The U of A team gave the humans the logs of the first two games!
Perhaps after the entire match they could have reviewed the game logs, however this give the humans an unfair advantage during the second day. I can't believe that this isn't getting more attention -- they bascially gave the human team a huge insight into the inner workings, strategy, and tendencies of their opponent. Something that Polaris definitely did not have.
In my opinion this sours the competition and completely invalidates the final two matches. The human likely found a weakness (or two or three) and exploited it, and we can't know for sure that they would have found the weakness without those logs.
That was a huge mistake by the U of A team, and they have apparently got away with it without anyone noticing.
As a Canadian, I am getting the impression that in Nevada when you register to vote, you have to declare a party affiliation. Is this true? If so, this is quite alien to me.
Furthermore the last time I voted (I did not pre-register), all I did was show up to the voting location in my area, provide several pieces of ID confirming my identity and my current address (driver's licence, pay stub, etc) and I get a ballot. I vote. End of story.
Nowhere, I mean NOWHERE, do I EVER have to declare any party affiliation that I may have. If my vote is supposedly anonymous and confidential, it strikes me as just plain crazy to have to give a party affiliation when you register to vote. Simply ludicrous if this is the case.
In most elections that I have witnessed in Canada, either municipal, provincial, or federal, there is ALWAYS a paper trail. I mark my ballot with a big fat X in the appropriate spot on a voting card.
Then the magic begins: the cards are each fed, as collected, into a vote counting machine. The ballots are held in the case a recount (automated or manual), and the results are known just as soon as it takes to communicate the results from each of the machines at each polling station.
We usually have the final, _official_ results within an hour or two of the poll closing time, and you can always go back to the paper ballot to verify the count. And who the heck has a hard time with a piece of paper and a pencil?
No hanging or dimpled chads here, and this to me seems the best of both worlds - technology aiding the speed of vote-counting (isn't that what this is all about, anyway?), but with the safeguards (and transparency) of a manual voting system.
I don't understand the rationale behind casting "virtual" votes. How can you go back and audit the votes? How do you ensure reliability and security?
In Canada whenever I have voted, I have put an "X" in the appropriate spot beside the candidate or question I'd like to vote for. Sure the voting card is then fed (by an elections official) through an automated counter, but the powers that be can always go back and recount the votes, either manually or using the automated counters.
Using this system the results are usually known within a couple of hours of the polls' closing time, and there are no hanging or dimpled chads -- or the possibility of the public at large messing with the system (other than spoiling one's own ballot).
What is wrong with this system? I can't really find too much to complain about -- old fashioned voting cards coupled with technology to speed the counting process.
"Sweden field" should obviously be "Swedish field".
And if you actually read the article, the test was a success but the parachutes didn't deploy properly, resulting in some damage to the craft. The scientific data, however, was gathered successfully.
This is a case where the work has been farmed out to ISM, which is a subsidiary of IBM. It's not the government's fault, but ISM/IBM who are to blame here.
The amount and detail of data makes this a SCARY situation.
As a Vancouverite following this case, these are the facts:
According to the judge, the American media can full-well report everything, provided it is in their own country. US news feeds into BC/Canada are blacked-out, but if you pick up feeds from US satellite or over the airwaves, you too can watch the US media report on this trial.
This is simply a means to a fair trial and an untainted jury, not directed at controlling the media, per-se.
There is going to be a water shortage in the future, and I believe that there is a very easy way to deal with it, however it will require a change in thinking, and an investment in infrastructure:
I don't know how many of you drink the tap water in your community, but here in Canada I know of few people that don't. But we also water our lawns with it, bathe in it, wash dishes with it, wash our cars with it, water our plants with it, etc. etc. etc.
Do you see a pattern here? We use drinkable/potable water for a huge number of things that don't require the water to be drinkable. We spend huge amounts of money to treat our water to then pour it onto our lawns and cars? This makes no sense. What we need is a dual system of delivery: the taps in your kitchen provide drinking water, but the faucet in your laundry room or on the exterior of your house provide non-drinking water for general use.
We could then forgo a huge number of costly, time-consuming treatments for water that is simply not meant for consumption. Previously non-viable sources of water suddenly become available for use in the "secondary" system of water.
You surely don't care if the water that is cleaning your clothing is chlorinated and fluorinated, do you?
