Ella Rochelle

October 25, 2010 at 12:46pm

An interesting experiment took place in a Romanian prison for women. The inmates received a total of 6 Canon PowerShot cameras and were taught how to use them. During the first two months, 14.000 photos were taken!

Saltboy

July 30, 2010 at 7:00am

You can still gamble on the internet right now.  Pre-paid Visa cards still work.

 

Did they really think that banning it would stop people?

 

I do have a problem with forcing one's morality upon all.  Sure, saying murdering is bad because you jurt others, but gambling is your problem.  If you are hurting your family, then your family needs to handle you, not the government.

 

Just to reiterate, and I will everytime I post (which will decrease in frequency), the captcha AND copying a sting is ridiculous and only punishes those that wish to share thoughts and ideas.

Morete

July 30, 2010 at 4:21am

Forget the ethics and addiction issues of online gambling.  The fact that individuals and businesses run proggys and organize collusion within gambling sites themselves should be a huge warning sign to stay away from this.  If non-gambling online gaming can be hacked and cheat proggys are frequently run on games where the only benefit is to win a game with little or no monetary compensation involved, how much more are gambling sites doing this?  The only government regulation that is of most concern is taxation and revenue for State and Federal entities.  EULA agreements are rarely enforced when gaming sites are hacked or where the sites owners and investors are found to be colluding against their victims.  Tables are rigged and people that are playing have absolutely no idea who is at that table and what programs they have running in the game.  Violation of EULA agreements for running proggys and hacking game-play has never once had a successful prosecution in past court trials in the U.S.  EULA laws have so many loopholes and are written so ambiguously when it comes to internet gaming that corporations rarely if ever attempt to sue anyone that has either tried to hack or run malicious cheat programs on gaming sites.  It's hard to get a game manager to shut down an account that is running cheat programs when the ones who may be running cheat programs are the sites owners and their accomplices.

1968Panther

July 29, 2010 at 5:48pm

According to Ryan Whitwam's article, the US government banned online gambling because, and I quote, "Many felt that online gambling was too tempting, and trapped people into losing large sums of money too easily."  Not that I'm saying he isn't correct, but as for that being the reason, it's total b***s***.

If they want to say they are "protecting" us from being trapped into losing large sums of money, then maybe they should also ban MMORPGs, like Everquest, World of Warcraft, and Aion.  As a matter of fact, there are other such "tempting" places online that we "lose large sums of money" at, including amazon.com, tigerdirect.com, the iTunes store, etc.  Maybe they should ban them, and put them out of business.  While they're at it, maybe they could go even further, to "protect us", by banning those idiotic online ads selling cheap garbage that sucks away our money (oh, wait...that would actually be a good thing...LOL).

The REAL truth of the matter, and what has been going on for more years than anyone wants to admit, is that "Big Brother" wants to stick its nose in deeper, and deeper, and control as much of our lives as they possibly can.  What they should...or, better yet, NEED...to do is get rid of all these idiotic bans, and let us decide for ourselves.  We ARE, after all, grownups (well, at least those of us over 18), and we are supposed to, at least according to the law, be able to make our own decisions as to what ways we do certain things, and that INCLUDES how we spend our money.

 

 

squarebab

July 29, 2010 at 4:39pm

Since most internet gambling sites were offshore and not subject to US taxation, the holy trinity of money collectors (Federal, State, and Local governments) were outraged they weren't getting their cut. Add in the fact that offshore gambling was taking away dollars that would presumably be spent on lotteries and local casinos, it's no wonder we have laws like this that "protect the people".  The current internet gambling bans are transparently hypocritical.  Either ban ALL gambling, or allow ALL gambling.

mickreid

July 29, 2010 at 2:38pm

You compare gambling to alcohol and just like alcohol it is impossible prohibit this as people will find other ways to do it anyway - and the vast majority of people who do both activities do so in moderation. The likes of the United Kingdom and Australia have huge gambling cultures as well as very highly regulated legal industries and all of the licensed bookmakers have to legally provide facilities to help problem gamblers - surely this is better than having Americans bet with some shady website located on some tax free island which offers no facilities to problem gamblers? and let's face it at the minute it's only the shady under handed companies who will touch the American market as the clean licensed operators won't touch them due to the prohibition law.

K0BALT

July 29, 2010 at 2:35pm

Again I was gonna go out and make an educated comment, but this stupid securty phrase BS just throws my mood off. Ridiculous. Get rid of it.

 

"turnkey you're"

JohnP

July 29, 2010 at 2:24pm

It's that other 5% that have some sort of gambling addiction. It's a recognized and treatable disease that, like alcoholism, should never be encouraged. It rips up families, loses jobs, and wreaks the individual's life.

Unless you have spent time with one of these poor souls, NEVER ask the question of what harm gambling does.