Meritline, SuperMediaStore, and even Best Buy have the Verbatim Dual Layer "Solution" pack for about $25. It gets you ONE dual-layer disc, 8 single-layer 4x burnables, and one DVD-RW. Considering the cost of the other pieces is about $5-$7, it's at least $18 for a single piece of dual-layer media right now.
SuperMediaStore and Meritline represent pretty much the cheapest places to safely buy large quantites of high-quality media (read: Ridata, et cetera).
So, if you've got something important to burn, and it's 8.5G in size, it better be $20 important, you'd better not accidentally make a coster, and don't forget to pay your VAT if you're in one of those countries.
Also, the dual-layered NEC2510A runs about $79 (or cheaper!) at NewEgg.
Do I pick Windows (Pain in the ass to install, Hell to operate and protect, and expensive to buy and get support for, which needs to be periodically reinstalled when it stops working for no apparent reason)
Or do I pick Linux (easy to install, free to get, and millions of developers that give you the info you need to keep things going for free on a stable platform that can be trusted not to inexplicably decide not to work)?
I never have understood this. I've installed my fair share of Linux distributions and I've installed my fair share of Windows distributions.
Saying "[Windows is a] pain in the ass to install" is absurd. While GREAT strides have been made with the installer, it's just not any more or less easy to install Suse or Redhat than it is to install XP. Similarly, installing your nVidia driver isn't exactly mom-friendly under Linux yet. It can't be much more complicated than finding the missing chipset drivers for your Mr. Nobody brand motherboard -- and I assure you, if you're looking for it under XP, you're probbaly looking for it under Linux too.
You people complain about FUD all the time, and you throw out things like "inexplicably decide[s] not to work."...WHAT? Windows doesn't inexplicably do anything. I don't spend all day doing anything except WORKING on my XP.SP2 machine, and it *works*. It doesn't crash "willy nilly." Windows isn't the giant collection of BSODs people want to pretend that it is.
Is Microsoft perfect? No. Good lord no. Does IE still have scripting exploits that even McAfee and Norton only *sometimes* block? Yes, absolutely. But Linux is not "The Answer" (capital T, capital A). It is _an_answer_ to some problems.
Complicated because you have to free your info from their locked-down shitty closed source applications-usually fixing a crapload of errors generated by these same apps, wasting a lot of time(=money), and wishing you never made the mistake of using Microsoft crap in the first place (painful).
The release of the Phatbot source made most of this possible. Agobot had over a thousand variants because any kid with GCC could change half a dozen strings, pick a new list of tasks to kill, pick a new IRC server to report back to for 'pwn3rship' and then pack the thing up with the executable compressor of his choice.
Not everything should be released under the GPL, I'm afraid.
Legally speaking the player may play blackjack any way he wants without cheating or using a computer, and the casinos may do anything from making conditions unfavorable to barring in an effort to stop anyone who they deem has an advantage over the game. Much of the challenge of card counting is avoiding suspicion that you are anything but a normal non-counting player. The most obvious indication that somebody is counting is that they make a substantial increase in bet size after a lot of small cards leave the table. Although the greater the factor by which you can increase your bet the greater your odds of winning, more than doubling your last bet is a fast way to arouse "heat" from the dealer and pit boss. Usually when casinos do realize you are counting they will either shuffle the cards whenever you increase your bet, essentially removing any advantage, or ask you to leave.
WRONG! -- Facts included.
on
Geeks and Poker?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Completely wrong.
http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/slotapx3.htm l
NEVADA - Las Vegas
Unlike New Jersey, the Nevada Gaming Control Board does not break down its slot statistics by individual properties. Rather, they are classified by area.
The annual gaming revenue report breaks the Las Vegas market down into two major areas: the Strip and downtown. There is also a very big locals market in Las Vegas and those casinos are shown in the gaming revenue report as the Boulder Strip and North Las Vegas areas.
