Funny you should ask, because mortgage interest is tax deductible here, so a mortgage is fiscally very attractive. It's the main reason why rich people (big income, big house) pay much less income tax than you'd expect, looking at the percentages.
I admit it looks high, but it doesn't feel out of control at all. Yes, the sales tax means that anything other than iPhones is more expensive here than in the US, and a lot of people on Slashdot seem to be making a lot more money than I do, and housing in Netherland is very expensive, and yet I don't feel like I'm paying too much tax.
Affordable education and healthcare means I don't have any serious debts (other than mortgage), and I've got plenty of disposable income every month (although my wife having a better-paying job than I have helps a lot there).
Even so, government wastes money on the craziest things (like top of the line jet fighters that we're never ever going to use, railroads and other prestigious public works that nobody wants, multimillion euro websites that fail), and I think a lot of operational costs of the government could be a lot cheaper in lots of ways.
I think just making the tax + social security simpler would make a lot of things a lot easier and cheaper.
If you sell your house you have to pay, if you buy a house you have to pay...
Those two are the same one as far as I know. There's a 10% transfer tax on the purchase of a house, and it's usually paid by the buyer and funded by the mortgage.
Personally I think it's one of the most harmful taxes we have; it keeps housing prices high and discourages people from moving (to a house closer to their job, to a house more appropriate to their income). I think that sort of thing needs to be encouraged rather than discouraged.
I don't object much to any of the other taxes, although I'd still love to see them completely reorganised. Less arbitrary and a more unifying idea behind them.
Well duh? If pot is legalized more people would use it. They'll be more stupid people who use it,
If it's legal, you can also have proper education (which is far more effective than prohibition). In Netherland, pot is legal and many other drugs tolerated or easier to get than abroad, but the people who are stupid with drugs are mostly foreigners. The Dutch mostly restrict their pot use to weekends and parties, and don't mix them with alcohol (or other drugs, but alcohol is the big one).
I've written some basic tests of this exact sort before (basic "burds"-looking stuff) and the resulting behavior is extremely intuitive and ordered-looking.
But can it kick my ass in a fair fight? That's what I want to know.
I agree that this is very interesting, but the sheer asymmetry of the setup (players begin with four ships versus 20,000+ for the AI) means that we don't really have a chance to compare the AI to human intelligence.
It's an RTS, so it was never going to give an accurate measure of strategic intelligence anyway. But on the whole, I agree with your point. I want to see this in action in a good, level playing-field TBS game.
Since when is marijuana a racist term? Cannabis is the name of the plant, marijuana is made from the buds of that plant, hash is made from the resin of that plan. They're all valuable words.
Why are you under the impression that cannabis intoxication is a traffic problem? (There's science done on the subject that I doubt you're aware of)
Cannabis != alcohol. Those two drugs to not have the same issues.
Well, they don't get aggressive or overconfident, which is definitely nice. But someone going 30 on the motorway isn't exactly safe either.
Even so, I've never heard of serious marihuana intoxication problems in traffic, and I live in a country where smoking pot is legal. People who are high have better things to do than driving a car, apparently.
Unfortunately, you are giving chess a little too much credit here. An unbeatable chess strategy really is to have an internal catalog of board states and optimal moves from those states.
No, an unbeatable chess strategy is calculating the entire game to the end (or at least to an obviously won osition). I'm just explaining how chess strategy works in practice. How am I giving chess too much credit?
It is worth remembering that strong AI is a fundamentally and profoundly atheistic concept; the possibility of it more or less presumes a definitely atheistic universe as a prerequisite.
Very interesting point, but I disagree. I disagree despite the fact that I'm a Christian and I don't see Strong AI as viable is the foreseeable future. I don't think there's a connection between those two beliefs. I think it is in theory possible to model absolutely everything on a computer, but I also think full human-level intelligence is too complex for us to grok completely for a long time to come.
For those of us who believe in the existence of God, (or at least the soul)
Well, what do you mean by a soul here? To me, our soul is not some magical spirit wholly seperate from our body, but the software that runs on the hardware of our body. Does that mean computers can have a soul? No idea. Depends on how you define it. If it's sufficiently complex, why not? Hasn't stopped me from believing in God, though.
I have yet to see anything that beats Master of Orion's AI
But to be fair I've played very few strategy games in the last 10 years, so shoot me down if I'm talking out my arse:)
In MOO the AI would recognise your tactics, and make moves specifically to counter them. You couldn't keep using a winning strategy.
