I suggest you take a look at how peoples' lives get ruined by gambling before making smart-ass comments.
More people's lives are ruined by fat than by gambling. My point stands.
To preempt the usual "everybody's free to ruin his own life" comment: I agree, partly.
But it's much more than that. Gambling doesn't necessarily ruin your life. It's not a strict evil. Sometimes it's bad, when it becomes an addiction, but not everyone who gambles becomes addicted. In fact, the vast majority of people who gamble don't become addicted to it.
"The government must play a greater role in detecting those who conceal their identities online," said Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, a sponsor of the bill.
The 'human element' you talk about is present in face-to-face games, but in online games, you can't even see the other players! That's why bots can compete and disrupt the game. Maybe you can comment about playing poker in home/casino games, but I think your relatively informed view does not apply to this thread.
Look. Go here. Read about the bots. Play against the bots. Read the publications. There is a large AI element to holdem, whether done in person or online.
A simple stat bot would raise until he's out of money.
But his comment was that there is software which gives an indicator, not that it is a bot which does everything. Having an indicator that your cards beat X% of other hands will improve the games of all but the best pros (who probably already know, at least in a relatively simple game like holdem). Having an indicator of certain groups of hands and what percent they beat you would also help. If this software is out there, anyone but the best pro is bound to lose money.
I don't think the AI level of a bot is good enough to beat even an average player at this point, without that bot colluding with other bots. But combine a bot's ability to calculate with the intelligence of a half-decent poker player, and you could break even with the best pros.
That element of deception turns the game into an unstructured game that is very hard to beat algorithmically, so I have my doubt about being able to create world-class bots.
I agree with you there, of course this assumes that collusion can be adequetely detected. A bot which colluded with other bots wouldn't have to be very smart to wipe everyone else out.
That means that if good bots exist, they can be let loose at tables where most people play for fun and where it's currently not worth it for a professional player to play.
That might be self-correcting, though, as the bots wouldn't make money against each other. Assuming, again, that collusion can be detected, though. Just two colluding bots would absolutely destroy any poker game.
Either a source can be trusted, or it can't -- and wikipedia cannot.
Wikipedia isn't a source. It's a collection of information from a very large number of sources, just like any encyclopedia. If you want to find the source of the information, you need to learn how to use the "history" link. Some of those sources can be trusted. Some cannot.
In order for the invalid data to be maintained in the wiki, the "dishonest" person would have to actively maintain it!
This is true if you only consider the life of a single fact.
I doubt that dishonest people would be as dedicated to their misinformation as honest people would be to their information.
Well, that really depends on the type of misinformation. If it's over the date some long dead person was born, you're probably right. If it's over the number of purple hearts someone won, on the other hand...
And yes, one person can cause a lot of damage to the wiki, but I'm not sure if you're aware of the "rollback" function available to wiki administrators.
I'm well aware of Wikipedia functions. I'm one of their biggest contributors and I run a mirror of their website (which is in the link you see above).
It is quite simple, in fact, to roll-back all changes made from a specific IP address.
Of course, in the long run we'll have IPv6. But yes, this is part of what I alluded to by the blocking functions.
Sure, this could be circumvented by switching IPs repeatedly, but I seriously doubt there are enough dedicated miscreants out there to make much of a dent.
This may very well be true. But not having enough dedicated miscreants and having "more honest people than asshats in the world" are quite different. In theory, one truly dedicated miscreant would be enough. In reality, a relatively small number of somewhat dedicated miscreants have already taken their toll.
If you look at their definition, it refers to presenting "all points of view." That doesn't really make sense. For instance, an article on geography doesn't need to present both the point of view that the earth is flat and the point of view that it's round.
That's because the NPOV rule is combined with the rule of verifiability and the rule of no original research. No one today seriously claims that the earth is flat, so presenting such a point of view would violate both of these rules.
I like Wikipedia. I contribute to Wikipedia. But I think it fundamentally fails when it comes to controversial topics. The "all" in "all points of view" really ends up meaning "all Wikipedians who care enough to put the article on their watchlists."
The problem here tends to be that the rule against original research is commonly broken. People insert their opinions, claiming that "Some people believe [whatever]" without citing an academic source which backs up that belief. In theory these statements will eventually be removed, if Wikipedia manages to come up with a system to enforce these basic rules.
