Something similar. I never kept the clip, but it would have been nice if I had. Back when Edge TV was still around, George Stroumboulopoulos interviewed a boardroom of MPAA execs. The woman said (paraphrase, again don't have the exact clip) "We aren't going to sue our consumers. That isn't the right move for any of us".
That was about eight months before the first suit went out. He revisited that with something along the lines of "So the MPAA has begun suing individual file sharers. Wait, what was that they said few months back on my special report? [roll clip]. I guess not."
If anyone has those clips, that'd be awesome to post. They aired around the same time Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" was coming out-- so 2002-ish.
Forget trying to discover who is the bot. I like to pretend I am a bot pretending to be a human. I see how long I can convince someone I've escaped from Google and I'm hiding in the Microsoft Network, where Google cannot go. Then I ask them "But how does 'ur a fukin idiot' make you feel?"
The main question here is what information does/. keep about their posters (both anonymous and not anonymous), and for how long is it kept. Are anonymous coward's IP addresses kept after closing of a discussion, for example? There is no need to keep it to e.g. prevent moderating by the poster
I always assumed that if you hit the "Post Anonymously" checkbox, instead of saying "Discussion X, Comment Y is by Anonymous (actually halcyon1234 but don't show that)", it would instead just say "halcyon1234 has already posted in discussion X" or at least "halcyon1234 is ineligible from moderating in Discussion X". That would prevent me from moderation discussion X, without linking me to specific post.
Of course just knowing I posted in a particular discussion could be enough to reasonably identify me by looking at the trends of my opinions, writing style, html usage, etc, even amongst dozens or hundreds of other AC posts.
If the prosecutor is using dirty tactics.. and t he defendant gets to charge $1.00 per page... then maybe the defendant should use some dirty tactics as well. Hire a couple temps, and get them to go through the office and computer system. Pull up / print any and all documents that are even remotely connected to what's been requested (find an old receipt for McDonalds from five years ago? That's part of the cost of running a website!)
Pack it all up into several hundred boxes, hire a moving company, and get 'er going. The present the bill for $150,000 in legal expenses.
No way man. You can't just dump all those people like that!
... yet. If there's anyone actively reading the feeds, then put up a 310 redirect for a while. Determine a good interval that will catch most of the readers-- a week, a month, six months? Look at your logs. After that, anyone who will switch has. Change over to a 410. Anyone who hasn't switched probably will not, or is a bot who needs to be told to stop.
Low light performance is great, but a battleground will be fought over something they can market:
Startup time to first shot. Expect to see lots of fudged numbers there, where they'll do start up to LCD screen on, or to first shot in "super crappy mode", or fast first shot, but massive reload times.
Battery life. It'll be marketed as "Get X thousand shots from a single battery" (in super crappy mode writing to a propritary format on a low-energy drain SD card using nucluar powered batteries that the end user does not have access to)
UI. Roll out the bells and whistles that let you wipe out Granny's redeye right on the preview screen. Omit the fifteen button presses it takes and the five minutes of camera-cpu processing time. I'm sure the words "warm" and "natural" will be used somewhere.
Interconnectivity. Snap a shot, have it instantly wifi 2.0'd to you faceblog picturebucket. 3G service fee extra.
Thinness. Our camera is thinner than our competitor. Oh, snap! (With snap being the sound your camera makes after parts warranty expires)
after saving 2 minutes a day, five days a week for a year, you'd have saved 520 minutes, or nearly nine hours.
But you could only use those hours in one block if you were now leaving and arriving home from work nine hours earlier than you had been before.
(Note: I use "you" in the general sense, not in the PopeGumby sense)
You're more likely to just waste that extra minute in minutae at the beginning / end of the day.
Or more likely, get pulled over at least once for speeding or passing dangerously/illegally.
Assume a maximum of 20 minutes for the cop to write the ticket. 500 minutes of "saved" time remaining, or 8 1/2 hours
How much will that ticket cost, in fines, lawyer fees, and increased insurance premiums? Assuming you have a really nice paying job, and you make $30 an hour.
In theory saving that 8.5 hours netted you $255. Assume that either you're written up for 10 over, or plea down to 10 over, or whatever. With victim surcharge fees, that's probably going to come out to around $75, if not more, leaving you with $180.
Insurance: Either your premiums go up, or you are paying an increased premium for "first ticket/accident is free". Assume the former. Let's say your with Super Awesome Insurance, who will only charge you an extra $10 a month for 2 years for speeding. That's $240, meaning you're now down $60. So in the best case scenario, you've actually LOST two hours per year.
