Part of the problem is that, through campaign contributions, big business decides which candidates we have to choose from. We are well on our way to becomming a corporate republic.
*sigh* Nothing like a claim about theory from someone who clearly hasn't studied enough theory. Google on the halting problem if you think verifying the correctness of a computer program is easy.
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Subscribers pay to avoid seeing ads, so they get early access to articles that are little more than ads? Glad I didn't waste my money on a subscription.
Its even worse than that. The fed also has a habit of using the threat of cutting highway funding to presure states to pass laws that would not be constitutional for the fed to pass itself. The states usually bow to this presure because interstate highways are so important for their economies. I'd be reluctant to give them another set of thumb-screws.
An AI player that could learn from its oponents would be pretty cool. It would also be far more sophisticated than the one described in the article. Designing an AI that can learn offense this way would be much harder than designing one that works on simple rules, which was my point. An effective defense, on the other hand, can be based on one simple rule: stop the ball.
That wouldn't really be a good offensive robot, just a good defensive one that wins with endurance. A good offensive robot would be one that scores on a higher percentage of its shots. To really make a more interesting problem, you could include performance limits in the rules. For example, you could set limits on how many frames per second the machine can see, how fast it can move its players, etc. Then you would need a better strategy than "hit and pray" to win.
So close to lunch time, I'd prefer "fries per second". Though, since foosball is the most exercise I'm likely to get today, I should probably have a salad instead.
In saying solving spin is hard, I'm assuming they are not allowed to mark the ball. Putting marks on the ball would make handling spin easier for human players, too.
Actually, I think defense would be much easier to teach the robot than offense. A human player has to anticipate the shot, because their reaction time is limited. The robot's reaction time is only limited by the technology used. If 50fps isn't fast enough, optimize your code, get faster hardware, and bump it up to 100fps. Repeat as needed. To become good at offense, the robot needs ball control, which is much more than the simple blocking/hitting that this one does. It also needs to avoid becomming predictable.
The framerate isn't much of a problem. Optimize your code or wait for faster equipment to come along and you can raise that pretty quickly. A harder problem is dealing with the spin on the ball, which would be difficult for the camera to pick up. A faster frame rate would mitigate this somewhat. As the framerate goes up, the AI's defence will improve. The hard part is improving its offence. Getting it to use bank-shots, spin, controlled passing... that where all the interesting stuff happens.
I'm not surprised that this case didn't go to trial -- there was too much risk for both sides. Even if the students could afford to defend themselves, there is no way they could risk losing millions of dollars. On the RIAA side, they would be in trouble if the case went to trial whether they won or lost. If they lost, they would not be able to use the threat of lawsuits as effectively in the future. If they won, the bad publicity from getting such an obscene judgement might cause people to question current copyright laws. With this settlement, the RIAA maintains the status quo.
It is not a loss of control to them because these companies do not have control currently. They are trying to prevent the cable companies from gaining control, which would reduce their freedoms and thereby hurt their profits.
Your theory that clean-fix would mean more sales for the MPAA is untested. It is also possible that it would reduce sales. If parents could by cleaned up version of a movie they want to watch, that means one sale. But, if they can only get the dirty version, they have to buy a Barney video to show to their kids, leading to two sales. Without market reseach, you can't say which theory is correct. I'm confident that MPAA would do the reaseach and choose the course of action they think most likely to increase their profits.
The fact that the poster is surprised at the companies supporting this shows that they misunderstand the principles by which these companies operate. They have only one priciple -- to make money. Once you understand that, their behavior is clearly consistant. Their own freedom helps their bottom line, the freedom of others may hurt it.
The difference between this program and the GPL is more than just superficial. Under the GPL, all parties are on equal footing, and have equal insentive to share their work. Under microsoft's new plan, they reserve the right to sell your work for a profit without paying for it, but they don't give the same right to you.
The site is slashdotted, but I don't feel I'm missing anything. Microsoft has ignored any court mandated restrictions on it behavior that it didn't like in the past, and I see no reason why that would change now. Conduct remedies are irrelevant. The only result that matters is whether, when this phase is over, other companies will be able to sue Microsoft for damages caused by their violations of anit-trust law. If the settlement prevents that, then Microsoft has, once again, gotten off scott free.
I don't think you've made your point, or at least, not clearly. As I understand you, you would define an intelligent actor as one that solves a problem with a non-LCD solution that works. This doesn't strike me as a useful test. If presented with a problem, I can usually find more than one solution. If some are LCD and some are not, and I am free to choose any one of them, how can my choice tell you whether or not I am intelligent (as in: intelligent vs. non-intelligent, not intelligent vs. stupid:) )
I was mearly expressing my understanding of the author's definition of intellingence, not defending or attacking it. I was asking the poster of the parent comment to give us his definition of intelligence, since he was clearly using a different one, but hadn't bothered to mention what it was.
I'm going to put the burden back on you to support your assertion that intelligence is not a process. How do you distinguish between a action that is intelligent, and one that is not? In the reviewer's case, he seems to consider natural selection as an intelligent because it provides solutions to problems. This places the focus on the result of the process, not what drives it. If you would place your requirement for intelligence on the driver of the process, what is it? Does it require a brain? A human brain? A soul?
Slashdot Mirror
All trolls bow down. McBride is your king.
Part of the problem is that, through campaign contributions, big business decides which candidates we have to choose from. We are well on our way to becomming a corporate republic.
