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A man caught counting cards at a blackjack table who was consequently banned from the casino just got some unexpected support from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.
Retired pc programmer Thomas Donovan admitted to counting cards in 2006 at the Grand Victoria Casino and Resort at Rising Sun, reports The Courier-Journal.
Card counting is often a strategy some players use to track what cards have been played, thereby determining their probability benefit. Card counting (without having an outside device) is totally legal, but casinos usually ban known card counters from their premises, in what they say is an effort to maintain great business.
The casinos, which are private companies, are allowed to refuse business to anyone, as long as it isn’t based on discrimination.
But Governor Daniels said Saturday in a commencement speech at Franklin College that he’s on Donovan’s side.
“Donovan’s sin in the casino’s eyes is not that he is inordinately lucky, it’s that he’s inordinately smart,” Daniels stated, according towards the Courier-Journal. “He has taught himself to count the cards as they are played, then constantly and rapidly to calculate the odds on his winning the next hand. In the game where luck still plays a large part, Donovan has, through tough work, learned to increase his chances.”
Donovan wanted to inspire the students, explaining the distinction between luck and wise choices.
The Indiana Supreme Court heard arguments in the lawsuit Donovan brought against the casino last month. A ruling is expected later this year.
Matt Bartosik is often a Chicago native and a social media sovereign.
European satellite operator Eutelsat is providing capacity to sports programmer Eurosport for a dedicated 3D signal that is delivering live 3D coverage with the French Open tennis championship in Paris to Panasonic sets in retail outlets across Europe.
The 3D signals, which began on May 23 and will run to June 6 through the men’s and women’s finals, are being transmitted to Eutelsat’s “HOT BIRD 6” satellite at 13 degrees East. As part from the sponsored “Panasonic 3D Experience,” they are getting received at thousands of retail outlets and business clients in 28 countries across Europe and displayed on Panasonic Viera VT20 3D Plasma TVs.
“This partnership with Eurosport plays to two core assets of our broadcast satellites: the capacity to deliver a signal across a broad international footprint, as well as the bandwidth to transmit a new generation of rich content requiring a 12 Mbit/s signal to fully appreciate stunning 3D effects,” said Eutelsat Commercial Director Olivier Millies-Lacroix in a statement. “We are delighted to be Eurosport’s chosen partner for delivering this compelling content to Panasonic 3D sets across Europe.”
It seems fair to say that the relationship between programmer and platform is in quite a few techniques like a romantic one, characterized by mutual respect and also a balanced exchange of give and take on both sides.
Just as so several of us really enjoy and respect Linux, for instance, so it surely loves us back with all its numerous virtues — no strings or price tags attached!
So happy are a lot of from the Linux community with their favorite OS, in reality, that it was hard not to feel mortally wounded by a recent accusation — one that not just charged Linux with carrying out too small for programmers, but then went on to say Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) does additional.
Talk about sprinkling salt on the wound!
As the well-known poet once stated, “Ah, Adore, but a day, and the world has changed!”
‘Linux Has Absolutely nothing to Compare’
“Microsoft does some things greater, very much much better, than Linux,” Computerworld’s Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols began. “Number one with a bullet is how Microsoft helps computer programmers and ISVs (independent software program vendors).”
Specifically, “MSDN (Microsoft Software program Developer Network) is often a wonderful on-line developer resource,” Vaughan-Nichols asserted. “Linux has had nothing to compare.”
The Linux system Developer Networkhasn’t lived up to its promise, he added; training classes, vendor-ISV partnerships and a dedicated conference are all among the solutions he proposes.
‘You are Kidding, Perfect?’
Additional than 50 Linux system bloggers fairly tripped over themselves in their haste to respond to Vaughan-Nichols’ cutting remarks on Computerworld before the topic spread to Linux Currently, to LXer and beyond.
“You are kidding, correct?” shot back Seth Kriticos from the Linux Currently comments, for example. “Maybe the documentation for Linux needs much more attention, maybe not. One thing I am certain of is, that it is far superior towards the MSFT stuff.”
