Let your mouth speak archive

IF THE fragmented and bathetic correspondence between Sinead O’Connor and Miley Cyrus has taught us anything, it’s that the time has come to abandon the hopelessly naive phrase, "role model". Cyrus, I think we can all agree — assuming that "we" are no longer adolescents — is not the stuff of which role models are made. But she certainly is influential.

I feel I am bound, using the now-standard measure of influence, to note she has almost 15-million Twitter followers; admittedly, on this score, she is still behind Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Britney Spears and fellow "thought leaders" (another phrase we should consign to the dustbin). Still, I think you get my point.

The problem is that anyone who tries too hard to be a role model almost inevitably comes across as a moralising prude and a killjoy. This has happened to O’Connor, despite her best intentions. Furthermore, it’s difficult to shift from iconoclast to wise maternal figure without being called out for hypocrisy and condescension.

The fact is that nobody’s life bears too much close scrutiny. The more we praise famous people and idealise them as "examples", the more we set ourselves up for disappointment when we discover their failings. We are, bizarrely, surprised to discover that even utterly likeable celebrities are imperfect. Lionel Messi is a tax dodger. Cory Monteith was the poster boy for clean living until he died of an accidental drug overdose.

But back to Miley, a fine example of what media scholar Nicky Falkof (citing cultural theorist Angela McRobbie) described as the "hegemonic co-optation of progressive language", with the consequence that feminists "have to listen to endless dispiriting arguments about why … Miley Cyrus licking a wrecking ball is ‘empowering’ for girls".

As always, the trouble starts at the semantic level. The words used to describe famous people are not a sound basis on which to construct an identity, particularly not if you’re a preadolescent female.

Nonetheless, although wanting to become like someone else (or the image of someone else) is a dangerous impulse, there is tremendous value in learning about other people’s experiences — especially if those people are not famous.

For this reason, I was delighted to discover that my recent visit to the Women’s Jail on Constitution Hill (1 Kotze Street, Braamfontein) coincided with the arrival of pupils from a local girls’ school.

As a physical space, a historical symbol and a repository of stories, the Women’s Jail is one of Joburg’s most important sites. This month — the month of the United Nations’ Girl Child campaigns — one of its rooms has been set aside for Our Stories, a photographic exhibition curated by the self-designated "pan-African storytelling movement", Behind the Faces.

Twelve banners carry black-and-white portraits of women from various countries: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Somalia. The close-ups are flattering and striking, but the real interest lies in the text on the walls behind them, where short passages of their narratives have been transcribed.

Some of the women fit into a "subaltern" demographic — they have HIV, live in conditions of poverty, are victims of domestic abuse or xenophobia. Others have achieved measures of success in their fields: music, work in nongovernmental organisations, psychology, entrepreneurship, poetry. But they are not famous, not yet.

Among the speakers who opened the exhibition last week was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who took the opportunity to promote her new book, 491 Days, an account of her detention in 1969-70.

As her reputation demonstrates, one woman’s struggle champion is another woman’s manipulative, self-enriching deceiver.

I find myself in the latter camp, and was relieved that I couldn’t attend her talk. Fortunately, however, Our Stories is not skewed by Madikizela-Mandela’s presence; the everyday heroines it depicts may not be "role models", but young women across South Africa would do well to see their faces and read their stories.

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Trump Entertainment's two Atlantic City properties have been issued Internet gambling permits, with more permits for other Atlantic City properties likely on the way.

Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort and Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino both obtained permits as of Thursday, according to a list on the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement’s website. They are the third and fourth casinos in New Jersey permitted for online gambling operations.

“We are very pleased to acknowledge that Trump Plaza and Trump Taj Mahal have received the third and fourth Internet gaming permits in the state of New Jersey. This is very positive for the company and the Atlantic City market,” Trump Entertainment Resorts CEO Robert Griffin said in a written statement.

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa received a permit earlier this month, and Golden Nugget Atlantic City received a permit Wednesday.

None can begin offering online gambling until the statewide launch on Nov. 26. The launch will be preceded by a five-day trial period.

Trump Taj Mahal will use Ultimate Gaming as its Web partner. Trump Plaza will team up with Web company Betfair, Wall Street analysts have reported.

When Internet gambling goes live next month, it will mark the most significant expansion of gambling in Atlantic City since casinos were legalized in 1978. Nevada and Delaware are the only other states currently offering online gambling.

Gamblers will have to be located within the confines of the state to participate.

Casinos are hoping that the new revenue source will help to supplement declining revenues in Atlantic City’s live operations. Some analysts believe that the addition of Internet gambling will draw more people away from the brick-and-mortar operations.

Ten of Atlantic City’s 12 casinos have lined up online partners. Revel Casino-Hotel and Atlantic Club Casino Hotel — two of the only three Atlantic City casinos that have seen revenue increases in the year to date — have not publicly stated plans for Internet gambling.


