Disclaimer: I used to work for the largest chain of casinos in the country taking care of the machines that actually talked to all the slots and games in the casino.
Casinos would like you to believe in Ocean's 13 size IT rooms and facial recognition and such. The truth is that most casino security is low-tech (cameras and people). The largest cheating ring that was broken up recently involved a gaming commission, law enforcement, and the casinos themselves busting a partnership between outside cheaters and the employees working at the table. You have to remember, the states view cheating as bilking them out of the exorbitant taxes they get to rake from casinos since casinos are evil like cigarettes and okay to tax at obscene rates.
If some casino is using facial recognition scanning software etc, they probably are just peeing money down a drain. More likely, its hype designed to scare off cheaters. I think its a dumb idea to create this image though.
In Stalin's Russia, there wasn't a dossier on everyone, but the fear of a dossier on everyone was what helped keep the masses in check. Cultivating a fear in casino goers that they are under watch at all times and being scanned isn't in the interest of the big casinos. Casinos are the last place you are free to be free. You can let your hair down, have a politically incorrect drink, and inhale politically incorrect air.
Go to a casino, have fun, and remember that the cameras are more likely watching employees than they are watching you.
Can we get some other stories by Art Bell guests on slashdot please? You know, good credible information sources like BBV that promise to expose a stolen election and then remove the story about how they are going to expose it after they solicited donations in the mean time? Good ole Bev Harris who posted about how her window washers were FBI moles.
Please stop posting BBV stories. BBV is to election fraud what Enterprise Mission is to astronomy.
Firewire was mostly used for DV cameras and external hard drives. These devices worked pretty well under XP, Linux, and OSX. However, the 800 pound gorilla has turned on firewire.
Vista's firewire implementation is the pits. I think TI spec controllers basically didn't work at all even though the cards were recognized (maybe it was the other spec). MS recently released a hotfix that remedied some of the problems, but the controllers were then only working up to 100mbps and not 400 even with registry settings set to 400. Getting 12MB/s to an external hard disk instead of 48MB is pretty ghetto.
Also, MS recently released a technote saying that IP over Firewire wasn't an oversight in Vista. It is a feature that will never be re-implemented.
The 800lb gorilla has left the building and I don't think Linux and OSX computers will be enough to keep the market for firewire devices robust except.
I was going to post something non-confrontational about how election conspiracy theories (which certain slashdot editors helped propagate with stories from disreputable sources) have probably jaundiced slashdot readers into either yawning when they see this or having their knee jerk and make wry remarks about how the US is probably just as bad.
Thanks for beating me to the punch with a very confrontational version of what I wanted to say that draws party lines and political ideology into what is really a conspiracy theory/kooky thinking issue.
The really sad part is, if you look, the conspiracy comments are getting good mod points.
Because of PCI compliance you have Linux/Unix admins across the country installing useless virus scanners that scan for windows viruses on their Linux/Unix machines. PCI compliance is a private initiative by the credit card companies.
I would hate to see the retardation government compliance laws in 50 different states would result in.
The sad thing is, a call to support legitimate voting watchdog groups followed by a quote of Bev Harris acting like a creationist about her voting conspiracies is down modded to a troll immediately.
2 of the replies so far have been people mad because I left the "ic" out of DU's name as if I was besmirching the political party that site favors.
This site is a decent enough news source but when its used as a tool for the kooks I get up in arms. Bev Harris' people are one step away from shadow government kooks and a quick read of their forums will show you that.
Try using a tool called google? There are some wonderful Bev Harris crackpot links on the web including old Art Bell show stuff. Don't feel limited to the piece DemocraticUnderground compiled on her.
There are legitimate evoting orgs out there. Help one of them. DemocratUnderground exposed Bev Harris as a phony a long time ago. Her people regularly astroturf here. Here is some of Bev Harris' latest kookery. Find a legitimate evoting org and help them instead.
By the way: the scientific community has been complicit in cover-ups of the truth, and makes errors -- as you just did when you asserted that VoteHere code did not need to be stolen because it was public, without doing your homework on the dates or running a simple media search. RABA technologies head Michael Wertheimer withheld crucial information from his report, supposedly because he was told to by Diebold lobbyists and people in Lamone's office. Scientists have yet to acknowledge the very real and continuing issues with GEMS, WinEDS and the other central tabulating programs.
To say that Black Box Voting has a "reputation" for making assertions is an elitist bit pushed by the scientists and their followers. You just made an assertion, about VoteHere. The scientists have made several incorrect assertions -- at one point, one of the very well known ones tried to get Hursti to CHANGE HIS REPORT so as not to expose an incorrect assertion this guy had been making.
You can find old Art Bell/George Norry interviews with Bev Harris where she goes on her conspiracy theories. Try BBV's forums, you can find Bev Harris saying their window washer is with the FBI and other looney stuff. Try democratunderground and see their long expose on Bev Harris including citations and evidence.
You restated everything I stated innaccurately to discredit my assertions which are easily backup up by simple google searches. No offense, but you are not interested in hearing the truth.
