So I'm curious, it always seemed likely, with something like this that my ISP would have squid running, and all I'd get was that 2 hop cache (instead of wasting the "right" person's bandwidth cap).
Well, the randomness can really be an issue here. There was an awesome case of reverse enginering in one of the early online poker instantiations. A fellow had decided to see if he understood the shuffling algorithm the casino was using. He assumed the randomization seed was millisecond accuracy timer seed from the server, and had guessed the rand() function they were using. Not far fetched as these are pretty common tools to (mis)use in programming. Using a 'bot' he was able to accurately determine (through artificial sync'ing of timers) the shuffle that had been used, after only having seen a small number of the face up cards in a 7-card stud game. Everytime the bot was able to correctly guess the shuffle, the timer syncing was more likely to be correct at the time of the next shuffle. And so on. Well, you can see where this is going -- through a couple of simple educated guesses, he was able to write a bot that always 'knew' whether he was going to win or not, and advised him accordingly.
Anyway, story went that he gave his code to the casino to tell them about the importance of entropy and whatnot -- very whitehat. But the important thing here, is that a bot doesn't have to be only as smart as a good poker player. A bot might also be as smart as a systems analyst or someone who's really good at guessing or any number of things that don't want to trust their luck to statistics.
Crap, I wish I still had the link to that story...
Don't be silly, there are plenty of famous artists who are unhappy with pieces and continue to work them over until they are happy with them. Picasso did this plenty of times, reformatting a piece painting over large sections with new work. In general, this is something that critic/historians get very excited about. It's a chance to see the artist's mind at work -- to see the thought process. Musicians do this all the time as well, most music fans would say "If it sounds the same live, then the band lacks musicianship."
Alright, that said, movies are an artform where the artist cannot afford to sit on the project until it's finished. It would certainly seem odd if Michalangelo decided recently to amend David, saying "I never liked this hair. It's got an odd wave to it from this one particular angle."
Anyway, I don't want Lucas directly compared to Michalangelo, it just seems unfair to blanketly define artist integrity and artist idiological desire as such.
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So I'm curious, it always seemed likely, with something like this that my ISP would have squid running, and all I'd get was that 2 hop cache (instead of wasting the "right" person's bandwidth cap).
How do these programs get around that? Any ideas?
Well, the randomness can really be an issue here. There was an awesome case of reverse enginering in one of the early online poker instantiations. A fellow had decided to see if he understood the shuffling algorithm the casino was using. He assumed the randomization seed was millisecond accuracy timer seed from the server, and had guessed the rand() function they were using. Not far fetched as these are pretty common tools to (mis)use in programming. Using a 'bot' he was able to accurately determine (through artificial sync'ing of timers) the shuffle that had been used, after only having seen a small number of the face up cards in a 7-card stud game. Everytime the bot was able to correctly guess the shuffle, the timer syncing was more likely to be correct at the time of the next shuffle. And so on. Well, you can see where this is going -- through a couple of simple educated guesses, he was able to write a bot that always 'knew' whether he was going to win or not, and advised him accordingly.
Anyway, story went that he gave his code to the casino to tell them about the importance of entropy and whatnot -- very whitehat. But the important thing here, is that a bot doesn't have to be only as smart as a good poker player. A bot might also be as smart as a systems analyst or someone who's really good at guessing or any number of things that don't want to trust their luck to statistics.
Crap, I wish I still had the link to that story...
Don't be silly, there are plenty of famous artists who are unhappy with pieces and continue to work them over until they are happy with them. Picasso did this plenty of times, reformatting a piece painting over large sections with new work. In general, this is something that critic/historians get very excited about. It's a chance to see the artist's mind at work -- to see the thought process. Musicians do this all the time as well, most music fans would say "If it sounds the same live, then the band lacks musicianship."
Alright, that said, movies are an artform where the artist cannot afford to sit on the project until it's finished. It would certainly seem odd if Michalangelo decided recently to amend David, saying "I never liked this hair. It's got an odd wave to it from this one particular angle."
Anyway, I don't want Lucas directly compared to Michalangelo, it just seems unfair to blanketly define artist integrity and artist idiological desire as such.