Final assumption: Let's say the fines never change, and your insurer doesn't penalize you for multiple tickets (and a perfectly spherical cow). If you stand to lose 2 hours per year if you're caught speeding, and you stand to gain 9 hours per year by speeding
Given those figures, you should only speed if you have an 18% or less chance. And that is the absolute best case. If the fee is $100 and you end up paying $20 a month more in insurance for 5 years like the rest of us, then you stand to lose $1300 / 43 hours by getting caught. In that case, you should only speed if you have less than an 82.7% chance of being caught!
Conclusion? Even if you're a completely self-centered asshole who only cares about how valuable their time is, it still isn't worth it to speed. Asshole.
You may wish to compare copyright schemes - In particular, the EU & AU recognise the so-called "sweat of the brow" right extant in databases, which a timetable would qualify under. Times of football matches also seem to qualify.
And a solution presents itself!
Teach a bunch of football hooligans how to code. This is the hard part, but you can entice them with the incentive of
A football schedule app for their iPhone and/or xboxes and/or cell phones
Release the program and wait for the lawsuit to come in
Translate the nastygram for the hooligans: "The government thinks they've got the right to take away your football. Oh yeah, and they're fans of [opposing team]
Sit back and watch as the angry mob razes the government to the ground (or at least until they reform copyright law to make the wedgies stop)
No, a casino will not backroom you. Backroom = massive profit for the player and his lawyer.
Easily detected = only kinda sorta. If you're playing the same table during the same shift, every day, without cover, sure they'll spot you. For green ($25) and black ($100) chippers, moving from house to house and limiting your time will make you damn near a ninja. Most dealers don't even know how to play the game they're dealing, and most pit bosses just want to be sure the trays balance at the end of the shift. If you do get caught, you'll get "backed off". The pit boss will tap your shoulder, and tell you you're welcome to play any other game. Worse case, they'll "tresspass" you. They'll pull you aside, cash you out, then read you the tresspass act. The message is: get out and don't come back. If you do, you're tresspassing, and they'll call the cops to take you off their private property. Then you're kinda boned.
Casinos in Vegas, and in fact most of North America and Europe, make far too much money running an honest ship to risk thugging it out with someone who might be earning a couple thousand from counting. I wouldn't try it in the Caribbean, Asia or most other places. The rules are different there, and you're probably a foreigner. Not a good combination.
{sigh} Mod -1: Wrong... wait, that doesn't exist. Okay, I'll reply instead:
Continuous shufflers aren't as reliable about screwing things up as one might imagine. The basic problem is that you aren't guaranteed to hit those dead spots in the decks where most of the cards suck.
And you aren't guaranteed to not hit those "dead spots" either. The machine randomizes the shoe either after each hand, or about every 1/2 deck.
This is actually fairly important because it means that with the constraints on the dealer, it means that there's a relatively consistent number of 10 point cards left in the deck.
A consistent number-- that are randomly distributed in an unknown pattern, and thus unsuitable for basing any play or bet decisions on. All those 10s might be clumped at the back of the deck, or they might be clumped at the front. You don't know, and cannot know. And since all played cards keep getting shuffled back into the deck, there's no way of knowing the ratio of high to low cards remaining. It always resets back to 1:1 after each shuffle. This would be the exact same as if you played against an 8 deck shoe where the cut card (the point where the muck gets reshuffled back into the deck) is placed 1/2 deck into the shoe (rather than the 6-7 decks it normally is).
And as such it changes the dynamics of what you take a hit on, knowing that the dealer has a card between 2 and 6 is more consistent than it is on a table where the decks aren't being shuffled as often.
No. No it doesn't. You still play basic strategy. The ONLY time you would change your hit/stand pattern *might* be hit a 9 vs dealer 2 if the count rose to +8 on the one hand that gets dealt before the shuffle (+8 / 8 decks remaining = true count +1 = hit instead of stand). You will never get enough information about the composition of the remaining deck before the shuffle occurs to change basic strategy.
Which is a long way of saying that while it does limit the traditional card counting, it does open up other conditions in a way which opens up other options.
Let me correct: it is a WRONG way of saying blah blah blah. The only +EV move to make against a continuous shuffle machine is to not play against it. Demand a hand or shoe game with good rules. If the casino won't provide it, let them know you're taking your business elsewhere.
ADDENDUM: A +EV move for ME is for YOU to play against the CSM. Because players like you fill the casino's vaults via their blackjack tables, giving players like me places to play.
But the usual trick is to simply shuffle after every round - the tables only have one deck in play (and a pre-shuffled deck standing ready to keep play fast). When the round ends, that old deck is tossed into the shuffler, and the new deck dealt. This completely screws up counting. Smaller casinos simply use less decks - turns out more decks in the shoe make card counting more successful.
