Digital Fortess, also by Dan Brown, is a year older than that and centers around cryptograpohy. Though it is Fiction.
It also happens to be possibly the worst piece of fiction ever written. Dan, if you read slashdot I'm sorry for the insult. But I read that craptastic book of yours and didn't get an apology or refund from you either. In fact, the only reason I read past the first 100 pages was that I just couldn't believe that it could be this bad - it had to get better soon. By the time I reached halfway I just finished it out of pure irony. Then I passed it off on a coworker to see if it was just me. He had the same experience (sorry Alex). If you ever need an example of how not to write a book, "Digital Fortress" is it.
Thanks for the link. This is a very interesting article.
The experimental design of selecting for "true responders" before proceeding with double-blinded tests is interesting. After reading through, it seems that their may be some bias on the part of the experimenters, as they express belief that those responding to placebo could be suffering delayed reaction to previous challenges. They also report delayed responses that included lapsing into depression and unconciousness for hours or days. This seems highly unlikely. If EMF exposure was really causing these people to fall unconscious for days they would never be awake.
Also, they don't seem to have ever heard of a Faraday cage. They tested in the dark because some were sensitive to the florescent lighting, but a simple wire mesh should eliminate that possibility. I also wonder about their test equipment. As described the equipment is sitting right in front of the subject, so it seems that they might be able to ascertain if the emitter is on by means other than EMF sensitivity. There doesn't seem to be any reason not to have the subject acoustically and visually isolated from all test equipment.
I didn't put more than a couple of minutes of thought into it, but it is odd to me that a list of authors from a wide variety of institutes of higher learning would come up with an experimental design that was easy to question. Perhaps I'm misreading something. When I used to do medical research, I noticed that the medical doctors and particularly the behavioral sciences people were not very good at experimental design, so maybe their panel is full of those types. The "not good at experimental design" means that they allowed their biases to enter the results way too easily. Because the tenor of the article is that the authors believe that not only the 16% of patients they measured as sensitive to EMF, but as much as 75% of those claiming EMF sensitivity are in fact EMF sensitive, I would suggest that they may have strong biases that are affecting their design and interpretation.
This is just a hunch based on a brief reading though. Hey, for Slashdot that counts as informed expert opinion! If I was a researcher in this field, I would try to reproduce their results while correcting possible deficiencies in the experimental design. It should be easy to get a Science or Nature article out of this with strong enough results. If this high hit rate (16%) is really true, similar results should have shown up in any study of reasonable size. The fact that it hasn't is another reason to be skeptical of their methodology.
I work for Siemens, with Winergy being a subsidiary of us. They build the gear multiplier that sits behind the blades and drives the generator. It alone weighs in at 32,000 lbs or around there. This is a 1.5 Megawatt box too. The 3.5s that they're getting ready to start building are even heavier. Heh.
This blimp should do the trick. Lifting capacity of one to two million pounds.
One of the great annoyances is that the quoted refund is so much more here - 40GBP is about US$66. So why are Microsoft charging us $66 for the same thing you can buy in the US for $40?
An amateur astronomer puts up pictures on his blog and we're comparing it to Shoemaker-Levy?
Right.... it's not like any amateur astronomer could have discovered something like comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. David Levy would be spinning in his grave to hear of this... well, if he was dead that is. Or not an amateur astronomer.
Blaming the low quality of public healthcare in Taiwan on the national health insurance system is ridiculous. The primary problem is that most of the doctors who participate in it are incompetent. The good doctors who actually went to quality medical schools do not participate in the national insurance program because the payments are much too small.
The public healthcare system isn't to blame.... the doctors are no good because the public healthcare system doesn't pay enough for the good doctors to participate. But it's not the public healthcare system's fault. Nope, sorry... not following your logic there.
McD's burgers have tiny, thin patties. Their taste comes from the toppings, not from the beef itself. If you like that, more power to you. But a real burger has typically a 1/4 to 1/3 pound patty of beef, and much of the flavor comes from the meat itself.
I'd suggest you give them another shot the next time you need a drive-through meal. They have 1/3 pound Angus Burgers right now; the mushroom/swiss burger is pretty darn tasty. And you really can't beat the fries at Mickey-D's anywhere - if you are in the mood for fries.
Oh, and this is not a corporate Astroturf. I actually eat their crap a few times a month. And it is usually quite good value.
