A narrow opening into which something can be inserted or fitted, such as the mail slot in a door or the hole in the bottom of a car. Also, the name of a position or job (such as chief copy editor) in a newspaper or a time slot for an airplane departure or landing. Originally, the term was applied to the whole arrangement of operation issue and data path machinery surrounding a set of execution units in a VLIW computer. Now it more commonly refers to the relationship between an instruction in a program and the pipeline that executes it.
Slot
Penny slots are particularly attractive to gamblers because of their high payouts, but players should beware of their tendency to drain their bankrolls quickly. In addition, it’s important to know how to read a pay table and understand the symbols that lead to winning combinations. The pay tables for each machine are typically listed on the screen, often above and below the wheels, or can be accessed through a help menu.
Psychologists have found that people who play video slots reach debilitating addiction levels three times as fast as those who play traditional casino games, even if they’ve never engaged in other forms of gambling before. Researchers suggest that the hypnotic and trance-like nature of these machines, combined with their ubiquity and addictive qualities, may contribute to this dramatic rise in problem gambling. In 2011, a 60 Minutes report revealed that the makers of some slot machines employ “tilt” technology to keep gamblers hooked. Basically, when a slot machine senses that the player is losing, it sends a signal to the tilt sensors, which can change the odds of a win or reset them to zero.