When choosing where to do your slot gambling, you may to keep in mind the following slot payback percentages for Nevada's fiscal year beginning July 1, 2002 and ending June 30, 2003:
5 Slot Machines The Strip - 90.32% Downtown - 91.50% Boulder Strip - 93.03% N. Las Vegas - 92.97%
25 Slot Machines The Strip - 92.59% Downtown - 94.83% Boulder Strip - 96.47% N. Las Vegas - 96.63%
$1 Slot Machines The Strip - 94.67% Downtown - 95.35% Boulder Strip - 96.48% N. Las Vegas - 97.21%
$1 Megabucks Machines The Strip - 89.12% Downtown - 88.55% Boulder Strip - 87.76% N. Las Vegas - 89.41%
$5 Slot Machines The Strip - 95.33% Downtown - 95.61% Boulder Strip - 96.53% N. Las Vegas - 96.50%
All Slot Machines The Strip - 93.85% Downtown - 94.32% Boulder Strip - 95.34% N. Las Vegas - 95.32%
These numbers reflect the percentage of money returned to the players on each denomination of machine. All electronic machines including slots, video poker and video keno are included in these numbers.
As you can see, the machines in downtown Las Vegas pay out 1% to 2% more than those located on the Las Vegas Strip for the lower denomination 5 and 25 machines. When you get to the $1 and $5 machines the difference is less noticeable but you can clearly see that the downtown casinos always return more than the Strip area casinos. This information is pretty well known by the locals and that's why many of them do their slot gambling away from the Strip unless they are drawn by a special slot club benefit or promotion.
Returns even better than the downtown casinos can be found at some of the other locals casinos along Boulder Highway such as Boulder Station and Sam's Town and also in the North Las Vegas area which would include the Fiesta, Santa Fe and Texas Station casinos. Not only are those numbers among the best returns in the Las Vegas area, they are also among the best payback percentages for anywhere in the United States.
I spent a 24 hour block at work on Thursday fighting an undetectable to McAfee/Norton/Trend version of Polybot/Gaobot/SDBot.
The *bot line of worms spreads two ways. It uses both the RPC exploit (patched last year) and by using a laundry list of username/password combinations. While I'll be the first to admit that a STRONG local administrative password and 100% patched boxes would have evaded *this* worm, it won't be a defense against the next one that targets RPC-like-flaw-v2.0 or that includes our "strong" local administrative password in its list of passwords to try.
The *bot series of worms is also pretty "neat" in that it immediately updates the HOSTS. file of infected machines to redirect all major AV update sites to 127.0.0.1, and it spawns a double-process that each iteration of itself checks constantly to ensure that the other instance of itself is still running, and that all of its restart values are still in place. Tricky indeed.
Sure, lock the HOSTS. file too you say, but we've got more than one VPN solution in-house that changes HOSTS. when executing.
Use VNC on our desktops? As soon as it includes domain authentication instead of weak passwords stored plaintext in the registry. (Yes, there are updated versions, yes the source is available, but "use VNC" isn't as simple as it sounds. -- From a security standpoint, VNC just isn't "secure.")
Up-to-date AV? Useless against new threats.
Turn off the SERVER service you say! That'll fix 'em......it'll also stop you from fixing anything remotely too.
Anyway, rambling aside, we deployed a fix (with a tool that, ironicly would be caught by many AV programs as "dangerous" and blocked -- since our fix included a copy of PSKILL) to our machines through our automated software deployment agent, and we'll be cleaning up HOSTS. files later this week.
There is no "do this and you will be protected" blanket statement. If there was, I'd be out of a job.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my jebus!
:(
The post gets edited from "OGG" to "Ogg" and I get moderated to troll. What's the world coming to.
It's Ogg not OGG!
Replying to myself! Good lawd, I'm bored.
Flamebait? Don't get me wrong, but there's two types of people out there: Those kooky people who buy Macs, and the rest of us.
