"In my book, the geeks writing these bots are showing the same piratical attitude that caused the computer industry to lead the league in financial fraud during the tech bubble. It's bad enough that the bot creators feel no shame, but the willingness of others to condone this sort of misbehavior is a sad commentary on the state of ethics and common decency."I read his blog fairly regularly--he seems to be on the libertarian side of corporate law, applauding the recent appointment of Christopher Cox to head the SEC. [Full disclosure: while Cox is apparently capable, IMHO the investigation he headed into Chinese influence on US politics was a bait and switch con job so I've an irrational prejudice against him.]
Anyhow, someone with a good Presbyterian/Lutheran background doesn't expect anything better from people exploiting a new ecological niche, like on-line poker playing. As someone said in some number of the Federalist, if humans were angels we wouldn't need government. But humans are not angels. If we rely on shame, ethics and common decency to manage our economy, we rely on sand. You need law, or at the very least, a good counter-programmer in the arms race.
Actually, it seems like a relatively easy cheat to defeat, at least for now--every couple hands the host site displays one of those distorted passwords for the player to echo back to the site.
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