Re:The optimal state of any linear game is a draw
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 1
Neat proof, I'd never thought of that. Though in the case of Go, since it's a score-based game, perfect play wouldn't exactly result in "win" or "lose" but a specific score, correct? So once you knew that score, you could have a mathematically perfect compensation that made the game "even". It would be interesting to know whether that perfect compensation was appropriate for actual human play.
The article wasn't saying "Linux is good for the consumer" in the sense that "everybody with a computer should go install Linux now". All the article is saying is that if Linux can offer challenge and competition to the Microsoft monopoly, that THIS would be good for the consumer. For example, presumably if Linux starts making inroads into corporate desktops Microsoft will lower the price of some of their products (if nothing else). Better yet, maybe we'll see more interoperability between the MS, Apple, and Unix worlds, which would also be good for "consumers". Don't try to force what the paper said into such a narrow-minded view.
Re:The optimal state of any linear game is a draw
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This is untrue. The optimal outcome of a chess or go game is unknown. It's possible that the player who moves first can always win, and it's possible that the player who moves second can always win. You've forgotten that in a turn-based game the two players are inherently different mathematically since one moves first.
Both parties dialing into an ISP wouldn't be able to increase bit rate at all. The upstream connection is always limited to 33.6 on an analog line, no matter what equipment the ISP has. And the only bit rate that can matter in this situation is the _lower_ of the receive and transmit speeds.
That's not my point exactly, and it isn't what I said. In the case of a zombie process, it's certainly true that the name "zombie process" was established from metaphor ("hmm, we have a situation where a process won't die... we'll call that a zombie, makes sense") but what I'm saying is that it isn't intended to be understood as a metaphor. You have to assign a name to the condition - it's inconvienient to say "process that has terminated but whose parent hasn't read its result code yet" every single time - but the name "zombie process" isn't really an attempt to convey any kind of understanding of what it IS. All the name conveys is that the process is sort of dead but not really; it doesn't purport to suggest how it came about, or what you could do about it.
A metaphor for a zombie process would be if you called it a "dead limb still hanging to a live tree" or something like that. It's certainly the case that the "process tree" is a metaphor, as the concept is usually taught and understood as a metaphor.
The reason for my response was to express that there's a difference between concepts that are understood as metaphors and concepts that are only named as metaphors. If you attempt to understand a complex concept using a metaphor, your understanding is limited to the quality of the metaphor. But jargon, merely naming a concept after a convenient metaphor, is not the same thing. No Unix I've seen has a "shotgun" command to do away with zombie processes. Imagine if they did, though; that would result in sysadmins who said "zombie process? just click on the shotgun" and they wouldn't have any clue what was really going on. That's what the concern is.
Those aren't really metaphors though, they're just jargon. Nobody expects you to understand what a "zombie process" is by thinking of it as a real zombie.
I really think you should put more thought into whether you consider a DVD "software". In a sense any data (including, say, a text file) can be considered software constructed for some API (ASCII). That being said, we typically consider something "software" if the API it runs in has certain technical features (for example, the ability to construct a finite Turing machine). The API a DVD runs in, when it is in your player, is not that sophisticated, though it may seem so at times... but MPEG is certainly not Turing-compatible with, say, x86 binary instructions, and neither is the simplistic layout engine that the menus are constructed with. Given that, what's your justification for considering a DVD "software", other than the fact that the data on them is read electronically?
This proof is by spontateous invention, so don't sue me if it's screwed up someplace. There's probably a much simpler proof, but proof by induction is fun. Note that I'm assuming base 10, and this obviously doesn't work in other bases.
Start with the first multiple of 3: 3. As this is one digit, obviously the sum of all its digits is divisible by three. Consider this a basis case for induction.
When we add 3 to a number that is divisible by three, either we have to perform a carry, or we don't. If we don't, then the addition operation will add exactly three to the sum of the digits. Since we know (from our induction assumption) that the sum of the digits is already divisible by three, obviously adding three to that sum creates another multiple of three.
