I don't think that the users and admins of EFNet would like the thought of having the government actually being part of their network.
Um, if you don't think the government is already on EFNet (actually, any IRC networks) then you are living in a fairy tale. Think back to the mafiaboy fiasco...he bragged in an irc channel and the next day he was arrested.
Not to mention all the undercover cops in channels like #dadanddaughtersex hoping to catch some kiddie porners.
Since the government can get their hands on any information with a sealed subpoena there is no more or less protection than just everyone using a server like irc.fbi.gov!
The whole EFNet piract scene is a few thousand people at best. There are far larger targets (although they have gone after FTP sites, which in a sense could count as an IRC bust since most siteops are on IRC).
Regarding proof, they don't need prove to make an arrest. That's what a trial is for. Kevin Mitnick was arrested because companies like Sun claimed his copying of source code cost them millions. This was enough to make him guilty of grand-theft computer and get him arrested, even if Sun couldn't prove a single cent of damages resulting from the download. It was just a theory but that's all that matters for an arrest.
I admit that a bunch of WAREZ DOODS don't make a very sympathetic victim, but think about the major ISPs like @Home, C&W, Mindspring, etc that are subjected to constant attacks. If just one of these companies would grow a pair of balls and try to get enforcement instead of pulling the plug then it would send a message.
After mafiaboy I sincerely doubt that anyone would try a major attack against our precious, precious e-commerce sites. So if the same kind of example was made of one of these script kiddies then maybe the rest would think about whether taking that channel was worth years in jail.
No monetary losses? How about bandwidth cost? How about admin time to repair/fix hacked IRC servers?
What I fail to understand is how some Canadian teen ping floods Yahoo! and has the entire wrath of the FBI, NSA, CIA, DIA and Canadian Monties on his ass...meanwhile EFNet servers are subjected to coordinated 3Gbps attacks and the only solutions seems to be give up?
What the hell kind of logic is that? Okay, give up because it is easier. If you ask me, every EFNet server should lodge a formal complain, claiming $10million in monetary losses. If we learned anything from Mitnick, it's that companies can claim any bogus amount of losses and get results.
Or maybe the FBI/CIA should just host an EFNet server themselves. We all know they are caching the whole damn thing anyway to run through Echelon. If EFNet goes down then were are news organizations going to go for their pithy quotes?
Well, the problem with the other moves, like split and double-down is that that you can't continue to track the win count. Splitting is basically playing two hands in the space of one and double down makes your win or loss count twice as much.
In order to track these other options, you would have to use real money, say, bet $100 each hand and then find the pattern that produces the greatest profit.
The odds are always going to be in the house's favor because you always bust first (so even if the house would have busted, it doesn't) but still i think it should be possible to find a series of rules that makes the advantage as slim as possible.
I feel so dirty responding to such a clueless moron.
You'd be more convincing if you had the guts to say that under a login.
But your advice is crap. Thousands of simulations and patters of probability are all still just theories. Same thing for the little charts. They are all pretty good, but not perfect.
Look at chess programs. They play ahead X moves and use that to make a decision, but are still limited by modern technology to just a few moves. It is a poor substitute for knowing every possible chess move and thus never losing.
Chess maybe be too complex to brute force, but a simple game like blackjack isn't.
Was there anything in the terms of service (to borrow and AOL term) that prohibited using such a client? Is not, then f them.
I mean serious...if they gave you access to the computers (meaning you didn't hack into a bunch of University servers and install the client, which I suppose you could have done) then they have no business charging you for transfer fees. You have to agree to something before you owe a bill. If they told you "shut down the client or pay X per MB transferred" that would be a legal contract. They can't retroactively apply charges that you never agreed to pay.
Not to mention, a single warez dood trading ISOs or VCDs will chew up a years worth of RC5 traffic. I do hear about any of them getting slammed with this kind of ludicrous charge, although plenty lose their connections.
I've always wondered if you could use computers to generate a perfect list of moves which would, given enough time, always turn a profit.
Consider the game of blackjack...imagine a grid that has all the possible blackjack hands (from 2, 2 to Ace, Ace) versus all the possible dealer shown cards (from 2 to Ace). Each spot on this grid can hold one of two values: Hit or Stand. For example, when the dealer is showing a 6 and you are holding a 10 and a 6, that spot on the grid should tell you whether to hit or stand (definitely stand!)
Now, here's the tricky part. Make a routine with a giant loop. The loop should assign values to every spot on the grid (starting with all stands, for example) then play a few thousand hands using those rules. After a few thousand hands, change one spot on the grid to hit and repeat until the program has tested every possible combination (i can't even begin to imagine how many calculations this is but hell, there are several programs trying to crack huge key values and this is certainly a more financially valuable goal).
At the end, the program should print out a grid that contains the values that generates the highest number of wins. Then, if we human players were to memorize that grid and then use those rules when we play in the casino, shouldn't we have a good chance at making money? Dare I say, even finding the perfect combination that always turns a profit?
I dunno, but rather than trying to invent a blackjack genius that you would have to continuously update and modify, just brute force the game and be done with it.
Anyone feel like writing this routine in a p2p fashion? I have a few cycles I'd like to donate...
I remember reading an article (I think it was posted here on Slashdot) by a judge who argued there should be a way to legally define file deletion as a way of escaping legal consequences.
IE, if you find yourself in possession of something contraband, doing X would be the equivalent of burning it from a legal point of view.