Apple also confirms that no new customers will be buying any of their products except iPods.
It's OK, I had Karma to burn.
SuperMediaStore and Meritline represent pretty much the cheapest places to safely buy large quantites of high-quality media (read: Ridata, et cetera).
So, if you've got something important to burn, and it's 8.5G in size, it better be $20 important, you'd better not accidentally make a coster, and don't forget to pay your VAT if you're in one of those countries.
Also, the dual-layered NEC2510A runs about $79 (or cheaper!) at NewEgg.
If I could moderate in my own threads, you sir, would get a point :)
All replies will be of the following:
(a) FP!
(b) GNAA
(c) How dare he change the film.
(d) How dare the DVD not have both version.
(e) Star Wars sucks now, you bastard.
(f) Proffit!
...so, like 97%?
Saying "[Windows is a] pain in the ass to install" is absurd. While GREAT strides have been made with the installer, it's just not any more or less easy to install Suse or Redhat than it is to install XP. Similarly, installing your nVidia driver isn't exactly mom-friendly under Linux yet. It can't be much more complicated than finding the missing chipset drivers for your Mr. Nobody brand motherboard -- and I assure you, if you're looking for it under XP, you're probbaly looking for it under Linux too.
You people complain about FUD all the time, and you throw out things like "inexplicably decide[s] not to work." ...WHAT? Windows doesn't inexplicably do anything. I don't spend all day doing anything except WORKING on my XP.SP2 machine, and it *works*. It doesn't crash "willy nilly." Windows isn't the giant collection of BSODs people want to pretend that it is.
Is Microsoft perfect? No. Good lord no. Does IE still have scripting exploits that even McAfee and Norton only *sometimes* block? Yes, absolutely. But Linux is not "The Answer" (capital T, capital A). It is _an_answer_ to some problems.
THAT got moderated interesting?I use EasyNews, so I've pretty much got unlimited porn already.
I, for one, am looking forward to using the new Porn Beats search engine.
Thank goodness you can download critical updates manually regardless of your key. *whew*
You can get a Rebel for $900.
You can hack it to be 10D for free.
You can buy a $200 Muvo and swap out the 4G microdrive.
These Agobot variations wouldn't be a problem if half of the virus scanners in the world didn't only scan into UPX compressed files.
The problem is, if you search google for Executale Compressors you get a hundred more that McAfee and Norton can't see until it's too late.
Run PEID and find a couple hundred things on your OWN executables that McAfee can't look inside.
The release of the Phatbot source made most of this possible. Agobot had over a thousand variants because any kid with GCC could change half a dozen strings, pick a new list of tasks to kill, pick a new IRC server to report back to for 'pwn3rship' and then pack the thing up with the executable compressor of his choice.
Not everything should be released under the GPL, I'm afraid.
The real reason dinosaurs became extinct!
Well, at least they only sue you for about $.72 on the dollar...
From: http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/
Legally speaking the player may play blackjack any way he wants without cheating or using a computer, and the casinos may do anything from making conditions unfavorable to barring in an effort to stop anyone who they deem has an advantage over the game. Much of the challenge of card counting is avoiding suspicion that you are anything but a normal non-counting player. The most obvious indication that somebody is counting is that they make a substantial increase in bet size after a lot of small cards leave the table. Although the greater the factor by which you can increase your bet the greater your odds of winning, more than doubling your last bet is a fast way to arouse "heat" from the dealer and pit boss. Usually when casinos do realize you are counting they will either shuffle the cards whenever you increase your bet, essentially removing any advantage, or ask you to leave.
Completely wrong.
m l
http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/slotapx3.ht
NEVADA - Las Vegas
Unlike New Jersey, the Nevada Gaming Control Board does not break down its slot statistics by individual properties. Rather, they are classified by area.
The annual gaming revenue report breaks the Las Vegas market down into two major areas: the Strip and downtown. There is also a very big locals market in Las Vegas and those casinos are shown in the gaming revenue report as the Boulder Strip and North Las Vegas areas.
