Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim.
In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analysed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate. His findings led to an internal investigation by the parent company that owns both sites. It found rogue employees had defrauded players over three years via a security hole that allowed the cheats to see other player's secret (or hole) cards.
Now the owners of the sites have filed a $US75 million claim against the makers of the software that powers them, claiming they were unaware of the security holes when they purchased the sites in 2006, MSNBC reported this month.
Suckers at every level ...
Official investigators - brought in following Josem's revelations - have named one of the world's most successful poker players, Russ Hamilton, as the main perpetrator of the fraud.
Suspicions of unfair play at Absolute Poker were first raised late last year. Josem plotted the win rate of several thousand players against the suspicious accounts and found the cheats won money at a rate that was 100 times faster than a good player could reasonably win. The cheating accounts played every hand as if they knew every card that the other players had and folded hands at just the right time.
The findings led to an investigation by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, which licenses several hundred online casinos and poker rooms. It found Absolute Poker attempted to cover up the cheating by deleting gaming logs and records and fined it $US500,000.
Absolute Poker repaid those who had lost money but refused to release the cheater's identity because a private settlement was reached.
A few months later, Josem and players from the Two Plus Two online poker forum used the same methods to uncover almost identical cheating occurring at Absolute Poker's sister site, UltimateBet. One player account, NioNio, netted a profit of $300,000 in just 3000 hands and won 13 of the 14 sessions recorded on the MyPokerIntel.com website, which tracks high stakes online tournaments.
#1
Tons more of these, just haven't gotten caught like here. I don't know why anyone ever does any sort of gambling online, it's just too easy to cheat.
A police officer didn't think much of a call to shoo off a bothersome "kitty cat" at a Casper home on Monday. But after the officer arrived at the home, he ran for cover after seeing a male mountain lion weighing 80 to 90 pounds.
Beverly Hood said she was inside when she first saw the mountain lion lying on her porch Monday. Hood said the lion hissed at her, but she wasn't scared.
She called 911, animal control and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and reported that she had a bothersome "big cat." A dispatcher told Officer Mike Ableman that it was a house cat.
A game warden tranquilized the mountain lion and the animal was relocated.
#1
That officer was smart. A cat that size is perfectly capable of killing an adult human.
Some human will probably have trouble with that cat again. It's lack of fear is definitely a bad thing for both the cat and any person that it should happen to encounter.
#2
Reminds me of a story (possibly appocraphyl) that I read many years ago.
Seems there was this burglar who was climbing through a window. He saw a couple of cat's eyes and thinking that cats were better than dogs turned on his pocket flash light.
Seems the two cat's eyes that were a foot apart belonged to the same cat. The intended victim had a pet black panther.
The story came out when he proceeded to fall out of the window and got caught by the cops.
#5
Must not have been a football game that night. Needed something to bring out the primal thuggery and hooliganism.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/01/2008 6:58 Comments ||
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#6
Another manifestation of the utter moral bankruptcy of our society. And Britain's problem is that it is not Puritanism or Methodism that is rushing in to fill this vacuum but Islam.
#10
there were several groups of youths who ran from behind the cordon and looked like they were taking pictures with their mobile phones
What do you expect when you raise them in a culture devoid of values? Sadly, the answer to this nihilism is ignored in England: the church.
#12
People who make spectacles out of their suicides and - worse - disrupt the lives of others in doing so don't deserve much sympathy. Ask any train driver how they feel about jumpers on the line, for instance.
Nevertheless, the shouting minority are still a bunch of a***holes.
#13
I remeber watch something similar to this in person. I was in Denver on the 16th St mall when a woman was threatening to jump off a parking garage. The crowd was cheering her on. Definately not what she expected. Cops got to her in time though.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
10/01/2008 13:52 Comments ||
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#15
Most of the time, suicides are looking for attention. Sometimes they really want to die, too, but in my admittedly limited experience the ones who really wanted to die just did it rather than drawing a crowd first.
