There was an article - I believe in the Wall Street Journal - about these patents being rejected within the last week. The USPTO only does a very minimal prior art search during the initial application process because there is just too much data to dig through in order to complete an exhaustive search for prior art. Once the patent is issued, if a patent disput arises, then normally the two sides of the dispute will provide additional information to the USPTO that supports their side of the argument. In this instance, RIM was able to find prior art in Europe that pre-dated NTP's patent applications by a year, or so. This prior art was the basis for the non-final rejections that have been recently returned by the USPTO.
I think Sony obviously knew that what they were doing was wrong, otherwise they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to hide it. If you have to hide something from your customers, chances are it's at least unethical, if not illegal.
Why would Microsoft do that? It's not their business model. Sure, you may like them to be innovators, but M$'s strength (like it or not) is taking other people's ideas and beating them at their own game - whether through adding more features, integrating it into the OS, or just simply out-marketing them (Win vs. OS/2, anyone?).
... what happened during the boom times of the late '90s and the early '00s. There were plenty of Comp Sci students, but many of them were there only for the money - and it showed. I've never met so many half-@$$ed developers, analysts, etc. in my life!
So maybe this time around, Comp Sci departments should focus their attention on improving the numbers of students who will benefit the field in the long term.
Well, I can tell you from experience that the chips themselves (at least the ones without RFID) cost under $1/each when purchased from the manufacturer. In fact, the major chip manufacturers market their brands of chips to the casinos as being great for collectable revenue (people walking out with them). Even someone who takes a $1 chip home with them is giving free money to the casino. Not a bad deal, huh?
I thought the reason Apple produced iTunes was really to sell iPods, as they don't make much $ off of iTunes. If that's the case, then aren't they out of their bloody minds to shut down another vendor who's steering people to their hardware free of charge?
I haven't read too much on this subject, but am I missing something here? What's wrong with Real providing the option to use iPods on their service?
While I certainly have sympathy for this guy, I don't think a lawsuit is the answer here.
For starters, most "low-end" consumer electronics are not covered by what I would consider to be a long or extensive warranty, so this should come as no surprise to him that the warranty was already expired. Most of these devices are made to be disposable and/or have a fairly limited life span.
Most/.ers have read Bruce Schneier and know that he talks about trade-offs in security. Well, product cost vs. quality is a trade-off, too. Microsoft could probably sell me a $500 XBox that would have a 2 or 3 year warranty, but they know that I probably don't want to spend $500 for an XBox. Therefore, they decide to use lower-quality components in order to sell an XBox to me at a price I'm willing to pay. I might also add that since MS is selling the hardware at a loss, they have no incentive to use higher-quality components. This is also an area where extended warranties attempt to give consumers an option. If you pay me $X, I will ensure that you have a working XBox for the next X months/years. Depending upon the cost of the goods and your financial situation, an extended warranty may or may not be a good purchase, but I won't go into that here.
I don't think that this guy has a case against Microsoft because he was the person that made the trade-off that led him into this position (i.e. - not buying an extended warranty, not checking to see how long MS' warranty was before he chose not to buy the extended warranty, etc.). Being upset because something broke is understandable, but filing a lawsuit is simply not the answer - especially given the relatively low cost of an XBox when compared with many other pieces of home electronics. All he's going to accomplish by making this a class action lawsuit is enriching himself (possibly) and some lawyers - he's probably not going to do others in the class one bit of good.
To be blunt: expecting things to be cheap, always work, and be of high overall quality is just not realistic. There has to be a balance in the equation and for game consoles, price is what sells. The fact that he got burned this time around should be no surprise to anyone - himself included. He should just do what any other person would do: try to have it fixed, or just buy a new one. He's already wasted more than $150 of his time by getting a lawyer involved with this process.
You won't, because you know what the fuck you're doing.
My first compliment on/.... seriously:-)
Others (i.e. the clueless majority) will see it and say "Oooh, it's integrated into my OS, it must be the best!"