If we have to perform a single carry into the tens place (say 9+3=12), then the sum of the digits excluding the ones place increases by 1, and the value of the number (ignoring the ones place) increases by 10. Since we're adding three, obviously the value of the ones place always has to decrease by seven. 1-7=-6, so this operation always subtracts 6 from our total digit sum. Obviously subtracting 6 from any number that is already a multiple of 3 yields another multiple of 3.
What if the carry is compound (99+3=102, or 999+3=1002)? Since we're only adding 3, any place that is affected by the compound carry will have to be a 9. The 9 will always change to a 0. Subtracting nines doesn't hurt our multiple of 3, so we can ignore it. Then, the value of the first place that isn't a 9 will increase by 1, which makes this ultimately the same as the case in the above paragraph.
Thus, the first multiple of 3, 3, has digits that add up to 3, and adding 3 to a multiple of 3 whose digits add up to a multiple of 3 will create a number whose digits sum to a multiple of 3. So by induction, all multiples of 3 have digits that add up to a multiple of 3.
I figure, it's not really "human nature", it's really a matter of processor utilization. Deciding exactly what an economy should do - down to the detail of how many pencils the bank needs, requires a tremendous number of decisions to be made. If you centralize, that means that you have fewer people making those decisions. The truth is that it takes everyone's processing to get it all to work properly. That's what a free market does, by giving each agent a small microeconomy (their own checkbook) to perfect.
Sure you can. I've been upgrading from a skanky 386DX-40 for like a decade now. Granted, there aren't any parts left from the original, but never once have I bought a "new PC".
"remote control solution" is a Windows-centric idea. You could use this for remote administration of a Unix machine, but that's only a small usage. All Unix machines are multiuser, so you could have a graphical application hosted on a Unix server that displayed on Windows clients. It's a lot like Citrix/Terminal Server in the Windows world, although it is a weakness that it can't run rootless yet.
So in other words it can be used as a thin client solution, and thin client applications are becoming really popular. The "network computer" never went anywhere, but it's really common to see Windows machines used as pseudo-thin clients, that run some applications on their own and connect to a central server for others. This lets you use a Unix server for that, which many people would prefer.
Well, whatever the answer is, it ain't a number. If 1/0 was a number, then 0 would be equal to 1, and all hell would break loose. If you like you can say that the answer is "infinity", since "infinity" isn't a number either.
Macrovision is mandatory in the DVD player. The player itself is responsible for creating the signal; you can't encode Macrovision into an MPEG stream. The creators of the disks have to decide whether to use Macrovision on their disk though, which is basically "set the Macrovision bit" or not. If they choose to set the macrovision bit then they're supposed to pay some money per copy to Macrovision.
You may know this, but even in a fully switched environment, collisions and collision domains are still relevant, as it's always possible for two interfaces to attempt to transmit *to the same interface* at the same time.
What people are forgetting is that advertising COSTS you, however you look at it.
First your time is worth something. How much would someone have to pay you to sit there and listen to ads all day? I know I'd expect a good deal more than minimum wage. But even at minumum wage, if there's 10 minutes of commercials in an hour of radio, I'm paying 55 cents per hour to listen to the thing. You listen to an hour of radio a day? That'll be $10 a month, please. In other words, assuming I like music more than ads - and I do - removing commercials should be worth something to me, since it gives me more music time. It also means that the music will be chosen to please *listeners*, and not advertisers. If you don't think there's a difference, you probably don't watch much TV.
Second, I don't understand why so many people believe that advertising doesn't affect their decisions. When you're bombarded with ads for a product, it changes the way you think about that product. If nothing else it increases your recognition of that product. If given two product choices people will tend to buy the one they know, and much of that "knowledge" comes from advertising. If you think ads don't affect you, you're probably deluding yourself.
I prefer to pay for all my entertainment up front, so I can easily know how much it costs me. I'm not really a big patron of any advertiser-supported medium, unless you count Slashdot.
The obvious solution is that you need to pick up your pennies faster. If it's on the floor in front of you, you ought to be able to get it faster than 5 seconds.
The idsoftware screenshots are really lame. Check out the better shots at Gamespot. There's plenty of different heights and I don't recall Doom having a very engaging lighting model in the first place.
