She got a BA in Philosophy with a 3.97 GPA (she got a C in public health... I still can't figure that one out..), along with a ton of awards. She is currently working on a PHD in Philosophy at a public ivy university on a full scholarship.
Her two siblings were also unschooled, and also graduated with honors, though not nearly as high as she did.
What it comes down to, though, is the people who are going to home or unschool are a self selected lot who are probably going to do a better job than a random idiot off the street, so YMMV.
Its frustrating because what makes go an interesting problem, to me anyway, is that its hard. And whats hard about it is not the lack of a computer big enough to do a mini-max on the game tree, but in written an algorithm that captures the tactics and strategies of the game in a way that a human could read and employ themselves.
I think its important to maintain the distinction between a Monte Carlo go program and a strong AI Go program. They are different problems that require different techniques to solve. They shouldn't be conflated, and we shouldn't abandon one project cause the other has succeed in the holy grail of beating a human.
My fear is that MoGo will scale so well with the addition of computer power, that pretty soon it will be able to beat any 9-dan player and people will close the books on it and think the issue settled, when we haven't even begun to examine the things that made Go an interesting problem to begin with.
It does. There are "star" points on board on which you generally place handicap stones in place of going first. Each stone should represent a 1 place difference in skill. I.e. a 5-dan player would give a 3-dan player a 2 stone handicap, and we could expect, in the limit that they would each then win 50% of the games.
Another way to look at it is that each handicap stone is worth 10 points at the end of the game. So essentially the computer in this case started off 90 points ahead of the human player. If the computer won by less than 90, it played at a level worse than the human. If it won by exactly 90, it played just as well as the human. If by more than 90, it played better than the human.
A complication here, however, is that the size of the board matters. A full sized go board is 19x19. People generally learn to play on a 9x9, and you can play quick games on a 9x9 or 13x13 (or, really, any sized grid you want. Biggest i've ever seen is 36x36 and that is just crazy...). A 9 stone handicap on a 9x9 board is almost IMPOSSIBLE to beat, unless the other played is a drooling moron.
What really frustrates me about this is that it uses a Monte Carlo method.
As is mentioned in the body, essentially it plays a shitload of random moves out to some cutoff point and tries to determine which moves contribute to a winning end state more often than the other ones.
Basically, the only thing the stupid algorithm knows about Go is the simple rules and how to score the board. It knows nothing of strategy, tactics, strong shapes, living shapes, dead shapes, etc. Of course, it may be doing some sophisticated analysis to determine fruitful branches so as to not waste time on bad ones, but that doesn't defeat my point; it just means that with more computing power, you don't have to be so choosy. Knowledge about the complexities of the game is not required for the machine to win with this method, and that makes me call bullshit.
I'll be excited when a computer beats a 9-dan player without using a probabilistic method to choose a winning path through the search space. I want to see a program that plays like a human, i.e. looks at the board and determines which groups are alive, which are dead, where it is fruitful to play and where it is a waste. In other words, I'll be impressed when someone is able to pin down what makes one shape strong and another weak precisely enough to put it in an algorithm. Otherwise, its just a cheap probability crunching trick.
This has puzzled me as well. My roomate got into the early alpha, 3 or 4 years ago, but there was NOTHING in the game and we forgot about it untill a year ago.
THe game seems to have a large undergound following, mostly in Euroupe.
One thing it has going for it: You can download the game, set up an account, and "play" without the use of a credit card for anything at all. Granted you will have no money to playwith, but a kind player may give you some noob equipment so you can hunt. Compare this to say WOW, which requiers a trip to a store, 50 bucks up front, and then credit card info to get your "free" month of play.
When the 26k island sold last year, there was a HUGE influx of new players, far more then a similar event in WOW would probably bring.
On the other hand, the figure of 260k accounts is misleading. SInce there is no money fee, accounts are never deactivated or locked. If you make a noob and play for an hour, you can come back a year later as if you never left.
