Bluffing is something that comes naturally to humans, but is very hard to program an effective bluff in AI. The reason being that patterns of behavior are easy to recognize in computers.
I think the most effective pokerbot may just be one that is poorly written. Like many have posted, following probability guidelines will not win the tournament. I'm wondering what the most effective way of bluffing a bot would be. Probably by displaying an easy to follow pattern for a series of rounds and then hammering away when the odds look to be in my favor. Even then, when playing bots, you have to imagine that several will be calling your final bet when most humans would shy away.
My best day of poker ever was winning 12 hands in a row. I just kept throwing out the max bet without looking at my cards because I was too busy stacking my chips from the previous win. When people were bold enough to call, I happened to have a lucky hand and won anyways. 8 of those hands were won because everybody folded though. You can't program that kind of ludicrousity.
It seems that they have made a pretty obvious mistake here.
If you sign into your account and choose slashdot, and leave the default of 3 stories, it will only show 1. Editing your choice by changing it from 3 to another number and back again will display the correct number of stories.
Just saw this reply in my e-mail... I'm glad some interesting discussion resulted, but I wish I never posted it. (Discussion probably happened more because people inadvertantly replied to my post than because my post was actually discussion-worthy).
You have to imagine that they are after intellectual property beyond what is on the surface. Could it be that Caldera didn't get all of the rights that SCO thought they did?
Don't we already have a federal ID? You know, that thing we call a passport.
This is federal government at its finest.
They see a problem that needs fixing and decide to fix it at a cost of millions to hundreds of millions without thinking about whether or not the solution is neccessary or effective. (kind of like airport security)
Tiger Direct is getting everything they need by just announcing their intent to sue. They can settle out of court for nothing 5 months from now, but they successfully got themselves into the headlines of every trade journal for a 100 dollar filing fee.
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
samzenpus gets the HSDHL award for April (High Sylabbic Density HeadLine).
He also gets props for spelling Digitisation correctly. You looked at it funny. Admit it.
It was a samsung I got through sprint. There was talk about streaming mp3's, but the reality was that the RealPlayer interface you were bound to was the only way to put music on it.
Still... the phone worked great. I had it from about 2000-2002.
What's the big deal anyways. Windows Mobile phones have been able to play music for a while now. I don't get why anybody cares whether you have an iPod or any of the other 200 mp3 players on the market. Yeah, it has the cool spinner wheel, and a buttload of space, but it can't possibly be that much better than any other product.
When this thing came around for a vote last year, I talked to a lot of people about it. To me, it was absurd that the government would be able to take your DNA, profile it, maintain it in a "sexual offenders" database, and never have to remove it - even if you are proven innocent.
It's scary. All they have to do is arrest you for a crime - without any real evidence - and then you are labeled a sex offender for life.
To my surprise, nobody I know - other than my wife - was with me on this one. Most people here equate it to fingerprinting. If you get fingerprinted, then they keep it forever. This is vastly different though. They are not only keeping identifying information, they are labelling it "sex offender", making it a matter of public record, and maintaining that record regardless of conviction.
And in other news today, the Justice Department has reported that it is not abusing it's power. To quote the Fuhrer, uh, I mean, director: "A bunch of people called us to tell us we were abusing the system, but then we looked into it and those people are totally wrong. And even though a couple of those people were sort of right, they totally called the wrong number to complain, so they don't really count."
This is a point that I might agree with in a different situation, but the Big Dig is actually the most expensive road construction project in American history. It was approved originally at $2.5 Billion Dollars and slated to be completed by 1998. It is now at over $15 Billion in costs and 7 years overdue. At some point you need to just cut your losses and figure out how to recoup some of your original investment. And keep in mind that it isn't just Mass. taxpayers footing the bill here.
When money for the Big Dig was debated on the Senate floor in 1991, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) stated, "There is no intention of repeating or coming back for additional resources." Taxpayers should hold Congress and the State of Massachusetts to that promise.
