"Or, the bot tries to model its opponents and tries to take those models into account when playing. If that is the case, as soon as a good player recognises that a bot is playing, he can ensure that the bot will have the wrong model of him, and then exploit that."
That is a quite long and techinical way of saying: "Let the fool win some hands and then take all its money".
"And tell me most users wouldn't be able to reinstall their drivers by running a simple vendor supplied executable."
I tell you: Most users wouldn't be able to reinstall their drivers by running a simple vendor supplied executable.
It is not a joke. Most users will be afraid of those drivers thing. And it is never so simple, you have to find the driver, download it, discover where it is on your computer (since IE will tell you that you shouldn't run from the network), and run it. Most people will not even know where to start from. having the driver on a CD will make it easier, but not enogh.
So you can't change your plattform because you have already spent $4000 on yours. Great thinking! The cost of the switch* is not taken into account? But the amount of money you already spent is?
And no, your plattform doesn't work fine. You may not have a better option (maybe you can't run Linux or anything else), but I'm sure you have all kinds of problems with your computer (from that image on a Word dcument that keep vanishing to a file that you have to reboot the computer to delete).
* There is a cost on the switch, that is not zero. But it is not $4000 also, $4000 is the amount you spent to make your plattform.
This can also be done by a cluster of small (geographicaly distributed or centralized) computers, with distributed data management (aka RAID) on a more cheap and safe way.
I keep asking myself why there still are so many mainframes out there. But I don't know the answer.
By now, MS has a very nice position being a monopoly on both the OS and the most common applications. They use both monopolies to sustain each other and have no reason to change that.
On the near future, Linux will probably catch up Windows on the OS market. Then, MS will have to support Linux (and lose a monopoly). By this time, Microsoft will be on a very weak position, trying to maintain a monopoly without the other that they used to have. The company may be bankrupt, but can also make the transition to the applications market. The most important factor here is if MS will notice that they lost the OS market on time to change their strategy. If they can notice that, they will probably make the transition.
On the long term, free office suits (don't know witch one) will catch up* with MS Office. By this time, MS will lose all the profit it makes now. They may adapt to a different market, probably open sourcing their products. If Ms can't find a new way of earning money by this time, they'll be bankrupt.
That is the scenario I trace. I'll be glad to listen to other ideas, or flaws on it.
* This is inevitable. FOSS moves much faster than proprietary software, and there is no reason to it deaccelerate on the forseable future.
So, what is happenin it the following: MS contacted Red Had to do some cooperative benchmarking, since the get the facts campaing is not going well. RH answered that they are not interested on benchmark, so MS made the offer to OSDL. Since OSDL didn't bothered to answer the proposal, MS arranged to have the article covered by a magazine, so they will not loose everything.
No reason or fear here, since RH and OSDL aready ignored MS, and their strategy is clear, they just want more powerfull FUD. The sky wont fall by now.
Luck you. Qemu on my computer is so slow that I can't run some DOS games I have here. This on a Athlon XP 2200+ 256MB ram DDR 266. I did never take the time to discover why it is so slow, since I could run those games on xdosemu, but I'd like to know on what CPU you run it.
What distro are you using? If it is Debian, just apt-get install mplayer (or gmplayer, if you want the GUI). Debian will automaticaly install the codecs.
If you are using another distro, use your package management software to install it. This is not hard at all.
If some genetic characteristic have a really low chance of being exposed, evolution spends a lot of time to get ride of it. Sometimes the proportion of the individuals carring this (supressed) characteristic can even increase due to the selection of another, benefical, characteristic.
Your poster is very like saying that down syndrome or --replace this by your favorite genetic disiase-- should be good someway, because if it wasn't, it should have disapeared by now.
"How does this relate to Einstein's theories about gravity wells, speed of light, etc."
It is derived from the special realtivity, that talks about the speed of light. It is not clearly related with gravity wells, that are described by the general relativity.
But what you can't do is to take a look without interference of the media hype, so you are confused. In fact, there is just one thing to understand, the equation express a relation between mass and energy. And that you already know.
The equation has some uses. E.g. it makes possible to calculate the amount of energy that a nuclear reaction will emit, if you know the mass that will be there before and after the reaction. It has a lot of uses on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, where particles can have really hight speeds.
What changed how the world was viwed was the modern relativity, mostly the general one. General realtivity is a mechanic* with much more equations than this one. Saing that E = Mc^2 changed the world is like saying that E = Mv^2/2 did the same, but people say that because E = Mc^2 is the only equation they know.
* a set of equations that fully explains the behaviour of the univrse - no promisses about the explanation being right, just complete. Not a very rigorous definition, but I think you'll get the point.
