I think it's great and all that they're doing such a potentially fun/edgykayshunull program... but still...
Robot Wars had that guy from Red Dwarf!
What's Battlebots got to beat that, huh?
In the words of Scott Evil: "*Cough* *Cough* *Ripoff!*"
Not that I think the show's a bad idea... just that it ought to have something to differentiate it-- y'know... like an Iron Chef bonus round or something (with the chefs made from real iron!)
See, when you take the time and effort to blatantly rip off two cult TV hits, then you're actually doing the viewer a service, by compressing two shows down to a manageable 30 minute time slot, thereby freeing up everybody's time to go play Networked Pong ("what's your Pong ping?")
Then again, I hope they don't recycle too many TV favorites... I mean, if Comedy Central gets real cheap, then we might end up watching a gruesome, lopsided deathmatch as some hulking, firebreathing, multiple-chainsaw-propeller-wielding chrome behemoth Mech's mammoth shadow looms over the cowering, doomed duo of Servo and Crow!
Eep!
Okay, I promise... this is the second-to-last time that I check the Slashdot headlines right after drinking 2 bottles of generic store brand cola! (From now on, just 1 case of Red Bull oughta last me a whole week!)
Mmmm... now bring on the educational robotic violence!....
"
(Oh yes, I also got in a debate over whether the halfling female or gnomish female (As depicted in the 3rd ed. phb) would be better to have sex with.
I, of course, chose the gnome. And stand by (above?) my decision. So take my opinion on women with 1cp worth of salt.)"
At least you didn't put a write-in vote for the half-orc! (Shudder)
"I immediatly wonder where one
gets a chainmail bikini sized for a 300 pound woman and whether the artisan was properly compensated for the
incurred RSI."
And I quote, from the sidebar on the top-right corner of page 105 of the D&D 3rd edition Player's Handbook:
"The information on Table 7-5: Armor is for Medium-size creatures... Armor for Large characters costs double and weighs twice as much, and for Huge creatures it costs quadruple and weighs five times as much. Armor for even larger creatures must be specially made and has no standard price or weight."
Hehehehehe. Funny as all hell, but than you for maing me spit my drin out my nose... now the "" ey on my eyboard is stuc.:-(
Oay, now I'm off to finish Gees, my favorite boo by Jon atz.
Re:This Must Be More Complex Than It Sounds . . .
on
Rock-Paper-Scissors
·
· Score: 2
"And I could, by picking moves randomly, beat Kasparov at Chess."
Exactly.
Imagine how embarrassing that would be!
Re:This Must Be More Complex Than It Sounds . . .
on
Rock-Paper-Scissors
·
· Score: 1
Try this. Write code that picks a random number, 0 or 1. Have it pick 50,000 of these, and compare the quantity of each number, and add an iteration. See how many iterations it takes before the 0's beat the 1's by 5000 or more.
See? Eventually, it will.
My point was that a pure random (or pseudorandom?) Roshambot is never guaranteed to finish in the middle of the pack. It almost definitely will, but it's not absolutely certain. When dealing with randomness, there's always the possibility of a fluke, even if that possibility is mathematically insignificant. It still could happen, just as you could get smacked on the head by a stray meteorite. Not bloody likely, but nevertheless possible.
Obviously, to beat a pure "good ole rock" bot, it'd have to randomly pick thousands of "paper" choices, which in and of itself makes it damned unlikely, but there is no reason it can't happen. It's incredibly improbable, but not impossible.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no "Nuclear Bomb" which destroys everything.
If only we had known that in the 1950s. Instead of a Cold War, we could have devoted our computing power to perfecting the art of Sim-RoShamBo. See what FUD does to society?!?
int roshambot(void) { return 0;/* Good ol' rock. Nothing beats rock. */ }
Re:This Must Be More Complex Than It Sounds . . .
on
Rock-Paper-Scissors
·
· Score: 2
In their FAQ, they tell you not to submit the random strategy, because it'll be guaranteed to finish in the middle of the pack.
Bull. If enough people submit programs that use the 'random strategy', then one of them will win by sheer chance. If you've got thousands of Roshambots choosing at random, then the sequences of a few of them are going to coincidentally look a lot like the winning strategy of the smartest 'bots. It's the infinite-monkeys-on-typewriters problem, just simplified.