Then again: “Some programmers are married to their code,” charged Sherman T Potter from the Computerworld comments. “They take any critique or suggestion for improvement as the equivalent of saying their is wife ugly.”
‘Who’ll Pay for It?’
Alternatively: “Standards are the only way,” opined an anonymous Computerworld commenter.
On the other hand, “who’ll pay for it?” asked an additional one.
It soon became clear that the court of public opinion was far from unanimous on this one. Linux Girl took it upon herself to seek out a small advice within the matter from a variety of Linux system Love Doctors.
Ought to Linux truly be undertaking much more?
‘MSFT Rocks’
“When it comes to IDEs, MSFT rocks,” Slashdot blogger hairyfeet asserted. “VS could be the programming IDE as far as myself and several of my programming friends are concerned. More importantly it allows individuals that aren’t kernel level programmers (including myself) to write fundamental apps in a RAD style and get them usable and out the door.”
Linux system “simply doesn’t possess a multilanguage IDE that compares to VS, so possibly that’s where the focus should be?” hairyfeet suggested. “A nice, easy-to-use multilanguage IDE that would allow for an quick migration path for individuals which are utilised to VS. Linux has the web computer programmers, it is the rich desktop apps that seem to get harder, at least to me, on Linux system.”
In fact, “if Linux system could come up with the next really user-friendly programming language — one that may be as easy to pick up as VB — then that might be the ‘killer app’ that could give Linux system a true shot at gaining some real marketshare,” hairyfeet extra.
“Programming basically isn’t hardcore ASM or kernel-level hackers anymore, it’s guys dragging and dropping in IDEs,” he explained. “Appeal to THAT group and you possess a true shot of gaining ground.”
‘I’ve Obtained Forums for That’
Slashdot blogger David Masover saw it differently.
“I need to wonder how a great deal the Computerworld guy knows,” Masover started.
“His complaint appears to be to get that Linux has no MSDN, but I’ve in no way wanted or needed that,” Masover asserted. “Just what does MSDN really supply? Assist and support? I’ve obtained forums for that. Low-cost software subscriptions? My package manager delivers software package for totally free.
“Maybe I’m missing some thing, but maybe this is like complaining that Linux system has no antivirus application,” Masover extra.
It would have helped if Vaughan-Nichols had provided “a certain example of your distinct trouble for which having MSDN would’ve been useful,” he suggested.
“The closest he comes is describing the issues of developing and deploying on numerous Linux system platforms, for which you can find multiple solutions — not that it appears to matter very much,” Masover claimed. “Shouldn’t your app be cross-platform anyway? Would you expect a single source of help for both Windows and OS X machines?”
‘Pity He’s Missed Freenode.net’
Concerning education, meanwhile, “I’m going to Railsconf this summer to learn more about Rails, so I’ve got my coaching covered — but notice, that’s not ‘Linux teaching,’ it’s Rails training,” explained Masover, who develops Java utilizing Eclipse and also functions with Ruby on Rails.
“I think that’s as it really should be — no single OS is as exciting as being a platform that operates on all OSes, and there are adequate such platforms already, with their own communities, instruction sessions, certifications, networks, and distribution systems that, being a programmer, I’m definitely having to operate tough to understand what he’s complaining about,” he concluded.
“It’s a pity he’s totally missed out about the existence of freenode.net,” Montreal consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack agreed. “I tend to go to Freenode when Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) searches don’t support me with what I’m working on.”
‘Linux Should Make Me Coffee!’
Must Linux system do more for programmers?
“Absolutely! Linux system ought to go and make me a coffee! Then it should automagically translate my ideas into ideal code,” quipped Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by “Tom” around the website. “And how about walking my dogs for me? Or put away the laundry? Linux system is definitely not undertaking adequate for *this* programmer!”
As for Vaughan-Nichols’ arguments, “I’m not getting it,” Hudson explained.
“Linux runs Java apps just fine,” she explained. “It also is usually a significantly superior development platform for web operate — most distros, including a LAMP stack is just a few clicks during the initial setup, and you’ve got your selection of servers, php, python, perl, ruby, tcl/tk, etc.”
