Right wing dictators the world over and throughout history disagree with you.
You may want to look up the socialist, revolutionary dictators around the world and throughout history who's main ideas revolve around: Socialism, marxism, and communism.
So what? The fact that there are left wing authoritarians who favour state power doesn't mean there aren't right wing authoritarians who favour state power, nor (more to the point) does it mean that they're the same just because they favour state power.
The reason that the US is hung up on race, is because of the appalling history of racism in the US. The only possible argument is about how much of a change for the better there has been.
To pretend that racism has completely faded away is to ignore reality, however uncomfortable it may make some people feel.
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism.
That's nice for you. In other news, the US has a black President, and recently had a female Secretary of State, so obviously there's neither racism nor sexism anywhere in the country.
===Off topic. In the early 1980's I bought a Bobbi Fischer Chess computer. At the time it was one of the more advanced ones, costing $150-ish range. It had a flaw. Sometimes the computer would play and illegal move. It would Castle out of check. It wouldn't let you do that move, but it would do it.
And guess what? A few years ago I bought the dominant computer chess program from Ubisoft. It does the same error! Did Ubisoft just buy the code from the Bobby Fischer game, and add on some flashy videos and design of the chess set?
I've played a variety of chess games. I'm not particularly good, but I do know the rules. You'd be surprised how many games, especially the online ones, appear to have been written by people who don't. I've come across games that let you castle out of check, that let you move the king across check, that don't recognise pawns taking en passant, that force you to take a promoted pawn as a queen, and so on.
There really aren't that many rules to chess, it's amazing how people can even begin to write a chess program without understanding all of them.
I don't see this as being a criminal act, but given the way that it was carried out, I think the casino has every right to demand 9/10 of his winnings back.
Under the law, the have no such right. Players are not responsible for malfunctioning gaming machines. Indeed, the casino can not even force you away from such a machine if it is accepting wagers and paying according to the published schedule. Walk away from it though, even if only for a moment, and it's game over, literally. This actually happened to a friend of mine years ago, during a visit to Reno. He'd stumbled onto a slot that was "stuck on win". They wanted very badly to have him get up so that they could take the machine out of service, and after a short while enticed him to do so, much to his later (and more sober) regret.
Really?. If a machine malfunctioned and just started spewing out winnings without anyone even touching it, are you saying that the casino would have to let the person sitting in front of it keep all the money until it was empty?
Blue screens are statistically almost always caused by hardware failures.
Bullshit, pure and simple.
Back in the "good old days" of still using Windows 95 to ME (I was young and needed the money), PCs would blue screen not infrequently. Almost always, if you re-installed windows, they stopped crashing, at least for a while.
Do you seriously think the failed hardware coincidentally (and magically) repaired itself?
you can't cheat a computer., you can only operate it within it's programmed bounds.
It would be interesting to be a software developer if every programming bug was the responsibility of the person who created it. I'd love to be the insurance broker quoting for your professional liability insurance.
I remember a story about people trying to game a casino. They bought a video poker machine they'd found had a faulty random number generator or something and put it through various tests. They got to the point where after playing a few rounds on the machine they could determine when to push particular buttons to generate large payouts, assuming the player could hit the button within the right time window.
Sounds like cheating and theft to me.
If they discovered such a flaw, the correct thing to do, legally and morally, was to report it to the manufacturers.
I'm sorry, I simply do not believe in the sociopathic "anything's OK as long as I get away with it" attitude of some people here. I suppose I just wasn't force fed enough Scientology and Ayn Rand books as a kid.
he instead used his fingers and eyes to write a mental program which moved his fingers in order to exploit an initialization bug in the software
And if I use my fingers and eyes to write a mental program that allows me to beat the house at blackjack(e.g. card counting), is that hacking too? No, it's strategy.
He really is using a software exploit and 'hacking' the software.
Bullshit. He's playing the game as it is implemented. He found a strategy that allowed him to win more than the casino intended. The game might be unfairly balanced against the casino, but that's the casino's fault.
The technical details of how his strategy works doesn't change the fact that it's a strategy. And discovering winning strategies is the whole point of playing games.
If I'm playing blackjack and I invent a way of seeing through the cards so that I know exactly what the dealer's got, and what cards are coming up next, is this "strategy" or "cheating". I know what I'd call it.
Exactly. For example if I am playing poker and have a lousy hand, but bid high to trick the other players into folding, then that's fraud too. If I use that trick to make money then I'm stealing from the house.
Right?
No, because it is perfectly within the rules of poker to do that.
You don't know what "theft by taking" means, do you?
If I see someone leave their wallet on the seat of a restaurant, and I pick it up and trouser the cash, I have stolen their money.
If I find an envelope full of notes in the middle of an empty street, pick it up and trouser the cash, I have still stolen the money.
The facts that in the latter case (a) I don't know who the rightful owner is and (b) I'll probably get away with it if there are no witnesses around are both irrelevant from a legal point of view.