She wasn't a jumper, but I ran a call one time where a women was on a pay phone with 911 threatening to shoot herself - something about a boyfriend problem. (Never got the complete story.) 2 cops were there trying to talk her out of the gun when she decides to put the gun to her left upper shoulder and pull the trigger. (I'm betting both cops had to change their drawers later. Considering the area, I'm surprised she didn't have an encouraging audience too. Probably the whole thing didn't take long enough to draw a crowd, and it was kinda cold to be outside besides.)
Why the left shoulder, you may ask? This is just a guess, of course, but she probably watched too many old movies and TV shows - the hero always gets shot through the left shoulder and it's always not serious and he always he goes right on doing his hero stuff, so getting shot in the left shoulder is obviously not only non-lethal but not even very painful, right?
Except back here in the real world, at a minimum it would puncture a lung and blow a big hole in your back. In her case, the .32 bullet deflected off her clavicle and bounced around inside her chest cavity somewhere. We got her to the hospital still alive, but she died on the operating table. And I think the most surprised person in the room was her.
While I feel sorry that anyone gets to the point where they think they want to die, it also makes me angry. It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and if they do succeed, it's their final act of control over those left behind.
Pfui.
And f*ck those assholes who cheered him on. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/01/2008 19:34 Comments ||
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BEIJING, China (CNN) -- The Chinese women's gymnastics team did not use underage competitors during this year's Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, the International Gymnastics Federation said Wednesday.
The federation said it has concluded its inquiry into the matter after it confirmed the gymnasts' ages through official documents that the Chinese Gymnasts Association provided. The documents included passports, identity cards and household registers.
However, the organization intends to further investigate the ages of two gymnasts, Dong Fangxiao and Yang Yun, who participated in the 2000 summer games in Sydney, Australia. The federation said it did not consider the explanations and evidence that Chinese authorities provided in regard to those athletes as satisfactory.
The International Olympic Committee had asked gymnastics officials to clarify the situation after numerous commentators, bloggers and others questioned whether about half the members of China's team were old enough to compete. Watch tiny gymnasts work out »
Athletes must be at least 16 in the year the games take place. In women's gymnastics, younger girls can have an advantage over older competitors on account of their often smaller, lighter and more agile bodies.
The Chinese women's gymnastics team won a gold medal in a team competition at the Beijing games, and five members won individual medals.
One of the challenges came from a blogger known as "Stryde Hax." The blogger claimed to have uncovered proof that Chinese gymnast He Kexin is only 14.
In Internet searches, "Stryde Hax" allegedly uncovered Web pages showing lists complied by China's General Administration of Sport that show a 1994 date of birth for He.
CNN was not been able to independently verify the information, but snapshots of the Web pages appeared to back up the claim. Other bloggers joined the search and reported similar results.
The New York Times conducted its own investigation, producing similar results that seem to implicate He and two other members of the team. The Times uncovered a 2006 biography on He that lists her birthday as January 1, 1994.
The International Gymnastics Federation, however, has said that those gymnasts were eligible and that the ages on their passports were correct.
#1
To be expected. The Chinese government can manufacture genuine official documents with false dates of birth any time it wants to. Just goes to show that people who say that the central government is good, while local government is corrupt are delusional - the corruption and evil-doing is orchestrated by the central government, with occasional scapegoats from the local government singled out to lull the masses.
#2
Unfortunately for the IGF + IOCC, HE's own interviews and comments as per the MSM-Net do NOT go against the allegations/accusations agz China's team. HE IS EITHER VERY SMART OR POL ASTUTE FOR AGE 12, OR SOMEBODY'S TELLING HER WHAT TO SAY BEFORE THE IOCC + WESTERN MEDIAS.
Also, as per normal Gender-based physiological science, it is anatomically or naturally possible for for a 12-year old to scientif pass for age 16 [intermediate range = "grey area"].
A narrow ribbon of fraying tar snakes up from the plains of Orissa to the hills of Kandhamal, an unlikely setting for what is being described as the country's latest battle over faith.
There is no railroad to this remote landlocked district dominated by tribes people. Here, they and a growing number of Hindu Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) who have converted to Christianity have lived together for centuries, tilling its fertile land, growing vegetables, turmeric and ginger.