As a Canadian who has a DirectTV dish and receiver and loves watching "grey market" TV, I hope there are more guys like him at DirectTV. Sure dealers of the hardware and those in the US are getting arrested in droves, but the Canadian end-user is apparently never bothered by the law.
What I do isn't in the moral good-books, but I can't imagine paying for the piles of crappy programming that are offered by DirectTV or the Canadian equivilants -- I watch the NHL games the the occasional movie, and would pay a reasonable fee to do it above-board, but I can't seriously imagine shelling out hundreds per month to do it.
FYI -- Canadians CAN'T subscribe to DirectTV due to Canadian laws, as the government feels that we should be using the alternatives in our own country. However that doesn't stop a wackload of people from watching "grey-market" TV -- it isn't illegal, but you can't actually legally subscribe to it. It's really a very strange situation.
Someone invents a tool to perform some action, and of course this tool can be used for something other than intended. For example, you invent the hammer, its purpose is to pound nails into wood. Wonderful.
Now just because someone else uses a hammer to bludgeon someone to death, does this make the hammer illegal? Of course not.
I think that we should focus on who is weilding the tool, not necessarily the tool itself.
Unless you are already a well-established company or organization with a product that will benefit form being able to gain access to MS's APIs, this won't help you at all.
Picture this scenario: I would like to start a company that builds a piece of software that will use these APIs. But according to this agreement, the only benefits are for existing OEMs, etc. So this seems to me to be a situation where Microsoft can simply deny access to their APIs because a company doesn't have a product, and it would be a security risk to release the APIs to just anyone.
In my opinion this ruling and resolution does nothing for consumers or end-users, but has everything to do with big companies vs. the big company. I didn't read anything in the settlement about "users" or "consumers", but there were alot of acronyms describing companies.
When are the courts going to realize the country is made of PEOPLE, not companies, and the PEOPLE should see some benefit due to the harm that Microsoft's monopolistic practices caused. It seems to me that the only 'entities' that benefit by this decision are other big companies. *sigh*
Programming ASP for 27 hours? You need to attend AA (ASPers Anonymous).
"Hi, my name is Mattygfunk, and I have a problem." "Hi Mattygfunk!" "I program in, er, um, ASP." "That's ok Mattygfunk, we have all been through rough times in our lives, and with the help of friends and this group, you can make it past this troubled time in your life." "Thanks, AA!"
Only the "pro" version costs anything, however the plain version comes with many many features, including skins, message window options (no pop-ups!), etc.
This dude owns the majority of newspapers across Canada. In my area, Vancouver, he owns both major local papers, plus a boatload of other smaller semi-weeklies, etc. Kind of hard to get good unbiased reporting regarding Vancouver & BC-related issues.
He recently fired an editor for writing a pro-palestinian editorial who didn't tow the unstated company line. Oh, did I mention Izzy Asper is a Zionist Jew?
I guess the days of news organizations attempting to report both sides of a story are long gone. How can an organization, attempting to be reputable, basically "report" exactly what Microsoft is spewing? Come on "reporters", do some legwork and cover the other side of the story!!
It seems to me like this is yet another problem with ownership of "rights": broadcast rights, intellectual property rights, etc. I am a firm believer that each individual person (consumer, citizen, etc) is actually hurt, not helped, because of these so-called rights. The entities that are benefiting from the ownership of these rights are usually corporations or shareholders, who are typically the rich and well-off who have used their positions of power to gain even more.
Check this for an excellent argument against intellectual property rights. This argument can easily be applied to broadcast rights. Who wins in a world with broadcast rights? Not you, not me, not the athletes, but the broadcasters and the huge organizations that own the rights.
The Internet has brought about an information revolution, and it is seriously time for everyone to think about information "rights" (intellectual property, broadcast, etc.), their value, and how they benefit or hinder actual people, not corporations or shareholders.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the first entry (bottom of page) on the Polaris team's blog for the second day. The day that the humans started winning:
e /Live/Day2Session1/
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/man-machin
The U of A team gave the humans the logs of the first two games!
Perhaps after the entire match they could have reviewed the game logs, however this give the humans an unfair advantage during the second day. I can't believe that this isn't getting more attention -- they bascially gave the human team a huge insight into the inner workings, strategy, and tendencies of their opponent. Something that Polaris definitely did not have.
