First, Canada never had prohibition. Second, you're thinking Al Capone. That's the US. The GP is saying that Canadian courts don't allow for explicit taxation of illegal behaviour. That has not ever really been a US thing (income is income, whether legal or not). It may be related to the concept that Canadians don't pay taxes on lottery winnings, but Americans do: income tax is targeted at employment income in Canada.
Well, he was right. At least about the conclusion. Nothing else was accurate, but his conclusion was right. Linux did not defeat W2K. XP did. Linux continues the fight with XP, and has started making inroads in the server market, but still does not touch the desktop (figuratively speaking - the numbers are too small to contemplate compared to XP). And now Vista is out - will Linux beat Vista? I hope so, but only time will tell.
I get why that's a preference - those domains are reserved for use in examples such that they will never actually be available for real, live, production use. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that any programmer worth his salt would have checks against that, fingering your email address as bogus and try again - or just discard it, wasting no resource on it. Which entirely defeats the purpose that the GP post has: to waste phishing site resources.
That's interesting. I had one former employee ("downsized") who asked if he could use me as a reference. I said I had no problem with that, but I would only tell the truth about their performance from the perspective of his former lead. That includes both his positive attitude, and his negative productivity (he had medical issues that seemed to interfere with getting his work done, and was not on a medical leave when he was laid off - I don't know the legalities, but neither was I his actual manager who had to make such a decision, nor worry about those legalities). I told him this because I did not want to subtly impede his ability to find new employment, but would not compromise my integrity over it. I volunteered the information I would give to an interviewer right to the past employee, and he could decide whether to use it or not.
He agreed with every point I made, and, oddly enough, I never got any calls.:-)
That's the part I don't get. If I were designing hardware for the PC, I'd want its interface to be compatible with other adapters, if only to reduce the ability to screw up the software driver side! Then I'd get Linux/MacOSX/Solaris-x86/BSD support for free. Not that I'd have to care about those (although "MacOSX-Ready" is always a plus in common marketing), but I'd still save money and effort.
Speaking as a 33 year old who remembers being 17 and thinking the 15 year old girls I knew were smart enough not to meet up with someone on the internet like that, I'd have to wonder about that. It's very easy for teens to feel all alone in the world as if they were the only ones with problems, when they spend all day at school with other teens feeling the same way. Because most of these teens are skilled at putting on social masks to hide their own perceived pain, some teens never see the pain their friends think they're in.
A 15-year-old girl, wishing she had more attention from her dad, meets a male stranger from the internet to fulfill that piece missing from her life. Not really that farfetched. Do I think most girls at 15 would do this? Definitely not. Many? Still no. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that this would be a logical outcome for not-insignificant numbers of kids.
At 15, or even 17, your brain isn't even finished growing yet. Your ability to predict the results of your actions is not as high as it will be at 25 or so when your brain does finish growing (even then, some people are better at it than others - you may be better at it at 17 than some at 25 - but they're as good as they're going to get, and you still have growth left). So a girl, looking for some male relationship, hoping for the best, meets up with some guy she doesn't really even know from the internet. Really, that's almost to be expected - if it weren't for the fact that it's the missing male leadership in her life was part of the cause of her actions, her dad might have expected it.
That's not to speak negatively of any other part of your comment - just the part that seemed to imply that every 15 year old girl you know is smart enough to avoid this (you probably don't know them behind their mask that well, nor could you), and by implication, that all 15 year old girls should be smart enough to avoid it.
I don't think the stockholders of IBM will really be satisfied with just bankrupting SCO.
Well, given that there are about 1.5 billion shares outstanding (according to google's finance report on IBM, market cap divided by current price is about 1.5 billion shares), I'd say that there's a lot of variation possible. Based on human nature, I'd say about 40-60% just don't care, as long as stock price goes up. Some of us (disclaimer: yes, I own some shares, but not enough to count towards anything - somewhere around, oh, 300) would think it's worth any minor downward pressure on the price to see SCO turned into a black hole in the ground for their arrogance.;-)
That said, IBM has a policy: no settling. If they were to do anything other than turn SCO into a black hole in the ground, it might embolden other competitors to try to take on IBM in the courts over trivial or untrue allegations. The $50m (or $100m or whatever) that they spend on this battle is considered "insurance premiums" - to ensure others don't idiotically try the same thing, thinking that just because they've got deep pockets they make a great target.
