I read some months ago about progress in computer go made this way. I went looking to download one (hoping for a freely available version), but all I found was a small bit that played 9x9 - or maybe it was even smaller.
Yes, it's called "Monte Carlo" or "UCT". The two front-runners at the moment are MoGo and CrazyStrone, but to my knowledge neither is available for free download. If you contact the authors directly with your stated purpose, they may likely give you a copy. If you can beat GnuGo on its highest settings, however, I'm not sure either of those programs will be much of a match, but I suppose it depends on your playing style. I'm about 6k KGS and I have problems even if GnuGo gives me two stones, whereas I know 10k players who can crush GnuGo easily.
As far as I know, the major difficulty in writing a strong go playing program isn't the search space, but the fact that there are so many opposing aims that it's very hard to write a good heuristic. For instance, players have to decide wether to go for speed or security in their play. Deciding whether to expand territory quickly and risk invasion, or to build up a small stronghold is a major factor in the game.
The major difficulty isn't so much in that there are opposing aims so much as the fact that there's no good evaluation function. In chess, you search the tree as far as you can, then you have some way of statically evaluating the leaf nodes without traversing the tree any further. In chess, you can use the number of pieces, or the number of squares controlled on the board, etc. But in Go, it's really hard to statically evaluate the board, because all of your pieces on the board might be capturable, and the only real way to tell is by continuing down the search tree.
As a result, recent advances in Go-playing programs have actually come simply because a new "evaluation function" has arisen: random play. When you get to the end of your search tree, to evaluate whether a move is good or not, you simply randomly play a bunch of games starting at that position, with random moves by both sides, and see what happens. It's a pretty dumb "evaluation function", and isn't really even very static (so it's much slower than, say, most chess evaluation functions), but it has still resulted in a reasonable increase in program strength.
Maybe if you grew up in a state like Massachusetts where children died getting crushed by weaving machines in fabric mills, and where PCBs were dumped by GE into rivers simply because they COULD...well, maybe just then you'd feel a little differently about regulating industry. Hell, they recently found near the Alewife T station, on the cite of an old dye plant, that people who grew up in the area had cancer rates that were astronomically high. These people, as kids, played on the site- and many of them remember that the ground was so contaminated, puddles would form spontaneously in depressions in the ground that were every color of the rainbow.
There are different shades of libertarians just as there are with many things in life. Many libertarians are not complete anarchists, however; they see the role of government as being important for market failures, such as pollution. Charging a pollution tax on the marginal cost of pollution would, in my opinion, completely compatible with a libertarian outlook.
I have no excuses for your hypocritical friend and his driveway, however.
God thats horrible. Your son's school gets ad money? So you're allowing corporations to educate your child on which products they should be buying, from an early age?
No, it's not. The point is to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted material.
And how, pray tell, does DRM achieve that aim? Yes, that's right! By preventing someone from making full use of some data they have. One of the (very common) uses of data is copying that data. And the point of DRM is to prevent someone from making full use of their ability to copy that data.
So while it's true that the intent of DRM is to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted material, it is also true that the intent of DRM is to prevent people from making full use of some data they have.
Actually, you are wrong. The GPL is only required (i.e., only applicable) when copyright is involved; i.e., making a derivative work.
I think you meant "e.g.". Copyright is also involved when making a copy, which is what Nintendo would have to do if Linux came on every Wii. Thus, Nintendo would have to distribute the source code (or fulfill one of the other similar requirements) for the GPL'd portions of the software. (You are correct, however, in that only derivative works would be covered under the GPL, so Nintendo could certainly create a closed-source user interface on top of Linux and distribute them both together without having to GPL the userland portion.)
Israel, for example, is surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby. The savage truth is that for them holy writ condones this slaughter.
Indeed, you are correct that "whom," as opposed to "who," should have been used. However, I believe the term "accusative" does not apply to the distinction between "who" and "whom" in English. I believe the terms that should be used are "subjective" (who) or "objective" (whom).
Actually, "accusative" just means "objective case" (used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb). The link you posted lists "whom" as being able to be used in Modern English as the accusative, dative, or instrumental. "Objective" is a common way to refer to the accusative case in English however.
No worries about copyright? In today's environment?
If a "cut-list" for a DVD is considered possible copyright infringement as a "derivative work", you can sure as hell bet that a voice-over commentary intended for a DVD can be considered possible copyright infringement by today's overzealous copyright holders.
