In my pursuit of 10,500 points, I got two of my best rounds yet tonight. First 128 points, then 125 points. It was sweeeet! Sorry Brokn_Arrow that I couldn’t keep playing in the same server, but I got booted for “inactivity”… Tomorrow I should get my new mouse and my Corporal unlock 
I also got my Valorious Merit Ribbon in one of those rounds!Battlefield 2
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It’s Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren’t there to begin with?
Wired 13.09: On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Bot
In the booming world of online poker, anyone can win. Especially with an autoplaying robot ace in the hole. Are you in, human?
It’s late one Wednesday afternoon, and CptPokr is logged on to PartyPoker.com and ready to play. Onscreen, the captain exudes a certain brash charisma – broad shoulders, immaculate brown hair, restless animatronic eyes. He looks like he should be playing synth in Kraftwerk. Instead, he is seated at a virtual table with nine other avatars, wagering on limit Texas hold ‘em.
There’s plenty at stake. An estimated 1.8 million gamblers around the world ante up for online poker every month. Last year, poker sites raked in an estimated $1.4 billion, an amount expected to double in 2005.
Ever since the aptly named accountant Chris Moneymaker parlayed a $40 Internet tournament buy-in into a $2.5 million championship at the World Series of Poker in 2003, card shark wannabes have been chasing their fantasies onto the Net. Some even quit their day jobs and try to make a living at online poker. And why not? This shadowy world is driven by no less a force than the great American dream. As the tournament’s motto goes, “Anyone can win.” There’s one problem, though, as CptPokr is about to demonstrate: The rules of the game are different online.
CptPokr is a robot. Unlike the other icons at the table, there is no human placing his bets and playing his cards. He is controlled by WinHoldEm, the first commercially available autoplaying poker software. Seat him at the table and he will apply strategy gleaned from decades of research. While carbon-based players munch Ding Dongs, yawn, guzzle beer, reply to email, take phone calls, and chat on IM, CptPokr (a pseudonym) is running the numbers so it will know, statistically, when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.
This one only looks good in Firefox.Battlefield 2
“Google finally has what it needs to catalog the DNA of every organism on Earth,” said analyst Imran Kahn of J.P. Morgan Chase. “Of course, some people might not want their DNA indexed. Hence, the robot army. It’s crazy, it’s brilliantâ€â€?typical Google.”Funny
So you like Internet Explorer (why??) and don’t want to try Firefox instead. Here comes Foxie, an addon for Internet Explorer that adds many new features such as Tabbed Browsing, a Firewall, spam/spyware blocker, search bar, etc. I like it for the tabbed browsing at work where I can’t use Firefox. It’s not perfect (found some bugs) but has potential. Check it out at getfoxie.com.