Trump casinos issued Internet gambling permits - pressofAtlanticCity-com: Breaking News

In a partnership with Microgame, NYX Gaming Group has entered the Italian jurisdiction to offer its products to the market. The lucrative online gambling market in Italy will give NYX an opportunity to grow.

David Flynn, Senior Vice President for Business Development at NYX Gaming Group said, "This is a monumental step for NYX to take its OGS product into the Italian market. I am thrilled to see our first Italian wager through the OGS system. To take this step together with one of the leading Providers in the Italian market is truly phenomenal. Microgame has been at the centre of gaming in Italy since its birth in 1996. In only one year NYX OGS has become the games platform of choice for many tier one operators such as Microgame and this launch further increases our reach into regulated markets in which we provide this product,"

NYX Gaming Group has been developing online gambling solutions for the largest of internet gambling operators in business today. NYX Gaming group has offices in Las Vegas and development departments in Sydney Australia and Stockholm Sweden for its innovative product line.
Microgame has the position in Italy as the leading service provider, offering gaming solutions for online gambling platforms that include poker, online casino games, other skill games, bingo, horse racing, fixed odds and other offerings. Microgame's punters have generated a turnover of over €2.3 billion.

Microgame’s General Manager, Marco Castaldo, commented on the partnership and the future prospects, "NYX Gaming Group's games are growing on our platform since the launch and we look forward to broadening the offer. By adding NYX OGS to our existing portfolio, Microgame further strengthens its leadership position with the most complete online casino product offering in the Italian market."
Italy has been seeing the benefits of regulated online gambling since its liberation in 2006.



Online Gambling in Italy From NYX Gaming

The online gambling jurisdiction of Canada has a reputation as being an open book with few restrictions on international gambling. The federal rules in Canada say it is illegal to go to offshore gambling sites and wager real money but there is very little to stop a resident in Canada from doing so.

Canadians feel the offshore international operators offer a better product. Canadians can fund their sports books, casino or poker sites using credit cards although some credit card companies voluntarily withdrew that option;. There are also e-wallets like Moneybookers and Instadebit; Western Union or MoneyGram or simply by way of a check to play the sites. PokerStars, Party Poker and Full Tilt have never been off limits to Canadian residents and are still the biggest poker sites for Canadian poker players and all sports books including Bet365, Betfair, William Hill, Ladbrokes, Pinnacle and others offer their products to Canadians.

Canada is the land of opportunity for offshore operators who know the government web locations offering online gambling such as the British Columbian playnow-com aren’t as competitive. One regular online poker player said, "PokerStars has better volume, better games, better limits, better promotions and better fish. Why the heck would I switch?" Some provincial governments and trade groups are starting to adopt the saying "if you can't beat them then join them." British Columbia Lottery Corp. has made an agreement with Paddy Power to set odds if and when single game sports betting is legal and the Interactive Gaming Council of Canada is now calling on the Canadian governments to start regulating and taxing offshore operators.
The trade organizations in Canada are attempting to make online gambling in Canada regulated with a taxation platform and licensing program modeled after the regulatory system in the United Kingdom. The model has proven successful in the U.K. and would bring greater stability and safety for the Canadian punter.



The Canadian Online Gambling Industry Is Booming

Robert Rodriguez is a paradox. He makes extremely violent action movies and he makes extremely saccharine kids’ movies. He doesn’t want to work in the studio system, but you could argue that his output is incredibly studio-friendly: Sequels, spin-offs, comic book adaptations. Over the last decade, Rodriguez has created an infrastructure around himself that would theoretically allow him to make any movie he wants — and in 2011, he really wanted to make Spy Kids 4.

Rodriguez was a pioneer in HD filmmaking and digital backlots and 3-D technology, which also makes him a pioneer in Things Film Lovers Despise. He is a hero of the independent-film movement, and he is sponsored by BlackBerry. He calls himself a “rebel,” but that might just be because he’s an excellent salesman. He is one of the most important Latino filmmakers ever, and the arrival of Machete in the midst of the anti-immigration wave vibed at the time like an outright political statement, but Machete Kills sands down those political hard edges and makes you wonder if they were ever even there in the first place. (If you take Once Upon a Time in Mexico seriously, it appears to be arguing that the way to get rid of drug cartels is to fight them with cooler guns.)

Twelve years ago, he cast Alexa Vega as a plucky kid spy, and now he dresses her up like a stripper in Machete Kills. It’s impossible not to find that weird, but it doesn’t necessarily read as prurient. Rodriguez makes sexy movies — this is the guy who filmed barely clothed dance scenes with Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba, and Rose McGowan — but there’s an adolescent smirk hovering over that sexiness. There’s never really any danger; there are usually happy endings. Why not? Rodriguez seems like the happiest film director alive, and his career looks much more impressive if you stop thinking about him as a film director.