Exploiting that concept...I wonder about the legality of the following things (pardon the Windows bias but hey, that's me)
1) Keeping your MP3/BombPlans/TeenPorn in the \RECYCLER folder on an NTFS volume. Note that under Windows NT, each user gets his or her own "Recycler Bin" (whereas they all share one common \RECYCLED folder on non-NTFS volumes). So, anything you put in the root of this folder is not deleted when you "Empty Recycle Bin". From a legal perspective, it seems possible you could say, "Hey, I dragged that all to the trash to delete it, don't blame me!" At the same time, all the files would be perfectly usable. Just have to clear your file histories to hide the fact that you are accessing the files there.
2) Same as #1 but actually putting them in the Recycle Bin...and disabling/teaching yourself not to ever empty it. Stronger case than #1 although you can't navigate folders and some programs give error messages when you try to use those files.
3) Have a hard disk that you do not use. "Delete" files...which in Windows land means the first letter of the file name is erased from the File Allocation Table. When you want to access the files, unerase them with a utility. As long as you don't write anything else to the drive while files are in "delete" state you can repeat this infinitely.
4) Write a program that automatically does #3 on the fly (Unerase D:\MP3, Open WinAmp, Play, Close WinAmp, Erase D:\MP3).
Seriously...would judges hold people accountable for files that were deleted? It seems worth considering...
Yes, buy copies of this CD. Buy many copies. Play with them a couple days, try to crack them, whatever.
Then return them all to the retail store and demand a full refund. Site the fact that these CDs will not play on your CD player, your mother's CD player, your brother's CD player, etc. Don't settle for an exchange or store credit. Get angry and tell them you will never buy CDs from this store again. You ruined little Timmy birthday party when his new CD wouldn't play boo hoo hoo.
In short, hit the record industry in its most important link...the music retailer. Customers don't buy opened CDs, re-shrinkwrapping is illegal and now there is no way for a store to tell if a CD is truly defective (warped) or just semi-defective (copy-protected) which means a lot more stock is going to get tied up in the return process.
If enough stores get burned by these copy-protected CDs, then guess what? They probably will stop carrying them. Artists aren't going to like that. What will that do for sales? Or store owners will start bitching up the channel all the way to RIAA. RIAA can't piss off the music retailer because right now THAT IS THEIR ONLY SALES OUTLET.
Read what I said. I'm not saying I could care less about bugs. What I said was: I am not concerned with trying to keep my installation media current with the latest patches and fixes. I install the raw OS then patch/update.
IE, every time a new NT service pack comes out (what is this last one, the eighth?) I don't re-burn my install CD to overwrite the source files with the newer SP version. I just go ahead and install SP0/1/2 and then when I'm all done install SP4/5/6. Ditto for the critical updates/hotfixes/security bulletins. I head over to the update server and check off everything except that f'in Media Player 7.
It saves me time, it saves me CD, it saves me hassle. The only thing I need to carry around with me on CD is enough of the OS to connect to the Internet and from there I can pull down whatever else I need. That is what Apple should be focusing on, in my opinion.
I'm curious what kind of update/package system OS X uses...I have searched and not found word one about it. I assume since it is UNIX, it can use whatever current standards (RPM?) there are but this seems like a feature Steve Jobs would be hot to get his hands into.
Bugs in an installation media don't really bother me. God knows I'd have to be insane to leave any version of Windows the way it comes on CD (My most recent NT4 CDs are still just SP1!). So then why not push out the OS X CD on the due date and then throw out nightly "recommended updates" until its working the way it should?
I think that screen size falls under "function" and not "form". People with small screens need information (regardless of what it is) presented in a long tall format so they only have to scroll down, not side to side. People with huge screens need information presented in a short wide format so they don't have to scroll at all.
Remember when most sites had a "text only" link? Maybe if the browsers make it easy to identify text-only users then that kind of duality can come back. Right now I think web designers don't want to have to present the text-only question before jumping to the content. But that's laziness more than anything.
Imagine never having to answer stupid questions like "flash or html?" "800x600 or 1024x768?"
Its possible that based on the connection speed, you could default modem users to the HTML site and broadband customers to the flash site (of course, with links to the opposite choice). You could also arrange the tables so people with smaller screen sizes are scrolling left to right and people with large screen sizes aren't forced to scroll down a website that fits into the first three inches of their screen.
I do think there is something else they should flag...system color scheme. I use a darker scheme where my text is white and my workspace is black. On many websites with hardcoded white background I can't read a thing. I usually end up having to disable them. It would be nice if a website could ask my browser what my default text color is and send out the appropriate background.
Consider how the current movie distribution is so much more expensive than for music. Anyone can sell CDs but it takes a mega-thousand dollar investment to build a theater that people will actually go to.
Plus, as the popularity of the rental and pay-per-view markets have shown, people don't NEED a fancy theater and many would rather watch on their home theater and then not have to pay $40 for snacks too.
Plus, the current distibution network is already non-secure...anyone can smuggle in a camera and again as the sales of bootlegs have shown, people don't always care about quality.
Plus, the movie industry is a lot more records driven than the music industry. You have another multi-platinum album and people yawn. You have a movie that did X dollars on opening night and its a record people remember. Imagine if they could spin add downloads to those box office statistics.
Plus, right now there is no real name brand for movie sharing (unless you count IRC).
