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Showing remarkable restraint and an unwillingness to shout 'Give it up for me!'...

Just in case some of you don't get the reference, check out this video of Steve Ballmer at a MicroSoft pep rally.

It really speaks for itself :-)

Having a central Windows machine and thin clients for each of the users was a horrendous mistake. Whole labs spent as much time non-functional as they spent functional. Even having users change their passwords was problematic. Now, this was a few years back now and things may have improved. However, the only way I'd consider this is if the company you are buying the hardware from will guarantee uptime. This should be at least 99.9% uptime (and yes, this includes security patches and hardware failures), otherwise you are going to get crucified.

On the other hand, the computing science department also maintains several labs running OpenBSD for the client operating system. A student can log in to any computer in any lab because the /home directories are exported (over NFS, I think, but I could be wrong) from central file servers. The default software is installed locally so things can run very quickly but a large amount of additional software is also installed on central file servers and exported out to all the machines.

That setup is not bulletproof but the uptime is measured in weeks or months rather than hours or days. Depending on the year, it probably approaches 99.9% uptime. It also has the nice advantage of almost all of the software being entirely free.

So which should you go with? From my experience (ymmv), the clearly superior technical solution is to run OpenBSD on a large number of semi-thin client Intel machines. This is far more reliable than a competing Windows solution. From a cost perspective, there's really no comparison. That said, this assumes that you can migrate over to a Unix style environment. Not everyone can. Do not forget that you'd be throwing out all your Windows software using this solution. Also, you require sysadmins who are familiar with Unix. I assume this is the case.

Uh... getting a computer to bluff is very easy. My MSc. thesis topic is computer poker AI. You can play against my poker bots with my online applet

Getting it to play *well* is the hard part.

Getting a bot to bluff is actually quite easy.
The formulas can be quite simple. If the opponent will fold 20% of the time to your bluff, and the ratio of the cost of your bet to the size of the pot is 0.20 then it is profitable to bluff.

It all boils down to math. Who cares what's on the other player's faces? If they are good players, it won't tell you anything, anyways.

------

PokiBot is a poker-playing AI developed at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. You can play Poki these days through a Java applet at the link above, but back in the day Poki was always on IRC, bilking the tourists out of their (admittedly play-money) bankrolls. Early versions of PokiBot had problems (for a long time he was a terrible sucker for a check-raise), but in the days just before the majority of IRC poker players left for the online cardrooms, he was quite impressive.

Of course, this is in a medium uniquely suited to computer players. Some of the most difficult problems in AI are in computer vision, although in certain limited problem spaces (including recognizing emotions by modeling human facial expressions -- looking for a reference on this: some group in Japan, I think...) significant progress has been made.

By the way, has anyone found a link to a picture from the top down? All I see is from the side.

As far as I know, there is no polar view of Saturn.

If you think about it, this makes sense: all the planets orbit around the sun in approximately the same plane (called the plane of the ecliptic), and all the planets (except Uranus) rotate on their axis that are close to perpendicular to this plane. All are tilted to some degree or another - Earth's axis is tilted by more than 23 degrees (which is, of course, why we have distinct seasons).

Saturn's axis is tilted by more than 26 degrees. This is why in the pictures linked, we appear to be looking at Saturn from slightly below - at other points in Saturn's orbit, we would similarly be looking at it from above, but never more than about 26 degrees.

Although we could never get an actual single polar image of Saturn, it would be relatively simple to take several images of saturn at various times throught the day (Saturn's day), and interpolate them to create a simulated polar view.

(as an aside, I am a computing science student. I took a graphics course last semester, and one student did a similar project in image-based rendering. Using the Mona Lisa, he was able to interpolate various positions and create a 3-Dimensional view of it, and he animated it so that it appeared that a camera was going around the face of the person in the image - a very cool effect).

Good question.

Now that computers are starting to plateau off in strength, more game results are coming down to the quality of the opening book (just like in real Grandmaster tournaments)....

I wonder what quantum computing (which i suppose might be the next major plateau in processing power) will do to the world of chess -- computer v human or otherwise. Personally, I know that I lost all interest in playing checkers when I heard that Chinook beat just about every human master there was. (A little irrational, I know.) On the other hand, if Deeper Blue was still around, I'm sure there are a lot of Grandmasters that could win games against it.

