What I want to know is, didn't Fritz know that an obvious trap would be avoided by a champion player? Why would it play such a move? My uninformed opinion is that the possible gain in material it saw in its move search led it to make the move. Any human player would have known the opposing player would never blunder away his queen. Perhaps Fritz was "hoping" for a blunder?
No, that's not how computers (or high-level human players, for that matter) play chess. The conventional wisdom--and principle of game theory, for that matter--is to always assume that your opponent will make the strongest possible response. You only set a trap if things will work out OK for you even if your opponent sees the trap. This was the case here, at least as far ahead as Fritz was able to evaluate--even with Kasparov seeing the trap, he wasn't able to take advantage out of it, at least as far as Fritz could see.
Even as a lowly 1500 player, that's something I strive for--when I see a clever trap I can set for my opponent, I try to ask myself "and what if my opponent realizes what I'm trying to do? Am I still OK then?" I'm not always successful--sometimes the trap is so clever, and I'm so pleased with myself for finding it, that I play it without checking if I'm OK if my opponent sees it. And sometimes he doesn't see it, and my clever trap works, but very often he does, and he has a strong response, and then I'm screwed.
It's not really so much about what it says about the game of chess, as what it says about the state of computers and computer programming.
30 years ago, the best human players were far better than the best computers, and no one bothered to hype human-computer matches because they would not be interesting.
30 years in the future, the best computers will be far better than the best human players, and no one will bother to arrange big human-computer matches because they would be uninteresting. (The "30 years" here may be off. It will depend more on advances in computer chess programming then on hardware, because even if Moore's law holds for the next 30 years, the number of positions that a computer must look at goes up exponentially with the number of plies it looks ahead, so even with Moore's-law-hardware-growth the number of plies a computer can look ahead--if its software is unchanged--grows only linearly with time. But the basic point is the same, at some point in the future computers will be far better than even the best humans at chess.)
Right now we're at the point where the best human players and the best computers are about equally strong. It's interesting (to a lot of people at least, if not to everyone) to mark the transition.
And the computer beat him once, in game two, so if you're referring to individual games rather than matches, Kasparov is still not "capable of beating the machines anytime, anywhere."
Also, since draws are common results in high-level chess (note that 2 of the 4 Kasparov/Fritz games ended in draws), an odd number of games is still no guarantee that the match would not end in a draw.
But give credit where credit is due, the feat here is Kasparov's, one of the few humans alive today still capable of beating the machines anytime, anywhere.
I hate to insert mere facts into a good rant like this, but Kasparov didn't beat the machine, he drew it.
At this point, Karpov tries a new tack with Qrs-e5 (Queen from right sleeve to e5).
Well, it's not really that much of a new tack, seeing as it's the third illegal move Karpov has made, following 2... f7-g6 (there's no White piece on g6 for the f7 pawn to take) and 3... f8-g7 (the Black pawn is still on g7).
This is why Open Source Electronic Voting would be safer, because even though your Grandma and even you would not be able to check all the 100,000 lines of code it still would be available for the different political parties to check themselves and THEY have a good incentive to make sure the system is fair, or at least not biased against them, with the opposite party making sure it isn't biased against them...
That's fine for the two major parties, and perhaps even for the larger minor parties. What about J. Upstanding Independent, who has two other people on his campaign staff, neither of whom are geeks? How is he supposed to verify that the machines aren't biased against him and in favor of his opponents, Corrupt X. Republican and Y. Bribed Democrat?
No, your argument is nonsense. Murder is fundamentally different than voting verification. It is entirely infeasible to make murder completely impossible. Therefore, we do the next best thing, which is to provide severe disincentives to murder and discourage it as much as possible, a.k.a. making it illegal. If we could make murder impossible, we would.
OTOH, we can and do make it not just illegal, but impossible to verify how someone else voted. Would you be satisfied with making murder merely illegal if you could make it impossible?
