It may seem that way until you realize that the average programmer may take more than a day to solve the same problem that these guys solve in 30 minutes (If he solves it at all). The code of the average programmer will probably also take ten times as much space.
So if your average programmer takes more than a day to solve a small localized problem, how much time will it take for him to solve a larger problem? While I can agree that overestimating the importance of problem solving skills isn't good, underestimating the importance is much worse.
Since a single flaw in the code leads to 0 points, good competition programmers are also very good at seeing special cases and avoiding bugs. If being able to produce code quickly and bugfree isn't useful I don't know what is.
Opponents of TopCoder like competitions often argue that because there is time pressure, writing easy to understand code is discouraged. From the little experience I have, I can definetly say that this is far from the truth. While you have produce the code quickly, it is also a great advantage that the code is clean for more than one reason.
Cleanly written code is less likely to contain bugs or cause problems with special cases. Since a single mistake will cost all points this is more than enough reason to keep the program clean. Clean code usually also takes up less place due to the fact that it is clean (doesn't contain unneeded stuff). These competitions also encourage library reuse instead of reinventing the wheel (It is quicker and more bug free to reuse code).
Since all problems at TopCoder have well defined in parameter ranges, and only require that the solution takes less than 2 seconds to run, there is often more than enough time to use an inefficent but simple to code and read algorithm. A good programmer will see that recursion can be used to solve a problem while a bad programmer will try to solve it with an iterative approach which takes more space and is much less readable and much easier to make a mistake with.
There is of course things that occurs that isn't that practical in real applications. The code usually contains little if no comments since there is time pressure. Variable names are often short and random since there is no time for figuring out the best name.
Your argument violates the prinicipal of not doing premature optimization. The choice between ++x and x++ should depend on readability.
If you are using it as a standalone statement the obvious choice is x++ in most object oriented languages since it follows the convention of writing the object first and the action afterwards.
If it is not standalone the different variants have different meanings so there is no need to choose because you are forced to use the correct one or the code won't work.
For me it is the main feature that Opera has. Zooming only text is pretty useless since it completly deforms the layout of most webpages.
As far as I know, Opera is the only browser that works decently with a high dpi monitor.
Another poster in this thread said that images doesn't look good when zoomed. I have to disagree with that. An image viewed at 200% zoom, 1600x1200 res, looks just as good as a not zoomed image at 800x600.
Actually the bittorrent protocol does in a sense make you download from people close to you, because you exchange data with those peers that give you the best speeds. This is most likely to happen if they are closer to you.
Still, since Akamai and its equals are a high level kind of multicasting, and are hard to beat when it comes to network efficency.
The biggest advantage of bittorrent is that it automatically charges a small micropayment from its peers in the currency of bandwidth.
The biggest problems with bittorrent are NAT (which is an abomination in itself) and ISPs that cap bittorrent speed. (which is an even bigger abomination)
eMule is to BT as plan economy is to market economy, or to put it in more correct terms:
The eMule community has decided that clients aren't allowed to do certain things that would make them better more efficent at retrieving data from the network. If a client does it it is banned by the rest of the community. For a full list of things that aren't allowed you will have to check the eMule forums.
The first bittorrent client and all clients since has been constructed around the principals learned from the Prisoner's Dilemma. Basically that means that they play tit-for-tat with other clients.
Bittorrent also has a few important improvements compared to eMule, including the ability to set the size of pieces to less than 8 MB. It is also much more centered around swarms, while eMule focuses on sharing of individual rarer files.
eMule does have a more utopian view on its community, and while that is nice, it does suffer because of it when it comes to sharing popular files. Note that BT wouldn't work very well as a general file sharing client. It relies very much on swarming to achieve the optimum efficency. When you only have one seed and one leech you can't play tit for tat.
There still remains one big advantage that BT has over other p2p apps, and it is a big one.
Unlike more inefficent protocols, BT choose to implement basic game theory into the design. While it is not nescessary for a client to implement the tit-for-tat algorithm (see prisoner's dilemma), pretty much all do because not implementing it would make the client work less efficently in the BT network.
Other p2p networks try to reward uploading in different ways, but all those ways are far less efficent than using the basics learned from the prisoner's dilemma.