The studios were forced to divest themselves of their theater holding because the governement thought it would be a bad idea for them to control both content and distributions. Using the Internet the movie studios have a chance to regain that control again.
If they price it in the range of home pay-per-view but offer first-run movies hotels pay-per-view, I think it would be something I'd buy.
AOL was not developed with the intent to trade in 'illegal goods
I strongly disagree with that statement, did you read my post?
AOL was one of the primo warez scenes back in the early to mid 90's. If you look at the logistics of it, there is no way AOL could justify their mail system being for legitamate use. Every other ISP had at most a 10MB storage limit on mail. Even in this modern era you are hard pressed to find more than 20MB. Yet in days when hard drives barely came in that size, AOL was allocated gigabytes of mail storage per user.
There is no possible way AOL could not have noticed the warez groups uploading 500+ 15MB ZIP files and then forwarding them to thousands of people. Someone had to buy the hard drives.
I agree the AOL service was not created to facilitate piracy, but there is no way you can explain their completely absure mail system design without piracy. Legitamate users simply do not need that kind of mail capacity.
Built a service that now has millions of customers by turning a blind eye to music piracy even though it was "possible" to prevent the exchange of illegal materials by blocking access to the file names.
Result: Found guilty, guilty, guilty.
AOL:
Built a service that now has millions of customers by turning a blind eye to software piracy and child pornograpy trading even though it was possible to prevent the exchange of illegal materials by blocking access to private chat room names.
Result: Innocent?
Give me a break. According to their own internal audits, AOL had fewer than 400,000 paying member back when it overtook Compuserve as America's number one ISP. The renaming TWO THIRDS of their so-called million plus member were warez users who generated fake credit card info and used the account for several months until it was finally cancelled.
AOL knew about people gathering in private rooms with names like "warez" and "kiddie porn" but refused to block them for several years, stating they had no grounds to police private rooms. Trading flourished unhindered until AOL had around 10 million members at which time AOL simply blocked access to private rooms with "warez" or "kiddie" or "child" in them. Which of course means the traders just started using w4r3z speak instead. Not to mention the fact that AOL allow members to have five accounts with 550 e-mails each with a 15MB attachment. That's over 2GB of storage that legitamate members were supposed to use for what? And the To: and CC: field capacities were increased three times from 200 people to 500 people then over a thousand people. Who forwards to thousands of people by warez traders? That's what listservs are for. Only after becoming so far out in front of other ISPs did AOL throw a switch and suddenly prevent people from mass-downloading forwarded warez files.
The hypocracy is incredible. Obviously AOL pays more for their lawyers.
I know very little (read: nothing) about Perl but it seems like this is basically compressing that long, ugly, awkward table of values that represents the magical mystery DVD key. Am I correct?
This reminds me of those DOS days when you would run PKLite on a executable to compress the EXE file and wrap it with enough code to uncompress the original EXE when you actually ran it.
- JoeShmoe
The rules about upstream ISPs are different for countries. Just because an Internet connection to Canada travels across US soil does not give the US the right to censor it. HavenCo is counting on international treaties that govern communications carries to prevent any organization or entity (read RIAA or US Government) from saying "pull the plug". No one owns the Internet, so no one has a right to block another country's access to its content.
I didn't go into detail in my original post, but the company was aware that helped Brand X develop its solution. My intent in selling it as Brand X and not myself was to make it clear that the company had absolutely no rights to the product because it was developed 100% outside of the company.
As to allegations of fraud, yes, I would agree with that theory if I had knowing recommended an inferior product to get a kickback or such. That would be fraud. If I concealed knowledge of a superior product so that I could recommend something I had a vested interest in, that would be fraud.
However, if questioned I can honestly say that I recommended the only/best product on the market that would fit their needs. I don't see how this situation would have been any different if I sold the distribution rights of product to my friend and then received royalties for its use from him.
The company was paying in the range of $400-500/system every quarter to send a field technician out to a store to log in as administrator, copy a few files and log off. In the end for $10/system they make changes on one master system and updates are mailed out to the store where the manager just sticks the disc in, boots it, then throws it away. So they were quite pleased with the results. Besides, I would have ended up making $30-50/system if I had developed it in house so I don't see how I could be guilty of fraud for cutting myself out of profits.
What a ludicrious argument. There was no breach of ethics. There is nothing in the law that obligates full disclosure. I was merely removing the any appearance of impropriety.
You can't disprove something using an affirmative defense. The problem being discussed in this Ask Slashdot question is "How do I prove that I came up with someone on my own time that LOOKS like something I came up with during company time?" The answer is you can't, it is impossible. You'd have to give them a log of everything you did in your off time and I doubt most people keep those kinds of records. Even if you swore up and down that you came up with the idea yourself, that doesn't mean they can't sue you anyway because they don't believe you.
They also have a right to know when they are paying an employee twice for the same work What a moronic statement. They purchased something I developed on my own time. That's something they never paid for. The fact that I am the one deploying it is irrelavant. The person who writes a word processor gets paid and so does the person who installs it. If anything, the company comes out ahead because I'm the best person to deploy the product since I already know everything about it.
Fact is, there are hundreds of managers out there with stock in IBM who push completely worthless solutions like MQSeries because when IBM is awarded big million dollar contracts their stock gets a nice boost. I don't see it as any different than what I did. Yes I could have disclosed the fact that I wrote it. But then I'd be spending my time on a futile quest instead of getting the work done.