It is also the place which has been rocked by violence between Hindus and Christians over the past month. Events here have triggered off anti-Christian attacks in a number of other states.
Villages have been attacked, people killed, churches and prayer houses desecrated. Radical Hindu groups have accused Christian groups of converting people against their will. Christian groups say these allegations are baseless.
Kandhamal continues to simmer a month after the murder of a controversial 82-year-old Hindu holy man and the consequent rioting between local tribes people and Christians.
Some 13,000 Christians are still living in tented refugee camps, with many having no homes to return to.
The popular narrative is that the conflict is all about tribes people, egged on by radical Hindu groups, targeting the Christian community to put an end to the church and its growing influence in the region.
But that is only a small part of Kandhamal's tangled conflict. To describe it as a war over religion is to simplify it, say analysts and officials.
They say it is essentially a decades-old conflict over identity, rights and entitlements.
Faith is now being used as a tool to rake up and settle old disputes. A similar bloody clash between the two communities in the early 1990s that killed some 24 people went largely unreported because it did not assume a religious hue.
At the root of the conflict is the unchecked rift among the majority Kandha tribes people - one of Orissa's 62 tribal communities who make up over 22% of the state's population - and the minority Hindu Pana Dalit community who have converted to Christianity in droves.
The Kandha tribes people comprise more than half of the district's 648,000 population and they openly say they are angry with their Christian neighbours.
Unlike their counterparts in many parts of India who have been ignored, exploited or displaced, the isolated tribes people of Kandhamal, in the words of local officials, are "proud and assertive".
Literacy among them has risen to around 40%, just under the 43% literacy rate for the district.
Living outside the pale of India's oppressive caste system and on the margins of society with their animist practices, Kandhamal's tribes people have not found a good reason yet to convert to Christianity in large numbers.
The untouchables on the other hand have borne the brunt of the caste system and have converted for a better life and more dignity.
Resultantly, the Christian population in the district has leapt by 56% between 1991 and 2001, when India's last census was conducted, while the average population grew up only 18% during the same period.
The pet complaint among the tribes people is that after converting to Christianity, their neighbours have become aggressive.
They say they have grabbed their lands - land owned by tribes people in India cannot be bought under the country's laws - and used fake certificates to declare themselves as tribes people to take advantage of complex affirmative action benefits like government jobs.
"The Christian converts have been stealing our crops and livestock. They are ploughing and taking away our lands using force, they are faking their identities to get jobs. They want to have the best of both worlds," says Lambodhar Kanhar, who heads an increasingly influential group local group of tribes people.
Officials say there is merit in some of these allegations and they should have been investigated and settled a long time ago. The failure to do so has led to growing animosity between the two groups.
"There are some issues. We are working to resolve the issues of land acquisitions and fake caste certificates," says the district's most senior official, Krishan Kumar.
Things began to take a religious turn some 40 years ago when a Hindu religious man, Laxmananda Saraswati, arrived here.
He set up schools and clinics, ran anti-liquor campaigns, openly railed against conversions and organised reconversions of some returnees to Hinduism.
He also became popular among the tribes people because his ire was mainly directed against Christian converts.
The holy man instantly became a target of his opponents, surviving some nine assassination attempts before he was murdered last month by a group of gunmen.
There are reports of local Maoist rebels claiming responsibility, but officials rubbish this suggestion, saying that rebels do not gain anything by killing a Hindu holy man.
By all accounts, Laxmananda Saraswati was both a revered and feared man: the first, for his social work; the second, for his rabble rousing against the minorities.
He had clear links with the radical Hindu group, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, whose pamphlets describe him as a "formidable force against conversions by Christians" and somebody who "enlightened innocent tribes regarding their land rights".
With his killing, what was essentially a movement for identity and rights mutated into a religious battle between the tribes people and the Christian converts.
A spokesman for Orissa's Christian community insists it is basically a religious fight, provoked by radical Hindu groups who want to polarise people ahead of general elections.
"Why is the violence happening now? The radical Hindu groups want to polarise people to benefit Hindu nationalist parties during polls. It is also part of a larger design to attack Christians," says Dr Swaroopananda Patra.
