It's a mailing list. There are plenty of time-wasting posts on it. Like any community, you take the good with the bad. This particular community has been very important over the years. Not sticking with it would be your mistake.
I wonder whether the reason for the poor showing of "AI" play in Shogi is due to subtleties in the game itself, or the relative unpopularity of the game in the western world. Chess has a certain cachet in the west, and that's still (for a little while longer) where most of the advanced computer science in the world gets done. Amusingly, solving "the Chess Problem" has been on the hot list for a while among so-called "AI" researchers (who miraculously still have some cachet themselves), and both the software and hardware dimensions of the problem have received massive, focused investment.
Deep Blue beat Kasparov not with raw GP computing horsepower, but with extravagant custom hardware designed specifically to solve the chess problem.
Purpose-built silicon can yield orders-of-magnitude speed improvements.
Different game rules, of course, dictate the depth of the problem space; Shogi may certainly just be deeper than chess, and/or more resistant to "traditional" brute force attacks... Of course, as others have said here, the state of the art in chess AI is well beyond simple brute force.
No discussion of the topic could be complete without mentioning RISKS. The RISKS Digest has been discussing risk factors associated with technology and engineering (and to some extent generally) on the internet since 1986.
Every engineer should spend time reading there. Any _good_ engineer should subscribe.
At first blush I would disagree; I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with a "content tax" - or ideally, a "content redistribution." Copyright IP monopoly is a violation of the free market too, but it has beneficial effects so we make that compromise. Since IP monopolies and licensing like Copyright appear to be problematic in their enforcement and perhaps ultimately pernicious for our intellectual and economic development (not to mention basically unenforceable in any way compatible with civil liberties and human rights), by all means, let's consider alternatives for creating an incentive for art.
The problem, however, is how the distribution works. The laws we already have that function this way are a perfect example. They're basically highway robbery - we allow the 5 major companies at the heart of the RIAA and MPAA to collect a tax! They're supposed to distribute the booty to the artists... want to guess how much of it any of them actually see? And do all artists get the same? Or some more than others? Who qualifies as a "content creator" and who doesn't?
It's not pretty. I like the pre-DMCA status quo better (bootleggers are prosecuted, and "recreational" duplication is de facto permitted). As distribution technology gets easier, the content industry revenues gradually attenuate. It's too bad, but I won't lose any sleep - they were ushered in on a technological accident just a few years ago, and they'll be ushered out on one. There's no god-given right to become a billionare selling music. The first technological revolution in the content industry - the phonograph, and the radio - already caused a far worse tragedy, removing the livelihood of many millions of professional musicians. Life will go on.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the net effect of all this that the middle-man is simply cut out of the transaction, and the old "semi-voluntary" model where the audience compensates the artist directly comes back once again.
I pine for the good old days (of 1997 or so) when I could say this and it would be true. Too bad congress took the right to modify and reverse engineer away from us, because we might use it to threaten the intellectual property of a few big companies.
If it were particularly easy to do this sort of thing, how long do you think it would be before tinkering with this kind of equipment would be illegal too? Or even talking about it, for that matter? Because why make it just a civil matter between business and customer when the goverment can join the party!
It's amazing how proactive the government can get with your rights and freedoms when a big corporation's monoply- I mean, revenues might be threatened. You see, when two individuals or two businesses disagree about how their business relationship is working out, they have to pay for their own day in court. But when it's business vs. consumer, the police suddenly don't mind lending a few billy clubs.
I think if we take the DMCA to it's logical conclusion (since if it's a good law, surely not only copyright deserves that level of protection), we should be setting up "Federal Speech Centers" for citizens to visit before they write or say anything, and everyone can take a number and stand in line and step up to the counter to ask the Federal Department of Speech employees if what they're thinking is OK to talk about, to insure that no one else's government-sponsored "rights and freedoms" get "threatened." I mean, what's the sense in waiting until someone actually comits a crime?
We don't need a Department of Actions Performed in the Privacy of the Home, because it'll be cheaper to just put cameras in every room.
In fact, now that I think about it, a dramatic decline in the price of Solaris, and an equally dramatic increase in the features included in the base package, fits with the big picture.