I agree with most of what you said. I just wanted to give you a small tips about how to get the old Google Groups interface. Since Gougle Groups 2 is still in beta the new interface hasn't been propagated to Google's country domains. This means that you can still use groups.google.ca etc. to get the old interface.
The chicken idea was the best one I have heard so far. Guaranteed to annoy gankers while not making it possible for multiple low levels to grief a higher level character.
Hurting the ego is much more effective than hurting stats/reputation.
And then the real question is asked... How do you gank someone who is in a guild? They should have atleast a couple of friends around at most times.
And if you really don't have fun playing the game because your guild requires that you play on a PvP server, maybe you should consider joining a better guild that likes PvE more.
OK, that sounded a little trollish, but seriously, Blizzard can't be expected to change the rules of the PvP server just because your guild plays on it.
Also as I mentioned in a previous post, All dishonor systems are flawed and Blizzard knows it and even said so in the final beta.
There are lots of things to do in WoW. First let me mention the four core values that drive most people playing MMORPGs
Explorer/Achiver/Socializer/Killer
Most people don't exclusivly belong to one group but like do some of each. There are even tests you can do on the internet to find out how much of each group you belong to.
Explorers probably have it the best in WoW. There are lots of details in the world of warcraft. Blizzard has done a great job adding small details everywhere. The huge amount of quests with stories behind them is a further bonus for explorers. To finish it off blizzard has done a great job making each class require its own unique playing style. Rage/Energy for Warriors/Rogues was a brilliant idea.
Socializers are very much dependent on the community and less on the game. WoW is easy to solo which is bad for this group, however WoW also makes it easy to create temporary small groups which offsets the previous badness factor. Overall I would say that WoW is average for socializing.
Killers should enjoy WoW decently. The game has a rather quick pace for an MMORPG and decent skills are required to play your class proficently as well as to adept to the opponents class. The biggest problem for killers right now is the lack of any real competition. This is where Battlegrounds/PvP Ranking comes in. I agree that this will be important to keep Killers in the game. Otherwise they will be lost to another MMORPG or to a NON-MMORPG like guildwars which emphasizes skill.
Achievers are probably those least satisfied with WoW. This is the group that contains the most powergamers and by now most of them should probably have atleast one character at level 60. The reason achievers aren't happy with WoW is the same reason WoW is popular. WoW is far from the grind that games like Everquest/FF XI are. It is possible for casual gamers to reach the max level in WoW. Achievers despise this because they want to be better than the casual gamer because they spend more time in the game. They also have nothing to do once they have reached the max level because leveling is what they live for. Raids are still something to do, but there is only so much raid content.
A good deal of the achievers will probably jump ship and play another MMORPG instead but I am fine with that because a single game can't suit everyone. Blizzard knows that and will hopefully continue to support the more casual gamers. More high level content will come out but not at the rate the Achievers want.
If I sounded biased against Achievers in the above text, it wasn't really meant that way. It is just that they need to realize that games like Everquest is more suited for around the clock thread milling. The big selling point of WoW is that you don't have to be online 24 hours a day 7 days a week and a large amount of people are willing to pay for that.
Actually, one of the big comments that Blizzard did during the final open beta was that the dishonor system had been abandoned because it was hard if not impossible to program a dishonor system that couldn't be abused.
More specifically, if you have a dishonor system the low level characters can hang around a higher level enemy waiting for their pray to become weak before attacking and the higher level guy can do nothing because of dishonor. There are ways to solve this problem but solving it causes other similar problems instead.
The biggest problem I think is that most people want PvE but choose PvP because they don't know that PvP is possible on PvE servers also, except that on PvE servers all PvPing is consentual.
PvP servers in MMORPGs will probably always be for hardcore players because that is what happens when you allow PvPing without limits in a level based RPG.
Another thing with WoW is that lots of people is playing it as their first MMORPG and many of those probably choose PvP servers. For more experienced MMORPG players that don't like griefing style play the choice of PvE was obvious. Games like UO, Everquest, etc. had already proven what WoW continues to prove.
That is completly incorrect. The starcraft AI could be beaten playing 1 vs 7 if you knew what you were doing and played on the correct maps and exploited the flaws in the AI.
The map is best determined by the distance from the AI homebase to yours. Farther distance gives a few extra seconds that determines life or death.
By getting a good enough defense (especially at the front door) you can hold of the computer AIs with minimal expenditures until they are out of resources. That is your cue to slowly move in and destroy them one by one.