Are you talking about the original MoO? You could just steamroller right over them. Not much strategy required (though the battle system was very exploitable).
I think the Mimiry suggestion is more comparable to a chess player who has played a lot of games, studied other people's games and studied books on opening theory and that sort of thing. That gives a good player a big knowledge base of good moves and a feel for how the results of those moves might turn out. A self-learning system would expand its base of good moves with each new game it plays.
Ever since I wrote my first connect 4 game in the 80s - and was totally thrashed by it, I never beat it - its been clear to me that the trick is to degrade a computer player in most circumstances to the level that it appears to have human flaws and play in a more human fashion.
Only in simple, full information games. In complex strategy games, particularly turn-based ones, nobody has been able to design AI that can stand up to a good human player in a fair fight.
Computers are really good at calculation and at doing lots of simple things fast, but they're absolutely awful when it comes to strategic thinking, which is why they're good at full-information games with a limited number of options per move (connect four, chess), and RTS games that are more about fast mouse control than about strategy, but they're crap at your average wargame.
I agree that the "do not cheat" is a good rule. However, having ten times mire resources for the AI is only cheating if it is hidden. If you have a starwars-esque setting where you are taking on the huge Empire with only a tenth of their resources, it can make for an interesting challenge.
Rebels against the Empire is never going to be a flat playing field. The die-hard do-not-cheat/flat-playing-field position means you start out from the same position, with the same resources, the same information and the same options.
Whether that makes for a fun game is a different matter. It does when the AI is really, really good. So usually it doesn't.
This gentleman says that his AI is often the goliath in a david vs goliath scenario. I suspect that this makes AI far easier : it doesn't care to waste some resources, its strategy is to be overwhelming...
Exactly. It's a different style of play compared to the flat playing-field duel. It's not a fair game anymore, so what counts as cheating and what's simply part of the designed imbalance is very fuzzy.
So... how is this concept new (or NEWSworthy, for that matter)?
This is games.slashdot, and good AI still hasn't been done in games. If this results in some decent AI, it's worthy of slashdot. But a bit more data on either the quality of the AI or the technical side of it would have been nice.
Which is unfortunate, because it's a really interesting topic.
Basically what he says is that he has three levels of AI: strategic, sub-commander and unit. Units look out for themselves, strategic is rule based and sets strategic goals, and sub-commander is the fun part: it makes units work together through flocking.
That's pretty much it. Very interesting, but a bit more meat would have been nice.
The slashvertisement worked, though. I'm very tempted to buy this game to see if the AI is really good, even though I hate RTS games.
I have met some women who feel they are entitled to do as well as the men who come in at 7:30am and work until 5:30pm when they role in at 9am having dropped the kids at school and have to leave at 3pm to pick them up,
Are the men at your work all childless, or do they all skimp on their parental duties?
Testosterone helps build muscle mass. Men have higher natural testosterone levels Men and women will get equal physical strength when equal amounts of steroids (anabolic or androgen) circulate in the blood stream.
But how many women are willing to have manly looks to achieve equality?
I do something similar. In Belgium the standard keyboard is Azerty and I use QWERTY.
This is something that's always amazed me: that people actually use azerty keyboard settings. I'm Dutch, and while I think there actually is an official Dutch typewriter layout, I've never heard of anyone using it for computers. I grew up with a UK keyboard (on the Acorn Electron) originally, and later I've only used standard US keyboard settings (slightly modified by various manufacturers, like Sun and Apple).
The last couple of years I get increasingly annoyed with Windows' US International keyboard settings because they don't show quotes and other vital punctuation immediately but wait until the next character has been typed, which makes it impossible to type passwords.
Really, I hate the US as much as the next guy, but IMO there is simply no alternative to a standard US keyboard setting.
Slashdot Mirror
And who do you think is paying the mortgage...
Funny you should ask, because mortgage interest is tax deductible here, so a mortgage is fiscally very attractive. It's the main reason why rich people (big income, big house) pay much less income tax than you'd expect, looking at the percentages.
I admit it looks high, but it doesn't feel out of control at all. Yes, the sales tax means that anything other than iPhones is more expensive here than in the US, and a lot of people on Slashdot seem to be making a lot more money than I do, and housing in Netherland is very expensive, and yet I don't feel like I'm paying too much tax.
