Sure, but if you can't master this simple count, you probably have no chance at a real count. The hard part isn't counting, it's counting in a loud, action packed place where if you make it obvious you get kicked out. If you take odds at the craps table, you are getting some of the best odds in the house.
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Oddly enough in some places and times, they were considered cash. I heard a story about the local bookie in a small town who used to go around weekly to the local shops and buy back his chips, which were accepted by the local merchants.
For those who want to try card counting and have mastered the basic strategy, there is a simpler insurance count. You subtract 2 for each ten you see, and add one for each other card, then divide by the number of decks in the shoe, if your result is more than four, take insurance when offered.
My favorite was on that hairpin at apricot hill (after the big tire and long straightaway). I was regularly spinning out and usually saw a set of boards up close there, anyway it almost always had a Lotus logo (Lotus for the/.ers who aren't car geeks too makes cars that are very light and handle very well so they do quite well in races even if they don't have amazing horsepower levels, I figure someone there got some joy out of putting Lotus ads there. If I were programming it it would have gone something like, "If you were driving a Lotus you wouldn't be reading this from a standstill."
One of the things I liked about Jet Moto was that teams were sponsored by brands, just like they are in similar sports. Unfortunately for the other advertisers, the only one I recall was Mountain Dew. I'm curious who pays who in racing games, does Sony pay the car makers for the right to use their models and data, or do the car makers pay Sony. I know Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini have exclusive licenses (which is why there were only RUFs in GT) and I would guess that those car makers got paid, but what about Fiat or Subaru, who sold a ton of Imprezas to people who had only "driven" one in GT. That probably did more to reinvent Nissan than anything else (The 350z and G35s are built on the Skyline R35 platform.
The Yuan has traded at roughly 8:1 with the dollar since 1998. (My example was a littel off, it's actually buy a dollar print 8 yuan). A ton of third world foreign governments that trade heavily with the US have done this, because it keeps their fiscal policy disciplined. Argentina did until trade with Brazil was too difficult to maintain (when the Real was devalued). Honduras or Guatemala doesn't even issue currency they just use US dollars. Those are great, because those are all examples of interest free loans they make.
The investments are at risk because our markets benefit from significant foreign investment. Asians largely buy US government debt, but Europeans, Saudis (and other oil exporters) and a whole host of investors buy lots of dollar denominated investments (stocks and corporate debt) which keeps prices up (or interest rates low for companies and governments.
Taxes go up because foreigners don't really care how many dollars they get they are more interested in their home currency. Since the Swiss are the stereotypical investors I'll use them as an example. Imagine two investment choices to invest their money in: a 1 yr swiss government bond and a 1 yr American Government bond. The swiss bond pays about.45% (1000 francs nets you 4.5 in interest) and the american bond pays 1% ($1000 nets you $10. Those figures are actually what 1 yr bonds pay today. Assuming nothing changes between the Swiss Franc (CHF) and the Dollar (USD)the US bond pays you a bit more, if the dollar falls to say 1.2 Francs per dollar (from about 1.25) your interest is still $10, but after currency move the swiss investor only gets 970 CHF back. [1000 CHF/1.25 CHF/Dollar= 800 USD * 1.01 = 808 USD *1.2 CHF/Dollar=969.6 CHF] Not a very good yield. If our only debt buyers were swiss we would have to offer significantly more interest than the swiss rates to get them to bite.
That was a small example the USD fell more between 10% and 20% against most major currencies this year so foreign investors had to make that up in the investments they made to be even with keeping it under their pillow. If they begin to expect declining dollars, they stop buying government bonds raising our interest costs, and it flows back to taxes (each % increase costs about 3 billion/yr on our $300 billion deficit. In China's case they don't just keep dollar bills, they are buying US government debt, so if the dollar keeps falling they get more and more likely to begin pegging to European currencies (and buing European debt). Unfortunatly it seems that our current administration cares more about maintaining some exports through a weak dollar than our golden goose (Currency that is the standard of value) and is making very drastic changes.
While I certainly don't disagree that Apple's board is basically Jobs' lackeys, They bought him an airplane, and let him serve as CEO of both Apple and Pixar. Not too many CEOs get to moonlight. Ellison recently stepped down back in Sept of 02, in between the cleanup of corporate governance and his announcement of the proposed merger with PeopleSoft.
They will probably make the same profit (or close to it) on each iPod that HP sells since they will likely collect a fee for using the brand name design spec and let HP keep most of the volume gains (ordering parts and better distribution). iTunes will likely continue to be a close to breakeven service.