But you probably don't want to take advice from me. I've been into the grilled octopus at the local Greek restaurant lately, so clearly I'm a little off kilter.
Care about it? No, not really. But you'd buy a copy of Compute's Gazette that had a few games in each issue. In printed text. In Basic. Then you'd run home and spend a couple of hours typing in all of those lovely sprite graphics.... Poke-ing and peek-ing. Then you got to play they game! Awesome!
Then you'd put a sign on the computer "Do Not Unplug" because you didn't have a tape drive to save the game to and if anyone unplugged your computer you'd lose all that work. Ahhh, good times....
I think your analysis misses the point of the RIAA's actions. They don't want publicity for their actions at trial, they want publicity for "don't download music or you'll wreck your life." As such they got exactly what they wanted, no gory details of legal sausage-making and a headline grabbing verdict of "pay a metric crap-ton of money for using Kazaa". Now that they have their headline-grabbing verdict, they can try to get her to settle for a much lower amount to avoid the risk of a business model destroying verdict on appeal. All they really needed was the publicity for the danger of P2P downloads anyway - it's not like they needed the cash. They probably spent many times more on legal work.
I would seriously like to see how they define "obscene" as the term itself is VERY subjective.
They define it subjectively, of course. Reasonable jurors applying contemporary standards. All VERY subjective. The supremes have weighed in on this, and this (paraphrased) is the standard they chose.
You leave out the important calculus of risking 10, 20 or 30 years in jail with no possibility of parole, versus taking the year and getting out in 8 months or less - when the trial and appeals would take longer than that. Pleading "guilty" can mean "I didn't do crap, but I can do a risk/reward analysis". If I was young and idealistic and if I hadn't seen the news of McMartin preschool, Wee Care nursery, Little Rascals day care and other cases of Day care sexual abuse hysteria I might be motivated to make a stand on principle. Now I'm older, jaded, more pragmatic and have more to lose. There are times when you'll admit to something that isn't true to avoid life in prison without possibility of parole - if you don't believe me, just ask Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson of Little Rascals. The charges against them were so ridiculous that you couldn't imagine they'd be convicted - but they were. Dawn Wilson took a stand on principle and refused a deal to testify against Robert Kelly on the grounds that what they were asking her to do was lie to convict him. Brave girl - particularly as a young newlywed with her first child on the way. Dawn was sentenced to life in prison for the utterly unbelievable crime of having sex with her boss in the storefront window on main street at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. According to the Frontline documentary, even the jury didn't believe the charges against her - but they felt they had to convict her to "protect the children". Betsy Kelly, seeing the writing on the wall took a plea bargain after being held in prison for two years awaiting trial. She plead "no contest" and served another year.
....this woman's now on the hook for enough money...
What happens to this woman or someone like her who doesn't have a penny to her name and she simply doesn't pay? How can you squeeze blood out of a turnip? If the award had been 10 times or 100 times or 1000 times as much, what difference would it make? They might as well tell her that she must pay off the national debt. It will never get paid off either.
What this means is that the RIAA got exactly what they want. They have the nuclear option for downloading.mp3's - if you share files we'll bankrupt you. Pretty effective deterrent. I don't think they really give a crap about collecting the money for the sake of the cash itself.
How does globalization work against evolution? If anything it brings radically diverse genes closer, more variations, fitter offspring.
The answer to your question lies in the origin of those radically diverse genes. Diversity arises because of isolation of breeding populations - see "island effect" for examples. If diversity is your goal, then a global breeding population is working against you. In fact, if you were to completely isolate populations by national border, you'd find that you'll eventually end up with a few hundred distinct species of man. (for large values of "eventually") This would be the ultimate in "diverse".
The current situation is that we have several very large populations that were in isolation for a short period of time (a few thousand years). The diversity in genes you cite coming from globalization actually arose due to that previous isolation.
Of course, this is only one effect on genetic diversity, there are many others.
They can tell the difference between a Nova and a Supernova by the light curves. The two distinctly different events have different brightening curves as the explosion proceeds, so they can tell which one it is no matter how far away or how bright or dim, as long as they catch it early enough in the process.
Estimates are already a form of guessing. The word 'guesstimate' make me want to puke blood.
You are missing out on the hierarchy of the estimate - an honored and proud tradition of quantifying the quality of your guess.
Least accurate is the guesstimate.
Then comes the SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess). It's better because it's scientific.
Finally, we have the estimate.