Terran was probably the most easy to do so with. Tanks with bunkers in front of them can hold of most things that come through the front door and later in the game the base should be quite heavily turreted. You can also use supply depots to completly block of the base entrance. I do consider that to be exploiting the path finding AI and it is possible to do it without them.
Protoss makes good use of a massive static defense early on. Place pylons in front of the cannons to make the AI target those first. A couple of reavers will also help out and as the game goes on you need to get air superiority (carriers) quickly. The main problem if I remember correctly is the first terran tanks. They outrange the static defense and they appear quite early.
Zerg is the most difficult. I havn't done it myself actually. I have only seen it be done by a friend. Guardians are the key. The problem is getting them in time. A few anti ground building will probably also be needed to slow the early onslaught. Once you have air superiority with zerg it becomes easier.
These tactics won't work with the AI script that blizzard added in a later patch because that script cheated (Created units out of thin air). Also, you will probably want to use lower speed settings. Even with the tactics I mentioned it is still a lot of micro managing needed to actually win.
This is the same reason I avoid emule as much as I can.
The community, has this insane fear of trading that has influenced the developers to such a degree that the current clients are extremly inefficent at dividing resources.
The credit system is pretty much a joke which is supposed to get those with higher upload bandwidth to share more but due to its inefficency that is not what happens.
The best strategy is to cap your upload bandwidth at a pretty low level and queue up as many files as you can.
Once in a while I check in on the official emule forums to see if there is any change and every time I see idealistic socialistic/communistic thinking clouding the thinking of the developers.
Socialistic/Communistic thinking is quite decent for political descisions but it very much sucks when it comes to economy and distribution of scarce resources in which it is much better to rely on free market theory.
Unfortunally most attempts to increase the efficency of the emule protocol, like direct payback to those who upload more to you or ignoring those who don't upload anything while downloading lots, is rejected and sometimes even subject to black listing in the community.
Once in a while I still use emule because it does have a large selection of old material, but I try to avoid it due to the fact that it is way to easy to leech on it.
Mods that prevent leeching are hard to find because they are banned from the emule message boards because they are too efficent at what they do so they can be used for leeching. (Somewhat ironic actually)
I am not against the idea of global warming. I am against the environmentalists idea of global warming. And with environmentalist I include all those "scientists" who are 100% sure that global warming is happening, that humans are the cause and that everything will go to hell. (And the quotes around scientist was intentional because anyone calling himself a scientist should never be 100% sure of anything)
The real problem I have is with the assumption that everything is going to hell. Here follows some of my viewpoints.
* Global warming should more accuratly be called climate change and refers to a build up of energy in the atmosphere which causes a more dynamic and moving enviroment. (stronger winds, etc.)
* This energy build up is likely caused by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, although other explanations are also possible such as increased solar activity/temperature.
* The increasing CO2 entering the atmosphere is caused by burning fossile fuel.
Here are some possible theories and ways to take advantage of our current situation instead of running around screaming and demanding the impossible.
* Plants needs CO2. Higher amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere should help plants grow. Better plant growth makes food/lumber production more efficent.
* Also, genetically engineered plants should be able to utilize CO2 for even more efficency. (Of course I can now hear the same environmentalists screaming about how genetic engineering is bad)
* Higher energy content in the atmosphere while creating more hurricanes and other bad weather, will also speed up the water distribution cycle. This could lead to more availible farm land.
* Since I mentioned genetic engineering above, we should also focus on creating plants/trees that can live in hostile environments like deserts/tundras. This could most likely increase the percentage of vegitation in the world which would help to remove some of the increased CO2 volume while providing food/lumber to those less fortunate parts of the world that doesn't have vegitation today.
* With increase wind movement, both Wind and Water Power Plants should have increased efficency. Especially wind power serves to absorve some of the new energy in the atmosphere.
As you can see from the above everything isn't nescessary the end of mankind.
The real reason people are afraid is because the human brain is inherently opposed to change and lots of people will do anything to keep change from happening. That is of course impossible.
I just looked in ie, mozilla and opera. Both ie and mozilla says 'Table of Contents' instead of the correct '2. Table of Contents', 'Second Level Heading' instead of the correct '4.1. Second Level Heading' and so on. Only opera displays it correctly.
