Indeed. I'm a bit surprised by all the complaining "controls are teh s uck" posts, when the point is that someone's doing the damn thing at all in the first place. It's not meant to be the greatest thing in the world right out of the gate, it's the first milestone of a charming new hack on an interesting new platform.
I thought my Linux education was going well...
on
Creative Documentation
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· Score: 4, Funny
Many sellers of high-value items on eBay throw in a line like "the seller reserves the right to cancel this auction for any reason," which I imagine would leave the seller the option to go with some sort of last-minute offer like the one in this case. However, said high offer would be outside eBay, and therefore not subject to any of the protections against fraud or simply chinging one's mind in the eBay system.
I'm not much of a fan of how things are done on eBay, but I do know there are proper ways for sellers to tailor eBay's system a bit more toward to what they want to do.
But there are right ways to use the buying process as well. If Mr. $250,000 was all that into buying the plane, why didn't he simply bid on the auction? He might have even beat the high bidder with a lower price.
The problem with that is with the right gear, you can still create a really high-res photoshop of something, and then take a photograph of the photoshopped image. Instant analog!
Photographs in general will never be as reliable as they once were, regardless of the format.
I've been using the cheap $20 Logitech optical trackballs on my main machines for years. For graphic design, 3-D building, audio stuff, and pretty much anything that requires precision control for long stretches of time, there really is no possibility of me ever going back to a mouse.
"We try to be fair and reasonable in resolving these cases," said RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth. "Our aim is not to be in court, but to seek appropriate retribution for the damage done to the industry." Duckworth then resumed dusting and polishing each gold coin in the RIAA's money bin.
This display of unprofessionalism is most upsetting. As a result, I've sent out a memo to the office banning the use of emoticons in work-related matters. It's written in Comic Sans MS.
Dealer: My deal..
Eliza: What does that suggest to you?
Dealer: It suggests I'm giving you your cards.
Eliza: We can talk about me later. Now back to you...
Guest: Here you go.
Eliza: So you feel I go...
Guest: Um.. yeah. How many cards do you want?
Eliza: What else comes to mind when you ask that?
Dealer: You need to give me whatever cards you want to exchange.
Eliza: I see. Tell me more.
Dealer: Um.. so you can get a better hand?
Eliza: We were discussing you--not me.
Dealer: Do you have any interest in playing this game?
Eliza: Oh, I have any interest in playing this game?
Dealer: That's it, I quit! Go find someone else to torture!
Eliza: That would't help much, now, would it?
From the articles I have read (and the one you linked to seems to infer the same), there were two separate, isolated issues. "Those two" people involved were indeed just age-playing with avatars.
However, you are correct in that Germany is insane enough to have made "virtual" child pornography a crime. I stand corrected, thanks.
It was a reference to the recent banning of two adults who were roleplaying. If you're referring to the recent high-profile case from Germany, those two were not only ageplaying intercourse with virtual child avatars (which is quite illegal over there) but also trading pictures of the real thing. Prosecuting them is a far cry from "no sex" in Second Life.
That's a very good point, but one which leads to another factor in this whole situation I hadn't even considered before.
In legal casinos such as those in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, the human dealers and digital gambling machines are subject to stringent licensing and auditing procedures. However, in SL anyone with rudimentary building and scripting skills can build a gambling machine, and anyone who buys a piece of virtual land could put a casino on it. Since nobody was watching them, they could fiddle with those algorithms in any way they like without consequence. As with games on some random shady website, skill might be of little to no importance depending on the scruples of the proprietor.
SL is not a "free society," it's a simulated world which is operated by an American entity, and which uses virtual currency that is openly exchangable for the real thing. As such, it needs to abide by the law or it puts its entire operation at legal risk.
At any rate, the issue isn't gambling itself, at least for me. I'm no gambler beyond the occasional lotto scratchcard, but I don't mind at all that it exists. Let people have their fun, I just won't be joining in. However, the implementation of same in Second Life had many negative effects on everything in SL that was not gambling-related. This is why I won't miss it.
Just about all SL's casino games, including the ones you listed, are single-player affairs generated by scripted machines. There aren't human dealers or other human players to out-skill.
To summarize my recent rambling journal post on the subject, there are many SL residents (including myself) who appreciate this move. The casinos really tended to trash the sims in which they set up shop, in both functional and aesthetic ways.
It's worth noting that online gambling has been illegal in the US for a while now, and it's something of a surprise that Linden let things continue for so long.
Each issue of the WoW comic's gripping storyline will be interrupted by the characters running around shouting misspelled racist and homophobic epithets at the reader for two solid pages.
I think every example in this article is absolutely accurate. But then again, I'm posting this from a parallel universe on my Commodore 1024 running OS/2 XP in the Confederate States of America.
