"It took us [...] a few years to develop a program that could win consistently in higher-level games against opponents who took the game seriously. It has been successful against human players of average skill for many years now, but it is the only known program that can make that claim. [...]
I expect there are a few now, yes. Perhaps more than a few. But are they a threat? Probably not. Many of them will be losing players, at least for a while. Their authors will either lose interest, or have to invest a lot of time and effort to improve their programs.
If someone does succeed in writing a program that can grind out a small win, what difference should it make?"
Poker is played against other players, not the house.
If you think there are no players of "the house" in on-line casinos, you are fooling yourself. I have done some network security consulting for one of those companies. I have signed NDA and I formally cannot talk about it, but I bet (pun not intended) they won't dare sue me because they would have to reveal their identity and subsequently lose (again, pun not intended) all of their customers who are even remotely intelligent.
When I showed up, my first observation was that those people wasn't exactly the "nerd" type. The "server room" looked more like a night club than anything else--lots of expensive computer equipment, quite an overkill actually, but in a complete mess, with girls walking around etc.--they have even asked me if I want to drink alkohol for God's sake, but when I told them "no, thank you, I need my brain to work" they kind of like gave me a break and stopped bothering me, except the guy who was working with me helping with the audit.
I have never seen so much of so badly written crap in Perl. Seriously. I could barely understand the logic of 400-line subs which were hardly uncommon. There were invocations of external code written in PHP, shell, some in Python and even compiled code written in C, all over the place. There were parts written in Java. An utter mess, I tell you. What I have found the most interesting was the "debugging module" written as a binary Apache module written in C with no source code available. When I asked about it that guy was kind of confused and said that this was not important and told me to skip it but I told him that the security of Apache modules is much more important than the security of the CGI scripts themselves, because modules are actually parts of the server.
I kept asking for the source and this guy said he has to ask his boss. He went to bring him and came back with three other guys. All of my later conversation was with two of them, while the guy I previously worked with and some other guy was only silently observing the conversation.
First one of those two guys told me not to worry about the debugging and to concentrate on the network security. I expleined that I cannot tell them whether anything is secure without any knowledge of Apache modules, because I effectively know nothing about the server as a whole whish might have for example buffer overflow problems etc. He asked me if I was absolutely sure, I confirmed it, and at this point he gave me the NDA to sign.
Finally, they showed me the mysterious mod_pokdebug.c and the first thing that surprised me was that the code was very clean, completely unlike the rest of the mess they had there. To my surprise the only purpose of the debugging module was to display cards in the deck and in the hands of players, with their betting history and quite a few interesting details. I was reading the code feeling kind of insecure with those four guys standing behind me in silence and looking at the screen over my shoulder.
When I started to get the picture, I turned around, look at them, and before I said anything, two of those new guys started laughing and explaining that they know how it must look like, but it is actually impossible to cheat, because it only works with the debug flag in player cookie and this is only present for users logged from their network and such a player cannot get any money because he has no real account.
And indeed, I checked it and it turned out to be true. When I read the source of that debugging module--it was truly refreshing after reading all of the spaghetti code before and I quickly made sure there were no buffer overflow vulnerabilities, string formatting bugs and the like--they logged me out from the privileged account and left me alone with only the guy who was previously guiding me to continue the audit of ordinary scripts.
The strange thing I found later was the server log showing that every day in the pr
Putting the word "Porn" in the headline when no actual pr0n is involved is just CRUEL.
This is not only cruel but also quite dangerous as it has just caused Slashdot to be firewalled here in my lab. Not that it would be a bad idea productivity-wise... Maybe whitelisting it wasn't so good idea after all.
I mean, I really really don't it. It's already illegal share movies. Now in order for them to allow me to commit an illegal act I have to share my email address?
What this bill does is effectively adding one year of jail time. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it pointless? No.
People seem to think that everything that google ever does is a god-sent gift!
Well... Doesn't "G" in "Google," "GMail," "GSpot" and "GBrowser" stand for "God-sent"? Seriously,
it reminds me of one story with Google, when
I was wondering whether
mankind will one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age. So I asked Google:
"How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?"