Besides, if they had paid me to recreate the system on company time they would have ended up paying a lot more and waiting a couple weeks. The work is done, why re-invent the wheel?
So yes, I think I did the right thing for the company and myself. And let's be clear, there was no psuedonym involved. I merely chose to sell the product under a name different than my own to remove the appearance of impropriety. Just like Adaptec selling software under the brand name Roxio so they don't confuse their image as a hardware provider. Etc.
Quickly go get yourself a business license and then tell your company that there is already a product on the market that does what they want it to and suggest they use that rather than re-invent the wheel in house.
At this one company that had kiosk machines in every store, they were having a very difficult time getting machines updates since only techs had the know-how to apply patches from a floppy. I developed a way to use a Ghost image to update the system from a bootable CDs. I planned to offer it to them after my contract expired.
While working for them, they asked me if there was any way to make the update process simplier. Using an old business license, I told them there was a company Brand X that offers just that sort of product. I had a friend of mine contact them on behalf of Brand X and pitch it to them. They agreed to buy a enterprise-wide license for $10/system. At that point I used the business license to cash the check for Brand X and came in the next week and started deploying the CD based system.
It was a Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde kind of development thing, but I thought it was the best way to handle in since the only thing I did at work was see how inefficient companies are.
Ridiculous. Easy-of-use and streamlined are at opposite ends of the usage spectrum. There have been forces pulling in both directions at every stage of development.
Why aren't we manually settings registers by flipping switches? Wasn't the punchcard horrible real world stuff? You had to design your program, punch it out, then feed it into the computer to compile it. So why would anyone do that? Because it sure beat having to feed your program in flawlessly character by character flipping switches.
The "desktop" analogy that modern GUIs use is an extension of this same "hard work". You have to click the file. You have to drag the file. You have to drop the file. So why would anyone do that? Because it sure beats having to learn the command syntax for copy.
I think you couldn't be further off base when you clame the appeal of computers is that you can create streamline environments. The appeal of computers is that they abstract large amounts of menial tasks so all we need to be concerned about is higher-level thinking skills.
The real world is hardly a "horrible" place to get work done. Which is more efficient?
A) Having ten people watching indicators so they can push a button when the state changes or
B) Having a computer watching indicators and pushing buttons when the state changes
Well the answer would seem to be B, but it begs the questions, who tells the computer what to do? It's rather simple to tell ten people (even high-school dropouts) to watch this light and push that button if it goes red. It's rather difficult to have one of them built a proper indicator/computer interface and the software with logic to do the same task.
Now of course you can hire someone with the expertise to do it, but then we've just proven my point.
If a person can understand a command line interface, it makes sense that they would and should use that since it is the most efficient.
If a person can't understand a command line interface but can understand a graphical user interface, it makes sense for them to use that.
If a person can't understand even a graphical user interface (and there are plenty of people who have still no idea how to work a mouse) then I say it makes perfect sense for them to use a virtualize world interface because that's the lowest common denominator.
You seem to think people should rise to the challenge of the most efficient system. That's an ideal. Have you ever been in a real company? How many geeks are there? The majority of the people hired by companies are hired for business/legal/etc skills. So should a company exclude them because they don't have the ability to learn/use a "superior" interface? Please tell me where to find a CFO that's also a UNIX guru.
At a company I worked at, once of the VPs didn't even have a computer. Why did they hire him? Because he was a financial wizard and made a lot of money. So if he needed information from a computer system, he used a "horrible real world" interface called the administrative assistance. He would tell her what information he wanted and she would get it and print it out for him. It was more efficient for the company to hire a secretary to do the work than to have him spend his time learning how to do it himself.
Oh, and once last thing..."hardcopy doesn't even let you copy/paste!" Absurd! Where do you think we got the terms from? From people cutting sections of documents up, pasting them together and then photocopying to form the final document. Is it efficient? Probably not, but it's something even my grandmother knows how to do.
- JoeShmoe
Re:This reminds me of Disclosure
on
MUD Shell
·
· Score: 2
"Insightful"??? Did you even read the article? You've missed the whole point of the MUD shell. Is it for CmdrTaco? No, and he doubted he would ever use it. Is it for someone that doesn't know UNIX syntax? Yes.
Your criticism of the VR database is being inefficient? That's the same argument made against GUIs (in fact the article even mentions that). The CLI uses far fewer resources.
My favorite is "you have to actually walk over to a cabinet, open it, find the file, then open it and read it"...reality check but this is how a lot of companies still handle records. And the point of the VR version is that instead of re-training 80-year-old secretaries to use a database(or even a computer) they can just slip on a pair of glasses/gloves and make database searches the same way they've been getting information their whole life.
I'm sorry but I think you completely missed the point.
- JoeShmoe
The object is not to develope something efficient and practical, but something that an 80-year old receptionist can use to wander through a database without having to touch a keyboard.
Not to criticize the moderators, but this seems "Mistaken" more than "Insightful".
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that the users and admins of EFNet would like the thought of having the government actually being part of their network.
Um, if you don't think the government is already on EFNet (actually, any IRC networks) then you are living in a fairy tale. Think back to the mafiaboy fiasco...he bragged in an irc channel and the next day he was arrested.
Not to mention all the undercover cops in channels like #dadanddaughtersex hoping to catch some kiddie porners.
Since the government can get their hands on any information with a sealed subpoena there is no more or less protection than just everyone using a server like irc.fbi.gov!