Allow me to repair your ignorance. It is actually NOT possible. A nuclear explosion requires a certain (high) concentration of fuel, as well as a certain ratio of volume to surface area - or it doesn't happen. This is why making a nuclear bomb is actually very difficult. In a fission reactor, the material isn't concentrated enough, and it isn't unstable enough. Further, the material isn't in one large chunk - it's separated into rods. And further, there's no mechanism for imploding the reaction material to reach critical mass. So no, actually, despite what you read in old sci-fi, it's not physically possible for a fission reactor to explode. Take the rods out, overheat the thing, whatever. The ABSOLUTE worst is that it gets really hot and melts - which is very bad, but very rare, much rarer than a coal or gas explosion (so the overall risk is lower).
The only major nuclear disaster in history is Chernobyl, which was not a nuclear reaction but a chemical reaction; the graphite coolant caught fire. The graphite reactor was a bad design, and all reactors today are water-cooled. Further, Chernobyl had no containment building to speak of, and was run by idiots.
People speak of Three Mile Island as if it was some kind of disaster, but it didn't hurt anybody or anything. The worst that happened from TMI was the destruction of the reactor itself (which is a bit of a disaster alone, since those things cost billions).
A complete meltdown is a disaster, but not the end of the world. It would be nothing like the destruction wreaked by even a small nuclear weapon.
I swear, no matter how illogical it is, there will always be people who expect everyone on Slashdot to comment as if they were all the same person, just because they're all on the same website.
Repeat after me: "Slashdot comment posters are all different people... Slashdot comment posters are all different people..."
Okay, first off, corporations are imperfect by definition, so yes, Wal-Mart has done some bad things. I know that personally. But your examples are inane.
Let's say you own a small bookstore. As a retailer, what you do is buy things on one hand and sell them on the other. You put books on your shelves and you hope people buy them.
Do you have an obligation to stock any particular book? If you're a gaming bookstore, are you going to have teachers banging on your door, demanding that you stock more books about science and math? If you do run a science-oriented bookstore, are you going to have Christians banging on your door, demanding that you stock Christian Bibles?
Maybe you will, but you'll send them on their way, or call the police if they get too annoying. And you'll be in the right.
Any retailer has to make decisions about what they will and will not stock. More importantly, any retailer has the unalienable RIGHT to decide what to stock. The size of the retailer has nothing to do with it, because abuse of monopoly power is about things you do to your *competition*. If Wal-Mart would only stock albums from publishers who would not sell to K-Mart (aka Microsoft in reverse), that would be an abuse of a monopoly.
Wal-Mart controls what they put on their shelves. Not you, and not the government. And certainly not the bands or the publishers. Misunderstanding this makes you look like someone who doesn't understand the system. Wal-Mart isn't coercing bands; that's ridiculous. That's like saying you're coercing Hershey's to stop using almonds whenever you buy a candy bar that doesn't have almonds.
Whenever you use an argument like this, think about what you're suggesting. For example, are we suggesting that the government should prevent Microsoft from forcing OEM's to load Windows only? I think so. Do you want to suggest that the government should allow the music publishers to control what Wal-Mart is required to stock on the shelves it owns? I think not.
What they're doing isn't technically illegal. They've basically stumbled upon a loophole in society. The investors haven't caught them yet because the returns are so yummy, and the regulators haven't caught them yet because this hasn't really been done before, so it doesn't trigger the impropriety sensors in their orderly bureaucratic minds.
Sorry, but as your nearest DVD will inform you, copyright infringement carries criminal penalties, and you can in fact be arrested, at least for that. I'm not so sure about patent infringements. Remember that there is no such thing as "intellectual property" recognized by the law.
Actually it's quite indirect, but buying disks used does help the MPAA. The reason is that the existence of a resale market increases the DVD's inherent value and therefore the prices they can be sold for retail. The same holds true in all markets. Granted, they might make even MORE money if they eliminate the first sale doctrine entirely, but right now that hasn't been accomplished.
The company that removed their airplane phones is Southwest Airlines. And do the math - if the US Government would allow Southwest to allow in-flight cell phone usage, they absolutely would. Just think of the business travelers who would flock to SWA in the first week alone. (The second week, all the other carriers would be forced to do the same.) No, cell phone use on commercial airlines is not allowed, and it's not because the airlines don't want it.