It's not a matter of absolute success of absolute failure. On many topics, I find Wikipedia more useful than print encyclopedias. You just have to use the right tool for the job, and use critical thinking skills.
In this sense Wikipedia is really a microcosm of the web itself. Just better organized, and without all the poetry.
I would lump "honest, but incorrect" individuals in with the "dishonest" and still expect to have a higher number of "honest and correct" contributors to the wiki. Most people don't contribute if they are unsure!
Depends on the topic. There are plenty of rumors which go around the internet, and plenty of people who buy into those rumors, whether true or false. In this sense I see Wikipedia mainly as a really good search engine (complete with caching).
But anyway, try this argument on for size: Individual wiki articles (and even the facts contained within them) evolve, just as organisms do. Good, factual data has a higher fitness quotient than do errrors and misinformation. Over long periods of time, the wiki content will tend towards truth.
That's not how evolution works in organisms or in wiki articles. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fitte st:). Factual data does not necessarily have a higher fitness quotient than errors or misinformation. At least not without redefining truth...
Now, we could get into a whole other debate about what is "true", but I think that for the purposes of the wiki, truth can only be defined as that which a majority of editors agree upon.
Well, by this definition your theory is much closer to being correct. It still ignores the fact that it's easier to enter incorrect data than correct data, though. A simple majority is not enough to keep the wrong information out, even in the long run, because one person can cause more destruction than one person can fix. This is why Wikipedia has to resort to blocking.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out.
There are a lot of problems with that. For one thing, not everyone in the world will ever use Wikipedia. So we're only talking about the proportion of people who use Wikipedia. Another problem is that it's much easier to introduce intentional errors than it is to introduce true facts. So people inserting errors have a basic advantage there. Finally, you assume that merely being honest is enough, but it's not. You have to not only be honest, but you have to be correct.
A lot of the errors on Wikipedia fall under that last category. This is especially true in the more technical categories, where there are a lot of amateurs who think they know things but are just completely wrong. It's a similar situation to a lot of the problems with Slashdot and its moderation system. The majority is not always right.
The rules that the organ networks use to determine who gets a donated organ and what priority are designed to make the best use of a very limited commodity.
But that's the thing - it's not a very limited commodity. There are far more perfectly fine livers in people who just recently died then there are patients that need those livers. Furthermore, livers are ''not'' commodities. The donor and the recipient must match in terms of body size and blood type.
The way I see it you've gotta do one of two things. Either force people (dead people) to donate their livers when they can be used, or let the owners of the liver (the family of the dead person) decide for themselves whether they want to give it to a specific person, to the general pool, or to no one.
Personally, I'd prefer the former. Either way, Todd isn't the one to blame for the people who die without a liver. It's the fucked up system which makes these life saving organs personal property (albeit in a limited fashion) in the first place.
Suppose you were in an accident, and someone with authority to sign your Do Not Resuscitate order didn't like you, but wanted one of your family to be able to cash in.
Right, and that's why we outlaw life insurance too. Oh wait a second, no we don't.
You could certainly hold 500 users on a single machine. So add another $1/user. I suspect google already has the space and might even have the bandwidth. Still, say $5/user for everything. Now assume an 8% interest rate, and that's still only $0.50/month.
I forward my whole domain to gmail, and the spam filtering sucks. Additionally, the filters are buggy and you can't use filters to apply more than one label, you have to use multiple filters, which is a pain. I'm sure all this will be fixed eventually, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if this has anything to do with the Attorney General Ashcroft's October 12, 2001 memo instructing federal agencies to stall on FOIA requests.
Considering that it is the Connecticut government fighting the request and not the US government, probably not.
We've already scrapped the first amendment when it comes to elections.
Anthony DiPierro is responsible for the content of this Slashdot post.
I suggest you take a look at how peoples' lives get ruined by gambling before making smart-ass comments.
More people's lives are ruined by fat than by gambling. My point stands.
To preempt the usual "everybody's free to ruin his own life" comment: I agree, partly.
But it's much more than that. Gambling doesn't necessarily ruin your life. It's not a strict evil. Sometimes it's bad, when it becomes an addiction, but not everyone who gambles becomes addicted. In fact, the vast majority of people who gamble don't become addicted to it.