ACtually he used the wrong word. What he meant to say was:
If it's something I want, I'll just COPY it
And if I remember correctly, the definition of thief doesn't mention anything about copying.
Re:Talk economic sense, please.
on
Fission in a Box
·
· Score: 1
The only erroneous assumption is that there will be less people out of work. In an evolving society the workforce is constantly transferred to different areas. If this didn't happen we would be stuck in a medival scenario where a very large percentage of the population worked with food production.
Technology that makes it possible to decrease the number of people working in some area is always welcome since those people can instead be transferred to new areas where they are needed.
There are of course short term disadvantages such as layoffs but hopefully a working society should handle these problems. (I leave it up to others to debate how good/bad our society is though)
Everyone: If everyone has the same color guess that you have the opposite color.
Everyone but p1: If p1 has the opposite color of the rest guess that you have the same color as p1.
-----
Extend rules for higher order solutions. Following is a schematic of how I reached the above rules.
r r r r W W W W
r r b b - C - -
r b r r - C - -
r b b b C W W W
r b r b - - C -
r b b r - - - C
r r r b - - - C
r r b r - - C -
b r r r C W W W
b r b b - C - -
b b r r - C - -
b b b b W W W W
b b r b - - C -
b b b r - - - C
b r r b - - - C
b r b r - - C -
Actually, no. This doesn't work since with this algorithm you will have to do a guess when you see hats with different color (you can't pass since that would mean they were the same color according to your reasoning). This guess would make 2/8 = 25% wrong directly.
Correctly observed. The first person to guess will always have atleast a 25% chances to fail. If he is going to relay enough information to the other guessers.
The simultaneous guess solution is perfect since it overlaps the wrong guesses while spreading out the correct guesses.
Schematics (W=Wrong guess, C = Correct guess, - = pass):
r r r W W W
b b b W W W
r b b C - -
b r r C - -
b r b - C -
b b r - - C
r r b - - C
r b r - C -
Slashdot Mirror
It may seem that way until you realize that the average programmer may take more than a day to solve the same problem that these guys solve in 30 minutes (If he solves it at all). The code of the average programmer will probably also take ten times as much space.
So if your average programmer takes more than a day to solve a small localized problem, how much time will it take for him to solve a larger problem? While I can agree that overestimating the importance of problem solving skills isn't good, underestimating the importance is much worse.
Since a single flaw in the code leads to 0 points, good competition programmers are also very good at seeing special cases and avoiding bugs. If being able to produce code quickly and bugfree isn't useful I don't know what is.
Opponents of TopCoder like competitions often argue that because there is time pressure, writing easy to understand code is discouraged. From the little experience I have, I can definetly say that this is far from the truth. While you have produce the code quickly, it is also a great advantage that the code is clean for more than one reason.
Cleanly written code is less likely to contain bugs or cause problems with special cases. Since a single mistake will cost all points this is more than enough reason to keep the program clean. Clean code usually also takes up less place due to the fact that it is clean (doesn't contain unneeded stuff). These competitions also encourage library reuse instead of reinventing the wheel (It is quicker and more bug free to reuse code).
Since all problems at TopCoder have well defined in parameter ranges, and only require that the solution takes less than 2 seconds to run, there is often more than enough time to use an inefficent but simple to code and read algorithm. A good programmer will see that recursion can be used to solve a problem while a bad programmer will try to solve it with an iterative approach which takes more space and is much less readable and much easier to make a mistake with.
There is of course things that occurs that isn't that practical in real applications. The code usually contains little if no comments since there is time pressure. Variable names are often short and random since there is no time for figuring out the best name.
Your argument violates the prinicipal of not doing premature optimization. The choice between ++x and x++ should depend on readability.
If you are using it as a standalone statement the obvious choice is x++ in most object oriented languages since it follows the convention of writing the object first and the action afterwards.
If it is not standalone the different variants have different meanings so there is no need to choose because you are forced to use the correct one or the code won't work.
For me it is the main feature that Opera has. Zooming only text is pretty useless since it completly deforms the layout of most webpages.
As far as I know, Opera is the only browser that works decently with a high dpi monitor.
Another poster in this thread said that images doesn't look good when zoomed. I have to disagree with that. An image viewed at 200% zoom, 1600x1200 res, looks just as good as a not zoomed image at 800x600.
