Although it's about blackjack, not poker, I'd also recommend Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. The subtitle speaks for itself, "The inside story of six MIT students who tooks Vegas for millions." You can't ask for a better story about geeky college students analyzing the mathematics of card counting and beating Vegas at their own game.
BitKeeper doesn't bother me because I can always choose not to use it
...but you can always choose not to use DRM, say, by using only pre-2003 computers. The problem with Linus' practicality is its succeptiability to falling down the slippery slope. We are going to have problems when we value convenience more than freedom. I have a hard time seeing where you could draw a distinct line between BitKeeper is good, DRM is bad in the following list...
"You don't HAVE to use BitKeeper to submit kernel patches, it's just more convenient"
"You don't HAVE to use the Intel (TM) compiler, it just compiles 5% faster (and we'll get to those gcc problems eventually)"
"You don't HAVE to use this $500 version of Microsoft lint, its just that all of the other kernel hackers do."
"You don't HAVE to use this binary only kernel module, you just won't be able to send email otherwise"
"You don't HAVE to use a kernel signed by Hollywood, you just won't be able to boot your computer"
"You don't HAVE to use our DRM restricted hardware, use computers from 10 years ago."
"You don't HAVE to use our DRM hardware, just go build your own fab to make chips (90% of the earth's crust is Si02!)"
"You don't HAVE to follow the laws of this country, just go start your own country"
I grew up in Billings, MT (and my parents still live there), and let me tell you, those aren't programming jobs that are spurring on the growth. There's a reason me and all of my friends pursuing high-tech jobs moved away. All those growth jobs are in areas like construction. The big industry is cattle ("more cattle go through Billings, MT than anywhere else in the world!"), followed by closely by tourism (close proximity to Yellowstone National Park, etc.). It's a nice quite pace of life (population ~90,000), and you should be able to buy a nice 1500sf home for $100,000. So before you pack up your worldly goods and move to Montana, you'd better already have your coding job all lined up, otherwise you might be stuck as the greeter at the brand new Wal-Mart (although competetion might be stiff for that position, since the K-Mart down the street in closing its doors).
And I suppose there is one other benefit Fox sees from lying. I can almost hear the laywers saying "We can't copyright facts, but hey, if we make it up, that's fair game for copyright law. Then we can whip out the DCMA and sue someone if they try to report on our lies." Clever. Very clever.
Since I've seen no mention of methane hydrates yet, I'll bring it up. Methane hydrate is a compound somewhat similar to natural gas that is found trapped in ice crystals on the ocean floor. We don't know how to extract it economically yet, but according to the this article there are about 400 million trillion cubic feet of this stuff worldwide. Replace "Hydorgen Economy" with "Methane Gas Economy" and you've now got a resource that you can mine. Check out google for more info on methane hydrates.
Vblogs sound like a good match for multicasting, where you distribute your video every hour on the hour, instead of whenever a user just happens to drop by. If video blogging is the killer app which jumpstarts the demand for IPv6 (and multicasting), I'm all for it.
Perhaps I should explain how I think it could work in the ideal case. I admit you could do better than random sampling. Find out where the FBI/CIA offices are located on a map. Draw a perimeter around the offices where you think the commute time would be about 30 minutes or so. Gather up public domain information on housing prices/rents in those areas (from real-estate agency info, property tax info, etc.). Subtract out the neighborhoods in which the housing costs are not in line with what a low-mid level FBI civil servent makes (i.e. no $1,000,000 estates, no public housing). Then you gather up your thousand or two dedicated individuals who will send out 5 or 10 copies of the book (I did say *dedicated* didn't I?)(Note to self: We probably need broader coverage of this issue than this/. thread. Submit story to Politech, instablogger, et cetera. Also resubmit to Slashdot:). Then you hope and pray that you hit 5% of the households. The next time a scheduled polygraph comes along the interview goes something like this...
Interrogator:
Before we get started, is there anything you'd like to get off your chest?
Subject: Well...I, um...you see...last month I got this, um, package in the mail, which had a book called _The Lie Behind the Lie Detector_ in it. I didn't read it or anything, in fact I threw it out right away. But I was kinda feelin' guilty about it and I wouldn't want it to effect my poly results or anything. Everything's alright, right?