Officials have hidden billions of dollars in overruns from auditors, have lied about progress, and have handed huge contracts to businesses that have proven in the past on this very project that they will not accomplish their goals.
I agree that you don't just scrap something right away because it is over budget. But this particular project is just as bad, if not worse, than the Bradley fiasco.
The original bid went out in 1994 according to the article - which at that point access to source code was not a foreseeable issue for a lot of people in government purchasing departments.
Also, this project was slated to take nearly a decade, at which point it was more than likely that other software might be available that would be able to handle the task.
It's interesting to note that on top of the $10M, Honeywell upped their charge from a bidded $104M to $188M and explains away their cost overrun as a result of this dispute. So really, we're looking at now 94 Million Dollars being blamed on some poor schmuck in a purchasing department for not knowing that he should have included a source code clause in one of the 85 contracts he supervised that quarter.
Now the purchasing people I know would blacklist any contractors associated with that kind of catastrophe, but then again, I don't know any of the bozo's working on the Big Dig.
I understand that things can get out of hand occassionally and sometimes deadlines get missed and costs get to be over-budget. But nearly 100% over budget with no end in site? Just for this piece of the overall project that is wrought with this kind of thing? Maybe you shouldn't be hiring your project managers from the "welfare-to-work" program.
The Big Dig is a huge waste of money. When I was working out in Boston, Congress told Mass. "No more money" and then proceeded to fire the guy heading up the project. (This was about 5 years ago).
I watched them take down a bridge, then actually rebuild the same bridge. I don't know what exactly they accomplished, but it just seems like a stupid thing to do. There are so many unaccomplished goals, you would think that breaking down and rebuilding would be tasked for a later date while they focused on doing things that actually provided a tangible improvement.
When I think about Government Waste, I think about how my schools were run. Every school I ever went to from elementary school through college was wrought with waste and mismanagement - and those people all had a real desire to improve things. Now make the organization millions of times bigger with employees that could give a care and you end up with a trillian dollars in waste all from situations like this where it took months for somebody to say "hey, if this is costing us so much money wouldn't it make sense to just settle and move on?"
The apathy that government employees have is staggering. If half of the government organizations simply had one whistleblower that alerted the press about waste that they witnessed, we would... well, we'd be in the same situation because nobody would do anything about it... but theoretically we could reduce waste by billions of dollars.
Why is it that after all this time and all these budget overruns that the people of Mass. haven't just said "This is a bad idea. Lets kill it!"? Eventually, they'll just call the project done and we'll have another Bradley Fighting Vehicle on our hands.
I rode in a rented RV to Vegas for a bachelor party only to find I did not bring my drivers license with me, since I had it in my travel kit, which I use to fly. This was problematic with bars and such, but in the end with as much money as I was spending, I was able to get in with the bachelor party pretty much everywhere. (I'm 30, so I don't really look like a teenager trying to sneak in).
My plan was to ride in the RV to Vegas, and fly home in order to hop on a plane again and fly out of town for work on Monday. I called southwest to discuss my dillema. I did for some reason have my boarding pass printed and with me. They told me to have my wife fax my birth certificate and drivers license, so I had her fax it to my hotel. At security, I explained my situation, and showed them my faxed birth certificate and license, and they let me through.
Now, this isn't entirely without ID, but faxed copies of those documents are a heck of a lot easier to forge than a CA drivers license. In fact, the security guard didn't even unfold the paper, so it could have been anything that I handed to her. No extra searches, they just let me through.
This whole subject is interesting though - Which is more important, the ability to travel to petition your government, or the ability to identify each and every passenger? Since a few states have easily forgeable drivers licenses, and many countries have easily forgeable passports, the ability to identify passengers is pretty weak in and of itself. So knowing that does your answer change? Hmm...
I feel a lot safer since 911. It has nothing to do with security. In fact, I think security is as bad or worse than ever. It has to do with the mindset of my fellow passengers. You want to hijack my plane? I don't think so. Me and most of the passengers will kick the living turd out of anyone who wants to take over the plane now.
I have to chime in here and tell you that you are absolutely correct!