Affordable education and healthcare means I don't have any serious debts (other than mortgage), and I've got plenty of disposable income every month (although my wife having a better-paying job than I have helps a lot there).
Even so, government wastes money on the craziest things (like top of the line jet fighters that we're never ever going to use, railroads and other prestigious public works that nobody wants, multimillion euro websites that fail), and I think a lot of operational costs of the government could be a lot cheaper in lots of ways.
I think just making the tax + social security simpler would make a lot of things a lot easier and cheaper.
If you sell your house you have to pay, if you buy a house you have to pay...
Those two are the same one as far as I know. There's a 10% transfer tax on the purchase of a house, and it's usually paid by the buyer and funded by the mortgage.
Personally I think it's one of the most harmful taxes we have; it keeps housing prices high and discourages people from moving (to a house closer to their job, to a house more appropriate to their income). I think that sort of thing needs to be encouraged rather than discouraged.
I don't object much to any of the other taxes, although I'd still love to see them completely reorganised. Less arbitrary and a more unifying idea behind them.
Netherland: 19% sales tax on luxuries, 6% on bare necessities. Income tax 30-50% (but with a lot of deductibles).
Well duh? If pot is legalized more people would use it. They'll be more stupid people who use it,
If it's legal, you can also have proper education (which is far more effective than prohibition). In Netherland, pot is legal and many other drugs tolerated or easier to get than abroad, but the people who are stupid with drugs are mostly foreigners. The Dutch mostly restrict their pot use to weekends and parties, and don't mix them with alcohol (or other drugs, but alcohol is the big one).
I've written some basic tests of this exact sort before (basic "burds"-looking stuff) and the resulting behavior is extremely intuitive and ordered-looking.
But can it kick my ass in a fair fight? That's what I want to know.
I agree that this is very interesting, but the sheer asymmetry of the setup (players begin with four ships versus 20,000+ for the AI) means that we don't really have a chance to compare the AI to human intelligence.
It's an RTS, so it was never going to give an accurate measure of strategic intelligence anyway. But on the whole, I agree with your point. I want to see this in action in a good, level playing-field TBS game.
cannabis (marijuana is a racist term)
Since when is marijuana a racist term? Cannabis is the name of the plant, marijuana is made from the buds of that plant, hash is made from the resin of that plan. They're all valuable words.
export-quality pot
Export quality? I thought the whole point was that we don't export it. Otherwise we get into trouble with France.
Why are you under the impression that cannabis intoxication is a traffic problem? (There's science done on the subject that I doubt you're aware of)
Cannabis != alcohol. Those two drugs to not have the same issues.
Well, they don't get aggressive or overconfident, which is definitely nice. But someone going 30 on the motorway isn't exactly safe either.
Even so, I've never heard of serious marihuana intoxication problems in traffic, and I live in a country where smoking pot is legal. People who are high have better things to do than driving a car, apparently.
Unfortunately, you are giving chess a little too much credit here. An unbeatable chess strategy really is to have an internal catalog of board states and optimal moves from those states.
No, an unbeatable chess strategy is calculating the entire game to the end (or at least to an obviously won osition). I'm just explaining how chess strategy works in practice. How am I giving chess too much credit?
From my experience I'd award the best AI to Civilization.
Fortunately we have actually progressed quite a bit from there. Not nearly enough, though.
It is worth remembering that strong AI is a fundamentally and profoundly atheistic concept; the possibility of it more or less presumes a definitely atheistic universe as a prerequisite.
Very interesting point, but I disagree. I disagree despite the fact that I'm a Christian and I don't see Strong AI as viable is the foreseeable future. I don't think there's a connection between those two beliefs. I think it is in theory possible to model absolutely everything on a computer, but I also think full human-level intelligence is too complex for us to grok completely for a long time to come.
For those of us who believe in the existence of God, (or at least the soul)
Well, what do you mean by a soul here? To me, our soul is not some magical spirit wholly seperate from our body, but the software that runs on the hardware of our body. Does that mean computers can have a soul? No idea. Depends on how you define it. If it's sufficiently complex, why not? Hasn't stopped me from believing in God, though.
I have yet to see anything that beats Master of Orion's AI
But to be fair I've played very few strategy games in the last 10 years, so shoot me down if I'm talking out my arse :)
In MOO the AI would recognise your tactics, and make moves specifically to counter them. You couldn't keep using a winning strategy.