The whole EFNet piract scene is a few thousand people at best. There are far larger targets (although they have gone after FTP sites, which in a sense could count as an IRC bust since most siteops are on IRC).
Regarding proof, they don't need prove to make an arrest. That's what a trial is for. Kevin Mitnick was arrested because companies like Sun claimed his copying of source code cost them millions. This was enough to make him guilty of grand-theft computer and get him arrested, even if Sun couldn't prove a single cent of damages resulting from the download. It was just a theory but that's all that matters for an arrest.
I admit that a bunch of WAREZ DOODS don't make a very sympathetic victim, but think about the major ISPs like @Home, C&W, Mindspring, etc that are subjected to constant attacks. If just one of these companies would grow a pair of balls and try to get enforcement instead of pulling the plug then it would send a message.
After mafiaboy I sincerely doubt that anyone would try a major attack against our precious, precious e-commerce sites. So if the same kind of example was made of one of these script kiddies then maybe the rest would think about whether taking that channel was worth years in jail.
- JoeShmoe
It's not the slashdotting (well, it probably is now) its that everyone on irc has been trying to get an update since yesterday.
You can read the news at this mirror too:
http://www.phule.net/mirrors/efnet-news.html
- JoeShmoe
This is a crime. Where is law enforcement?
No monetary losses? How about bandwidth cost? How about admin time to repair/fix hacked IRC servers?
What I fail to understand is how some Canadian teen ping floods Yahoo! and has the entire wrath of the FBI, NSA, CIA, DIA and Canadian Monties on his ass...meanwhile EFNet servers are subjected to coordinated 3Gbps attacks and the only solutions seems to be give up?
What the hell kind of logic is that? Okay, give up because it is easier. If you ask me, every EFNet server should lodge a formal complain, claiming $10million in monetary losses. If we learned anything from Mitnick, it's that companies can claim any bogus amount of losses and get results.
Or maybe the FBI/CIA should just host an EFNet server themselves. We all know they are caching the whole damn thing anyway to run through Echelon. If EFNet goes down then were are news organizations going to go for their pithy quotes?
- JoeShmoe
Well, the problem with the other moves, like split and double-down is that that you can't continue to track the win count. Splitting is basically playing two hands in the space of one and double down makes your win or loss count twice as much.
In order to track these other options, you would have to use real money, say, bet $100 each hand and then find the pattern that produces the greatest profit.
The odds are always going to be in the house's favor because you always bust first (so even if the house would have busted, it doesn't) but still i think it should be possible to find a series of rules that makes the advantage as slim as possible.
- JoeShmoe
I feel so dirty responding to such a clueless moron.
You'd be more convincing if you had the guts to say that under a login.
But your advice is crap. Thousands of simulations and patters of probability are all still just theories. Same thing for the little charts. They are all pretty good, but not perfect.
Look at chess programs. They play ahead X moves and use that to make a decision, but are still limited by modern technology to just a few moves. It is a poor substitute for knowing every possible chess move and thus never losing.
Chess maybe be too complex to brute force, but a simple game like blackjack isn't.
- JoeShmoe
Was there anything in the terms of service (to borrow and AOL term) that prohibited using such a client? Is not, then f them.
I mean serious...if they gave you access to the computers (meaning you didn't hack into a bunch of University servers and install the client, which I suppose you could have done) then they have no business charging you for transfer fees. You have to agree to something before you owe a bill. If they told you "shut down the client or pay X per MB transferred" that would be a legal contract. They can't retroactively apply charges that you never agreed to pay.
Not to mention, a single warez dood trading ISOs or VCDs will chew up a years worth of RC5 traffic. I do hear about any of them getting slammed with this kind of ludicrous charge, although plenty lose their connections.
- JoeShmoe
I've always wondered if you could use computers to generate a perfect list of moves which would, given enough time, always turn a profit.
Consider the game of blackjack...imagine a grid that has all the possible blackjack hands (from 2, 2 to Ace, Ace) versus all the possible dealer shown cards (from 2 to Ace). Each spot on this grid can hold one of two values: Hit or Stand. For example, when the dealer is showing a 6 and you are holding a 10 and a 6, that spot on the grid should tell you whether to hit or stand (definitely stand!)
Now, here's the tricky part. Make a routine with a giant loop. The loop should assign values to every spot on the grid (starting with all stands, for example) then play a few thousand hands using those rules. After a few thousand hands, change one spot on the grid to hit and repeat until the program has tested every possible combination (i can't even begin to imagine how many calculations this is but hell, there are several programs trying to crack huge key values and this is certainly a more financially valuable goal).
At the end, the program should print out a grid that contains the values that generates the highest number of wins. Then, if we human players were to memorize that grid and then use those rules when we play in the casino, shouldn't we have a good chance at making money? Dare I say, even finding the perfect combination that always turns a profit?
I dunno, but rather than trying to invent a blackjack genius that you would have to continuously update and modify, just brute force the game and be done with it.
Anyone feel like writing this routine in a p2p fashion? I have a few cycles I'd like to donate...
- JoeShmoe
I remember reading an article (I think it was posted here on Slashdot) by a judge who argued there should be a way to legally define file deletion as a way of escaping legal consequences.
IE, if you find yourself in possession of something contraband, doing X would be the equivalent of burning it from a legal point of view.