The licensing structure is broken up so that, depending on your needs (compiler, etc), you have to buy many pieces separately. Hence, "binder." The full suite, as far as I am told is far in excess of $50,000.
I'd welcome actual references to the contrary.
It had to be tense being the Linux person at Sun
on
Sun's Linux Exec Departs
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Printing $50,000 Solaris CD binders is a major source of profit for Sun, and they are not in a position to endanger any sources of profit right now.
Linux is already putting the big hurt on Solaris' server marketshare. Remember, unlike Microsoft, Sun is in the untenable position of competing _directly_ with a free product. Solaris X86 was a response to the nascent Linux threat (a dismal failure, as any closed source product was bound to be, even if it didn't suck goat ass to begin with). The disastrous reluctance to support Linux Java was another byproduct of Linux Paranoia at Sun.
But the Java issue clarified things a bit for the Sun people. They saw that trying to isolate and marginalize Linux would hurt Java, and then began to realize that it could hurt their whole company. They began to wonder if Linux's rise might be inexorable. Inevitable. That was when things started to change. The Cobalt acquisition, the Gnome support, the Open Office work... and of course the tier 1 Java support.
But when hard times come, people look at the P&L and they get the Fear. Bold, risky moves like moving towards Linux start to be questioned. You become desperate about the bottom line _right now_. I don't know if this is why DeWitt left or not, but I imagine what he represents could be feared inside Sun.
I expect cooler heads to prevail, eventually. Sun will continue to sell Solaris forever. But eventually, when the numbers finally work out, they will start offering "Sun Linux," hopefully with some useful "value adds," on progressively more expensive hardware, and as Solaris 3rd party development slows and Linux 3rd party development accellerates, Solaris will eventually be relegated to legacy status, and hopefully by then Sun will have emulated IBM's rise into the services sector.
We've been reading for decades now about our lagging public educational institutions. They were sub-standard in the 80's, and now they're to that point past crisis where as a parent in all but the most affluent suburbs (and even there) I would have a serious problem sending my child to them. In New York City the high school dropout rate remains over 50%, and the facilities are so poor that classes are taught in closets, and falling masonry is literally killing students. We pay teachers here less than garbagemen; it's not just an urban problem, either, as primary school educators generally can expect to earn a fraction of what other graduate degree holders make (think attorneys, engineers, or doctors). The system's funding has been at best maintained year after year despite a burgeoning, malthusian population explosion. By now we've entered a death spiral of "reforms" and "reorganizations"; vouchers and charters (catholic school subsidy and union busting, respectively) are a perfect example, and as the conservative-liberal polemic has adopted education as one of its battlegrounds, you can't talk to anyone about it without hearing one ignorant catechism or another.
Only your teachers know the real story, which is that there aren't nearly enough of them, and getting more is tough, since as it stands right now only martyrs and discipline enthusiasts want the job.
These things have consequences.
All that separates the 1st world from the 3rd world is the schools. Without education, there's no such thing as democracy.
"When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness - then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream!"
Yeah, those crazy scientists, you can never trust 'em to tell you the straight truth. What a bunch of crazy jokers, always out to put one over on us. Not nearly as trustworthy as people like you, for instance.
Say, this is sort of like that tree falling in the woods theory. If something happens in the world that's more complicated than you can understand, does it exist?
You really kill me. I bet you don't understand how the web browser, network protocols, operating system or CPU you're using right now works. I guess that means I'm not really reading what you're posting.
I'm sorry to inform you that, while you have some rights in theory, in practice none of them will do you any good, and for all intents and purposes, you are, and have been from the moment you first installed commercial software, the BSA's ass toy.
All the frightened whining and speculation aside, it comes down to this; if you don't do what they demand, they'll sue you, and you can't afford the kind of sueing they can dish out. Not by a long shot. Don't be too comforted by any supposed "relucance" on the part of the BSA to test their authority in court. That authority has already been tested quite adequately by others. Not that your college administrators (one of the more notoriously spineless subspecies of human beings) would even consider standing up to them.
