Right, thus my quotes. This is the reason I enjoy to gamble!

Maybe *I* will be the guy who is there when two six sided dice roll an '8' 10 times in a row. Maybe I will see a lot more blackjacks than I statistically should during a 3 day trip to Vegas.

Your use of microbes in your argument is ironic since farmers are also a huge part of the problem of driving bacterial evolution for resistance through misuse of antibiotics.

Antivirals, antibiotics and pesticides should be used in the minimal amounts exactly where most needed. They should not be routinely used everywhere indiscriminately. That's the mode that these GMO crops are encouraging.

The GMO plants I was referring to were designed specifically accommodate increased usage of chemicals. Look up "Roundup ready".

Herbicide use in this country has skyrocketed due to the widespread adoption of GMO crops.

Making a plant manufacture its own insecticide is one thing. Modifying it so that it can withstand being soaked with ever-increasing quantities and varieties of synthetic pesticides is another.

Weeds are gradually evolving to resist this chemical onslaught. Most people would rather not have themselves subjected to such evolutionary pressure within their lifetimes.

The weeds are destined to eventually win this arms race anyway, so this huge experiment in chemical exposure to the US population is eventually going to be for naught.

All the plastic helps with the incremental increments in fuel economy: approximately 2X better over the past 57 years. I also neglected to mention safety, which has improved a good deal more than fuel economy. That's all OK, but it's nothing like the dramatic changes that happened previous to the 707. After nearly six decades, today's planes still look very similar to a 707, are about the same size, and go the same speed.

You should come to some tournaments! We're a small community but always in need of new blood.

http://www.cross-tables.com/

You won't make a living off of it, but it's a satisfying hobby with good people, and you don't have to put in world champion hours to win money and have fun.

Not really. Scrabble Players buy in to tournaments like poker players. There is no 'house' rake, but oftentimes money is taken out for things like renting a hotel ballroom to or catering the event.

Add on top of that the amount of variance in Scrabble, and you're really not likely to make a consistent living unless you are *very* frugal.

I mean there is Nigel Richards, who undoubtedly the best player the game has ever seen, and he's 'only' won $200,000 since 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If we got some sponsorship money in the game, then sure, but not until then -- we're just trading money around in the community.

I don't think that it's necessarily "inevitable". Take aviation, for example. There was arguably exponential increases in the capability of aircraft for 55 years from 1903 to 1958, when the Boeing 707 was introduced. Ever since, further progress on economically viable aircraft has been pretty much limited to incremental increases in fuel economy and marketing strategies to keep costs down by keeping planes full.

My understanding is that this is not correct (your comments on the difficulty of programming an RNG notwithstanding.)

If you can assume a magical perfectly random algorithm for a moment, you simply have to design a slot machine as follows (simple example):

Machine takes $1 bets only. Machine "rolls" a virtual ten sided die. On the number 10, a jackpot of $9 is paid. On any other number, the bet is lost.

This machine would make $1 profit for every $10 wagered, over time, "guaranteed" (by mathematics, not rigged programming) and would never need to be 'overdue' to hit or any other such nonsense. A customer could get lucky and hit 10 jackpots in a row, but the odds would be fairly astronomical.

Incidentally, such a machine would be a pretty bad bet compared to most Vegas slot machines, but I think still a high enough payout to be legal in Nevada. I think it would be roughly comparable to the odds on the bad machines in the McCarran airport...

If you start winning sufficiently large amounts, this doesn't work. The casino might not know where all of its $500 dollar chips are, but it damn well will have a record of all of the $5,000 chips and there is scrutiny when cashing them in.

If you're deliberately cashing in stacks of 1000 at a time in order to avoid scrutiny over $10,000 in chips, that is called 'structuring' and the Federal government doesn't look on it too kindly. But they would have to notice, and I'm sure they miss plenty. I guess it's a risk/reward calculation we all have to make (should we be lucky enough to find ourselves in possession of many thousands of dollars in casino chips...)

I really have nothing more than speculation to go on here so I could be wrong, but judging the state of some of the places I've seen selling lottery tickets, I don't think the lottery has particularly onerous requirements in order to become a vendor.

Waiting to hear "stories" would be of no use if, for example, attackers choose to wait until a nationwide cold-snap and then simultaneously brick one million thermostats.

If there's a public safety concern about people hacking code in cars, then copyright is not the way to address it. The purpose of copyrights is purportedly to encourage the production of more works. It is certainly not intended to be a tool for ensuring public safety.

Ideally, hacking safety-related code (and then driving it on a public highway) should be legal only if the hacker got the appropriate certifications to work on that area, along with insurance riders to go with it. This would be completely unrelated to the copyright status of the original code.

Projectiles from your puny weapons will simply bounce off my armored playground robot.

Now, hand over your weapon and your lunch box to the machine.

Why compromise?

All the city bus drivers in my area are on video surveillance. We routinely get to see footage of accidents and altercations with crazed passengers on the local news.

If it's good enough for a bus, it should be good enough for someone responsible for the safety of a 500mph $200M machine.