What they should do is have a version of Wikipedia that has already been verified by a community of editors. So, a process similar to the following would take place:
1) General population would add/modify/remove entries on Wikipedia with public-editing capabilities. 2) A second Wikipedia would be set-up where only a group of editors would have write-access to the content. The editors would periodically compare the two versions of Wikipedia and commit the "good" information from the publicly-edited version to the restricted version.
Ever heard of Nupedia? It was the "second Wikipedia" you describe. What happened to it? It disappeared several years ago--nobody wanted to use it. Wikipedia nearly always had superior content.
My thoughts. If somebody wants to censor for them, why let them? As long as there is "lost sale" going on (e.g. these places buy the movie and splice tape, or every edited copy they sell along with the original edited copy well) I see what beef the copyright holders have with this.
[The above post edited by CleanPosts, a Utah corporation.]
I'm perfectly fine with nacturation providing a service where he edits my posts for those who are willing to pay him for the service, and who realize what they're getting isn't what I actually said. I may be really pissed if nacturation botches my work, and I may try my best to publicize what he's doing and get people who are purchasing his "edited posts" to stop buying them, but I don't think what he's doing is illegal.
Wow. Much as I approve of this slap to the boobies-are-icky types, this is really another example of the ways copyright is going crazy.
Exactly my thoughts. If somebody wants somebody else to censor a movie for them, why not let them? As long as there isn't any "lost sale" going on (e.g. most of these places either buy an original copy of the movie and splice up the original tape, or they buy an original copy and every edited copy they sell comes along with the original unedited copy as well) I don't see what beef the copyright holders can have with this.
The only thing extraneous I can see is the status bar at the bottom, which is (I believe) off by default in Opera 9, although I prefer it. What more do you want?!
I sang the same song at bible camp. Same tune (and actions) as "Mother Gooneybird had many chicks", for those of you familiar with that "hokey pokey"ish song.
I know, we can call it something crazy like "OpenGL"! Or, if we need a framework that does more than just 3D effects, we can call it DirectMedia or something like that, just a simple layer of code that provides typical game functionality--"Simple DirectMedia Layer", or SDL for short.
The whole point of Net Neutrality is not to make everything neutral, as the telcos want you to believe....the point is to have fairness. So if you're using Vonage VoIP, or using Skype VoIP, or ANY other VoIP, it's okay to prioritize those packets so long as you prioritize everyone's VoIP traffic exactly the same.
Thanks for the clarification. Do you know if this idea of "it's okay to prioritize as long as you prioritize everyone's the same" is present in all proposed "net neutrality" legislation, or only in some of the bills? Have there been discussions as to whether the wording of the proposed legislation will successfully achieve this or not? It seems like that simple idea might be somewhat complex to put into enforceable legalese without having unforeseen ramifications. Has there been any discussion at this level, or is it all just "Google should pay us money!" "Nuh uh, they already pay their own ISP!" "Whatever!" "Totally!"? So far I haven't seen anything beyond the level of Junior High debate.
It seems like, among all the applications that use IP, some of them are time-sensitive, and some of them are time-insensitive. And ones that are time-sensitive seem to be quite variable in the amount of time-sensitivity. For example, I may want to download or upload some file overnight--as long as it's done by the following morning, I don't care how long it took the packets to get from point A to point B. Or I may be surfing the web--in which case I'll probably want the packets to move pretty much as fast as possible. Or I may be on an interactive ssh session, in which case I may also want faster packets.
If I understand it correctly, this whole "net neutrality" thing makes everyone treat "bits as bits"--my overnight download is exactly the same as my web surfing which is exactly the same as my ssh session. This seems like a huge waste--why shouldn't we have the ability to shape our bandwidth based on our needs? Obviously there's room for abuse (such as Comcast blocking or degrading VoIP packets from competing companies, but leaving its own alone) but aren't we throwing the baby out with the bathwater by disallowing any sort of discrimination based on packet contents?
Or am I just completely misunderstanding the whole "net neutrality" thing?
Slashdot Mirror
Dlugar
As a result, recent advances in Go-playing programs have actually come simply because a new "evaluation function" has arisen: random play. When you get to the end of your search tree, to evaluate whether a move is good or not, you simply randomly play a bunch of games starting at that position, with random moves by both sides, and see what happens. It's a pretty dumb "evaluation function", and isn't really even very static (so it's much slower than, say, most chess evaluation functions), but it has still resulted in a reasonable increase in program strength.