No, my friend, what you have here is an example of the real cost of commercial software. It's part of why Richard Stallman is so incoherenly pissed off all the time. When you chose to use Windows instead of Linux, and Word instead of Emacs, you chose wrong. And this is just one of the many, many very good reasons why.
You haven't read the law, have you. In fact, you don't even know what UCITA stands for, do you? I can just see you right now, scrambling to google to look it up so you can make another nagging little comment.
Pop quiz, hotshot: How many software companies have opened offices in Virginia and Maryland in the last two years?
I don't know whether you're in denial or you're just terminally stupid. I suppose I'd guess both.
I wonder what will ultimately happen... just in the few narrow disciplines I follow there's a mountain of bad law just from the last 5 years alone. I think I'm somewhat in denial, in that I somehow harbor the hope that in my lifetime we might sort ourselves out and put the pieces back together... But that's just dreaming, isn't it.
That's what we said about the entire EULA until UCITA made it 100% binding - even the most outrageous parts (like not being able to unfavorably comment on the software).
These guys are not buying legalese for nothing. And even if the next round of bought-and-paid-for legislation doesn't make it on the books for a year or two, and they bring a baseless lawsuit, do you have $200,000 to defend yourself in court? Or will you just settle, pull your site and go home crying?
Remember all those frighteningly vague and overbroad "computer crime" and "anti-hacking" laws that most states have passed over the last 20 years? You know, like the one that got that college kid a felony indictment for installing SETI@Home at his university?
Of course, so is all "spyware," including RealPlayer/CometCursor/RealJukebox/etc., and for that matter, perhaps even Windows Media Player 8 (silent reporting) and Microsoft Word (silent GUID/CPUID tagging). Not to mention all spam/UCE. Then again, so is even portwalking or attempting to log in to a computer that's not yours... And I could go on.
Then again, if the government is corrupt enough for Bono/DMCA/UCITA/SSSCA, it's way more than corrupt enough to conveniently forget to enforce these laws to any good end.
You can't lose customers if there's no one to switch to. Since the FCC regulates regional cable monopolies, that only leaves the phone company, which may or may not offer comparable service.
The primary purpose of cable lines was information delivery, before we started using them to carry internet traffic.
The very networking functionality being "regulated" here puts the lie to your assertion. Delivery is no longer the only significant purpose of cable, and it's not in any way the purpose of cable broadband.
Thereby proving, yet again, that our government's regulatory and judicial agencies are, in their current form, unable to resist influence by sufficiently large, wealthy, and "powerful" companies which they are supposed to police.
Oh, you can make all kinds of arguments about how competition on these kinds of networks doesn't really make sense, but these are primarily engineering arguments. Yet the best decision seems to be to allow competition, because the overwhelming, extremely repetitive evidence is that allowing too much vertical integration in infrastructure industries like telecom results in abominable prices and worse service.
Or perhaps somebody actually believes this semantic hair-splitting nonsense about about cable being an "information" carrier rather than a "telephony" carrier?
DMCA and UCITA need to be repealed. They're bad, and they're blatantly unconstitutional, but let's be honest: they aren't outrageous in the technical sense. They're certainly a quid pro quo for soft money, and potentially worse, and they're certainly only going to last until their first appointment with a high court.
They are not "let's try to paint the sky red."
The SSSCA is.
And this is where I draw the line.
If this law passes, I will put my current career on hold. I will become a political activist.
Soft money reform is only the beginning.
I will vote against every incumbent in the following election, and I will devote every available bit of my energy towards encouraging others to do the same.
If we, as a nation, can seriously consider bribe-legislation so foul, so odious, so obviously pernicious both to our own economy and our basic civial rights, then it's time for some turnover.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a mailing list. There are plenty of time-wasting posts on it. Like any community, you take the good with the bad. This particular community has been very important over the years. Not sticking with it would be your mistake.
-David
I wonder whether the reason for the poor showing of "AI" play in Shogi is due to subtleties in the game itself, or the relative unpopularity of the game in the western world. Chess has a certain cachet in the west, and that's still (for a little while longer) where most of the advanced computer science in the world gets done. Amusingly, solving "the Chess Problem" has been on the hot list for a while among so-called "AI" researchers (who miraculously still have some cachet themselves), and both the software and hardware dimensions of the problem have received massive, focused investment.