Actually the Chinese are one of the few countries that buys enough dollars to keep their currency at exactly the same level relative to the dollar 1:1(they buy a dollar and issue a yuan). The Japanese used to buy more, but have been unable to keep up recently (it's hard to keep buying dollars when Euros offered risk free 30% returns and the dollar only offered 2%(relative to the Yuan). At some point the Chinese (or Saudis Oil) will begin to shift to the Euro and our now big export (debt and other financial products) will dissapear, at that point this economy will be screwed, and I don't just say that because I'm in finance. Your 401k will drop like a rock, taxes will increase (it will take much more than 6% interest to keep people investing if the dollar falls 10% a year against other currencies). Hopefully the vote driven rush to promote exports by weakening the dollar will end this year.
Yes, but too many of them are not out there being "Steve Jobs" or Einsteins. They are unfortunatly probably subsistance farming but lacking the education and opportunities can't change the world the way someone with the a similar talent set can in the first world. It is this very reason that I'm in full support of globalization, those people become increasingly likly to be educated to their potential. When they are, while those that they directly compete with will be made worse off, everyone else benefits (and the benefits are much, much larger). Their skills will enrich their employees and partners creating new markets for everyones products and new products that fit needs better than current ones.
Just make options vest after 10 years, and make the exercise price 2.8 times the current stock price (10% growth over 10 years (and offseting for dilution)). Then bump the shares allocated to something that nets the employee a very significant payouff (say 15% of the company) if they make the goal. If they actually achieve those kinds of results over a decade they will have some very please shareholders who probably beat the market. That's what they were supposed to do originally, the problem became they are an easy way to transfer a tremendous amount of wealth to employees in a complex manner that makes it difficult for those without a significant amount of math and statistics to really understand their value (Googling for Black-Scholes gives you a pretty darn good model for valuing them). Crap even the beneficiaries at Microsoft were undervaluing their underwater options.
I think he's refering to the Anarcho-Capitalists, who really don't fit in our current political spectrum. They are basically anti-government, and pro-freedom examples are they are generally down on welfare, funding for education, and drug laws. I think the grandparent is refering to the fact that they would see the corporation as granted existance by the state and therefor bad. I'm more Chigago school, if the government can do something more efficently than individuals, let 'em. Anarcho-Capitalists would be against a national military force, and would let smaller groups organize their police and judical system (or even competing legal systems). It's similar to Austrian Economics, and is libertarianism to a degree that I (personally) don't think we have the technology to impliment.
Move to a cheaper state or city, an expensive home here is $200,000. You can rent an apartment for less than $500 or a house (with plenty of room for a family and a yard) for well under $1000. With your experience you and your wife would probably easily find a job paying north of $40,000. You would have to be more flexible with your plans, there's lots to do here, it's just different (you get the wonderful mountains, but the symphony is good/great not world class). The problem with cost of living and salary structure in your area is that you and many others are all fighting to stay in a place that can't suport all of you. If you hold out long enough population will shift and you'll be fine, but I have no idea how long long enough is.
And her idea of fixing the company was to move it away from x86, in the enterprise, while buying more PCs. I thought they should have sold or scrapped the PC and enterprise lines (perhaps offering the services business as an sweetener to the buyer) cut costs and retrenched around the printer business, while working what ever is going to be the next big thing.
Don't worry in an attempt to save money on documentation (if noone can understand it do we really have to write it?) SUN will be moving their call centers to Gypsy towns where they speak the Shelta language, featured in Snatch.
Same with fencing, something like 40% of world class fencers are left handed, while only 10% or 15% of beginners are. If you take up tennis, practice a spin serve, it doesn't need to be fast or hard, just go in and zing (oddly to a righty who must correct to their backhand side). Plus it's a pretty fun sport.
I'm all for free trade too, I agree that Bush is quite a bit more protectionist than he should have been or campaigned to be. Mostly my point was that since the IT industry is not in a state that has little chance of being a battle ground state, they won't get any protectionist policies, as they almost all have favored industries with ties to those states that were very close in the last election. No one panders to the states that are largely republican or democrat, because it doesn't help them in the next election.
Keep in mind that they are suing for billions of dollars in damages and annual license fees that would total at a minium hundreds of millions more each year. Note that even with the stock price increasing to about $18/share, and counting significant potential dilution, if they win, the comapny only has about 16 million potential shares outthere. This gives a current potential value of roughly $300 million. If they were to win lock stock and barrel the company would be worth significantly more. The value lies in how big the licensing stream is worth. I think Barron's recently put it at around $3 billion. Currently the market is giving them about a 10% chance of collecting, if you believe in effecient markets, don't hold your breath on this one (current value=chance of winning*value if they win).