One also doesn’t require for being any more of your Linux expert to use Eclipse or Netbeans or a text editor “than you’ve to become a Windows expert,” Hudson asserted.
‘Thank Them for a Work Perfectly Done’
Blogger Robert Pogson summed it up nicely:
“Of course we should do much more for the programmers who contribute to FLOSS,” Pogson opined. “Donate money and equipment, hire them, give them credit when FLOSS shows for the resume, present them with assistance documenting and testing and promoting, and thank them for a work nicely done.
“The mass of software program contributed as FLOSS is of inestimable value,” he added. “Every contributor should be effectively rewarded.”
“Nice Band-Aid,” says David Miller, pointing to the little Batman bandage around my finger. Since Miller is owner of Bellevue’s new comic book and gaming store, Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy, it’s appropriate, perhaps expected, that this is the first thing he says as we sit down.
For Miller, a former software programmer for Microsoft, Sprint and Blue Ribbon, the opening of Dragon’s Lair marks the culmination of a lifelong dream.
“I’ve been into comic books for as long as I can remember,” says Miller, adding that he is also a voracious reader of fantasy and sci-fi as well as an avid gamer — make that addict, he adds.
Miller cheerfully admits that he worked as a software programmer to support his “gaming addiction” which started as a teenager when he discovered Dungeons & Dragons.
“It was the summer of ‘78, I remember it well,” he said, laughing.
Gaming appealed to him because it allowed him to be a writer. At various points in his life he wanted to be an author, but didn’t have the patience to sit down and write out a full novel, so gaming fulfilled that urge to write and tell stories. It also changed his life.
“That’s how my wife [Kristen] and I met, playing D&D at Microsoft,” he said. Today they have two children, Griffin and Persephone.
But long before Microsoft, Miller was just a kid growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., who loved comics. After graduating from high school he went to a junior college, but quit to go to a vocational school in Atlanta for computer science and got his first job out of that.
“That was in the early ‘80s, back when you could still get a job without having a degree,” Miller said with a smile.
A self-described “math geek,” Miller found he clicked with computer science, and after that it was his experience that enabled him to get jobs.
Throughout his career, Miller has gamed constantly on the side, often with coworkers who shared his passion. But some locations were better suited to his addiction.
“Atlanta doesn’t have as huge of a nerd culture,” he said.
But he soon would find a better fit.
In 1995 Microsoft bought a little company Miller was working for called Blue Ribbon Soundworks and moved all of its programmers to Seattle, a city with, shall we say, a slightly larger nerd culture.
Miller continued to work at Microsoft up until a few years ago, then left to work for MixMeister, a tiny company that made DJ mixing software.
“Most of my computer work in the last 20 years has been music related,” Miller says, and he excitedly talks about the music he likes, scrolling through his iPod and listing off bands such as Led Zeppelin, The Kinks, The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater, David Bowie, and more recent fare like The White Stripes and the Gorillaz.
After working for MixMeister for about three years, Miller got a shot at his secret dream. Last year at a Dr. Who convention in Los Angeles, Miller came across a woman with her own Tardis (that is a time machine phone booth featured in the Dr. Who series). He learned that her husband owned a comic book and game store in Texas and was looking to start franchising it (I’m sure you don’t need a Tardis to figure out where this is going).
Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy, offering everything from manga to graphic novels and comics to board and card games and action figures, is located at 14725 N.E. 20th St. in Bellevue, right across from the IHOP. Or, visit online at www.dlair.net.
Kelly Hendrickson is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.
Film Fest - The latest addition to the city’s extensive list of film festivals is the Calgary Latin Wave, taking place June 11 to 13 at The Uptown Stage & Screen.
The inaugural festival will showcase eight feature-length films — award-winning titles from six countries that reflect the power and richness of Latin American culture.
Diana Sanchez, from the Toronto International Film Festival, may be the programmer for Calgary Latin Wave. Sanchez’s program includes films from Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Cuba and Argentina, including the newest Academy Award winning film for Best Foreign Language Film of the year, The Secret In Their Eyes.
This first edition will cross many different styles, subjects and genres, from comedy to drama, deep nature to urban landscapes, and thrillers to documentaries.
