That would explain why GNU/Hurd is such an excellent OS

These are based on the original BSD troll which was very similar to the FP, which used to (many years ago) make an appearance in almost every story related to BSD.

Banks use their r&d for competitive advantage. The chances of them freely releasing their work to help humanity (and their competitors) is not very high.

How many major infrastructure projects have been attempted at all over the past 40 years? That is the entire problem, as far as I see it, is we are falling behind because we are not building anything. Successive governments keep playing it safe and if there is a surplus the money does not get invested into major infrastructure projects, it gets "invested" into winning the next election through middle class welfare. The mining boom will eventually end and we will be left in the tough times with nothing to show from the good times.

9 employers in 12 years is excessive for a programmer? I guess you don't know many contractors then. Regular 3 to 12 month gigs are the norm and nobody bats an eyelid at it.

So their main goal is not to make money but to produce innovations and advancements? I'm sure their shareholders would be interested in that one.

Oh come now, we all know you just enjoy the ability to play with no clothes on! Must admit I have done that more than once.

A big problem online poker players face is the nonsense that the GP was sprouting. The trouble is that they know nothing about the topic at hand yet feel they are qualified to talk about it (well, I guess the same goes for any topic really). You summed it up nicely - in a game of poker it is player v player, the house does not care one bit who wins and loses as they get a "rake" out of every pot. Their sole interest - the one that makes them the most money - is to make as many people play as possible. The better players tend to play more tables therefore provide more income to the sites, which is why sites reward high volume players regardless of whether they are winners or losers (and there are quite a number of high volume winners). The site gets paid regardless of who wins and loses a game, there is no way for them to end up behind on a hand played.

If I were playing a cash game I would fist pump if I saw my AK get called by 43. Yes, the flop comes out 443 this time however in the long run (and poker is about the long run, as in tens if not hundreds of thousands of hands if you play seriously online) you will destroy that clown. Yes he wins this game, however over the next 10 times this happens he will lose around 2/3 of the hands, providing a nice profit.

I'm glad someone beat me to it. That statement was just absurd and shows a total ignorance of the subject being discussed, made worse with the condescending "you are all so sadly mistaken and I am now going to tell you how it is" tone.

The ONLY game where computers are a match with the top human players is heads up limit holdem. There is no other poker game where computers would be favoured against a top pro so the statement "pitted against a computer, their results suddenly fall well within a bell curve of chance" is just false.

When I look in my database there is a very strong trend where winrates reduce as the stakes increase. This would indicate that as opponents get tougher, it is harder to beat the game in the long run. This flies in the face of the notion that poker is only a game of chance which would lead to no correlation between opponent skill level and winrates.

It would have been interesting to a C, C++ and Fortran shootout on some heavy number crunching. Throw in some OpenGL, OpenCL and assembly for good measure. We always get to see how high level languages compare, when in reality for most apps that are written in higher level languages raw speed is one of the lesser factors when choosing a language. Yet we never see shootouts between the lower level languages which would be used if speed truly was a concern.

TFA here though isn't referring to someone "sneaking a few minutes break at work to check a website while they wait for an email", it is talking about a police officer accessing personal and by its nature I would imagine very sensitive information on a police database, not a random website, that they had no legal reason to be accessing. This is a far cry from using company time to surf the web.

You too? And here I thought I was the one in a million lottery winner!

Wow, just wow.

I will put it simply - you are not as good at poker as you think you are.

How do I know this? I play seriously both live AND online. I win at both, and not cheesburger stakes either (I am a winner at mid stakes at both and use it to comfortably support myself between contracts). If you can beat live but can't beat online it is not because OMGZ online is rigged! it is generally because at least at up to mid stakes online players are far better than live players.

I am happy to expand (whether you want me to or not). Online games tend to be both tighter and more aggressive. What this generally means is that an online only player coming to a live game will at first struggle with the looser more passive play. If they are tilt prone they may struggle with the greater number of suckouts in live play due to more players to the flop who will go all the way with their weak draw or underpair and don't know what went wrong. The better players quickly adjust and after a relatively small crossover period will happily destroy most live games as they generally have a far better understanding of the theory behind the game. And no, wearing your sunglasses and hoodie looking for the twitch in the corner of your opponents eye does not give you a massive advantage, if you think it does, then that may explain why you struggle online.

Live players moving to online on the other hand get crushed when they call 3-bets out of position with their any 2 suited cards and attribute it to online being rigged rather than piss poor pre-flop strategy. In general (this is generalising but does apply in the majority of cases) they have no grasp of positional play, have no clue why playing out of position is bad and will call down the whole way with a weak draw and don't get paid off when they do hit. Then they wonder what went wrong as this play works fine in live games where most flops see 5 to 7 to a flop rather than most being heads up or 3-way. In a large multi-way pot pre-flop mistakes are negligible. In a short handed game where heads up post flop play is the norm rather than exception pre-flop mistakes add up very quickly and if they are large enough can't be compensated for by post-flop skill.

Poker is poker, whether it be live or online. They play differently however it is still the same game with the same rules and it is just a matter of adjusting. If you can beat one and not the other then the flaw lies in your game rather than in the medium of delivery.

Who needs proof here on /.? Poster had their AA beaten - definitive proof that teh online pokahz iz rigged!!1! A few of the smaller sites have been busted for dodgy things, I have never seen any proof against Full Tilt or PS (being a fairly serious player both online and live I keep a very close eye on these things). Stars especially has a reputation for solid service and refunding $ to players if anything shady was discovered in any of the games that player played in.

If by any chance the poster does have proof there are many people who would be very interested in seeing it. Trouble is - proof has to be a bit more definitive than "I don't trust their RNG" or "they cheat cause I am the worlds best poker player but can't win online". In re the random number generator - proof or STFU. In re being a good player but can't beat online, the reason for that is because online players tend to be, at least at the small to mid stakes, orders of magnitude better than live players.