It has often been argued that competition is good, and therefore we need both KDE and Gnome. But after reading Miguels very nice article it seems to me that this is not the case. The thing we really need is common standarts. If KDE and Gnome are not willing to make a common standart then it might be time for one of them to die.
It's funny how Katz can get such a reaction every time he posts something. I mean the net is full of people saying all sorts of stuff. Some is useful some is not. There lots of old farts are out there, but why bother? If you guys don't like the stuff that Katz writes, you can just click on preferences and turn him off.
The funny thing is that nobody does this. (At least plenty of people don't). Even though most people disagree with him, the Karma scores, and the number of reples tell that he is one of the most poplular writers on slashdot. It's so nice to have someone to talk about.
Thank you Katz for creating all this fuzz every time you post an article:)
Priate fertility clinics (is this the future?)
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Walk-By DNA Testing
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Now this stuff will really begin to rock when fertility clinics gets their hand on this machine. Send the contains of your vacuum ceaner device to the clinic. Arrive there a month later when the genes have been multiplicated and have a child with the man whose genes were contained in your vacuum cleaner device.
Yes i know this is not possible right now, but it seems to me that the tecnical side of it will be rality within 10 - 20 years, and somehow it sounds scary to me.
Looking at the papers I fail to see what these guys have invented. Hot air makes pieces of skin foat upwards... But I had this feature long before they made the patent. Actually my forefathers have had it since they stopped being reptiles. The only thing these guys added was a vacuum cleaner device.
Now I have a vacuum cleaner device at home. It occasionally sucks up old pieces of skin (and other creepy stuff). If I started analysig the contents of my vacuum cleaner would that be breaking the patent? What kind of a patent is this?
I have yet to see an open source project that is not a clone or a close relative of something that already exists in the world. Perhaps it's done better, but that's not the point.
Well actually most the popular games today are either wolfenstein clones (such as halflife) or dune clones (such as starcraft). In other words this is what people want. So if we want to create GPL'ed games as an alternative to the games you can buy in the stores, we must make the games that people want to play
Personally I think that the worldforge project is doing the right thing. They are writing an engine that you can use to create a diablo clone or an ultima clone. But then again the engine is extensible in such a way that you can also implement a starcraft or pong. This way they are almost sure to make a game that someone would like to play, but if some creative person comes along with an idea to create something completely new, the engine can also provide the right tools for that.
By the way I don't understand all this fuzz about graphics and new ideas. I usually play xpilot This game looks like an amiga game from the 80'es. but its still good fun. Who needs this new creativity anyway? No flame intened, but I just love that game:)
What is a good program (a gametheoretic view)
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Rock-Paper-Scissors
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The programs that win the RoShamBo competition are the ones that can take advantage of lesser opponent. So when they discover that their opponent is playing stupidly they use it against him (or it). This definition of a master player is very different from the one you use in normal (null sum) game theory. There you start out asserting that your opponent is a master player, and that he can read your thoughts. In this scenario the only thing to do is to do something random. So the standart game theoretic analysis leads to a random player described by a uniform distribution. So the two analysises leads to different definitions of a master player.
Let's compare this analysis to chess. My father once had a chess program. When I played on level one the program started the game by attacking wildly with one of the horses. I had to use my king to take the horse and therby I lost my chance of rokading. Then the program attacked me with all the officers and I lost quickly. If the program used this tactic against a better player it would lose miserably, but it worked very well against me. Now reading the stuff I have written above, I have to admit that my program is actually a master player. When I chose to play on level 1, I must be a lesser player. And therefore the best thing to do is to take advantage of my weakness.
Before commenting on the stuff he says. Have a look at the people paying he him to say it. If IE was split into a separate company. The same could easily happen to Netscape.
As I see it AOL is actually a much bigger evil than Microsoft. Somehow don't like the idea of media companies that are not economically independent.
Using fly wheels in a bus is very smart. When the bus stops the kinetic energy is layered in the fly wheel. When the bus starts again it uses energy from the fly wheel.
This kind of busses was used in Copenhagen for some years. For some reason they stopped buying this kind of busses. I think they started using gas powered bussus instead. Sadly the gas powered busses had a bad habit of catching fire, so maybe switching was a bad choice. I don't know what they use now.
No, because the code's author has the right to redistribute his code under another license as he/she sees fit. So basically he gets with nVidia, comes up with a "GetRidOfItASAP License" and there you go. The phone call and the agreement between Mr. Metzler and nVidia becomes a binding and legal contract/license.
Could someone elaborate on this one? I thought this would result in two different distributions, with the same code.
Of course they could always start claiming that there was an existing agreement before the driver was distributed but that is a different subject
Chess has full information
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Solving Chess?