My bet is that this type of expense is cheaper than not going all the way on this type of court case (in that it reduces the number of cases it sees). And it's probably cheaper than actually marketing the IBM brand name to the Linux community. I don't think anyone could actually buy the publicity they're getting on slashdot, for example. Or Groklaw. Or lots of other places. Besides, it's also very cheap advertising for Linux, too. Everyone wins... except SCO. Seems like a cheap win-win-win situation to me;-)
As a member of the "Man has [little] effect" crowd, I'd rather see everyone focus on issues that we actually have, rather than fabricating new ones.
As for reduction: I'm all for electric vehicles, nuclear/wind/solar power (though those wind-powered turbines are ugly, IMO), and I live in oil-rich Alberta. The best I can do, personally, is to get the best use of the gas I use: house was built in 2001 so it's pretty energy efficient already, and I just bought a hybrid vehicle (no EVs that I know of to purchase). Yes, it's an SUV, but I also need space to hold all that comes with having an infant (car seat, stroller, diaper bag, and still gotta carry the groceries or whatever we're going out for).
As for dependent on another country's resource: I think we're pretty self-sufficient on the oil here in Alberta;-) However, you're right - there are other technologies that can and should replace this. Great. Let's look at them. Let's develop them. I like nuclear - too bad the eco-wackos prevent their very salvation. I'm kind of unsold on hydrogen, mostly because we need another technology to create the hydrogen. To me, it looks like the potential to become a large capacity battery - nothing more. We need the other energy source to create it. I'm afraid, however, that if we don't get another technology in place, we'll end up using more fossil fuel to create the hydrogen than we'll get back out of the hydrogen, which will make things worse rather than better. I get that it's like a stepping stone - but it's a risk to take that the next generation of energy creation will be here really soon thereafter.
Personally, I'm doing it to save $$ - on my energy bills and at the pump;-)
Sorta like how they won't release any patches to the 1.5 series after 2.0 came out, right?
(Hint: timeline was 1.5.0.7, then 2.0, then 1.5.0.8...)
Using the past as the best indicator of the future, it sounds like this isn't a concern. Being concerned that they keep doing it is valid. But assuming such when the evidence points the other way is a bit premature.
You, sir, must not be a true programmer. If you were, you would know that goto has long been considered evil. Instead, you should make sourceforge into a function, and call it as such: sourceforge().
That depends on the job. If it's a job for a technical position, ask the applicant to send you their resume as a PDF instead.
If the originator has a virus that sends out infected docs, they'll get your request and say, "huh?". If the originator did send the resume, but it's infected, the PDF won't be (or at least your PDF reader probably won't have the vulnerability). If the originator can't figure out how to do create a PDF, you probably don't want to hire them into a technical position;-) If it's a non-technical position, well, asking someone who is being hired into HR or sales to create a PDF may be asking a bit much (although even then, some will be able to do it).
Solution? Open your unsolicited (but expected) docs in OpenOffice.org!
Throwing the word "censor" around like that seems to imply some sort of first-amendment complaint. But nothing could be further from the truth. What's going on is simple. The oil industry has money. They have the right to throw it where they want. If you want some of their money, don't piss 'em off.
The solution, then, should be obvious. NSTA needs to stop taking money that has strings. Until then, they will self censor to ensure the money continues to flow.
(I said obvious, not simple.)
I suppose the question is: do we prefer organisations like this to garner private dollars, or would we rather increase taxes to pay for this organisation's operations? Or, the third option: would we prefer disbanding it? Note that disbanding it not only probably wouldn't work (it's natural for people to organise into groups based on creed, philosophy, job description), but probably wouldn't save money (pushing all the decision-making down into state or county-based groups - not saying that this is bad, just expensive).
Are you kidding? I got my bran' new 37" LCD TV two days before the Grey Cup. And my team wasn't even in it! And I'm not even a sports fan... but I did make $100 on my Grey Cup pool tickets this year... no, doesn't even make a dent in the purchase price of the TV.
As for the FA, the guy is out to lunch. Especially when it comes to things like hockey, but even for other shows. When you get -40 degree weather (and I don't particularly care if you're using Fahrenheit or Celsius), all you can do is spend time at home. Either on the 'net or watching TV. Geeks will get nice computers and monitors. The rest of the population still spends more time watching TV, and will get the nice TV.
