Posts by Neil Graham
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One thing I have always wondered about television advertising was if they have a metric that works like banner ads where it gets broken down to the cost of one-person one-view.
There are two reasons for this, There were some ads a few years ago. they seemed to be a series of ads that misrepresented what the advertising industry does followed up with the weirdly-meta irony of "Advertising, that's the way it works". One of those ads had a family argument situation that implied a single viewers worth was in the dollars per hour. I figured they were making shit up, but I still haven't found any numbers as to how much it really is.
Secondly, I'm curious to know whether it would be an amount I'd actually consider paying to get rid of the goddamn things.
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No they don't, at least they're not supposed to. Every spin is supposed to be an independent random event, but the house edge (the amount that the casino is statistically guaranteed to keep) is usually higher than other casino games. A lot of players think otherwise of course; if they didn't they wouldn't be playing. For those who want more info see here.
I have read the content at the linked page before, maybe on that site, the same info seems to be on a bunch of sites word-for-word.
I think the only way I'd be sure that each spin is an independent event is If I looked at the code or that they are required to by law. I'm assuming they get audited, I remember reading a piece comparing the controls on the development of slot machines compared to those of voting machines.
If they were not required to have each roll independent then that would give the casinos the choice of probably making a lot of money or definitely making a lot of money. Anyone care to wager on what they'd pick?
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The roulette is also programmed to make you lose, without being a computer.
Not in the same way. Roulette is biased against you winning but it does not do any balancing. A win in roulette does not make the chances of a loss in the next round any higher.
I am under the impression that this is what pokies do. I can't really say that I know this, but I have heard so and I would not expect a casino to do things any other way unless explicitly legislated for.
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imagine a tomato plant. Now imagine going around with a paintbrush and transferring pollen from one flower to another. Now imagine doing that for *every tomato we eat*. It'd be a total nightmare.
I remember reading something a few years ago that playing Guns n Roses extremely loudly did a reasonable job at pollinating tomatoes.
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I have a somewhat ...erm... other than normal way of thinking. My attention span is pretty poor but I seem to be able to deal with many many things about as well as one or two. Consequently I tend to have a decent number windows open.
Right now I have 61 tabs on this version of Firefox, A mere 5 on the Linux box, and 28 tabs on Safari on the Mac. (three monitors, one for Each of OsX, Ubuntu, WinXP) and some Synergy magic to in the darkness bind them.
As for finding things, I think it's a spacial awareness thing. Like a messy room (which this room well qualifies) I still know where things are.
I'll be interested in how the new Safari works out, I have a PPC mac mini with 1 gig. Some of the new things do indeed make it chug.
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I thought it was supposed to set his arm.
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I did tweet from the midst of it.
Are their many twerps about here?
It being Friday and all, some might be interested in a comp that Stephen Fry is having on his twitter.
L=50 in Roman. The best tweet containing exactly 50 Ls will win. All tweets to contain the tag #L and none to exceed 140 character limit SF
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bloody karma...
It appears the sofa quip earned me two dogs and a five year old on the chest. I am now the sofa.
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Leave the house and exercise for at least an hour a day. A long walk is not only good for the body...
Not so good for my body I found, I always ended up at the local bakery.
[posting while draped over the sofa btw]
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Never worked in the performing arts then?
Nope, never. The idea appeals, all except for the being in front of people bit.
That's not at all the sort of group I was imagining though. That's more of a hierarchy of fairly well defined pockets of creativity. I'm not sure if I've ever encountered something that I could see was created by more than two people of level standing.
Even with improv it doesn't really occur so much, The main skill in improv (from my vast experience of watching who's line, scared scriptless and some dire amateur stuff) seems to be the ability to pass the executive seamlessly, watching for who has the good idea. Time slicing rather than multi-processing.