Oh, well. There's always Go...

There are a number of efforts at automating the process of creating an opening book, but the results have been mediocre....

This is a little disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. What are the main problems here? Is it more a matter of not having enough statistical power to make opening book refinements?

However, outside of their books full of rote opening moves, most programs don't have opening specific knowledge, such as knowing about certain thematic sacrifices and plans in particular openings. For example, a computer out of its book in the Sicilian Dragon will not make the thematic queenside RxN sacrifice....

On the other hand, if the computer knows that the Sicilian Dragon was the opening, maybe during the early middlegame it could always consider that move with a few extra plys. It still smacks of soft AI, but I suppose it's not too far-removed from how humans learn to play chess (memorizing openings, learning themes).

• There is a deep cynicism about managed culture, and this is our modern popular culture. A kind of sovietism that worked

LL has a true gift for langauge. Younger readers may not be aware just how tightly managed the Soviet Union was. The production of everything was strictly controlled by a series of Five Year Plans that attempted to match supply to predicted future demand. By "everything", I mean that the number and colour of toothbrushes that would be produced was planned on a five year basis.

Picture this from the populace's point of view. You go to buy a new toothbrush. You quite fancy an orange one, but all they have is blue. Everyone else is buying blue toothbrushes, so, hey why not? One toothbrush is much like another, right? They're all just cheap mass manufactured plastic that'll be old in six months, so you might as well buy what they've got. You quickly get used to it. In time, you stop even wondering what an orange toothbrush - or a non-Government toothbrush - would be like.

Compare with the US music industry. You go to buy a CD... you see where this is going?

Big labels plan years in advance. They produce acts to fit the niches that they have decided there will be demand for. If there isn't demand for those acts, well tough, that's all there is on the shelves, and they aren't going to change their CD pressing schedules to suit you. That would play merry hell with their smooth profits. They know they're getting your money, because all the artists are just cheap mass manufactured plastic that'll be old in six months, so you might as well buy what they've got. You quickly get used to it. In time, you stop even wondering what an independent artist would be like.

If you don't believe that labels plan that far ahead, look at Mariah Carey. She has a five album 80 million US dollar deal. Despite suffering an "emotional and physical breakdown" and releasing a film and album that both tanked, EMI has not canned her. They can't. They have a Five Year Plan. We will love Mariah, and we will buy her albums, because they will make damn sure that when the next album comes out, they'll have cut a deal to ensure that no big name from any other label will release at the same time, and the advertising will be Mariah, Mariah, Mariah.

Or so they think. The trouble with their Five Year Plans is the same as in the Soviet Union. The people aren't stupid. They know what kind of toothbrush they want. If they can't get that, then they'll take what's available. But when the non-Government toothbrushes become available on street corners, even though it's illegal, they'll buy them, and they'll tell their friends where to get them, and a black or grey market will spring up to supply the genuine demand, and the Five Year Plan is suddenly in disarray because all the cheap plastic government approved toothbrushes are sitting in factories and nobody wants them any more.

At this point, the analogy breaks down because it's comparing sharing with purchasing. The toothbrush analogy is very immediate, but if you want a better history lesson of why monolithic government/industry content control is doomed from the get go even if abominations like the SSSCA are passed, then read about samizdat, and understand that We, the People will find a way.

The students are using university property to develop the code. They only pay a fraction of the cost via their tuition; the rest is obtained from other funding sources including public and corporate ones.

Since there are so many interests funding university resources, the answer as to who owns the intellectual property developed with these resources becomes a whole lot more difficult to figure out.

I've dealt with the University of Alberta's Industry Liason Office. Here is a summary of their performance since 1994. In the short term it is often diffcult to deal with them, but the overhead fees they charge are important: "The indirect costs -- or overhead -- of research include utilities (electricity, water, natural gas, and so on) physical plant (building maintenance, repairs), library support, financial and other administrative costs" (source). Check out that page since it'll even give you a percentage breakdown of where the overhead fees are allocated. For instance, 11% of the fees go to the university's libraries. That means that other students will get access to more books.

The ILO departments also provide important services to researchers such as patent background checks and market analysis. They're not just blood-suckers waiting to bounce on student- or professor-generated ideas.