A lot of people will use it, if it's prominently integrated into the OS/WMP - I'll grant you that. The one problem MS still has, though, is that the clueless majority also loves the fact that the iPod is "cute," so they want one. Since the MS Music Store doesn't provide music that works with the iPod, the users will have to make a decision. Which takes precedent: the software or the hardware? I don't know the answer... just throwing it out there.
On another note, I can only imagine how pissed the other stores are that use MS's DRM technology (as was alluded to in the article).
I don't care if they have the best software design in the world for their music store: if they don't have better hardware than the iPod, it isn't going to matter.
I totally agree with you on your point (IE absolutely stomped Netscape's butt back in the day - now look at what a pile it has become compared to recent Netscape/Mozilla versions), but that was a simple software-on-software comparison. This is a little more complex because it involves cash transactions and hardware - not just a software technology competition.
I quit using Napster because I didn't really like the Windows Media Player, or the Microsoft DRM technology. Why would I switch back just because MS has their own music store? The music store marketplace is becoming too saturated now and the only way for anyone to distinguish themselves is with a great hardware accessory - like Apple's iPod.
Apple is well in the lead and I don't see them losing the lead unless MS comes up with something better than just another "hey, me too!" store.
Ok, I think the title was stretching it a bit, but that's beside the point.
While the people being arrested may think of themselves as "music lovers," their practice of sharing music makes them anything but music lovers. Usually when I love a product, I pay for it. I don't use it without a license and then distribute it to thousands of strangers without a license. That's why I had a Napster premium subscription and now I buy from iTunes.
For all of the people that claim that they only share/download music that they would never buy, I think that's a total load of crap. If you care enough about a song or album to download it from a P2P service, I think you'd pay $0.99/$9.99 for it on iTunes, if you weren't so cheap. If you honestly can't afford it, that's no excuse either. All of us have to make sacrifices when we're under a budget crunch - that's just part of being a fiscally responsible person.
I will probably get the obligitory "I download songs that I already own on disk." My comments here aren't directed at those people, and I don't think they should be subjected to any litigation for their actions.
Mod me down as as troll or flamebait if you wish, but I've seen one too many of these stories and all of the related whining to keep my mouth shut any longer.
I can give kudos to IBM, too, when it comes to corporate support. You certainly pay a premium for their services/products, but you can tell that the extra money you're spending is actually providing you with an added benefit. That is not the case with all companies!
Oh come on, this color scheme isn't so bad! The designer could've used #FFFFFE text against a #FFFFFF background. Try that out and then come back and tell me this is a crap design!
</sarcasm>
For the record, I am a Napster Premium subscriber and I like it. Yes, it's DRM music, yes it's lossy compression, yes it's Microsoft technology, but it's a pretty good deal and here's why:
* For $9.95/month I get unlimited downloads to up to 3 PCs. I do the majority of my music listening during the day at work, so I can just plug my laptop into the network and have access to over 500,000 songs. It's true that not all are available for the free download, but most that I'm interested in are (I'm an 80s freak).
* Included in the Premium subscription is the ability to stream the files in their entirety for free. If I'm thinking of buying something that's new, why would I rely on a 30-second clip? That's just rediculous and one of the downsides of iTunes, IMO. Napster also has some "radio stations," but those don't really interest me.
* Napster provides Billboard charts so I can scan the charts and find songs that I liked from any era.
* Napster provides a discount on tracks to premium service members. If I buy music in bulk, I can get the price down to 80 cents per song when I buy tracks individually. Albums are still a better deal at the full album price of ~$10.
* Napster keeps track of the songs that I download and allows me to synchronize my PC and laptop with the click of one button. Plus (as mentioned in another post), if I lose all of my music, I don't have to worry about having a backup of it.
I've downloaded multiple hundreds of songs from Napster and so far only paid about $100 in monthly fees. That's a pretty good deal for me because doing the same thing on iTunes would cost me several times that amount, since they don't have a subscription service. It's all about how you listen to music, so you have to make a personal choice, but Napster really does have a lot of things going for it if you listen to music on your computer very often.
