You are correct that with this model, you can reduce the odds of player collusion to practically zero (especially on a site with 10 million plus players). However, no poker site actually uses this model, and for a good reason. All sites offer many varieties of poker (hold 'em, draw, stud, HORSE, etc) as well as different game conditions (number of players, cash games vs sit n' go games vs tournament, number of players, buy-in, fixed limit vs pot limit vs no limit, etc). For a specific choice of these options, say a 9 person 10 dollar buy in no limit hold 'em sit n' go, there are only one or two tables available to register at at a given time*, so assigning people randomly is not the advantage you think it is. As well, you certainly WANT to be able to choose which table you sit down at. If you know that user NOOB15 is an amateur player who doesn't know the odds, you'd prefer to sit down at a table with him than one where you don't know anyone, or one where you know the competition is tough (and if you've been playing the same games at the same buy-in level for a while, you get to know the people you play with).
As far as casino games go, perhaps you're right. I've only played online and with friends. But I can tell you that the rake (as the poker site's take is called) is only around 10% of your buy in for tournaments and sit n' go's, and even less for cash games. The minimum pay out for finishing in the money is always more than that, usually significantly more. So as long as you win, even if you're making the minimum possible, you shouldn't be put off by the rake.
* The site I play at is Pokerstars, the largest of the poker sites in terms of membership. And even for the cheap games, which the most people play, registration is usually open only for one game at a time. So it's certainly easy enough for collusion to happen. On other sites, it should be even easier. On the other hand, collusion is swiftly punished and rarely happens. Especially when you're only playing 5$ games which last an hour. It's just not worth your time (ex. 9 player 5$ sit n go and the best case scenario of colluding players finish 1st and second means that they make a grand total of 13$ an hour each. And that best case scenario rarely happens. Most likely, they'd be earning just above minimum wage.)
One of the things I like about this idea is that I can download the album for free and see if I like it. If I do, I can always choose to pay them later, or maybe save that money and go see them live (Radiohead tickets are very hard to get, so you're basically paying ebay prices). If it sucks, I can delete it and be on my way.
The property of position is exactly what makes the center of a circle different from the other points. It is the only point equidistant from every point on the circle. The same goes for the idea of a center of the universe. If you want to define a center of the universe is a non-arbitrary way, it should have some kind of property. Then I could argue that the universe is not isotropic everywhere because if I stand at any point away from the center, I can distinguish the line connecting me to the center from any other line.
Sorry for the lateness of my reply.
Rather, the fact that the universe has no 'center' is a POSTULATE of big bang theory. The assumption is that the universe is isotropic and homogeneous, i.e. that the universe looks the same in any direction from any location. While this is obviously false on small scales (the center of the sun, for instance, does not look the same as a point on the surface of the earth), on scales large than the largest structures, on the order of hundreds of megaparsecs, you can begin to see evidence for it. The best evidence for isotropy comes from the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the same in any direction up to one part in 10^5. These small inhomogeneities in the background imply small inhomogeneities in mass density at the time it was created, 600,000 years after the big bang. Those regions of increased mass eventually formed the galaxies we see today. Getting back to your original question, assuming isotropy and homogeneity, there can obviously be no center of the universe, because it would have to stand out from other points. Likewise, if there was a preferred axis of revolution for all galaxies, then the universe would not be isotropic. That's why this claim is a bit difficult to accept, given the massive success of big bang theory.
Even threatening to shutdown operations because the employees unionize is illegal. Actually doing so, when the purpose it only thwart unionization, is definitely illegal.
And in Canada, they did exactly that. The first Wal-Mart store in North America to unionize, located in Jonquiere, Quebec, was shut down immediately afterwards due to 'lack of profitability'. Fortunately the labor board saw through that bs and ordered Wal-Mart to compensate the workers.
First of all "extremely improbable" when talking about something the size of the universe means that even if life in a given star system had a 1 in 1 million chance of ever developing (I'd call that "extremely improbable"), that's still 5,000 systems in our galaxy alone that will develop life someday, or already have
I was waiting for someone to make this fake argument. Tell me, what makes you think that the probability is one in a million, or one in a billion, or any number that large, other than that it makes your conclusion seem valid? You want to make the possibility of life developing an extremely improbably event? Try one in a googol. Then let's see how your argument works: 5x10^11 galaxies (and where did you get this number?) times 10^11 stars per galaxy x 1/10^100. That gives you 10^-77, or, for those of you who don't know scientific notation, five orders of magnitude less than one in one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.