Hunting, you need a weapon, and when you kill a monster you may (but probably won't...) loot some money, and possibly an item.
In mining, you use bombs to locate resources in the ground, and then a tool to extract them.
In crafting, you need a blueprint, and the resources called for to make the particular item, these having been obtained by someone mining.
Hunting and mining require weapons or tools, which decay with use. This decay is not permanent. Items can be repaired back to their maximum trade terminal value at cost. The decay per use varies form item to item, anywhere between $0.001 to (the highest I know of...) $0.10. I addition to item decay, hunting requires ammo. One unit of ammo costs 1 pec (1 pec = $0.001). Mining requires bombs, which cost 1 ped each (1 ped = $0.10).
Crafting just requires the raw materials. On each attempt, you may fail completely and loose the amount required for one try; you may succeed, and create the item; or you may partially succeed, and get back some or all of the following: some or all of the raw materials; some residue which can be sold of an amount that will be about as much as the attempt cost. As with all items, the crafted ones have a maximum value and on success its value will be a random amount between 2 or 3 times the cost to make and its fully repaired value, which in some cases can be several hundred ped. Expensive items can take 10's of ped to make in terms of TT (trade terminal) value. However, unless you mine the minerals yourself, you must buy them at some mark up that will range between 105% of tt for common minerals and 150-200% for rarer ones. The rarest mineral, which is not found often, goes for as much as 1500%.
When hunting or mining, you may find an exceptionally large loot, or mineral resource. If the value is over 50 ped, a global message is sent saying "NAME has (killed a created/found a deposit) (creature name/mineral type) worth XXX ped!" There is a "Hall Of Fame" board which records the type 25 loots/mineral deposits/crafting successes for the last 24 hours. It alls shows the top 25 all time highs. When crafting, the message will come up if the item or value of the resulting residue is worth 50ped +. Rarely, you will also manufacture one or more gems of various type worth between 150 and 500 ped.
Currently, the largest loot ever was a mineral resource worth 42,600 ped, or $4,260US. Incidentally, this was found last week. The highest crafting is 32k ped, and the highest hunting is 29k ped. These were also found in the last two weeks.
The game is essentially a zero sum game. When you begin you get NOTHING but an orange jumpsuit worth 0 ped. There is no way in the game to acquire items worth more than 0 ped without depositing money, or being given it by another avatar. There are trade terminals which sell basic junk that no one uses. All other items are either crafted, or looted. The blueprints to craft items cost 0.01 ped each, and minerals must be found by mining (which requires money for tools and bombs).
Essential, when the game began, there was no way for the first play to get money from the game before he put money into the game. Mindark (the company that makes/runs the game) is very secretive about how the loot system works, but I would suspect that there is never more loot to be had then has been lost by players through item decay, ammo burn, supply burn, or crafting failures. Otherwise, MindArk would go broke.
The best equipment is extremely rare, and expensive to buy. The most expensive item market wise is a medical kit that commonalty sells for 50kUS. In the time that I have been playing (1.4 years give or take), no more then 3 of these have been looted. The best weapons and armor sell for 2-10kUS.
The loot system is VERY stingy. It is not uncommon to spend 2 or 3 hundred ped in ammo burn/item decay, before (maybe...) getting a large loot to break even. There are 60 or 70 different skills that determine
The most interesting feature of P.E. is that it use a real money system. You can buy ped (Poject Entropia Dollars) at the rate of 10 ped per USD, and you can sell them back at the same rate. The catch is there is a 3.5% fee going in, and a 1.5% or 100 ped (which ever is greater) fee going out. It states it may take up to 90 days to withdraw.