Yeah, but until California becomes a swing state, or the IT industry moves to a swing state, don't expect any protectionism. Your Republican governor was the first step, the second is to have a closer vote, you can still give your EC votes to the Dem's just not by so large a margin. It's only those states that either went or could go either way that get benefits.
The reason AMD build a 64 bit chip. You have to understand the changes going on on the server markets. In short x86 caught up with proprietary architectures. Realize that it probably takes about $2 billion to develop a processor architecture (I'm probably low here, but you get the idea). Let's assume that 15 million server processors are sold annually. Sun ships about 300k servers a quarter and has 1/3 of the market, most of them are at the lower end (ie lots more 1-4 processor systems than 72 processor systems). If a design lasts 2 years, each of the three big architecutres have about 10 million processors to spread design costs over, or about $200 in R&D costs per processor. Because of the PC market, Intel and AMD combine to sell 130 million processors annually (100 million for Intel and 30 for AMD. If they spend the same $2 billion on a processor design and their desings also last 2 years AMD can spread development costs over 60 million processors for about $30 per chip. If they can sell these chips into the server market, they have a $170 R&D advantage over the propretary architectures, even if consumers never use 64 bit features (buying them only because they are fast or cheap. They are quite willing to add something that allows them to compete quite effectivly in the server market even if it makes the chips cost a little more in the consumer market. This is why Xeon is selling like hotcakes, while Itanium lingers on the shelves.
I was on the school's rifle team in the late 90s. What an enjoyable sport that was. I think skeet is becoming more popular, but there are still a few rifle teams around, they are sort of retreating to the south and other places with a strong military/independant heritage (UA-Fairbanks and Navy both do really well).
Madison Avenue (New York) is the road where many advertising agencies have (had there all merging pretty rapidly now) their headquarters. In a manner similar to the way Wall St is portrayed as the center of all things financial, Madison Ave. is the center of all things advertising and promotion related, both good and bad. In the derogatory sense it would be the hub of consumerism.
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Sure, but if you can't master this simple count, you probably have no chance at a real count. The hard part isn't counting, it's counting in a loud, action packed place where if you make it obvious you get kicked out. If you take odds at the craps table, you are getting some of the best odds in the house.
Oddly enough in some places and times, they were considered cash. I heard a story about the local bookie in a small town who used to go around weekly to the local shops and buy back his chips, which were accepted by the local merchants.
For those who want to try card counting and have mastered the basic strategy, there is a simpler insurance count. You subtract 2 for each ten you see, and add one for each other card, then divide by the number of decks in the shoe, if your result is more than four, take insurance when offered.
All I saw was a black screen, but now my cupholder works again, thanks the little ones were allways falling through the middle.
I always prefered tinker toys for making wheeled or spinning projects. Now that's a geek holy grail integrating tinkertoys and LEGO.
My favorite was on that hairpin at apricot hill (after the big tire and long straightaway). I was regularly spinning out and usually saw a set of boards up close there, anyway it almost always had a Lotus logo (Lotus for the /.ers who aren't car geeks too makes cars that are very light and handle very well so they do quite well in races even if they don't have amazing horsepower levels, I figure someone there got some joy out of putting Lotus ads there. If I were programming it it would have gone something like, "If you were driving a Lotus you wouldn't be reading this from a standstill."
Your comment got me thinking, imagine if all the little unit flags were the Windows logo.
One of the things I liked about Jet Moto was that teams were sponsored by brands, just like they are in similar sports. Unfortunately for the other advertisers, the only one I recall was Mountain Dew. I'm curious who pays who in racing games, does Sony pay the car makers for the right to use their models and data, or do the car makers pay Sony. I know Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini have exclusive licenses (which is why there were only RUFs in GT) and I would guess that those car makers got paid, but what about Fiat or Subaru, who sold a ton of Imprezas to people who had only "driven" one in GT. That probably did more to reinvent Nissan than anything else (The 350z and G35s are built on the Skyline R35 platform.