The students are using university property to develop the code. They only pay a fraction of the cost via their tuition; the rest is obtained from other funding sources including public and corporate ones.

Since there are so many interests funding university resources, the answer as to who owns the intellectual property developed with these resources becomes a whole lot more difficult to figure out.

I've dealt with the University of Alberta's Industry Liason Office. Here is a summary of their performance since 1994. In the short term it is often diffcult to deal with them, but the overhead fees they charge are important: "The indirect costs -- or overhead -- of research include utilities (electricity, water, natural gas, and so on) physical plant (building maintenance, repairs), library support, financial and other administrative costs" (source). Check out that page since it'll even give you a percentage breakdown of where the overhead fees are allocated. For instance, 11% of the fees go to the university's libraries. That means that other students will get access to more books.

The ILO departments also provide important services to researchers such as patent background checks and market analysis. They're not just blood-suckers waiting to bounce on student- or professor-generated ideas.

The students are using university property to develop the code. They only pay a fraction of the cost via their tuition; the rest is obtained from other funding sources including public and corporate ones.

Since there are so many interests funding university resources, the answer as to who owns the intellectual property developed with these resources becomes a whole lot more difficult to figure out.

I've dealt with the University of Alberta's Industry Liason Office. Here is a summary of their performance since 1994. In the short term it is often diffcult to deal with them, but the overhead fees they charge are important: "The indirect costs -- or overhead -- of research include utilities (electricity, water, natural gas, and so on) physical plant (building maintenance, repairs), library support, financial and other administrative costs" (source). Check out that page since it'll even give you a percentage breakdown of where the overhead fees are allocated. For instance, 11% of the fees go to the university's libraries. That means that other students will get access to more books.

The ILO departments also provide important services to researchers such as patent background checks and market analysis. They're not just blood-suckers waiting to bounce on student- or professor-generated ideas.

> Well, when it gets too repressive, now I know where I can go.

Yea, to a country that regulary kills those that speak out against the government?

I knew Georgy Gongadze and his wife briefly, and because of their wonderful government, he was beheaded. You want to explain to his two children, now living in the US, about how repressive our government is?

> They speak Russian in the Ukraine, right?

In the East. The official language is Ukrainian, but many in the eastern part generally speak Russian.

We have the luxury to argue about issues like this in the press. They dont.

Complete BS, huh? Have you read the papers you can find here, here, and other places not on the first page of results on a Google search. Maybe I should have mentioned that speed wasn't the only concern, but it was the prime concern. In any event, I've got evidence to back up what I said. You?

Complete BS, huh? Have you read the papers you can find here, here, and other places not on the first page of results on a Google search. Maybe I should have mentioned that speed wasn't the only concern, but it was the prime concern. In any event, I've got evidence to back up what I said. You?

Sorry, stoned, can't spell proper link is here[www.ualberta.ca]

Here are some of the more promising results of a search from google.com (String used was :unix ref card pdf)

Unix Cheat Sheet
Unix Cheat Sheet
From Rice University : Very basic
Another Too large and outdated
Selection of Unix, Vi, and Emacs refferences Courtesy Univ. of Alberta.ca

You should be able to find what you need easy enough. I should also highly reccommend to everyone the linuxsecurity.com Linux Security guidesheet. Damn good reading to hardening your system. Here

Toodles

Austria
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Vienna)
Canada
http://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/Mirror/Linux/mandra ke/mandrake-8.0/iso/ (Alberta)
Czech Republic
ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/iso/ (Prague)
ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/iso/
France
ftp://chronos.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/linux/dist ributions/Mandrake/iso/(Belfort)
ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/iso/ (Paris)
ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/mandrake/mandrake/iso/ (Versailles) Germany
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/iso/ (Chemnitz) Spain ftp://ftp.cica.es/pub/Linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Sevilla) United Kingdom
ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Canterbury) United States
ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/iso/ (Georgia)
ftp://ftp.stealth.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.mandrake.com /Mandrake/iso/
ftp://jungle.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributio ns/mandrake/Mandrake/iso/ (North Carolina)

• developing legislation with such broad and far reaching wording is dangerous to everyone the world over

Yup. I've been told to stop over reacting, that this legislation isn't even going to be used much because, hey, the USA are the good guys, and we need it to defend Freedom and such.