Actually the bittorrent protocol does in a sense make you download from people close to you, because you exchange data with those peers that give you the best speeds. This is most likely to happen if they are closer to you.
Still, since Akamai and its equals are a high level kind of multicasting, and are hard to beat when it comes to network efficency.
The biggest advantage of bittorrent is that it automatically charges a small micropayment from its peers in the currency of bandwidth.
The biggest problems with bittorrent are NAT (which is an abomination in itself) and ISPs that cap bittorrent speed. (which is an even bigger abomination)
eMule is to BT as plan economy is to market economy, or to put it in more correct terms:
The eMule community has decided that clients aren't allowed to do certain things that would make them better more efficent at retrieving data from the network. If a client does it it is banned by the rest of the community. For a full list of things that aren't allowed you will have to check the eMule forums.
The first bittorrent client and all clients since has been constructed around the principals learned from the Prisoner's Dilemma. Basically that means that they play tit-for-tat with other clients.
Bittorrent also has a few important improvements compared to eMule, including the ability to set the size of pieces to less than 8 MB. It is also much more centered around swarms, while eMule focuses on sharing of individual rarer files.
eMule does have a more utopian view on its community, and while that is nice, it does suffer because of it when it comes to sharing popular files. Note that BT wouldn't work very well as a general file sharing client. It relies very much on swarming to achieve the optimum efficency. When you only have one seed and one leech you can't play tit for tat.
There still remains one big advantage that BT has over other p2p apps, and it is a big one.
Unlike more inefficent protocols, BT choose to implement basic game theory into the design. While it is not nescessary for a client to implement the tit-for-tat algorithm (see prisoner's dilemma), pretty much all do because not implementing it would make the client work less efficently in the BT network.
Other p2p networks try to reward uploading in different ways, but all those ways are far less efficent than using the basics learned from the prisoner's dilemma.
I agree with most of what you said. I just wanted to give you a small tips about how to get the old Google Groups interface. Since Gougle Groups 2 is still in beta the new interface hasn't been propagated to Google's country domains. This means that you can still use groups.google.ca etc. to get the old interface.
The chicken idea was the best one I have heard so far. Guaranteed to annoy gankers while not making it possible for multiple low levels to grief a higher level character.
Hurting the ego is much more effective than hurting stats/reputation.
And then the real question is asked... How do you gank someone who is in a guild? They should have atleast a couple of friends around at most times.
And if you really don't have fun playing the game because your guild requires that you play on a PvP server, maybe you should consider joining a better guild that likes PvE more.
OK, that sounded a little trollish, but seriously, Blizzard can't be expected to change the rules of the PvP server just because your guild plays on it.
Also as I mentioned in a previous post, All dishonor systems are flawed and Blizzard knows it and even said so in the final beta.
Read the european WoW forums instead. They are much more civil and has a lot less whining.
There are lots of things to do in WoW. First let me mention the four core values that drive most people playing MMORPGs
Explorer/Achiver/Socializer/Killer
Most people don't exclusivly belong to one group but like do some of each. There are even tests you can do on the internet to find out how much of each group you belong to.
Explorers probably have it the best in WoW. There are lots of details in the world of warcraft. Blizzard has done a great job adding small details everywhere. The huge amount of quests with stories behind them is a further bonus for explorers. To finish it off blizzard has done a great job making each class require its own unique playing style. Rage/Energy for Warriors/Rogues was a brilliant idea.
Socializers are very much dependent on the community and less on the game. WoW is easy to solo which is bad for this group, however WoW also makes it easy to create temporary small groups which offsets the previous badness factor. Overall I would say that WoW is average for socializing.
Killers should enjoy WoW decently. The game has a rather quick pace for an MMORPG and decent skills are required to play your class proficently as well as to adept to the opponents class. The biggest problem for killers right now is the lack of any real competition. This is where Battlegrounds/PvP Ranking comes in. I agree that this will be important to keep Killers in the game. Otherwise they will be lost to another MMORPG or to a NON-MMORPG like guildwars which emphasizes skill.
Achievers are probably those least satisfied with WoW. This is the group that contains the most powergamers and by now most of them should probably have atleast one character at level 60. The reason achievers aren't happy with WoW is the same reason WoW is popular. WoW is far from the grind that games like Everquest/FF XI are. It is possible for casual gamers to reach the max level in WoW. Achievers despise this because they want to be better than the casual gamer because they spend more time in the game. They also have nothing to do once they have reached the max level because leveling is what they live for. Raids are still something to do, but there is only so much raid content.