Excuse me for being a skeptic...
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Can anyone track down an authoritative source for this?
Bisso got it from languagehat. Bisso also cites a Nature article that may be related; however, the Nature article clearly deals with hearing time-reversal of segments of spoken sentences, not reading mangled written words. languagehat cites Avva, who languagehat admits doesn't give a source; I can't get to the Avva entry at the moment.
MP3s may fall under a different area of fair use: that protecting the right to establish works in the style of other works.
You're trolling, right? Well, in case you're not, "style" refers to a much more general overall feel of the music, for lack of a better term. The "style" provision means that if I record and publish a rap song, the first person ever to copyright a rap song can't sue me. The Offspring's "Get a Job" is very much in the style of The Beatles' "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," but it's also clearly a different song, so it's not copyright infringement. If The Offspring recorded their own version of "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," however, without permission of the copyright holder would be infringement.
it's a digital interpretation of it which eliminates at least 90% of the original and bears as much resemblence to it on the data level as a cassette does to a record
Bingo!! And the astute observer will note that copying a vinyl record to a cassette and then selling the cassette without permission of the copyright holder is copyright infringement. Despite the fact that the data format is completely different.
Well, as an AC commented it seems you suffer not only from lack of fun training but from depression.
Don't be so sure. Like slaker, I've tried many types of exercise and haven't found any that I like--in that regard, I'm in much the same boat.
I have also suffered from clinical depression in the past. I know what depression feels like. And I am quite certain that I am not currently depressed.
So don't assume that just because slaker and I can't find any exercise we like, that we're depressed.
Have you ever published your email address online? Many people have to in order to run a website, you know.
I have a website, which has my email address, unmunged, both in text and in a mailto link.
I avoid spam at this address by changing the address as soon as the address receives its first spam. (I use a server-side include so I only have to change it in one place and all references to it on my web pages are changed. There are of course other ways to do the same thing.)
This happens about once every two months, on average, and takes me not more than five minutes to set up the new address (which is a simple forward to a real-but-unpublished address) and change the address on my pages.
I'm still not interested in registering at NYT.. so I'll not be able to read the article and flame here instead...
If you're concerned about your privacy while reading the article online, your local public library almost certainly has a print subscription to the New York Times, which you can still read anonymously.
That is, as long as there are librarians like the ones described in the article, who will defend your right to read newspapers anonymously.
7) The only thing not duplicated is polls (not even sure about that).
8) 1000/1 = The ratio of time it takes for moderators to discover a dupe vs. the readers.
9) 0 = The number of dupes deleted.
10) The post (God forbid) announcing its closing will probably be posted twice.
With apologies to the author of Ecclesiastes...
on
The Tyranny of Email
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· Score: 1
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every medium of communication under heaven. A time to phone, and a time to voice mail. A time to IM, and a time to chat. A time to FTF, and a time to videoconference. A time to snail mail, and a time to email. A time to reply to sender, and a time to reply to all. A time to shout, and a time to be silent.
No, I'm not trying to be snide. Consider current debates over mass media. Conservatives talk about the "liberal bias" of the major news outlets (with the possible exception of WSJ and Fox News), while liberals complain that these same outlets are bastions of big-corporate conservatism. Who determines whether the segment is "non-partisan"? Even if you answer that question, who handles all the complaints from conservatives and liberals that the program is biased against their view? Who handles the complaints from the libertarians and greens that their viewpoints are not being represented?
I used to be a big supporter of IRV. Until the 2000 election. IRV requires that voters have enough intelligence to understand the principles behind IRV. Simple, you say? IRV isn't that difficult to understand? Yes, I thought so too, until the 2000 election. With Florida voters having so much trouble with their ballot (and it's not that Florida was anywhere worse than anywhere else, just that a relatively small number of people having problems made a huge difference), I have absolutely no hope that American voters can be made to understand IRV. (And just a majority of American voters understanding IRV isn't good enough--it has to be a case where all, or very nearly all, voters understand IRV.)
