Read the text again, you're wrong. Clause 2.1 bans *all* games ('technical' or 'gambling' ones) that rely on electronic/electrical/software means. Clause 2.2 specifically allows ONLY games 'whose results only depends on the player's ability and skill' WHEN THEY ARE PLAYED ON DEVICES THAT 'rely only on one's muscle force', IFF 'no bets are placed on them'. So, clause 2.2 allows what? Masturbation? The really annoying fact about this law is that is designed as an amendment to a previous law distinguishing between 'technical' and 'gambling' games, just to narrow it's interpretation to the point that it effectively dissalows every electronic game, period. They could just ban gambling by disallowing "any game whose win/lose result causes a monetary transaction to take place", effectively banning gambling on it's root, rather than relying on totally unrelated game properties. The *intention* of the law maker was indeed to ban all games, just because they could not easily distinguish procedurally between 'technical games' and 'gambling' in the case of modified 'technical games'.
The whole thing started some years ago, when Greek officials decided to ban gambling. Gambling is, from an social and ethical perspective, mostly considered a normal activity in Greece, and it's rather usual for Greeks to gamble, in several ways. Card playing with money, and some gambling games with dice are a long time tradition in Greece.
The real problem Greek government has with gambling is that it's a mostly un-taxable financial transaction. From about 1990 on, there were some shops in Greece with coin-up games employing a mostly innocent "one armed bandit" slot machine that would not pay the player back, of course.
Many people converted these slot machines to full gambling mode, enabling them to get bets and pay the player back on winning events. The use of these machines in this mode was always banned, and it's prohibited only in government-licensed (and highly taxed) casinos (which are some of the most profitable businesses in Greece)
Coin-up shops employed several methods to cover this special 'gambling mode', on the coin-ups, even controlling the machines remotely to get them back on their normal operation mode in the case of a DOY (Greek IRS) raid.
Of course, whenever a raid was sucessful and the owner of the shop (or, more usually, an inoccent waitress - shop owners are always careful not to be present when a raid takes place) got busted, the problem was usually solved by another kind of financial transaction that is also a long time tradition in Greece, namely bribery:>
Very few shops went as far as to operate under an Internet Cafe cover, employing PCs and software for gambling purposes. In the case of a raid, they were switched to normal 'internet cafe' operation.
All these facts were widely known in Greece, though no one really was really giving too much attention on them. Suddenly, a renowned TV journalist, well known for his style of researching, though sensational and yellow journalism, made a TV show that 'revealed' what almost everybody knew about gambling machines in Greece. The press - mostly yellow press - acted immediately, magnifying the whole subject to an inappropriate degree (as they mostly do on every chance they get).
At some time, somebody found out that you can illegaly gamble through Internet and gambling sites, online casinos, etc. This only made the whole matter worse, especially to the eyes of a sensational, uneducated, and highly conservative majority of the 'public opinion' in Greece, that spontaneously equated "internet use" and "internet cafes" with "illegal gambling".
The reaction of the legislative body was reflexive - they unanimously passed a law banning *all* games except for some that 'require muscle power from the player' and that 'don't rely on electrical/electronic or software mechanisms'. The law essentialy bans all games except perhaps "heads or tails".
Internet Cafes in Greece get most of their profit from online gaming - web browsing or email is a relative minority on their profit, as most people just go there to play games like Starcraft. The law had a special provision for Internet Cafes, stating that they are allowed to use computers only to provide non-gaming activities. The activation of the abovementioned law caused a wide range of actions, from official protesting and lobbying through a newly formed Netcafe Union, to the forming of special hidden rooms in netcafes to play the 'illegal games'.
The whole matter has tremendous interest to watch, from several perspectives. It's always a great intellectual challenge to live in Greece and actually try to understand what's going on around you:>
I live in Greece. We have a state authority responsible for hunting down Financial Crime. They just come in and do financial audits to companies suspect for tax evasion, etc. Starting from somewhere in 2001, when they do an audit, they also have a BSA representative with them, who does all their usual software auditing process. I always wondered if they actually have the rights to do that. It's essentially the government assisting a private body auditing you. As many legal matters are radically different in the US and Europe, I wonder if they do this in other EU countries too, and whether it is considered legal under EU legislation.
Re:10 baht coins look like 2 Euro (for machines)
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
That's actually more common than you'd expect - I remember a particular Swiss coin having the same dimensions and similar weight to an old 50 Greek Drachmas coin.
The coin actually manged to pass the check on some vending machines, but not too many. I suspect they use more intelligent tests than just size and weight (conductivity, perhaps?). It would be safe to conclude that, as coin size ranges are rather limited to be practical, there surely would have been coins with the same size, and vending machine manufacturers are most probably aware of this.
Re:Different versions of the Euro...
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 1
It's actually interesting how they tried to solve some 'incompaibility' problems between_european countries, mainly due to language pluralism.
All EU countries use the latin alphabet, except for Greece that has its own one.
Euro bank notes are identical in all euro currency zone countries, and the word 'euro' is typed in both latin and Greek alphabets. They are decorated with amazingly neutral designs, avoiding any resemblance to any national currency - they have bridges printed on the one side and buildings on the other (supposedly symbolizing the cooperation and communication of the european union construct), but they came out rather flat and tasteless, in my opinion.
Coins, on the other side, have one common side and one 'national' side, allowing the use of national symbols/logotypes on the national side, and also accounting for the fact that the 1/100th of the currency is not called 'cent' in all european countries.
They expect to have some problems arising from the fact that some people won't accept perfectly valid Euro coins just based on the fact that the 'national' side is different.
On a sidenote, having a currency that equals roughly 0.8$, makes the use of e-bay more economical - you pretend bidding in $, and you always have some money left:>
Slashdot Mirror
Read the text again, you're wrong.