(Yes, yes, you provided the smallish-word definition, but I thought you'd last longer than three words without resorting to oversized words where diminutive words would have sufficed.;->)
The problem? Third-party software companies, including even MS's big foe, IBM, make too much money off the upgrade cycle. The next versions of your favourite software will, no doubt, support Vista, as well as XP. But, after a couple years, the support for XP will drop. You'll need to upgrade everything (including OS), or nothing.
For many people, that's a minor inconvenience. Until (they think) they need something from the newer version of something. For example, a new printer. Or scanner. Or a device type we haven't imagined yet. And that forces a huge upgrade.
Microsoft doesn't need to lock in their own software - other companies, citing a desire to keep support costs down, will do that for them. I'm thinking, web sites that only work with IE7.2 - which is Vista-only.
Sure, many people will shrug their shoulders and continue without Windows. But many will shrug their shoulders and upgrade. Microsoft knows they got their target market by the short-hairs. And they're not even being polite about it now.
I'm actually trying to decide if I should warn the people I care about about this, or wait for them to get screwed over by it. On one hand, I care about them and want them to not get sucked in to such a legal quagmire. On the other hand, I've been trying to get them to switch to Linux for years. They obviously don't listen to me - maybe this is the thing that is needed to get them to wake up and find alternatives...
As a Gentoo user (but perhaps not a "buff" in your definition - I wonder how many users actually would be a "Gentoo buff" under your definition), I must say that I only load a new kernel whenever I have to reboot for some reason. As I use the machine as my desktop, it takes a bit of a thrashing, so I generally will need to reboot for some reason every 3-6 months. (Of course, if that kernel didn't work, I'll have to reboot right away again back into the old kernel. Not sure if I need to count that here.) Excepting when the new kernel doesn't work immediately, and when I first set up the machine, my shortest time between reboots has probably been about 4 weeks. Nothing to do with the kernel - XFree86 didn't want to come down nicely.
However, I generally compile every kernel marked stable. I just don't reboot into them unless there is a perceived security risk in delaying the upgrade. Then, assuming no such security risk, I only keep in/boot the kernel that I currently am running (and thus believe to be stable in my environment) and the latest compiled kernel so that next time I reboot it's all ready to go.
Actually, there is a reason for this. And it's not just limitations of the filesystem. It's that it actually was not uncommon for Windows users to "accidentally" delete their Windows directory (sometimes thinking they're clever for freeing up space for other things). Since there is no filesystem security on Windows by default, you ended up deleting many (but not all) DLLs... and next time you tried to load something, crash. (Had that happen to my dad with Win3.1. Luckily, Win 3.1 was easy enough to reinstall.)
Meanwhile, Linux users generally don't run as root - so all they can bork is their own home directory. However, if you do make a typo as root... well, yeah, you run into problems. There are ways around that, too, if you're paranoid enough. One way is to use setacl's to mark everything in/usr,/lib,/boot,/bin, and/sbin as immutable. Another is to put those on their own partition(s), and mount them as read-only. Both solutions make it a royal PITA to upgrade things, but they do take care of the accidental-delete idea.
Hmmm - I wonder if I could convince the Gentoo guys to do the setacl's thing in their portage. Since they always do a temp-install to/var/tmp/packagename anyway, they could automatically unset the immutable bit on everything they're about to overwrite, overwrite it, reset the immutable bit, all automatically. RPM (the only other package manager I'm familiar with) would make this much more painful without serious changes to the RPM code.
Breaking the law? Really? That all depends on where you made your money.
If you and a group of friends put money in a pot to make a wager, and then the winner(s) take all the money from the pot, leaving no "overhead" for the establishment in which you make the bets (e.g., your house), it's perfectly legal. What's not legal is some person or organisation taking a cut from the wagers, without a valid license from the jurisdiction the gambling is occuring in (e.g., casino, charity raffles, etc.)
And, if what you're doing really is illegal, it seems a bit brash to advertise it on the 'net. Not that I think any law enforcement is going to notice or pay attention.
(which is why many inventors who are otherwise unable to come up with capital for manufacturing merely license their patents to others - making their own profit, while still allowing the consumer the benefits of mass production.)
Slashdot Mirror
First, Canada never had prohibition. Second, you're thinking Al Capone. That's the US. The GP is saying that Canadian courts don't allow for explicit taxation of illegal behaviour. That has not ever really been a US thing (income is income, whether legal or not). It may be related to the concept that Canadians don't pay taxes on lottery winnings, but Americans do: income tax is targeted at employment income in Canada.