The sheer number of creative coders for Linux is one of its greatest advantages. Make a standardized Linux console system, create a (SDL/GGI/whatever-based) standardized game API, and even coders who have never used Linux will be flocking to the platform, simply because of the ease of entry, and the ability to reach large numbers of people with their offerings.
Of course, quality control may be a problem. One reason Nintendo is so successful is that it earns its reputation for quality by testing, testing, and retesting all titles (even those by third parties) before allowing their release.
It would definitely be harder to do that for a more open system.
On the other hand, nothing beats putting in the cartridge, turning on the console, and seeing a stylized splash screen boldly proclaiming, "This game is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Press 'B, A, B, A, Up, Down, B, A, Left, Right, B, A, Start' for details."
While this, in conjunction with Freenet may make censorship more difficult, and possibly more tricky from a PR point of view, it's a simple matter for a large governmental body to find and stamp out all the freenet-type servers in its jurisdiction.
The best weapon against censorship is getting the general public rallied to your cause. Slinking around in the underground only makes you look more criminal to the average joe, and easier for any censorial body to sway public opinion against you. (Remember the panic about "hackers" from the early 90s to the present?)
Failing that, though, the second best weapon, IMO, would be true anonymity. Would it be possible to have host addresses spontaneously, randomly generated, encrypted, and routed to the destination in a kind of virtual circuit?
Then, when the connection is terminated (or even beforehand if constant generation of new addresses is part of the scheme), the address is discarded, never to be used again (except perhaps by coincidence).
If someone wants to communicate, um, "nonymously" (as opposed to anonymously, of course:), they'd simply use digital signatures, but anonymity would be the default.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how the non-addressing scheme would be implemented, and it would be of limited use to servers (which would require static addresses anyway), but with a shared client/server mechanism such as Gnutella, Freenet, (or OpenCOLA, for that matter;), you could have a "swarm" network. Like a swarm of insects, you can definitely see that the swarm's there, you can tell when one insect bites you, but you can't track down that individual insect, as it gets lost in the swarm again.
Or something like that. (It's 1:50-ish a.m., so I'm not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed...:)
Man, now "Slash" doesn't even sound like a real word... it's like when you say "dolphin" over and over again 'til you start wondering who in their right mind would build a doll with fins.
How do they pull that one off? Maybe by day, the iPAQ makes you a mild-mannered reporter, but by night... it makes you a grouchy, irritable reporter... (with superhuman crankiness).
include season.h might help you qualify it as a true haiku
Interesting... if "include season.h" is 5 syllables, does that mean that you don't pronounce the dot? I've always said it, "Include season DOT h", not "Include season h"...
Slashdot Mirror
Warning: Incoherent Mumbling Rant
Purpose: Unknown
I think it's great and all that they're doing such a potentially fun/edgykayshunull program... but still...
Robot Wars had that guy from Red Dwarf!
What's Battlebots got to beat that, huh?
In the words of Scott Evil: "*Cough* *Cough* *Ripoff!*"
Not that I think the show's a bad idea... just that it ought to have something to differentiate it-- y'know... like an Iron Chef bonus round or something (with the chefs made from real iron!)
See, when you take the time and effort to blatantly rip off two cult TV hits, then you're actually doing the viewer a service, by compressing two shows down to a manageable 30 minute time slot, thereby freeing up everybody's time to go play Networked Pong ("what's your Pong ping?")
Then again, I hope they don't recycle too many TV favorites... I mean, if Comedy Central gets real cheap, then we might end up watching a gruesome, lopsided deathmatch as some hulking, firebreathing, multiple-chainsaw-propeller-wielding chrome behemoth Mech's mammoth shadow looms over the cowering, doomed duo of Servo and Crow!
Eep!
Okay, I promise... this is the second-to-last time that I check the Slashdot headlines right after drinking 2 bottles of generic store brand cola! (From now on, just 1 case of Red Bull oughta last me a whole week!)
Mmmm... now bring on the educational robotic violence!....
At least you didn't put a write-in vote for the half-orc! (Shudder)
And I quote, from the sidebar on the top-right corner of page 105 of the D&D 3rd edition Player's Handbook:
"The information on Table 7-5: Armor is for Medium-size creatures... Armor for Large characters costs double and weighs twice as much, and for Huge creatures it costs quadruple and weighs five times as much. Armor for even larger creatures must be specially made and has no standard price or weight."