...IBM is renowned for patenting more things every year than you can shake a stick at...
Try shaking a stick at 3415 preliminary patents in 2003 alone - nearly double their nearest competitor! IBM has been #1 in patents for 11 consecutive years now.
I think the biggest problem with some of the patents we're seeing these days is that the issue of prior art isn't being taken into account. There are not many things that are totally new in the software industry - just things that are improvements upon something that someone else has already done. We see a lot of patents where companies try to patent the entire idea, when they are responsible only for a certain improvement upon the original idea.
I would highly recommend Verizon - particularly for their coverage. If you regularly travel outside of major interstates and major cities, you will really appreciate the superior coverage they offer. Even within major cities (I work in DC), I find that my signal strength is much better than friends of mine who use a variety of different services. It even works underground in the metro.
Their customer service is usually very good in the few times that I've dealt with them. In one particular instance, I called about a question I had on my bill and the CSR told me that I should change my plan. I ended up coming out of the call with a lower cost plan with more minutes. You don't often find companies that will give you a better price unless they have to.
I have been a Pressplay/Napster user now for several months and I must say that it is a good solution for me - but it definitely won't be for everyone.
75% or more of my music listening is done at home, so I really don't have a need to rely on burns or a portable music device. I have a WinXP box with WMP 9, so Napster's integrated WMP plugin works fine for me.
The reality is that for $10/month, I get unlimited downloads and streams (if I want a song, I just download it), plus Napster's selection of radio stations and Billboard charts, which I've found to be pretty useful. I have downloaded hundreds of songs already, and only paid probably $50-$60 worth of monthly fees, so for my needs it's much cheaper than iTunes or paying for the rights through Napster.
Napster's song selection is very good and they seem to get new albums (or at least the popular singles) up fairly quickly.
If you're looking for portability and the ability to burn tracks, I really can't speak to that - since that's not how I use Napster. If you want a service to use on your computer and to check out new albums before you buy the hard copy, I would highly recommend Napster. Their WMP plugin is pretty well integrated and you can use WMP's built-in library functions to manage your songs and create playlists.
I'm writing this as a person who only recently went back and took a look at a browser OTHER than IE. Back in the early days of the Internet, I was a diehard Netscape user, but was quickly converted once IE passed Netscape in functionality and correct rendering of pages.
Just this past week, I've installed Mozilla Firebird on both my work and home computers. I love the tabbed browsing interface - which is one thing I think IE needs to avoid losing market share to Opera and Mozilla.
I do see a couple of problems with using Mozilla as my full-time browser, though. First, is that (like it or not) many more pages are designed to work correctly with IE - without any consideration for other browsers. The company I work for is guilty of this, but I can't necessarily blame them because the other browsers have such a small market share. Why waste expensive development hours on something that a very small percentage of users will ever notice?
The second problem is that the Mozilla Firebird browser doesn't work nearly as well with accessing our Intranet sites at work because of all of the strange URLs that we have. It wants to add.com to the end of everything, and I haven't found a way to disable that "feature."
Overall, I'm really impressed with Mozilla, but it's not quite to the point where I can quit using IE and switch over. That's where they need to get before they can possibly win the browser war.
While I don't doubt that the bar-coded tickets can be used to track players, I can guarantee you that they aren't used in a way that can affect the odds for the player.
Each slot machine is equipped with a chip that determines the payout for that machine. The gaming control board of each gaming jurisdiction usually requires that the casinos register each machine's payout with them. If the casinos want to change the payout, they have to notify the gaming control board of the change, and then manually open all of the machines and swap out the chips. There is no such thing as dynamically changing the odds on a machine.
The bar-coded tickets were primarily introduced for two reasons:
#1. Players won't have to haul around buckets of coins and don't have to feed coins into machines, which soils their hands and also means that they'll play fewer spins in a given period of time. Fewer pulls of the handle = lower profits for the casinos.