To indicate a super-duper extra-good estimate you provide an estimate with a "high degree of confidence". People like "degree of confidence" in their guesses.
I went to a BC football game at Foxboro stadium some years ago and found out that you don't screw with the cops up there. On the extra point following a touchdown, the ball missed the netting behind the goal posts and went into the crowd. The guys in the stands were having a fun game of keepaway from the staff when the cops intervened. They yelled at the next guy that caught the ball to hand it over. He merrily tossed it across the stands as everyone else had been doing. Whereupon he got his ass royally kicked by about 3 cops, and dragged out - presumably to be arrested for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. (assaulting their batons with his ribs) I'm not sure if they were BC or Foxboro or state police, but I ain't screwing with them, that's for sure.
In most countries, as well as the United States, if you are engaging in any legal 'money making activity' you have to claim the income on your taxes, for sufficient values of income.
Actually, you have to report any income, legal or not. Not doing so can often be worse than getting caught for your illegal activity. Just ask Al Capone.
Somebody mod this guy up.... he knows what he's talking about. And send a copy of his post to your representative, because odds are that they don't get it. In fact, read his post - then take a list of everything the government is working on right now and compare it to the list of things the constitution says the government is allowed to do. On second thought, don't. It'll just piss you off.
Whether or not they should be provided by the federal government is debated. If the people want these things, the laws can be changed to support it (including a Constitutional amendment if required).
This is the spot-on civics lesson for how a constitutional democracy works. Unfortunately that little "including a Constitutional Amendment" caveat you toss in there has been completely abandoned by the government. As long as it is "sound government policy" it is constitutional these days.
Amendment IX - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
It's the ignorance of folks like you that opponents of the Bill of Rights were afraid of. They feared people would think the Bill of Rights was an exhaustive list of our rights, even if one of them explicitly stated it wasn't (i.e. the 9th). The US Constitution protects all rights, even ones not explicitly enumerated therein....
Excellent post!
I'll jump on your bandwagon and add that the constitution does not name the rights of the people, it names the powers that the federal government may take from the people. In effect, it lists the limited areas that the government may infringe upon your personal rights. Anything not listed in the constitution is denied to the government - not the other way around.
Regulate commerce? Yup, we got a clause in the constitution that allows us to do that. Outlaw oral sex? Nope, nothing in the constitution says we have the power to do that.
On a sad note, you'll notice that there is very little interest in following this interpretation of constitutional power. I'm afraid that the prevailing view now is that "constitutional" is synonymous with "it's a good idea".
Agreed, this is a great article. A point I hope nobody missed is that the manufacturer (OCZ) was pissed about a bad review, but worked with the reviewer, learned something from the review and made massive improvements to their product. And the reviewer gave a full account of the interaction, which is wonderful journalism.
This is almost the perfect review. Anand gives us his methodology, reveals his contact with manufacturers in context, and explains fully what the tests mean and why they were designed as they were. Really fantastic work.
I hope that other reviewers read this article and learn from it. The interaction with OCZ reported actually makes me want to try their products, because it sounds like they actually have the passion and wherewithal to provide true value to the customer. The mea-culpa from Anand about missing the performance issues with used drives was also very useful. It reveals the learning process of the reviewer and also makes me root for their success. All in all, this was a fantastic article.
One of the best AI examples I've played against was a quakeC bot written to learn just as a player would. The bots had no knowledge of the map nor any information beyond what a human player could garner, but they learned everything they were exposed to. So the first encounter was an easy kill. Later encounters became progressively more difficult as they learned to avoid your fire and learned to anticipate your dodges. In the end, they would memorize all ammo and health spawn points and times such that you could never defeat them as they would starve you out if you were good enough to go toe-to-toe in a firefight.
The same AI applied to the enemies in the regular quake game resulted in the best (and least fair) enemy ever. The first guy I failed to kill ran away and got help. I didn't see any enemies again until they had me surrounded by all of the enemies on the level. It was brilliant. And unfair, and undefeatable. Still, watching them learn how to defeat me was pretty interesting.
That also points out the problem with FPS AI. If they really had any degree of intelligence, they'd duck for cover and call in backup and you'd get pinned down pretty quick.
Slashdot Mirror
Digital Fortess, also by Dan Brown, is a year older than that and centers around cryptograpohy. Though it is Fiction.