When I was in college (early '90s), I ran into the same problem. My Communications professor believed that I should be spending 80% of my time on her class and assigned work accordingly. Nevermind that I was juggling 2 physics classes, 2 calculous classes, Chemistry, Philosophy, and Programming and Algorithms. I certainly undertood the importance of a communications class, but a) it wasn't my only class and b) there wasn't enough practical knowledge being learned. Spending an hour and a half watching 12 Angry Men in 7th grade was more informative.
When I look at the graduation requirements, they were well thought out. Certainly a student should fulfill those requirements throughout their academic career. You need to know more than numbers and technology to maintain a career. The implementation was flawed however. The classes offered to fulfill the requirements were mostly lacking. If I need to fulfill a cultural requirement, then something better than black or hispanic studies should be offered. Both of those classes, while interesting, proved to be lacking in producing an understanding of another culture. I need to know more than the fact that imigration treated Mexicans badly. There is so much more to hispanic culture or african culture than oppression. For that matter there are a hundred and fifty other cultures that are deserving of attention.
I could probably write a page and a half about every requirement and every class that I was forced to take to fulfill that requirement.
Another problem I remember was that as a CMPE major, I didn't have much choice about my "electives" if I wanted to graduate in 4 years. Certain classes fulfilled multiple requirements and I had to choose those since my major happened to require 8 more classes than other majors. Hispanic or Black studies, Small Group Comm., and Logic and Critical Thinking were among my 'forced' classes. At least the last one payed off:).
My father refused to take some of the classes he disagreed with and ended up not getting his phd because of it. He felt that any scientist worth his salt spoke english, and he was and is still right.(He went on to build the beginnings of AZT, reduce the still birth rate in the US by over 50%, and a list of other things that would have eventually brought him a nobel prize if he had not prematurely passed) He also flunked out of high school because it was not challenging enough for him and forged his transcripts to get into college - where he held a 4.0 through his junior year - the only reason he didn't get kicked out when the administration learned of his transcript transgressions.
Me, I still have not taken the "History of Math", and another class I can't remember, so I never really graduated. (although my reasons were more because of personal and financial problems more than any thoughtful rebellion). I don't feel like any less of a person for not having taken those classes and 10 years later I make more money than anyone I know, I've been recognized by Congress, and I've changed the USA and Mexico for the better as a result of my work.
Looks like I'm bragging, but what I'm trying to say is that my father and I both have proved that you can not only get by without some of those ludicrous classes, but you can be hugely successful without them. It's not to say it wasn't an easy road for us, but there are plenty of people out there who take and pass all those classes and take nothing from it.
I left college confident that I had more knowledge about my major than anyone in my graduating class. Not because I was any better than the other students, but because I truly was/am interested in the subject and I spent a great deal of my free time learning all the things that my university wasn't teaching me - either through work, through trade journals and magazines, or through the hacking community. (not to mention th
When people start talking about the UN taking over something, they always knock the job that the US is doing. Or they bring up the fact that the US shouldn't be in charge, it should be an international thing.
The UN wouldn't exist without the leadership of the United States of America. We founded the organization.
Most of the things that people say "should be governed by an international body" were things that no international body ever tried to take responsibility for. Only after the US or an American entity fosters a project through to maturity do the "international bodies" want to step in. Why not? If I thought that people would just hand me that kind of power, I'd complain to the news outlets too.
Members of the UN have zero power in their own countries. Rarely to UN members outside of the United States make a comparible contribution to a UN effort. The US may pay it's dues late, but they are always the first to commit troops, supplies, transportation, and political clout.
What has the UN accomplished without major US involvement?
On topic... I don't think that it's a good idea to place any such power inside any governmental or pseudo-governmental body - international or national. If an international commission is what is needed, then lobby for the appointment international members to the ICANN board. If ICANN isn't doing the job correctly, then stop complaining and work towards building a better ICANN and make the world better through competition.
SCO sues Novell over the use of the number 200,000 which was used in the original unix implementation in a header file.