A good deal of the achievers will probably jump ship and play another MMORPG instead but I am fine with that because a single game can't suit everyone. Blizzard knows that and will hopefully continue to support the more casual gamers. More high level content will come out but not at the rate the Achievers want.
If I sounded biased against Achievers in the above text, it wasn't really meant that way. It is just that they need to realize that games like Everquest is more suited for around the clock thread milling. The big selling point of WoW is that you don't have to be online 24 hours a day 7 days a week and a large amount of people are willing to pay for that.
Actually, one of the big comments that Blizzard did during the final open beta was that the dishonor system had been abandoned because it was hard if not impossible to program a dishonor system that couldn't be abused.
More specifically, if you have a dishonor system the low level characters can hang around a higher level enemy waiting for their pray to become weak before attacking and the higher level guy can do nothing because of dishonor. There are ways to solve this problem but solving it causes other similar problems instead.
The biggest problem I think is that most people want PvE but choose PvP because they don't know that PvP is possible on PvE servers also, except that on PvE servers all PvPing is consentual.
PvP servers in MMORPGs will probably always be for hardcore players because that is what happens when you allow PvPing without limits in a level based RPG.
Another thing with WoW is that lots of people is playing it as their first MMORPG and many of those probably choose PvP servers. For more experienced MMORPG players that don't like griefing style play the choice of PvE was obvious. Games like UO, Everquest, etc. had already proven what WoW continues to prove.
3) Both IE and Firefox lacks full screen zooming which makes them next to useless on non standard DPI displays.
That is completly incorrect. The starcraft AI could be beaten playing 1 vs 7 if you knew what you were doing and played on the correct maps and exploited the flaws in the AI.
The map is best determined by the distance from the AI homebase to yours. Farther distance gives a few extra seconds that determines life or death.
By getting a good enough defense (especially at the front door) you can hold of the computer AIs with minimal expenditures until they are out of resources. That is your cue to slowly move in and destroy them one by one.
Terran was probably the most easy to do so with. Tanks with bunkers in front of them can hold of most things that come through the front door and later in the game the base should be quite heavily turreted. You can also use supply depots to completly block of the base entrance. I do consider that to be exploiting the path finding AI and it is possible to do it without them.
Protoss makes good use of a massive static defense early on. Place pylons in front of the cannons to make the AI target those first. A couple of reavers will also help out and as the game goes on you need to get air superiority (carriers) quickly. The main problem if I remember correctly is the first terran tanks. They outrange the static defense and they appear quite early.
Zerg is the most difficult. I havn't done it myself actually. I have only seen it be done by a friend. Guardians are the key. The problem is getting them in time. A few anti ground building will probably also be needed to slow the early onslaught. Once you have air superiority with zerg it becomes easier.
These tactics won't work with the AI script that blizzard added in a later patch because that script cheated (Created units out of thin air). Also, you will probably want to use lower speed settings. Even with the tactics I mentioned it is still a lot of micro managing needed to actually win.
This is the same reason I avoid emule as much as I can.
The community, has this insane fear of trading that has influenced the developers to such a degree that the current clients are extremly inefficent at dividing resources.
The credit system is pretty much a joke which is supposed to get those with higher upload bandwidth to share more but due to its inefficency that is not what happens.
The best strategy is to cap your upload bandwidth at a pretty low level and queue up as many files as you can.
Once in a while I check in on the official emule forums to see if there is any change and every time I see idealistic socialistic/communistic thinking clouding the thinking of the developers.
Socialistic/Communistic thinking is quite decent for political descisions but it very much sucks when it comes to economy and distribution of scarce resources in which it is much better to rely on free market theory.
Unfortunally most attempts to increase the efficency of the emule protocol, like direct payback to those who upload more to you or ignoring those who don't upload anything while downloading lots, is rejected and sometimes even subject to black listing in the community.
Once in a while I still use emule because it does have a large selection of old material, but I try to avoid it due to the fact that it is way to easy to leech on it.