Rodriguez came up with the early-’90s class of independent film directors, the mouthy hotshots who gave good interview and got everyone talking about a new age of cinema. He ran with Quentin Tarantino, but his spiritual sibling has always been Kevin Smith. Like Smith, Rodriguez had a no-budget origin story (Clerks vs. El Mariachi). Like Smith, he turned his early work into a franchise — a savvy move that, accidentally or not, positioned them both well in the post-millennium franchise-brand era, even as it simultaneously kept them shackled to the work that started their career. (Imagine if Quentin Tarantino was still making movies about hitmen with color-coded nicknames. Or imagine if every Disney movie starred Mickey Mouse.)

Rodriguez was always up to something different than his indie-brat brethren, though. He was in the empire business. The last decade-plus has revealed Rodriguez as a particular kind of filmmaker-type: the director-as-technocrat, the filmmaker-as-innovator, the guy who seems to make movies at least partially to test out new technology. Think of James Cameron or Peter Jackson — Thomas Edison. These are men who seem to spend at least half of their time developing new technology; they own special-effects houses, they insist on better frame rates or higher-quality video. (Robert Zemeckis tried to be one of these guys for a decade, before ultimately settling for merely being an extremely talented film director.) We need to redefine our understanding of the products these men produce: They are movies, yes, but they are also proof-of-concept demos for hardware and software. The patron saint of this particular subculture is George Lucas, the man who refused to do it the Hollywood way and opened his own studio in Marin County and essentially invented the special-effects era in cinema. And look how bad his movies got.

Rodriguez is not as bad (or as good) as Lucas yet, and he doesn’t usually enter the conversation when you talk about the big important contemporary filmmakers of today, but in his way, he has been ridiculously influential. For a brief-but-pivotal span of years around the turn of the century, Rodriguez was actually considered cooler than Tarantino, if you were a teenage boy. Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn were basically the movies every guy wanted to make — sexy, violence, sexy violence, badasses doing badass things. Once Upon a Time in Mexico was an action fantasia. (In hindsight, it was also the very last time Johnny Depp was completely and unabashedly cool.) And everybody loved Sin City, a movie that was just weird enough to make you feel better for liking it, but not weird enough to scare anyone away.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Sin City is actually one of the most influential movies made in the 2000s. It proved once and for all that people would go and see a movie that was basically actors walking in front of a cartoon background — anticipating Alice in Wonderland and Oz the Great and Powerful and Tron: Legacy and, well, pretty much every blockbuster not filmed by noted digital-phobe Christopher Nolan. It featured an all-star cast, but pretty much all of them had roles that amounted to extended cameos — a model of trailer-ready filmmaking that anticipates The Expendables and the rebooted Fast & Furious franchise. Everything was a knowing cliché, which meant the bad dialogue and thin characterization was excusable and even mandatory.

Sin City was an incredibly bold move for Rodriguez, but like all bold moves that turn out to be successful, it taught everyone the wrong lessons. You remember in The Player, when Tim Robbins has that great line: “I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we could just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we’ve got something here.” You imagine a studio executive in 2005 watching Sin City: A movie put together entirely in the editing room, a movie where most of the actors never met even if they were in the same room, a movie with lots of famous faces doing a few days’ work for low wages, a

The news on music icon Freddie Aguilar giving the thought of marrying his 16-year-old girlfriend drew mixed reactions from netizens.

One jokingly said Aguilar’s favourite musical note progression nowadays revolves on the variations of “A minor”. Others said his most famous song, “Anak”, could be dedicated to his current object of affection.

Most comments border on the negative, saying Aguilar could be sued for seduction or child abuse.

In a report by Ervin Santiago, INQUIRER Bandera entertainment editor, on Thursday, the 60-year-old Aguilar admitted he is dating someone 44 years younger than him.

The news started when he was seen with the girl while attending the 5th Star Awards for Music on Sunday at Solaire Resort & Casino in Pasay City, wherein he was given a special recognition for his contribution to local and international music.

He admitted to the media present that indeed, the girl is his girlfriend.

Aguilar had a disclaimer that he didn’t know the age of the girl when he courted her. It was too late because he already fell in love with her when he learned of her actual age.

He requested the media not to mention the name of the girl.

But Aguilar said there’s nothing to worry about since the parents of the girl have approved of the relationship, only with a warning that she should be careful because Aguilar is known to be a ladies’ man.

Aguilar said he doesn’t mind the negative criticisms like those describing him a “cradle snatcher” or he ages backwards, among others.

He said he’s been used to being thrown with lots of sarcastic remarks from friends. He added he is ready to marry the girl once she reaches legal age.

Since the news came out, there were also photos circulating online of Aguilar and his girlfriend kissing each other, drawing more negative reactions.