Dlugar
There are different shades of libertarians just as there are with many things in life. Many libertarians are not complete anarchists, however; they see the role of government as being important for market failures, such as pollution. Charging a pollution tax on the marginal cost of pollution would, in my opinion, completely compatible with a libertarian outlook.
I have no excuses for your hypocritical friend and his driveway, however.
Dlugar
No kidding. Aim Higher.
So while it's true that the intent of DRM is to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted material, it is also true that the intent of DRM is to prevent people from making full use of some data they have.
Dlugar
I was referring to the second "i.e." where it should have read "for example".
Dlugar
But you must admit it has raised a human cry.
Dlugar
Dlugar
Actually, "accusative" just means "objective case" (used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb). The link you posted lists "whom" as being able to be used in Modern English as the accusative, dative, or instrumental. "Objective" is a common way to refer to the accusative case in English however.
Dlugar
Dlugar
No worries about copyright? In today's environment?
If a "cut-list" for a DVD is considered possible copyright infringement as a "derivative work", you can sure as hell bet that a voice-over commentary intended for a DVD can be considered possible copyright infringement by today's overzealous copyright holders.
Dlugar
<shameless plug>Not if you use Opera!</shameless plug>
Ever heard of Nupedia? It was the "second Wikipedia" you describe. What happened to it? It disappeared several years ago--nobody wanted to use it. Wikipedia nearly always had superior content.
Dlugar
Dlugar
Here's my screenshot as well:
http://trantor.indessed.com/screenshot.png
The only thing extraneous I can see is the status bar at the bottom, which is (I believe) off by default in Opera 9, although I prefer it. What more do you want?!
Dlugar
Angel Boris actually has a Bacon Number of 2:
1. Angel Boris was in Suicide Blonde (1999) with Robert Deacon
2. Robert Deacon was in Wild Things (1998) with Kevin Bacon
(Source: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia)
Which makes three steps from you to Kevin Bacon. HTH, HAND!
Dlugar
I sang the same song at bible camp. Same tune (and actions) as "Mother Gooneybird had many chicks", for those of you familiar with that "hokey pokey"ish song.
Dlugar
"whole lot of people" very well might be equal to "tiniest fraction of Windows users".
Dlugar
1) Yes, all three groups can be helped, but typically not by giving them money.
2) Yes, I've had beggars refuse food. I used to keep a loaf of bread in the car and offer it to any person begging for money--most would refuse.
I know, we can call it something crazy like "OpenGL"! Or, if we need a framework that does more than just 3D effects, we can call it DirectMedia or something like that, just a simple layer of code that provides typical game functionality--"Simple DirectMedia Layer", or SDL for short.
Brilliant, man, brilliant!
Thanks for the clarification. Do you know if this idea of "it's okay to prioritize as long as you prioritize everyone's the same" is present in all proposed "net neutrality" legislation, or only in some of the bills? Have there been discussions as to whether the wording of the proposed legislation will successfully achieve this or not? It seems like that simple idea might be somewhat complex to put into enforceable legalese without having unforeseen ramifications. Has there been any discussion at this level, or is it all just "Google should pay us money!" "Nuh uh, they already pay their own ISP!" "Whatever!" "Totally!"? So far I haven't seen anything beyond the level of Junior High debate.
Dlugar
It seems like, among all the applications that use IP, some of them are time-sensitive, and some of them are time-insensitive. And ones that are time-sensitive seem to be quite variable in the amount of time-sensitivity. For example, I may want to download or upload some file overnight--as long as it's done by the following morning, I don't care how long it took the packets to get from point A to point B. Or I may be surfing the web--in which case I'll probably want the packets to move pretty much as fast as possible. Or I may be on an interactive ssh session, in which case I may also want faster packets.
If I understand it correctly, this whole "net neutrality" thing makes everyone treat "bits as bits"--my overnight download is exactly the same as my web surfing which is exactly the same as my ssh session. This seems like a huge waste--why shouldn't we have the ability to shape our bandwidth based on our needs? Obviously there's room for abuse (such as Comcast blocking or degrading VoIP packets from competing companies, but leaving its own alone) but aren't we throwing the baby out with the bathwater by disallowing any sort of discrimination based on packet contents?
Or am I just completely misunderstanding the whole "net neutrality" thing?
Dlugar