Officials say that this is only a part of the problem.
"It is a cocktail of problems: economic, ethnic, religious. Any of these factors can precipitate violence in these parts," says Krishan Kumar.
What is clear that none of this would have happened if the state had carried out its duties on time - addressed the tribes peoples' grievances, prevented land and identity fraud and protected both communities from rabble rousers.
Posted by: john frum ||
10/01/2008 15:08 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
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#1
Affirmative action quotas, preferential minority contracts, collective property rights, no private property, religious hatred...
this fire isn't going out anytime soon...
Posted by: john frum ||
10/01/2008 15:18 Comments ||
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#2
Compare wid WAFF > FLEMISH WANT LESS CONTROL FROM BRUSSELS. Dutchies versus Frenchies, Pan-Euro Germanic North vs. Pan-Euro Latin South, FLEMISH PRO-FEDERALIST/GOVT CENTRALIST vs. FRENCH NATIONAL CONFEDERATIONISTS.
RED LIGHTERS VS PINK LIGHTERS, .........@"CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER, MASS HYSTERIA" [Ghostbusters].
The All-India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) has strongly condemned the "failure" of the Orissa police to arrest Sangh Parivar cadres accused of brutally gang raping a young nun on August 25 at K. Nuagaon in Kandhamal district of Orissa.
Shockingly, the assault was carried out in full public view, right in front of a police outpost with 12 policemen from the Orissa State Armed Police present and watching the atrocity. The attackers also grievously injured a priest and doused him with kerosene when he courageously tried to resist them. It is outrageous that despite the fact that both victims filed First Information Reports on the same day, not a single arrest has been made in the case although it is now over a month since the incident took place, a statement issued by AIDWA said here on Tuesday. Equally shocking is the inaction on the part of the Orissa Chief Minister who has been apprised of the facts.
"The Sangh Parivar's attacks on the Christian and Muslim minorities are acts of terrorism that target the secular fabric of our nation. We express our deep concern about the vicious communal campaign of the Bajrang Dal-Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh-Vishwa Hindu Parishad-Bharatiya Janata Party combine all over the country. There has been a huge escalation in the violence against minorities, and the targeting of women. The support extended by the State apparatus in Orissa and in Karnataka in the spread of this venom is an extremely disturbing development," the statement said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/01/2008 00:00 ||
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Link ||
[6 views]
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#1
India, the "not quite ready for prime time" democracy.
#4
Women have to take the initiative to protect themselves. Now granted this was a nun, but most aren't, and there is no reason they shouldn't regularly carry a sharp weapon with them in public.
Emphasis on cutting men on the head, since head wounds bleed freely. Had she even nicked the scalp of one of her attackers, the police would have probably at least arrested her--still with a better result than what happened.
* "Treeman" can now move his limbs
* Would like to get married in future
* In-depth - Dede's story
AN Indonesian man known as "treeman" because of the gnarled warts that covered him from head to foot is returning to normal after extensive treatment.
Dede, a 37-year-old from rural West Java, went home in August after nine months of operations to remove the woody growths that had smothered his hands and feet.
American dermatologist Anthony Gaspari was moved by Dede's plight after his story made headlines around the world last year.
He found Dede suffered from the Human Papiloma Virus (HPV), or common warts.
Because he had an immune deficiency, the virus flourished to a massive, debilitating infection.
Over the nine months, Dr Gaspari gave Dede chemotherapy and performed gruelling surgery to remove 6kg of branch-like warts.
"In the past I couldnt even put on my own shirt. Now I can do it myself. Its wonderful," The Sun newspaper today quoted Dede as saying.
Dede said he hoped to return to a normal life and find a new wife after decades burdened by the root-like growths, which had left him unable to move and work except in a travelling "freak show".
"Now I can live with my children... I can move and go anywhere," Dede said from his village in August.
Dede lives alone in the village after his wife left him and his teenage children went to stay with relatives because he could no longer care for them.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim.
CNN was not been able to independently verify the information, but snapshots of the Web pages appeared to back up the claim. Other bloggers joined the search and reported similar results.
