Internet Gambling Banned? So What?

I honestly do not understand why some people are pissed off about the new ban on online gaming. Online casinos are a profit machine that do their customers no favors.

I would never trust an online casino to not rig the game somehow. Given how relatively easy it is to put in “streakbreaker” code or something that skews probability more in favor of the house, combined with the fact that these online casinos are virtually unregulated — there’s just no reason to NOT do it.

So when I see comments like this about the online ban:

“We’re going to have Prohibition, and what happened then?” said champion poker player Annie Duke, a former University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate who began playing professionally in 1994. “We had people running around with tommy guns and drinking moonshine because they weren’t given a safe product.”

My response is, give me a freaking break! There is a perfectly safe product out there already. It’s called a brick-and-mortar casino. A quick Google turned up this fact: There are 47 states in United States which have 1492 legal gambling facilities available. That’s plenty of product. Don’t live close enough to one of those casinos? There’s always poker night at your buddy’s house.

As my statistics teachers were fond of reminding us, even in an honest game, every casino game is set up so that the odds are in the house’s favor. That’s why casinos make so much money. But at least in a US casino, you can be reasonably sure that it’s a clean game.

And by the way, I’m not an anti-gambling crusader. Scott and I don’t gamble often, but when we have the cash, we’ve been known to hit a few blackjack tables and while away some hours. Well, actually, Scott plays blackjack and I either kibitz or wander off to lose some money in the slot machines.

At any rate, I want to be clear that I am not against gambling per se. I just think that anyone who’s upset about the Internet gambling ban needs to get over it.

Congrats to Yunus!

The Grameen Bank was one of the primary cases we studied in my Social Entrepreneurship class this summer. I’m totally stoked that Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize today.

Yunus, 66, set up a new kind of bank in 1976 to lend to the neediest, particularly women, in Bangladesh, enabling them to start up small businesses without collateral.

In doing so, he pioneered microcredit, a system copied in more than 100 nations from the United States to Uganda.

[snip]

In awarding a prize more traditionally given to those who sign treaties to end wars or fight for human rights, the secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee said eliminating poverty was a path to peace and democracy.

“Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights,” the committee added.

“Eradication of poverty can give you real peace,” said Yunus.

Technolust

Oooh. A less expensive Treo. Me want.

At DigitalLife 2006 in New York City Thursday, Palm introduced a new Treo smartphone aimed at average consumers rather than just business customers. The Treo 680 is a quad-band GSM handset that runs Palm OS and comes in a number of different colors.

Palm says it has designed the Treo 680 to reach a wide range of users around the world, and has simplified the device’s software to make that goal a reality. “Really what we focused on in the past is the mobile professionals,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a press conference.

Although it comes with largely the same feature set as the Treo 650, Palm has updated the 680’s phone application to version 3.0, which offers a completely new user interface. Favorites have been simplified and contacts are now integrated directly into the dial software.

In addition, Palm has included a wired car kit, a “My Treo” user guide and knowledge base support system, as well as a new version of the Treo’s e-mail software known as VersaMail 3.5. Multimedia, blogging and mapping utilities come with the 680 as well. Google finally released a version of its Maps software for Palm on Thursday.

I’m still reasonably happy with my Razr, though, so I doubt I’ll be buying one of these the day the come out. The Razr won’t last forever though……

What She Said!

I’ve never been a big fan of “holier than thou” doctrinaire types, whether they call themselves Greens, vegans, or feminists.

Shakes summed up the subject very well:

The measure of feminism