Well, he was right. At least about the conclusion. Nothing else was accurate, but his conclusion was right. Linux did not defeat W2K. XP did. Linux continues the fight with XP, and has started making inroads in the server market, but still does not touch the desktop (figuratively speaking - the numbers are too small to contemplate compared to XP). And now Vista is out - will Linux beat Vista? I hope so, but only time will tell.
I get why that's a preference - those domains are reserved for use in examples such that they will never actually be available for real, live, production use. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that any programmer worth his salt would have checks against that, fingering your email address as bogus and try again - or just discard it, wasting no resource on it. Which entirely defeats the purpose that the GP post has: to waste phishing site resources.
My guess? LEO decisions are likely less partisan.
That's interesting. I had one former employee ("downsized") who asked if he could use me as a reference. I said I had no problem with that, but I would only tell the truth about their performance from the perspective of his former lead. That includes both his positive attitude, and his negative productivity (he had medical issues that seemed to interfere with getting his work done, and was not on a medical leave when he was laid off - I don't know the legalities, but neither was I his actual manager who had to make such a decision, nor worry about those legalities). I told him this because I did not want to subtly impede his ability to find new employment, but would not compromise my integrity over it. I volunteered the information I would give to an interviewer right to the past employee, and he could decide whether to use it or not.
He agreed with every point I made, and, oddly enough, I never got any calls. :-)
That's the part I don't get. If I were designing hardware for the PC, I'd want its interface to be compatible with other adapters, if only to reduce the ability to screw up the software driver side! Then I'd get Linux/MacOSX/Solaris-x86/BSD support for free. Not that I'd have to care about those (although "MacOSX-Ready" is always a plus in common marketing), but I'd still save money and effort.
Speaking as a 33 year old who remembers being 17 and thinking the 15 year old girls I knew were smart enough not to meet up with someone on the internet like that, I'd have to wonder about that. It's very easy for teens to feel all alone in the world as if they were the only ones with problems, when they spend all day at school with other teens feeling the same way. Because most of these teens are skilled at putting on social masks to hide their own perceived pain, some teens never see the pain their friends think they're in.
A 15-year-old girl, wishing she had more attention from her dad, meets a male stranger from the internet to fulfill that piece missing from her life. Not really that farfetched. Do I think most girls at 15 would do this? Definitely not. Many? Still no. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that this would be a logical outcome for not-insignificant numbers of kids.
At 15, or even 17, your brain isn't even finished growing yet. Your ability to predict the results of your actions is not as high as it will be at 25 or so when your brain does finish growing (even then, some people are better at it than others - you may be better at it at 17 than some at 25 - but they're as good as they're going to get, and you still have growth left). So a girl, looking for some male relationship, hoping for the best, meets up with some guy she doesn't really even know from the internet. Really, that's almost to be expected - if it weren't for the fact that it's the missing male leadership in her life was part of the cause of her actions, her dad might have expected it.
That's not to speak negatively of any other part of your comment - just the part that seemed to imply that every 15 year old girl you know is smart enough to avoid this (you probably don't know them behind their mask that well, nor could you), and by implication, that all 15 year old girls should be smart enough to avoid it.
Well, given that there are about 1.5 billion shares outstanding (according to google's finance report on IBM, market cap divided by current price is about 1.5 billion shares), I'd say that there's a lot of variation possible. Based on human nature, I'd say about 40-60% just don't care, as long as stock price goes up. Some of us (disclaimer: yes, I own some shares, but not enough to count towards anything - somewhere around, oh, 300) would think it's worth any minor downward pressure on the price to see SCO turned into a black hole in the ground for their arrogance. ;-)
That said, IBM has a policy: no settling. If they were to do anything other than turn SCO into a black hole in the ground, it might embolden other competitors to try to take on IBM in the courts over trivial or untrue allegations. The $50m (or $100m or whatever) that they spend on this battle is considered "insurance premiums" - to ensure others don't idiotically try the same thing, thinking that just because they've got deep pockets they make a great target.
My bet is that this type of expense is cheaper than not going all the way on this type of court case (in that it reduces the number of cases it sees). And it's probably cheaper than actually marketing the IBM brand name to the Linux community. I don't think anyone could actually buy the publicity they're getting on slashdot, for example. Or Groklaw. Or lots of other places. Besides, it's also very cheap advertising for Linux, too. Everyone wins ... except SCO. Seems like a cheap win-win-win situation to me ;-)
As a member of the "Man has [little] effect" crowd, I'd rather see everyone focus on issues that we actually have, rather than fabricating new ones.
