So you mean to tell me that as these kids grow up, there will be yet another company holding their personal information?
And it's not just an address in a database, but it's every papery that they've written in grade school?
Jesus christ on a pogo stick. At what point does the FBI decide it's a good idea to scan this database when they're profiling an unknown perpetrator? When do they decide it's a good idea to scan this database so that they can "predict" who is likely to be the next Columbine shooter?
Copyright shmopyright. High school kids deserve a little privacy too.
Imagine being frozen for 50 years, then brought back so you could see the world for 1 year, then frozen for another 50, and so on until your natural death. You could witness the world thousands of years from now.
THAT would be great.
It would be great if that company you hired to store you and revive you each time lasted for thousands of years.
How many companies in history have survived for thousands of years?
Do you really think that anyone will want to revive you when the guy you originally hired is dead, his company bankrupt, there has been an economic depression and people are fighting for crumbs in the street? You really think they're going to keep paying the cooling bills for you?
Either it won't play old DVDs and home movies at all (in which case noone will buy these new drives), or it will have some extra track or encoding that indicates the presence of an rfid chip.
People figured out how to get rid of CSS, what makes the studios think that this will be any harder?
Amazing how they invest so much money in this stuff, when it's not likely to last longer than a few months.
Interesting - and typical for the "non-counting/non-memorizing", but "talking about" community - are those percentages mentioned. In your first post you where talking about 1%, while you now mention just "1/2% if you are perfect". Well, that's a 100% difference, or a 50% one?;-)
I studied and practiced counting cards for over two years.
The advantage varies greatly depending on the exact rules of the game you're playing. But as a trolling bullshit artist, you wouldn't know anything about that.
Seriously, if you could actually get an 18% advantage in a casino game you would make a lot of money, very quickly (assuming you didn't get thrown when they figured out your angle). As you allude, card counting is a grind, not a get-rich-quick scheme.
In the US, if you go to Vegas, or Biloxi or Atlantic City, the casinos engage in a cutthroat competition for the gambler's impulse.
There are no forms to sign or anything... it's all about who has the brightest lights, loudest slots and video poker machines... the biggest buffet, etc.
All this talk about the "easy formula of adding and deducting, and take care not to get cought" is FUD, spread and supported by the only people who make money from a casino, the owners.
One could make a good argument that the casino owners are behind the whole concept of card counting... why wouldn't they promote it. There is no better casino customer than one who falsely believes that he is beating the casino.
Very few card counters are good enough for the casinos to actually worry about. And the advantage when successful is only 1% at best.
but card-counting is not cheating, it's good memory.
Card counting really has little to do with memory. It simply involves assigning a point value to each card value and keeping count as each new deck is dealt out. As such. the only thing you have to remember is the current count.
The most useful aspect of card counting is determining your bet size. When there are more tens and aces left in the deck, you have better odds over the dealer (often this becomes an advantage). At this point, you increase the amount of your bet.
Unfortunately, this does make card counting rather easy to spot, so another aspect of card counting is to determine your playing strategy based on the current count. You then have to memorize charts that tell you what is the best play for a certain combination of cards and a given count. This does involve memorization, but not the kind that most people think of when you mention card counting.
Card counting has never really been about memorizing exactly which cards have been dealt out of the deck. Very few people would have the ability to do that. Card counting as it is actually practiced is not that hard to do... though it is very hard to master it such that you maintain your advantage AND don't get kicked out of the casino.
One of the simplest counting systems involves assigning a +1 to all the tens in the deck (tens and face cards), and a -1 to all the 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s. Whenever the count is positive, you have a higher ratio of tens to the lower cards, and thus you probably have an advantage. The more tens, the more likely you get a blackjack, and the more likely the dealer will bust if you don't get a blackjack.
Yeah, but picture this, you walk into a casino and before you can sit at the roulette table, they make you sign a 12 page contract, typed in 10 point text and single-spaced.
If this really is censorship (and if it isn't why didn't they just go get a defamation judgement entered in the US and get the site host to take it down?)
Um, because they aren't IN the US? 1. The US would not have jurisdiction against the Defendant, since he's apparently an Irishman, in Ireland. 2. US courts would have no reason to judge the case, since basically everything about it (except for a few servers) is in Ireland. All the evidence and witnesses are in Ireland. 3. It's going to be governed by Irish law. A US court isn't going to want to deal with trying to interpret Irish law unless they absolutely have to... and they don't.
Besides, why would the plaintiff want to travel all the way to the US to sue her own countryman? It makes no sense.
If chewbacca is a wookie from the planet Endor, you must acquit.
