Agyris – Fantasy RPG Campaign Setting – Free and Universal Gaming

Recently a law was passed that had some sort of effect on online gambling. I didn’t hear a lot of coverage of it, so I asked my gambling addict friend Pat if he wanted to write a guest post. He actually did it. Here it is.

How It Happened

On Friday, September 29^th, 2006 Congress was in its final hours of session before taking the election period recess. Only one thing was left to do was for a vote to be taken on a bill called the Safe Port Act, HR 4954, that dealt with port security. Seemingly harmless, this bill contained an Act that would strike horror through the community of online poker players and gamblers throughout the world. Title VIII, The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, was stuffed into this unrelated Safe Port Act by Senator Bill Frist that was sure to pass. And sure enough it passed with ease minutes before Congress went in recession.

What It Does

This Act is designed to target the prosperous overseas gambling companies, the online banking companiesm, ISPs, and not the individual gamblers in their homes. Pretty much it says that the government will now hold any “financial transaction provider” or any company in the “business of betting or wagering” accountable for causing such harm to the American public. This includes any internet provider, Neteller, Firepay, Pokerstars, Partypoker, and many others.

Its Effects

On Monday, October 2^nd, the stock market opened for the first day after the Act was passed. The two major companies that are traded over a Stock Exchange are Partypoker and Neteller. On Monday Partypoker, who happens to be one of Britain’s most successful companies, had a drop in their stock price of 58%, from 107 to 45, in a single day. Practical devastation of the British company done solely by the American Act that has not even been passed into law. Also Neteller has dropped significantly but not near the amount that Partygaming lost.

The Problems

HMMMM…. where to begin here. How about the way in which the Act was passed through the Senate in the first place. Senator Bill Frist took an Act that was supposedly being voted on sometime next year and shoved into a completely unrelated bill that was almost sure to pass. We poker players have been planning our defense since a vote was held in the House of Representatives in July. Yet we were not allowed to defend our position whatsoever. Next, the supposed reasoning of the Act compared to the actual reasoning. This Act took the assumption that Internet gambling was illegal by the Wire Act, while in reality this is a leap of faith. It is near impossible to find a federal, state, or tribal law that clearly defines an Internet bet as illegal, with the exception of Washington State of course. Then it declares that Internet gambling is a growing problem for banks and credit card companies. How so? All major banks and credit card companies already have blocked all accounts from transactions with Internet gambling sites. So what is the real reasoning? The fact that the U.S. Govment is not benefitting from all this Internet gambling. Instead they are watching money go from us gamblers in the U.S. to sites overseas. This pisses them off obviously. Then fucking make it legal and regulate it you dumbshit politicians. Sorry, lost it there for a second. Finally the Act uses the wording “games subject to chance” to describe the desired illegal gambling bets. This wording is designed specifically to allow Internet trading in the Stock market such as securities, commodities, and futures. But ask yourself, is playing the stock market any less of a gamble? Or is it legal because the U.S. Govment benefits from it.

What to Do

Every person in America should be concerned about this Act and all of its aspects. It shows the trend of the government sticking their noses into business that does not concern them. My hope is that the WTO really sticks it to this Act. How long until the government decides they want to control an important aspect of your life? This has affected myself and many of my friends in an extremely negative way. Already many sites have pulled their business out of the U.S. with most of the other companies still indecisive but likely to do the same. Internet Poker is the job for many people that I know and have met over various sites. It is not gambling, it is a game of skill, just like trading in the stock market is and there is no reason the government should have the right to tell me that I can’t play poker with my own goddamn money. If you feel strongly enough on this subject and want to help the cause go to the following site.

http://www.pokerplayersalliance.org/

I’m somewhat tired, but I’m going to try to bang out this blog post. Please forgive the like of organization that is likely to appear in this post.

So today I went to the second neuroscience/theology lecture thing I mentioned before. This guy was the dude, one of them anyway, that wrote Whatever Happened to the Soul? Anyway, he talked about how he doesn’t think dualism, the idea that we are a physical body housing a metaphysical soul, makes sense anymore due to information from modern neuroscience. Back when dualism was conceived of it was thought to be impossible that tasks like reason and morality could be controlled by an organ. Now we have strong evidence that the brain indeed does do all that stuff.

So he says there are two ways of going so long as you accept the evidence of neuroscience. One, you can be a physical reductionist, someone who believes ultimately our decisions are the product of impulses in our neurons, which are the result of molecules, which are the result of random subatomic interactions. Two, you can be like this dude, and be a physical nonreductionist… I think that’s what he called it. Anyway, the deal is you don’t believe in a metaphysical soul, all we are is matter, but there are emergent properties in the complexity in the matter. The idea being that there is complexity in the sum of the parts that cannot be accounted for solely on the quality of the parts.