Slashdot Mirror
Neat proof, I'd never thought of that. Though in the case of Go, since it's a score-based game, perfect play wouldn't exactly result in "win" or "lose" but a specific score, correct? So once you knew that score, you could have a mathematically perfect compensation that made the game "even". It would be interesting to know whether that perfect compensation was appropriate for actual human play.
The article wasn't saying "Linux is good for the consumer" in the sense that "everybody with a computer should go install Linux now". All the article is saying is that if Linux can offer challenge and competition to the Microsoft monopoly, that THIS would be good for the consumer. For example, presumably if Linux starts making inroads into corporate desktops Microsoft will lower the price of some of their products (if nothing else). Better yet, maybe we'll see more interoperability between the MS, Apple, and Unix worlds, which would also be good for "consumers". Don't try to force what the paper said into such a narrow-minded view.
This is untrue. The optimal outcome of a chess or go game is unknown. It's possible that the player who moves first can always win, and it's possible that the player who moves second can always win. You've forgotten that in a turn-based game the two players are inherently different mathematically since one moves first.
Both parties dialing into an ISP wouldn't be able to increase bit rate at all. The upstream connection is always limited to 33.6 on an analog line, no matter what equipment the ISP has. And the only bit rate that can matter in this situation is the _lower_ of the receive and transmit speeds.
That's not my point exactly, and it isn't what I said. In the case of a zombie process, it's certainly true that the name "zombie process" was established from metaphor ("hmm, we have a situation where a process won't die... we'll call that a zombie, makes sense") but what I'm saying is that it isn't intended to be understood as a metaphor. You have to assign a name to the condition - it's inconvienient to say "process that has terminated but whose parent hasn't read its result code yet" every single time - but the name "zombie process" isn't really an attempt to convey any kind of understanding of what it IS. All the name conveys is that the process is sort of dead but not really; it doesn't purport to suggest how it came about, or what you could do about it.
A metaphor for a zombie process would be if you called it a "dead limb still hanging to a live tree" or something like that. It's certainly the case that the "process tree" is a metaphor, as the concept is usually taught and understood as a metaphor.
The reason for my response was to express that there's a difference between concepts that are understood as metaphors and concepts that are only named as metaphors. If you attempt to understand a complex concept using a metaphor, your understanding is limited to the quality of the metaphor. But jargon, merely naming a concept after a convenient metaphor, is not the same thing. No Unix I've seen has a "shotgun" command to do away with zombie processes. Imagine if they did, though; that would result in sysadmins who said "zombie process? just click on the shotgun" and they wouldn't have any clue what was really going on. That's what the concern is.
Those aren't really metaphors though, they're just jargon. Nobody expects you to understand what a "zombie process" is by thinking of it as a real zombie.
I really think you should put more thought into whether you consider a DVD "software". In a sense any data (including, say, a text file) can be considered software constructed for some API (ASCII). That being said, we typically consider something "software" if the API it runs in has certain technical features (for example, the ability to construct a finite Turing machine). The API a DVD runs in, when it is in your player, is not that sophisticated, though it may seem so at times... but MPEG is certainly not Turing-compatible with, say, x86 binary instructions, and neither is the simplistic layout engine that the menus are constructed with. Given that, what's your justification for considering a DVD "software", other than the fact that the data on them is read electronically?
This proof is by spontateous invention, so don't sue me if it's screwed up someplace. There's probably a much simpler proof, but proof by induction is fun. Note that I'm assuming base 10, and this obviously doesn't work in other bases.
Start with the first multiple of 3: 3. As this is one digit, obviously the sum of all its digits is divisible by three. Consider this a basis case for induction.
When we add 3 to a number that is divisible by three, either we have to perform a carry, or we don't. If we don't, then the addition operation will add exactly three to the sum of the digits. Since we know (from our induction assumption) that the sum of the digits is already divisible by three, obviously adding three to that sum creates another multiple of three.
If we have to perform a single carry into the tens place (say 9+3=12), then the sum of the digits excluding the ones place increases by 1, and the value of the number (ignoring the ones place) increases by 10. Since we're adding three, obviously the value of the ones place always has to decrease by seven. 1-7=-6, so this operation always subtracts 6 from our total digit sum. Obviously subtracting 6 from any number that is already a multiple of 3 yields another multiple of 3.