Are you talking about the original MoO? You could just steamroller right over them. Not much strategy required (though the battle system was very exploitable).
Fun game, but I'm not impressed by the AI.
I think the Mimiry suggestion is more comparable to a chess player who has played a lot of games, studied other people's games and studied books on opening theory and that sort of thing. That gives a good player a big knowledge base of good moves and a feel for how the results of those moves might turn out. A self-learning system would expand its base of good moves with each new game it plays.
Ever since I wrote my first connect 4 game in the 80s - and was totally thrashed by it, I never beat it - its been clear to me that the trick is to degrade a computer player in most circumstances to the level that it appears to have human flaws and play in a more human fashion.
Only in simple, full information games. In complex strategy games, particularly turn-based ones, nobody has been able to design AI that can stand up to a good human player in a fair fight.
Computers are really good at calculation and at doing lots of simple things fast, but they're absolutely awful when it comes to strategic thinking, which is why they're good at full-information games with a limited number of options per move (connect four, chess), and RTS games that are more about fast mouse control than about strategy, but they're crap at your average wargame.
I agree that the "do not cheat" is a good rule. However, having ten times mire resources for the AI is only cheating if it is hidden. If you have a starwars-esque setting where you are taking on the huge Empire with only a tenth of their resources, it can make for an interesting challenge.
Rebels against the Empire is never going to be a flat playing field. The die-hard do-not-cheat/flat-playing-field position means you start out from the same position, with the same resources, the same information and the same options.
Whether that makes for a fun game is a different matter. It does when the AI is really, really good. So usually it doesn't.
This gentleman says that his AI is often the goliath in a david vs goliath scenario. I suspect that this makes AI far easier : it doesn't care to waste some resources, its strategy is to be overwhelming...
Exactly. It's a different style of play compared to the flat playing-field duel. It's not a fair game anymore, so what counts as cheating and what's simply part of the designed imbalance is very fuzzy.
So... how is this concept new (or NEWSworthy, for that matter)?
This is games.slashdot, and good AI still hasn't been done in games. If this results in some decent AI, it's worthy of slashdot. But a bit more data on either the quality of the AI or the technical side of it would have been nice.
It is very light on implementation details.
Which is unfortunate, because it's a really interesting topic.
Basically what he says is that he has three levels of AI: strategic, sub-commander and unit. Units look out for themselves, strategic is rule based and sets strategic goals, and sub-commander is the fun part: it makes units work together through flocking.
That's pretty much it. Very interesting, but a bit more meat would have been nice.
The slashvertisement worked, though. I'm very tempted to buy this game to see if the AI is really good, even though I hate RTS games.
I have met some women who feel they are entitled to do as well as the men who come in at 7:30am and work until 5:30pm when they role in at 9am having dropped the kids at school and have to leave at 3pm to pick them up,
Are the men at your work all childless, or do they all skimp on their parental duties?
Testosterone helps build muscle mass. Men have higher natural testosterone levels
Men and women will get equal physical strength when equal amounts of steroids (anabolic or androgen) circulate in the blood stream.
But how many women are willing to have manly looks to achieve equality?
Let people choose what they want to do. Stop trying to 'fix' it.
But we need more female nerds! Who else can we possibly relate to?
According to the corporate statistics linked in the summary, IE6 just overtook IE7.
Now that is truly retarded. And retarding even more as we speak.
If you consider borrowing laptop even remotely similar to borrowing wife... *Shudder*.
Well, you know how it is with nerds.
Anyhow, to state obvious that needs to be stated, borrowing wife is not harmless nor costless.
And it's the same with a laptop.
I do something similar. In Belgium the standard keyboard is Azerty and I use QWERTY.
This is something that's always amazed me: that people actually use azerty keyboard settings. I'm Dutch, and while I think there actually is an official Dutch typewriter layout, I've never heard of anyone using it for computers. I grew up with a UK keyboard (on the Acorn Electron) originally, and later I've only used standard US keyboard settings (slightly modified by various manufacturers, like Sun and Apple).
The last couple of years I get increasingly annoyed with Windows' US International keyboard settings because they don't show quotes and other vital punctuation immediately but wait until the next character has been typed, which makes it impossible to type passwords.
Really, I hate the US as much as the next guy, but IMO there is simply no alternative to a standard US keyboard setting.