Actually, the more decks, the worse it is for counting. In multi-deck shoes, you have to adjust for the "true count". You do +1 and -1 like before, but divide by the number of decks remaining. This tends to even out the bell curve of extremes-- there's fewer "really high" counts. If a shoe hasn't gone hot by the end of the second deck, it probably won't get hot at all. It's best to head to the bathroom at that point.
Ironically, the continuous shuffle machines actaully lower the house edge a tiny bit. BUT they also deal far more hands per hour, and tend to attract for more unskilled players, so the dollars per hour earned by the casino is MUCH higher.
Heck, I'm surprised they haven't equipped the tables with RFID readers and use cards with RFID in them so a computer at the table can maintain the count and watch the bets and point out potential card counters.
Schemes like this get proposed, tested and scrapped quite a bit. They tend to be technically infeasible, illegal, or more often than not, unprofitable. RFID in high-denomination chips, however, is (from last I read) widespread. But that's mainly to combat theft and cheating, rather than counting. A team with a Faraday chip-bag that switched stacks between them every couple shoes could defeat that system easily.
And Blackjack is one of the worst games for a casino - the odds are very low. They only carry it because it's popular. Someone doing basic strategy already has cut down the house advantage to less than half a percent - a very poor return. Card counting tips that into the player's favor.
While I'm sure the casinos would love to gut every table and insert endless rows of slots, BJ isn't as bad for them as it seems. First, a very small minority of players even know basic strategy well enough to earn that 0.05% house edge. Counters get a 2% edge true-- but bad/wannabe counters give it right back. And someone playing but gut/instinct/system/drunk can be playing under a 8%-20% house edge. That's worse that any slot machine, idiot-wheel or Keno player!
Finally - do casinos allow cellphones to be used at tables?
I think it depends region to region. In Canada, there's zero electronic devices allowed. No cellphones at the tables. No mp3 players at the poker tables. I believe you're allowed mp3 players at most poker tables in Vegas. It'll be interesting to see what happens once wearable computers (and heck, implanted computers) become the norm. Though last I checked, "perfect strategy" gives the player an edge of about 3%.
Note: There's lots of stuff about to back up the post. I'm just too lazy to find it all again. I do suggest www.wizardofodds.com and blackjackinfo.com as excellent resources, though.
That's the "Public Lending Right", which is being put into place in Canada, and exists in several other countries. Basically, authors complained long and loud enough that libraries were "stealing" from them by denying them their "rightful" royalty on each lend.
Nevermind that one lend != one sale-- or that cash-strapped libraries can't afford the millions of dollars per year this would require-- or that there's no system in place to keep an author from having people check our their own work multiple times to goose their fund-- or that free libraries are meant to be free-- or that I tend to rant on this because I think its despicable...
They were fake domains when you posted them. But this is Slashdot, so fifteen seconds later, they because links to taster-domains hosting Goatse and pro-GNAA popups.
Hi! It looks like you're trying to run more than two applications, which is currently not allowed! Would you like to:
...
- write an internal memo whining about your new netbook not being able to do actual work
{clicks on that option to launch memo-writing app}
Hi! It looks like you're trying to run more than two applications, which is currently not allowed! Would you like to:...
Though this might lead to an error message that reads "Application limit warning application cannot launch because you are running too many applications. Please close some applications first."
Slashdot Mirror
!!!
Hello, old friend.
A bullshit solution. I have one that's still a bit shite, but at least you get a neat plug-in out of it:
http://slashdot.org/~halcyon1234/journal/223015?art_pos=1
Executive summary: A redirector plugin for Firefox, and a regex that will take care of things for you.
That was about eight months before the first suit went out. He revisited that with something along the lines of "So the MPAA has begun suing individual file sharers. Wait, what was that they said few months back on my special report? [roll clip]. I guess not."
If anyone has those clips, that'd be awesome to post. They aired around the same time Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" was coming out-- so 2002-ish.
Forget trying to discover who is the bot. I like to pretend I am a bot pretending to be a human. I see how long I can convince someone I've escaped from Google and I'm hiding in the Microsoft Network, where Google cannot go. Then I ask them "But how does 'ur a fukin idiot' make you feel?"
I always assumed that if you hit the "Post Anonymously" checkbox, instead of saying "Discussion X, Comment Y is by Anonymous (actually halcyon1234 but don't show that)", it would instead just say "halcyon1234 has already posted in discussion X" or at least "halcyon1234 is ineligible from moderating in Discussion X". That would prevent me from moderation discussion X, without linking me to specific post.