The parent only pulled one in a million out of thin air because it seems like a small number for a layperson and it makes his calculations work out in favour of his opinion. The truth is no one knows the probability with which intelligent life develops in the universe because we only have a sample of 1 (or 0, depending on your view). In science, we see incredibly small numbers all the time, numbers which make 1 in a million seem huge, and there's no argument I've seen as to why the probability for intelligent life to develop should be so high.
I know someone's going to question N'Gai Croal's choice of words in the summary, so let me quote this from the debate Ebert had:
Barker: "I'm not doing an evangelical job here. I'm just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time -- to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control."
Ebert: Spoken with the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old.
I've seen this argument a few times already, but it rests on a false premise, that police don't abuse their right to carry lethal weapons. That is certainly not the case. The question that should be asked is what can cause the most damage, an abuse of power by a man with a gun, or an abuse of power by a man with a LED blinder?
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. It's well documented how the Bush administration let unqualified and biased political operatives rewrite science policy in direct contradiction to the science. The only difference is now it's official.
What I'd like to do is address anyone out there who works for one of these federal agencies. While orders like these usually result in mass resignations, it's important to remember that the Bush administration's goal is to eventually populate all levels of government with sympathetic lackeys (ex. DOJ). Any resignations play into their hands. The best way to fight this is by obstruction. Keep these people out of meetings. Go over their heads. Release all unedited documents to the public over the web. Do anything you can to get the real science out. This is the only way to keep Americans from being fed lies to support bad policy.
Arcade Fire (Currently HUGE, although not as canadian as they would like you to believe..)
You know, I'm not sure how it works in the US, but once someone moves to Canada, and lives in Canada, and marries a Canadian, we tend to treat them as if they were Canadians. Not to mention that most of the band is from Canada. Besides, you could easily make the same argument about the New Pornographers, seeing as vocalist Neko Case is from the US (she even has her own solo career).
Sorry about the rant, but as a Canadian, I'm proud of our independent music and the success they've found. Not to mention I love or at least respect almost(see below) all the bands you've mentioned. You might want to check out some of the side projects. Emily Haines from metric has a solo career, Torquil Campbell from stars has another band (called Memphis), and Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade just started a new project called the Handsome Furs.
On the other hand, our mainstream music is as crappy as the worst the US has to offer. Avoid Nickelback at all costs.
Entropy is generally conserved in the universe (making the amount of entropy irrelevent), and no, the early conditions for the universe give a large amount of entropy, given a large number of particles and high temperature (although if you add inflation into the picture, things change, but this isn't part of the standard big bang theory).
Thermal equilibrium had been postulated to provide a framework for physicists to study Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). The experimental confirmation of these predictions is what allows us to make this claim. You can read more at the wikipedia page for BBN, but probably the best source for an introduction to cosmology is Weinberg's 'The First Three Minutes'. It's not an easy read, but is impressive in its detail.
Many people tend to make a mistaken assumption about Big Bang Theory which tends to cause problems when topics like this one come up. The main postulates of Big Bang Theory are that
1) The universe was in thermal equilibrium at an early time and
2) The universe is isotropic, i.e. looks the same in every direction, at every point in space (Sometimes this is written as two conditions: 'homogeneous and isotropic about a specific point', but mathematically, these are the same).
Starting from this, if you work backwards in time, you find you reach an initial singularity (the universe has zero volume), which you can call zero time. However, we expect the GR description of the universe to break down at small enough scales and high enough temperatures (the 'size' of the universe, the time t and the temperature T are all related and, in general terms, the universe gets hotter and smaller as we go back in time). So when we talk about pre-big bang theories, we talk about a situation that gives conditions 1 and 2, but does not start from a problematic singularity. In this respect, the 'zero time' we assigned to the singularity is no longer physically relevant (since we got rid of the singularity), and the age of the universe, and what we call zero time, depends on the new theory. You can even have a situation where the universe is infinite in age and cyclically growing and contracting, periodically reproducing the conditions of Big Bang Theory every so often. Whether these theories conform to our own universe is an open question.
To me that only shows that he is both politically savvy and a liar (your arguments are from 2000, but he presented a fake 'softer side' in the 2004 presidential election as well). In my view, whether or not you are a 'true believer' is determined by your actions, not your words. And while his posturing and justifications for his actions may have changed, his actions have remained consistent. Don't forget, the people in his administration that were the most adamant about attacking Iraq (contrary to the campaign pledges you cite) were brought in from day one.