IBM is being subpoenaed to discuss licensing issues, and Novel is being ordered to release all 200,000 lines of public code to SCO (whose lawyers apparently didn't know that the code is publicly accessible).
A Microsoft owned company has already purchased 500 licenses of "litigation protection insurance" from Microsoft to avoid litigation in the future if SCO should win the legal battle.
Another microsoft company purchased 500 SCO licenses directly from SCO to avoid the potential of litigation, because, as it turns out, 500 licenses is slightly cheaper than the litigation protection insurance.
/* I stole this code from IBM via Linux... Apparently we have to change it before releasing it because SCO claims it is theirs (at least according to groklaw */
Gartner is The Authority when it comes to investment information. A positive note from them can push your stock waaay up. A negative note can dump it.
In the tech world, they just seem to be off. They look at numbers okay, but things that are obvious to any involved industry observer miss them completely.
When they miss things that are obvious to you, it's a good idea to analyze your portfolio and see if there isn't a profitable move to make.
One thing that they can't predict is the adoption of firefox as a default browser for network administrators. When the admins decide it'll be a better option for the network, firefox's market share will increase 10-fold.
Nobody seems to have mentioned that Clancy wrote about taking an airliner down with a laser device in Rainbow Six.
In the book, two operatives flash a really really bright light at the cockpit of a landing plane. I don't remember if it called it a laser, but anything but a laser would show an extremely visible point of assault. Simple concept. Attack the enemy with lights.
The defense? Reflective windshields. Would a laser penetrate a one-way mirror?
Slashdot Mirror
Bluffing is something that comes naturally to humans, but is very hard to program an effective bluff in AI. The reason being that patterns of behavior are easy to recognize in computers.
I think the most effective pokerbot may just be one that is poorly written. Like many have posted, following probability guidelines will not win the tournament. I'm wondering what the most effective way of bluffing a bot would be. Probably by displaying an easy to follow pattern for a series of rounds and then hammering away when the odds look to be in my favor. Even then, when playing bots, you have to imagine that several will be calling your final bet when most humans would shy away.
My best day of poker ever was winning 12 hands in a row. I just kept throwing out the max bet without looking at my cards because I was too busy stacking my chips from the previous win. When people were bold enough to call, I happened to have a lucky hand and won anyways. 8 of those hands were won because everybody folded though. You can't program that kind of ludicrousity.
It seems that they have made a pretty obvious mistake here.
If you sign into your account and choose slashdot, and leave the default of 3 stories, it will only show 1. Editing your choice by changing it from 3 to another number and back again will display the correct number of stories.
The same problem exists for google news.
Just saw this reply in my e-mail... I'm glad some interesting discussion resulted, but I wish I never posted it. (Discussion probably happened more because people inadvertantly replied to my post than because my post was actually discussion-worthy).
:)
http://slashdot.org/~Evets/journal/106553
You'll see that I wanted to take my comment back immediately after I made it.
You have to imagine that they are after intellectual property beyond what is on the surface. Could it be that Caldera didn't get all of the rights that SCO thought they did?
Don't we already have a federal ID? You know, that thing we call a passport.
This is federal government at its finest.
They see a problem that needs fixing and decide to fix it at a cost of millions to hundreds of millions without thinking about whether or not the solution is neccessary or effective. (kind of like airport security)
Now buffer overflow exploits can be written by everyday common script kiddies now that there is this wonderful tutorial featured on slashdot.
Expect a flood of security patches in the next 30 days, and a strong new virus in the same time frame.
Tiger Direct is getting everything they need by just announcing their intent to sue. They can settle out of court for nothing 5 months from now, but they successfully got themselves into the headlines of every trade journal for a 100 dollar filing fee.
Say that five times really quick.
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
European Libraries Counter Google Digitisation
samzenpus gets the HSDHL award for April (High Sylabbic Density HeadLine).
He also gets props for spelling Digitisation correctly. You looked at it funny. Admit it.