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I think I agree with you definition of a perfect game, but you are refering to the theory of two-player zero-sum games. This is a theory that is developed for games where both players move at the same time and they do not have full information about the other players move. An example of such a game is paper, rock and scissors. In chess players do not move at the same time. Therefore the chess is somewhat a different game.
The word strategy in game theroy
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Solving Chess?
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I think you have to distinguish between two different meanings of the word strategy. You are refering to the meaning of strategy in board gaming whereas he is refering to the meaning of strategy in game theory.
How do we discover when the problem is solved?
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Solving Chess?
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Even if we had a lot of time time, I don't think that the monkey solution would be productive. The problem is that we need someone to discover when the problem is solved. We might try to intend to a write down all the moves of the monkeys. But then we would have to spend eternity analysing the moves We could also try give each monkey a typewriter and wait for one of them to write a complete solution to chess. But then we have to read everything that they read.
1G$ Prize to Go program beating pro.
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Solving Chess?
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By the way. The ING cup will pay $1 mill to the first program that wins the cup and beats a human Taiwanese pro.
Quantum computers will solve this
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Solving Chess?
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If anyone ever succeeds in creating a quantum computer, the storage problems problems will probably be solved. A state in the quantum computer can correspond to a superpositition of a lot af different states of the game. So n bits in a binary quantum computer may be able to describe 2^n states of the game. I haven't heard of any quantum chess algorithms yet, but using a good algoritm, the quantum chess computer should be able to do a kind of massive parallel computing. Here is a nice introduction to quantum computing I am not sure if quantum computing will allow us to solve chess completely, but at least it will probably lead to a great improvement.
The subject of cheating in online games has been discussed earlier on slashdot http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/26/1255258.shtm l
As I see it there are two good ways of avoiding cheating in a GPL game. In nethack the sourcecode is open, but each user recieves an encrypted client. I think that the developers claim that Nethack is still covered by GPL. (Actually this has been a mystery to me)
The Worldforge project (former Altima) is an effort to make an engine for creating massive multiplayer online roleplaying games. The engine will be GPL but the worlds will not be not. The Worldforge team decided that the best way to avoid cheating was simply to have a thin client.
These two ways of solving the problem have different advantages. In an ultima-clone I think that a thin client can solve most of the problems. In a wolfenstein clone (such as Quake), aiming is so important that a thin client is not enough.
I study physics and I have used a lot of packages that I have got from people around the globe. These packages have been send to me via e-mail, so I know who I should blame if something goes wrong but if one of these programs contained a virus I wouldn't be able to tell.
If viruses start to come around, I don't think that anti-virus-programs is the only right solution. Aa an example dedebian is updated so slowly that it will always be behind in the race.
Instead of developing we should develop a kind of secure sites, where people can post there personal programs and have them virustested automaticly.
You may need a for-loop
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Date Pagers
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· Score: 0
If you really want to send of somebodys alarm you shold have a pager that changes your personality every 1 second. Eventually you will end up with a personality that matches. that would be fun
I do not think that this is a lasting problem. The reason is that there is a big number new non-hacker linux users. These new users will prefer office solutions like staroffice and Koffice to older editors like vi and emacs (which I use myself) Everybody that makes open source programs wants to have users, and when it becomes visible that the somewhat friendlier office solutions steals away the users, I think that open source developers will start to think differently.
If people would just check out the proper search engines, Amazon would have no customers. If you use www.dealpilot.com or similar search engines you will often find that Amazon is 50% more expensive than the cheapest offer. At least this is true in Europe
Slashdot Mirror
It has often been argued that competition is good, and therefore we need both KDE and Gnome. But after reading Miguels very nice article it seems to me that this is not the case. The thing we really need is common standarts. If KDE and Gnome are not willing to make a common standart then it might be time for one of them to die.
The funny thing is that nobody does this. (At least plenty of people don't). Even though most people disagree with him, the Karma scores, and the number of reples tell that he is one of the most poplular writers on slashdot. It's so nice to have someone to talk about.
Thank you Katz for creating all this fuzz every time you post an article :)
Yes i know this is not possible right now, but it seems to me that the tecnical side of it will be rality within 10 - 20 years, and somehow it sounds scary to me.
Now I have a vacuum cleaner device at home. It occasionally sucks up old pieces of skin (and other creepy stuff). If I started analysig the contents of my vacuum cleaner would that be breaking the patent? What kind of a patent is this?
Here is a corresponding cnn story
Well actually most the popular games today are either wolfenstein clones (such as halflife) or dune clones (such as starcraft). In other words this is what people want. So if we want to create GPL'ed games as an alternative to the games you can buy in the stores, we must make the games that people want to play
Personally I think that the worldforge project is doing the right thing. They are writing an engine that you can use to create a diablo clone or an ultima clone. But then again the engine is extensible in such a way that you can also implement a starcraft or pong. This way they are almost sure to make a game that someone would like to play, but if some creative person comes along with an idea to create something completely new, the engine can also provide the right tools for that.