#2. "Administration" costs for the machines go down for the casinos with the ticket-based systems. They no longer have to employ as many change people to fill the machines, or employ as many people in the cage because they won't have to count the coins that players bring up to cash in. In addition, I would guess that the type of tracking you talk about is also possible. When a machine takes in a ticket that was printed from another machine, I can start developing a relationship showing which machines are frequented by the same type of player.
One drawback of the ticket-based system (for the player) is that it is a lot easier to lose a paper slip worth $600 than a few buckets filled with $600 in coins!
Many of these people are wealthy on paper because much of their wealth is tied up in the stocks of the compan(y)(ies) that they are involved in. You and I are generally free to invest our money in any way we want, since we are using cash or cash-equivalents to invest. These people are "stuck" with stock that they cannot get rid of - at least for the short term. Therefore, I would expect their return to be lower than mine because they can't move their money around as easily.
As far as I can tell, the Internet Casino/Bookmaking business is one that is well past its prime - unless you got into the business several years ago.
Once these casinos started generating large sums of cash, anyone able to raise the capital decided it would be a great idea to start their own Internet Casino. Consequently, the market has become extremely diluted. If you don't believe me, just go to Google or Yahoo and look at the number of Internet Casinos available.
Another side effect of these large numbers is an overall lower quality - as well as lack of any originality. Most sites use pre-packaged software, which is then "customized" with some different graphics for each casino. So I could go to ten different casinos and I would basically feel like I was playing in the same place.
As far as cheating goes, I've never suspected that I've been cheated, but I was stiffed for $50 once by a casino that is now out of business. That is another risk you take when playing offshore, as opposed to a land-based casino.
I do still feel that there is a good opportunity for someone in the market who can be original and market themselves well.
If you're looking for a good Internet Casino, I would recommend the following:
Slashdot Mirror
There was an article - I believe in the Wall Street Journal - about these patents being rejected within the last week. The USPTO only does a very minimal prior art search during the initial application process because there is just too much data to dig through in order to complete an exhaustive search for prior art. Once the patent is issued, if a patent disput arises, then normally the two sides of the dispute will provide additional information to the USPTO that supports their side of the argument. In this instance, RIM was able to find prior art in Europe that pre-dated NTP's patent applications by a year, or so. This prior art was the basis for the non-final rejections that have been recently returned by the USPTO.
I think Sony obviously knew that what they were doing was wrong, otherwise they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to hide it. If you have to hide something from your customers, chances are it's at least unethical, if not illegal.
This is what happens when "security" is made a convenience rather than a way of protecting a system.
Why would Microsoft do that? It's not their business model. Sure, you may like them to be innovators, but M$'s strength (like it or not) is taking other people's ideas and beating them at their own game - whether through adding more features, integrating it into the OS, or just simply out-marketing them (Win vs. OS/2, anyone?).
... what happened during the boom times of the late '90s and the early '00s. There were plenty of Comp Sci students, but many of them were there only for the money - and it showed. I've never met so many half-@$$ed developers, analysts, etc. in my life!
So maybe this time around, Comp Sci departments should focus their attention on improving the numbers of students who will benefit the field in the long term.
Well, I can tell you from experience that the chips themselves (at least the ones without RFID) cost under $1/each when purchased from the manufacturer. In fact, the major chip manufacturers market their brands of chips to the casinos as being great for collectable revenue (people walking out with them). Even someone who takes a $1 chip home with them is giving free money to the casino. Not a bad deal, huh?
I thought the reason Apple produced iTunes was really to sell iPods, as they don't make much $ off of iTunes. If that's the case, then aren't they out of their bloody minds to shut down another vendor who's steering people to their hardware free of charge?
I haven't read too much on this subject, but am I missing something here? What's wrong with Real providing the option to use iPods on their service?
While I certainly have sympathy for this guy, I don't think a lawsuit is the answer here.
