” LetOhioVote, a newly formed committee, asked the Supreme Court to affirm the right of voters to decide whether video slot machines should be placed at Ohio’s seven racetracks. If the court agrees, the group will launch a petition drive to put the issue on the November 2010 ballot and delay plans to roll out the slots before then, Carlo LoParo, spokesman for the group, said.

” Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner announced an investigation into alleged irregularities involving petition circulators gathering signatures to put a plan for four casinos before voters on Nov. 3. In a news release, Brunner said “in the end it is likely to be the Ohio Supreme Court that will determine whether this issue is submitted to voters this fall.”

“The challenge to the slots plan comes three days after Gov. Ted Strickland signed a new $50.5 billion, two-year state budget that includes the slots. The budget projects that slots would rake in $933 million over two years to help balance the budget.

“If successful, the lawsuit could throw the budget out of balance quickly…”

Last week, the University of Kentucky student from Erlanger earned $896,730 for finishing 12th in the World Series of Poker. That came on the heels of his winning hundreds of thousands of dollars in other tournaments the last few years and forced his parents into making them believers that poker could become his career.

“We have come to the realization that he may make a living at it,” said Bill Kopp. “My wife and I, neither one went to college, and our goal was for (all our kids) to get a college degree. There were several evenings where we talked to him and said, ‘You really need to get this degree, so you have a good plan B.’ We have no carrots to dangle over his head to make him a believer in that right now.”

Bill Kopp said his son, who left for a week’s vacation Monday and is turning down interview requests until he returns, needs to finish about nine more classes to earn his degree in business, but that he’s put that on hold.

“When he started playing, he promised us he would get his diploma and still tells us he’ll get it, but it’s hard for us to tell him not to pursue this right now,” said Bill Kopp. “This was not a fluke. He’s been working at this like an athlete. He’s got a goal and he’s not where he wants to be yet, so he’ll keep striving and working hard until he does.

“My brother-in-law, who plays poker, was talking to my wife the other day about this and he said, ‘It’s hard to tell him to get that diploma so he can make $40,000 a year in a regular job when he’s doing so much better than that.’ ”

Bill Kopp said it helps that Billy, a 2004 graduate of Villa Madonna Academy, hasn’t taken his new-found wealth and started spending recklessly.

“Lucky for us he has a good head on his shoulders,” said Bill. “He just bought a car, but he bought a used car and he got a good deal. Maybe it helps that he has conservative parents.”

Bill Kopp said he isn’t much of a card fan and doesn’t much like gambling, but said his wife enjoys cards and credited card memory games she played with her children when they were younger for perhaps helping Billy.

He laughed when thinking back to a time just five years ago when Billy, still in high school, came to his parents with a proposition for funding him as an online player.

“He wanted to use our credit card and initially we said, ‘No way,’ ” said Bill. “Then we thought, well, OK, maybe we can control it and he put $20 on there. It’s the only time he ever had to do it.”

Billy won $100,000 at age 18 for just a $60 buy-in and has found success ever since.

That $20 investment might not have netted Bill and Barbara Kopp that college diploma yet, but it’s given their son Billy a pretty good financial start in life.

My brain keeps returning to the moment in time when Gates recognized the difficulty in controlling the creative impulses of the world — because I’ve been twiddling my thumbs waiting for Apple to approve my iPhone App version of my book, “Free for All.”

[ There are many worthwhile productivity apps you won't find at the App Store. See "21 apps Apple doesn't want on your iPhone." ]

A long time ago in March, I hatched a simple plan. I would dump the raw text of my book on the open source movement into HTML, render the HTML on the iPhone screen, and give away copies. Just for grins, I would also write a new forward to the book, call it the Gold version, charge $1 per copy, and give all of the revenues to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a charity that seems as deserving as any these days.

It was an easy idea that didn’t require understanding much about the trickier parts of the iPhone API, like the accelerometer or the camera. All it takes is a few calls to a UIWebView object, a part of the iPhone OS that implements the WebKit HTML rendering engine. Boom — it’s done.

The programming for this plan was very simple, but the distribution has been nearly impossible. Apple’s App Store is the only way to share your applications with the world, and it is lorded over by an inscrutable team of guardians devoted to maintaining control over the platform. During the last four months I’ve spent little time working on the application itself and almost all of that time waiting for Apple to respond.

A man, a plan, an App Store It is possible to skip the App Store if you want to give your application to a friend, but even this requires getting Apple to sign off on the transfer. The iPhone wants to see a cryptographically signed note from its mother before firing up any binary code. The ad hoc distribution mechanism puts a strict limit on 100 copies and enforces this by requiring a copy of each iPhone’s unique identification code to be bundled with the digital signature. Anyone who thought that cryptography was going to liberate the world was sadly mistaken.