The economy is almost entirely player driven. The trade terminals sell the most basic worthless crap there is. Everything else must be looted or, more likely, manufactured by a player. There is no monthly fee and the game can be downloaded and played with no cash put in at all. It should be noted, however, that you start with NOTHING but a bright orange jump suit with 0 value. You can get going with out cash by "sweating" monsters. You use a skill on them to gather sweat, and once you have about 1000 bottles, you can sell them to another player for a couple of ped, and keep doing this until you can get some weapons. Or you can bite the bullet, put $10 in (which, once you verify a credit card, you can do in game) and outfit your self with enough equipment to go hunting.
In the 3 months my roommates and myself have been playing, we've invested on average $40. I've managed to keep going on what I've earned from hunting for over a month. I'm certainly not making any real cash at the moment, but i can see that people are.
If someone finds loot or makes an item worth more then 50 ped, a server wide message is sent, and if it is high enough will be record in the hall of fame. There is one person who gets hall of fames for manufacturing items all the time. I see a message for him at least once every few hours. Several days ago, he got an all time high of over 4,000 ped, which translates to $400. Not too bad for playing a game.
The person who bought treasure island can really make a killing. He is going to be able to sell off plots of it over the course of a year, and also gets a tax on mining or hunting done on it. Because of the two way exchange, this is real money we are talking about.
Which leads me to the first of two questions I've been wondering about for the last few months. Can MindArk actually make money off this? They get a nice fee on both ends of the deal, and while they have your money, they can invest it like a bank, etc. They also have several money sinks in the game. Everything decays and needs repairing, which can only be done at a terminal. Ammo can only be gotten from a terminal. And there is an in game auction, but there is a 1 ped fee per item, sold or not.
Treasure Island offers another way for them to profit on a number of fronts. They get a lump sum from the purchase (I doubt this guy had 260,000 ped laying around), and the sale of the sub plots encourages more investment.
Its interesting that this comes along after blizzard cracked down on the sale of items out side the confines of the game. MindArk has gone to the other extreme. They are acting as the gate keeper on an economy, over which they exert an enormous amount of control.
The other question is, can i make money off this? People say you can, but if so, the time investment to get your character to that point is well over a year, possibly 2. As i stated about, i can see people making very valuable items all the time. I have to assume he is withdrawing that money, so it seems people are. By publicizing it, MindArk encourages others to deposit more and keep going, so they can be there. Does this offset his gains, and let the company make a profit?
Right to keep and bear arms....
on
Assault Weapons Ban
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The reasoning behind granting everyone the unrestricted right to keep and bare arms was that a well armed populace is harder to oppress then an unarmed populous. I.e. he government should not have an excessive advantage over the populous in the amount of force at its disposal.
Carrying this to its logical conclusion, citizens should be allowed to posses all the weapons the government is allowed to; if they cannot, there is no way a popular revolt could succeed. The government, with its tanks and other large weapons, could easily roll over any revolt by citizens.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison,
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of the government."
No, you do not need an assault weapon for hunting. But you do need it for personal defense against an oppressive government. That is the justification for allowing them to be possessed.
Aside from that, how am I going to kick the ass of a foreign army, marauding zombies, or invading aliens if I don't have a handy, insanely large supply of firepower?
Maybe the statistics might make it look like there was an increase, as people who did them would be more likely to admit to doing them, but i seriously doubt the number of drug users would drasticaly increase.
Ive never tried crack, but its not because ive been waiting for it to be legalized so i wont get in trouble... i just dont want to do it, regardless of the law. Similiarly, i might choose to do a drug even though its illegal, because i do want to; again, regardless of the law.
If people want to do something, they are going to do it. Illegalizing it only makes them criminals, and us hyporocrits. If we are so free, why are there so many things we arent allowed to do?
And please dont offer the argument "people steal things to get moeny for drugs." Does that mean if people steal things to buy candy bars, we illegalize cady bars? People steal things. What they buy with the money they get from doing so is irrelavent. They stole because they precived it to be easier then getting the money through honest means.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife was unschooled.