I'll take a true believer that I disagree with on some substantive issues over someone that can't decide if they are for or against something until they see the polls.
I think 8 years of 'true believer' government is quite enough. I'd rather go with a politically savvy candidate willing to change his mind than someone who will hold fast to the wrong ideas even as he witnesses their disasterous results.
'Bobby: "I mean yeah, our line of work, it's always out there...bet you don't even hear it when it happens, right?"
Tony: "Ask your friend in there, on the wall"
Bobby: "(laughs) Listen to us...morbid fucks." '
Nowhere does anyone say 'everything goes black', or anything even remotely like that (and if you want to see what it looks like to 'not even hear it', I suggest you re-watch the execution of Jerry Torciano). The truth is that there are some people out there who just have to have some kind of closure to the series, people who have to see the bad guys get what they deserve. Well, that didn't happen here. Think of all the times he evaded death or capture, mostly through shear luck. Hell, look at the beginning of the episode! Are you honestly saying that the whole series was nothing more than a series of red herrings leading right up to the last second? I have more respect for the writers than that. If there was going to be a surprise hit, why bother with Phil ordering the 'decapitation' of the Family, or the entire second to last episode?
Personally, I find fans like to play guessing games now with shows, looking for symbolism and clues that aren't even there. Sometimes, what you see is what you get, and what you see is the Sopranos, presented one last time for our viewing pleasure. Remember the last lines:
'AJ:"...right. Focus on the good times."
Tony: "Don't be sarcastic."
AJ: "Isn't that what you said one time?
Try and remember the times that were good?"
Tony:"I did?
Well, it's true,I guess."'
I would suggest, in addition to watching the Earth for climate change, that we also watch other planets. I've read recently that some research points to part of the climate change problem being the sun itself.
I don't know who told you that, but it isn't true. Solar irradiance is a very small part of global warming. This is the conclusion in the IPCC's latest report: see this presentation from the vice chair of working group one (top link, the relevant slide is 27). The main reason we can separate the two is that heating from the sun varies with respect to altitude in a different way than anthropogenic heating (unfortunately I don't have those slides for you).
Slashdot Mirror
Except the EU hasn't approved the Google-Doubleclick deal yet.
What the hell is he doing here?
He doesn't belong here.
You are correct that with this model, you can reduce the odds of player collusion to practically zero (especially on a site with 10 million plus players). However, no poker site actually uses this model, and for a good reason. All sites offer many varieties of poker (hold 'em, draw, stud, HORSE, etc) as well as different game conditions (number of players, cash games vs sit n' go games vs tournament, number of players, buy-in, fixed limit vs pot limit vs no limit, etc). For a specific choice of these options, say a 9 person 10 dollar buy in no limit hold 'em sit n' go, there are only one or two tables available to register at at a given time*, so assigning people randomly is not the advantage you think it is. As well, you certainly WANT to be able to choose which table you sit down at. If you know that user NOOB15 is an amateur player who doesn't know the odds, you'd prefer to sit down at a table with him than one where you don't know anyone, or one where you know the competition is tough (and if you've been playing the same games at the same buy-in level for a while, you get to know the people you play with). As far as casino games go, perhaps you're right. I've only played online and with friends. But I can tell you that the rake (as the poker site's take is called) is only around 10% of your buy in for tournaments and sit n' go's, and even less for cash games. The minimum pay out for finishing in the money is always more than that, usually significantly more. So as long as you win, even if you're making the minimum possible, you shouldn't be put off by the rake.
* The site I play at is Pokerstars, the largest of the poker sites in terms of membership. And even for the cheap games, which the most people play, registration is usually open only for one game at a time. So it's certainly easy enough for collusion to happen. On other sites, it should be even easier. On the other hand, collusion is swiftly punished and rarely happens. Especially when you're only playing 5$ games which last an hour. It's just not worth your time (ex. 9 player 5$ sit n go and the best case scenario of colluding players finish 1st and second means that they make a grand total of 13$ an hour each. And that best case scenario rarely happens. Most likely, they'd be earning just above minimum wage.)
Please contact your representative FIRST, then post to Slashdot(*). Otherwise, save your (metaphorical) breath...
Why? At least when people post to Slashdot, they know that someone will actually listen to what they have to say.