For starters, most "low-end" consumer electronics are not covered by what I would consider to be a long or extensive warranty, so this should come as no surprise to him that the warranty was already expired. Most of these devices are made to be disposable and/or have a fairly limited life span.
Most /.ers have read Bruce Schneier and know that he talks about trade-offs in security. Well, product cost vs. quality is a trade-off, too. Microsoft could probably sell me a $500 XBox that would have a 2 or 3 year warranty, but they know that I probably don't want to spend $500 for an XBox. Therefore, they decide to use lower-quality components in order to sell an XBox to me at a price I'm willing to pay. I might also add that since MS is selling the hardware at a loss, they have no incentive to use higher-quality components. This is also an area where extended warranties attempt to give consumers an option. If you pay me $X, I will ensure that you have a working XBox for the next X months/years. Depending upon the cost of the goods and your financial situation, an extended warranty may or may not be a good purchase, but I won't go into that here.
I don't think that this guy has a case against Microsoft because he was the person that made the trade-off that led him into this position (i.e. - not buying an extended warranty, not checking to see how long MS' warranty was before he chose not to buy the extended warranty, etc.). Being upset because something broke is understandable, but filing a lawsuit is simply not the answer - especially given the relatively low cost of an XBox when compared with many other pieces of home electronics. All he's going to accomplish by making this a class action lawsuit is enriching himself (possibly) and some lawyers - he's probably not going to do others in the class one bit of good.
To be blunt: expecting things to be cheap, always work, and be of high overall quality is just not realistic. There has to be a balance in the equation and for game consoles, price is what sells. The fact that he got burned this time around should be no surprise to anyone - himself included. He should just do what any other person would do: try to have it fixed, or just buy a new one. He's already wasted more than $150 of his time by getting a lawyer involved with this process.
the quality of the search interface becomes a mute point
:-)
What was that?!? I couldn't hear ya, sonny, you must've been making a mute point.
THE WORD IS MOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some things I just can't take.
A lot of people will use it, if it's prominently integrated into the OS/WMP - I'll grant you that. The one problem MS still has, though, is that the clueless majority also loves the fact that the iPod is "cute," so they want one. Since the MS Music Store doesn't provide music that works with the iPod, the users will have to make a decision. Which takes precedent: the software or the hardware? I don't know the answer... just throwing it out there.
On another note, I can only imagine how pissed the other stores are that use MS's DRM technology (as was alluded to in the article).
I don't care if they have the best software design in the world for their music store: if they don't have better hardware than the iPod, it isn't going to matter.
I totally agree with you on your point (IE absolutely stomped Netscape's butt back in the day - now look at what a pile it has become compared to recent Netscape/Mozilla versions), but that was a simple software-on-software comparison. This is a little more complex because it involves cash transactions and hardware - not just a software technology competition.
I quit using Napster because I didn't really like the Windows Media Player, or the Microsoft DRM technology. Why would I switch back just because MS has their own music store? The music store marketplace is becoming too saturated now and the only way for anyone to distinguish themselves is with a great hardware accessory - like Apple's iPod.
Apple is well in the lead and I don't see them losing the lead unless MS comes up with something better than just another "hey, me too!" store.
Ok, I think the title was stretching it a bit, but that's beside the point.
While the people being arrested may think of themselves as "music lovers," their practice of sharing music makes them anything but music lovers. Usually when I love a product, I pay for it. I don't use it without a license and then distribute it to thousands of strangers without a license. That's why I had a Napster premium subscription and now I buy from iTunes.
For all of the people that claim that they only share/download music that they would never buy, I think that's a total load of crap. If you care enough about a song or album to download it from a P2P service, I think you'd pay $0.99/$9.99 for it on iTunes, if you weren't so cheap. If you honestly can't afford it, that's no excuse either. All of us have to make sacrifices when we're under a budget crunch - that's just part of being a fiscally responsible person.