Exploiting that concept...I wonder about the legality of the following things (pardon the Windows bias but hey, that's me)
1) Keeping your MP3/BombPlans/TeenPorn in the \RECYCLER folder on an NTFS volume. Note that under Windows NT, each user gets his or her own "Recycler Bin" (whereas they all share one common \RECYCLED folder on non-NTFS volumes). So, anything you put in the root of this folder is not deleted when you "Empty Recycle Bin". From a legal perspective, it seems possible you could say, "Hey, I dragged that all to the trash to delete it, don't blame me!" At the same time, all the files would be perfectly usable. Just have to clear your file histories to hide the fact that you are accessing the files there.
2) Same as #1 but actually putting them in the Recycle Bin...and disabling/teaching yourself not to ever empty it. Stronger case than #1 although you can't navigate folders and some programs give error messages when you try to use those files.
3) Have a hard disk that you do not use. "Delete" files...which in Windows land means the first letter of the file name is erased from the File Allocation Table. When you want to access the files, unerase them with a utility. As long as you don't write anything else to the drive while files are in "delete" state you can repeat this infinitely.
4) Write a program that automatically does #3 on the fly (Unerase D:\MP3, Open WinAmp, Play, Close WinAmp, Erase D:\MP3).
Seriously...would judges hold people accountable for files that were deleted? It seems worth considering...
- JoeShmoe
Yes, buy copies of this CD. Buy many copies. Play with them a couple days, try to crack them, whatever.
Then return them all to the retail store and demand a full refund. Site the fact that these CDs will not play on your CD player, your mother's CD player, your brother's CD player, etc. Don't settle for an exchange or store credit. Get angry and tell them you will never buy CDs from this store again. You ruined little Timmy birthday party when his new CD wouldn't play boo hoo hoo.
In short, hit the record industry in its most important link...the music retailer. Customers don't buy opened CDs, re-shrinkwrapping is illegal and now there is no way for a store to tell if a CD is truly defective (warped) or just semi-defective (copy-protected) which means a lot more stock is going to get tied up in the return process.
If enough stores get burned by these copy-protected CDs, then guess what? They probably will stop carrying them. Artists aren't going to like that. What will that do for sales? Or store owners will start bitching up the channel all the way to RIAA. RIAA can't piss off the music retailer because right now THAT IS THEIR ONLY SALES OUTLET.
- JoeShmoe
See my above response.
0 22 8&cid=102
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/03/23/03
- JoeShmoe
Read what I said. I'm not saying I could care less about bugs. What I said was: I am not concerned with trying to keep my installation media current with the latest patches and fixes. I install the raw OS then patch/update.
IE, every time a new NT service pack comes out (what is this last one, the eighth?) I don't re-burn my install CD to overwrite the source files with the newer SP version. I just go ahead and install SP0/1/2 and then when I'm all done install SP4/5/6. Ditto for the critical updates/hotfixes/security bulletins. I head over to the update server and check off everything except that f'in Media Player 7.
It saves me time, it saves me CD, it saves me hassle. The only thing I need to carry around with me on CD is enough of the OS to connect to the Internet and from there I can pull down whatever else I need. That is what Apple should be focusing on, in my opinion.
- JoeShmoe
I'm curious what kind of update/package system OS X uses...I have searched and not found word one about it. I assume since it is UNIX, it can use whatever current standards (RPM?) there are but this seems like a feature Steve Jobs would be hot to get his hands into.
Bugs in an installation media don't really bother me. God knows I'd have to be insane to leave any version of Windows the way it comes on CD (My most recent NT4 CDs are still just SP1!). So then why not push out the OS X CD on the due date and then throw out nightly "recommended updates" until its working the way it should?
- JoeShmoe
I think that screen size falls under "function" and not "form". People with small screens need information (regardless of what it is) presented in a long tall format so they only have to scroll down, not side to side. People with huge screens need information presented in a short wide format so they don't have to scroll at all.
Remember when most sites had a "text only" link? Maybe if the browsers make it easy to identify text-only users then that kind of duality can come back. Right now I think web designers don't want to have to present the text-only question before jumping to the content. But that's laziness more than anything.
- JoeShmoe
Imagine never having to answer stupid questions like "flash or html?" "800x600 or 1024x768?"
Its possible that based on the connection speed, you could default modem users to the HTML site and broadband customers to the flash site (of course, with links to the opposite choice). You could also arrange the tables so people with smaller screen sizes are scrolling left to right and people with large screen sizes aren't forced to scroll down a website that fits into the first three inches of their screen.
I do think there is something else they should flag...system color scheme. I use a darker scheme where my text is white and my workspace is black. On many websites with hardcoded white background I can't read a thing. I usually end up having to disable them. It would be nice if a website could ask my browser what my default text color is and send out the appropriate background.
Consider how the current movie distribution is so much more expensive than for music. Anyone can sell CDs but it takes a mega-thousand dollar investment to build a theater that people will actually go to.
Plus, as the popularity of the rental and pay-per-view markets have shown, people don't NEED a fancy theater and many would rather watch on their home theater and then not have to pay $40 for snacks too.
Plus, the current distibution network is already non-secure...anyone can smuggle in a camera and again as the sales of bootlegs have shown, people don't always care about quality.
Plus, the movie industry is a lot more records driven than the music industry. You have another multi-platinum album and people yawn. You have a movie that did X dollars on opening night and its a record people remember. Imagine if they could spin add downloads to those box office statistics.
Plus, right now there is no real name brand for movie sharing (unless you count IRC).