The Yuan has traded at roughly 8:1 with the dollar since 1998. (My example was a littel off, it's actually buy a dollar print 8 yuan). A ton of third world foreign governments that trade heavily with the US have done this, because it keeps their fiscal policy disciplined. Argentina did until trade with Brazil was too difficult to maintain (when the Real was devalued). Honduras or Guatemala doesn't even issue currency they just use US dollars. Those are great, because those are all examples of interest free loans they make. .45% (1000 francs nets you 4.5 in interest) and the american bond pays 1% ($1000 nets you $10. Those figures are actually what 1 yr bonds pay today. Assuming nothing changes between the Swiss Franc (CHF) and the Dollar (USD)the US bond pays you a bit more, if the dollar falls to say 1.2 Francs per dollar (from about 1.25) your interest is still $10, but after currency move the swiss investor only gets 970 CHF back. [1000 CHF/1.25 CHF/Dollar= 800 USD * 1.01 = 808 USD *1.2 CHF/Dollar=969.6 CHF] Not a very good yield. If our only debt buyers were swiss we would have to offer significantly more interest than the swiss rates to get them to bite.
The investments are at risk because our markets benefit from significant foreign investment. Asians largely buy US government debt, but Europeans, Saudis (and other oil exporters) and a whole host of investors buy lots of dollar denominated investments (stocks and corporate debt) which keeps prices up (or interest rates low for companies and governments.
Taxes go up because foreigners don't really care how many dollars they get they are more interested in their home currency. Since the Swiss are the stereotypical investors I'll use them as an example. Imagine two investment choices to invest their money in: a 1 yr swiss government bond and a 1 yr American Government bond. The swiss bond pays about
That was a small example the USD fell more between 10% and 20% against most major currencies this year so foreign investors had to make that up in the investments they made to be even with keeping it under their pillow. If they begin to expect declining dollars, they stop buying government bonds raising our interest costs, and it flows back to taxes (each % increase costs about 3 billion/yr on our $300 billion deficit. In China's case they don't just keep dollar bills, they are buying US government debt, so if the dollar keeps falling they get more and more likely to begin pegging to European currencies (and buing European debt). Unfortunatly it seems that our current administration cares more about maintaining some exports through a weak dollar than our golden goose (Currency that is the standard of value) and is making very drastic changes.
While I certainly don't disagree that Apple's board is basically Jobs' lackeys, They bought him an airplane, and let him serve as CEO of both Apple and Pixar. Not too many CEOs get to moonlight. Ellison recently stepped down back in Sept of 02, in between the cleanup of corporate governance and his announcement of the proposed merger with PeopleSoft.
They will probably make the same profit (or close to it) on each iPod that HP sells since they will likely collect a fee for using the brand name design spec and let HP keep most of the volume gains (ordering parts and better distribution). iTunes will likely continue to be a close to breakeven service.
Actually the Chinese are one of the few countries that buys enough dollars to keep their currency at exactly the same level relative to the dollar 1:1(they buy a dollar and issue a yuan). The Japanese used to buy more, but have been unable to keep up recently (it's hard to keep buying dollars when Euros offered risk free 30% returns and the dollar only offered 2%(relative to the Yuan). At some point the Chinese (or Saudis Oil) will begin to shift to the Euro and our now big export (debt and other financial products) will dissapear, at that point this economy will be screwed, and I don't just say that because I'm in finance. Your 401k will drop like a rock, taxes will increase (it will take much more than 6% interest to keep people investing if the dollar falls 10% a year against other currencies). Hopefully the vote driven rush to promote exports by weakening the dollar will end this year.
Yes, but too many of them are not out there being "Steve Jobs" or Einsteins. They are unfortunatly probably subsistance farming but lacking the education and opportunities can't change the world the way someone with the a similar talent set can in the first world. It is this very reason that I'm in full support of globalization, those people become increasingly likly to be educated to their potential. When they are, while those that they directly compete with will be made worse off, everyone else benefits (and the benefits are much, much larger). Their skills will enrich their employees and partners creating new markets for everyones products and new products that fit needs better than current ones.
Just make options vest after 10 years, and make the exercise price 2.8 times the current stock price (10% growth over 10 years (and offseting for dilution)). Then bump the shares allocated to something that nets the employee a very significant payouff (say 15% of the company) if they make the goal. If they actually achieve those kinds of results over a decade they will have some very please shareholders who probably beat the market. That's what they were supposed to do originally, the problem became they are an easy way to transfer a tremendous amount of wealth to employees in a complex manner that makes it difficult for those without a significant amount of math and statistics to really understand their value (Googling for Black-Scholes gives you a pretty darn good model for valuing them). Crap even the beneficiaries at Microsoft were undervaluing their underwater options.