Seriously people, show some fucking appreciation for someone with specialized knowledge who took time out to answer your questions.
If you don't like the answers, well maybe it has something to do with the questions. Every question was modded either +5 "Interesting", or "Funny".
Not a single question was modded "Insightful". And one of the questions insulted him for being a lawyer. Another stupidly asked why he doesn't contact the US Attorney General for help in fighting the RIAA.
Of the good questions, he gave informative and helpful answers.
Maybe it's just the nature of the issue (RIAA and filesharing) that brings out the most moronic of the slashdot crowd, but I am seriously irritated by the stupidity that's been displayed here.
Since "Making copies for my convience and/or time shifting" is not criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, it does NOT fall under Fair Use and the/. "FAIR USE FAIR USE WHAT OF MY RIGHTS" crowd really needs to stop using this argument.
Note that the statute says "for purposes such as". It doesn't say "for the following purposes exclusively".
The purposes listed seem to be examples of valid purposes. Interpreting the language literally, any purposes not listed would have to be "such as" the listed ones (ie similar to them).
I guess we can litigate this to find out whether time-shifting and convenience are sufficiently similar to the other purposes... who wants to goad the RIAA into suing you for ripping your own cds and listening to them on your ipod?
So what does Slashdot think? Are kid growing up too fast nowadays because of them new-fangled technologies?
The problem is not that they are growing up too fast. Kids are being immersed in a consumer lifestyle that celebrates consumption of someone ELSE'S interpretation of the world. That does not equal growing up too fast.
Immersion in bullshit does not cause people to grow up too fast at all. It causes people to grow up too slowly.
Because iPods don't support WMA. If Microsoft can't keep its DRM hole patched, there will soon be a lot of people paying their $15 a month to subscribe to Napster2go or Rhapsody2go or Urge or whatever else is out there... because they know that they can strip the DRM off.
It's a cold hard fact that if people can cheat the system, they will... and those people will want players that play the songs they've "stolen". Those will be players that play the music in the downloaded format: WMA files.
I wonder how much of an effect this will have on iPod sales. Obviously, it's too early to tell.
Is this the first step to escalating videogames to the status of the X-Games and poker?
No. I cannot think of anything more boring than watching someone else play a video game. There is nothing dangerous happening. There is nothing all that interesting happening. It's akin to watching someone else watching a movie.
Seriously, statements like the one quoted above just demonstrate the author's misguided desire that someday other people will share their love of video games... and maybe, just maybe their otherwise useless skill at Quake will get them some sort of notoriety, beyond other gamers.
Ain't gonna happen. It's a toy. There's nothing wrong with that. Just be real about it. Mmmmmmkay?
There is no such thing as a right to speedy trial in a civil suit. It only applies to criminal cases.
Also, can I counter-sue for lost time, lost wages, added stress, etc.?
Probably not. First, you aren't going to lose any wages unless you have to take time off from your job. There's no reason you would have to do that unless it actually went to trial.
Stress, distress, etcetera are awardable in situations where your leg gets cut off or you watch your kid get run over by a car. But they are not awardable simply because someone gave you something to worry about. In other words, emotional damage is very hard to prove, so the law doesn't allow it in most cases. It's only allowed in cases where there is some sort of severe physical impact on you or a loved one in your presence.
...to purchase your products, but it's also good service to have plenty of friendly cashiers at the counter. Should the government mandate that as well? When government tells private business how to operate, you can guarantee that businesses will do the minimum necessary to comply. Sometimes this is necessary with regards to fair trade and product safety, but it is *not* necessary in this case.
You blithely assume that it is "good business" to serve blind people. But clearly the people in control at Target disagree with you.
If a store does not have friendly cashiers at the counter, it will be punished by the free market.
But a store will not be punished by the free market if it decides not to accomodate blind people. It will simply not get business that it didn't desire in the first place.
(Actually, that's a UK figure. But I doubt that the US is hugely different.)
I believe you would be right about that. Former Dekalb County, Georgia DA J. Tom Morgan wrote a very good piece about the Georgia law (not quite as bad as this Ohio law we're talking about, but still bad).
Slashdot Mirror
...who gets to decide what is outside the subject?
Congress right?
Next idea please.
So you mean to tell me that as these kids grow up, there will be yet another company holding their personal information?
And it's not just an address in a database, but it's every papery that they've written in grade school?
Jesus christ on a pogo stick. At what point does the FBI decide it's a good idea to scan this database when they're profiling an unknown perpetrator? When do they decide it's a good idea to scan this database so that they can "predict" who is likely to be the next Columbine shooter?