Technically you're probably right, however I know that Casinos in Vegas do actually keep photographs and blacklists - if someone is in their books as being a "cheater" (to include card counting), the Casino is well within it's right to escort them from the premises.
Well, that alone makes me side with the guy - if you advertise a game with some rules and then enforce a "but we'll only admit losers to the game" policy, you're already rigging it. Even if it were immoral per se for the guy to walk away with the money, I think that in the grand scheme of things, it would be only a tiny upwards adjustment of bad karma for the gaming industry.
You don't understand how gambling works. The casino/bookmaker/whoever WANTS people to win, just not all the time. If no one ever won anything, they wouldn't bother gambling, would they?
Obviously, they are a business and so they want to make a profit overall, but it's like lottery games: they love it when someone wins a massive jackpot that's been rolled over a few times.
There is a difference, which you seem intellectually incapable of grasping, between a one-off genuine mistake and a sustained attempt to abuse a flaw you have found in a system.
This is where the slashdot "if I am physically able to do something, there is nothing you can do to prevent me, and therefore it should be legal" attitude shows itself for the sociopathic nonsense it is.
Just because you don't sign a contract doesn't mean that no contract exists.
If I walk into a shop, put something in my basket, take it to the till and they ring up the price and I pay them, I have engaged in a legally binding contract.
I have made my offer to purchase, and the shop has accepted it by taking my money.
They can't then turn round and say "actually, we've changed our mind and you now owe us another million dollars for that can of beans, and if you walk out the door we'll call the cops and charge you with theft of a million and one dollars worth of beans".
At the point they accept your money, the force of contract law, as well as any relevant consumer protection laws come into effect.
The rules of the game are clear. Malfunction voids all games. That works BOTH directions. That means neither side whens in the case of an error in the machine.
So they will be refunding money to everyone who lost money on this machine?
No, it is part of the contract that you are prepared to lose money on a gambling machine. If the machine malfunctions, that is when the contract is voided.
Slashdot Mirror
As for your other post:
Right wing dictators the world over and throughout history disagree with you.
You may want to look up the socialist, revolutionary dictators around the world and throughout history who's main ideas revolve around: Socialism, marxism, and communism.
So what? The fact that there are left wing authoritarians who favour state power doesn't mean there aren't right wing authoritarians who favour state power, nor (more to the point) does it mean that they're the same just because they favour state power.
To pretend that racism has completely faded away is to ignore reality, however uncomfortable it may make some people feel.
You can't be right wing and call constantly for increasing state power.
That is quite possibly the stupidest political comment I've ever seen on slashdot, which is really saying something.
Here are some taps with the cluebat:
>>tap, Hitler
>>tap, Mussolini
>>tap, Franco
>>tap, Pinochet
There we go, playing the race card.
The refusal to admit that there is any racism in your country is, in itself, racist
Oh, please. I have brown skin living in South Carolina, and have never encountered any racism.
That's nice for you. In other news, the US has a black President, and recently had a female Secretary of State, so obviously there's neither racism nor sexism anywhere in the country.
Truly, America is a land of wonders.
It is also difficult for anyone who IS a white male to get a job at a large company
Yes, it's a well known fact (*) that all the senior posts in large Western companies are held by disabled black lesbians, isn't it?
(*) Amongst those with a totally distorted view of reality.
I think you may be missing the point of condemning racism if you find it acceptable to casually condemn an entire region as being of similar mind
So you wouldn't characterise, just for the sake of argument, 1930s Germany as racist?
===Off topic. In the early 1980's I bought a Bobbi Fischer Chess computer. At the time it was one of the more advanced ones, costing $150-ish range. It had a flaw. Sometimes the computer would play and illegal move. It would Castle out of check. It wouldn't let you do that move, but it would do it.
And guess what? A few years ago I bought the dominant computer chess program from Ubisoft. It does the same error! Did Ubisoft just buy the code from the Bobby Fischer game, and add on some flashy videos and design of the chess set?
I've played a variety of chess games. I'm not particularly good, but I do know the rules. You'd be surprised how many games, especially the online ones, appear to have been written by people who don't. I've come across games that let you castle out of check, that let you move the king across check, that don't recognise pawns taking en passant, that force you to take a promoted pawn as a queen, and so on.
There really aren't that many rules to chess, it's amazing how people can even begin to write a chess program without understanding all of them.
I don't see this as being a criminal act, but given the way that it was carried out, I think the casino has every right to demand 9/10 of his winnings back.
Under the law, the have no such right. Players are not responsible for malfunctioning gaming machines. Indeed, the casino can not even force you away from such a machine if it is accepting wagers and paying according to the published schedule. Walk away from it though, even if only for a moment, and it's game over, literally. This actually happened to a friend of mine years ago, during a visit to Reno. He'd stumbled onto a slot that was "stuck on win". They wanted very badly to have him get up so that they could take the machine out of service, and after a short while enticed him to do so, much to his later (and more sober) regret.
Really?. If a machine malfunctioned and just started spewing out winnings without anyone even touching it, are you saying that the casino would have to let the person sitting in front of it keep all the money until it was empty?
