To explain this article a little better, here is what the distributed method would be doing: building the world's hugest opening game database. That is it. It would be running an alpha-beta pruning mini-max algorithm with hash tables so many times to create a huge database. Then, this database (probably, I don't know, maybe 500 mb?) could be used so that search trees would never be used again on chess. The best move for every position, in all cases, for all sides. This would only work if it were completely solved, of course, because a computer who knew only the absolute best path could be beat if someone played an inferior path. Yet, this would be very intresting. It would be the *end* of computer chess. Never again would Kasparov play deep blue, only inferior humans would challenge each other, since machines would think it to be trivial.
Care to post a summary of this? I'm a huge Asimov fan and have read a lot of his novels, short stories, and articles. Don't think I've come across this one though.
OpenGL is nice for 3D, but the inclusion of sound on any cross-platform project presents problems that often lead programs to use DirectSound and lose all of the portability and readable code that OpenGL was intended for. Such an API would be, no doubt, sooner on later, become a highly tweaked end-all-beat-all game AI. Assuming is would be handled in this "anybody can make suggestions for improvement" way, like Java is, this would lead to a clean, great API. This is why Java is king right now, it works everywhere and easy to write. I hope they just leave OpenGL as is, though, and then stick in Sound, still picture, and video playback api's for major file formats. I can't wait. I've been waiting for a good game API, and Java's is not exactly what I'm looking for (3D shooters in Java? Yeah right).
I wasn't basing the web or powerpoint presentations, I am saying that no class should spend all of it's time with students in front of terminals, else they learn to use the computer instead of think. Let them use Maple,Mathematica,or Matlab if they like, but only after they can do the Integrations themselves. Some day, when they are walking down a dark alley and someone puts a gun to their head, demanding they integrate e to the x dx, I would surely hope it would not be a problem for them. In fact, the ability to use calculators on so many tests in high school probably hurt my mathematics skills. Replace 'calculator' with 'symbolic math software' and imagine what the students will fail to learn then!
Your kid will never get to learn from the ZDTV either. What a shame. Or PBS (Nova, National Geographic, Scientific American Frontiers), The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet. Hey, my parents aren't scientificly minded, but they did get me interested in books that I did like about that sort of thing. Also, though, I can not discount the TV for sparking my interest in computers and science. It had a huge influence. There are some bad things on TV, but does that make a TV bad? No. It just means your kid is being sheltered somewhat. If he's young, that is fine. But the point is, you can learn from a TV as well. There are many GOOD things on TV, just not neccesarily on ABC, NBC, and CBS. And if you are worried about porn, wait till he sees Blue Whales having sex...personally, I like to watch giraffes:)
In high schools, middle schools, etc, students need to have applicable programming and computer use courses readily available. Labs need to be there, and need to be up to date. However, the use of computers in every aspect of the classroom draws the influence away from the instruction and towards the computer. English becomes a spellcheck/formatting class, Math becomes "how to use maple" and not "how to UNDERSTAND a derivative", and I don't know what the heck would happen to PE. Computers are not really even required in college, except for a matter of convience when sufficient labs are provided. I am a student at NC State University, where we learn coding and theory in class, not "How to use this program". Our lecture halls do not have computers in them, and we do this by choice. We are not going with a student-owned computing plan. This is great. The idea is you should be learning the material, not playing with a computer. I highly advocate everyone owning a computer, but computers should only be used in education for computer related subjects (computer science, typing, etc) and the occasionally really cool whiz-bang math or science demo. Computers should not be used in every class every day.
Ok, I hate AOL like the plague. The AOL/Time Warner thing to me is 10x scarier than Microsoft, they'll own the Internet, the Cable Modems, the TV. They will be brainwashing us day and night. An ISP should not have to police it's member pages and forums *UNTIL* a complaint is made. No ISP should passively allow MP3 trading that they are aware of. The fact that AOL is supposed to be halfway moderated implies their employees (moderators) were looking the other way. They should not have to police member accounts to find illegal activity, since that is a privacy violation. Yet, given knowledge of such activity, looking the other way is highly unethical. I consider Napster unethical and they need to be shut down, but hey, I am enjoying it while it is still running. Incidentally, if you want to talk about illegal activity, look at gnutella's search monitor feature. I personally don't like my computer forwarding requests and helping other computer's find porn. In this sense, I would say Napster and the AOL situation is much less illegal than Gnutella, which supports underground traffic of all kinds and sucks bandwidth like there is no tomorrow. ---
Slashdot Mirror
To explain this article a little better, here is what the distributed method would be doing: building the world's hugest opening game database. That is it. It would be running an alpha-beta pruning mini-max algorithm with hash tables so many times to create a huge database. Then, this database (probably, I don't know, maybe 500 mb?) could be used so that search trees would never be used again on chess. The best move for every position, in all cases, for all sides. This would only work if it were completely solved, of course, because a computer who knew only the absolute best path could be beat if someone played an inferior path. Yet, this would be very intresting. It would be the *end* of computer chess. Never again would Kasparov play deep blue, only inferior humans would challenge each other, since machines would think it to be trivial.