It also leaves a huge advantage for good master level players over machines, since an opening book is virtually eliminated.
Quite the opposite. Master level players and above rely quite heavily on their own "opening books," and may often play the first 15-20 moves of a game by rote. They are able to avoid the common opening traps, not so much because they work them out at the board, but because they've seen them before.
A new position in Fischer Random chess brings about a whole new set of potential opening traps. The master-level player will still be able to see and avoid many of these, but probably not all of them (not some of the ones which are several moves deep), whereas the computer will be able to see new, complicated opening traps with ease.
This doesn't seem to be the case at all after 9/11 (and most recently the loss of Columbia), with the most glaring example being the removal of the Spider-Man trailer (catching a helicopter in a web strung between the two World Trade towers).
What parallel universe is this AC living in? In my world, Dave Letterman came back on the air six days after 9/11. Yes, his first guest, Dan Rather, was intense and emotional, but his second guest, Regis Philbin, was quite funny on the topic. In my world, the Onion published their brilliantly funny "Holy Fucking Shit" issue within 2 weeks of 9/11.
And, pray tell, how would leaving the Spider-Man/WTC preview in theaters have been humorous? That wasn't even funny before 9/11!
And the other extreme is the "technological might makes right" attitude which is even worse. "If you're not technically savvy enough to prevent this, it's your own damn fault." Which may be fine for most/. readers, but leaves the average computer user adrift.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it amusing that you were able to express this sentiment in fewer than 140 characters.
What I want to know is, didn't Fritz know that an obvious trap would be avoided by a champion player? Why would it play such a move? My uninformed opinion is that the possible gain in material it saw in its move search led it to make the move. Any human player would have known the opposing player would never blunder away his queen. Perhaps Fritz was "hoping" for a blunder?
No, that's not how computers (or high-level human players, for that matter) play chess. The conventional wisdom--and principle of game theory, for that matter--is to always assume that your opponent will make the strongest possible response. You only set a trap if things will work out OK for you even if your opponent sees the trap. This was the case here, at least as far ahead as Fritz was able to evaluate--even with Kasparov seeing the trap, he wasn't able to take advantage out of it, at least as far as Fritz could see.
Even as a lowly 1500 player, that's something I strive for--when I see a clever trap I can set for my opponent, I try to ask myself "and what if my opponent realizes what I'm trying to do? Am I still OK then?" I'm not always successful--sometimes the trap is so clever, and I'm so pleased with myself for finding it, that I play it without checking if I'm OK if my opponent sees it. And sometimes he doesn't see it, and my clever trap works, but very often he does, and he has a strong response, and then I'm screwed.
Yeah, I figured as much, I was just being snarky.
It's not really so much about what it says about the game of chess, as what it says about the state of computers and computer programming.
30 years ago, the best human players were far better than the best computers, and no one bothered to hype human-computer matches because they would not be interesting.
30 years in the future, the best computers will be far better than the best human players, and no one will bother to arrange big human-computer matches because they would be uninteresting. (The "30 years" here may be off. It will depend more on advances in computer chess programming then on hardware, because even if Moore's law holds for the next 30 years, the number of positions that a computer must look at goes up exponentially with the number of plies it looks ahead, so even with Moore's-law-hardware-growth the number of plies a computer can look ahead--if its software is unchanged--grows only linearly with time. But the basic point is the same, at some point in the future computers will be far better than even the best humans at chess.)
Right now we're at the point where the best human players and the best computers are about equally strong. It's interesting (to a lot of people at least, if not to everyone) to mark the transition.
And the computer beat him once, in game two, so if you're referring to individual games rather than matches, Kasparov is still not "capable of beating the machines anytime, anywhere."
Also, since draws are common results in high-level chess (note that 2 of the 4 Kasparov/Fritz games ended in draws), an odd number of games is still no guarantee that the match would not end in a draw.