Interrogator (with a frowny-face, while scribbling into a notebook): Hmmm... That doesn't sound so good.
So then the department which runs the polygraph testing notices a statistically significant uptick in the number of subjects that admit that they have been possibly exposed to (and compromised by) poly countermeasures. Uh oh. A memo is drafted which details this phenomena. Meanwhile a dedicated reporter for the Washington Post, who just happens to have an inside source at the FBI, comes across the memo and writes an article about some internet radicals trying to subvert the FBI during these trying times (terrorists, you know). Suddenly, something that was only minutes ago a boring old fact now becomes newsworhty! First the Post runs the story, then Newsweek devotes a cover to the issue and 60 Minutes does an expose. Then the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the issue. A bill is drafted, passed by both houses, and signed by the Prez. Ta, da! Problem solved. Chalk up another victory for those freedom loving geeks on the 'Net!
The whole sender-pays email system has a lot of questions surrounding it. So can anyone point us in the direction of an RFC (informational/official/otherwise) which goes into detail describing it? The only thing that I could find is RFC 2753 which talks about sender-pays network services in general and a slight mention of sender-pays email in RFC 1192 which states that mailing list traffic is reduced in sender-pays situations like MCI-MAIL. It seems like an RFC would be the next logical step.
What we need to do is start apply spam principals to telemarketers, like a teergrube. I don't know if it would be possible to do, but I'd like to have a button next to my phone which I could press which wouldn't hang up the connection for an hour or two, thus clogging up their precious lines. I've heard that law enforcement has something like this to help in tracing calls. Or even better, have a machine setup which listens in and whenever it hears a pause on the other end of the line it would spit out a canned recording saying something like "hmmm.. that's interesting. Tell me more".
And why exactly can't we have a SPEWS/blackhole type of call blocking list? I'm paitently waiting.
Print up copies of the book -- or summarize the basic points on a smaller handout -- and hand them out at FBI, at DoJ, and make them available in the usual places like lefty bookstores and so forth.
That solution requires a lot of work. You need round up highly motivated individuals to take time off of work, spend money flying into D.C. and stand around hasseling honest people, trying to convince them you're not a nut. My solution requires almost no work (File->Print on your browser, or a trip to the local print shop) and minimal expense ($10 worth of paper per copy?) Because of its distributed nature (thousands of people spread throughout the country) it would be hard to quell, and provide little backlash risk for any single participant.
If they've got a curriculum in polygraph countermeasures, you can be pretty certain they know they exist, don't you think?
The point is not that *some* of the higher up people know, but if *everyone* in the FBI was aware of how to defeat a polygraph, then there would be little point in administering them, right?
I'm not really up on the *science* of polygraph, but I've read the The Lie Behind the Lie Detector and it seems pretty damning. The basic premise of the book is that a polygraph interview is really just an interrorgation; all of the equipment is mostly just a ruse to intimidate the subject into telling the truth. Lately I've been wondering what could be done to educate the poor low-level schmucks at the FBI/CIA on this issue (i.e. those employees required to submit to polygraphs on a regular basis). The best I could come up with is engaging the Slashdot-Ralsky protocol. Everyone heads down to the local Kinko's and makes a copy (or three) of the book, and then sends it off to a likely FBI/CIA employee. The copyright notice on the book states that it is free for noncomericial purposes, which I think would cover this situation. The only problem of course is to identify likely CIA/FBI employees. The easist thing would be to start picking random addresses in the suburbs of D.C. (say within a 30-40 minute commute to known FBI office buildings) in the hopes of reaching the FBI employees or their friends and families (and this is assuming that FBI employment data isn't public domain). Of course, random addresses might not be the most efficient, I'm sure someone out there might have a better idea. Maybe we could pick random address, but exclude those we know are employed elswhere (hey, this is kinda like Total Information Awareness in reverse).
It seems like the powers-that-be might not be happy if they knew that a not insignificant portion of their workfore was _aware_ of polygraph countermeasures and "the lie behind the lie detector". Then they might have to admit that polygraph testing is a fraud (or maybe they'd just dismiss us as those "nutty internet kooks").
Anyway, I'd like to see your comments/suggestions on this.
OK, probaby not the whole answer, but this article points out that...