In my opinion this sours the competition and completely invalidates the final two matches. The human likely found a weakness (or two or three) and exploited it, and we can't know for sure that they would have found the weakness without those logs.
That was a huge mistake by the U of A team, and they have apparently got away with it without anyone noticing.
As a Canadian, I am getting the impression that in Nevada when you register to vote, you have to declare a party affiliation. Is this true? If so, this is quite alien to me.
Furthermore the last time I voted (I did not pre-register), all I did was show up to the voting location in my area, provide several pieces of ID confirming my identity and my current address (driver's licence, pay stub, etc) and I get a ballot. I vote. End of story.
Nowhere, I mean NOWHERE, do I EVER have to declare any party affiliation that I may have. If my vote is supposedly anonymous and confidential, it strikes me as just plain crazy to have to give a party affiliation when you register to vote. Simply ludicrous if this is the case.
In most elections that I have witnessed in Canada, either municipal, provincial, or federal, there is ALWAYS a paper trail. I mark my ballot with a big fat X in the appropriate spot on a voting card.
Then the magic begins: the cards are each fed, as collected, into a vote counting machine. The ballots are held in the case a recount (automated or manual), and the results are known just as soon as it takes to communicate the results from each of the machines at each polling station.
We usually have the final, _official_ results within an hour or two of the poll closing time, and you can always go back to the paper ballot to verify the count. And who the heck has a hard time with a piece of paper and a pencil?
No hanging or dimpled chads here, and this to me seems the best of both worlds - technology aiding the speed of vote-counting (isn't that what this is all about, anyway?), but with the safeguards (and transparency) of a manual voting system.
I don't understand the rationale behind casting "virtual" votes. How can you go back and audit the votes? How do you ensure reliability and security?
In Canada whenever I have voted, I have put an "X" in the appropriate spot beside the candidate or question I'd like to vote for. Sure the voting card is then fed (by an elections official) through an automated counter, but the powers that be can always go back and recount the votes, either manually or using the automated counters.
Using this system the results are usually known within a couple of hours of the polls' closing time, and there are no hanging or dimpled chads -- or the possibility of the public at large messing with the system (other than spoiling one's own ballot).
What is wrong with this system? I can't really find too much to complain about -- old fashioned voting cards coupled with technology to speed the counting process.
I vote we get this poster some grammar lessons:
"Sweden field" should obviously be "Swedish field".
And if you actually read the article, the test was a success but the parachutes didn't deploy properly, resulting in some damage to the craft. The scientific data, however, was gathered successfully.
This is a case where the work has been farmed out to ISM, which is a subsidiary of IBM. It's not the government's fault, but ISM/IBM who are to blame here.
The amount and detail of data makes this a SCARY situation.
Dude,
As a Vancouverite following this case, these are the facts:
According to the judge, the American media can full-well report everything, provided it is in their own country. US news feeds into BC/Canada are blacked-out, but if you pick up feeds from US satellite or over the airwaves, you too can watch the US media report on this trial.
This is simply a means to a fair trial and an untainted jury, not directed at controlling the media, per-se.
There is going to be a water shortage in the future, and I believe that there is a very easy way to deal with it, however it will require a change in thinking, and an investment in infrastructure:
I don't know how many of you drink the tap water in your community, but here in Canada I know of few people that don't. But we also water our lawns with it, bathe in it, wash dishes with it, wash our cars with it, water our plants with it, etc. etc. etc.
Do you see a pattern here? We use drinkable/potable water for a huge number of things that don't require the water to be drinkable. We spend huge amounts of money to treat our water to then pour it onto our lawns and cars? This makes no sense. What we need is a dual system of delivery: the taps in your kitchen provide drinking water, but the faucet in your laundry room or on the exterior of your house provide non-drinking water for general use.
We could then forgo a huge number of costly, time-consuming treatments for water that is simply not meant for consumption. Previously non-viable sources of water suddenly become available for use in the "secondary" system of water.
You surely don't care if the water that is cleaning your clothing is chlorinated and fluorinated, do you?
As a Canadian who has a DirectTV dish and receiver and loves watching "grey market" TV, I hope there are more guys like him at DirectTV. Sure dealers of the hardware and those in the US are getting arrested in droves, but the Canadian end-user is apparently never bothered by the law.
