Nonsense. I've had leaders of at least three major Christian sects tell me that the bible is the literal word of god, written down by divinely inspired men. Including the pornographic poem in the middle of it.

There are plenty of radical Christians who interpret the bible literally, including the nasty parts. There are just fewer (by no means none) who care to die for their convictions.

Christianity is older than Islam. It had some pretty nasty times, then it mellowed. It seems to be getting more violent again though.

Murder rates per 100,000 per year (2012):

France: 1.0
USA : 4.7

Looks like France is doing something right in the overall department too.

"Queue" means to line up. You "queue up" people. You cannot "Cue up" people. You can "cue people" though, which means to give a signal. In summary, you are the idiot, not the GP. The metasummary is that it's entertaining to watch two ACs call each other idiots.

I wonder how many posts each of those would have if you removed all the ones complaining about the irrelevance of the story.

Let me introduce you to my little friend, the hash table.

Your disbelief is a common human trait. It's why lots of people who play in casinos insist that the can win.

Solving a game means that the consequences of every possible situation are known. You can't beat a perfect player if the assumptions that make it perfect are met. In this case those assumptions are long play heads up limit hold 'em.

You can't determine the robots cards because you don't have enough information. Playing heads up limit poker long term against this bot, the best you can do is tie, by playing a perfect game just like it does. Any deviation from that perfect strategy will cause you to lose.

You aren't smarter than the scientists who created this bot. They brute forced the game.

You know if the robot checks or raises or folds at each opportunity. How do you expect to figure out what its cards are based on that information? We call that an ill-posed problem.

It depends on the game. In a game like rock-paper-scissors the perfect strategy, complete randomness, gives exactly 50% probability of winning. It's unknown what kind of game chess is because it hasn't been solved, but in the limited situation you give the perfect strategy isn't to prolong the game as long as possible. The computer would first look for a way to force a draw and, if that failed, choose the branch that led to the most win or draw end states, i.e., the most opportunities for the opponent to make a mistake.

Heads up limit poker, which is what the story is about, is by definition a two player game.

The house always wins in poker because it takes a rake and doesn't risk anything. That's the most obvious one of all.

In blackjack it's technically possible to play a winning strategy good enough to overcome the house advantage. When people (such as the MIT group) started doing that, the house changed the game. Adding multiple decks reduces the advantage from counting and makes it much more difficult. You can still beat the house by using a computer, but that's cheating.

The house always wins. If they don't, they shut down the game.

Perhaps in the US. In Canada, if you didn't take appropriate precautions you could be found guilty of things like criminal negligence or involuntary manslaughter, depending on what happened. I don't know about Switzerland.

From what I've heard of US drug laws, I suspect if you ordered drugs in the US and your defense was "my computer did it!" you'd be convicted of a criminal offense.

It depends where you are. On one visit to Venice we were told that there was a problem with street vendors selling counterfeit designer bags and it was an automatic 10,000 euro fine if you were caught buying one.

A computer program is a tool. If I toss a hammer off a scaffold and it hits someone, I'm responsible. I can't just say "the hammer did it, not me." The crime or non-crime I'm responsible for may vary depending on the circumstances. If I threw the hammer on purpose or accidentally kicked it off, whether I took sufficient safety precautions, etc.

These artists are clearly responsible for whatever their program did, and it purchased illegal drugs from a website. If Switzerland doesn't have a legal distinction between purchasing drugs and possession or use then hopefully smart cops, district attorneys, judges will take the mitigating circumstances into account. But it doesn't absolve the artists of responsibility.

Incidentally, where I live (and I believe in the US, probably in Europe as well) you can absolutely be held responsible for the actions of your children, until they reach an age where they are legally determined to be responsible themselves.

That would require crypto locker to be specifically targeted to OS X. I highly doubt it does this. There are so many people who don't have adequate backups, or any backups, that it's probably not worth the effort to go after the ones who do, unless you're running a targeted attack.

Absolutely, an offline backup system is necessary for complete security. But for a home user protecting against non-targetted attacks, obscurity offers very good security, with minimal effort.