It also happens to be possibly the worst piece of fiction ever written. Dan, if you read slashdot I'm sorry for the insult. But I read that craptastic book of yours and didn't get an apology or refund from you either. In fact, the only reason I read past the first 100 pages was that I just couldn't believe that it could be this bad - it had to get better soon. By the time I reached halfway I just finished it out of pure irony. Then I passed it off on a coworker to see if it was just me. He had the same experience (sorry Alex). If you ever need an example of how not to write a book, "Digital Fortress" is it.
Thanks for the link. This is a very interesting article.
The experimental design of selecting for "true responders" before proceeding with double-blinded tests is interesting. After reading through, it seems that their may be some bias on the part of the experimenters, as they express belief that those responding to placebo could be suffering delayed reaction to previous challenges. They also report delayed responses that included lapsing into depression and unconciousness for hours or days. This seems highly unlikely. If EMF exposure was really causing these people to fall unconscious for days they would never be awake.
Also, they don't seem to have ever heard of a Faraday cage. They tested in the dark because some were sensitive to the florescent lighting, but a simple wire mesh should eliminate that possibility. I also wonder about their test equipment. As described the equipment is sitting right in front of the subject, so it seems that they might be able to ascertain if the emitter is on by means other than EMF sensitivity. There doesn't seem to be any reason not to have the subject acoustically and visually isolated from all test equipment.
I didn't put more than a couple of minutes of thought into it, but it is odd to me that a list of authors from a wide variety of institutes of higher learning would come up with an experimental design that was easy to question. Perhaps I'm misreading something. When I used to do medical research, I noticed that the medical doctors and particularly the behavioral sciences people were not very good at experimental design, so maybe their panel is full of those types. The "not good at experimental design" means that they allowed their biases to enter the results way too easily. Because the tenor of the article is that the authors believe that not only the 16% of patients they measured as sensitive to EMF, but as much as 75% of those claiming EMF sensitivity are in fact EMF sensitive, I would suggest that they may have strong biases that are affecting their design and interpretation.
This is just a hunch based on a brief reading though. Hey, for Slashdot that counts as informed expert opinion! If I was a researcher in this field, I would try to reproduce their results while correcting possible deficiencies in the experimental design. It should be easy to get a Science or Nature article out of this with strong enough results. If this high hit rate (16%) is really true, similar results should have shown up in any study of reasonable size. The fact that it hasn't is another reason to be skeptical of their methodology.
I work for Siemens, with Winergy being a subsidiary of us. They build the gear multiplier that sits behind the blades and drives the generator. It alone weighs in at 32,000 lbs or around there. This is a 1.5 Megawatt box too. The 3.5s that they're getting ready to start building are even heavier. Heh.
This blimp should do the trick. Lifting capacity of one to two million pounds.
One of the great annoyances is that the quoted refund is so much more here - 40GBP is about US$66. So why are Microsoft charging us $66 for the same thing you can buy in the US for $40?
VAT?
An amateur astronomer puts up pictures on his blog and we're comparing it to Shoemaker-Levy?
Right.... it's not like any amateur astronomer could have discovered something like comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. David Levy would be spinning in his grave to hear of this... well, if he was dead that is. Or not an amateur astronomer.
Whoa, wait a minute...
Blaming the low quality of public healthcare in Taiwan on the national health insurance system is ridiculous. The primary problem is that most of the doctors who participate in it are incompetent. The good doctors who actually went to quality medical schools do not participate in the national insurance program because the payments are much too small.
The public healthcare system isn't to blame.... the doctors are no good because the public healthcare system doesn't pay enough for the good doctors to participate. But it's not the public healthcare system's fault. Nope, sorry... not following your logic there.
McD's burgers have tiny, thin patties. Their taste comes from the toppings, not from the beef itself. If you like that, more power to you. But a real burger has typically a 1/4 to 1/3 pound patty of beef, and much of the flavor comes from the meat itself.
I'd suggest you give them another shot the next time you need a drive-through meal. They have 1/3 pound Angus Burgers right now; the mushroom/swiss burger is pretty darn tasty. And you really can't beat the fries at Mickey-D's anywhere - if you are in the mood for fries.
Oh, and this is not a corporate Astroturf. I actually eat their crap a few times a month. And it is usually quite good value.
But you probably don't want to take advice from me. I've been into the grilled octopus at the local Greek restaurant lately, so clearly I'm a little off kilter.
Care about it? No, not really. But you'd buy a copy of Compute's Gazette that had a few games in each issue. In printed text. In Basic. Then you'd run home and spend a couple of hours typing in all of those lovely sprite graphics.... Poke-ing and peek-ing. Then you got to play they game! Awesome!
