but it's possible that he was using the computer to augment competent-or-better human play; but not replace it entirely

Are you suggesting that somehow makes it OK?

Because my take would be to strip him of titles, and bar him from future competition.

Saying he only cheated a little is meaningless.

*shudder* While I'm sure this is someone's idea of where rule #34 should apply ... a bunch of nekkid/pasty/flabby chess players is a terrible idea.

Just ... no. Stop it.

Or better yet, allow VPN traffic to be inspected?

Oh yeah, fucking brilliant idea .. undermine the security of corporate VPNs so that the assholes who run media companies can further tell us how we are allowed to use technology.

I have a better idea, feed the execs from media companies and their lawyers to the bears and tell them to piss up a rope.

These clowns won't be happy until they have veto power over all security and technology. Which, oddly enough, the assholes in the NSA and their peers want the same thing.

Because, the entertainment industry has decided that it is 100% in control of who are their customers, when they are their customers, and how much they will have to pay for the privilege of being customers.

In this case, I suspect because they've decided the people in New Zealand will get it six months later, for twice the price.

The same as they don't want you to be able to buy a DVD elsewhere in the world and bring it into your own country and watch it.

Of course the media industry is malignant, but they keep bribing or bullying lawmakers to stack the deck in their favor ... so much so that the copyright of multinational corporations is more firmly entrenched in the law than the rights of citizens on some topics.

We live in a world in which the media companies have co-opted the legal system, with the help of governments who help push the agenda against the interests of their own citizens.

If the media companies had any say in the matter, buying a CD to rip the songs to MP3 to play on your portable device would be illegal.

Because they're assholes who somehow feel their business model is more important than property rights.

You could put the real computer in a locked room, and only provide serial access through a terminal.

And, then you have to have a locked room outside of (and enclosing your locked room) to limit access to the serial connected terminal, otherwise you've just stupidly erased the benefit of your locked room.

I don't think you've solved the problem, just changed where the attack point is -- and that's the serial cable.

Yours just adds complexity so now you have two rooms which need to be secured.

Yo dawg, I hear you like locked rooms ...

If I was to do it, No chance in hell I would be anywhere near the buying of the ticket or the collection of the winnings.

Well, that's grand an all ... but then you have a co-conspirator who could be the source of you getting caught.

So, either you try to be a clever criminal all on your own, or you try to be a clever member of a conspiracy.

It's all well and good to say "yarg, if I was a master criminal I'd have lackeys to do the dirty work". But having lackeys is just another link in the chain.

If you hire some kid to buy the ticket and bring it back to you, unless you off the kid, at some point he'll say "oh, yeah, that guy asked me to buy him the ticket".

Obviously, if people could find infallible ways to do this, they'd do so. And, equally obviously, it's hard to do this kind of thing without leaving some form of trail.

If I had plans to be a master criminal, I sure as fuck wouldn't be posting on Slashdot about how I'd prevent myself from getting caught. ;-)

Except a rootkit can probably bypass anything in the OS which would allow for auditing.

That's kind of the point of a rootkit.

So depending on the OS, and just how much this could bypass, that there was simply no record isn't surprising.

That's what the tool is designed for, and it certainly isn't there to do anything but bypass security.

If you have security holes in your OS which can be exploited, chances are your auditing is included in things which can be bypassed.

Seriously, why don't you RTFA where they point out that a corporation registered in Belize tried to claim this prize through an attorney in New York.

It's not like the someone who was barred from playing walked in and tried to claim the prize.

Yes, your what you say is obvious. So obvious, in fact, that it isn't what happened.

Well, it also says he went in ostensibly to change the time on the computers.

So he was basically at the physical computer, and whether the thing did an autorun or he issued a quick command is irrelevant.

The former security director "was 'obsessed' with root kits, a type of computer program that can be installed quickly, set to do just about anything, and then self-destruct without a trace," prosecutors wrote. They went on to say a witness would testify at trial that Tipton told him before December 2010 that he had a self-destructing rootkit.

If you already have the right tools, and are physically sitting at the machine, and the cameras suddenly are only recording a fraction of what happens ... this is at best a small amount of work.

I mean, really, f:\fuck_em_all.exe will not take long to type before you set the clock as you said you would, and suddenly the camera isn't going to capture you doing it.

I had always thought, like so many lotteries for random things, that those associated with the company, even by merely being a family member of someone that is employed by them, makes it so that they can not participate in the drawings.

Of course they do, for the obvious reasons.

The winning ticket went unclaimed for almost a year. Hours before it was scheduled to expire, a company incorporated in Belize tried to claim the prize through a New York attorney. In January, Tipton was charged with two counts of fraud. The allegations that he used his insider access to tamper with the RNG were first made in the court documents filed last week.

It's not like he walked up and tried to claim the ticket personally.

It is required that people not be able to participate. But someone went to great lengths to do this at arms length from themselves.

I'm actually surprised there haven't been more cases of insiders rigging lotteries.

I should think knowing all of those zillions of dollars are just sitting there would cause more people to decide to see if they could get away with it.

My guess, the star is "a", the number is the catalog name of the star, and the things which orbit it are derived from that.

Yup, Assange may have thrown out some false information.

But diverting a presidential plane against diplomatic immunity, forcing it to land, and searching it?

That is entirely to be owned by the countries who did it and the country who asked for it.

Even if he was on a presidential plane, they had no legal right to divert it or search it.

Assange is an ass, and he may have lied, but the stuff that was done to divert the Bolivian presidents plane was flat out illegal according to diplomatic rules. And that has nothing to do with Assange.

He could apologize in case he needs another place to hole up. But he sure isn't responsible for what was actually done with that information.

Well, the link I gave says "88 ± 2 ÂC (190 ± 4 ÂF)", which is hotter than the numbers you seem to be providing. TFS says 208F. So I have no idea where you're getting your numbers.

Argotec and Lavazza are Italian companies, so I assume this is the one you're thinking of and is finally arriving.

My problem with commercial radio is that you can often set your watch by which song is playing.

I was on vacation a month or so, an on one particular day, it seemed every damned time I was in the car it was the exact same song playing.

I think this royalty thing, however, is complete and utter crap, because I completely disagree that the music studios should be paid royalties for the music stations to keep overplaying their pop songs.

I suspect if the radio stations didn't just keep paying the same songs over and over they'd be less popular or even well known.

And, of course, the real eventual grab here is the claim that every time I play something I've bought I should also be paying them ... because music companies are run by assholes whose greed knows no bounds.

At the end of the day I don't care if they try to put radio stations out of business, because I've given up listening to radio. But I'm still someone who buys a LOT of music and rips them to MP3. And it irks me to no end these clowns are likely sitting around trying to figure out how to have my iPod collect payment every time I play a song.

I sincerely hope they try this and then suddenly find nobody plays their pop songs on rotation and their record sales fall even further. Then these idiots might realize they can't monetize every damned play of a song without cutting out how many they actually sell.