Google fell dead and silent.
The slow movement of progress bar ceased,
the distant flashing of modem lights ended.
Then, just as I
felt I could hold my breath no longer,
there was a sudden springing to life of the browser
connected to Google.
Five words were printed:
"INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER."
I think you get my point.
"An interesting question that the article raises is whether automatic takedown notices based on blind keyword searches constitutes spam."
Spam my bloody arse! Those incompetent imbeciles from MPAA wish it was spam but this is in fact extortion. I have actually made some of my holiday movies available as files named "star_wars_dvd_rip_divx.mpeg" etc. and I honestly hope to sue those bastards as soon as they dare to send me one of those pathetic "automatic takedown notices."
If the unicorns are invisible, then how can they be pink?
This question is +5, Insightful?
Invisible Pink Unicorn is a goddess, therefore
she can be both invisible and pink.
Asking how can she be invisible and pink at the same time is equally meaningful as asking e.g. how any deity can be both transcendent and immanent at the same time. Logically, it obviously cannot. But by definition, someone who is an omnipotent supreme being is beyond any reason and understanding and therefore does not have to follow our rules of logic. Do you feel somehow obligated to point out logical inconsistencies and paradoxes in every religion? You may find it entertaining but some people might find it highly offensive. Actually, every truly religious person will most certainly find it offensive if not outrageous. Faith and reason are orthogonal phenomena. It is not only common for religious beliefs to be illogical, but it is actually a prerequisite of any faith system in the first place, since otherwise where any religion was logically consistent and provable or at least falsifiable, there would be no need for faith whatsoever and such a system would not be a religion any more.
"... who forever shall be known as 'Duke Nukem'..."
It's "whom" actually. Welcome to Slashdot!
Actually, it would be "whom" in "whom we'll know" but not in "who will be known," since "who" is a subject of the verb "be"--in passive voice, but a subject nevertheless--but in any case, I believe it should be: "it was found off Tybee Island by retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Derek Duke who shall be known as 'Duke Nukem' forever." Pun most definitely intended.
Most new ideas are dumb ideas and don't work.
Some dumb ideas can be made to work, and very slowly we get some idea of what the right ideas really are.
That sounds very familiar. Most of ideas, changes and patches made by a random Joe Sixpack are dumb. And I mean really dumb, sometimes utterly moronic. The forked branch can be merged with the original tree only when the idea turns out to be not as dumb as it seemed to be, but most of the redundant work is wasted and dumb ideas are forgotten. Free software works a lot like Darwinian evolution. When one compares it to the intelligent design of proprietary software, it is obvious which model is right.
Pass a law declaring Bic pens to be "burglary tools", which can only be carried by "licensed professionals", and arrest anyone found in possession of one without a license. It works so well for lock pick kits...
Maybe not necessarily "licensed professionals," but I would personally arrest anyone who is illiterate found in possession of a pen. Seriously. It would catch at least some thiefs and would not harm any intelligent person, so this is not as funny as it might seem.
Unless we really want to live in a society where equality is enforced and nobody is allowed to have anymore than anyone else, the presence of thieves and other criminals is something we will always need to deal with.
So, people will not want more, if no one has more than them? (Hint: Bill Gates.)
I was in Copenhagen in the middle of a huge crowded square. There was a public bathroom that I went in to use. On a table was an unprotected plate of money with a sign that said something to the effect of "please donate 25 Kroner for the use of these facilities". After I did my business, I dropped my money on the plate and walked back out into the crowded square.
I have seen a similar thing in Switzerland. After I did my business, I took the money and walked back out into the crowded square, but then when I realised what I had done, I was crying all the way to the bank. Speaking about Copenhagen, though, I have not seen any money lying around there (and trust me, I was looking very carefully), but I have seen public bikes on the street, locked like shopping carts, which I could unlock with a coin and ride all town, only to lock it again and get my coin back anywhere else, in some other part of Copenhagen. I thought it was realy a great idea, even though those bikes was kind of spartan, with hard, full tires without air which together with at least equally hard sits made me call them Model Marquis de Sade 1985. But would it be possible in Detroit, I ask you? I don't think so. I am sure someone would shoot me in no time just to steal my coin from the bike lock. Sad, really sad.