Care to post a summary of this? I'm a huge Asimov fan and have read a lot of his novels, short stories, and articles. Don't think I've come across this one though.
OpenGL is nice for 3D, but the inclusion of sound on any cross-platform project presents problems that often lead programs to use DirectSound and lose all of the portability and readable code that OpenGL was intended for. Such an API would be, no doubt, sooner on later, become a highly tweaked end-all-beat-all game AI. Assuming is would be handled in this "anybody can make suggestions for improvement" way, like Java is, this would lead to a clean, great API. This is why Java is king right now, it works everywhere and easy to write. I hope they just leave OpenGL as is, though, and then stick in Sound, still picture, and video playback api's for major file formats. I can't wait. I've been waiting for a good game API, and Java's is not exactly what I'm looking for (3D shooters in Java? Yeah right).
I wasn't basing the web or powerpoint presentations, I am saying that no class should spend all of it's time with students in front of terminals, else they learn to use the computer instead of think. Let them use Maple,Mathematica,or Matlab if they like, but only after they can do the Integrations themselves. Some day, when they are walking down a dark alley and someone puts a gun to their head, demanding they integrate e to the x dx, I would surely hope it would not be a problem for them. In fact, the ability to use calculators on so many tests in high school probably hurt my mathematics skills. Replace 'calculator' with 'symbolic math software' and imagine what the students will fail to learn then!
Your kid will never get to learn from the ZDTV either. What a shame. Or PBS (Nova, National Geographic, Scientific American Frontiers), The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet. Hey, my parents aren't scientificly minded, but they did get me interested in books that I did like about that sort of thing. Also, though, I can not discount the TV for sparking my interest in computers and science. It had a huge influence. There are some bad things on TV, but does that make a TV bad? No. It just means your kid is being sheltered somewhat. If he's young, that is fine. But the point is, you can learn from a TV as well. There are many GOOD things on TV, just not neccesarily on ABC, NBC, and CBS. And if you are worried about porn, wait till he sees Blue Whales having sex...personally, I like to watch giraffes :)
In high schools, middle schools, etc, students need to have applicable programming and computer use courses readily available. Labs need to be there, and need to be up to date. However, the use of computers in every aspect of the classroom draws the influence away from the instruction and towards the computer. English becomes a spellcheck/formatting class, Math becomes "how to use maple" and not "how to UNDERSTAND a derivative", and I don't know what the heck would happen to PE. Computers are not really even required in college, except for a matter of convience when sufficient labs are provided. I am a student at NC State University, where we learn coding and theory in class, not "How to use this program". Our lecture halls do not have computers in them, and we do this by choice. We are not going with a student-owned computing plan. This is great. The idea is you should be learning the material, not playing with a computer. I highly advocate everyone owning a computer, but computers should only be used in education for computer related subjects (computer science, typing, etc) and the occasionally really cool whiz-bang math or science demo. Computers should not be used in every class every day.
Ok, I hate AOL like the plague. The AOL/Time Warner thing to me is 10x scarier than Microsoft, they'll own the Internet, the Cable Modems, the TV. They will be brainwashing us day and night. An ISP should not have to police it's member pages and forums *UNTIL* a complaint is made. No ISP should passively allow MP3 trading that they are aware of. The fact that AOL is supposed to be halfway moderated implies their employees (moderators) were looking the other way. They should not have to police member accounts to find illegal activity, since that is a privacy violation. Yet, given knowledge of such activity, looking the other way is highly unethical. I consider Napster unethical and they need to be shut down, but hey, I am enjoying it while it is still running. Incidentally, if you want to talk about illegal activity, look at gnutella's search monitor feature. I personally don't like my computer forwarding requests and helping other computer's find porn. In this sense, I would say Napster and the AOL situation is much less illegal than Gnutella, which supports underground traffic of all kinds and sucks bandwidth like there is no tomorrow. ---