Deep Blue beat Kasparov not with raw GP computing horsepower, but with extravagant custom hardware designed specifically to solve the chess problem.
Purpose-built silicon can yield orders-of-magnitude speed improvements.
Different game rules, of course, dictate the depth of the problem space; Shogi may certainly just be deeper than chess, and/or more resistant to "traditional" brute force attacks... Of course, as others have said here, the state of the art in chess AI is well beyond simple brute force.
-David
No discussion of the topic could be complete without mentioning RISKS. The RISKS Digest has been discussing risk factors associated with technology and engineering (and to some extent generally) on the internet since 1986.
Every engineer should spend time reading there. Any _good_ engineer should subscribe.
-David
At first blush I would disagree; I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with a "content tax" - or ideally, a "content redistribution." Copyright IP monopoly is a violation of the free market too, but it has beneficial effects so we make that compromise. Since IP monopolies and licensing like Copyright appear to be problematic in their enforcement and perhaps ultimately pernicious for our intellectual and economic development (not to mention basically unenforceable in any way compatible with civil liberties and human rights), by all means, let's consider alternatives for creating an incentive for art.
The problem, however, is how the distribution works. The laws we already have that function this way are a perfect example. They're basically highway robbery - we allow the 5 major companies at the heart of the RIAA and MPAA to collect a tax! They're supposed to distribute the booty to the artists... want to guess how much of it any of them actually see? And do all artists get the same? Or some more than others? Who qualifies as a "content creator" and who doesn't?
It's not pretty. I like the pre-DMCA status quo better (bootleggers are prosecuted, and "recreational" duplication is de facto permitted). As distribution technology gets easier, the content industry revenues gradually attenuate. It's too bad, but I won't lose any sleep - they were ushered in on a technological accident just a few years ago, and they'll be ushered out on one. There's no god-given right to become a billionare selling music. The first technological revolution in the content industry - the phonograph, and the radio - already caused a far worse tragedy, removing the livelihood of many millions of professional musicians. Life will go on.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the net effect of all this that the middle-man is simply cut out of the transaction, and the old "semi-voluntary" model where the audience compensates the artist directly comes back once again.
I pine for the good old days (of 1997 or so) when I could say this and it would be true. Too bad congress took the right to modify and reverse engineer away from us, because we might use it to threaten the intellectual property of a few big companies.
If it were particularly easy to do this sort of thing, how long do you think it would be before tinkering with this kind of equipment would be illegal too? Or even talking about it, for that matter? Because why make it just a civil matter between business and customer when the goverment can join the party!
It's amazing how proactive the government can get with your rights and freedoms when a big corporation's monoply- I mean, revenues might be threatened. You see, when two individuals or two businesses disagree about how their business relationship is working out, they have to pay for their own day in court. But when it's business vs. consumer, the police suddenly don't mind lending a few billy clubs.
I think if we take the DMCA to it's logical conclusion (since if it's a good law, surely not only copyright deserves that level of protection), we should be setting up "Federal Speech Centers" for citizens to visit before they write or say anything, and everyone can take a number and stand in line and step up to the counter to ask the Federal Department of Speech employees if what they're thinking is OK to talk about, to insure that no one else's government-sponsored "rights and freedoms" get "threatened." I mean, what's the sense in waiting until someone actually comits a crime?
We don't need a Department of Actions Performed in the Privacy of the Home, because it'll be cheaper to just put cameras in every room.
In fact, now that I think about it, a dramatic decline in the price of Solaris, and an equally dramatic increase in the features included in the base package, fits with the big picture.
Thank you. It's been a little while since I've been around a big Sun purchase; Things have obviously changed a bit.
The licensing structure is broken up so that, depending on your needs (compiler, etc), you have to buy many pieces separately. Hence, "binder." The full suite, as far as I am told is far in excess of $50,000.
I'd welcome actual references to the contrary.
Printing $50,000 Solaris CD binders is a major source of profit for Sun, and they are not in a position to endanger any sources of profit right now.