When choosing where to do your slot gambling, you may to keep in mind the following slot payback percentages for Nevada's fiscal year beginning July 1, 2002 and ending June 30, 2003:
5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 90.32%
Downtown - 91.50%
Boulder Strip - 93.03%
N. Las Vegas - 92.97%
25 Slot Machines
The Strip - 92.59%
Downtown - 94.83%
Boulder Strip - 96.47%
N. Las Vegas - 96.63%
$1 Slot Machines
The Strip - 94.67%
Downtown - 95.35%
Boulder Strip - 96.48%
N. Las Vegas - 97.21%
$1 Megabucks Machines
The Strip - 89.12%
Downtown - 88.55%
Boulder Strip - 87.76%
N. Las Vegas - 89.41%
$5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 95.33%
Downtown - 95.61%
Boulder Strip - 96.53%
N. Las Vegas - 96.50%
All Slot Machines
The Strip - 93.85%
Downtown - 94.32%
Boulder Strip - 95.34%
N. Las Vegas - 95.32%
These numbers reflect the percentage of money returned to the players on each denomination of machine. All electronic machines including slots, video poker and video keno are included in these numbers.
As you can see, the machines in downtown Las Vegas pay out 1% to 2% more than those located on the Las Vegas Strip for the lower denomination 5 and 25 machines. When you get to the $1 and $5 machines the difference is less noticeable but you can clearly see that the downtown casinos always return more than the Strip area casinos. This information is pretty well known by the locals and that's why many of them do their slot gambling away from the Strip unless they are drawn by a special slot club benefit or promotion.
Returns even better than the downtown casinos can be found at some of the other locals casinos along Boulder Highway such as Boulder Station and Sam's Town and also in the North Las Vegas area which would include the Fiesta, Santa Fe and Texas Station casinos. Not only are those numbers among the best returns in the Las Vegas area, they are also among the best payback percentages for anywhere in the United States.
www.wizardofodds.com
Gambling math, stats, theories, and great newbie information.
Sir, you can have this copy of SUSE Standard, or this copy of XP Professional and a corned beef on rye.
I spent a 24 hour block at work on Thursday fighting an undetectable to McAfee/Norton/Trend version of Polybot/Gaobot/SDBot.
...it'll also stop you from fixing anything remotely too.
The *bot line of worms spreads two ways. It uses both the RPC exploit (patched last year) and by using a laundry list of username/password combinations. While I'll be the first to admit that a STRONG local administrative password and 100% patched boxes would have evaded *this* worm, it won't be a defense against the next one that targets RPC-like-flaw-v2.0 or that includes our "strong" local administrative password in its list of passwords to try.
The *bot series of worms is also pretty "neat" in that it immediately updates the HOSTS. file of infected machines to redirect all major AV update sites to 127.0.0.1, and it spawns a double-process that each iteration of itself checks constantly to ensure that the other instance of itself is still running, and that all of its restart values are still in place. Tricky indeed.
Sure, lock the HOSTS. file too you say, but we've got more than one VPN solution in-house that changes HOSTS. when executing.
Use VNC on our desktops? As soon as it includes domain authentication instead of weak passwords stored plaintext in the registry. (Yes, there are updated versions, yes the source is available, but "use VNC" isn't as simple as it sounds. -- From a security standpoint, VNC just isn't "secure.")
Up-to-date AV? Useless against new threats.
Turn off the SERVER service you say! That'll fix 'em...
Anyway, rambling aside, we deployed a fix (with a tool that, ironicly would be caught by many AV programs as "dangerous" and blocked -- since our fix included a copy of PSKILL) to our machines through our automated software deployment agent, and we'll be cleaning up HOSTS. files later this week.
There is no "do this and you will be protected" blanket statement. If there was, I'd be out of a job.
You mean, it won't be this game?
Will he use his powers for good, or awesome?