But give credit where credit is due, the feat here is Kasparov's, one of the few humans alive today still capable of beating the machines anytime, anywhere.
I hate to insert mere facts into a good rant like this, but Kasparov didn't beat the machine, he drew it.
1. d2-d4 g8-f6
2. c2-c4 f7-g6
3. b1-c3 f8-g7
4. e2-e4 d7-d6
5. g1-f3 Qrs-e5
At this point, Karpov tries a new tack with Qrs-e5 (Queen from right sleeve to e5).
Well, it's not really that much of a new tack, seeing as it's the third illegal move Karpov has made, following 2... f7-g6 (there's no White piece on g6 for the f7 pawn to take) and 3... f8-g7 (the Black pawn is still on g7).
This is why Open Source Electronic Voting would be safer, because even though your Grandma and even you would not be able to check all the 100,000 lines of code it still would be available for the different political parties to check themselves and THEY have a good incentive to make sure the system is fair, or at least not biased against them, with the opposite party making sure it isn't biased against them...
That's fine for the two major parties, and perhaps even for the larger minor parties. What about J. Upstanding Independent, who has two other people on his campaign staff, neither of whom are geeks? How is he supposed to verify that the machines aren't biased against him and in favor of his opponents, Corrupt X. Republican and Y. Bribed Democrat?
No, your argument is nonsense. Murder is fundamentally different than voting verification. It is entirely infeasible to make murder completely impossible. Therefore, we do the next best thing, which is to provide severe disincentives to murder and discourage it as much as possible, a.k.a. making it illegal. If we could make murder impossible, we would.
OTOH, we can and do make it not just illegal, but impossible to verify how someone else voted. Would you be satisfied with making murder merely illegal if you could make it impossible?
Can anyone track down an authoritative source for this?
Bisso got it from languagehat. Bisso also cites a Nature article that may be related; however, the Nature article clearly deals with hearing time-reversal of segments of spoken sentences, not reading mangled written words. languagehat cites Avva, who languagehat admits doesn't give a source; I can't get to the Avva entry at the moment.
MP3s may fall under a different area of fair use: that protecting the right to establish works in the style of other works.
You're trolling, right? Well, in case you're not, "style" refers to a much more general overall feel of the music, for lack of a better term. The "style" provision means that if I record and publish a rap song, the first person ever to copyright a rap song can't sue me. The Offspring's "Get a Job" is very much in the style of The Beatles' "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," but it's also clearly a different song, so it's not copyright infringement. If The Offspring recorded their own version of "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," however, without permission of the copyright holder would be infringement.
it's a digital interpretation of it which eliminates at least 90% of the original and bears as much resemblence to it on the data level as a cassette does to a record
Bingo!! And the astute observer will note that copying a vinyl record to a cassette and then selling the cassette without permission of the copyright holder is copyright infringement. Despite the fact that the data format is completely different.
Well, as an AC commented it seems you suffer not only from lack of fun training but from depression.
Don't be so sure. Like slaker, I've tried many types of exercise and haven't found any that I like--in that regard, I'm in much the same boat.
I have also suffered from clinical depression in the past. I know what depression feels like. And I am quite certain that I am not currently depressed.
So don't assume that just because slaker and I can't find any exercise we like, that we're depressed.
...which is just a general donations page. I'd donate to a legal defense fund, if they had one, but I'm not going to buy them beer.
Have you ever published your email address online? Many people have to in order to run a website, you know.
I have a website, which has my email address, unmunged, both in text and in a mailto link.
I avoid spam at this address by changing the address as soon as the address receives its first spam. (I use a server-side include so I only have to change it in one place and all references to it on my web pages are changed. There are of course other ways to do the same thing.)
This happens about once every two months, on average, and takes me not more than five minutes to set up the new address (which is a simple forward to a real-but-unpublished address) and change the address on my pages.