Linux is already putting the big hurt on Solaris' server marketshare. Remember, unlike Microsoft, Sun is in the untenable position of competing _directly_ with a free product. Solaris X86 was a response to the nascent Linux threat (a dismal failure, as any closed source product was bound to be, even if it didn't suck goat ass to begin with). The disastrous reluctance to support Linux Java was another byproduct of Linux Paranoia at Sun.
But the Java issue clarified things a bit for the Sun people. They saw that trying to isolate and marginalize Linux would hurt Java, and then began to realize that it could hurt their whole company. They began to wonder if Linux's rise might be inexorable. Inevitable. That was when things started to change. The Cobalt acquisition, the Gnome support, the Open Office work... and of course the tier 1 Java support.
But when hard times come, people look at the P&L and they get the Fear. Bold, risky moves like moving towards Linux start to be questioned. You become desperate about the bottom line _right now_. I don't know if this is why DeWitt left or not, but I imagine what he represents could be feared inside Sun.
I expect cooler heads to prevail, eventually. Sun will continue to sell Solaris forever. But eventually, when the numbers finally work out, they will start offering "Sun Linux," hopefully with some useful "value adds," on progressively more expensive hardware, and as Solaris 3rd party development slows and Linux 3rd party development accellerates, Solaris will eventually be relegated to legacy status, and hopefully by then Sun will have emulated IBM's rise into the services sector.
We've been reading for decades now about our lagging public educational institutions. They were sub-standard in the 80's, and now they're to that point past crisis where as a parent in all but the most affluent suburbs (and even there) I would have a serious problem sending my child to them. In New York City the high school dropout rate remains over 50%, and the facilities are so poor that classes are taught in closets, and falling masonry is literally killing students. We pay teachers here less than garbagemen; it's not just an urban problem, either, as primary school educators generally can expect to earn a fraction of what other graduate degree holders make (think attorneys, engineers, or doctors). The system's funding has been at best maintained year after year despite a burgeoning, malthusian population explosion. By now we've entered a death spiral of "reforms" and "reorganizations"; vouchers and charters (catholic school subsidy and union busting, respectively) are a perfect example, and as the conservative-liberal polemic has adopted education as one of its battlegrounds, you can't talk to anyone about it without hearing one ignorant catechism or another.
Only your teachers know the real story, which is that there aren't nearly enough of them, and getting more is tough, since as it stands right now only martyrs and discipline enthusiasts want the job.
These things have consequences.
All that separates the 1st world from the 3rd world is the schools. Without education, there's no such thing as democracy.
"When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness - then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream!"
-William James, The Will to Believe
Yeah, those crazy scientists, you can never trust 'em to tell you the straight truth. What a bunch of crazy jokers, always out to put one over on us. Not nearly as trustworthy as people like you, for instance.
Say, this is sort of like that tree falling in the woods theory. If something happens in the world that's more complicated than you can understand, does it exist?
You really kill me. I bet you don't understand how the web browser, network protocols, operating system or CPU you're using right now works. I guess that means I'm not really reading what you're posting.
There I go, talking to myself again. (sigh)
-David
I'm sorry to inform you that, while you have some rights in theory, in practice none of them will do you any good, and for all intents and purposes, you are, and have been from the moment you first installed commercial software, the BSA's ass toy.
All the frightened whining and speculation aside, it comes down to this; if you don't do what they demand, they'll sue you, and you can't afford the kind of sueing they can dish out. Not by a long shot. Don't be too comforted by any supposed "relucance" on the part of the BSA to test their authority in court. That authority has already been tested quite adequately by others. Not that your college administrators (one of the more notoriously spineless subspecies of human beings) would even consider standing up to them.
No, my friend, what you have here is an example of the real cost of commercial software. It's part of why Richard Stallman is so incoherenly pissed off all the time. When you chose to use Windows instead of Linux, and Word instead of Emacs, you chose wrong. And this is just one of the many, many very good reasons why.
-David
I was curious what the lab was working on and found a variety of multimedia materials on their anonymous FTP site here:
/
ftp://ftp.uk.research.att.com/pub/videos/qsif-200
What I've seen so far is interesting though not earth-shattering. Take a look.
