be able to purchase your system through the campus bookstore at a discount, and without the aggravation of shipping.
Assuming you do actually take delivery at home and then need to ship, save ALL of the original packing materials. These are good enought to ship in. In addition some carriers, UPS in particular will try to wiggle on an insurance claim if they damage your system and its not packed with the original materials.
As far as carriers go, I've used them all to ship systems as well as a variety of other items. UPS is by far the hardest on packages. I've had good results with FedEx (their ground service is just as cheap as UPS), DHL (now part of Fedex), and Airborne Express. Depending on where you are, how fast you need it, and your budget, any of these should be fine. My personal choice would be Fedex, as I've had very few problems ever with them.
Finally as has been mentioned by others, if you do insist on shipping, declare the full value on the manifest and pay the extra few bucks for insurance up to the full replacement cost of the system.
Who cares? You ( and just about every other poster in this thread) are missing the point. Its an insigificant order, for an even more insigificant amount of money. Is it worth even the smallest possibilty of annoying a large (probably their largest) customer over?
If this were your business would you even consider taking an order that might net you $100.00 at the risk of annoying your best customer? If your answer is yes, I'd suggest that you avoid going into business for yourself.
The reality is that they made an agreement with MSFT. We'll give you x amount of business and in exchange you don't work for our competitors. It happens every day in every industry and no one questions it. The further reality is that no one at MSFT would give a rat's ass if they printed these CD's . Just the same, for the insanely small amount of money involved, its not worth the aggravation for the vendor. Its not like theres any risk that this will develop into another major client or anything
Furthermore, when you use these systems to deploy nukes and other highly damaging weapons, do you want a stable system or do you rely on windows?
You're joking right? I can't believe you'd be naive enough to think that the military is using off the shelf software or operating systems for anything as mission critical as nukes or targeting systems.
This is desktop software used on desktop computers. The army like any other business, more so in fact than most, has a huge number of users whose only computer needs are email, a word processor, a spreadsheet, and access to a corporate database, and like it or not, the Microsoft products are the best available solution.
but I was assuming they just put, "Download this skin". How would you get the names?
You couldn't. The site operator could produce his access logs, assuming he keeps any, and they would show IP addresses. You could then try to track them back, but as many of not most of them are dynamic addresses, it would take massive cooperation from dozens of ISP's which is unlikely to happen. The even better solution would be to simply destroy his weblogs and then there is no problem.
I think it's about 2/3 of your salary with a cap at $280 a week.
When I did my six months of unemployment after my previous employer shut down their Boston operations I was given $952 twice a month by the very generous folks at the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Plenty of cash to pay the mortgage and bills but not enough to play.
This is closer to right. The cap in N.J when I looked last year was $480.00 week paid bi-weekly
Why is it a bad thing? I mean, saying your access will be cut off if you go over a limit is one thing, but charging you in proportion to what you download/upload seems perfectly reasonable to me
It would be a perfectly reasonable thing if that was what was advertised and that was what I purchased. But it isn't. The ISP's in particular the cable and DSL isps advertised unlimited hi speed internet, in order to lure customers away from their old dial up providers. Nothing wrong there except now they want to change the rules midstream. Now they have the users.. The users are using the system they advertised, as they advertised it, and they wish to up the rates.
If they'd advertised a metered plan, and I CHOOSE to purchase that, then fine.. but thats not the case. Those who remember the old Hughes DirectPC program may remember that they did exaclty this. Advertised unlimited service and then started limiting bandwith for high volume users. A class action suit ensued (which Hughes lost) forcing them to buy back the system of any (that was all of them) dissattisfied customer
In addition, do you think they will drop the rates for low volume users? Remember it doesn't cost them any more to operate, its just a question of who uses how much. No, this is simply a ploy to juice the rates, and as a result juice their profits.
Speaking for myself, I'd visit a site that used something so incredibly annoying exactly once. It shouldn't take site operators long to notice that no one ever clicks more than one layer down into their site and realize why.
First post WOOHOO
The trouble is, these "fish" can be hard to play against, because they think they're playing video poker, and call way too often. When I'm holding Cowboys, and the flop comes suited 4-6-A, if a guy bets heavily into me, I put him on A-something, or maybe a flush draw (which he should have mucked anyway) . . . so I'll muck more often than not. But when it's some noob holding crabs, hoping to river the straight . . . and then he does (!) it throws the game off
If you're having this problem too often you either need to evaluate your game or your choice of tables. If you want to get away from these players it's easy.. get up from the 2-4 table and sit down at the 20-40 or 30-60.
Personally I LOVE these players, because even though they will suck out a hand on me occasionally, and as a result my variances will be slightly wider, the money will in the long run always be moving from their side of the table to mine. If you find this is not the case, the problem is not these players, it's your game
Tape needs to be located somewher also, and there's no requirement that the HDD array be at the same location that the backed up systems.
Except that keeping the drive array offsite adds exponentially to the cost. First off you need to have a site with all the features of your primary data center (ie Power, cooling, security etc). In addition you need to have some means to transfer that data.. 1 TB per night over a t-1? I think not.