And from an addiction and life-ruining point of view, I'm not sure poker is fairing much better than those.
I'm sure there are more people addicted to food than poker. Let's give the government a monopoly on McDonalds too.
"The government must play a greater role in detecting those who conceal their identities online," said Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, a sponsor of the bill.
Scared yet?
Two colluding humans can wipe everyone else out also.
True. I guess the only advantage the computer has is that it never goes on tilt. :)
The 'human element' you talk about is present in face-to-face games, but in online games, you can't even see the other players! That's why bots can compete and disrupt the game. Maybe you can comment about playing poker in home/casino games, but I think your relatively informed view does not apply to this thread.
Look. Go here. Read about the bots. Play against the bots. Read the publications. There is a large AI element to holdem, whether done in person or online.
A simple stat bot would raise until he's out of money.
But his comment was that there is software which gives an indicator, not that it is a bot which does everything. Having an indicator that your cards beat X% of other hands will improve the games of all but the best pros (who probably already know, at least in a relatively simple game like holdem). Having an indicator of certain groups of hands and what percent they beat you would also help. If this software is out there, anyone but the best pro is bound to lose money.
I don't think the AI level of a bot is good enough to beat even an average player at this point, without that bot colluding with other bots. But combine a bot's ability to calculate with the intelligence of a half-decent poker player, and you could break even with the best pros.
But we're not talking about gambling, we're talking about poker.
That element of deception turns the game into an unstructured game that is very hard to beat algorithmically, so I have my doubt about being able to create world-class bots.
I agree with you there, of course this assumes that collusion can be adequetely detected. A bot which colluded with other bots wouldn't have to be very smart to wipe everyone else out.
That means that if good bots exist, they can be let loose at tables where most people play for fun and where it's currently not worth it for a professional player to play.
That might be self-correcting, though, as the bots wouldn't make money against each other. Assuming, again, that collusion can be detected, though. Just two colluding bots would absolutely destroy any poker game.
Either a source can be trusted, or it can't -- and wikipedia cannot.
Wikipedia isn't a source. It's a collection of information from a very large number of sources, just like any encyclopedia. If you want to find the source of the information, you need to learn how to use the "history" link. Some of those sources can be trusted. Some cannot.
In order for the invalid data to be maintained in the wiki, the "dishonest" person would have to actively maintain it!
This is true if you only consider the life of a single fact.
I doubt that dishonest people would be as dedicated to their misinformation as honest people would be to their information.
Well, that really depends on the type of misinformation. If it's over the date some long dead person was born, you're probably right. If it's over the number of purple hearts someone won, on the other hand...
And yes, one person can cause a lot of damage to the wiki, but I'm not sure if you're aware of the "rollback" function available to wiki administrators.
I'm well aware of Wikipedia functions. I'm one of their biggest contributors and I run a mirror of their website (which is in the link you see above).
It is quite simple, in fact, to roll-back all changes made from a specific IP address.
Of course, in the long run we'll have IPv6. But yes, this is part of what I alluded to by the blocking functions.
Sure, this could be circumvented by switching IPs repeatedly, but I seriously doubt there are enough dedicated miscreants out there to make much of a dent.
This may very well be true. But not having enough dedicated miscreants and having "more honest people than asshats in the world" are quite different. In theory, one truly dedicated miscreant would be enough. In reality, a relatively small number of somewhat dedicated miscreants have already taken their toll.
If you look at their definition, it refers to presenting "all points of view." That doesn't really make sense. For instance, an article on geography doesn't need to present both the point of view that the earth is flat and the point of view that it's round.
That's because the NPOV rule is combined with the rule of verifiability and the rule of no original research. No one today seriously claims that the earth is flat, so presenting such a point of view would violate both of these rules.
I like Wikipedia. I contribute to Wikipedia. But I think it fundamentally fails when it comes to controversial topics. The "all" in "all points of view" really ends up meaning "all Wikipedians who care enough to put the article on their watchlists."
The problem here tends to be that the rule against original research is commonly broken. People insert their opinions, claiming that "Some people believe [whatever]" without citing an academic source which backs up that belief. In theory these statements will eventually be removed, if Wikipedia manages to come up with a system to enforce these basic rules.