I'm still not interested in registering at NYT.. so I'll not be able to read the article and flame here instead...
If you're concerned about your privacy while reading the article online, your local public library almost certainly has a print subscription to the New York Times, which you can still read anonymously.
That is, as long as there are librarians like the ones described in the article, who will defend your right to read newspapers anonymously.
1) A first exclusive interview gets posted twice.
2) New scientific discoveries sound familiar.
3) 10 questions turn into 20.
4) Last interviews turn into next to last.
5) Congress is considering the first ever digital cloning ban.
6) Duplicate replies to duplicate posts get duplicate moderation.
7) The only thing not duplicated is polls (not even sure about that).
8) 1000/1 = The ratio of time it takes for moderators to discover a dupe vs. the readers.
9) 0 = The number of dupes deleted.
10) The post (God forbid) announcing its closing will probably be posted twice.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every medium of communication under heaven.
A time to phone, and a time to voice mail.
A time to IM, and a time to chat.
A time to FTF, and a time to videoconference.
A time to snail mail, and a time to email.
A time to reply to sender, and a time to reply to all.
A time to shout, and a time to be silent.
Define "non-partisan."
No, I'm not trying to be snide. Consider current debates over mass media. Conservatives talk about the "liberal bias" of the major news outlets (with the possible exception of WSJ and Fox News), while liberals complain that these same outlets are bastions of big-corporate conservatism. Who determines whether the segment is "non-partisan"? Even if you answer that question, who handles all the complaints from conservatives and liberals that the program is biased against their view? Who handles the complaints from the libertarians and greens that their viewpoints are not being represented?
I used to be a big supporter of IRV. Until the 2000 election. IRV requires that voters have enough intelligence to understand the principles behind IRV. Simple, you say? IRV isn't that difficult to understand? Yes, I thought so too, until the 2000 election. With Florida voters having so much trouble with their ballot (and it's not that Florida was anywhere worse than anywhere else, just that a relatively small number of people having problems made a huge difference), I have absolutely no hope that American voters can be made to understand IRV. (And just a majority of American voters understanding IRV isn't good enough--it has to be a case where all, or very nearly all, voters understand IRV.)
It also leaves a huge advantage for good master level players over machines, since an opening book is virtually eliminated.
Quite the opposite. Master level players and above rely quite heavily on their own "opening books," and may often play the first 15-20 moves of a game by rote. They are able to avoid the common opening traps, not so much because they work them out at the board, but because they've seen them before.
A new position in Fischer Random chess brings about a whole new set of potential opening traps. The master-level player will still be able to see and avoid many of these, but probably not all of them (not some of the ones which are several moves deep), whereas the computer will be able to see new, complicated opening traps with ease.
This doesn't seem to be the case at all after 9/11 (and most recently the loss of Columbia), with the most glaring example being the removal of the Spider-Man trailer (catching a helicopter in a web strung between the two World Trade towers).
What parallel universe is this AC living in? In my world, Dave Letterman came back on the air six days after 9/11. Yes, his first guest, Dan Rather, was intense and emotional, but his second guest, Regis Philbin, was quite funny on the topic. In my world, the Onion published their brilliantly funny "Holy Fucking Shit" issue within 2 weeks of 9/11.
And, pray tell, how would leaving the Spider-Man/WTC preview in theaters have been humorous? That wasn't even funny before 9/11!
Why does everything posted about MS on Slashdot have to be some kind of conspircy?
/.ers' heads would explode if they actually tried to wrap their minds around the concept of MS doing something good.
Because at least 80% of
And the other extreme is the "technological might makes right" attitude which is even worse. "If you're not technically savvy enough to prevent this, it's your own damn fault." Which may be fine for most /. readers, but leaves the average computer user adrift.
Want to make the average person care? Two words: "Happy Birthday."
"Do you know that you're breaking the law by singing 'Happy Birthday?' Because of the Bono Act, it'll stay illegal for an additional twenty years."