"Property" . . . there's an interesting word with a very precise definition, "Stealing" is another one. Yet again we have a post which insists that copyright infringement is the same as "stealing property".
I believe it is time for the entire Slashdot community to stop laughing at Richard Stallman becuase he has been "bitching" about avoiding the term of "intellectual property" for bloody decades.
It is not unlike The Right to Read when back in February 1997 all of us were foolishly laughing how ridiculously paranoid that essay was, and now we are all screaming bloody murder and wetting out pants because suddenly we have DMCA. Such a moronic behaviour only makes us look like idiots. Maybe this is time to stop and think about it.
Look, infringement of copyright is illegal. In fact, it's even wrong. People shouldn't do it. But that doesn't make it piracy, except through the unjustified and laughably outrageous co-option of the term by publishers, a long long time ago.
"My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film. It's just lucky I keep a copy in the VCR at all times!"
He presses a button and a film title appears on the screen:
Too bad we couldn't just live in a society where we wouldn't have to worry about theft!
You mean like.... umm.... Nope, can't think of an example on this planet. You have one?
At least some suburban areas of Switzerland, to name a few.
I have personally seen unlocked motorcycles with keys in them, not to mention cars with windows and sometimes even doors (sic) wide open to avoid overheating in Sun light. I think it was around 1991 somewhere near Interlaken. I've never been to Switzerland since then. The temptation to steal was just too high. I have actually developed symptoms of kleptomania. This is a great place to live, if you have strong will. And it's beautiful too. I will never forget the sight of Jungfrau.
"Once upon a time, a magic marker was able to defeat the Key2Audio copy protection scheme of older Sony CDs. Now, it has been shown that a Bic pen can easily open several models of Kryptonite U-locks."
Fortunately, the increasing rate of illeteracy and teh subsequent decrease of the amount of circumventing devices such as pens and markers will save us all.
What, Michael Hall, the DeGroot Research Institute and the hot new recreational area, the G Spot?
You seem to be confusing DeG-Spot, the Michael Hall, with TheG-Spot, the Ernst Gräfenberg Recreational Area. Please never do that. The latter was named after a guy who has invented the Command Line Interface Terminal, known as the only intuitive interface, after which it's all learned.
I, for one, will never agree to have this SVP implanted in my brain because-- What? It is meant to be used in the hardware and the signal will be eventually decrypted before it hits my retina? And they are spending millions on this technology? Morons... Bloody morons!
Slashdot Mirror
"It took us [...] a few years to develop a program that could win consistently in higher-level games against opponents who took the game seriously. It has been successful against human players of average skill for many years now, but it is the only known program that can make that claim. [...] I expect there are a few now, yes. Perhaps more than a few. But are they a threat? Probably not. Many of them will be losing players, at least for a while. Their authors will either lose interest, or have to invest a lot of time and effort to improve their programs. If someone does succeed in writing a program that can grind out a small win, what difference should it make?"
Hmmm... I guess The University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group is some kind of top secret project then, right?
If you think there are no players of "the house" in on-line casinos, you are fooling yourself. I have done some network security consulting for one of those companies. I have signed NDA and I formally cannot talk about it, but I bet (pun not intended) they won't dare sue me because they would have to reveal their identity and subsequently lose (again, pun not intended) all of their customers who are even remotely intelligent.
When I showed up, my first observation was that those people wasn't exactly the "nerd" type. The "server room" looked more like a night club than anything else--lots of expensive computer equipment, quite an overkill actually, but in a complete mess, with girls walking around etc.--they have even asked me if I want to drink alkohol for God's sake, but when I told them "no, thank you, I need my brain to work" they kind of like gave me a break and stopped bothering me, except the guy who was working with me helping with the audit.