Copyright shmopyright. High school kids deserve a little privacy too.
christ almighty it was just a joke... maybe kind of a lame joke... but not flamebait.
jeez
that the headline would have read better if it said "Gentoo spills seed."
Just sayin.
Imagine being frozen for 50 years, then brought back so you could see the world for 1 year, then frozen for another 50, and so on until your natural death. You could witness the world thousands of years from now.
THAT would be great.
It would be great if that company you hired to store you and revive you each time lasted for thousands of years.
How many companies in history have survived for thousands of years?
Do you really think that anyone will want to revive you when the guy you originally hired is dead, his company bankrupt, there has been an economic depression and people are fighting for crumbs in the street? You really think they're going to keep paying the cooling bills for you?
Either it won't play old DVDs and home movies at all (in which case noone will buy these new drives), or it will have some extra track or encoding that indicates the presence of an rfid chip.
People figured out how to get rid of CSS, what makes the studios think that this will be any harder?
Amazing how they invest so much money in this stuff, when it's not likely to last longer than a few months.
Interesting - and typical for the "non-counting/non-memorizing", but "talking about" community - are those percentages mentioned. In your first post you where talking about 1%, while you now mention just "1/2% if you are perfect". Well, that's a 100% difference, or a 50% one? ;-)
I studied and practiced counting cards for over two years.
The advantage varies greatly depending on the exact rules of the game you're playing. But as a trolling bullshit artist, you wouldn't know anything about that.
In a usual Blackjack setting with common rules correct counting puts your advantage over 18%
You're way off. In a "usual" setting (ie, a 6 deck shoe), you are likely to get only a 1/2% advantage if you are perfect.
See here, here, and here.
Seriously, if you could actually get an 18% advantage in a casino game you would make a lot of money, very quickly (assuming you didn't get thrown when they figured out your angle). As you allude, card counting is a grind, not a get-rich-quick scheme.
Oh, I didn't know that.
In the US, if you go to Vegas, or Biloxi or Atlantic City, the casinos engage in a cutthroat competition for the gambler's impulse.
There are no forms to sign or anything... it's all about who has the brightest lights, loudest slots and video poker machines... the biggest buffet, etc.
Now I can....
wait... what can I do with this?
All this talk about the "easy formula of adding and deducting, and take care not to get cought" is FUD, spread and supported by the only people who make money from a casino, the owners.
One could make a good argument that the casino owners are behind the whole concept of card counting... why wouldn't they promote it. There is no better casino customer than one who falsely believes that he is beating the casino.
Very few card counters are good enough for the casinos to actually worry about. And the advantage when successful is only 1% at best.
It's funny, cause I was thinking about how easy it is to mix up the positive and negative when I wrote it... but I still mixed it up.
Thanks for the correction.
but card-counting is not cheating, it's good memory.
Card counting really has little to do with memory. It simply involves assigning a point value to each card value and keeping count as each new deck is dealt out. As such. the only thing you have to remember is the current count.
The most useful aspect of card counting is determining your bet size. When there are more tens and aces left in the deck, you have better odds over the dealer (often this becomes an advantage). At this point, you increase the amount of your bet.
Unfortunately, this does make card counting rather easy to spot, so another aspect of card counting is to determine your playing strategy based on the current count. You then have to memorize charts that tell you what is the best play for a certain combination of cards and a given count. This does involve memorization, but not the kind that most people think of when you mention card counting.
Card counting has never really been about memorizing exactly which cards have been dealt out of the deck. Very few people would have the ability to do that. Card counting as it is actually practiced is not that hard to do... though it is very hard to master it such that you maintain your advantage AND don't get kicked out of the casino.
One of the simplest counting systems involves assigning a +1 to all the tens in the deck (tens and face cards), and a -1 to all the 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s. Whenever the count is positive, you have a higher ratio of tens to the lower cards, and thus you probably have an advantage. The more tens, the more likely you get a blackjack, and the more likely the dealer will bust if you don't get a blackjack.
Yeah, but picture this, you walk into a casino and before you can sit at the roulette table, they make you sign a 12 page contract, typed in 10 point text and single-spaced.
Doesn't help their bottom line much.
This is just another example of Web 2.0 security, or the lack thereof.
I disagree. They are letting people download this music, but they are supposed to prevent them from saving the file.
This is just an attempt at DRM, which really has little to do with our traditional notion of "computer security".
"Security" usually means preventing unauthorized access of your computers... not preventing unauthorized access to data after you give it to someone.
If this really is censorship (and if it isn't why didn't they just go get a defamation judgement entered in the US and get the site host to take it down?)