Blue screens are statistically almost always caused by hardware failures.
Bullshit, pure and simple.
Back in the "good old days" of still using Windows 95 to ME (I was young and needed the money), PCs would blue screen not infrequently. Almost always, if you re-installed windows, they stopped crashing, at least for a while.
Do you seriously think the failed hardware coincidentally (and magically) repaired itself?
Whether or not it was legal, I don't see this as immoral.
I suppose you're the sort of person who blames drinks' manufacturers for alcoholism?
That still doesn't mean that you're right to rob a bank.
you can't cheat a computer., you can only operate it within it's programmed bounds.
It would be interesting to be a software developer if every programming bug was the responsibility of the person who created it. I'd love to be the insurance broker quoting for your professional liability insurance.
I remember a story about people trying to game a casino. They bought a video poker machine they'd found had a faulty random number generator or something and put it through various tests. They got to the point where after playing a few rounds on the machine they could determine when to push particular buttons to generate large payouts, assuming the player could hit the button within the right time window.
Sounds like cheating and theft to me.
If they discovered such a flaw, the correct thing to do, legally and morally, was to report it to the manufacturers.
I'm sorry, I simply do not believe in the sociopathic "anything's OK as long as I get away with it" attitude of some people here. I suppose I just wasn't force fed enough Scientology and Ayn Rand books as a kid.
he instead used his fingers and eyes to write a mental program which moved his fingers in order to exploit an initialization bug in the software
And if I use my fingers and eyes to write a mental program that allows me to beat the house at blackjack(e.g. card counting), is that hacking too? No, it's strategy.
He really is using a software exploit and 'hacking' the software.
Bullshit. He's playing the game as it is implemented. He found a strategy that allowed him to win more than the casino intended. The game might be unfairly balanced against the casino, but that's the casino's fault.
The technical details of how his strategy works doesn't change the fact that it's a strategy. And discovering winning strategies is the whole point of playing games.
If I'm playing blackjack and I invent a way of seeing through the cards so that I know exactly what the dealer's got, and what cards are coming up next, is this "strategy" or "cheating". I know what I'd call it.
Exactly. For example if I am playing poker and have a lousy hand, but bid high to trick the other players into folding, then that's fraud too. If I use that trick to make money then I'm stealing from the house.
Right?
No, because it is perfectly within the rules of poker to do that.
The machine was programmed to work this way. He didn't trick anything.
He tricked you into thinking that because this is a programmable computer, therefore the laws on theft doesn't apply.
If I see someone leave their wallet on the seat of a restaurant, and I pick it up and trouser the cash, I have stolen their money.
If I find an envelope full of notes in the middle of an empty street, pick it up and trouser the cash, I have still stolen the money.
The facts that in the latter case (a) I don't know who the rightful owner is and (b) I'll probably get away with it if there are no witnesses around are both irrelevant from a legal point of view.
That's the way it is in the UK, anyway.
Technically you're probably right, however I know that Casinos in Vegas do actually keep photographs and blacklists - if someone is in their books as being a "cheater" (to include card counting), the Casino is well within it's right to escort them from the premises.
Well, that alone makes me side with the guy - if you advertise a game with some rules and then enforce a "but we'll only admit losers to the game" policy, you're already rigging it. Even if it were immoral per se for the guy to walk away with the money, I think that in the grand scheme of things, it would be only a tiny upwards adjustment of bad karma for the gaming industry.
You don't understand how gambling works. The casino/bookmaker/whoever WANTS people to win, just not all the time. If no one ever won anything, they wouldn't bother gambling, would they?
Obviously, they are a business and so they want to make a profit overall, but it's like lottery games: they love it when someone wins a massive jackpot that's been rolled over a few times.
This is where the slashdot "if I am physically able to do something, there is nothing you can do to prevent me, and therefore it should be legal" attitude shows itself for the sociopathic nonsense it is.
Someone please mod this up, it is not flamebait to disagree strongly with a sociopath.
Vegas wasn't like the 50 years ago. try 70.
You sure?
From the article "Las Vegas was a gold mine for the Mafia from 1963 to 1966."
If I walk into a shop, put something in my basket, take it to the till and they ring up the price and I pay them, I have engaged in a legally binding contract.
I have made my offer to purchase, and the shop has accepted it by taking my money.
They can't then turn round and say "actually, we've changed our mind and you now owe us another million dollars for that can of beans, and if you walk out the door we'll call the cops and charge you with theft of a million and one dollars worth of beans".
At the point they accept your money, the force of contract law, as well as any relevant consumer protection laws come into effect.
The rules of the game are clear. Malfunction voids all games. That works BOTH directions. That means neither side whens in the case of an error in the machine.
So they will be refunding money to everyone who lost money on this machine?
No, it is part of the contract that you are prepared to lose money on a gambling machine. If the machine malfunctions, that is when the contract is voided.
There was a case like this in the UK a few years ago....
Let's be real here, the UK is hardly an example of good use of laws.
You are aware that the US legal system is, in fact, based on the UK's?