As for reduction: I'm all for electric vehicles, nuclear/wind/solar power (though those wind-powered turbines are ugly, IMO), and I live in oil-rich Alberta. The best I can do, personally, is to get the best use of the gas I use: house was built in 2001 so it's pretty energy efficient already, and I just bought a hybrid vehicle (no EVs that I know of to purchase). Yes, it's an SUV, but I also need space to hold all that comes with having an infant (car seat, stroller, diaper bag, and still gotta carry the groceries or whatever we're going out for).
As for dependent on another country's resource: I think we're pretty self-sufficient on the oil here in Alberta ;-) However, you're right - there are other technologies that can and should replace this. Great. Let's look at them. Let's develop them. I like nuclear - too bad the eco-wackos prevent their very salvation. I'm kind of unsold on hydrogen, mostly because we need another technology to create the hydrogen. To me, it looks like the potential to become a large capacity battery - nothing more. We need the other energy source to create it. I'm afraid, however, that if we don't get another technology in place, we'll end up using more fossil fuel to create the hydrogen than we'll get back out of the hydrogen, which will make things worse rather than better. I get that it's like a stepping stone - but it's a risk to take that the next generation of energy creation will be here really soon thereafter.
Personally, I'm doing it to save $$ - on my energy bills and at the pump ;-)
Sorta like how they won't release any patches to the 1.5 series after 2.0 came out, right?
(Hint: timeline was 1.5.0.7, then 2.0, then 1.5.0.8...)
Using the past as the best indicator of the future, it sounds like this isn't a concern. Being concerned that they keep doing it is valid. But assuming such when the evidence points the other way is a bit premature.
You, sir, must not be a true programmer. If you were, you would know that goto has long been considered evil. Instead, you should make sourceforge into a function, and call it as such: sourceforge().
That depends on the job. If it's a job for a technical position, ask the applicant to send you their resume as a PDF instead.
If the originator has a virus that sends out infected docs, they'll get your request and say, "huh?". If the originator did send the resume, but it's infected, the PDF won't be (or at least your PDF reader probably won't have the vulnerability). If the originator can't figure out how to do create a PDF, you probably don't want to hire them into a technical position ;-) If it's a non-technical position, well, asking someone who is being hired into HR or sales to create a PDF may be asking a bit much (although even then, some will be able to do it).
Solution? Open your unsolicited (but expected) docs in OpenOffice.org!
Hmmm .. it appears that the offer is no longer available. It seems to have had a limit.
Just not the limit that the company intended ;-)
OMG! It's so bad that even GP's ALIAS has been suppressed! Call the BBC - if that ain't evidence, I don't know what is!
</tongue-in-cheek>
Unfortunately, the regulations of /. have prevented me from purchasing mod points such that I may give my market (you) what it wants (-1, Offtopic).
(I do figure, however, that I'm about to get one ... and similar /. regulations will continue to prevent me from passing it on to you.)
Throwing the word "censor" around like that seems to imply some sort of first-amendment complaint. But nothing could be further from the truth. What's going on is simple. The oil industry has money. They have the right to throw it where they want. If you want some of their money, don't piss 'em off.
The solution, then, should be obvious. NSTA needs to stop taking money that has strings. Until then, they will self censor to ensure the money continues to flow.
(I said obvious, not simple.)
I suppose the question is: do we prefer organisations like this to garner private dollars, or would we rather increase taxes to pay for this organisation's operations? Or, the third option: would we prefer disbanding it? Note that disbanding it not only probably wouldn't work (it's natural for people to organise into groups based on creed, philosophy, job description), but probably wouldn't save money (pushing all the decision-making down into state or county-based groups - not saying that this is bad, just expensive).
Are you kidding? I got my bran' new 37" LCD TV two days before the Grey Cup. And my team wasn't even in it! And I'm not even a sports fan ... but I did make $100 on my Grey Cup pool tickets this year... no, doesn't even make a dent in the purchase price of the TV.
As for the FA, the guy is out to lunch. Especially when it comes to things like hockey, but even for other shows. When you get -40 degree weather (and I don't particularly care if you're using Fahrenheit or Celsius), all you can do is spend time at home. Either on the 'net or watching TV. Geeks will get nice computers and monitors. The rest of the population still spends more time watching TV, and will get the nice TV.