"Salarywise I think a good Windows admin should command about as much as a good Linux or Unix admin, unfortunately the majority of Windows admins I've seen can't even spell enterprise, much less act as part of one."
Not really. There are good Windows admins out there (most of them also know *nix), and the ones I know are still less productive (even salarywise) than *nix admins. This is Windows falt, because it has poor administrating tools and a lot of security flaws.
There was an interesting discussion at another topic about spam that rised a good point: Nobody realy knows if spam is lucrative.
Yes, spammers think it is, but how rational are those individuals? They may be just wrong, or just a very small percentage of them get some money. Also, if companies use spam as a marketing tool, how do they measure the return? They may be measuring it on a wrong way.
So, we may have no need to make spam unprofitable, and need to react on a completely different way to get ride of it.
The lists of softwares that they would and would not deploy seem to be marketing driven. That is the only way I can understand that MySQL would be deployed and PosgreSQL not. Also, Exim and Thunderbird on that list seems suspect. People should desist of free software just after they try it (if it is free(beer), they there is no excuse about not trying), not because soembody told them something weird about them. The good news is that Open Office may still be desirable, since the research doesn't reflect the software quality.
Also, the peiceved advantages of free software don't include the lack of vendor lockin. It is important that people realize that vendor lockin is a bad thing and that it is the only cause to lack of long term supporting.
I am also behind the time, but the GP was talking about OO-1.9, that is very different from 1.1.4, and yes, OO-1.1.4 equations suck. On OO-1.2 equations suck a little less, and since the GP says that 1.9 is so fine, I'll give it a try and see if I can stop writting presentation on LaTeX.
But if you need stuff like numbered equations, numbered images and numbered tables, you shouldn't have any hopping of abandonning LaTeX. Even more because being a scientist, you'll need citations, and LaTeX handle all this on a wonderfull way.
"Now I wish I used emacs so I could turn this into a emacs v. vi flamewar!"
No problem, I had. What's up with you guys. This:q! stuff is wothless... How do you expect a non thechie to use such terrible interface! Let's get it straight,:q is absurd, let's teach them CTRL-x-c, CTRL-x-s and CTRL-x-o. Now we have an interface that even granma would understand. We don't need no WYSIWYG stuff.
As I see, we have 2 kinds of spam. One is sent by spammers with no other activity, hopping that 1 or 2 persons answer it. The other one is sent by companies' maketing departartments to make people know their products.
The first kind (people that only spam), it is a risky investment. If somebody answers, they earn money, if not, they lose. They probably keep trying because of the "mine of gold" factor: A few people get a lot of money, very few people lose a lot and most lose a small bit. Since people tend to only look the suscessfull cases, they see a lucrative scenario.
The second kind is simpler. Since marketing return is very hard to measure, companies don't measure it. So, doesn't matter if spam is effective or not, people who belive it is will spam.
Most people don't like to learn everything, and almost all people like to learn something*. If your children are young grammar and spelling nazis, you can let them use a text processor. If your children is like almost every other and thik that learning aritimetic and spelling are boring, you shouldn't let them use computers everytime.
*Almost all matematicians that I met didn't like aritimetics when young, and a lot of them continue to dislike it after grown up. That didn't stop them.
I may be able to answer your question number 2: A galaxy irradiates on all directions, thus feeding the black hole. You don't need much energy to compensate the evaporation of a very massive black hole.
But I also have another question: Why does the GP says that if the near galaxies have formed around quasars they would have fallen into each other? The long distance effect of the gravity of a galaxy is the same of the one of a black hole, and those galaxies orbitate now. Why wouldn't the black holes orbitate?
"How long before we have nanodetectors that detect the miniscule (nanoscule?) deflection of a laser within a small space on Earth, away from the "straight" path we'd expect from the influence of the space matter that we can see?"
Maybe not that long, but we will need a very long time to wait for our laser to pass by the black hole, reflect somewhere and come back to Earth.
"Since when did the "small shops" receive some type of right to exist and operate? If Tesco provided a better value for customers then that is where the customers will go."
The "small shops" never received "some kind of right to exist". But it is important to keep in mind that it may be some kind of tragedy of the commons, where the people will be better with the small shops, but see more value (individualy) at the big ones.
Slashdot Mirror
"Or, the bot tries to model its opponents and tries to take those models into account when playing. If that is the case, as soon as a good player recognises that a bot is playing, he can ensure that the bot will have the wrong model of him, and then exploit that."
That is a quite long and techinical way of saying: "Let the fool win some hands and then take all its money".
"And tell me most users wouldn't be able to reinstall their drivers by running a simple vendor supplied executable."
I tell you: Most users wouldn't be able to reinstall their drivers by running a simple vendor supplied executable.
