

Try the unconventional alternative - marklittlewood
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/08/an-unconventional-alternative.html

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JacobAldridge
Two very good business stories on unconventional thinking, both forced by a
lack of proper preparation and due diligence.

It doesn't distract from the OP's point - don't restrict yourself to only the
obvious options you have in front of you - but at the same time, think about
how much opportunity could have been created by applying to innovation the
thought that went into fixing two million-dollar mistakes.

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amirmc
Great story and a good example of why having the right team is critical.

Creative problem solving is a difficult thing to cultivate since it requires
both insight (e.g the ePrize legal guy) and also the courage to _actually_
voice it. Many environments do a great job of inadvertently crushing the
latter.

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marklittlewood
This is one of the most unexpected, but welcome, reactions to anything I have
put on Hacker News. Thank you wonderful HN people.

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ianterrell
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot>

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ez77
How is the Brazilian embassy 'within the geographic borders of Australia'?
That piece of land is part of Brazil (full stop), and for this reason
(embassies) all countries are multiply-connected regions.

Edit: To be precise, their largest regions (excluding their own embassies) are
multiply connected.

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damoncali
That's pretty much a courtesy, no?

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sp332
If someone commits a crime in the embassy, they should be tried according to
the laws of the nation of the embassy. Also, an attack on an embassy is
technically an invasion of the land of that nation.

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thisisfmu
Good story. Wouldn't a better hack have been to draw input values in both
countries, then communicate this input to the other location and XOR the
results to determine the final outcome, so the drawing will actually have
happened in both territories? This would also scale to n>2 countries.

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ryandvm
Laws do not work that way!

[You don't get to use a Morbo reference every day on Hacker News.]

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thisisfmu
i did go to law school and am thus reasonably well aware of how laws work ;)

having no specific knowledge about sweepstakes regulations, i does not appear
completely unreasonable to me that a random drawing in each territory
completely changing the outcome might satisfy the requirements.

as a practical matter, when $1m in extra payouts are at stake it could be
reasonable to accept a fine from regulators while at the same time avoiding
civil liability to participants.