What if the carry is compound (99+3=102, or 999+3=1002)? Since we're only adding 3, any place that is affected by the compound carry will have to be a 9. The 9 will always change to a 0. Subtracting nines doesn't hurt our multiple of 3, so we can ignore it. Then, the value of the first place that isn't a 9 will increase by 1, which makes this ultimately the same as the case in the above paragraph.
Thus, the first multiple of 3, 3, has digits that add up to 3, and adding 3 to a multiple of 3 whose digits add up to a multiple of 3 will create a number whose digits sum to a multiple of 3. So by induction, all multiples of 3 have digits that add up to a multiple of 3.
I figure, it's not really "human nature", it's really a matter of processor utilization. Deciding exactly what an economy should do - down to the detail of how many pencils the bank needs, requires a tremendous number of decisions to be made. If you centralize, that means that you have fewer people making those decisions. The truth is that it takes everyone's processing to get it all to work properly. That's what a free market does, by giving each agent a small microeconomy (their own checkbook) to perfect.
Sure you can. I've been upgrading from a skanky 386DX-40 for like a decade now.
Granted, there aren't any parts left from the original, but never once have I bought a "new PC".
"remote control solution" is a Windows-centric idea. You could use this for remote administration of a Unix machine, but that's only a small usage. All Unix machines are multiuser, so you could have a graphical application hosted on a Unix server that displayed on Windows clients. It's a lot like Citrix/Terminal Server in the Windows world, although it is a weakness that it can't run rootless yet.
So in other words it can be used as a thin client solution, and thin client applications are becoming really popular. The "network computer" never went anywhere, but it's really common to see Windows machines used as pseudo-thin clients, that run some applications on their own and connect to a central server for others. This lets you use a Unix server for that, which many people would prefer.
Well, whatever the answer is, it ain't a number. If 1/0 was a number, then 0 would be equal to 1, and all hell would break loose. If you like you can say that the answer is "infinity", since "infinity" isn't a number either.
Macrovision is mandatory in the DVD player. The player itself is responsible for creating the signal; you can't encode Macrovision into an MPEG stream. The creators of the disks have to decide whether to use Macrovision on their disk though, which is basically "set the Macrovision bit" or not. If they choose to set the macrovision bit then they're supposed to pay some money per copy to Macrovision.
You may know this, but even in a fully switched environment, collisions and collision domains are still relevant, as it's always possible for two interfaces to attempt to transmit *to the same interface* at the same time.
What people are forgetting is that advertising COSTS you, however you look at it.
First your time is worth something. How much would someone have to pay you to sit there and listen to ads all day? I know I'd expect a good deal more than minimum wage. But even at minumum wage, if there's 10 minutes of commercials in an hour of radio, I'm paying 55 cents per hour to listen to the thing. You listen to an hour of radio a day? That'll be $10 a month, please. In other words, assuming I like music more than ads - and I do - removing commercials should be worth something to me, since it gives me more music time. It also means that the music will be chosen to please *listeners*, and not advertisers. If you don't think there's a difference, you probably don't watch much TV.
Second, I don't understand why so many people believe that advertising doesn't affect their decisions. When you're bombarded with ads for a product, it changes the way you think about that product. If nothing else it increases your recognition of that product. If given two product choices people will tend to buy the one they know, and much of that "knowledge" comes from advertising. If you think ads don't affect you, you're probably deluding yourself.
I prefer to pay for all my entertainment up front, so I can easily know how much it costs me. I'm not really a big patron of any advertiser-supported medium, unless you count Slashdot.
The obvious solution is that you need to pick up your pennies faster. If it's on the floor in front of you, you ought to be able to get it faster than 5 seconds.
The idsoftware screenshots are really lame. Check out the better shots at Gamespot. There's plenty of different heights and I don't recall Doom having a very engaging lighting model in the first place.
Allow me to repair your ignorance. It is actually NOT possible.