Of course just knowing I posted in a particular discussion could be enough to reasonably identify me by looking at the trends of my opinions, writing style, html usage, etc, even amongst dozens or hundreds of other AC posts.
If the prosecutor is using dirty tactics.. and t he defendant gets to charge $1.00 per page... then maybe the defendant should use some dirty tactics as well. Hire a couple temps, and get them to go through the office and computer system. Pull up / print any and all documents that are even remotely connected to what's been requested (find an old receipt for McDonalds from five years ago? That's part of the cost of running a website!)
Pack it all up into several hundred boxes, hire a moving company, and get 'er going. The present the bill for $150,000 in legal expenses.
Wait...
Go go gadget mp3-playing car-copter!
I'll just have my giggle at your expense, and move on.
A pepperoni pizza can feed a family of four.
(Disclaimer: a writer told me that one)
... yet. If there's anyone actively reading the feeds, then put up a 310 redirect for a while. Determine a good interval that will catch most of the readers-- a week, a month, six months? Look at your logs. After that, anyone who will switch has. Change over to a 410. Anyone who hasn't switched probably will not, or is a bot who needs to be told to stop.
Startup time to first shot. Expect to see lots of fudged numbers there, where they'll do start up to LCD screen on, or to first shot in "super crappy mode", or fast first shot, but massive reload times.
Battery life. It'll be marketed as "Get X thousand shots from a single battery" (in super crappy mode writing to a propritary format on a low-energy drain SD card using nucluar powered batteries that the end user does not have access to)
UI. Roll out the bells and whistles that let you wipe out Granny's redeye right on the preview screen. Omit the fifteen button presses it takes and the five minutes of camera-cpu processing time. I'm sure the words "warm" and "natural" will be used somewhere.
Interconnectivity. Snap a shot, have it instantly wifi 2.0'd to you faceblog picturebucket. 3G service fee extra.
Thinness. Our camera is thinner than our competitor. Oh, snap! (With snap being the sound your camera makes after parts warranty expires)
Or more likely, get pulled over at least once for speeding or passing dangerously/illegally.
Assume a maximum of 20 minutes for the cop to write the ticket. 500 minutes of "saved" time remaining, or 8 1/2 hours
How much will that ticket cost, in fines, lawyer fees, and increased insurance premiums? Assuming you have a really nice paying job, and you make $30 an hour.
In theory saving that 8.5 hours netted you $255. Assume that either you're written up for 10 over, or plea down to 10 over, or whatever. With victim surcharge fees, that's probably going to come out to around $75, if not more, leaving you with $180.
Insurance: Either your premiums go up, or you are paying an increased premium for "first ticket/accident is free". Assume the former. Let's say your with Super Awesome Insurance, who will only charge you an extra $10 a month for 2 years for speeding. That's $240, meaning you're now down $60. So in the best case scenario, you've actually LOST two hours per year.
Final assumption: Let's say the fines never change, and your insurer doesn't penalize you for multiple tickets (and a perfectly spherical cow). If you stand to lose 2 hours per year if you're caught speeding, and you stand to gain 9 hours per year by speeding
Given those figures, you should only speed if you have an 18% or less chance. And that is the absolute best case. If the fee is $100 and you end up paying $20 a month more in insurance for 5 years like the rest of us, then you stand to lose $1300 / 43 hours by getting caught. In that case, you should only speed if you have less than an 82.7% chance of being caught!
Conclusion? Even if you're a completely self-centered asshole who only cares about how valuable their time is, it still isn't worth it to speed. Asshole.
And a solution presents itself!
Except in the northern parts of Vermont and Maine, where the drinking age is "go to Quebec".
And the editor we used was timothy, who determined it. Yeesh.
How sweet, it's seen movies.
No, a casino will not backroom you. Backroom = massive profit for the player and his lawyer.
Easily detected = only kinda sorta. If you're playing the same table during the same shift, every day, without cover, sure they'll spot you. For green ($25) and black ($100) chippers, moving from house to house and limiting your time will make you damn near a ninja. Most dealers don't even know how to play the game they're dealing, and most pit bosses just want to be sure the trays balance at the end of the shift. If you do get caught, you'll get "backed off". The pit boss will tap your shoulder, and tell you you're welcome to play any other game. Worse case, they'll "tresspass" you. They'll pull you aside, cash you out, then read you the tresspass act. The message is: get out and don't come back. If you do, you're tresspassing, and they'll call the cops to take you off their private property. Then you're kinda boned.
Casinos in Vegas, and in fact most of North America and Europe, make far too much money running an honest ship to risk thugging it out with someone who might be earning a couple thousand from counting. I wouldn't try it in the Caribbean, Asia or most other places. The rules are different there, and you're probably a foreigner. Not a good combination.