I think he's refering to the Anarcho-Capitalists, who really don't fit in our current political spectrum. They are basically anti-government, and pro-freedom examples are they are generally down on welfare, funding for education, and drug laws. I think the grandparent is refering to the fact that they would see the corporation as granted existance by the state and therefor bad. I'm more Chigago school, if the government can do something more efficently than individuals, let 'em. Anarcho-Capitalists would be against a national military force, and would let smaller groups organize their police and judical system (or even competing legal systems). It's similar to Austrian Economics, and is libertarianism to a degree that I (personally) don't think we have the technology to impliment.
Move to a cheaper state or city, an expensive home here is $200,000. You can rent an apartment for less than $500 or a house (with plenty of room for a family and a yard) for well under $1000. With your experience you and your wife would probably easily find a job paying north of $40,000. You would have to be more flexible with your plans, there's lots to do here, it's just different (you get the wonderful mountains, but the symphony is good/great not world class). The problem with cost of living and salary structure in your area is that you and many others are all fighting to stay in a place that can't suport all of you. If you hold out long enough population will shift and you'll be fine, but I have no idea how long long enough is.
And her idea of fixing the company was to move it away from x86, in the enterprise, while buying more PCs. I thought they should have sold or scrapped the PC and enterprise lines (perhaps offering the services business as an sweetener to the buyer) cut costs and retrenched around the printer business, while working what ever is going to be the next big thing.
Don't worry in an attempt to save money on documentation (if noone can understand it do we really have to write it?) SUN will be moving their call centers to Gypsy towns where they speak the Shelta language, featured in Snatch.
Same with fencing, something like 40% of world class fencers are left handed, while only 10% or 15% of beginners are. If you take up tennis, practice a spin serve, it doesn't need to be fast or hard, just go in and zing (oddly to a righty who must correct to their backhand side). Plus it's a pretty fun sport.
I'm all for free trade too, I agree that Bush is quite a bit more protectionist than he should have been or campaigned to be. Mostly my point was that since the IT industry is not in a state that has little chance of being a battle ground state, they won't get any protectionist policies, as they almost all have favored industries with ties to those states that were very close in the last election. No one panders to the states that are largely republican or democrat, because it doesn't help them in the next election.
Keep in mind that they are suing for billions of dollars in damages and annual license fees that would total at a minium hundreds of millions more each year. Note that even with the stock price increasing to about $18/share, and counting significant potential dilution, if they win, the comapny only has about 16 million potential shares outthere. This gives a current potential value of roughly $300 million. If they were to win lock stock and barrel the company would be worth significantly more. The value lies in how big the licensing stream is worth. I think Barron's recently put it at around $3 billion. Currently the market is giving them about a 10% chance of collecting, if you believe in effecient markets, don't hold your breath on this one (current value=chance of winning*value if they win).
Yeah, but until California becomes a swing state, or the IT industry moves to a swing state, don't expect any protectionism. Your Republican governor was the first step, the second is to have a closer vote, you can still give your EC votes to the Dem's just not by so large a margin. It's only those states that either went or could go either way that get benefits.
The reason AMD build a 64 bit chip. You have to understand the changes going on on the server markets. In short x86 caught up with proprietary architectures. Realize that it probably takes about $2 billion to develop a processor architecture (I'm probably low here, but you get the idea). Let's assume that 15 million server processors are sold annually. Sun ships about 300k servers a quarter and has 1/3 of the market, most of them are at the lower end (ie lots more 1-4 processor systems than 72 processor systems). If a design lasts 2 years, each of the three big architecutres have about 10 million processors to spread design costs over, or about $200 in R&D costs per processor.
Because of the PC market, Intel and AMD combine to sell 130 million processors annually (100 million for Intel and 30 for AMD. If they spend the same $2 billion on a processor design and their desings also last 2 years AMD can spread development costs over 60 million processors for about $30 per chip. If they can sell these chips into the server market, they have a $170 R&D advantage over the propretary architectures, even if consumers never use 64 bit features (buying them only because they are fast or cheap. They are quite willing to add something that allows them to compete quite effectivly in the server market even if it makes the chips cost a little more in the consumer market. This is why Xeon is selling like hotcakes, while Itanium lingers on the shelves.
I was on the school's rifle team in the late 90s. What an enjoyable sport that was. I think skeet is becoming more popular, but there are still a few rifle teams around, they are sort of retreating to the south and other places with a strong military/independant heritage (UA-Fairbanks and Navy both do really well).
Madison Avenue (New York) is the road where many advertising agencies have (had there all merging pretty rapidly now) their headquarters. In a manner similar to the way Wall St is portrayed as the center of all things financial, Madison Ave. is the center of all things advertising and promotion related, both good and bad. In the derogatory sense it would be the hub of consumerism.