I will probably get the obligitory "I download songs that I already own on disk." My comments here aren't directed at those people, and I don't think they should be subjected to any litigation for their actions.
Mod me down as as troll or flamebait if you wish, but I've seen one too many of these stories and all of the related whining to keep my mouth shut any longer.
</rant>
I can give kudos to IBM, too, when it comes to corporate support. You certainly pay a premium for their services/products, but you can tell that the extra money you're spending is actually providing you with an added benefit. That is not the case with all companies!
Oh come on, this color scheme isn't so bad! The designer could've used #FFFFFE text against a #FFFFFF background. Try that out and then come back and tell me this is a crap design!
</sarcasm>
For the record, I am a Napster Premium subscriber and I like it. Yes, it's DRM music, yes it's lossy compression, yes it's Microsoft technology, but it's a pretty good deal and here's why: * For $9.95/month I get unlimited downloads to up to 3 PCs. I do the majority of my music listening during the day at work, so I can just plug my laptop into the network and have access to over 500,000 songs. It's true that not all are available for the free download, but most that I'm interested in are (I'm an 80s freak). * Included in the Premium subscription is the ability to stream the files in their entirety for free. If I'm thinking of buying something that's new, why would I rely on a 30-second clip? That's just rediculous and one of the downsides of iTunes, IMO. Napster also has some "radio stations," but those don't really interest me. * Napster provides Billboard charts so I can scan the charts and find songs that I liked from any era. * Napster provides a discount on tracks to premium service members. If I buy music in bulk, I can get the price down to 80 cents per song when I buy tracks individually. Albums are still a better deal at the full album price of ~$10. * Napster keeps track of the songs that I download and allows me to synchronize my PC and laptop with the click of one button. Plus (as mentioned in another post), if I lose all of my music, I don't have to worry about having a backup of it. I've downloaded multiple hundreds of songs from Napster and so far only paid about $100 in monthly fees. That's a pretty good deal for me because doing the same thing on iTunes would cost me several times that amount, since they don't have a subscription service. It's all about how you listen to music, so you have to make a personal choice, but Napster really does have a lot of things going for it if you listen to music on your computer very often.
...IBM is renowned for patenting more things every year than you can shake a stick at...
:-)
Try shaking a stick at 3415 preliminary patents in 2003 alone - nearly double their nearest competitor! IBM has been #1 in patents for 11 consecutive years now.
Chew on that, SCO
I think the biggest problem with some of the patents we're seeing these days is that the issue of prior art isn't being taken into account. There are not many things that are totally new in the software industry - just things that are improvements upon something that someone else has already done. We see a lot of patents where companies try to patent the entire idea, when they are responsible only for a certain improvement upon the original idea.
I would highly recommend Verizon - particularly for their coverage. If you regularly travel outside of major interstates and major cities, you will really appreciate the superior coverage they offer. Even within major cities (I work in DC), I find that my signal strength is much better than friends of mine who use a variety of different services. It even works underground in the metro.
Their customer service is usually very good in the few times that I've dealt with them. In one particular instance, I called about a question I had on my bill and the CSR told me that I should change my plan. I ended up coming out of the call with a lower cost plan with more minutes. You don't often find companies that will give you a better price unless they have to.
I have been a Pressplay/Napster user now for several months and I must say that it is a good solution for me - but it definitely won't be for everyone.
75% or more of my music listening is done at home, so I really don't have a need to rely on burns or a portable music device. I have a WinXP box with WMP 9, so Napster's integrated WMP plugin works fine for me.
The reality is that for $10/month, I get unlimited downloads and streams (if I want a song, I just download it), plus Napster's selection of radio stations and Billboard charts, which I've found to be pretty useful. I have downloaded hundreds of songs already, and only paid probably $50-$60 worth of monthly fees, so for my needs it's much cheaper than iTunes or paying for the rights through Napster.
Napster's song selection is very good and they seem to get new albums (or at least the popular singles) up fairly quickly.