She got a BA in Philosophy with a 3.97 GPA (she got a C in public health... I still can't figure that one out..), along with a ton of awards. She is currently working on a PHD in Philosophy at a public ivy university on a full scholarship.
Her two siblings were also unschooled, and also graduated with honors, though not nearly as high as she did.
What it comes down to, though, is the people who are going to home or unschool are a self selected lot who are probably going to do a better job than a random idiot off the street, so YMMV.
Its frustrating because what makes go an interesting problem, to me anyway, is that its hard. And whats hard about it is not the lack of a computer big enough to do a mini-max on the game tree, but in written an algorithm that captures the tactics and strategies of the game in a way that a human could read and employ themselves.
I think its important to maintain the distinction between a Monte Carlo go program and a strong AI Go program. They are different problems that require different techniques to solve. They shouldn't be conflated, and we shouldn't abandon one project cause the other has succeed in the holy grail of beating a human.
My fear is that MoGo will scale so well with the addition of computer power, that pretty soon it will be able to beat any 9-dan player and people will close the books on it and think the issue settled, when we haven't even begun to examine the things that made Go an interesting problem to begin with.
It does. There are "star" points on board on which you generally place handicap stones in place of going first. Each stone should represent a 1 place difference in skill. I.e. a 5-dan player would give a 3-dan player a 2 stone handicap, and we could expect, in the limit that they would each then win 50% of the games.
Another way to look at it is that each handicap stone is worth 10 points at the end of the game. So essentially the computer in this case started off 90 points ahead of the human player. If the computer won by less than 90, it played at a level worse than the human. If it won by exactly 90, it played just as well as the human. If by more than 90, it played better than the human.
A complication here, however, is that the size of the board matters. A full sized go board is 19x19. People generally learn to play on a 9x9, and you can play quick games on a 9x9 or 13x13 (or, really, any sized grid you want. Biggest i've ever seen is 36x36 and that is just crazy...). A 9 stone handicap on a 9x9 board is almost IMPOSSIBLE to beat, unless the other played is a drooling moron.
What really frustrates me about this is that it uses a Monte Carlo method.
As is mentioned in the body, essentially it plays a shitload of random moves out to some cutoff point and tries to determine which moves contribute to a winning end state more often than the other ones.
Basically, the only thing the stupid algorithm knows about Go is the simple rules and how to score the board. It knows nothing of strategy, tactics, strong shapes, living shapes, dead shapes, etc. Of course, it may be doing some sophisticated analysis to determine fruitful branches so as to not waste time on bad ones, but that doesn't defeat my point; it just means that with more computing power, you don't have to be so choosy. Knowledge about the complexities of the game is not required for the machine to win with this method, and that makes me call bullshit.
I'll be excited when a computer beats a 9-dan player without using a probabilistic method to choose a winning path through the search space. I want to see a program that plays like a human, i.e. looks at the board and determines which groups are alive, which are dead, where it is fruitful to play and where it is a waste. In other words, I'll be impressed when someone is able to pin down what makes one shape strong and another weak precisely enough to put it in an algorithm. Otherwise, its just a cheap probability crunching trick.
Yes, you can withdraw from the game. there is a fee of 100 ped of 3.5% of the amount withdrawn, whichever is greater.
Incidentaly, he will probably make most or all of his money back just by sellign the arpartment and vendor stall deeds.
This has puzzled me as well. My roomate got into the early alpha, 3 or 4 years ago, but there was NOTHING in the game and we forgot about it untill a year ago.
THe game seems to have a large undergound following, mostly in Euroupe.
One thing it has going for it: You can download the game, set up an account, and "play" without the use of a credit card for anything at all. Granted you will have no money to playwith, but a kind player may give you some noob equipment so you can hunt. Compare this to say WOW, which requiers a trip to a store, 50 bucks up front, and then credit card info to get your "free" month of play.
When the 26k island sold last year, there was a HUGE influx of new players, far more then a similar event in WOW would probably bring.