It was a samsung I got through sprint. There was talk about streaming mp3's, but the reality was that the RealPlayer interface you were bound to was the only way to put music on it.
Still... the phone worked great. I had it from about 2000-2002.
What's the big deal anyways. Windows Mobile phones have been able to play music for a while now. I don't get why anybody cares whether you have an iPod or any of the other 200 mp3 players on the market. Yeah, it has the cool spinner wheel, and a buttload of space, but it can't possibly be that much better than any other product.
When this thing came around for a vote last year, I talked to a lot of people about it. To me, it was absurd that the government would be able to take your DNA, profile it, maintain it in a "sexual offenders" database, and never have to remove it - even if you are proven innocent.
It's scary. All they have to do is arrest you for a crime - without any real evidence - and then you are labeled a sex offender for life.
To my surprise, nobody I know - other than my wife - was with me on this one. Most people here equate it to fingerprinting. If you get fingerprinted, then they keep it forever. This is vastly different though. They are not only keeping identifying information, they are labelling it "sex offender", making it a matter of public record, and maintaining that record regardless of conviction.
This has potential for abuse written all over it.
And in other news today, the Justice Department has reported that it is not abusing it's power. To quote the Fuhrer, uh, I mean, director: "A bunch of people called us to tell us we were abusing the system, but then we looked into it and those people are totally wrong. And even though a couple of those people were sort of right, they totally called the wrong number to complain, so they don't really count."
This is a point that I might agree with in a different situation, but the Big Dig is actually the most expensive road construction project in American history. It was approved originally at $2.5 Billion Dollars and slated to be completed by 1998. It is now at over $15 Billion in costs and 7 years overdue. At some point you need to just cut your losses and figure out how to recoup some of your original investment. And keep in mind that it isn't just Mass. taxpayers footing the bill here.
When money for the Big Dig was debated on the Senate floor in 1991, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) stated, "There is no intention of repeating or coming back for additional resources." Taxpayers should hold Congress and the State of Massachusetts to that promise.
Officials have hidden billions of dollars in overruns from auditors, have lied about progress, and have handed huge contracts to businesses that have proven in the past on this very project that they will not accomplish their goals.
I agree that you don't just scrap something right away because it is over budget. But this particular project is just as bad, if not worse, than the Bradley fiasco.
The original bid went out in 1994 according to the article - which at that point access to source code was not a foreseeable issue for a lot of people in government purchasing departments.
Also, this project was slated to take nearly a decade, at which point it was more than likely that other software might be available that would be able to handle the task.
It's interesting to note that on top of the $10M, Honeywell upped their charge from a bidded $104M to $188M and explains away their cost overrun as a result of this dispute. So really, we're looking at now 94 Million Dollars being blamed on some poor schmuck in a purchasing department for not knowing that he should have included a source code clause in one of the 85 contracts he supervised that quarter.
Now the purchasing people I know would blacklist any contractors associated with that kind of catastrophe, but then again, I don't know any of the bozo's working on the Big Dig.
I understand that things can get out of hand occassionally and sometimes deadlines get missed and costs get to be over-budget. But nearly 100% over budget with no end in site? Just for this piece of the overall project that is wrought with this kind of thing? Maybe you shouldn't be hiring your project managers from the "welfare-to-work" program.
In Soviet Russia, the big dig is done!
The Big Dig is a huge waste of money. When I was working out in Boston, Congress told Mass. "No more money" and then proceeded to fire the guy heading up the project. (This was about 5 years ago).
I watched them take down a bridge, then actually rebuild the same bridge. I don't know what exactly they accomplished, but it just seems like a stupid thing to do. There are so many unaccomplished goals, you would think that breaking down and rebuilding would be tasked for a later date while they focused on doing things that actually provided a tangible improvement.
When I think about Government Waste, I think about how my schools were run. Every school I ever went to from elementary school through college was wrought with waste and mismanagement - and those people all had a real desire to improve things. Now make the organization millions of times bigger with employees that could give a care and you end up with a trillian dollars in waste all from situations like this where it took months for somebody to say "hey, if this is costing us so much money wouldn't it make sense to just settle and move on?"
