I have to say though, having a nice round UID number is almost as cool as having a nice 4-digit one.

Yeah, I've been asking Slashdot to do this for a looooong time... :) Someday!

It's definitely nifty, the pictures are beautiful, and the creator deserves praise, but the author himself says it's probably not a "true" 3D Mandelbrot:

http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/2mandelbulb.html#epilogue

As exquisite as the detail is in our discovery, there's good reason to believe that it isn't the real McCoy. ... ...
Evidence it's not the holy grail? Well, the most obvious is that the standard quadratic version isn't anything special. Only higher powers (around after 3-5) seem to capture the detail that one might expect. The original 2D Mandelbrot has organic detail even in the standard power/order 2 version. Even power 8 in the 3D Mandelbulb has smeared 'whipped cream' sections, which are nice in a way as they provide contrast to the more detailed parts, but again, they wouldn't compare to the variety one might expect from a 3D version of Seahorse valley.

So, Slashdot, I know this is asking a lot, but can you PLEASE at least read the article before posting? Thanks.

The should absolutely behave like a business concern.

But when people are robbed of their just rewards, especially for short-sighted PR reasons, it undermines the trust in the organization itself. Who in their right mind would now put up real money and effort into competing for this prize, when the organizers have already shown that they're perfectly happy to cheat?

That's bad business.

What are you talking about? This has nothing to do with "the universe", it's about the specific, deliberate decisions of crooked, misguided judges.

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/10/30/armadillos-mccormack-robbed-ngllc-judges/

The other team had a whole extra day to improve their results that Armadillo did not. This is totally and blatantly unfair, and he has every right to be pissed.

Garbage like this will dissuade other teams from entering, no doubt.

Not true, the benefit of the crowds is to blend in and dilute their attention, so they spend less attention on you. They don't care of others are losing near you.

The downside is having lots of other players around severely slows down the game, and really cuts into profits. (it's $/hand, not $/hr)

This is what I'm saying is wrong:

"However, they are under no obligation to keep dealing until they reach the cut card. A competent dealer can recognize a shuffle that would play out in your favour, just as well as you can."

Yes they are, by state law and the gaming commission. A dealer is not allowed to make *any* decisions, period. If they do make decisions, such as shuffling early, they can easily lose their job, if not their gaming license, just as I said. They are cheating, no two ways about it, and it's prohibited.

If they change the dealer when people are winning, either the floor person is being a superstitious idiot, or far more likely, they suspect the dealer is making mistakes, such as flashing the hole card or screwing up payouts, which can be hugely profitable for a skilled player.

Right. That's very different than shuffling when the player has an advantage, and letting it play out when they don't. Cutting off lots of the shoe is pretty common, or just restricting them to flat-betting is quite effective.

It applies universally, including on reservations. If they're shuffling away a known player advantage, they are cheating. Good luck prosecuting them, though.

Very few bother with this, however, as the casinos do quite well even without cheating the customers, and it isn't worth the risk.

Systems like this have been around for many years, and have been used commercially in various casinos. There really is nothing new or unique about it. I also see no evidence at all that it's reliable enough to use in a real casino environment, or to be of any help at all.

Remember, this is just some kid's college project. I'm sure he's enjoying the attention, but this is not an innovation.

The commercial units combine video tracking with RFID for measuring chips and betting. These systems are very expensive, and don't work all that well. They're also easily defeated by skilled card counters using various techniques. This system is too.

As for card counting itself, there is really a lot of misinformation on here, but here's the gist:

- It's totally legal, and it's totally legal for the casino to ask you to leave if they don't want your business.
- They don't do this often, because most people are losers, even if they're trying to count cards.
- They don't care if you win a ton, if you're just lucky.
- It only gives you about a 1-2% advantage overall. That's really not a lot.
- The MIT team didn't invent any of it, including team play. Nor were they all that successful or profitable overall. Disregard the movie, guys.
- It's not that hard to learn, but it does take practice, a strong stomach, and a huge bankroll to ride out the inevitable swings.
- Expected earning is around 1-2 units per hour. So if you're playing $25 units, you'll make $25-$50/hr in the long run.
    Not bad, but not great either. And you should have at least $25,000 (1000 units) as a disposable bankroll to do this, or you risk going broke fairly easily.
- Lots of people think they can do it, but few really can. The ones who think they know what they're doing are subject to lose a lot of money in short order, so the card counting hype is of benefit to the casinos. They've known this since Thorpe's day.
- Casino rules vary wildly from location to location, even with a casino. Same thing for card counting conditions.

Yes, I've studied this quite a lot. Anyone have any questions?

They don't do this because there's a chance that the player is a legitimate advantage player, they worry that they're cheating or exploiting a bug. There's a huge difference. They know full well that some people get lucky, and have no problem with it.

This is totally untrue.

The dealer does NOT have the ability to decide to shuffle early. The dealers are not allowed to make any decisions at all.

If they're doing this, they're cheating, and can lose their gaming license over it.

This is completely, totally untrue. They do NOT have to have the same payout rate, and there is no legal requirement for backing off counters at all.

I don't know why you think this, but it's wrong. The strip casinos vary quite a lot in house edge and blackjack rules. House edge with perfect strategy ranges from 0.20% to about 2%, depending on house rules, a factor of 10! You'll even find the same casino offer vastly different rules/edge depending on bet level and pit location.

Ideas on their own are a dime a dozen, and a lot of people get all crazy when thinking that their ideas are worth something, and need patenting, protecting, secrecy, etc.

Ideas are easy and incredibly overrated. Bringing the idea to something that can be sold, and then actually selling it, is the hard part.

So unless you have a real interest in pursuing this as a business, don't waste your money. If you have some interest, but aren't sure, then spend the $100 or so on a provisional patent. That buys you a year of time to see if there's a viable market.