> In the late 1990s the development platform ASF Software supplied several online poker providers, such as Planet Poker, with card-shuffling algorithms. The platform even posted the algorithm on its website as proof that the game was reliably programmed.
What amazes me is the level of overconfidence the developers of the broken algorithm had to post it online. I mean it's not that the probability theory was a novel and unexplored field at the time.
Imagine you proudly present to the public your obviously flawed version of the algorithm even though the correct version is known for decades. If only you've read a single book on the topic.
If that's not overconfidence then it's hard to find what is.
You haven't established their intent for gross negligence and give no charity to the fact this was 30 years ago (pre-Wikipedia and the search breadth we have today). Since then, people have continued to expose severe RNG design flaws in other systems designed by very smart people. It happens...
...They posted their algorithm as a way to prove it was reliable. Someone pointed out it wasn't reliable. They revised the algorithm. What's the problem here?
They were selling this algorithm for money and evidently didn't use any of that money to hire a single statistician to validate it. The mistake they've made isn't obscure and doesn't require a thousand pairs of eyes to catch, just one.
Imagine paying to a professional plumber, he installs the toilet upside down and then posts the photos online for the community to check his work.
What amazes me is the level of overconfidence the developers of the broken algorithm had to post it online. I mean it's not that the probability theory was a novel and unexplored field at the time.