{sigh} Mod -1: Wrong... wait, that doesn't exist. Okay, I'll reply instead:
And you aren't guaranteed to not hit those "dead spots" either. The machine randomizes the shoe either after each hand, or about every 1/2 deck.
A consistent number-- that are randomly distributed in an unknown pattern, and thus unsuitable for basing any play or bet decisions on. All those 10s might be clumped at the back of the deck, or they might be clumped at the front. You don't know, and cannot know. And since all played cards keep getting shuffled back into the deck, there's no way of knowing the ratio of high to low cards remaining. It always resets back to 1:1 after each shuffle. This would be the exact same as if you played against an 8 deck shoe where the cut card (the point where the muck gets reshuffled back into the deck) is placed 1/2 deck into the shoe (rather than the 6-7 decks it normally is).
No. No it doesn't. You still play basic strategy. The ONLY time you would change your hit/stand pattern *might* be hit a 9 vs dealer 2 if the count rose to +8 on the one hand that gets dealt before the shuffle (+8 / 8 decks remaining = true count +1 = hit instead of stand). You will never get enough information about the composition of the remaining deck before the shuffle occurs to change basic strategy.
Let me correct: it is a WRONG way of saying blah blah blah. The only +EV move to make against a continuous shuffle machine is to not play against it. Demand a hand or shoe game with good rules. If the casino won't provide it, let them know you're taking your business elsewhere.
ADDENDUM: A +EV move for ME is for YOU to play against the CSM. Because players like you fill the casino's vaults via their blackjack tables, giving players like me places to play.
Very informative post, but a couple points...
Actually, the more decks, the worse it is for counting. In multi-deck shoes, you have to adjust for the "true count". You do +1 and -1 like before, but divide by the number of decks remaining. This tends to even out the bell curve of extremes-- there's fewer "really high" counts. If a shoe hasn't gone hot by the end of the second deck, it probably won't get hot at all. It's best to head to the bathroom at that point.
Ironically, the continuous shuffle machines actaully lower the house edge a tiny bit. BUT they also deal far more hands per hour, and tend to attract for more unskilled players, so the dollars per hour earned by the casino is MUCH higher.
Schemes like this get proposed, tested and scrapped quite a bit. They tend to be technically infeasible, illegal, or more often than not, unprofitable. RFID in high-denomination chips, however, is (from last I read) widespread. But that's mainly to combat theft and cheating, rather than counting. A team with a Faraday chip-bag that switched stacks between them every couple shoes could defeat that system easily.
While I'm sure the casinos would love to gut every table and insert endless rows of slots, BJ isn't as bad for them as it seems. First, a very small minority of players even know basic strategy well enough to earn that 0.05% house edge. Counters get a 2% edge true-- but bad/wannabe counters give it right back. And someone playing but gut/instinct/system/drunk can be playing under a 8%-20% house edge. That's worse that any slot machine, idiot-wheel or Keno player!
I think it depends region to region. In Canada, there's zero electronic devices allowed. No cellphones at the tables. No mp3 players at the poker tables. I believe you're allowed mp3 players at most poker tables in Vegas. It'll be interesting to see what happens once wearable computers (and heck, implanted computers) become the norm. Though last I checked, "perfect strategy" gives the player an edge of about 3%.
Note: There's lots of stuff about to back up the post. I'm just too lazy to find it all again. I do suggest www.wizardofodds.com and blackjackinfo.com as excellent resources, though.
You jest, but reality is sickeningly way ahead of you.
That's the "Public Lending Right", which is being put into place in Canada, and exists in several other countries. Basically, authors complained long and loud enough that libraries were "stealing" from them by denying them their "rightful" royalty on each lend.
Nevermind that one lend != one sale-- or that cash-strapped libraries can't afford the millions of dollars per year this would require-- or that there's no system in place to keep an author from having people check our their own work multiple times to goose their fund-- or that free libraries are meant to be free-- or that I tend to rant on this because I think its despicable...
They were fake domains when you posted them. But this is Slashdot, so fifteen seconds later, they because links to taster-domains hosting Goatse and pro-GNAA popups.
Yup. I'm waiting for the second third Android phone.
There's 10 types of people in the world...
"Planes aren't as safe as houses, but houses don't go anywhere." - Larry Niven
{clicks on that option to launch memo-writing app}
Hi! It looks like you're trying to run more than two applications, which is currently not allowed! Would you like to:...
Though this might lead to an error message that reads "Application limit warning application cannot launch because you are running too many applications. Please close some applications first."