Clause 2.1 bans *all* games ('technical' or 'gambling' ones) that rely on electronic/electrical/software means.
Clause 2.2 specifically allows ONLY games 'whose results only depends on the player's ability and skill' WHEN THEY ARE PLAYED ON DEVICES THAT 'rely only on one's muscle force', IFF 'no bets are placed on them'.
So, clause 2.2 allows what? Masturbation?
The really annoying fact about this law is that is designed as an amendment to a previous law distinguishing between 'technical' and 'gambling' games, just to narrow it's interpretation to the point that it effectively dissalows every electronic game, period.
They could just ban gambling by disallowing "any game whose win/lose result causes a monetary transaction to take place", effectively banning gambling on it's root, rather than relying on totally unrelated game properties.
The *intention* of the law maker was indeed to ban all games, just because they could not easily distinguish procedurally between 'technical games' and 'gambling' in the case of modified 'technical games'.
#include
:>
:>
As they always say, the devil is in the details.
The whole thing started some years ago, when Greek officials decided to ban gambling. Gambling is, from an social and ethical perspective, mostly considered a normal activity in Greece, and it's rather usual for Greeks to gamble, in several ways. Card playing with money, and some gambling games with dice are a long time tradition in Greece.
The real problem Greek government has with gambling is that it's a mostly un-taxable financial transaction. From about 1990 on, there were some shops in Greece with coin-up games employing a mostly innocent "one armed bandit" slot machine that would not pay the player back, of course.
Many people converted these slot machines to full gambling mode, enabling them to get bets and pay the player back on winning events. The use of these machines in this mode was always banned, and it's prohibited only in government-licensed (and highly taxed) casinos (which are some of the most profitable businesses in Greece)
Coin-up shops employed several methods to cover this special 'gambling mode', on the coin-ups, even controlling the machines remotely to get them back on their normal operation mode in the case of a DOY (Greek IRS) raid.
Of course, whenever a raid was sucessful and the owner of the shop (or, more usually, an inoccent waitress - shop owners are always careful not to be present when a raid takes place) got busted, the problem was usually solved by another kind of financial transaction that is also a long time tradition in Greece, namely bribery
Very few shops went as far as to operate under an Internet Cafe cover, employing PCs and software for gambling purposes. In the case of a raid, they were switched to normal 'internet cafe' operation.
All these facts were widely known in Greece, though no one really was really giving too much attention on them. Suddenly, a renowned TV journalist, well known for his style of researching, though sensational and yellow journalism, made a TV show that 'revealed' what almost everybody knew about gambling machines in Greece. The press - mostly yellow press - acted immediately, magnifying the whole subject to an inappropriate degree (as they mostly do on every chance they get).
At some time, somebody found out that you can illegaly gamble through Internet and gambling sites, online casinos, etc. This only made the whole matter worse, especially to the eyes of a sensational, uneducated, and highly conservative majority of the 'public opinion' in Greece, that spontaneously equated "internet use" and "internet cafes" with "illegal gambling".
The reaction of the legislative body was reflexive - they unanimously passed a law banning *all* games except for some that 'require muscle power from the player' and that 'don't rely on electrical/electronic or software mechanisms'. The law essentialy bans all games except perhaps "heads or tails".
Internet Cafes in Greece get most of their profit from online gaming - web browsing or email is a relative minority on their profit, as most people just go there to play games like Starcraft. The law had a special provision for Internet Cafes, stating that they are allowed to use computers only to provide non-gaming activities. The activation of the abovementioned law caused a wide range of actions, from official protesting and lobbying through a newly formed Netcafe Union, to the forming of special hidden rooms in netcafes to play the 'illegal games'.
The whole matter has tremendous interest to watch, from several perspectives. It's always a great intellectual challenge to live in Greece and actually try to understand what's going on around you
I live in Greece. We have a state authority responsible for hunting down Financial Crime.
They just come in and do financial audits to companies suspect for tax evasion, etc.
Starting from somewhere in 2001, when they do an audit, they also have a BSA representative with them, who does all their usual software auditing process.
I always wondered if they actually have the rights to do that. It's essentially the government assisting a private body auditing you.
As many legal matters are radically different in the US and Europe, I wonder if they do this in other EU countries too, and whether it is considered legal under EU legislation.
That's actually more common than you'd expect - I remember a particular Swiss coin having the same dimensions and similar weight to an old 50 Greek Drachmas coin.
The coin actually manged to pass the check on some vending machines, but not too many. I suspect they use more intelligent tests than just size and weight (conductivity, perhaps?). It would be safe to conclude that, as coin size ranges are rather limited to be practical, there surely would have been coins with the same size, and vending machine manufacturers are most probably aware of this.
It's actually interesting how they tried to solve some 'incompaibility' problems between_european countries, mainly due to language pluralism. :>
All EU countries use the latin alphabet, except for Greece that has its own one.
Euro bank notes are identical in all euro currency zone countries, and the word 'euro' is typed in both latin and Greek alphabets. They are decorated with amazingly neutral designs, avoiding any resemblance to any national currency - they have bridges printed on the one side and buildings on the other (supposedly symbolizing the cooperation and communication of the european union construct), but they came out rather flat and tasteless, in my opinion.
Coins, on the other side, have one common side and one 'national' side, allowing the use of national symbols/logotypes on the national side, and also accounting for the fact that the 1/100th of the currency is not called 'cent' in all european countries.
They expect to have some problems arising from the fact that some people won't accept perfectly valid Euro coins just based on the fact that the 'national' side is different.
On a sidenote, having a currency that equals roughly 0.8$, makes the use of e-bay more economical - you pretend bidding in $, and you always have some money left
...They just wanted to fire the person who came up
with the "2-user license" HP-UX scheme that counts
*all* network logins as 1 license.