Um, because they aren't IN the US? 1. The US would not have jurisdiction against the Defendant, since he's apparently an Irishman, in Ireland. 2. US courts would have no reason to judge the case, since basically everything about it (except for a few servers) is in Ireland. All the evidence and witnesses are in Ireland. 3. It's going to be governed by Irish law. A US court isn't going to want to deal with trying to interpret Irish law unless they absolutely have to... and they don't.
Besides, why would the plaintiff want to travel all the way to the US to sue her own countryman? It makes no sense.
If chewbacca is a wookie from the planet Endor, you must acquit.
Seriously people, show some fucking appreciation for someone with specialized knowledge who took time out to answer your questions.
If you don't like the answers, well maybe it has something to do with the questions. Every question was modded either +5 "Interesting", or "Funny".
Not a single question was modded "Insightful". And one of the questions insulted him for being a lawyer. Another stupidly asked why he doesn't contact the US Attorney General for help in fighting the RIAA.
Of the good questions, he gave informative and helpful answers.
Maybe it's just the nature of the issue (RIAA and filesharing) that brings out the most moronic of the slashdot crowd, but I am seriously irritated by the stupidity that's been displayed here.
Chinese newspapers shut down by government.
Since "Making copies for my convience and/or time shifting" is not criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, it does NOT fall under Fair Use and the /. "FAIR USE FAIR USE WHAT OF MY RIGHTS" crowd really needs to stop using this argument.
Note that the statute says "for purposes such as". It doesn't say "for the following purposes exclusively".
The purposes listed seem to be examples of valid purposes. Interpreting the language literally, any purposes not listed would have to be "such as" the listed ones (ie similar to them).
I guess we can litigate this to find out whether time-shifting and convenience are sufficiently similar to the other purposes... who wants to goad the RIAA into suing you for ripping your own cds and listening to them on your ipod?
So what does Slashdot think? Are kid growing up too fast nowadays because of them new-fangled technologies?
The problem is not that they are growing up too fast. Kids are being immersed in a consumer lifestyle that celebrates consumption of someone ELSE'S interpretation of the world. That does not equal growing up too fast.
Immersion in bullshit does not cause people to grow up too fast at all. It causes people to grow up too slowly.
Because iPods don't support WMA. If Microsoft can't keep its DRM hole patched, there will soon be a lot of people paying their $15 a month to subscribe to Napster2go or Rhapsody2go or Urge or whatever else is out there... because they know that they can strip the DRM off.
It's a cold hard fact that if people can cheat the system, they will... and those people will want players that play the songs they've "stolen". Those will be players that play the music in the downloaded format: WMA files.
I wonder how much of an effect this will have on iPod sales. Obviously, it's too early to tell.
Is this the first step to escalating videogames to the status of the X-Games and poker?
No. I cannot think of anything more boring than watching someone else play a video game. There is nothing dangerous happening. There is nothing all that interesting happening. It's akin to watching someone else watching a movie.
Seriously, statements like the one quoted above just demonstrate the author's misguided desire that someday other people will share their love of video games... and maybe, just maybe their otherwise useless skill at Quake will get them some sort of notoriety, beyond other gamers.
Ain't gonna happen. It's a toy. There's nothing wrong with that. Just be real about it. Mmmmmmkay?
There is no such thing as a right to speedy trial in a civil suit. It only applies to criminal cases.
Also, can I counter-sue for lost time, lost wages, added stress, etc.?
Probably not. First, you aren't going to lose any wages unless you have to take time off from your job. There's no reason you would have to do that unless it actually went to trial.
Stress, distress, etcetera are awardable in situations where your leg gets cut off or you watch your kid get run over by a car. But they are not awardable simply because someone gave you something to worry about. In other words, emotional damage is very hard to prove, so the law doesn't allow it in most cases. It's only allowed in cases where there is some sort of severe physical impact on you or a loved one in your presence.
...to purchase your products, but it's also good service to have plenty of friendly cashiers at the counter. Should the government mandate that as well? When government tells private business how to operate, you can guarantee that businesses will do the minimum necessary to comply. Sometimes this is necessary with regards to fair trade and product safety, but it is *not* necessary in this case.
You blithely assume that it is "good business" to serve blind people. But clearly the people in control at Target disagree with you.
If a store does not have friendly cashiers at the counter, it will be punished by the free market.
But a store will not be punished by the free market if it decides not to accomodate blind people. It will simply not get business that it didn't desire in the first place.
(Actually, that's a UK figure. But I doubt that the US is hugely different.)
I believe you would be right about that. Former Dekalb County, Georgia DA J. Tom Morgan wrote a very good piece about the Georgia law (not quite as bad as this Ohio law we're talking about, but still bad).