Now, I’ve heard this idea before, and it seems like not much of an idea to me. Apparently there are types of emergence and whatnot, that people get into on the forefront of the reductionist debate. It seems fairly obvious that complexity can emerge from simple pieces, but it is rather difficult to objectively say that that complexity is not explainable by the simple pieces. My understanding based on the Q&A portion of this most recent talk is that simple emergence is the idea that the complexity of the super-system can be accounted for by the properties of the sub-system’s components and number of components. I guess then that non-simple emergence would be the idea that the super-system is just can do more than can be explained by the properties of the subsystem components or the number of components. I dunno if that’s right, but the point is the simple emergence thing is what makes sense to me currently.

Obviously having many simple things can create a complex thing, especially when organized. Dots can form an image, sounds can form language, etc. etc. I don’t see how the emergence of these complex properties necessitates the interference of a mystical energy however.

Anyway, this emergence thing is cool, mostly because it can apply to lots of things. One interesting level, for me, is the step just above an individual. In theory, the complexity of a group of individuals could have properties emerge that are beyond than the properties of the individuals. It makes sense that these properties exist, and probably can be observed and studied, it’s just somewhat difficult. I think now that the idea is relatively prevalent, however, that changes in these properties, or new emerging properties, will be recognized. This will be helped, possibly, by radical changes in our societies due to technological development.

This sorta lead nicely into that rant I said I wanted to give many posts ago about people being tied up in inconsequential things. I’ve since calmed down slightly, so that’s good, but here is the general idea.

We’re, people, technologically on the cusp of a lot of things. It’s not entirely unlikely that people my age will live for hundreds of years in good health (possibly nearly forever) and that cybernetics will enhance human mental and physical ability. These things are the ideas that are in the worlds fairs and stuff, just like flying cars and such, so I realize that not every scientific idea pans out, but I have to say I think a lot of these things are fairly close.

One idea I particularly like is that the internet is forming a new step in man’s evolution. Not biologically, but socially or something. An example of a previous evolutionary jump of this nature would be the ability to read a write. A literate person, at the time when it was new, had a resource that expanded his experience many times giving the literate person an understanding of the world so much more comprehensive than an illiterate person that communication between the two became fairly limited. Literate and illiterate were essentially two classes of human.

The idea for the internet is similar. The amount of information available on the internet will be so great, and so easily accessed, that those able to utilize the resource will essentially experience a different universe than those who can’t. Ideas will be formed, examined, expanded, discussed, and rejected or accepted at a rate far faster than is possible without a network like the internet. Those outside the internet community will no longer be able to keep up. This will rapidly lead to the internet users outstripping the non-internet users in cultural ideas and these changes could be fairly divisive rather quickly. A sign of this would be Wikipedia. The basis of Wikipedia is that information should be shared freely and that every one’s opinion counts. This is dramatically different than the current/old idea that knowledge is power, and therefore valuable, and that information must therefore be carefully controlled.

I dunno, it’s certainly fun to imagine living in that Wikipedia type Utopian future. And I hate that so many people seem oblivious to the fact that these issues exist, and that their whole world could be turned upside so quickly. What if some guy at Cambridge figures out how to extend every one’s life 100 years in the next 5 years? Nobody is even talking about it. All they want to talk about is who is gay or how expensive oil is or whatever. Clearly I’m just a biased naive scientist, but as those who know me know, I’m usually right, so you might want to at least remember the possibility of these things happening that I’m talking about.

Ok, that was some good ranting I think. Probably way more than anyone wanted to read, but I hope you read it anyway.

In other news I just watched a DVD sent to me by Southwestern Medical Center. It was about an hour long and was a full DVD movie really. Kinda an infomercial for a grad school. I dunno what to think, because obviously they’re biased and whatnot, but it still seemed really nice. So nice I dunno why they think they’d admit me. I totally want to go to the place in the DVD though, although I’m not certain it exists in Dallas. I’ve got some time to think. I wish the DVD was online so you all knew where I was coming from.

8’s back from her concert thing. I guess that means I’m really up to late. Couple more things though to ramble about.

I actually got asked questions in front of people at the Senior Comprehensive Exam thing today. Kinda mock exam thing. I think I did ok. I think I sound way more put together than most people, and on certain things I definitely know a bunch. I did start to mess up towards the end when he was asking me stuff I really didn’t know anything about, and a couple things I really should know, but I’ve still got 12 days to learn all that. Anyway, I think it was generally a good sign.

In lab, signs are not so good. Nobody seems to be getting blue spots on their Southern Blots, so something could be horribly wrong. I hate when that happens. Something is already not so great for my partner and I, and that is that about half of our blot is in pieces. A Southern Blot, for those of you who don’t know, is a technique that allows the transfer of the bands (DNA) from an electrophoresis gel, onto a membrane. Then one can do fancy things with this DNA, like block parts of it and bind colorful things to the other parts, to show that what you think happened really did happen. Anyway, our, and several other, membranes, have crumbled in the process. The prof suggested the membranes could have been old, which I like as an explanation, because she is a new professor and probably just found the membranes that the last professor bought back in the early 80’s or something.