It is not a joke. Most users will be afraid of those drivers thing. And it is never so simple, you have to find the driver, download it, discover where it is on your computer (since IE will tell you that you shouldn't run from the network), and run it. Most people will not even know where to start from. having the driver on a CD will make it easier, but not enogh.
So you can't change your plattform because you have already spent $4000 on yours. Great thinking! The cost of the switch* is not taken into account? But the amount of money you already spent is?
And no, your plattform doesn't work fine. You may not have a better option (maybe you can't run Linux or anything else), but I'm sure you have all kinds of problems with your computer (from that image on a Word dcument that keep vanishing to a file that you have to reboot the computer to delete).
* There is a cost on the switch, that is not zero. But it is not $4000 also, $4000 is the amount you spent to make your plattform.
This can also be done by a cluster of small (geographicaly distributed or centralized) computers, with distributed data management (aka RAID) on a more cheap and safe way.
I keep asking myself why there still are so many mainframes out there. But I don't know the answer.
That's what I think:
By now, MS has a very nice position being a monopoly on both the OS and the most common applications. They use both monopolies to sustain each other and have no reason to change that.
On the near future, Linux will probably catch up Windows on the OS market. Then, MS will have to support Linux (and lose a monopoly). By this time, Microsoft will be on a very weak position, trying to maintain a monopoly without the other that they used to have. The company may be bankrupt, but can also make the transition to the applications market. The most important factor here is if MS will notice that they lost the OS market on time to change their strategy. If they can notice that, they will probably make the transition.
On the long term, free office suits (don't know witch one) will catch up* with MS Office. By this time, MS will lose all the profit it makes now. They may adapt to a different market, probably open sourcing their products. If Ms can't find a new way of earning money by this time, they'll be bankrupt.
That is the scenario I trace. I'll be glad to listen to other ideas, or flaws on it.
* This is inevitable. FOSS moves much faster than proprietary software, and there is no reason to it deaccelerate on the forseable future.
This don't work because MS has much more money to spend spreading their version. The best option is still to not do the testing.
So, what is happenin it the following: MS contacted Red Had to do some cooperative benchmarking, since the get the facts campaing is not going well. RH answered that they are not interested on benchmark, so MS made the offer to OSDL. Since OSDL didn't bothered to answer the proposal, MS arranged to have the article covered by a magazine, so they will not loose everything.
No reason or fear here, since RH and OSDL aready ignored MS, and their strategy is clear, they just want more powerfull FUD. The sky wont fall by now.
DRM doesn't work. Unless you are using a TCPA platform.
Open sourcing it will only make it harder to break.
Luck you. Qemu on my computer is so slow that I can't run some DOS games I have here. This on a Athlon XP 2200+ 256MB ram DDR 266. I did never take the time to discover why it is so slow, since I could run those games on xdosemu, but I'd like to know on what CPU you run it.
What distro are you using? If it is Debian, just apt-get install mplayer (or gmplayer, if you want the GUI). Debian will automaticaly install the codecs.
If you are using another distro, use your package management software to install it. This is not hard at all.
If some genetic characteristic have a really low chance of being exposed, evolution spends a lot of time to get ride of it. Sometimes the proportion of the individuals carring this (supressed) characteristic can even increase due to the selection of another, benefical, characteristic.
Your poster is very like saying that down syndrome or --replace this by your favorite genetic disiase-- should be good someway, because if it wasn't, it should have disapeared by now.
I'll try to answer that... First, an easy one:
"How does this relate to Einstein's theories about gravity wells, speed of light, etc."
It is derived from the special realtivity, that talks about the speed of light. It is not clearly related with gravity wells, that are described by the general relativity.
But what you can't do is to take a look without interference of the media hype, so you are confused. In fact, there is just one thing to understand, the equation express a relation between mass and energy. And that you already know.
The equation has some uses. E.g. it makes possible to calculate the amount of energy that a nuclear reaction will emit, if you know the mass that will be there before and after the reaction. It has a lot of uses on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, where particles can have really hight speeds.
What changed how the world was viwed was the modern relativity, mostly the general one. General realtivity is a mechanic* with much more equations than this one. Saing that E = Mc^2 changed the world is like saying that E = Mv^2/2 did the same, but people say that because E = Mc^2 is the only equation they know.
* a set of equations that fully explains the behaviour of the univrse - no promisses about the explanation being right, just complete. Not a very rigorous definition, but I think you'll get the point.
"Salarywise I think a good Windows admin should command about as much as a good Linux or Unix admin, unfortunately the majority of Windows admins I've seen can't even spell enterprise, much less act as part of one."