The apathy that government employees have is staggering. If half of the government organizations simply had one whistleblower that alerted the press about waste that they witnessed, we would... well, we'd be in the same situation because nobody would do anything about it... but theoretically we could reduce waste by billions of dollars.
Why is it that after all this time and all these budget overruns that the people of Mass. haven't just said "This is a bad idea. Lets kill it!"? Eventually, they'll just call the project done and we'll have another Bradley Fighting Vehicle on our hands.
This technology does not exist.
It's just a way for firms to bilk money from Government grants and gullible investors.
Everybody already knows that the secret to getting past the Maginot Line is to simply go around it.
Even if nobody was allowed to talk about it, everybody would still know how to defeat it.
I rode in a rented RV to Vegas for a bachelor party only to find I did not bring my drivers license with me, since I had it in my travel kit, which I use to fly. This was problematic with bars and such, but in the end with as much money as I was spending, I was able to get in with the bachelor party pretty much everywhere. (I'm 30, so I don't really look like a teenager trying to sneak in).
My plan was to ride in the RV to Vegas, and fly home in order to hop on a plane again and fly out of town for work on Monday. I called southwest to discuss my dillema. I did for some reason have my boarding pass printed and with me. They told me to have my wife fax my birth certificate and drivers license, so I had her fax it to my hotel. At security, I explained my situation, and showed them my faxed birth certificate and license, and they let me through.
Now, this isn't entirely without ID, but faxed copies of those documents are a heck of a lot easier to forge than a CA drivers license. In fact, the security guard didn't even unfold the paper, so it could have been anything that I handed to her. No extra searches, they just let me through.
This whole subject is interesting though - Which is more important, the ability to travel to petition your government, or the ability to identify each and every passenger? Since a few states have easily forgeable drivers licenses, and many countries have easily forgeable passports, the ability to identify passengers is pretty weak in and of itself. So knowing that does your answer change? Hmm...
I feel a lot safer since 911. It has nothing to do with security. In fact, I think security is as bad or worse than ever. It has to do with the mindset of my fellow passengers. You want to hijack my plane? I don't think so. Me and most of the passengers will kick the living turd out of anyone who wants to take over the plane now.
All these people talking down to you...
:).
I have to chime in here and tell you that you are absolutely correct!
When I was in college (early '90s), I ran into the same problem. My Communications professor believed that I should be spending 80% of my time on her class and assigned work accordingly. Nevermind that I was juggling 2 physics classes, 2 calculous classes, Chemistry, Philosophy, and Programming and Algorithms. I certainly undertood the importance of a communications class, but a) it wasn't my only class and b) there wasn't enough practical knowledge being learned. Spending an hour and a half watching 12 Angry Men in 7th grade was more informative.
When I look at the graduation requirements, they were well thought out. Certainly a student should fulfill those requirements throughout their academic career. You need to know more than numbers and technology to maintain a career. The implementation was flawed however. The classes offered to fulfill the requirements were mostly lacking. If I need to fulfill a cultural requirement, then something better than black or hispanic studies should be offered. Both of those classes, while interesting, proved to be lacking in producing an understanding of another culture. I need to know more than the fact that imigration treated Mexicans badly. There is so much more to hispanic culture or african culture than oppression. For that matter there are a hundred and fifty other cultures that are deserving of attention.
I could probably write a page and a half about every requirement and every class that I was forced to take to fulfill that requirement.
Another problem I remember was that as a CMPE major, I didn't have much choice about my "electives" if I wanted to graduate in 4 years. Certain classes fulfilled multiple requirements and I had to choose those since my major happened to require 8 more classes than other majors. Hispanic or Black studies, Small Group Comm., and Logic and Critical Thinking were among my 'forced' classes. At least the last one payed off
My father refused to take some of the classes he disagreed with and ended up not getting his phd because of it. He felt that any scientist worth his salt spoke english, and he was and is still right.(He went on to build the beginnings of AZT, reduce the still birth rate in the US by over 50%, and a list of other things that would have eventually brought him a nobel prize if he had not prematurely passed) He also flunked out of high school because it was not challenging enough for him and forged his transcripts to get into college - where he held a 4.0 through his junior year - the only reason he didn't get kicked out when the administration learned of his transcript transgressions.