- BBV are "kooks" and only in it for the money
* I didnt say that
- They've been disowned even by other "fringe" groups
* BBV is a fringe group being mainstreamed by exposure such as slashdot gives. I maintain they are a fringe group.
- The EFF was tricked into giving them "some" award
* I didnt say that. I said the legitimization of BBV has led to this sort of thing.
- They engage in astroturfing
* This is acknowledged on their forums. They encourage it.
- This article was planted by BBV as part of an astroturf campaign.
* Most likely yes, read their activism forums where they tell people how to get out the message.
You may need to reread what I wrote since you didn't understand it.
Bev Harris the founder of BBV was an Art Bell guest type kook who rode dissatisfaction with 2000 into a money making scheme. DemocratUnderground are some pretty fringe guys but even they won't take BS from BBV after seeing the scams they run.
So now because slashdot has let so many BBV stories and astroturfing go on here, these guys look more and more legitmate. They even won some EFF award.
If you criticize some of the nefarious things they have done or even point out which voting activist friendly sources have disowned BBV, the BBV astroturfers accuse you of shooting the messenger.
BBV encourages its member to astroturf like this, bomb news media fax machines, call into shows, etc. You are witnessing how they net new members and funds.
Bev Harris is an acknowledged kook who used to do the Art Bell circuit but got promoted to legitmacy because her people are so effective at pushing these stories to media like Slashdot. Boom, she's an EFF award winner.
The black box voting people are bigtime astro-turfers and they use willing sites like slashdot to make BBV seem more legitimate and draw in more marks.
Read up on BBV:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=view_all&address=203x340188
Gee, could we get some stories about how communism is bad from the John Birch soceity while were at it?
The point is, the bragged about their youth and lack of education as if it was a boon and not a caution point. How would you like to know your firewall was designed by teenage hax0rs with no training in methodology or business ethics (or even kissed a girl for the first time for that matter)?
I was on a scuba cruise and there was a guy from ISS onboard. He was bragging to me about how ISS had all these 18 year old uber-crackers with fast cares and no college degree making their products.
I told him I would never buy any of their products since I figured they were just as likely to insert their own backdoors in the products due to maturity reasons.
This is just priceless though, I wish that guy a hardy Nelson "har har".
Here is the deal. Hoagland makes extraordinary claims. It is up to the claimant to provide extraordinary evidence.
For instance, Hoagland's proof for life on Mars includes an old blurry pixellated photo of a "face". Plait points out that this is not proof.
Plait doesn't have to disprove there is life on Mars to "debunk" Hoagland, he merely needs to point out the lack of evidence for it.
Now, even with a high resolution photograph of the face, Hoagland refuses to back down from his claims and keeps selling books on the subject. I think his credibility and motives are open for speculation. Hoagland also misrepresents his credentials and this should be open to scrutiny.
My biggest problem with Ximian is that it breaks your distro's dependency tree. Sometiems they will use split packages wheres your vendor doesn't. Installing ximian means you break your upgrade path, now why would anyone want that?
It seems to me a trifle thing to use the same package names your vendor does and work within how things in your distro are already done.
Allofasudden, +X to light radius items mean something. Maphack gets rid of the "fogofwar" and that means a lot for characters that rely on avoiding enemies to survive.
The only point in the article was about marijauna. I can't believe something this vacuous is newsworthy here.
I intentionally leave off the YRO stories on slashdot so I don't have to read the political shilling and editorializing that goes on here. I want news for nerds and not activism.
How about instead of me removing "United States" from my news listings, you guys stop posting horse puckey? Deal? Nah.... that'll never happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Casinos would like you to believe in Ocean's 13 size IT rooms and facial recognition and such. The truth is that most casino security is low-tech (cameras and people). The largest cheating ring that was broken up recently involved a gaming commission, law enforcement, and the casinos themselves busting a partnership between outside cheaters and the employees working at the table. You have to remember, the states view cheating as bilking them out of the exorbitant taxes they get to rake from casinos since casinos are evil like cigarettes and okay to tax at obscene rates.
If some casino is using facial recognition scanning software etc, they probably are just peeing money down a drain. More likely, its hype designed to scare off cheaters. I think its a dumb idea to create this image though.
In Stalin's Russia, there wasn't a dossier on everyone, but the fear of a dossier on everyone was what helped keep the masses in check. Cultivating a fear in casino goers that they are under watch at all times and being scanned isn't in the interest of the big casinos. Casinos are the last place you are free to be free. You can let your hair down, have a politically incorrect drink, and inhale politically incorrect air.
Go to a casino, have fun, and remember that the cameras are more likely watching employees than they are watching you.
Run uncensored internet to the target country. It wouldn't surprise me if this actually happened.
Please stop posting BBV stories. BBV is to election fraud what Enterprise Mission is to astronomy.
Vista's firewire implementation is the pits. I think TI spec controllers basically didn't work at all even though the cards were recognized (maybe it was the other spec). MS recently released a hotfix that remedied some of the problems, but the controllers were then only working up to 100mbps and not 400 even with registry settings set to 400. Getting 12MB/s to an external hard disk instead of 48MB is pretty ghetto.
Also, MS recently released a technote saying that IP over Firewire wasn't an oversight in Vista. It is a feature that will never be re-implemented.