Google News already has made arrangements with some leading news sites that use registration schemes -- such as The New York Times. Google News users who click on links to NYTimes.com articles at Google News go directly to the article -- there's no intervening registration screen -- even if they're not already registered at NYTimes.com. This works, explains product manager Mayer, because the site allows Google's spiders to crawl its content and include links in the Google service. When a non-registered user hits a NYTimes.com page, the site will recognize that it's a referral from Google News and serve up the content
So it looks like should be possible to roll your own brower that makes all of your connections to nytimes.com to appear to be coming from google. Wait a minute, it looks like someone is already doing just that.
Yes the Qt licenses are very confusing, because on their site they claim...
Terms of use Developing and distributing applications Private users may use the Qt non-commercial edition in a non-commercial setting to produce non-commercial applications.
A non-commercial setting means that you must not use the package in the course of your employment or whilst engaged in activities that will be compensated. A non-commercial application is an application that cannot be sold, leased, rented or otherwise distributed for recompense.
Private users may distribute the applications they develop as free software, i.e. they must distribute their software free of charge, include the complete source code and pass on to their users the right to copy and modify the software under the same terms.
...that would seem to be in direct contradiction to what the FSF says about selling GPL'd software...
Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
...and...
The (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.
But finally Trolltech goes on to say...
A simple way to meet these requirements is to use one of the well-established open source licenses for your code. Add a file containing the license text to your source package and a short copyright notice to every source file. See http://www.opensource.org for information on free software licensing and for a list of approved licenses. Note that although the license requires that you provide the source code, you may also include an executable version of your software for the convenience of your users.
It's all very confusing and I can only conclude this confusion is deliberate, in the hopes that they will sell more commercial licenses.
For another proposition (by none other than Mr. Lessig himself) on reducing the effects of long term copyrights, see the Eldred Act FAQ. The excutive summary...
What have you proposed?
We have proposed a tiny tax designed to move unused copyrighted work into the public domain.
How would it work?
Fifty years after a copyrighted work was published, a copyright owner would have to pay a tiny tax. That tax could be as low as $1. If the copyright owner does not pay that tax for three years in a row, then the copyright would be forfeited to the public domain. If the tax is paid, then the form would require the listing of a copyright agent--a person charged with receiving requests about that copyright. The Copyright Office would then make the listing of taxes paid, and copyright agents, available free of charge on their website.
"...Eeyores are Realists, the say. But reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has. Eeyores see only what they want to...For example, never before in history has the individual had so much power, and so many opportunities to effect change. That assertion can be easily verified by taking a good look around. But the Eeyore Effect makes a great many people believe that they are powerless. And because they believe they're powerless, the are.
...Eeyores, in other words, are Whiners. They believe the negative but not the positive and are so obsessed with What's Wrong that the Good Things in Life pass them by unnoticed. Are they the ones, then to give us an accurate account of what life is about? If the universe were governed by the Eeyore Attitude, the whole thing would have collapsed eons ago
...The Critics can be pretty intimidating, all right. One can't do or say much of anything without frear of offending this particular--very particular--type of Eeyore. If you do or say the wrong thing (or the right thing), you may find yourself ostracized. But being Ostracized by Eeyores has its advantages."
Hey this is way OT, but the best quote I could find about a "loss" from Mr. Moglen is...
Users wanted to be infantilized, to return to a pre-linguistic condition in the using of computers, and the Xerox PARC technology`s primary advantage was that it allowed users to address computers in a pre-linguistic way. This was to my mind a terribly socially retrograde thing to do, and I have not changed my mind about that. I lost that war in the early 1980s, went to law school, got a history PHD, did other things, because the fundamental turn in the technology - which we see represented in its most technologically degenerate form, which is Windows, the really crippled version.
Why isn't software (and more importantly Free Software) subject to strict liability for defects (i.e. security holes, etc.)? Is it because of the disclaimers in the license text? Is it because there is no specific tort mentioning software? Is it because, in the case of Free Software, you are only paying for the distribution, not the software? Or is it because no one has a reasonable expectation of bug free programs?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean this guy
Although it's about blackjack, not poker, I'd also recommend Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. The subtitle speaks for itself, "The inside story of six MIT students who tooks Vegas for millions." You can't ask for a better story about geeky college students analyzing the mathematics of card counting and beating Vegas at their own game.