I, on the other hand, think that it's not enough to just say that you're the good guys. You actually have to act like it as well. Even at the height of the Soviet Union's crackdown on samizdat, the oppression was all being done in the name of the greater good of the people, as represented by the state. Let's not take one single step in that direction.

Why pass laws that effects 300 million people if you're truly only proposing to use them against 50 people or so? There must be ways to save Freedom without giving up freedoms.

Check out a picture and another one a friend and I took of a Predator UAV in front of the University of Alberta's Polar Bear robot. It gives you a sense of scale. The Polar Bear is five feet long.

The pictures were taken at a robotics symposium in Orlando, Florida in July, 2000. Other pictures from the symposium with other UAVs as well as ground robot vehicles can be found here, here (includes rear and side views of Predator), and here.

Check out a picture and another one a friend and I took of a Predator UAV in front of the University of Alberta's Polar Bear robot. It gives you a sense of scale. The Polar Bear is five feet long.

The pictures were taken at a robotics symposium in Orlando, Florida in July, 2000. Other pictures from the symposium with other UAVs as well as ground robot vehicles can be found here, here (includes rear and side views of Predator), and here.

Check out a picture and another one a friend and I took of a Predator UAV in front of the University of Alberta's Polar Bear robot. It gives you a sense of scale. The Polar Bear is five feet long.

The pictures were taken at a robotics symposium in Orlando, Florida in July, 2000. Other pictures from the symposium with other UAVs as well as ground robot vehicles can be found here, here (includes rear and side views of Predator), and here.

Check out a picture and another one a friend and I took of a Predator UAV in front of the University of Alberta's Polar Bear robot. It gives you a sense of scale. The Polar Bear is five feet long.

The pictures were taken at a robotics symposium in Orlando, Florida in July, 2000. Other pictures from the symposium with other UAVs as well as ground robot vehicles can be found here, here (includes rear and side views of Predator), and here.

Check out a picture and another one a friend and I took of a Predator UAV in front of the University of Alberta's Polar Bear robot. It gives you a sense of scale. The Polar Bear is five feet long.

The pictures were taken at a robotics symposium in Orlando, Florida in July, 2000. Other pictures from the symposium with other UAVs as well as ground robot vehicles can be found here, here (includes rear and side views of Predator), and here.

Check out a picture and another one a friend and I took of a Predator UAV in front of the University of Alberta's Polar Bear robot. It gives you a sense of scale. The Polar Bear is five feet long.

The pictures were taken at a robotics symposium in Orlando, Florida in July, 2000. Other pictures from the symposium with other UAVs as well as ground robot vehicles can be found here, here (includes rear and side views of Predator), and here.

I wrote my letter, and you can read it here.

So have you sent in your letter?

Imagine you find your cubicle next morning like this: http://www.ee.ualberta.ca/~pmok/ftp/humorpics/cubi cle.jpg

Probably the most famous example of a machine which taught itself, IBM's Deep Blue, which taught itself to play chess better than the human world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

Probably the most famous example of a machine which taught itself, IBM's Deep Blue, which taught itself to play chess better than the human world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

Probably the most famous example of a machine which taught itself, IBM's Deep Blue, which taught itself to play chess better than the human world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

Probably the most famous example of a machine which taught itself, IBM's Deep Blue, which taught itself to play chess better than the human world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

Probably the most famous example of a machine which taught itself, IBM's Deep Blue, which taught itself to play chess better than the human world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

If Chess is added to the Olympics, it's only a matter of time before many many other "mental" games are petitioning the Olympic Commission for admission to the games.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

If Chess is added to the Olympics, it's only a matter of time before many many other "mental" games are petitioning the Olympic Commission for admission to the games.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

If Chess is added to the Olympics, it's only a matter of time before many many other "mental" games are petitioning the Olympic Commission for admission to the games.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

If Chess is added to the Olympics, it's only a matter of time before many many other "mental" games are petitioning the Olympic Commission for admission to the games.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

If Chess is added to the Olympics, it's only a matter of time before many many other "mental" games are petitioning the Olympic Commission for admission to the games.