Me, I still have not taken the "History of Math", and another class I can't remember, so I never really graduated. (although my reasons were more because of personal and financial problems more than any thoughtful rebellion). I don't feel like any less of a person for not having taken those classes and 10 years later I make more money than anyone I know, I've been recognized by Congress, and I've changed the USA and Mexico for the better as a result of my work.
Looks like I'm bragging, but what I'm trying to say is that my father and I both have proved that you can not only get by without some of those ludicrous classes, but you can be hugely successful without them. It's not to say it wasn't an easy road for us, but there are plenty of people out there who take and pass all those classes and take nothing from it.
I left college confident that I had more knowledge about my major than anyone in my graduating class. Not because I was any better than the other students, but because I truly was/am interested in the subject and I spent a great deal of my free time learning all the things that my university wasn't teaching me - either through work, through trade journals and magazines, or through the hacking community. (not to mention th
When people start talking about the UN taking over something, they always knock the job that the US is doing. Or they bring up the fact that the US shouldn't be in charge, it should be an international thing.
The UN wouldn't exist without the leadership of the United States of America. We founded the organization.
Most of the things that people say "should be governed by an international body" were things that no international body ever tried to take responsibility for. Only after the US or an American entity fosters a project through to maturity do the "international bodies" want to step in. Why not? If I thought that people would just hand me that kind of power, I'd complain to the news outlets too.
Members of the UN have zero power in their own countries. Rarely to UN members outside of the United States make a comparible contribution to a UN effort. The US may pay it's dues late, but they are always the first to commit troops, supplies, transportation, and political clout.
What has the UN accomplished without major US involvement?
On topic...
I don't think that it's a good idea to place any such power inside any governmental or pseudo-governmental body - international or national. If an international commission is what is needed, then lobby for the appointment international members to the ICANN board. If ICANN isn't doing the job correctly, then stop complaining and work towards building a better ICANN and make the world better through competition.
And in a related story...
SCO sues Novell over the use of the number 200,000 which was used in the original unix implementation in a header file.
IBM is being subpoenaed to discuss licensing issues, and Novel is being ordered to release all 200,000 lines of public code to SCO (whose lawyers apparently didn't know that the code is publicly accessible).
A Microsoft owned company has already purchased 500 licenses of "litigation protection insurance" from Microsoft to avoid litigation in the future if SCO should win the legal battle.
Another microsoft company purchased 500 SCO licenses directly from SCO to avoid the potential of litigation, because, as it turns out, 500 licenses is slightly cheaper than the litigation protection insurance.
/* I stole this code from IBM via Linux... Apparently we have to change it before releasing it because SCO claims it is theirs (at least according to groklaw */
Gartner is The Authority when it comes to investment information. A positive note from them can push your stock waaay up. A negative note can dump it.
In the tech world, they just seem to be off. They look at numbers okay, but things that are obvious to any involved industry observer miss them completely.
When they miss things that are obvious to you, it's a good idea to analyze your portfolio and see if there isn't a profitable move to make.
One thing that they can't predict is the adoption of firefox as a default browser for network administrators. When the admins decide it'll be a better option for the network, firefox's market share will increase 10-fold.
imagine how many non-standard user agents will be showing up in bt's logs tomorrow.
I bet there's a ton of LWP requests hitting BT as we speak.
Nobody seems to have mentioned that Clancy wrote about taking an airliner down with a laser device in Rainbow Six.
In the book, two operatives flash a really really bright light at the cockpit of a landing plane. I don't remember if it called it a laser, but anything but a laser would show an extremely visible point of assault. Simple concept. Attack the enemy with lights.
The defense? Reflective windshields. Would a laser penetrate a one-way mirror?