On the other hand, the figure of 260k accounts is misleading. SInce there is no money fee, accounts are never deactivated or locked. If you make a noob and play for an hour, you can come back a year later as if you never left.
There are 3 sources of income:
Hunting
Mining
Crafting
Hunting, you need a weapon, and when you kill a monster you may (but probably won't...) loot some money, and possibly an item.
In mining, you use bombs to locate resources in the ground, and then a tool to extract them.
In crafting, you need a blueprint, and the resources called for to make the particular item, these having been obtained by someone mining.
Hunting and mining require weapons or tools, which decay with use. This decay is not permanent. Items can be repaired back to their maximum trade terminal value at cost. The decay per use varies form item to item, anywhere between $0.001 to (the highest I know of...) $0.10. I addition to item decay, hunting requires ammo. One unit of ammo costs 1 pec (1 pec = $0.001). Mining requires bombs, which cost 1 ped each (1 ped = $0.10).
Crafting just requires the raw materials. On each attempt, you may fail completely and loose the amount required for one try; you may succeed, and create the item; or you may partially succeed, and get back some or all of the following: some or all of the raw materials; some residue which can be sold of an amount that will be about as much as the attempt cost. As with all items, the crafted ones have a maximum value and on success its value will be a random amount between 2 or 3 times the cost to make and its fully repaired value, which in some cases can be several hundred ped. Expensive items can take 10's of ped to make in terms of TT (trade terminal) value. However, unless you mine the minerals yourself, you must buy them at some mark up that will range between 105% of tt for common minerals and 150-200% for rarer ones. The rarest mineral, which is not found often, goes for as much as 1500%.
When hunting or mining, you may find an exceptionally large loot, or mineral resource. If the value is over 50 ped, a global message is sent saying "NAME has (killed a created/found a deposit) (creature name/mineral type) worth XXX ped!" There is a "Hall Of Fame" board which records the type 25 loots/mineral deposits/crafting successes for the last 24 hours. It alls shows the top 25 all time highs. When crafting, the message will come up if the item or value of the resulting residue is worth 50ped +. Rarely, you will also manufacture one or more gems of various type worth between 150 and 500 ped.
Currently, the largest loot ever was a mineral resource worth 42,600 ped, or $4,260US. Incidentally, this was found last week. The highest crafting is 32k ped, and the highest hunting is 29k ped. These were also found in the last two weeks.
The game is essentially a zero sum game. When you begin you get NOTHING but an orange jumpsuit worth 0 ped. There is no way in the game to acquire items worth more than 0 ped without depositing money, or being given it by another avatar. There are trade terminals which sell basic junk that no one uses. All other items are either crafted, or looted. The blueprints to craft items cost 0.01 ped each, and minerals must be found by mining (which requires money for tools and bombs).
Essential, when the game began, there was no way for the first play to get money from the game before he put money into the game. Mindark (the company that makes/runs the game) is very secretive about how the loot system works, but I would suspect that there is never more loot to be had then has been lost by players through item decay, ammo burn, supply burn, or crafting failures. Otherwise, MindArk would go broke.
The best equipment is extremely rare, and expensive to buy. The most expensive item market wise is a medical kit that commonalty sells for 50kUS. In the time that I have been playing (1.4 years give or take), no more then 3 of these have been looted. The best weapons and armor sell for 2-10kUS.
The loot system is VERY stingy. It is not uncommon to spend 2 or 3 hundred ped in ammo burn/item decay, before (maybe...) getting a large loot to break even. There are 60 or 70 different skills that determine
The most interesting feature of P.E. is that it use a real money system. You can buy ped (Poject Entropia Dollars) at the rate of 10 ped per USD, and you can sell them back at the same rate. The catch is there is a 3.5% fee going in, and a 1.5% or 100 ped (which ever is greater) fee going out. It states it may take up to 90 days to withdraw.