Mods that prevent leeching are hard to find because they are banned from the emule message boards because they are too efficent at what they do so they can be used for leeching. (Somewhat ironic actually)
I am not against the idea of global warming. I am against the environmentalists idea of global warming. And with environmentalist I include all those "scientists" who are 100% sure that global warming is happening, that humans are the cause and that everything will go to hell. (And the quotes around scientist was intentional because anyone calling himself a scientist should never be 100% sure of anything)
The real problem I have is with the assumption that everything is going to hell. Here follows some of my viewpoints.
* Global warming should more accuratly be called climate change and refers to a build up of energy in the atmosphere which causes a more dynamic and moving enviroment. (stronger winds, etc.)
* This energy build up is likely caused by an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, although other explanations are also possible such as increased solar activity/temperature.
* The increasing CO2 entering the atmosphere is caused by burning fossile fuel.
Here are some possible theories and ways to take advantage of our current situation instead of running around screaming and demanding the impossible.
* Plants needs CO2. Higher amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere should help plants grow. Better plant growth makes food/lumber production more efficent.
* Also, genetically engineered plants should be able to utilize CO2 for even more efficency. (Of course I can now hear the same environmentalists screaming about how genetic engineering is bad)
* Higher energy content in the atmosphere while creating more hurricanes and other bad weather, will also speed up the water distribution cycle. This could lead to more availible farm land.
* Since I mentioned genetic engineering above, we should also focus on creating plants/trees that can live in hostile environments like deserts/tundras. This could most likely increase the percentage of vegitation in the world which would help to remove some of the increased CO2 volume while providing food/lumber to those less fortunate parts of the world that doesn't have vegitation today.
* With increase wind movement, both Wind and Water Power Plants should have increased efficency. Especially wind power serves to absorve some of the new energy in the atmosphere.
As you can see from the above everything isn't nescessary the end of mankind.
The real reason people are afraid is because the human brain is inherently opposed to change and lots of people will do anything to keep change from happening. That is of course impossible.
I just looked in ie, mozilla and opera. Both ie and mozilla says 'Table of Contents' instead of the correct '2. Table of Contents', 'Second Level Heading' instead of the correct '4.1. Second Level Heading' and so on. Only opera displays it correctly.
ACtually he used the wrong word. What he meant to say was:
If it's something I want, I'll just COPY it
And if I remember correctly, the definition of thief doesn't mention anything about copying.
The only erroneous assumption is that there will be less people out of work. In an evolving society the workforce is constantly transferred to different areas. If this didn't happen we would be stuck in a medival scenario where a very large percentage of the population worked with food production.
Technology that makes it possible to decrease the number of people working in some area is always welcome since those people can instead be transferred to new areas where they are needed.
There are of course short term disadvantages such as layoffs but hopefully a working society should handle these problems. (I leave it up to others to debate how good/bad our society is though)
Oops, you asked for the 7 player solution. Ok, I am not 100% sure but it should be like this:
Everyone: If everyone has the same color guess that you have the opposite color.
Everyone but p(x): If p(x) has the opposite color of the rest guess that you have the same color as p(x).
Everyone: If everyone has the same color guess that you have the opposite color.
Everyone but p1: If p1 has the opposite color of the rest guess that you have the same color as p1.
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Extend rules for higher order solutions. Following is a schematic of how I reached the above rules.
r r r r W W W W
r r b b - C - -
r b r r - C - -
r b b b C W W W
r b r b - - C -
r b b r - - - C
r r r b - - - C
r r b r - - C -
b r r r C W W W
b r b b - C - -
b b r r - C - -
b b b b W W W W
b b r b - - C -
b b b r - - - C
b r r b - - - C
b r b r - - C -
Actually, no. This doesn't work since with this algorithm you will have to do a guess when you see hats with different color (you can't pass since that would mean they were the same color according to your reasoning). This guess would make 2/8 = 25% wrong directly.
Correctly observed. The first person to guess will always have atleast a 25% chances to fail. If he is going to relay enough information to the other guessers.
The simultaneous guess solution is perfect since it overlaps the wrong guesses while spreading out the correct guesses.
Schematics (W=Wrong guess, C = Correct guess, - = pass):
r r r W W W
b b b W W W
r b b C - -
b r r C - -
b r b - C -
b b r - - C
r r b - - C
r b r - C -
Red Cross origins in the USA? And I who always believed it was a Swiss who began it all. For more information see the following link
e li ne1.asp
http://www.redcross.alertnet.org/en/history/tim