I have never seen so much of so badly written crap in Perl. Seriously. I could barely understand the logic of 400-line subs which were hardly uncommon. There were invocations of external code written in PHP, shell, some in Python and even compiled code written in C, all over the place. There were parts written in Java. An utter mess, I tell you. What I have found the most interesting was the "debugging module" written as a binary Apache module written in C with no source code available. When I asked about it that guy was kind of confused and said that this was not important and told me to skip it but I told him that the security of Apache modules is much more important than the security of the CGI scripts themselves, because modules are actually parts of the server.
I kept asking for the source and this guy said he has to ask his boss. He went to bring him and came back with three other guys. All of my later conversation was with two of them, while the guy I previously worked with and some other guy was only silently observing the conversation.
First one of those two guys told me not to worry about the debugging and to concentrate on the network security. I expleined that I cannot tell them whether anything is secure without any knowledge of Apache modules, because I effectively know nothing about the server as a whole whish might have for example buffer overflow problems etc. He asked me if I was absolutely sure, I confirmed it, and at this point he gave me the NDA to sign.
Finally, they showed me the mysterious mod_pokdebug.c and the first thing that surprised me was that the code was very clean, completely unlike the rest of the mess they had there. To my surprise the only purpose of the debugging module was to display cards in the deck and in the hands of players, with their betting history and quite a few interesting details. I was reading the code feeling kind of insecure with those four guys standing behind me in silence and looking at the screen over my shoulder.
When I started to get the picture, I turned around, look at them, and before I said anything, two of those new guys started laughing and explaining that they know how it must look like, but it is actually impossible to cheat, because it only works with the debug flag in player cookie and this is only present for users logged from their network and such a player cannot get any money because he has no real account.
And indeed, I checked it and it turned out to be true. When I read the source of that debugging module--it was truly refreshing after reading all of the spaghetti code before and I quickly made sure there were no buffer overflow vulnerabilities, string formatting bugs and the like--they logged me out from the privileged account and left me alone with only the guy who was previously guiding me to continue the audit of ordinary scripts.
The strange thing I found later was the server log showing that every day in the pr
This is not only cruel but also quite dangerous as it has just caused Slashdot to be firewalled here in my lab. Not that it would be a bad idea productivity-wise... Maybe whitelisting it wasn't so good idea after all.
What this bill does is effectively adding one year of jail time. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it pointless? No.
I swear I first read it as "all your apps are belong to Google."
Well... Doesn't "G" in "Google," "GMail," "GSpot" and "GBrowser" stand for "God-sent"? Seriously, it reminds me of one story with Google, when I was wondering whether mankind will one day without the net expenditure of energy be able to restore the sun to its full youthfulness even after it had died of old age. So I asked Google: "How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?" Google fell dead and silent. The slow movement of progress bar ceased, the distant flashing of modem lights ended. Then, just as I felt I could hold my breath no longer, there was a sudden springing to life of the browser connected to Google. Five words were printed: "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER." I think you get my point.
Google, GMail, GBrowser, Gindows--how long before Ernst Gräfenberg sues them?
Actually, quite well, thank you.
I think you are too harsh for their PR dept.
Spam my bloody arse! Those incompetent imbeciles from MPAA wish it was spam but this is in fact extortion. I have actually made some of my holiday movies available as files named "star_wars_dvd_rip_divx.mpeg" etc. and I honestly hope to sue those bastards as soon as they dare to send me one of those pathetic "automatic takedown notices."
This question is +5, Insightful? Invisible Pink Unicorn is a goddess, therefore she can be both invisible and pink. Asking how can she be invisible and pink at the same time is equally meaningful as asking e.g. how any deity can be both transcendent and immanent at the same time. Logically, it obviously cannot. But by definition, someone who is an omnipotent supreme being is beyond any reason and understanding and therefore does not have to follow our rules of logic. Do you feel somehow obligated to point out logical inconsistencies and paradoxes in every religion? You may find it entertaining but some people might find it highly offensive. Actually, every truly religious person will most certainly find it offensive if not outrageous. Faith and reason are orthogonal phenomena. It is not only common for religious beliefs to be illogical, but it is actually a prerequisite of any faith system in the first place, since otherwise where any religion was logically consistent and provable or at least falsifiable, there would be no need for faith whatsoever and such a system would not be a religion any more.