Read more: Freddie Aguilar courts controversy with 16-year-old girlfriend | Inquirer Entertainment
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A recent article in the respected science magazine online Scientific American explains a fascinating development in the world of gambling research. Everyone knows that there are masses of information being garnered by the internet gambling trend and this information is leading to developments of breakthrough technology that will help identify issues with gamblers and modify the offering to warn the gambling public of potential problems.
As the software becomes increasingly capable of “thinking” says the article, experts in the gambling research community are working to create these advanced warning machines.

The University of Brescia and other organizations in Italy research has revealed that interent gamblers who closed their accounts because of money troubles showed the widest variance in the size of their bets over time. A research paper published online last February in International Gambling Studies indicted the pattern that the problem gambler exhibited was that of a ‘sawtooth’ with the betting on a slow increase but then a sudden drop, a pattern that predicted unsustainable betting. Digital or online gambling statistics have made these patterns observable.
A psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and Director of the division on addiction at the Cambridge Health Alliance, Howard Shaffer,and his colleagues have been conducting research with bwin.party Digital Entertainment an established internet gambling firm.
The site's data on betting frequency and patterns of play for more than 40,000 registered players is being utilized for the research. The doctors are creating algorithms that can be implemented when people show a risk of becoming problem gamblers. “The machine, for example, will provide messages to the player or slow down or shut down entirely” Dr. Shaffer commented.
Software that gamblers can rely on to limit their losses could be a growth industry, Nicola Adami proposed for the Italian research group. Shaffer added that gambling providers could bolster their reputations by protecting customers from harmful or excessive wagering.



Online Gambling Providing Valued Insight to Science

Maybe he's rushed off them. Or he's just been doing too much thinking on them.

Whatever it is, there they are - the famously, conspicuously bare feet of Sir Peter Jackson.

On this Friday afternoon, said feet are poking from a couch which is set up, not at Park Road Post or Stone Street Studios or any of the Wetas out in Miramar, but in the Ilot Theatre within the Wellington Town Hall.

The sofa might be his director's chair today, but here he's taking a back seat. A mug of tea permanently wrapped in one hand, he's here to keep an ear on things and talk to Canvas. Spread out in front of him are the workings of a recording studio control room. Up front is a screen repeatedly showing the opening scenes of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, Jackson's part II in his second Tolkien trilogy.

Occasionally, as the film's prologue cuts to the movie's title, the room fills with a great rumbling of sound topped by a minor-key shriek of strings which sound almost Chinese in its foreboding motif.

"That is a little bit of a Smaug theme in the title," murmurs Jackson after I've sunk into the couch alongside him, leaving my own footwear on. He explains composer Howard Shore, who also did The Lord Of The Rings scores, created a theme for Smaug the dragon - seen briefly enacting a scorched Middle-earth policy in the first Hobbit movie - inspired by the prominence of dragons in Chinese and Indonesian culture.

Plus a touch of Psycho.

"Smaug is not Jaws or a monster," says Jackson as the music tails off. "Smaug is a psychopath. Smaug is literally a cunning, intelligent psychopath who is laying in wait for these guys. So it's sinister clever kind of music."

If it sounds, well, epic, as it blasts from the speakers to the analytical ears of a team of audio boffins headed by Abbey Road senior engineer Peter Cobbin, who has been on the mixing desk for many past Jackson films, then let's head into the town hall's main auditorium and hear the thunder up close.


There, spread across the floor are the 80-plus members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Today they are dressed not in concert attire but comfy civvies. A few Hawaiian shirts stand out, but not as much as one string player still in the high-viz vest he rode to work in.

They sit beneath a forest of microphones and under the baton of Conrad Pope, whose podium has a monitor showing the scene that is being played to, complete with time and bar cues. The avuncular American has quite some form as a film composer himself, but he is here as an orchestrator - someone who takes the film score and figures out how the orchestra might play it.

It's a job he's done for a who's who of Hollywood movie maestros. Writing those themes is one thing. Having the attention to detail to take an orchestra through them, bar-by-bar, scene by scene, deciding what's working, making sure there's just enough brass at the point when Bilbo Baggins realises something nasty is about to befall him yet again ... that's Pope's job.

Each six-hour session of two three-hour slots realises about 10 minutes of music.

Then Cobbin and his cohorts must take it and mix it with the rest of the movie sound design and dialogue at Park Road Post.

"When you put something in a film you have to realise it's in that film forever," says Pope.

"It's not just a performance for one time that people will forget. It is something that is going into a soundtrack so that is why we have to do it a very technical way. This orchestra is used to giving concerts and performances on stage - it's like an actor doing a play. Once you get to a movie it's a very technical exercise."

Pope's is a job that means making decisions on the fly and going off manuscript. At one point there's a to-and-fro discussion between him and the control room about the worth of a single harmonic note played by the strings. Out it goes is the decision, and the players lean forward and attack their sheet music with erasers.