Calgary Latin Wave is being organized by Fundacion Proa (Buenos Aires), with the collaboration of the Calgary International Film Festival and its world cinema programmer, Brenda Lieberman.
The Maine man detained by federal law enforcement officials investigating the attempted bombing in New York’s Times Square is really a 33-year-old Pakistani pc programmer who had worked for an art supply business based in Portland since August.
Mohammad Shafiq Rahman, who is identified as Shafiq to friends, worked for Artist & Craftsman Supply, a business with 15 stores from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles, owner Larry Adlerstein said in a telephone interview today.
“He’s very gentle, very soft-spoken,” Adlerstein said of Rahman, who is married. “Everything we know about Shafiq was that he was a gentleman.”
Adlerstein said a handful of federal agents showed up at his business in Portland Thursday around 9 a.m. and informed him that Rahman had been arrested on immigration charges.
Adlerstein was upset and concerned because he likes Rahman and considers him a friend. He described the friendship in a telephone interview.
Coincidentally, Adlerstein said, Rahman volunteered a few days ago that he knew Faisal Shahzad, the man at the center of the Times Square investigation.
“I said, ‘Shafiq, this must be hard for you, all this negative stuff going on about Pakistan,’” Adlerstein recalled. “He said, ‘Yes, it is hard.’”
Adlerstein then said Rahman added as an aside, “I know the guy.”
Rahman told Adlerstein that he met Shahzad, a Pakistani-born former financial analyst from Bridgeport, Conn., through the Pakistani community in that state.
Rahman told his boss he hadn’t seen him in eight or nine years but was surprised by the allegations because the suspect was “very meek” and held no strong opinions, Adlerstein said.
“And then Shafiq said to me, ‘Maybe that’s the personality-type terrorists want to mold,’” Adlerstein said.
The federal agents did not tell Adlerstein where Rahman was arrested and simply said they were investigating the pc programmer for allegedly being in the US illegally, Adlerstein said. They seized at least one computer at the business that Rahman had used.
Rahman was seized Thursday morning as part of an FBI sweep of several locations in the Northeast, including two Watertown, Mass., men who were taken into custody for possible immigration violations — and possible links to Shahzad.
Naughty Dog’s universally praised Uncharted series could have been coming to PSP, if the Linkedin profile of programmer Ben Weston is anything to go by.
Weston worked at Naughty Dog on the PS3 version of the action blockbuster, but also lists an untitled “action game” for PSP on his CV.
It’s just speculation at this point, but Weston also states that he was working on ‘particle effects and volumetric cloud rendering’ for the PSP title, suggesting an outdoorsy setting.
Does that mean Uncharted was coming to PSP but was canned? Does it mean that it still could be seen on handheld? Or is some thing completely distinct?
One thing we can be certain of is Uncharted 3, which Drake actor Nolan North said was ‘common sense’, is around the way.
There’s a turning point that’s difficult to miss in the infographic the New York Times set together to mark the moment Wednesday when Apple (AAPL) overtook Microsoft (MSFT) to turn out to be America’s most valuable technology organization.
The turnaround — one with the most remarkable in U.S. corporate history — dates from January 2000, when Microsoft’s market cap began a 10-year decline and Apple’s started to catch up. It also occurs the mark the date when Bill Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO and named Steve Ballmer to replace him.
Gates and Ballmer had identified each other since college days, when they lived on the exact same hall at Harvard. When the two men ran Microsoft together, they shared a popular work ethic and management style — one that place a great deal of faith in raw brain power and involved a very good deal of shouting at underlings.
But Gates was a hardcore software guy. Ballmer — who grew up inside suburbs of Detroit, worked for two years as an assistant item manager at Procter & Gamble, and dropped out of a Stanford MBA program to join Microsoft — is a businessman at heart. Gates personally hand-coded the first microcomputer version of Basic. Ballmer never wrote a line of code in his life.