Seems to give new meaning to the term "LiveCD" ...
Interesting ...
Not more than three words later ...
<shrug>
(Yes, yes, you provided the smallish-word definition, but I thought you'd last longer than three words without resorting to oversized words where diminutive words would have sufficed. ;->)
+1, Cynical.
-1, Conspiratol.
+1, Probably right.
Slashdot needs more moderation options.
The problem? Third-party software companies, including even MS's big foe, IBM, make too much money off the upgrade cycle. The next versions of your favourite software will, no doubt, support Vista, as well as XP. But, after a couple years, the support for XP will drop. You'll need to upgrade everything (including OS), or nothing.
For many people, that's a minor inconvenience. Until (they think) they need something from the newer version of something. For example, a new printer. Or scanner. Or a device type we haven't imagined yet. And that forces a huge upgrade.
Microsoft doesn't need to lock in their own software - other companies, citing a desire to keep support costs down, will do that for them. I'm thinking, web sites that only work with IE7.2 - which is Vista-only.
Sure, many people will shrug their shoulders and continue without Windows. But many will shrug their shoulders and upgrade. Microsoft knows they got their target market by the short-hairs. And they're not even being polite about it now.
I'm actually trying to decide if I should warn the people I care about about this, or wait for them to get screwed over by it. On one hand, I care about them and want them to not get sucked in to such a legal quagmire. On the other hand, I've been trying to get them to switch to Linux for years. They obviously don't listen to me - maybe this is the thing that is needed to get them to wake up and find alternatives...
As a Gentoo user (but perhaps not a "buff" in your definition - I wonder how many users actually would be a "Gentoo buff" under your definition), I must say that I only load a new kernel whenever I have to reboot for some reason. As I use the machine as my desktop, it takes a bit of a thrashing, so I generally will need to reboot for some reason every 3-6 months. (Of course, if that kernel didn't work, I'll have to reboot right away again back into the old kernel. Not sure if I need to count that here.) Excepting when the new kernel doesn't work immediately, and when I first set up the machine, my shortest time between reboots has probably been about 4 weeks. Nothing to do with the kernel - XFree86 didn't want to come down nicely.
However, I generally compile every kernel marked stable. I just don't reboot into them unless there is a perceived security risk in delaying the upgrade. Then, assuming no such security risk, I only keep in /boot the kernel that I currently am running (and thus believe to be stable in my environment) and the latest compiled kernel so that next time I reboot it's all ready to go.
Actually, there is a reason for this. And it's not just limitations of the filesystem. It's that it actually was not uncommon for Windows users to "accidentally" delete their Windows directory (sometimes thinking they're clever for freeing up space for other things). Since there is no filesystem security on Windows by default, you ended up deleting many (but not all) DLLs ... and next time you tried to load something, crash. (Had that happen to my dad with Win3.1. Luckily, Win 3.1 was easy enough to reinstall.)
Meanwhile, Linux users generally don't run as root - so all they can bork is their own home directory. However, if you do make a typo as root ... well, yeah, you run into problems. There are ways around that, too, if you're paranoid enough. One way is to use setacl's to mark everything in /usr, /lib, /boot, /bin, and /sbin as immutable. Another is to put those on their own partition(s), and mount them as read-only. Both solutions make it a royal PITA to upgrade things, but they do take care of the accidental-delete idea.
Hmmm - I wonder if I could convince the Gentoo guys to do the setacl's thing in their portage. Since they always do a temp-install to /var/tmp/packagename anyway, they could automatically unset the immutable bit on everything they're about to overwrite, overwrite it, reset the immutable bit, all automatically. RPM (the only other package manager I'm familiar with) would make this much more painful without serious changes to the RPM code.
Breaking the law? Really? That all depends on where you made your money.
If you and a group of friends put money in a pot to make a wager, and then the winner(s) take all the money from the pot, leaving no "overhead" for the establishment in which you make the bets (e.g., your house), it's perfectly legal. What's not legal is some person or organisation taking a cut from the wagers, without a valid license from the jurisdiction the gambling is occuring in (e.g., casino, charity raffles, etc.)
And, if what you're doing really is illegal, it seems a bit brash to advertise it on the 'net. Not that I think any law enforcement is going to notice or pay attention.
(which is why many inventors who are otherwise unable to come up with capital for manufacturing merely license their patents to others - making their own profit, while still allowing the consumer the benefits of mass production.)