Actually, it would be "whom" in "whom we'll know" but not in "who will be known," since "who" is a subject of the verb "be"--in passive voice, but a subject nevertheless--but in any case, I believe it should be: "it was found off Tybee Island by retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Derek Duke who shall be known as 'Duke Nukem' forever." Pun most definitely intended.
That sounds very familiar. Most of ideas, changes and patches made by a random Joe Sixpack are dumb. And I mean really dumb, sometimes utterly moronic. The forked branch can be merged with the original tree only when the idea turns out to be not as dumb as it seemed to be, but most of the redundant work is wasted and dumb ideas are forgotten. Free software works a lot like Darwinian evolution. When one compares it to the intelligent design of proprietary software, it is obvious which model is right.
Maybe not necessarily "licensed professionals," but I would personally arrest anyone who is illiterate found in possession of a pen. Seriously. It would catch at least some thiefs and would not harm any intelligent person, so this is not as funny as it might seem.
So, people will not want more, if no one has more than them? (Hint: Bill Gates.)
I have seen a similar thing in Switzerland. After I did my business, I took the money and walked back out into the crowded square, but then when I realised what I had done, I was crying all the way to the bank. Speaking about Copenhagen, though, I have not seen any money lying around there (and trust me, I was looking very carefully), but I have seen public bikes on the street, locked like shopping carts, which I could unlock with a coin and ride all town, only to lock it again and get my coin back anywhere else, in some other part of Copenhagen. I thought it was realy a great idea, even though those bikes was kind of spartan, with hard, full tires without air which together with at least equally hard sits made me call them Model Marquis de Sade 1985. But would it be possible in Detroit, I ask you? I don't think so. I am sure someone would shoot me in no time just to steal my coin from the bike lock. Sad, really sad.
I believe it is time for the entire Slashdot community to stop laughing at Richard Stallman becuase he has been "bitching" about avoiding the term of "intellectual property" for bloody decades. It is not unlike The Right to Read when back in February 1997 all of us were foolishly laughing how ridiculously paranoid that essay was, and now we are all screaming bloody murder and wetting out pants because suddenly we have DMCA. Such a moronic behaviour only makes us look like idiots. Maybe this is time to stop and think about it.
"My God! He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film. It's just lucky I keep a copy in the VCR at all times!"
He presses a button and a film title appears on the screen:
DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY!!!
As a matter of fact, I believe you should also watch young_girl.mpg.
At least some suburban areas of Switzerland, to name a few. I have personally seen unlocked motorcycles with keys in them, not to mention cars with windows and sometimes even doors (sic) wide open to avoid overheating in Sun light. I think it was around 1991 somewhere near Interlaken. I've never been to Switzerland since then. The temptation to steal was just too high. I have actually developed symptoms of kleptomania. This is a great place to live, if you have strong will. And it's beautiful too. I will never forget the sight of Jungfrau.
What is exactly the point of comparing gcc and g++?
"Once upon a time, a magic marker was able to defeat the Key2Audio copy protection scheme of older Sony CDs. Now, it has been shown that a Bic pen can easily open several models of Kryptonite U-locks."
Fortunately, the increasing rate of illeteracy and teh subsequent decrease of the amount of circumventing devices such as pens and markers will save us all.
You seem to be confusing DeG-Spot, the Michael Hall, with TheG-Spot, the Ernst Gräfenberg Recreational Area. Please never do that. The latter was named after a guy who has invented the Command Line Interface Terminal, known as the only intuitive interface, after which it's all learned.
Marijuana found to be as healthy as hashish.
Why does every bloody Microsoft project always leak? Is it because they have so many holes?
I, for one, will never agree to have this SVP implanted in my brain because-- What? It is meant to be used in the hardware and the signal will be eventually decrypted before it hits my retina? And they are spending millions on this technology? Morons... Bloody morons!