If you're looking for portability and the ability to burn tracks, I really can't speak to that - since that's not how I use Napster. If you want a service to use on your computer and to check out new albums before you buy the hard copy, I would highly recommend Napster. Their WMP plugin is pretty well integrated and you can use WMP's built-in library functions to manage your songs and create playlists.
I'm writing this as a person who only recently went back and took a look at a browser OTHER than IE. Back in the early days of the Internet, I was a diehard Netscape user, but was quickly converted once IE passed Netscape in functionality and correct rendering of pages.
.com to the end of everything, and I haven't found a way to disable that "feature."
Just this past week, I've installed Mozilla Firebird on both my work and home computers. I love the tabbed browsing interface - which is one thing I think IE needs to avoid losing market share to Opera and Mozilla.
I do see a couple of problems with using Mozilla as my full-time browser, though. First, is that (like it or not) many more pages are designed to work correctly with IE - without any consideration for other browsers. The company I work for is guilty of this, but I can't necessarily blame them because the other browsers have such a small market share. Why waste expensive development hours on something that a very small percentage of users will ever notice?
The second problem is that the Mozilla Firebird browser doesn't work nearly as well with accessing our Intranet sites at work because of all of the strange URLs that we have. It wants to add
Overall, I'm really impressed with Mozilla, but it's not quite to the point where I can quit using IE and switch over. That's where they need to get before they can possibly win the browser war.
While I don't doubt that the bar-coded tickets can be used to track players, I can guarantee you that they aren't used in a way that can affect the odds for the player.
Each slot machine is equipped with a chip that determines the payout for that machine. The gaming control board of each gaming jurisdiction usually requires that the casinos register each machine's payout with them. If the casinos want to change the payout, they have to notify the gaming control board of the change, and then manually open all of the machines and swap out the chips. There is no such thing as dynamically changing the odds on a machine.
The bar-coded tickets were primarily introduced for two reasons:
#1. Players won't have to haul around buckets of coins and don't have to feed coins into machines, which soils their hands and also means that they'll play fewer spins in a given period of time. Fewer pulls of the handle = lower profits for the casinos.
#2. "Administration" costs for the machines go down for the casinos with the ticket-based systems. They no longer have to employ as many change people to fill the machines, or employ as many people in the cage because they won't have to count the coins that players bring up to cash in. In addition, I would guess that the type of tracking you talk about is also possible. When a machine takes in a ticket that was printed from another machine, I can start developing a relationship showing which machines are frequented by the same type of player.
One drawback of the ticket-based system (for the player) is that it is a lot easier to lose a paper slip worth $600 than a few buckets filled with $600 in coins!
Many of these people are wealthy on paper because much of their wealth is tied up in the stocks of the compan(y)(ies) that they are involved in. You and I are generally free to invest our money in any way we want, since we are using cash or cash-equivalents to invest. These people are "stuck" with stock that they cannot get rid of - at least for the short term. Therefore, I would expect their return to be lower than mine because they can't move their money around as easily.
I sure hope you're offshore! The feds are looking for people like you.
As far as I can tell, the Internet Casino/Bookmaking business is one that is well past its prime - unless you got into the business several years ago.
Once these casinos started generating large sums of cash, anyone able to raise the capital decided it would be a great idea to start their own Internet Casino. Consequently, the market has become extremely diluted. If you don't believe me, just go to Google or Yahoo and look at the number of Internet Casinos available.
Another side effect of these large numbers is an overall lower quality - as well as lack of any originality. Most sites use pre-packaged software, which is then "customized" with some different graphics for each casino. So I could go to ten different casinos and I would basically feel like I was playing in the same place.
As far as cheating goes, I've never suspected that I've been cheated, but I was stiffed for $50 once by a casino that is now out of business. That is another risk you take when playing offshore, as opposed to a land-based casino.
I do still feel that there is a good opportunity for someone in the market who can be original and market themselves well.
If you're looking for a good Internet Casino, I would recommend the following:
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