"Simp-son, Ho-mer Simp-son,
He's the greatest guy in hist-o-ry
From the
Town of Spring-field
He's about to hit a chestnut tree--
Aiiiiieee!! <CRASH!> "
Grsyzylax, Imperial Grand Jester of the Chef Nebula, declined to comment.
That's why Genetically Engineered "Smart Mice"[tm] use real interstellar sugar!
Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?
.tar.gz
Gotta love metallic "flesh" tones ;)
It's good to know that at least some good will come of this. :-)
Oay, now I'm off to finish Gees, my favorite boo by Jon atz.
Exactly.
Imagine how embarrassing that would be!
See? Eventually, it will.
My point was that a pure random (or pseudorandom?) Roshambot is never guaranteed to finish in the middle of the pack. It almost definitely will, but it's not absolutely certain. When dealing with randomness, there's always the possibility of a fluke, even if that possibility is mathematically insignificant. It still could happen, just as you could get smacked on the head by a stray meteorite. Not bloody likely, but nevertheless possible.
Obviously, to beat a pure "good ole rock" bot, it'd have to randomly pick thousands of "paper" choices, which in and of itself makes it damned unlikely, but there is no reason it can't happen. It's incredibly improbable, but not impossible.
Touché.
D'oh!
If only we had known that in the 1950s. Instead of a Cold War, we could have devoted our computing power to perfecting the art of Sim-RoShamBo. See what FUD does to society?!?
int roshambot(void) /* Good ol' rock. Nothing beats rock. */
{
return 0;
}
Bull. If enough people submit programs that use the 'random strategy', then one of them will win by sheer chance. If you've got thousands of Roshambots choosing at random, then the sequences of a few of them are going to coincidentally look a lot like the winning strategy of the smartest 'bots. It's the infinite-monkeys-on-typewriters problem, just simplified.
Of course, quality control may be a problem. One reason Nintendo is so successful is that it earns its reputation for quality by testing, testing, and retesting all titles (even those by third parties) before allowing their release.
It would definitely be harder to do that for a more open system.
On the other hand, nothing beats putting in the cartridge, turning on the console, and seeing a stylized splash screen boldly proclaiming, "This game is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Press 'B, A, B, A, Up, Down, B, A, Left, Right, B, A, Start' for details."
The best weapon against censorship is getting the general public rallied to your cause. Slinking around in the underground only makes you look more criminal to the average joe, and easier for any censorial body to sway public opinion against you. (Remember the panic about "hackers" from the early 90s to the present?)
Failing that, though, the second best weapon, IMO, would be true anonymity. Would it be possible to have host addresses spontaneously, randomly generated, encrypted, and routed to the destination in a kind of virtual circuit?
Then, when the connection is terminated (or even beforehand if constant generation of new addresses is part of the scheme), the address is discarded, never to be used again (except perhaps by coincidence).
If someone wants to communicate, um, "nonymously" (as opposed to anonymously, of course :), they'd simply use digital signatures, but anonymity would be the default.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how the non-addressing scheme would be implemented, and it would be of limited use to servers (which would require static addresses anyway), but with a shared client/server mechanism such as Gnutella, Freenet, (or OpenCOLA, for that matter ;), you could have a "swarm" network. Like a swarm of insects, you can definitely see that the swarm's there, you can tell when one insect bites you, but you can't track down that individual insect, as it gets lost in the swarm again.
Or something like that. (It's 1:50-ish a.m., so I'm not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed... :)
Serve Slashdot via a special "Slash" protocol. This, with the above, gives us:
slash://slashdot.dot/.slash/
"slash colon slash slash slash dot dot dot slash dot slash slash"
Man, now "Slash" doesn't even sound like a real word... it's like when you say "dolphin" over and over again 'til you start wondering who in their right mind would build a doll with fins.
How do they pull that one off? Maybe by day, the iPAQ makes you a mild-mannered reporter, but by night... it makes you a grouchy, irritable reporter... (with superhuman crankiness).
You should give the above post
Karma as follows:
Plus one, insightful
Plus one for humor as well
Minus one, BASIC
Interesting... if "include season.h" is 5 syllables, does that mean that you don't pronounce the dot? I've always said it, "Include season DOT h", not "Include season h"...
Something to ponder...
Lamentablemente, no
Por qué lo crees?
(I am forced to say
Lamentably it's not so
The last line's a bitch!)