Back in the control room, Jackson looks on as the monitor progresses through early scenes in the movie. Some are still basic animatics requiring megabytes of Weta Digital magic before the film's worldwide release on December 13.

With a box-office haul north of US$1 billon ($1.2 billion), the first film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey took almost as much at the international box office as The Return Of The King, the Oscar-laden final and the most successful of the LOTR trilogy.

That was despite An Unexpected Journey's mixed reviews - some of the criticism took aim at how the film looked in its 3D HFR (high frame rate) version - and the complaints of Hobbit purists who thought the movie took lavish liberties with the slim original bedtime tale.

By the looks of it, they ain't seen nothing yet. The latest trailer, for instance, hints at an elf romance between Orlando Bloom's returning Legolas (who doesn't feature in The Hobbit) and Evangeline Lilly's Tauriel (who doesn't feature anywhere in Tolkien at all).

The criticism of the first film hasn't affected Jackson's approach to parts II and III.

"Ah, not really. I don't pay a hell of a lot of attention. Every time you do something people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.

"We wrote these all at the same time and we shot them all at the same time. So it feels like a certain degree of it already being in place."

There was some pick-up shooting a few months ago at Miramar, he says, "to really nail bits of storytelling".

"But the pattern was set about three years ago when the scripts were written."

In New Zealand, the first film's opening came with its own media-political frenzy which revived the arguments over the Government's dealings with the trilogy's backers, Warner Bros, over labour laws and tax rebates.

Jackson says he didn

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Pennsylvania needs to look at the effects of legalized online gambling in other states before it considers offering it here, a state senator said.

“We want (gambling businesses) to survive here and to prosper, because it puts money in our coffers,” said state Sen. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, chairwoman of the Senate Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee.

Three states have legalized online gambling, and several others are considering it to generate more tax revenue.

Officials said concerns about legalizing online games include the potential loss of revenue among casinos and the Pennsylvania Lottery — the latter funds programs for senior citizens — and the possibility of underage gambling.

Those issues will be on the table on Tuesday and Wednesday, when gaming industry leaders from around the world and state gambling regulators attend an online gaming conference, the World Regulatory Briefing USA, in Philadelphia.

“We're basically hoping to learn more about how other states, jurisdictions and even some international jurisdictions, how they would approach Internet gambling ... or those jurisdictions that do have legislation that has passed,” said Kevin O'Toole, executive director of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

Online gambling is not a priority, nor is it under consideration in Pennsylvania, said state Rep. Mauree Gingrich, R-Lebanon County, chairwoman of the House Committee on Gaming Oversight.

“We do not have any estimates on potential additional revenues resulting from Internet gaming. Of course, before that could be accomplished, a tax rate, license fees, the regulatory structure would all have to be a part of the equation,” Gingrich said.

In April, state Rep. Tina Davis, D-Bucks County, introduced a bill that would have put the Gaming Control Board in charge of regulating online gaming in the state, including determining which games could be offered. The bill stalled in the House committee.

In December 2011, the Department of Justice removed the Wire Act as a tool to prosecute online gambling providers and allowed states to offer games of chance on the Internet to companies that operate within their respective borders, according to the Washington-based American Gaming Association, which represents the commercial casino industry.

Nevada legalized intrastate online gambling in February, but it allows only online poker. Delaware legalized intrastate online gambling in June 2012. New Jersey approved it in February, and games will start on Nov. 26.

New Jersey will be watched closely “because of the fact that they will be offering all games and because of the size of the population in New Jersey,” said Holly Wetzel, spokeswoman for the American Gaming Association.

Ward said she is considering sponsoring a study to examine gambling in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania casinos have lost revenue to competition in nearby states, Ward said, citing Ohio casinos that opened in 2012. Table game revenue at Presque Isle Downs and Casino in Erie County declined 31 percent to $15 million between fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13, and much of that dip is attributed to the opening of the Horseshoe Cleveland casino, officials said.

Most the American Gaming Association's members believe online gaming would complement casinos, Wetzel said.

“There will never be a substitute for the social aspect of the bricks-and-mortar gaming experience,” she said.

Read more: Online gambling on the radar of Pennsylvania officials | TribLIVE
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Yet another milestone for the Bitcoin currency has been achieved with the shutting down of Silk Road the online drug bazaar which has eluded authorities and been a big part of the Bitcoin narrative for years. It is well known that Bitcoin value goes up with media coverage and according to some it’s too predictable. A number of factors may be driving the latest climb. Big players in the financial sector may have been influenced to get involved after attending the recent Money 2020 conference in Las Vegas USA.
The entwined relationship between the two entities it appears that a significant portion of Bitcoin’s early traction and price gains can be traced directly to Silk Road. When the comparisons are done that include the New York Times and Time magazine coverage of the virtual currency each time its value spiked. Articles and coverage on the online gambling industry and its relationship to Bitcoin also caused some gains for internet coins.