A nuclear explosion requires a certain (high) concentration of fuel, as well as a certain ratio of volume to surface area - or it doesn't happen. This is why making a nuclear bomb is actually very difficult. In a fission reactor, the material isn't concentrated enough, and it isn't unstable enough. Further, the material isn't in one large chunk - it's separated into rods. And further, there's no mechanism for imploding the reaction material to reach critical mass. So no, actually, despite what you read in old sci-fi, it's not physically possible for a fission reactor to explode. Take the rods out, overheat the thing, whatever. The ABSOLUTE worst is that it gets really hot and melts - which is very bad, but very rare, much rarer than a coal or gas explosion (so the overall risk is lower).
The only major nuclear disaster in history is Chernobyl, which was not a nuclear reaction but a chemical reaction; the graphite coolant caught fire. The graphite reactor was a bad design, and all reactors today are water-cooled. Further, Chernobyl had no containment building to speak of, and was run by idiots.
People speak of Three Mile Island as if it was some kind of disaster, but it didn't hurt anybody or anything. The worst that happened from TMI was the destruction of the reactor itself (which is a bit of a disaster alone, since those things cost billions).
A complete meltdown is a disaster, but not the end of the world. It would be nothing like the destruction wreaked by even a small nuclear weapon.
I swear, no matter how illogical it is, there will always be people who expect everyone on Slashdot to comment as if they were all the same person, just because they're all on the same website.
Repeat after me: "Slashdot comment posters are all different people... Slashdot comment posters are all different people..."
Okay, first off, corporations are imperfect by definition, so yes, Wal-Mart has done some bad things. I know that personally. But your examples are inane.
Let's say you own a small bookstore. As a retailer, what you do is buy things on one hand and sell them on the other. You put books on your shelves and you hope people buy them.
Do you have an obligation to stock any particular book? If you're a gaming bookstore, are you going to have teachers banging on your door, demanding that you stock more books about science and math? If you do run a science-oriented bookstore, are you going to have Christians banging on your door, demanding that you stock Christian Bibles?
Maybe you will, but you'll send them on their way, or call the police if they get too annoying. And you'll be in the right.
Any retailer has to make decisions about what they will and will not stock. More importantly, any retailer has the unalienable RIGHT to decide what to stock. The size of the retailer has nothing to do with it, because abuse of monopoly power is about things you do to your *competition*. If Wal-Mart would only stock albums from publishers who would not sell to K-Mart (aka Microsoft in reverse), that would be an abuse of a monopoly.
Wal-Mart controls what they put on their shelves. Not you, and not the government. And certainly not the bands or the publishers. Misunderstanding this makes you look like someone who doesn't understand the system. Wal-Mart isn't coercing bands; that's ridiculous. That's like saying you're coercing Hershey's to stop using almonds whenever you buy a candy bar that doesn't have almonds.
Whenever you use an argument like this, think about what you're suggesting. For example, are we suggesting that the government should prevent Microsoft from forcing OEM's to load Windows only? I think so. Do you want to suggest that the government should allow the music publishers to control what Wal-Mart is required to stock on the shelves it owns? I think not.
What they're doing isn't technically illegal. They've basically stumbled upon a loophole in society. The investors haven't caught them yet because the returns are so yummy, and the regulators haven't caught them yet because this hasn't really been done before, so it doesn't trigger the impropriety sensors in their orderly bureaucratic minds.
Sorry, but as your nearest DVD will inform you, copyright infringement carries criminal penalties, and you can in fact be arrested, at least for that. I'm not so sure about patent infringements. Remember that there is no such thing as "intellectual property" recognized by the law.
What is Entourage? You don't mean Exchange...?
Actually it's quite indirect, but buying disks used does help the MPAA. The reason is that the existence of a resale market increases the DVD's inherent value and therefore the prices they can be sold for retail. The same holds true in all markets. Granted, they might make even MORE money if they eliminate the first sale doctrine entirely, but right now that hasn't been accomplished.
The company that removed their airplane phones is Southwest Airlines. And do the math - if the US Government would allow Southwest to allow in-flight cell phone usage, they absolutely would. Just think of the business travelers who would flock to SWA in the first week alone. (The second week, all the other carriers would be forced to do the same.) No, cell phone use on commercial airlines is not allowed, and it's not because the airlines don't want it.