I have a lab write up for this experiment due on Wednesday. First lab write up of the class so sorta uncertain and stuff. Plus it’s a large part of my grade so I am trying to psych myself into getting an early start and whatnot. To go with it I have a new program we’re starting in CS, plus the obvious Senior Comprehensive Exam. Stat’s is easy. Oh, and my MCB prof informed us all today that she was going to be “harsh” in grading our first take home test, that one I turned in Friday. So… whatever that means.

Oh right, so I totally didn’t mention this up there with all the society emergence things, but there is a book I half read where money is gone and instead people just give each other “Whuffie” which is basically points for doing good. Like a universal favor exchange program. Kinda a neat idea, cause it’s exactly like money, except it doesn’t exist so one can pretend all the problems that exist with money wouldn’t exist. Anyway, someone is working on making it a real thing. I support this, cause trying things from sci-fi books is awesome.

Well I guess my angry post didn’t work. I just ACED my Chinese test. Like 100% yo. I have to admit, though, that it was pretty easy.

This is actually Kait. I just didn’t feel like changing Gene’s damn auto-password of of my laptop. I’m lazy and apparently ought to be in a hurry.

I am going to maybe start taking crazy-brain medicine again in an attempt to be proactive. (Six says that six months of hiding things until they get worse is not proactive.)

Now I have to go fail out of college…. even though I studied. Even though I dream about chinese characters… Blah. The three floors of stairs are to blame. The excessively hot chinese classroom is to blame. Ou-Du is in particular to blame because he only has to write each character once to memorize it. 🙁

I’m a bit more pleased with my senior thesis after conversations with Gene and Jess. They inspired me to do something… evil? and then write about it. Really, I am always open to breaking a few hearts. If I’ve done anything positive at this god-forsaken joke of an institution it is permanently scarring people’s perception of love and women. Maybe hating on the GSA was positive too. Way to support stereotypes! Way to isolate all gay students on campus! Awesome!

Now, tired and bitter eight is going to study with Ou-Du and Shi.

And my chinese name? I am Wang Kun-Tan.

Bye.

Eight.

I didn’t have much in the way of commitments today but I was relatively productive. I “tutored” 8’s friend in biology. I dunno how much help I was but I sat there and guiltied into looking at her book for a couple hours at the very least. I also ate a slice of peach. I have to remember to add that to my diet. It’s not yet been added.

I also went to the first in a two part lecture thing about the biology of religion kinda. This guy was the biology dude who does brain scans of meditating people, or praying people, and tries to find out what’s going on. He does a lot of biology of spirituality stuff. It was semi interesting. Tomorrow is some other guy who I think is more on the theology side, but I’m not sure. I like surprises on these sorts of things I guess. I missing game night tomorrow to attend, so that’s cool I guess.

I also have started rolling dice compulsively and writing down the results. I’m hoping soon in statistics I’ll be able to determine if the results are significant. So far I’m up to around 1500 rolls of my 3 d20’s and I believe they are below average. The are getting closer to average though, so that bodes.

My Archlord review is apparently a big draw to this blog from google searches. There have been about 6 hits from it, which is more than any other post I know of. Just an aside.

So, like I said, it’s past my bed time.

Boing Boing: Neil Armstrong really said “one small step for A man…”

I was subconsciously worried about this for the last 18 years.

Remember all those times you asked me to describe 10 dimensional space? This is what I was trying to say. You can all thank Aaron and Trent for showing that to me.

On a related note there is a big stir going on right now in the string theory realm. Apparently there are some physicists calling for everyone to give up on it because it hasn’t produced any testable hypothesis in 30 years. So, just so you know, just because the 10 dimensional thing makes a lot of sense, it isn’t necessarily true. It’s mathematically fascinating though. Oh, and not all string theorists stop at 10. Some say 22, just fyi.

So I’ve had a pretty busy weekend. I wasn’t doing work this time though.

I turned in my test on Friday, e-mailed it Thursday technically, and finished classes. After finishing the internet I did my statistics homework in a couple minutes and did some non-compulsory coding. Had a free BBQ thing going on, so I went to that. I finished the internet again. I think we played some board games later that day, but I can’t really remember.

Saturday we had a Spoils tournament, which was sorta small time but it went fairly well I think. I left in the middle and went to this neighborhood ice cream pot luck get together thing that was pretty interesting. Two of the people there were Dr. Roberts and Dr. Kruchten. Roberts I had last year, and Kruchten is the one currently grading my test. Dr. Kruchten gave us two chairs for free, so now we have more chairs. We came out ahead on that thing.

After I got done with the Spoils thing we packed up our CPU’s and went to Ody’s for a LAN. It was a pretty mini LAN, but it was pretty fun, and lasted until late into the night.

Today I played D&D for 5 hours. It was the campaign with Sal, who’s pretty much my favorite, so that was cool.

I tried to do some productive things, but the computer lab is all messed up. I did study some biology and whatnot. I guess the weekend isn’t quite over, but I think all the major events have occurred. How cool can the weekend get though?

I stole this from Sandra’s Blog, but it’s ok I think. She’s my mom’s friend of forever and so our families r friends and whatnot. Anyway, here’s a picture of yore.

Pop quiz: Which one is six?

Hint: It is the one that looks awesome.