By July of 2012 the Bitcoin Foundation started putting a public face on the new industry and in early 2013 the European financial troubles created the climb to $260 in April of this year and unprecedented global attention.

According to a leading economist and academic, Simon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, governments and established financial institutions are likely to launch a campaign to quash the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, and he expects Bitcoin to face political pressure and aggressive lobbying from big banks because of its disruptive nature.
Bitcoin’s success will draw increased attention from governments and regulators, who are used to having tight control over currencies. Johnson believes they will be egged on by established financial institutions, which will likely seek to quash the currency. Bitcoin enables very rapid, cheap transfers and payments that could compete with existing fee-based ways of moving money around. “Any bankers watching this should be very afraid,”



Online Gambling Virtual Currency On Another Roll

There are many countries, operators and other investors keen to get in on the new found US online gambling market and the tiny British territory of Gibraltar has its eyes set on the Americans.

Gibraltar sees over 60% of all global online casino and online gambling business come flowing through their midst and Chief Minister Fabian Picardo, Head of Gibraltar's government has expressed interest in the new market. "Gibraltar is the largest jurisdiction in the world, the most successful jurisdiction in the world in the provision of online gaming. Online gaming is a burgeoning part of e-commerce and Gibraltar is at the forefront of that," he related during a recent trip to the Washington.

A Lot of Business

There are a whopping 26 registered online casinos and other operators running in Gibraltar. This includes British sportsbook powerhouse Ladbrokes who found that the territories low tax rates and other economic benefits are too appealing not to take advantage of.

"We believe that Gibraltar's in pole position to demonstrate to each of the states of the United States that we have been respectful of its laws and that this demonstrates how regulated the industry is in Gibraltar," Picardo said.
888 Holdings, based in Gibraltar reached a deal with Wynn Interactive in order for Wynn to begin their online gambling platforms in New Jersey and Nevada as they are now fully legal for online gambling.




Gibraltar Wants in On US Online Gambling - The Headlines - Onlinecasinoreports-com

US rapper Eminem will play his first show in New Zealand next year as he headlines a new touring hip hop event at Auckland's Western Springs.

Kendrick Lamar, J Cole and David Dallas will join the 13-time Grammy winner for Rapture, an event curated by Eminem to showcase some of the world's biggest rap and urban stars.

The event will be held at the iconic outdoor stadium on February 15, before heading to Australia for dates in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Rapture promoter Paul Dainty said he was excited to be working with Eminem on the event, which would show "the best of the best in hip hop at affordable prices to the punter".

Eminem, whose tenth album The Marshall Mathers LP2 is released next month, has had seven No 1 albums and six No 1 singles in New Zealand.

California rapper Lamar played one show at Auckland's Powerstation last December.

The province of British Columbia on the Pacific coast of vast Canada was one of the first to introduce online gambling to the population.
A recent article in the Nanaimo Daily news sounded like there are those opposed to the idea of gambling. Local experts claim there has been an explosion in online and electronic gambling and a doubling in the number of problem gamblers that will affect Nanaimo on a par with the rest of British Columbia.
This is a small but important city of around eighty four thousand people.
Dr. Perry Kendall, the provincial health officer estimates that an increase in electronic gambling over the past ten years coincides with more people who fit the description of problem gamblers as many as 31,000, up from 13,000.

The Island Health's medical health officer for the Central Island region, Dr. Paul Hasselback commented, "I think we can assume there is a cost," Hasselback continued, "The average problem gambler costs the health-care system $9,000, compared to the normal$2,000 a year."

B.C. spends the lowest amount per capita on problem gambling in Canada less than half the provincial average and there's evidence only a fraction of the people who need help are getting it, Dr. Kendall explained. Kendall made 17 recommendations in a report pertaining to issues with gambling, including better training, prevention, screening and assessment of gambling addicts. For the gambler with issues, electronic gaming machines are the most difficult to resist and online mobile gambling is very accessible now.
While the B.C. Liberal government maintains gaming revenues pays for services such as health care and education, and $135 million went to grants for charities and non-profit organizations in the last fiscal year alone. The Provincial government has committed to budget $11 million for programs that promote responsible gambling, with a review process in place before any expansion on gambling happens said B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong.




British Columbian Online Gambling Opposition

When Ross William Ulbricht was arrested in September for running the online drug store (and we don't mean the kind of drugs you get for a slight cold), Silk Road, eyebrows were raised among the general public, not just at how blazen the 29-year-old Texan's actions were, but also about the method of payment he accepted.

To serve his paying public, the self-styled Tony Montana, operating under the handle 'Dread Pirate Roberts', managed to conceal the identities of operators, sellers and buyers via the Tor anonymity online service and by accepting payment in Bitcoin.