The studios were forced to divest themselves of their theater holding because the governement thought it would be a bad idea for them to control both content and distributions. Using the Internet the movie studios have a chance to regain that control again.
If they price it in the range of home pay-per-view but offer first-run movies hotels pay-per-view, I think it would be something I'd buy.
- JoeShmoe
AOL was not developed with the intent to trade in 'illegal goods
I strongly disagree with that statement, did you read my post?
AOL was one of the primo warez scenes back in the early to mid 90's. If you look at the logistics of it, there is no way AOL could justify their mail system being for legitamate use. Every other ISP had at most a 10MB storage limit on mail. Even in this modern era you are hard pressed to find more than 20MB. Yet in days when hard drives barely came in that size, AOL was allocated gigabytes of mail storage per user.
There is no possible way AOL could not have noticed the warez groups uploading 500+ 15MB ZIP files and then forwarding them to thousands of people. Someone had to buy the hard drives.
I agree the AOL service was not created to facilitate piracy, but there is no way you can explain their completely absure mail system design without piracy. Legitamate users simply do not need that kind of mail capacity.
- JoeShmoe
Napster:
Built a service that now has millions of customers by turning a blind eye to music piracy even though it was "possible" to prevent the exchange of illegal materials by blocking access to the file names.
Result: Found guilty, guilty, guilty.
AOL:
Built a service that now has millions of customers by turning a blind eye to software piracy and child pornograpy trading even though it was possible to prevent the exchange of illegal materials by blocking access to private chat room names.
Result: Innocent?
Give me a break. According to their own internal audits, AOL had fewer than 400,000 paying member back when it overtook Compuserve as America's number one ISP. The renaming TWO THIRDS of their so-called million plus member were warez users who generated fake credit card info and used the account for several months until it was finally cancelled.
AOL knew about people gathering in private rooms with names like "warez" and "kiddie porn" but refused to block them for several years, stating they had no grounds to police private rooms. Trading flourished unhindered until AOL had around 10 million members at which time AOL simply blocked access to private rooms with "warez" or "kiddie" or "child" in them. Which of course means the traders just started using w4r3z speak instead. Not to mention the fact that AOL allow members to have five accounts with 550 e-mails each with a 15MB attachment. That's over 2GB of storage that legitamate members were supposed to use for what? And the To: and CC: field capacities were increased three times from 200 people to 500 people then over a thousand people. Who forwards to thousands of people by warez traders? That's what listservs are for. Only after becoming so far out in front of other ISPs did AOL throw a switch and suddenly prevent people from mass-downloading forwarded warez files.
The hypocracy is incredible. Obviously AOL pays more for their lawyers.
- JoeShmoe
I know very little (read: nothing) about Perl but it seems like this is basically compressing that long, ugly, awkward table of values that represents the magical mystery DVD key. Am I correct? This reminds me of those DOS days when you would run PKLite on a executable to compress the EXE file and wrap it with enough code to uncompress the original EXE when you actually ran it. - JoeShmoe
Not Insightful, Uninformed. Please read the previous stories about HavenCo/Sealand such as
2 53 &mode=nested
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/02/160
(Or Click Here)
The rules about upstream ISPs are different for countries. Just because an Internet connection to Canada travels across US soil does not give the US the right to censor it. HavenCo is counting on international treaties that govern communications carries to prevent any organization or entity (read RIAA or US Government) from saying "pull the plug". No one owns the Internet, so no one has a right to block another country's access to its content.
- JoeShmoe
Geez, you'd think someone at Apple had seen the css-auth/decss code floating around, wouldn't you?
[/tongue in cheek]
- JoeShmoe
I didn't go into detail in my original post, but the company was aware that helped Brand X develop its solution. My intent in selling it as Brand X and not myself was to make it clear that the company had absolutely no rights to the product because it was developed 100% outside of the company.
As to allegations of fraud, yes, I would agree with that theory if I had knowing recommended an inferior product to get a kickback or such. That would be fraud. If I concealed knowledge of a superior product so that I could recommend something I had a vested interest in, that would be fraud.
However, if questioned I can honestly say that I recommended the only/best product on the market that would fit their needs. I don't see how this situation would have been any different if I sold the distribution rights of product to my friend and then received royalties for its use from him.
The company was paying in the range of $400-500/system every quarter to send a field technician out to a store to log in as administrator, copy a few files and log off. In the end for $10/system they make changes on one master system and updates are mailed out to the store where the manager just sticks the disc in, boots it, then throws it away. So they were quite pleased with the results. Besides, I would have ended up making $30-50/system if I had developed it in house so I don't see how I could be guilty of fraud for cutting myself out of profits.
IMHO, the ends justify the means in this case.
- JoeShmoe
What a ludicrious argument. There was no breach of ethics. There is nothing in the law that obligates full disclosure. I was merely removing the any appearance of impropriety.
You can't disprove something using an affirmative defense. The problem being discussed in this Ask Slashdot question is "How do I prove that I came up with someone on my own time that LOOKS like something I came up with during company time?" The answer is you can't, it is impossible. You'd have to give them a log of everything you did in your off time and I doubt most people keep those kinds of records. Even if you swore up and down that you came up with the idea yourself, that doesn't mean they can't sue you anyway because they don't believe you.
