It was a mistranslation anyway - the actual number of the beast/whatever was 616.
Posts by Vlad The Impugner
20 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Feb 2009
Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip
Gambling companies must be extra careful with personal data
Wednesday 29th June 2011 08:46 GMT 
Process
When I worked in Gib for a gaming company, there was a 'well known' black market in player data - the going rate was about £4 per person I believe. The interesting thing was that even as someone only loosely classed as a technical role (more process management) I had full access to the production databases. And that wasn't uncommon across similar non technical roles in our and other companies out there (everyone socialised together, played cards together etc). Having come from a stricter background, I obviously locked this down for our company fairly quickly and set up proper segregation of roles, rights, access levels etc etc
Then there's the well publicised Absolute Poker / Ultimate Bet fiasco where a cunning developer introduced a nice loophole straight into the production environment and they defrauded people of millions. It's basic stuff, but frightening how little it gets done.
Apple bars WinXP users from iCloud
The good book: How to bet better online
Tuesday 24th March 2009 12:10 GMT
How To Bolt After Door Shut
Arbitrage is never going to be a long term profitable prospect. Systems such as BetRadar (and the more improved systems) will look for them on behalf of the traders.
It's easier to take advantage of gullible amateurs especially during in-running betting than it is to find a bookie's flaw.
I'm not saying the bookie's bet traders are perfect, they do miss stuff, and purposefully offer generous odds to get new punters signed up with them. But as more people look to exploit, the arbs will get less and less.
Although curiously I expect there to be some arb opportunities on multi bets for obvious reasons.
Upper-atmos ion drive dart sat launch delayed
Scientology spokesman confirms Xenu story
Monday 16th March 2009 16:04 GMT
how can you scorn?
My imaginary friend is better than yours.
So I will fight you, discredit you theories and come up with my own.
My new religion will be called Branology*
It will cost you only $350 to reach BT3. And my only commandment is thou shalt not gamble because it's discretionary spending, the same as religious offerings.
*brane and bulk obviously, not the improvement of digestive transit
Polish Spitfire shoots down BNP
UK IT should 'fire men first', says Kate Craig-Wood
Boffins breed new programming race
Stargazers peer into the 'Eye of God'
Hitler ordered Luftwaffe to spare Blackpool
BP snips IT contractor rates
Thursday 19th February 2009 13:43 GMT
Get over it
You have a price in mind for your services. If the new price doesn't meet that, then go somewhere else. We've not exactly had a raw deal out of contracting, in the current conditions I'm comfortable with taking a rate cut.
It all becomes a question of expectation. If I'm forced to drop from 500/day to 450/day but with a 100% likelyhood of work for the next 6 months, then that outcome is worth 450/day to me over 6 months.
If I hunt for another contract @ 500/day and estimate there's only a 75% chance of getting one and assume an average of 2 weeks off work, then that's only worth 343/day to me over the next 6 months.
Wanted: £160k-a-year Twittercrat
US Navy orders new electric hyper-kill railgun
Wednesday 18th February 2009 13:19 GMT 
@Defence is simple
Or even better, suspend a field of iron filings in front of the target, maybe attached to that sticky fly paper. The magnetised projectile will fly through them, then stop and try to brush them off with no success. It'll hang there spinning in the air trying to reach the bit between it's shoulder blades.....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