By the way I don't understand all this fuzz about graphics and new ideas. I usually play xpilot This game looks like an amiga game from the 80'es. but its still good fun. Who needs this new creativity anyway? No flame intened, but I just love that game :)
Let's compare this analysis to chess. My father once had a chess program. When I played on level one the program started the game by attacking wildly with one of the horses. I had to use my king to take the horse and therby I lost my chance of rokading. Then the program attacked me with all the officers and I lost quickly. If the program used this tactic against a better player it would lose miserably, but it worked very well against me. Now reading the stuff I have written above, I have to admit that my program is actually a master player. When I chose to play on level 1, I must be a lesser player. And therefore the best thing to do is to take advantage of my weakness.
As I see it AOL is actually a much bigger evil than Microsoft. Somehow don't like the idea of media companies that are not economically independent.
This kind of busses was used in Copenhagen for some years. For some reason they stopped buying this kind of busses. I think they started using gas powered bussus instead. Sadly the gas powered busses had a bad habit of catching fire, so maybe switching was a bad choice. I don't know what they use now.
Further reading on fly wheel engines: Danish experimentarium, Canadian traffic something and last but not the least Google search
The following book describes the implementation of a Turing machine in game of life:
Winning ways (vol 1 or 2), by
ER Berlekamp,
JH Conway and
RK Guy,
Academic press 1983
Could someone elaborate on this one? I thought this would result in two different distributions, with the same code.
Of course they could always start claiming that there was an existing agreement before the driver was distributed but that is a different subject
I think I agree with you definition of a perfect game, but you are refering to the theory of two-player zero-sum games. This is a theory that is developed for games where both players move at the same time and they do not have full information about the other players move. An example of such a game is paper, rock and scissors. In chess players do not move at the same time. Therefore the chess is somewhat a different game.
I think you have to distinguish between two different meanings of the word strategy. You are refering to the meaning of strategy in board gaming whereas he is refering to the meaning of strategy in game theory.
Even if we had a lot of time time, I don't think that the monkey solution would be productive. The problem is that we need someone to discover when the problem is solved. We might try to intend to a write down all the moves of the monkeys. But then we would have to spend eternity analysing the moves We could also try give each monkey a typewriter and wait for one of them to write a complete solution to chess. But then we have to read everything that they read.
By the way. The ING cup will pay $1 mill to the first program that wins the cup and beats a human Taiwanese pro.
If anyone ever succeeds in creating a quantum computer, the storage problems problems will probably be solved. A state in the quantum computer can correspond to a superpositition of a lot af different states of the game. So n bits in a binary quantum computer may be able to describe 2^n states of the game. I haven't heard of any quantum chess algorithms yet, but using a good algoritm, the quantum chess computer should be able to do a kind of massive parallel computing. Here is a nice introduction to quantum computing I am not sure if quantum computing will allow us to solve chess completely, but at least it will probably lead to a great improvement.
The subject of cheating in online games has been discussed earlier on slashdotm l
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/26/1255258.sht
As I see it there are two good ways of avoiding cheating in a GPL game. In nethack the sourcecode is open, but each user recieves an encrypted client. I think that the developers claim that Nethack is still covered by GPL. (Actually this has been a mystery to me)
The Worldforge project (former Altima) is an effort to make an engine for creating massive multiplayer online roleplaying games. The engine will be GPL but the worlds will not be not. The Worldforge team decided that the best way to avoid cheating was simply to have a thin client.
These two ways of solving the problem have different advantages. In an ultima-clone I think that a thin client can solve most of the problems. In a wolfenstein clone (such as Quake), aiming is so important that a thin client is not enough.
I study physics and I have used a lot of packages that I have got from people around the globe. These packages have been send to me via e-mail, so I know who I should blame if something goes wrong but if one of these programs contained a virus I wouldn't be able to tell.
If viruses start to come around, I don't think that anti-virus-programs is the only right solution. Aa an example dedebian is updated so slowly that it will always be behind in the race.
Instead of developing we should develop a kind of secure sites, where people can post there personal programs and have them virustested automaticly.
If you really want to send of somebodys alarm you shold have a pager that changes your personality every 1 second. Eventually you will end up with a personality that matches. that would be fun
I do not think that this is a lasting problem. The reason is that there is a big number new non-hacker linux users. These new users will prefer office solutions like staroffice and Koffice to older editors like vi and emacs (which I use myself) Everybody that makes open source programs wants to have users, and when it becomes visible that the somewhat friendlier office solutions steals away the users, I think that open source developers will start to think differently.
How many hours did you work last week 0 1 32.9 other
If people would just check out the proper search engines, Amazon would have no customers. If you use www.dealpilot.com or similar search engines you will often find that Amazon is 50% more expensive than the cheapest offer. At least this is true in Europe