Re:Some Perfect endgames are known
on
Solving Chess?
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· Score: 1
Playing chess against a perfect algorithm must be weird. Suppose the optimal solution is a win for white, say: then the perfect player would make its first move and announce "mate in 58 moves" (say). You make your move, and he announces "mate in 54": ah, well, you didn't do as good as you could have, some move would have let you remain alive for 57 more moves. And so on, you could see your "time to live" go down and down as you make those moves. Really weird
I don't know if you've ever heard of Zillions, it's this really cool generic board game playing program. You can basically write many different types games for it and it will play them, oftentimes very well. It has certain limitations in the sort of games it can play (mainly that it doesn't handle games like Go or Hex where the concept of a topologically connected group is important), but it can play many different types of Chess variants and Chess-type games, even incredibly complicated ones like Ultima.
Anyway, playing against the program is exactly like that if you're playing a game that it plays really well. It usually can't search 50-something moves ahead, of course, but it's really strange to see it say "Win in 14!" when you thought you were winning. For certain simple games like Nim, you can see the exact move you made which caused you to lose, immediately after you make it.
A 15 year old, slightly wierd and overly teased kid attacked his classmates today in Ontario near Ottawa
When people who voted on this poll read about that story, they'll probably think "we need stricter knife control laws to prevent this from happening!"
I think the fact that a student would want to stab/shoot/blow up other students is a much, much more important issue than their capability to do so. I guess I'm weird that way.
Their lives are so empty that they fixate on banal TV shows. (What kind of loser writes story after story about
Quantum Leap or The A-Team?)
Quantum Leap was banal? Sure banal describes every Scott Bakula movie I've ever heard of, but Quantum Leap was a great show. I can even see how its episodic nature particularly lends itself to fanfics (even though personally I think fanfics are lame as hell).
I mean what other show has a holographic quasi-angelic lecherous former-Vietman-POW, who's constantly yelling at a sentient computer named Ziggy?
Well I may be a little confused here, but when I saw Star Wars Episode 1 in theatres I noticed that it had to be in only a digital theater with digital sound and digital picture
Well, I think Episode I was shot on film for the most part. Very few theatres are equipped to show movies with a digital picture. There were select theatres where it was tried out for Episode I. I think many people seemed to like it better than film, but film buffs like Roger Ebert thought it looked much worse. I guess it's not very high resolution you can see obvious pixelization. Point is, digital is not always better in every way than analog (just ask a typical audiophile).
For laughs, I was looking through a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog the other day. The funniest item had to be this wearable computer that makes the user look like a cyborg in some cheesy scifi flick. I can't imagine someone actually traveling wearing this thing.
What's sad is that there's someone out there with money to burn who actually buys crap like this. (Or they're uninformed enough to believe that overpriced items like Bose Wave Radio are actually worth their price.)
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If this is slowly dying, then what do you consider a success?
That "comic book" is synonymous with "superhero".
That you have to be an insane freak like Jackson's character to think that comics can be art.
Not that there's anything wrong with a good superhero story, but there are other genres of comics.
www.emucamp.com
I don't know if you've ever heard of Zillions, it's this really cool generic board game playing program. You can basically write many different types games for it and it will play them, oftentimes very well. It has certain limitations in the sort of games it can play (mainly that it doesn't handle games like Go or Hex where the concept of a topologically connected group is important), but it can play many different types of Chess variants and Chess-type games, even incredibly complicated ones like Ultima.
Anyway, playing against the program is exactly like that if you're playing a game that it plays really well. It usually can't search 50-something moves ahead, of course, but it's really strange to see it say "Win in 14!" when you thought you were winning. For certain simple games like Nim, you can see the exact move you made which caused you to lose, immediately after you make it.
When people who voted on this poll read about that story, they'll probably think "we need stricter knife control laws to prevent this from happening!"
I think the fact that a student would want to stab/shoot/blow up other students is a much, much more important issue than their capability to do so. I guess I'm weird that way.
Quantum Leap was banal? Sure banal describes every Scott Bakula movie I've ever heard of, but Quantum Leap was a great show. I can even see how its episodic nature particularly lends itself to fanfics (even though personally I think fanfics are lame as hell).
I mean what other show has a holographic quasi-angelic lecherous former-Vietman-POW, who's constantly yelling at a sentient computer named Ziggy?
There was a memorial to him last year.
I think she was intended to be.
It's like the episode of the Simpsons that was on last night -
Casting Director: (after rejecting Moe) I want "Maryanne-on-Gilligan's-Island ugly", you know, "TV ugly", not "ugly ugly".
Anything that gets people to spend less time watching TV is a good thing. Check out this powerful anti-TV "essay".
What's sad is that there's someone out there with money to burn who actually buys crap like this. (Or they're uninformed enough to believe that overpriced items like Bose Wave Radio are actually worth their price.)