It's not a matter of absolute success of absolute failure. On many topics, I find Wikipedia more useful than print encyclopedias. You just have to use the right tool for the job, and use critical thinking skills.
In this sense Wikipedia is really a microcosm of the web itself. Just better organized, and without all the poetry.
I would lump "honest, but incorrect" individuals in with the "dishonest" and still expect to have a higher number of "honest and correct" contributors to the wiki. Most people don't contribute if they are unsure!
Depends on the topic. There are plenty of rumors which go around the internet, and plenty of people who buy into those rumors, whether true or false. In this sense I see Wikipedia mainly as a really good search engine (complete with caching).
But anyway, try this argument on for size: Individual wiki articles (and even the facts contained within them) evolve, just as organisms do. Good, factual data has a higher fitness quotient than do errrors and misinformation. Over long periods of time, the wiki content will tend towards truth.
That's not how evolution works in organisms or in wiki articles. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fitte st :). Factual data does not necessarily have a higher fitness quotient than errors or misinformation. At least not without redefining truth...
Now, we could get into a whole other debate about what is "true", but I think that for the purposes of the wiki, truth can only be defined as that which a majority of editors agree upon.
Well, by this definition your theory is much closer to being correct. It still ignores the fact that it's easier to enter incorrect data than correct data, though. A simple majority is not enough to keep the wrong information out, even in the long run, because one person can cause more destruction than one person can fix. This is why Wikipedia has to resort to blocking.
How is this any different than any other news or reference source? Anyone can edit it. That's what makes it better. And that's what makes it worse.
What's surprising is that the positives tend to outweigh the negatives. It surprised me, anyway.
If you'll grant that there are more honest people than asshats in the world, then over long periods of time, the wiki will tend towards authoritativeness as intentional errors are weeded out.
There are a lot of problems with that. For one thing, not everyone in the world will ever use Wikipedia. So we're only talking about the proportion of people who use Wikipedia. Another problem is that it's much easier to introduce intentional errors than it is to introduce true facts. So people inserting errors have a basic advantage there. Finally, you assume that merely being honest is enough, but it's not. You have to not only be honest, but you have to be correct.
A lot of the errors on Wikipedia fall under that last category. This is especially true in the more technical categories, where there are a lot of amateurs who think they know things but are just completely wrong. It's a similar situation to a lot of the problems with Slashdot and its moderation system. The majority is not always right.
So you don't wish they used quantitative storage units (they did), you just wish they didn't also include qualitative storage units.
And yet life insurance is legal. Why is this?
I'm living in the US on a work visa right now, and am a potential donor (per driver license entry).
What it says on your drivers license means nothing.
The rules that the organ networks use to determine who gets a donated organ and what priority are designed to make the best use of a very limited commodity.
But that's the thing - it's not a very limited commodity. There are far more perfectly fine livers in people who just recently died then there are patients that need those livers. Furthermore, livers are ''not'' commodities. The donor and the recipient must match in terms of body size and blood type.
The way I see it you've gotta do one of two things. Either force people (dead people) to donate their livers when they can be used, or let the owners of the liver (the family of the dead person) decide for themselves whether they want to give it to a specific person, to the general pool, or to no one.
Personally, I'd prefer the former. Either way, Todd isn't the one to blame for the people who die without a liver. It's the fucked up system which makes these life saving organs personal property (albeit in a limited fashion) in the first place.
Suppose you were in an accident, and someone with authority to sign your Do Not Resuscitate order didn't like you, but wanted one of your family to be able to cash in.
Right, and that's why we outlaw life insurance too. Oh wait a second, no we don't.
A company with 100 million users being advertised to on a regular basis with targetted ads would surely be worth billions of dollars.
You could certainly hold 500 users on a single machine. So add another $1/user. I suspect google already has the space and might even have the bandwidth. Still, say $5/user for everything. Now assume an 8% interest rate, and that's still only $0.50/month.
I forward my whole domain to gmail, and the spam filtering sucks. Additionally, the filters are buggy and you can't use filters to apply more than one label, you have to use multiple filters, which is a pain. I'm sure all this will be fixed eventually, though.
No, voluntary as in they ask you for permission before running you through the database.