Neither did Steve Jobs, who can be just as nasty as Gates or Ballmer. But he’s got an eye for excellent design and a focus on the user experience neither of them ever demonstrated. The years since his return to Apple in 1997 have been marked by a series of breakaway item releases: the iMac, the iBook, the iPod, Mac OS X, the MacBook, the iPhone and the iPad.
What has Microsoft produced inside Ballmer era? Some Office updates, three versions of Windows — including Vista — the Pocket PC, the XBox, the Tablet PC and the Zune.
Ballmer also seems to have a blind spot for what Apple is offering customers. He goes out of his way in his public remarks to belittle the Mac’s marketplace share gains (“a rounding error” he called them last July) and dismiss Apple’s products (“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant marketplace share,” he told USA Today in 2007. “No chance.”).
What Ballmer keeps coming back to is the marketplace share of Windows, which still runs 9 out of 10 with the world’s PCs. So far, however, Microsoft has failed to grab a comparable share of the marketplace for mobile devices.
Is there any wonder Apple is viewed by Wall Street these days as an investment in innovation and growth and Microsoft, by contrast, as a dubious bet on the status quo?
UPDATE: Ballmer dismissed questions about Microsoft’s valuation at a Thursday press conference in New Delhi, according to the Wall Street Journal. “I will make more profits and certainly there is no technology organization inside the planet which is as profitable as we are,” he said. “Stock markets will take care with the rest.”
Patrick and April Paulitz have listed for sale a four-bedroom, two-bath home at 1728 Wolfe Drive in San Mateo for $599,000.
David Wang of Reliance Realty Group may be the listing agent. The 1,540-square-foot house was built in 1956 at 19th Avenue Park.
Mr. Paulitz is really a programmer and analyst at Health.net, a healthcare insurance firm.
He also worked in the exact same position at SBC and AT&T.
He attended and California Polytechnic Institute.
According to BlockShopper.com, there have been 896 house sales in San Mateo during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $615,000.
NEW YORK: A laptop or computer programmer, who knew Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, is among the three Pakistani men arrested in the course of investigations into the failed plot.
The three adult males had been picked up on Thursday inside a series of raids inside the Boston suburbs, on New York’s Long Island and in New Jersey, as the FBI followed the money trail inside failed attack.
Although Mohammad Shafiq Rahman was a personal computer programmer, the other two had been a gas station attendant and a cab driver respectively.
They are suspected of funneling money to Pakistani- American Faisal Shahzad, who left a car packed with explosives inside middle from the well-liked tourist web site on May 1.
It is still not clear, even so, no matter whether the funds have been given to carry out the terrorist act or regardless of whether those arrested knew their money was staying channelled into a terror act.
The New York Instances reported that laptop or computer programmer Rahman told his employer days earlier that he knew Shahzad but had not seen him in almost a decade.
“It’s hard. Being a matter of fact I occur to know the guy accused of becoming the bomber in Times Square. I haven’t noticed him for eight or nine years, but back then he was a pretty uncomplicated individual, had no dogma, no theory, just went using the flow,” Rahman had told his boss, as quoted by NYT.
“So it’s tricky for me to recognize this, but maybe that’s what they appear for, what terrorist organisations appear for,” he added.
The connection using the other two adult men, Pir Khan, 43, who until recently drove a cab inside the Boston area, and Aftab Khan, who was in his 20’s and worked in a gas station in Brookline, and Shahzad have been unclear, the daily mentioned.
Shahzad, 30, was arrested two days right after his attempt while trying to escape to Dubai on an Emirates flight. He was apprehended at the John F Kennedy airport and has been charged with terror-related offence.
Last week, US Attorney General Eric Holder had declared that the investigation implicates the Pakistani Taliban from the foiled terror attack.
Soon after claiming responsibility for the attack initially, the Pakistan-Taliban had said that they have been not involved in this particular terror attempt but had sent suicide bombers to the US to carry out suicide attacks.
Media reports also suggest two males, suspected of staying Shahzad’s accomplices, have been arrested in Pakistan.
Shahzad worked as being a monetary analyst and live in Connecticut with his wife. But his individual and professional life came under strain last year through the monetary crisis.
Having waived his arraignments rights, Shahzad is cooperating with the authorities.