The case pushed Bitcoin into the wider mainstream, but how much is known about this mysterious new virtual currency?

WHERE DID BITCOINS COME FROM?

For a start, not much is known about Bitcoin's inventor, other than he/she is a reclusive computer programmer called Satoshi Nakamoto. (In keeping with the currency's secretive nature, his name may or may not be his real name.)

Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual currency, meaning neither does it exist in the physical world, nor does it have a central bank such as the Federal Reserve. It's an open source project, and it is used by more than 100,000 people. All over the world people are trading hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin every day with no middle man and no credit card companies.

Bitcoin first shot to mainstream financial attention after its value increased by up to 1,000 per cent since the start of 2013. Virtual currencies are nothing new, of course. World of Warcraft fanatics know all about the virtual money formed in the game to allow players to exchange value within the game. Online gamers then established 'gold farms': accruing online points, or virtual gold, which could be exchanged for real currency. However, in essence Bitcoin is similar to store cards where you 'buy' loyalty points and get to 'spend' the points later on.

WHAT IS BITCOIN ALL ABOUT?

Differing slightly to a traditional online payment processor, Bitcoin is a currency in its own right, and you can buy coins at sites like bitcoin.org and send them peer-to-peer across the Internet without going through a bank or clearing house. The fees are also relatively low.

So far, so PayPal, but there's a difference: like gold or other commodities, the coins rise and fall in value as there is a finite number of Bitcoins in the world at any one time - the number of Bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million and it is set to reach that figure in 2140. (To see how many Bitcoins are in circulation, you can actually visit blockchain-info/charts/total-bitcoins.)

Bitcoin values fluctuate - with the price around $140 not long ago, but you can buy fractions of a Bitcoin (known as Satoshis after its founder). The current market price for a Bitcoin is always changing due to the supply and demand for it.

HOW DO I BUY THEM?
OK, you like the idea, don't you? To buy Bitcoins, go to a site like bitcoin.org and open an account on your computer. Once you've opened an account your computer can then "mine" coins from servers via a peer-to-peer networking system. There is therefore no way for a central bank to issue a flood of new Bitcoins and devalue those already in circulation.

The most popular way to get your hands on Bitcoin, however, is via online exchanges such at Mt GoX, or via bank transfer on websites like Coinbase. Sellers can also be found directly online. Bitcoins can then be bought and sold in return for traditional currency like dollars and Euros on several exchanges, and can also be directly transferred across the Internet from one user to another.

WHAT DO I DO WITH THE BITCOINS ONCE I'VE GOT THEM?

It's the (relative) simplicity, with no messy bank charges or exchange rates that makes Bitcoin a potentially attractive currency in which to settle international transactions. Some Internet services (such as web hosting, and increasingly, online gambling) can be paid for using Bitcoin.

Blogging platform WordPress and WikiLeaks both accept Bitcoin, while some sites offer gift vouchers for retailers such as Amazon. There are also websites selling electronic goods that exclusively accept Bitcoin. The dark side to Bitcoin, however, is how it can continue to be accepted on sites such as Silk Road, or for money laundering purposes.

WHY ARE BUSINESSES GETTING INTO THEM?
Bitcoin's high security allows it to process transactions in a very efficient and inexpensive way. You can make and receive payments using the Bitcoin network with almost no fees. In most cases, fees are not strictly required but they are recommended for faster confirmation of your transaction.

Businesses that accept credit card or e-wallet payments like Bitcoin as Bitcoin payments are irreversible and wallets can be kept highly secure, meaning that the cost of theft is no longer pushed onto the shoulders of the merchants.

HOW ARE THEY USED IN ONLINE GAMBLING?
Online gambling accounts for a huge portion of Bitcoin activity. It is fast, with an immediate return (or loss), and bets can be relatively small. When done properly, it is also relatively easy to prove that bets are fair, either by tracking payouts in the block chain, or by using some external proof, such as records of cash inputs used to produce random numbers, some of which are controlled by the user. There are also no country restrictions, music to the ears of players living under restrictive jurisdictions.

While SatoshiDice has proven to be the most popular gambling Bitcoin site online so far - one winner bagged 11,000 Bitcoins (or $1.3 million) recently - there are also sportsbetting Bitcoin sites, blackjack games, roulette and even poker. Meanwhile, plenty of mainstream payment options including 'e-wallets' continue to thrive.

ARE BITCOINS THE FUTURE OF CURRENCY?
Some economists regard Bitcoin as a bubble waiting to burst (though possibly not till 2140, when none of us will be about to see the aftermath) a

If Troy Freeman has his way, almost 20 acres of vacant land in the southwest will be transformed into an entertainment complex by spring 2015.