Tapes on the other hand just need to be thrown into a van and driven somewhere. Whether you choose to use a data storage facility like Iron Mountain, or whether you store them in your basement at home can depend on the value of your data, but in either case is vastly less expensive than trying to back up a huge array to another array off site.
This has always been GW policy. Several years ago I owned and operated a hobby shop that had both a B&M and internet prescence. GW would not sell to me if I told them that I would sell their products online. They also have difficult restrictions on minimum orders and such.
The simple solution was just to buy from a wholesaler. GW is one of the few manufacturers that will sell direct to a retailer anyway. Almost all other lines are purchased via wholesalers. The benefit to dealing direct was a slightly better discount. (MSRP -%40 vs MSRP - %30 if my memory serves me). In all likelihood online dealers will still be able to buy thorugh wholesalers, they will simply be forced to either charge a little more or accept a little bit thinner margin on these products
Um no. Tivo (at least DirectTV Tivo) does 35 hours on a 40G hard drive with no loss in quality. So that would be 70 hours on an 80G drive. With some minor improvements in the compression algorthym it's easy to see how this could be feasible.
using a sledgehammer to kill a cockroach. There are lots of utilities out there that will do this that will boot off of CD or better yet floppy, without the overhead of a full distro. Try using partition magic from powerquest or some other such thing, you'll save a ton of time.
How about BIC lighters? Each one containes enough butane to make a nice little bomb!
First off.. not nearly enough butane to do any damage. Second they are already restricted. You maye carry up to two (2) butane style lighters on board an aircraft. The complete list of what is/isnt allowed can be found here
http://cryptome.org/tsa021403.txt
The relevant text is:
(9) Lighters (maximum of two, fueled with non-refillable liquefied gas (Bic-type) or absorbed liquid (Zippo-type).
(10) Matches (maximum of four books, strike on cover, book type).
Most people's number skills are so poor that they probably won't understanding or trust it. WHo cares? People don't need to understand this system in order to use it.. Do you think the average consumer understands the intricacies of the Federal banking system? How about automatic transmissions? All they need to know is that it works, and they need to trust that it's secure. The actual details are inconsequential.
Oh please. The guy was using another corporations logos and trademarks without permission. Of COURSE he is going to get a C&D. This kind of thing goes on all the time. The practice predates the internet by quite some time. This is not a "stifling effect" issue.
Of course it is. Satire, and parody are protected speech. This is well established and not really debatable. He has an absolute right to do so. Sadly, he probably does not have the resources to defend himself when some mega corp wields the legal sword. As a result we all suffer a little. Each time this happens it makes the next guy have to think a little harder before he creates his content. This is the very definition of a stifling effect.
It affects your rights, you mindless troll, because everytime a website operator pulls the plug on his site due to a C & D letter from some big corporation, it makes every other guy who might have created a similar site think twice. Repeat after me the following words "Stifling effect". Say it again until you grasp it.
It would be more than cost effective. First off, unless you have a building full of Kazaa junkies a T-1 for 150 systems is probably adequate. But lets assume you need 4x that much. You have 150 users, each paying ~$40.00 for Comcast cable now = $6K/mo. T-1 service will cost ~700/line/month = $2800/mo. Factor in a small upfront cost for a router, firewall, and switch, say ~$10K and it's not only cost effective, but potentially quite profitable for the apartment operators.
Location 2 admin, 1 dba, and 5 help desk for approx 600 users. Company wide 8 admin, 5dba, approx 20 help desk for approx 3000 users, so roughly 1:100
But doesn't the directory design in 2000 let you organize things into nice little containers where you could then delegate responsibilities?
Yes it does. They're called OU's. They're a BASIC and fundamental part of Active Directory
And doesn't windows 2000 have a "taskpad" or something, that you could say use the delegation infrastructure to give someone close to the convienent units, embodied in the little containers, the very limited ability of modifying passwords.
Yes it does. In fact it can all be done with a wizard called interestingly enough the delegation of authority wizard
MOst companies would do just what you've proposed have one person designated for each area/department/site or whatever to just do password resets. Total cost = 0
This is really not that complicated to solve. It is simple to assign someone the rights to change/reset passwords, without giving them any other administrative priveledges. Assign a person in each department the ability to do password resets.
You'll probably need to make it a secretary or similar, but ideally it would be the managers so they can actually appreciate which users are on the ball and which are completely inept.
You get to maintain reasonable security, you save the cost of all of those unneccesarry help desk calls, and your management gets a little more perspective on who they have working for them. Problem solved
I realize it's too late now for this guy, but renters should really have contents (or renters) insurance. It's insanely cheap, like $50.00/10k coverage per year.
If they were spending 5 hours on each hard drive setup, I'd agree. Most likely, one installation was done, and subsequent drives are done with an image utility. This makes it the time worth far less, and the profit far higher /. reader this pricing is insane. but for the average clueless user, its not all that crazy.
The amount of time it takes them is immaterial. The value (if there is any) comes in the amount of time it saves the end user who would otherwise have to do it himself. The vendor is obviously going to use duplicators. That doesn't mean that joe clueless newbie user isn't still going to need 5 hours, and untold frustration to install it.
I agree that for the average