Then you'd put a sign on the computer "Do Not Unplug" because you didn't have a tape drive to save the game to and if anyone unplugged your computer you'd lose all that work. Ahhh, good times....
This has far more visibility than I think the RIAA wanted. They may claim to be all about 'educating the public', but we know that's not the case: http://www.groundreport.com/Media_and_Tech/Judge-Orders-RIAA-Hearing-to-be-Televised-RIAA-Fil
I think your analysis misses the point of the RIAA's actions. They don't want publicity for their actions at trial, they want publicity for "don't download music or you'll wreck your life." As such they got exactly what they wanted, no gory details of legal sausage-making and a headline grabbing verdict of "pay a metric crap-ton of money for using Kazaa". Now that they have their headline-grabbing verdict, they can try to get her to settle for a much lower amount to avoid the risk of a business model destroying verdict on appeal. All they really needed was the publicity for the danger of P2P downloads anyway - it's not like they needed the cash. They probably spent many times more on legal work.
I would seriously like to see how they define "obscene" as the term itself is VERY subjective.
They define it subjectively, of course. Reasonable jurors applying contemporary standards. All VERY subjective. The supremes have weighed in on this, and this (paraphrased) is the standard they chose.
You leave out the important calculus of risking 10, 20 or 30 years in jail with no possibility of parole, versus taking the year and getting out in 8 months or less - when the trial and appeals would take longer than that. Pleading "guilty" can mean "I didn't do crap, but I can do a risk/reward analysis". If I was young and idealistic and if I hadn't seen the news of McMartin preschool, Wee Care nursery, Little Rascals day care and other cases of Day care sexual abuse hysteria I might be motivated to make a stand on principle. Now I'm older, jaded, more pragmatic and have more to lose. There are times when you'll admit to something that isn't true to avoid life in prison without possibility of parole - if you don't believe me, just ask Robert Kelly and Dawn Wilson of Little Rascals. The charges against them were so ridiculous that you couldn't imagine they'd be convicted - but they were. Dawn Wilson took a stand on principle and refused a deal to testify against Robert Kelly on the grounds that what they were asking her to do was lie to convict him. Brave girl - particularly as a young newlywed with her first child on the way. Dawn was sentenced to life in prison for the utterly unbelievable crime of having sex with her boss in the storefront window on main street at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. According to the Frontline documentary, even the jury didn't believe the charges against her - but they felt they had to convict her to "protect the children". Betsy Kelly, seeing the writing on the wall took a plea bargain after being held in prison for two years awaiting trial. She plead "no contest" and served another year.
Crappy connection? Resumable transfers? Slow connections? Sounds like the good old BBS days!
Z-modem is your answer.
....this woman's now on the hook for enough money...
What happens to this woman or someone like her who doesn't have a penny to her name and she simply doesn't pay? How can you squeeze blood out of a turnip? If the award had been 10 times or 100 times or 1000 times as much, what difference would it make? They might as well tell her that she must pay off the national debt. It will never get paid off either.
What this means is that the RIAA got exactly what they want. They have the nuclear option for downloading .mp3's - if you share files we'll bankrupt you. Pretty effective deterrent. I don't think they really give a crap about collecting the money for the sake of the cash itself.
How does globalization work against evolution? If anything it brings radically diverse genes closer, more variations, fitter offspring.
The answer to your question lies in the origin of those radically diverse genes. Diversity arises because of isolation of breeding populations - see "island effect" for examples. If diversity is your goal, then a global breeding population is working against you. In fact, if you were to completely isolate populations by national border, you'd find that you'll eventually end up with a few hundred distinct species of man. (for large values of "eventually") This would be the ultimate in "diverse".
The current situation is that we have several very large populations that were in isolation for a short period of time (a few thousand years). The diversity in genes you cite coming from globalization actually arose due to that previous isolation.
Of course, this is only one effect on genetic diversity, there are many others.
Pet Peeve Alert:
Weakest Supernova or STRONGEST NOVA?
They can tell the difference between a Nova and a Supernova by the light curves. The two distinctly different events have different brightening curves as the explosion proceeds, so they can tell which one it is no matter how far away or how bright or dim, as long as they catch it early enough in the process.
Estimates are already a form of guessing. The word 'guesstimate' make me want to puke blood.