The 800lb gorilla has left the building and I don't think Linux and OSX computers will be enough to keep the market for firewire devices robust except.
I was going to post something non-confrontational about how election conspiracy theories (which certain slashdot editors helped propagate with stories from disreputable sources) have probably jaundiced slashdot readers into either yawning when they see this or having their knee jerk and make wry remarks about how the US is probably just as bad. Thanks for beating me to the punch with a very confrontational version of what I wanted to say that draws party lines and political ideology into what is really a conspiracy theory/kooky thinking issue. The really sad part is, if you look, the conspiracy comments are getting good mod points.
I would hate to see the retardation government compliance laws in 50 different states would result in.
The sad thing is, a call to support legitimate voting watchdog groups followed by a quote of Bev Harris acting like a creationist about her voting conspiracies is down modded to a troll immediately. 2 of the replies so far have been people mad because I left the "ic" out of DU's name as if I was besmirching the political party that site favors. This site is a decent enough news source but when its used as a tool for the kooks I get up in arms. Bev Harris' people are one step away from shadow government kooks and a quick read of their forums will show you that.
Try using a tool called google? There are some wonderful Bev Harris crackpot links on the web including old Art Bell show stuff. Don't feel limited to the piece DemocraticUnderground compiled on her.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Kelvin%2 0Mace/2
You restated everything I stated innaccurately to discredit my assertions which are easily backup up by simple google searches. No offense, but you are not interested in hearing the truth. - BBV are "kooks" and only in it for the money * I didnt say that - They've been disowned even by other "fringe" groups * BBV is a fringe group being mainstreamed by exposure such as slashdot gives. I maintain they are a fringe group. - The EFF was tricked into giving them "some" award * I didnt say that. I said the legitimization of BBV has led to this sort of thing. - They engage in astroturfing * This is acknowledged on their forums. They encourage it. - This article was planted by BBV as part of an astroturf campaign. * Most likely yes, read their activism forums where they tell people how to get out the message.
You may need to reread what I wrote since you didn't understand it.
So now because slashdot has let so many BBV stories and astroturfing go on here, these guys look more and more legitmate. They even won some EFF award.
If you criticize some of the nefarious things they have done or even point out which voting activist friendly sources have disowned BBV, the BBV astroturfers accuse you of shooting the messenger.
BBV encourages its member to astroturf like this, bomb news media fax machines, call into shows, etc. You are witnessing how they net new members and funds.
Bev Harris is an acknowledged kook who used to do the Art Bell circuit but got promoted to legitmacy because her people are so effective at pushing these stories to media like Slashdot. Boom, she's an EFF award winner. The black box voting people are bigtime astro-turfers and they use willing sites like slashdot to make BBV seem more legitimate and draw in more marks. Read up on BBV: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboa rd.php?az=view_all&address=203x340188
Gee, could we get some stories about how communism is bad from the John Birch soceity while were at it?
How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence
Here is the headline Michael ran with:
White House Lied About Iraq Nuclear Programs
Do we really need to the News for Nerds site turning into moveon.org?
The point is, the bragged about their youth and lack of education as if it was a boon and not a caution point. How would you like to know your firewall was designed by teenage hax0rs with no training in methodology or business ethics (or even kissed a girl for the first time for that matter)?
I told him I would never buy any of their products since I figured they were just as likely to insert their own backdoors in the products due to maturity reasons.
This is just priceless though, I wish that guy a hardy Nelson "har har".
Here is the deal. Hoagland makes extraordinary claims. It is up to the claimant to provide extraordinary evidence. For instance, Hoagland's proof for life on Mars includes an old blurry pixellated photo of a "face". Plait points out that this is not proof. Plait doesn't have to disprove there is life on Mars to "debunk" Hoagland, he merely needs to point out the lack of evidence for it. Now, even with a high resolution photograph of the face, Hoagland refuses to back down from his claims and keeps selling books on the subject. I think his credibility and motives are open for speculation. Hoagland also misrepresents his credentials and this should be open to scrutiny.
We all know from slashdot that Dubya putting limits on government funded stem cell research will result in an Alzheimer's cure never being found.
The solaris 9 installer stinks,
the patch system is horrible,
the package system is far behind dpkg or rpm
Seriously, this author has a serious hard-on for solaris and it shows. Solaris is stuck in the year 1997.
This isn't a troll, this is just the way it is.
It seems to me a trifle thing to use the same package names your vendor does and work within how things in your distro are already done.
Allofasudden, +X to light radius items mean something. Maphack gets rid of the "fogofwar" and that means a lot for characters that rely on avoiding enemies to survive.
Most of the problems I see people still having has to do with repartitioning a dual-boot sytem.
It isnt me who has his head in the sand.
0
Number of times Slashdot has implied the US has curtailed civil liberties since 9-11:
1512
Shocking.
I intentionally leave off the YRO stories on slashdot so I don't have to read the political shilling and editorializing that goes on here. I want news for nerds and not activism.
How about instead of me removing "United States" from my news listings, you guys stop posting horse puckey? Deal? Nah.... that'll never happen.