Not really. There are good Windows admins out there (most of them also know *nix), and the ones I know are still less productive (even salarywise) than *nix admins. This is Windows falt, because it has poor administrating tools and a lot of security flaws.
Of corse you can always say that you represent somebody. What is missing is an statement from OSDL saying that the company represents them.
There was an interesting discussion at another topic about spam that rised a good point: Nobody realy knows if spam is lucrative.
Yes, spammers think it is, but how rational are those individuals? They may be just wrong, or just a very small percentage of them get some money. Also, if companies use spam as a marketing tool, how do they measure the return? They may be measuring it on a wrong way.
So, we may have no need to make spam unprofitable, and need to react on a completely different way to get ride of it.
And so, we seem to be advocating it wrong.
The lists of softwares that they would and would not deploy seem to be marketing driven. That is the only way I can understand that MySQL would be deployed and PosgreSQL not. Also, Exim and Thunderbird on that list seems suspect. People should desist of free software just after they try it (if it is free(beer), they there is no excuse about not trying), not because soembody told them something weird about them. The good news is that Open Office may still be desirable, since the research doesn't reflect the software quality.
Also, the peiceved advantages of free software don't include the lack of vendor lockin. It is important that people realize that vendor lockin is a bad thing and that it is the only cause to lack of long term supporting.
I am also behind the time, but the GP was talking about OO-1.9, that is very different from 1.1.4, and yes, OO-1.1.4 equations suck. On OO-1.2 equations suck a little less, and since the GP says that 1.9 is so fine, I'll give it a try and see if I can stop writting presentation on LaTeX.
But if you need stuff like numbered equations, numbered images and numbered tables, you shouldn't have any hopping of abandonning LaTeX. Even more because being a scientist, you'll need citations, and LaTeX handle all this on a wonderfull way.
"It's a shame, but maybe they are right. It's not easy to pay enough for good linux/unix admins on public sector wages."
If so, why can't they just use OO on Windows, and save the MS Office license?
"Now I wish I used emacs so I could turn this into a emacs v. vi flamewar!"
No problem, I had. What's up with you guys. This :q! stuff is wothless... How do you expect a non thechie to use such terrible interface! Let's get it straight, :q is absurd, let's teach them CTRL-x-c, CTRL-x-s and CTRL-x-o. Now we have an interface that even granma would understand. We don't need no WYSIWYG stuff.
We can see /. burn now.
As I see, we have 2 kinds of spam. One is sent by spammers with no other activity, hopping that 1 or 2 persons answer it. The other one is sent by companies' maketing departartments to make people know their products.
The first kind (people that only spam), it is a risky investment. If somebody answers, they earn money, if not, they lose. They probably keep trying because of the "mine of gold" factor: A few people get a lot of money, very few people lose a lot and most lose a small bit. Since people tend to only look the suscessfull cases, they see a lucrative scenario.
The second kind is simpler. Since marketing return is very hard to measure, companies don't measure it. So, doesn't matter if spam is effective or not, people who belive it is will spam.
Most people don't like to learn everything, and almost all people like to learn something*. If your children are young grammar and spelling nazis, you can let them use a text processor. If your children is like almost every other and thik that learning aritimetic and spelling are boring, you shouldn't let them use computers everytime.
*Almost all matematicians that I met didn't like aritimetics when young, and a lot of them continue to dislike it after grown up. That didn't stop them.
"Keeping track of what you kids do on the internet IS RAISING YOUR CHILD PROPERLY!"
Maybe, but if you need something more than talking to them to keep track of that, you already failed somewhere.
But I agree that, if you already made a mistake, and talking to them wouldn't work, you should fix it. And tracking them can be a good tool for that.
I may be able to answer your question number 2: A galaxy irradiates on all directions, thus feeding the black hole. You don't need much energy to compensate the evaporation of a very massive black hole.
But I also have another question: Why does the GP says that if the near galaxies have formed around quasars they would have fallen into each other? The long distance effect of the gravity of a galaxy is the same of the one of a black hole, and those galaxies orbitate now. Why wouldn't the black holes orbitate?
"How long before we have nanodetectors that detect the miniscule (nanoscule?) deflection of a laser within a small space on Earth, away from the "straight" path we'd expect from the influence of the space matter that we can see?"
Maybe not that long, but we will need a very long time to wait for our laser to pass by the black hole, reflect somewhere and come back to Earth.
"Since when did the "small shops" receive some type of right to exist and operate? If Tesco provided a better value for customers then that is where the customers will go."
The "small shops" never received "some kind of right to exist". But it is important to keep in mind that it may be some kind of tragedy of the commons, where the people will be better with the small shops, but see more value (individualy) at the big ones.