...but you can always choose not to use DRM, say, by using only pre-2003 computers. The problem with Linus' practicality is its succeptiability to falling down the slippery slope. We are going to have problems when we value convenience more than freedom. I have a hard time seeing where you could draw a distinct line between BitKeeper is good, DRM is bad in the following list...
The price of freedom is eternal vigilanceFirst, BitKeeper, then DRM. Maybe it is time to start looking into the Hurd.
I grew up in Billings, MT (and my parents still live there), and let me tell you, those aren't programming jobs that are spurring on the growth. There's a reason me and all of my friends pursuing high-tech jobs moved away. All those growth jobs are in areas like construction. The big industry is cattle ("more cattle go through Billings, MT than anywhere else in the world!"), followed by closely by tourism (close proximity to Yellowstone National Park, etc.). It's a nice quite pace of life (population ~90,000), and you should be able to buy a nice 1500sf home for $100,000. So before you pack up your worldly goods and move to Montana, you'd better already have your coding job all lined up, otherwise you might be stuck as the greeter at the brand new Wal-Mart (although competetion might be stiff for that position, since the K-Mart down the street in closing its doors).
And I suppose there is one other benefit Fox sees from lying. I can almost hear the laywers saying "We can't copyright facts, but hey, if we make it up, that's fair game for copyright law. Then we can whip out the DCMA and sue someone if they try to report on our lies." Clever. Very clever.
Since I've seen no mention of methane hydrates yet, I'll bring it up. Methane hydrate is a compound somewhat similar to natural gas that is found trapped in ice crystals on the ocean floor. We don't know how to extract it economically yet, but according to the this article there are about 400 million trillion cubic feet of this stuff worldwide. Replace "Hydorgen Economy" with "Methane Gas Economy" and you've now got a resource that you can mine. Check out google for more info on methane hydrates.
Vblogs sound like a good match for multicasting, where you distribute your video every hour on the hour, instead of whenever a user just happens to drop by. If video blogging is the killer app which jumpstarts the demand for IPv6 (and multicasting), I'm all for it.
So then the department which runs the polygraph testing notices a statistically significant uptick in the number of subjects that admit that they have been possibly exposed to (and compromised by) poly countermeasures. Uh oh. A memo is drafted which details this phenomena. Meanwhile a dedicated reporter for the Washington Post, who just happens to have an inside source at the FBI, comes across the memo and writes an article about some internet radicals trying to subvert the FBI during these trying times (terrorists, you know). Suddenly, something that was only minutes ago a boring old fact now becomes newsworhty! First the Post runs the story, then Newsweek devotes a cover to the issue and 60 Minutes does an expose. Then the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up the issue. A bill is drafted, passed by both houses, and signed by the Prez. Ta, da! Problem solved. Chalk up another victory for those freedom loving geeks on the 'Net!
The whole sender-pays email system has a lot of questions surrounding it. So can anyone point us in the direction of an RFC (informational/official/otherwise) which goes into detail describing it? The only thing that I could find is RFC 2753 which talks about sender-pays network services in general and a slight mention of sender-pays email in RFC 1192 which states that mailing list traffic is reduced in sender-pays situations like MCI-MAIL. It seems like an RFC would be the next logical step.
And why exactly can't we have a SPEWS/blackhole type of call blocking list? I'm paitently waiting.
It seems like the powers-that-be might not be happy if they knew that a not insignificant portion of their workfore was _aware_ of polygraph countermeasures and "the lie behind the lie detector". Then they might have to admit that polygraph testing is a fraud (or maybe they'd just dismiss us as those "nutty internet kooks").
Anyway, I'd like to see your comments/suggestions on this.
Let's not forget about PDL, the Perl Data Language. Think of Matlab combined with the goodness (i.e. CPAN packages) of perl.
Or the ever popular google cache here
Yup. You can find this answer and many others like it in the GPL FAQ
--The Te of Piglet by Benhamin Hoff
Why isn't software (and more importantly Free Software) subject to strict liability for defects (i.e. security holes, etc.)? Is it because of the disclaimers in the license text? Is it because there is no specific tort mentioning software? Is it because, in the case of Free Software, you are only paying for the distribution, not the software? Or is it because no one has a reasonable expectation of bug free programs?