They also have a right to know when they are paying an employee twice for the same work What a moronic statement. They purchased something I developed on my own time. That's something they never paid for. The fact that I am the one deploying it is irrelavant. The person who writes a word processor gets paid and so does the person who installs it. If anything, the company comes out ahead because I'm the best person to deploy the product since I already know everything about it.
Fact is, there are hundreds of managers out there with stock in IBM who push completely worthless solutions like MQSeries because when IBM is awarded big million dollar contracts their stock gets a nice boost. I don't see it as any different than what I did. Yes I could have disclosed the fact that I wrote it. But then I'd be spending my time on a futile quest instead of getting the work done.
Besides, if they had paid me to recreate the system on company time they would have ended up paying a lot more and waiting a couple weeks. The work is done, why re-invent the wheel?
So yes, I think I did the right thing for the company and myself. And let's be clear, there was no psuedonym involved. I merely chose to sell the product under a name different than my own to remove the appearance of impropriety. Just like Adaptec selling software under the brand name Roxio so they don't confuse their image as a hardware provider. Etc.
- JoeShmoe
Quickly go get yourself a business license and then tell your company that there is already a product on the market that does what they want it to and suggest they use that rather than re-invent the wheel in house.
At this one company that had kiosk machines in every store, they were having a very difficult time getting machines updates since only techs had the know-how to apply patches from a floppy. I developed a way to use a Ghost image to update the system from a bootable CDs. I planned to offer it to them after my contract expired.
While working for them, they asked me if there was any way to make the update process simplier. Using an old business license, I told them there was a company Brand X that offers just that sort of product. I had a friend of mine contact them on behalf of Brand X and pitch it to them. They agreed to buy a enterprise-wide license for $10/system. At that point I used the business license to cash the check for Brand X and came in the next week and started deploying the CD based system.
It was a Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde kind of development thing, but I thought it was the best way to handle in since the only thing I did at work was see how inefficient companies are.
- JoeShmoe
Ridiculous. Easy-of-use and streamlined are at opposite ends of the usage spectrum. There have been forces pulling in both directions at every stage of development.
Why aren't we manually settings registers by flipping switches? Wasn't the punchcard horrible real world stuff? You had to design your program, punch it out, then feed it into the computer to compile it. So why would anyone do that? Because it sure beat having to feed your program in flawlessly character by character flipping switches.
The "desktop" analogy that modern GUIs use is an extension of this same "hard work". You have to click the file. You have to drag the file. You have to drop the file. So why would anyone do that? Because it sure beats having to learn the command syntax for copy.
I think you couldn't be further off base when you clame the appeal of computers is that you can create streamline environments. The appeal of computers is that they abstract large amounts of menial tasks so all we need to be concerned about is higher-level thinking skills.
The real world is hardly a "horrible" place to get work done. Which is more efficient?
A) Having ten people watching indicators so they can push a button when the state changes or
B) Having a computer watching indicators and pushing buttons when the state changes
Well the answer would seem to be B, but it begs the questions, who tells the computer what to do? It's rather simple to tell ten people (even high-school dropouts) to watch this light and push that button if it goes red. It's rather difficult to have one of them built a proper indicator/computer interface and the software with logic to do the same task.
Now of course you can hire someone with the expertise to do it, but then we've just proven my point.
If a person can understand a command line interface, it makes sense that they would and should use that since it is the most efficient.
If a person can't understand a command line interface but can understand a graphical user interface, it makes sense for them to use that.
If a person can't understand even a graphical user interface (and there are plenty of people who have still no idea how to work a mouse) then I say it makes perfect sense for them to use a virtualize world interface because that's the lowest common denominator.
You seem to think people should rise to the challenge of the most efficient system. That's an ideal. Have you ever been in a real company? How many geeks are there? The majority of the people hired by companies are hired for business/legal/etc skills. So should a company exclude them because they don't have the ability to learn/use a "superior" interface? Please tell me where to find a CFO that's also a UNIX guru.
At a company I worked at, once of the VPs didn't even have a computer. Why did they hire him? Because he was a financial wizard and made a lot of money. So if he needed information from a computer system, he used a "horrible real world" interface called the administrative assistance. He would tell her what information he wanted and she would get it and print it out for him. It was more efficient for the company to hire a secretary to do the work than to have him spend his time learning how to do it himself.
Oh, and once last thing..."hardcopy doesn't even let you copy/paste!" Absurd! Where do you think we got the terms from? From people cutting sections of documents up, pasting them together and then photocopying to form the final document. Is it efficient? Probably not, but it's something even my grandmother knows how to do.
- JoeShmoe
"Insightful"??? Did you even read the article? You've missed the whole point of the MUD shell. Is it for CmdrTaco? No, and he doubted he would ever use it. Is it for someone that doesn't know UNIX syntax? Yes.
Your criticism of the VR database is being inefficient? That's the same argument made against GUIs (in fact the article even mentions that). The CLI uses far fewer resources.
My favorite is "you have to actually walk over to a cabinet, open it, find the file, then open it and read it"...reality check but this is how a lot of companies still handle records. And the point of the VR version is that instead of re-training 80-year-old secretaries to use a database(or even a computer) they can just slip on a pair of glasses/gloves and make database searches the same way they've been getting information their whole life.
I'm sorry but I think you completely missed the point.
- JoeShmoe
The object is not to develope something efficient and practical, but something that an 80-year old receptionist can use to wander through a database without having to touch a keyboard.
Not to criticize the moderators, but this seems "Mistaken" more than "Insightful".