The economy is almost entirely player driven. The trade terminals sell the most basic worthless crap there is. Everything else must be looted or, more likely, manufactured by a player. There is no monthly fee and the game can be downloaded and played with no cash put in at all. It should be noted, however, that you start with NOTHING but a bright orange jump suit with 0 value. You can get going with out cash by "sweating" monsters. You use a skill on them to gather sweat, and once you have about 1000 bottles, you can sell them to another player for a couple of ped, and keep doing this until you can get some weapons. Or you can bite the bullet, put $10 in (which, once you verify a credit card, you can do in game) and outfit your self with enough equipment to go hunting.
In the 3 months my roommates and myself have been playing, we've invested on average $40. I've managed to keep going on what I've earned from hunting for over a month. I'm certainly not making any real cash at the moment, but i can see that people are.
If someone finds loot or makes an item worth more then 50 ped, a server wide message is sent, and if it is high enough will be record in the hall of fame. There is one person who gets hall of fames for manufacturing items all the time. I see a message for him at least once every few hours. Several days ago, he got an all time high of over 4,000 ped, which translates to $400. Not too bad for playing a game.
The person who bought treasure island can really make a killing. He is going to be able to sell off plots of it over the course of a year, and also gets a tax on mining or hunting done on it. Because of the two way exchange, this is real money we are talking about.
Which leads me to the first of two questions I've been wondering about for the last few months. Can MindArk actually make money off this? They get a nice fee on both ends of the deal, and while they have your money, they can invest it like a bank, etc. They also have several money sinks in the game. Everything decays and needs repairing, which can only be done at a terminal. Ammo can only be gotten from a terminal. And there is an in game auction, but there is a 1 ped fee per item, sold or not.
Treasure Island offers another way for them to profit on a number of fronts. They get a lump sum from the purchase (I doubt this guy had 260,000 ped laying around), and the sale of the sub plots encourages more investment.
Its interesting that this comes along after blizzard cracked down on the sale of items out side the confines of the game. MindArk has gone to the other extreme. They are acting as the gate keeper on an economy, over which they exert an enormous amount of control.
The other question is, can i make money off this? People say you can, but if so, the time investment to get your character to that point is well over a year, possibly 2. As i stated about, i can see people making very valuable items all the time. I have to assume he is withdrawing that money, so it seems people are. By publicizing it, MindArk encourages others to deposit more and keep going, so they can be there. Does this offset his gains, and let the company make a profit?
The reasoning behind granting everyone the unrestricted right to keep and bare arms was that a well armed populace is harder to oppress then an unarmed populous. I.e. he government should not have an excessive advantage over the populous in the amount of force at its disposal.
Carrying this to its logical conclusion, citizens should be allowed to posses all the weapons the government is allowed to; if they cannot, there is no way a popular revolt could succeed. The government, with its tanks and other large weapons, could easily roll over any revolt by citizens.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to James Madison,
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of the government."
No, you do not need an assault weapon for hunting. But you do need it for personal defense against an oppressive government. That is the justification for allowing them to be possessed.
Aside from that, how am I going to kick the ass of a foreign army, marauding zombies, or invading aliens if I don't have a handy, insanely large supply of firepower?
Maybe the statistics might make it look like there was an increase, as people who did them would be more likely to admit to doing them, but i seriously doubt the number of drug users would drasticaly increase.
Ive never tried crack, but its not because ive been waiting for it to be legalized so i wont get in trouble... i just dont want to do it, regardless of the law. Similiarly, i might choose to do a drug even though its illegal, because i do want to; again, regardless of the law.
If people want to do something, they are going to do it. Illegalizing it only makes them criminals, and us hyporocrits. If we are so free, why are there so many things we arent allowed to do?
And please dont offer the argument "people steal things to get moeny for drugs." Does that mean if people steal things to buy candy bars, we illegalize cady bars? People steal things. What they buy with the money they get from doing so is irrelavent. They stole because they precived it to be easier then getting the money through honest means.