*sigh* Nothing like a claim about theory from someone who clearly hasn't studied enough theory. Google on the halting problem if you think verifying the correctness of a computer program is easy.
Subscribers pay to avoid seeing ads, so they get early access to articles that are little more than ads? Glad I didn't waste my money on a subscription.
Its even worse than that. The fed also has a habit of using the threat of cutting highway funding to presure states to pass laws that would not be constitutional for the fed to pass itself. The states usually bow to this presure because interstate highways are so important for their economies. I'd be reluctant to give them another set of thumb-screws.
An AI player that could learn from its oponents would be pretty cool. It would also be far more sophisticated than the one described in the article. Designing an AI that can learn offense this way would be much harder than designing one that works on simple rules, which was my point. An effective defense, on the other hand, can be based on one simple rule: stop the ball.
That wouldn't really be a good offensive robot, just a good defensive one that wins with endurance. A good offensive robot would be one that scores on a higher percentage of its shots. To really make a more interesting problem, you could include performance limits in the rules. For example, you could set limits on how many frames per second the machine can see, how fast it can move its players, etc. Then you would need a better strategy than "hit and pray" to win.
So close to lunch time, I'd prefer "fries per second". Though, since foosball is the most exercise I'm likely to get today, I should probably have a salad instead.
In saying solving spin is hard, I'm assuming they are not allowed to mark the ball. Putting marks on the ball would make handling spin easier for human players, too.
Actually, I think defense would be much easier to teach the robot than offense. A human player has to anticipate the shot, because their reaction time is limited. The robot's reaction time is only limited by the technology used. If 50fps isn't fast enough, optimize your code, get faster hardware, and bump it up to 100fps. Repeat as needed. To become good at offense, the robot needs ball control, which is much more than the simple blocking/hitting that this one does. It also needs to avoid becomming predictable.
The framerate isn't much of a problem. Optimize your code or wait for faster equipment to come along and you can raise that pretty quickly. A harder problem is dealing with the spin on the ball, which would be difficult for the camera to pick up. A faster frame rate would mitigate this somewhat. As the framerate goes up, the AI's defence will improve. The hard part is improving its offence. Getting it to use bank-shots, spin, controlled passing... that where all the interesting stuff happens.
I'm not surprised that this case didn't go to trial -- there was too much risk for both sides. Even if the students could afford to defend themselves, there is no way they could risk losing millions of dollars. On the RIAA side, they would be in trouble if the case went to trial whether they won or lost. If they lost, they would not be able to use the threat of lawsuits as effectively in the future. If they won, the bad publicity from getting such an obscene judgement might cause people to question current copyright laws. With this settlement, the RIAA maintains the status quo.
Thanks for the pointer...
Porn sites already do this sort of thing.... I mean, I've never even heard of this sort of pop-up before...
It is not a loss of control to them because these companies do not have control currently. They are trying to prevent the cable companies from gaining control, which would reduce their freedoms and thereby hurt their profits.
Your theory that clean-fix would mean more sales for the MPAA is untested. It is also possible that it would reduce sales. If parents could by cleaned up version of a movie they want to watch, that means one sale. But, if they can only get the dirty version, they have to buy a Barney video to show to their kids, leading to two sales. Without market reseach, you can't say which theory is correct. I'm confident that MPAA would do the reaseach and choose the course of action they think most likely to increase their profits.
The fact that the poster is surprised at the companies supporting this shows that they misunderstand the principles by which these companies operate. They have only one priciple -- to make money. Once you understand that, their behavior is clearly consistant. Their own freedom helps their bottom line, the freedom of others may hurt it.
The difference between this program and the GPL is more than just superficial. Under the GPL, all parties are on equal footing, and have equal insentive to share their work. Under microsoft's new plan, they reserve the right to sell your work for a profit without paying for it, but they don't give the same right to you.
And everybody also knows that your Jedi get their asses handed to them. Stick with the nukes.
Clearly, we need a new icon for this type of story. What picture would work for "you've got to be fucking kidding".
A breach of advertising conduct? Thanks, that's the best laugh I've had all week.
The site is slashdotted, but I don't feel I'm missing anything. Microsoft has ignored any court mandated restrictions on it behavior that it didn't like in the past, and I see no reason why that would change now. Conduct remedies are irrelevant. The only result that matters is whether, when this phase is over, other companies will be able to sue Microsoft for damages caused by their violations of anit-trust law. If the settlement prevents that, then Microsoft has, once again, gotten off scott free.
I don't think you've made your point, or at least, not clearly. As I understand you, you would define an intelligent actor as one that solves a problem with a non-LCD solution that works. This doesn't strike me as a useful test. If presented with a problem, I can usually find more than one solution. If some are LCD and some are not, and I am free to choose any one of them, how can my choice tell you whether or not I am intelligent (as in: intelligent vs. non-intelligent, not intelligent vs. stupid :) )
I was mearly expressing my understanding of the author's definition of intellingence, not defending or attacking it. I was asking the poster of the parent comment to give us his definition of intelligence, since he was clearly using a different one, but hadn't bothered to mention what it was.
I'm going to put the burden back on you to support your assertion that intelligence is not a process. How do you distinguish between a action that is intelligent, and one that is not? In the reviewer's case, he seems to consider natural selection as an intelligent because it provides solutions to problems. This places the focus on the result of the process, not what drives it. If you would place your requirement for intelligence on the driver of the process, what is it? Does it require a brain? A human brain? A soul?