You are missing out on the hierarchy of the estimate - an honored and proud tradition of quantifying the quality of your guess.
Least accurate is the guesstimate.
Then comes the SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess). It's better because it's scientific.
Finally, we have the estimate.
To indicate a super-duper extra-good estimate you provide an estimate with a "high degree of confidence". People like "degree of confidence" in their guesses.
After that post it looks like you might be shopping for a purity ring....
I went to a BC football game at Foxboro stadium some years ago and found out that you don't screw with the cops up there. On the extra point following a touchdown, the ball missed the netting behind the goal posts and went into the crowd. The guys in the stands were having a fun game of keepaway from the staff when the cops intervened. They yelled at the next guy that caught the ball to hand it over. He merrily tossed it across the stands as everyone else had been doing. Whereupon he got his ass royally kicked by about 3 cops, and dragged out - presumably to be arrested for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. (assaulting their batons with his ribs) I'm not sure if they were BC or Foxboro or state police, but I ain't screwing with them, that's for sure.
Would shooting a 3100 meter grounded cable into a lightning cloud actually discharge it into the ground?
This is routinely done in lightning research with small rockets and thin spools of wire.
In most countries, as well as the United States, if you are engaging in any legal 'money making activity' you have to claim the income on your taxes, for sufficient values of income.
Actually, you have to report any income, legal or not. Not doing so can often be worse than getting caught for your illegal activity. Just ask Al Capone.
Somebody mod this guy up.... he knows what he's talking about. And send a copy of his post to your representative, because odds are that they don't get it. In fact, read his post - then take a list of everything the government is working on right now and compare it to the list of things the constitution says the government is allowed to do. On second thought, don't. It'll just piss you off.
Whether or not they should be provided by the federal government is debated. If the people want these things, the laws can be changed to support it (including a Constitutional amendment if required).
This is the spot-on civics lesson for how a constitutional democracy works. Unfortunately that little "including a Constitutional Amendment" caveat you toss in there has been completely abandoned by the government. As long as it is "sound government policy" it is constitutional these days.
Amendment IX - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
It's the ignorance of folks like you that opponents of the Bill of Rights were afraid of. They feared people would think the Bill of Rights was an exhaustive list of our rights, even if one of them explicitly stated it wasn't (i.e. the 9th). The US Constitution protects all rights, even ones not explicitly enumerated therein. ...
Excellent post!
I'll jump on your bandwagon and add that the constitution does not name the rights of the people, it names the powers that the federal government may take from the people. In effect, it lists the limited areas that the government may infringe upon your personal rights. Anything not listed in the constitution is denied to the government - not the other way around.
Regulate commerce? Yup, we got a clause in the constitution that allows us to do that. Outlaw oral sex? Nope, nothing in the constitution says we have the power to do that.
On a sad note, you'll notice that there is very little interest in following this interpretation of constitutional power. I'm afraid that the prevailing view now is that "constitutional" is synonymous with "it's a good idea".
Hey, knock it off! No fighting in the war room!
This is almost the perfect review. Anand gives us his methodology, reveals his contact with manufacturers in context, and explains fully what the tests mean and why they were designed as they were. Really fantastic work.
I hope that other reviewers read this article and learn from it. The interaction with OCZ reported actually makes me want to try their products, because it sounds like they actually have the passion and wherewithal to provide true value to the customer. The mea-culpa from Anand about missing the performance issues with used drives was also very useful. It reveals the learning process of the reviewer and also makes me root for their success. All in all, this was a fantastic article.
One of the best AI examples I've played against was a quakeC bot written to learn just as a player would. The bots had no knowledge of the map nor any information beyond what a human player could garner, but they learned everything they were exposed to. So the first encounter was an easy kill. Later encounters became progressively more difficult as they learned to avoid your fire and learned to anticipate your dodges. In the end, they would memorize all ammo and health spawn points and times such that you could never defeat them as they would starve you out if you were good enough to go toe-to-toe in a firefight.
The same AI applied to the enemies in the regular quake game resulted in the best (and least fair) enemy ever. The first guy I failed to kill ran away and got help. I didn't see any enemies again until they had me surrounded by all of the enemies on the level. It was brilliant. And unfair, and undefeatable. Still, watching them learn how to defeat me was pretty interesting.
That also points out the problem with FPS AI. If they really had any degree of intelligence, they'd duck for cover and call in backup and you'd get pinned down pretty quick.