Freeman’s planned $110 million project is titled Twenty3’s, named for the day his vision was hatched: March 23, 2008. Since then he’s been crafting his dream, lining up investors and gaining experience.

Now he’s ready to let the world in.

Freeman’s vision is a family-friendly venue during the day and early evenings, with a focus on the 21 and over crowd at night. His complex is slated to feature a downstairs restaurant a la T.G.I.Fridays and a second-level joint on par with the Cheesecake Factory. A fan-shaped bowling alley on the first floor and another on the second level will provide 46 lanes, while 12 movie theaters will be equipped with bars. An arcade will feature 150 games, and a daycare complex will assist parents with their young. A 400-seat, multiuse venue onsite will be available for concerts, live events, high schools or other community uses.

“This is that project that really reaches out to different people at different levels,” Freeman said.

Next door to the entertainment complex, Freeman plans to build a hotel with 100 Hilton Garden Inn rooms and 80 Home2 Suites by Hilton. He’s working on the contract for the hotel partnership now. Freeman also said he wants to partner with a celebrity chef to open a rooftop restaurant and lounge.

Freeman is in the process of purchasing 19.73 acres of vacant land at Sunset Road and Durango Drive from SDSW 2 LLC for about $14.5 million. The deal is expected to close Dec. 17. While the site has no address yet, Freeman plans to request the address of 8823 W. Sunset Road from Clark County.

The majority of the funding for Freeman’s 175,000-square-foot project is coming from a California bank loan and the rest is coming from 19 individual investors. He’s using Orlando, Fla.-based Maverick Architecture & Design, and is eyeing a spring 2015 opening.

The daycare is the only aspect of the property Freeman and his company won’t run; it will be leased to a tenant.

Freeman is a 17-year veteran of the banking and investment industry, working most recently as a business banker. While holding down his day job he operated BlockBuster Cocktails for an 18-month period that ended June 30. The company was in charge of the alcohol concessions at what was then the Rave Motion Pictures at Town Square, 6587 Las Vegas Blvd. South. When AMC bought the theater in January, the company decided not to continue the lease. BlockBuster Cocktails is now defunct.

When Freeman conceived the idea for his complex in 2008, he was driving to work, depressed because the financial markets were crashing. He was listening to Chet Buchanan on 98.5 KLUC, who was asking listeners what Vegas doesn’t have but should. The resounding answers were Cracker Barrel and Dave & Busters.

Freeman called around and tried to franchise the latter, but the company wasn’t selling franchises at the time. He started coming up with his own idea, and the concept for Twenty3’s was born.

“If it wasn’t for (Buchanan,) I wouldn’t be able to open up,” Freeman said.

While Freeman is at the helm of the project, he won’t run day-to-day operations. He’s hired two industry people to do that, but he wouldn’t disclose their names.

Pennsylvania lawmakers might want to see how New Jersey and Delaware fare with their new Internet gambling operations before they seriously consider legalizing it here, the chairman of the state gambling board said Tuesday.

Both states, along with Nevada, are the first three in the nation to offer real-money online gambling, with Delaware expected to go live next week and New Jersey targeting the end of November.

Speaking at the opening of a two-day conference on Internet gambling, Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Ryan noted that it took state lawmakers more than a quarter-century before they addressed the migration of Pennsylvania residents to Atlantic City, N.J., to gamble at brick-and-mortar casinos. Pennsylvania legalized casino gambling in 2004 and since has become the nation’s second-largest casino state, after Nevada.

“It’s not easy to do something like this in the state of Pennsylvania,” he said, partly because significant pockets of moral and religious opposition to gambling remain. “I don’t see any real groundswell right now for Internet gaming.”

That could change if lawmakers see that New Jersey and Delaware are making a lot of money.

Ryan and other officials at the conference in Philadelphia said online poker and other casino-style games are the “new frontier” for states hungry for new sources of tax revenue, with some officials predicting relatively rapid expansion nationwide. Legislation to legalize online gambling has been introduced in eight states, Pennsylvania included.

“We do know that Internet gaming is a very big deal,” Ryan said.

But there could be significant regulatory, technical and legal hurdles to overcome, especially if states decide they want to strike agreements with each other to allow online gamblers to play games offered by other states. That could provoke a federal response, panelists at the World Regulatory Briefing USA conference said.

States will also need to make sure that online gambling doesn’t hurt existing brick-and-mortar casinos, and that strong regulations are put into place to curb fraud, as well as compulsive gambling and underage gambling, the panelists said.

“Internet gaming is going to happen. How it’s going to happen is an unknown,” said Michael Pollack, managing director of Spectrum Gaming Group.

Spectrum recently projected that by 2019, Internet gambling could generate $8.5 billion per year in the United States. By contrast, America’s nontribal casinos took in $37.3 billion last year.




Online Gaming Called ‘New Frontier’ For States « CBS Philly