Poker is an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research. It offers many new challenges since it is a game of imperfect information, where decisions must be made under conditions of uncertainty. Multiple competing agents must deal with probabilistic knowledge, risk management, deception, and opponent modeling, among other things.

Looks like everyone's dumping on the idea of solving chess, but a slightly less ambitious but no less interesting option exists: solve checkers. The Chinook Project, the current world champion of checkers, managed to solve all the endgames up to 8 pieces before 1992 (and indeed used some clever distributed computing algorithms to do so). The project is currently retired, but since the number of positions is only around 5*10^21 (only!), signifigantly less than chess, solving checkers might be more feasible, particularly on machines that are almost a decade more advanced.

So, while 10 move lookahead may give much better results than 5 move lookahead, 25 vs 20 offers much less advantage. This seems to be the case with othello, in my experience, where strong programs can do 24+ midgame searches (where the game is only 60 moves long).

Speaking of Othello, it's interesting to note that right about the same time as the '97 Kasparov-Deep Blue match, the Othello world champion, Takeshi Murakami (and champion again as of 2000), played a 6 game match against the program Logistello. Logistello won that match 6 games to 0.

The entries had to be given in the form of a subroutine that played the next move (given the current score and the history). The judges were linking two of them together and run the resulting binary.

Of course, there have been an entry that looked in the stack and modified the scores.

But the greatest was one (IMHO) that fork()ed and returned one possible response in each of its child. At next turn, the one that did not make the point (ie: had top score), exit()ed.

Mind-blowing. Found the link

That program was the "Fork Bot"

Cheers,

--fred

It has been pointed out however, that Kuchma would hardly have anything to fear from an e-zine like Ukrajinska Pravda, since very few have access to the Internet in Ukrain, and that it was unlikely that he had even heard of Georgy Gongadze.

It is, nevertheless, an issue to be alarmed by.

You can now play against Poki (and other humans) on our web applet. Just go to the University of Alberta GAMES group web page and click on the red "Play Online" button in the Poker section. Have fun.

- Darse.

Darse Billings and others at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group have done quite a bit of research on computer poker. Their program, Poki (source here) plays a reasonably good game of Texas Hold-Em. This is the primary game at the famous World Series of Poker.

Darse Billings and others at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group have done quite a bit of research on computer poker. Their program, Poki (source here) plays a reasonably good game of Texas Hold-Em. This is the primary game at the famous World Series of Poker.

Darse Billings and others at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group have done quite a bit of research on computer poker. Their program, Poki (source here) plays a reasonably good game of Texas Hold-Em. This is the primary game at the famous World Series of Poker.

Darse Billings and others at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group have done quite a bit of research on computer poker. Their program, Poki (source here) plays a reasonably good game of Texas Hold-Em. This is the primary game at the famous World Series of Poker.

Darse Billings and others at the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group have done quite a bit of research on computer poker. Their program, Poki (source here) plays a reasonably good game of Texas Hold-Em. This is the primary game at the famous World Series of Poker.

Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

These things are really really cool. You may be interested in the ALTA project -- they're putting cosmic ray detectors on the tops of high schools across Alberta, and letting the students there run them. The idea is to have a huge area over which to detect these things; they're pretty rare.

They're pretty mysterious, too. Nobody's really sure what sort of mechanism would throw off particles with this much energy. And it's not like we can just look up in the direction they came from, either -- the galaxy has a very slight magnetic field (but we don't know it that well), which bends the paths of charged particles (most cosmic rays), so the direction they hit the Earth from isn't the direction they really came from...

-Erf C.

Electrons are light enough that they travel at the speed of light at relatively low momenta. The experiment I'm working with will do most of its work at 30 MeV, and for all intents and purposes the electrons (which have a mass of 0.5 MeV) are moving at c (well, 0.99986*c). So basically they move at the speed of light in the vast majority of accellerators, with the exception of picture tubes. :)

-Erf C.

The book isSongs of Distant Earth, the first thing I thought of when I heard this on BBC Radio 4 (who needs /. when you have the Beeb). I'm quite relieved the events in the novel won't happen due to lack of neutrinos. There's a great throwaway line somewhere in the book, to the effect that after centuries of computer development, keyboards are still the best user interface.