-David
You haven't read the law, have you. In fact, you don't even know what UCITA stands for, do you? I can just see you right now, scrambling to google to look it up so you can make another nagging little comment.
Pop quiz, hotshot: How many software companies have opened offices in Virginia and Maryland in the last two years?
I don't know whether you're in denial or you're just terminally stupid. I suppose I'd guess both.
Thank you.
:)
You took the words out of my mouth.
I wonder what will ultimately happen... just in the few narrow disciplines I follow there's a mountain of bad law just from the last 5 years alone. I think I'm somewhat in denial, in that I somehow harbor the hope that in my lifetime we might sort ourselves out and put the pieces back together... But that's just dreaming, isn't it.
-David
That's what we said about the entire EULA until UCITA made it 100% binding - even the most outrageous parts (like not being able to unfavorably comment on the software).
These guys are not buying legalese for nothing. And even if the next round of bought-and-paid-for legislation doesn't make it on the books for a year or two, and they bring a baseless lawsuit, do you have $200,000 to defend yourself in court? Or will you just settle, pull your site and go home crying?
This is Microsoft saying "I dare you."
-David
Remember all those frighteningly vague and overbroad "computer crime" and "anti-hacking" laws that most states have passed over the last 20 years? You know, like the one that got that college kid a felony indictment for installing SETI@Home at his university?
a ws.html
This CD is illegal under almost all of them.
http://nsi.org/Library/Compsec/computerlaw/statel
Of course, so is all "spyware," including RealPlayer/CometCursor/RealJukebox/etc., and for that matter, perhaps even Windows Media Player 8 (silent reporting) and Microsoft Word (silent GUID/CPUID tagging). Not to mention all spam/UCE. Then again, so is even portwalking or attempting to log in to a computer that's not yours... And I could go on.
Then again, if the government is corrupt enough for Bono/DMCA/UCITA/SSSCA, it's way more than corrupt enough to conveniently forget to enforce these laws to any good end.
Hah. Hahahahahahaha. :)
Oh look, a republican spinmeister. Troll on, brother...
Anyone who does think for themselves can read about Enron here...
HINT: People believe your parrot-head antics more often when you learn to spell.
You can't lose customers if there's no one to switch to. Since the FCC regulates regional cable monopolies, that only leaves the phone company, which may or may not offer comparable service.
The primary purpose of cable lines was information delivery, before we started using them to carry internet traffic.
The very networking functionality being "regulated" here puts the lie to your assertion. Delivery is no longer the only significant purpose of cable, and it's not in any way the purpose of cable broadband.
Thereby proving, yet again, that our government's regulatory and judicial agencies are, in their current form, unable to resist influence by sufficiently large, wealthy, and "powerful" companies which they are supposed to police.
Oh, you can make all kinds of arguments about how competition on these kinds of networks doesn't really make sense, but these are primarily engineering arguments. Yet the best decision seems to be to allow competition, because the overwhelming, extremely repetitive evidence is that allowing too much vertical integration in infrastructure industries like telecom results in abominable prices and worse service.
Or perhaps somebody actually believes this semantic hair-splitting nonsense about about cable being an "information" carrier rather than a "telephony" carrier?
This is pretty much the definitive comment on this issue, as far as I can tell, and a real pleasure to read.
Thank you.
this is where I draw the line.
DMCA and UCITA need to be repealed. They're bad, and they're blatantly unconstitutional, but let's be honest: they aren't outrageous in the technical sense. They're certainly a quid pro quo for soft money, and potentially worse, and they're certainly only going to last until their first appointment with a high court.
They are not "let's try to paint the sky red."
The SSSCA is.
And this is where I draw the line.
If this law passes, I will put my current career on hold. I will become a political activist.
Soft money reform is only the beginning.
I will vote against every incumbent in the following election, and I will devote every available bit of my energy towards encouraging others to do the same.
If we, as a nation, can seriously consider bribe-legislation so foul, so odious, so obviously pernicious both to our own economy and our basic civial rights, then it's time for some turnover.