Maybe on the big radio franchises, but the smaller, independent stations won't have such expensive equipment installed. Coincidentally, the independent stations are the ones most likely to have talk shows which deal with heavy issues that make certain people very angry, and will be the most vulnerable to the OP's call-in-and-swear scenario.
Slashdot Mirror
*applause*
How expensive is it compared to the machine that goes "ping?"
You tell 'em, Uncle Daddy!
Indeed. I'm a bit surprised by all the complaining "controls are teh s uck" posts, when the point is that someone's doing the damn thing at all in the first place. It's not meant to be the greatest thing in the world right out of the gate, it's the first milestone of a charming new hack on an interesting new platform.
...until I was eaten by a Grue.
Many sellers of high-value items on eBay throw in a line like "the seller reserves the right to cancel this auction for any reason," which I imagine would leave the seller the option to go with some sort of last-minute offer like the one in this case. However, said high offer would be outside eBay, and therefore not subject to any of the protections against fraud or simply chinging one's mind in the eBay system.
I'm not much of a fan of how things are done on eBay, but I do know there are proper ways for sellers to tailor eBay's system a bit more toward to what they want to do.
But there are right ways to use the buying process as well. If Mr. $250,000 was all that into buying the plane, why didn't he simply bid on the auction? He might have even beat the high bidder with a lower price.
The problem with that is with the right gear, you can still create a really high-res photoshop of something, and then take a photograph of the photoshopped image. Instant analog!
Photographs in general will never be as reliable as they once were, regardless of the format.
Is it a snozzberry?
I've been using the cheap $20 Logitech optical trackballs on my main machines for years. For graphic design, 3-D building, audio stuff, and pretty much anything that requires precision control for long stretches of time, there really is no possibility of me ever going back to a mouse.
And you'll all have the privilege of reading it, just as soon as everyone on Slashdot sends me a dollar each.
This display of unprofessionalism is most upsetting. As a result, I've sent out a memo to the office banning the use of emoticons in work-related matters. It's written in Comic Sans MS.
After all these years, they've finally found a security hole in the Sneakernet.
Dealer: My deal..
Eliza: What does that suggest to you?
Dealer: It suggests I'm giving you your cards.
Eliza: We can talk about me later. Now back to you...
Guest: Here you go.
Eliza: So you feel I go...
Guest: Um.. yeah. How many cards do you want?
Eliza: What else comes to mind when you ask that?
Dealer: You need to give me whatever cards you want to exchange.
Eliza: I see. Tell me more.
Dealer: Um.. so you can get a better hand?
Eliza: We were discussing you--not me.
Dealer: Do you have any interest in playing this game?
Eliza: Oh, I have any interest in playing this game?
Dealer: That's it, I quit! Go find someone else to torture!
Eliza: That would't help much, now, would it?
That's a very good point, but one which leads to another factor in this whole situation I hadn't even considered before.
In legal casinos such as those in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, the human dealers and digital gambling machines are subject to stringent licensing and auditing procedures. However, in SL anyone with rudimentary building and scripting skills can build a gambling machine, and anyone who buys a piece of virtual land could put a casino on it. Since nobody was watching them, they could fiddle with those algorithms in any way they like without consequence. As with games on some random shady website, skill might be of little to no importance depending on the scruples of the proprietor.
SL is not a "free society," it's a simulated world which is operated by an American entity, and which uses virtual currency that is openly exchangable for the real thing. As such, it needs to abide by the law or it puts its entire operation at legal risk.
At any rate, the issue isn't gambling itself, at least for me. I'm no gambler beyond the occasional lotto scratchcard, but I don't mind at all that it exists. Let people have their fun, I just won't be joining in. However, the implementation of same in Second Life had many negative effects on everything in SL that was not gambling-related. This is why I won't miss it.
Just about all SL's casino games, including the ones you listed, are single-player affairs generated by scripted machines. There aren't human dealers or other human players to out-skill.
"No sex?" Have you actually seen SL at all?
To summarize my recent rambling journal post on the subject, there are many SL residents (including myself) who appreciate this move. The casinos really tended to trash the sims in which they set up shop, in both functional and aesthetic ways.
It's worth noting that online gambling has been illegal in the US for a while now, and it's something of a surprise that Linden let things continue for so long.
Each issue of the WoW comic's gripping storyline will be interrupted by the characters running around shouting misspelled racist and homophobic epithets at the reader for two solid pages.
I think every example in this article is absolutely accurate. But then again, I'm posting this from a parallel universe on my Commodore 1024 running OS/2 XP in the Confederate States of America.
Maybe on the big radio franchises, but the smaller, independent stations won't have such expensive equipment installed. Coincidentally, the independent stations are the ones most likely to have talk shows which deal with heavy issues that make certain people very angry, and will be the most vulnerable to the OP's call-in-and-swear scenario.
HAHAHA! That made my morning, many thanks.