What I do isn't in the moral good-books, but I can't imagine paying for the piles of crappy programming that are offered by DirectTV or the Canadian equivilants -- I watch the NHL games the the occasional movie, and would pay a reasonable fee to do it above-board, but I can't seriously imagine shelling out hundreds per month to do it.
FYI -- Canadians CAN'T subscribe to DirectTV due to Canadian laws, as the government feels that we should be using the alternatives in our own country. However that doesn't stop a wackload of people from watching "grey-market" TV -- it isn't illegal, but you can't actually legally subscribe to it. It's really a very strange situation.
Follow me on this....
;-)
Someone invents a tool to perform some action, and of course this tool can be used for something other than intended. For example, you invent the hammer, its purpose is to pound nails into wood. Wonderful.
Now just because someone else uses a hammer to bludgeon someone to death, does this make the hammer illegal? Of course not.
I think that we should focus on who is weilding the tool, not necessarily the tool itself.
My 2 cents.
(and please lay off the tool jokes
maybe that's why I like cheese so much.
Unless you are already a well-established company or organization with a product that will benefit form being able to gain access to MS's APIs, this won't help you at all.
Picture this scenario: I would like to start a company that builds a piece of software that will use these APIs. But according to this agreement, the only benefits are for existing OEMs, etc. So this seems to me to be a situation where Microsoft can simply deny access to their APIs because a company doesn't have a product, and it would be a security risk to release the APIs to just anyone.
In my opinion this ruling and resolution does nothing for consumers or end-users, but has everything to do with big companies vs. the big company. I didn't read anything in the settlement about "users" or "consumers", but there were alot of acronyms describing companies.
When are the courts going to realize the country is made of PEOPLE, not companies, and the PEOPLE should see some benefit due to the harm that Microsoft's monopolistic practices caused. It seems to me that the only 'entities' that benefit by this decision are other big companies. *sigh*
Programming ASP for 27 hours? You need to attend AA (ASPers Anonymous).
"Hi, my name is Mattygfunk, and I have a problem."
"Hi Mattygfunk!"
"I program in, er, um, ASP."
"That's ok Mattygfunk, we have all been through rough times in our lives, and with the help of friends and this group, you can make it past this troubled time in your life."
"Thanks, AA!"
Trillian is free!!!
Only the "pro" version costs anything, however the plain version comes with many many features, including skins, message window options (no pop-ups!), etc.
I use Trillian
It does:
AOL
ICQ
Yahoo
MSN
IRC
What else could you possibly want in one integrated IM client?
IZZY ASPER
CanWestGlobal.com
This dude owns the majority of newspapers across Canada. In my area, Vancouver, he owns both major local papers, plus a boatload of other smaller semi-weeklies, etc. Kind of hard to get good unbiased reporting regarding Vancouver & BC-related issues.
He recently fired an editor for writing a pro-palestinian editorial who didn't tow the unstated company line. Oh, did I mention Izzy Asper is a Zionist Jew?
*sigh*
What a horrid article that explained almost NOTHING of the engineering behind the iPod.
freaking americans got things right for once.
I guess the days of news organizations attempting to report both sides of a story are long gone. How can an organization, attempting to be reputable, basically "report" exactly what Microsoft is spewing? Come on "reporters", do some legwork and cover the other side of the story!!
This just in...
Deep thinker extraordinaire Jon Katz has determined that discoveries that are made in one area of our world are being used in others!!
The president is expected to make a state of the nation address regarding this important topic later today...
It seems to me like this is yet another problem with ownership of "rights": broadcast rights, intellectual property rights, etc. I am a firm believer that each individual person (consumer, citizen, etc) is actually hurt, not helped, because of these so-called rights. The entities that are benefiting from the ownership of these rights are usually corporations or shareholders, who are typically the rich and well-off who have used their positions of power to gain even more. Check this for an excellent argument against intellectual property rights. This argument can easily be applied to broadcast rights. Who wins in a world with broadcast rights? Not you, not me, not the athletes, but the broadcasters and the huge organizations that own the rights. The Internet has brought about an information revolution, and it is seriously time for everyone to think about information "rights" (intellectual property, broadcast, etc.), their value, and how they benefit or hinder actual people, not corporations or shareholders.