One of the things I like about this idea is that I can download the album for free and see if I like it. If I do, I can always choose to pay them later, or maybe save that money and go see them live (Radiohead tickets are very hard to get, so you're basically paying ebay prices). If it sucks, I can delete it and be on my way.
Because it's costly and no one's asking them to do it.
Getting other people to write your jokes for you: Priceless.
The property of position is exactly what makes the center of a circle different from the other points. It is the only point equidistant from every point on the circle. The same goes for the idea of a center of the universe. If you want to define a center of the universe is a non-arbitrary way, it should have some kind of property. Then I could argue that the universe is not isotropic everywhere because if I stand at any point away from the center, I can distinguish the line connecting me to the center from any other line. Sorry for the lateness of my reply.
Rather, the fact that the universe has no 'center' is a POSTULATE of big bang theory. The assumption is that the universe is isotropic and homogeneous, i.e. that the universe looks the same in any direction from any location. While this is obviously false on small scales (the center of the sun, for instance, does not look the same as a point on the surface of the earth), on scales large than the largest structures, on the order of hundreds of megaparsecs, you can begin to see evidence for it. The best evidence for isotropy comes from the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the same in any direction up to one part in 10^5. These small inhomogeneities in the background imply small inhomogeneities in mass density at the time it was created, 600,000 years after the big bang. Those regions of increased mass eventually formed the galaxies we see today. Getting back to your original question, assuming isotropy and homogeneity, there can obviously be no center of the universe, because it would have to stand out from other points. Likewise, if there was a preferred axis of revolution for all galaxies, then the universe would not be isotropic. That's why this claim is a bit difficult to accept, given the massive success of big bang theory.
Even threatening to shutdown operations because the employees unionize is illegal. Actually doing so, when the purpose it only thwart unionization, is definitely illegal.
And in Canada, they did exactly that. The first Wal-Mart store in North America to unionize, located in Jonquiere, Quebec, was shut down immediately afterwards due to 'lack of profitability'. Fortunately the labor board saw through that bs and ordered Wal-Mart to compensate the workers.
First of all "extremely improbable" when talking about something the size of the universe means that even if life in a given star system had a 1 in 1 million chance of ever developing (I'd call that "extremely improbable"), that's still 5,000 systems in our galaxy alone that will develop life someday, or already have
I was waiting for someone to make this fake argument. Tell me, what makes you think that the probability is one in a million, or one in a billion, or any number that large, other than that it makes your conclusion seem valid? You want to make the possibility of life developing an extremely improbably event? Try one in a googol. Then let's see how your argument works: 5x10^11 galaxies (and where did you get this number?) times 10^11 stars per galaxy x 1/10^100. That gives you 10^-77, or, for those of you who don't know scientific notation, five orders of magnitude less than one in one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.
The parent only pulled one in a million out of thin air because it seems like a small number for a layperson and it makes his calculations work out in favour of his opinion. The truth is no one knows the probability with which intelligent life develops in the universe because we only have a sample of 1 (or 0, depending on your view). In science, we see incredibly small numbers all the time, numbers which make 1 in a million seem huge, and there's no argument I've seen as to why the probability for intelligent life to develop should be so high.
Skinner says the teachers will crack any minute purple monkey dishwasher
I know someone's going to question N'Gai Croal's choice of words in the summary, so let me quote this from the debate Ebert had:
Barker: "I'm not doing an evangelical job here. I'm just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time -- to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control."
Ebert: Spoken with the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old.
I've seen this argument a few times already, but it rests on a false premise, that police don't abuse their right to carry lethal weapons. That is certainly not the case. The question that should be asked is what can cause the most damage, an abuse of power by a man with a gun, or an abuse of power by a man with a LED blinder?
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. It's well documented how the Bush administration let unqualified and biased political operatives rewrite science policy in direct contradiction to the science. The only difference is now it's official.
What I'd like to do is address anyone out there who works for one of these federal agencies. While orders like these usually result in mass resignations, it's important to remember that the Bush administration's goal is to eventually populate all levels of government with sympathetic lackeys (ex. DOJ). Any resignations play into their hands. The best way to fight this is by obstruction. Keep these people out of meetings. Go over their heads. Release all unedited documents to the public over the web. Do anything you can to get the real science out. This is the only way to keep Americans from being fed lies to support bad policy.
On behalf of Dick Cheney, go fuck yourself.
What's next? Indiana cops giving drug dealers the green light to push crack in schools?
If there was a big enough crack lobby, it would be sold in a vending machine next to the school cafeteria.
Arcade Fire (Currently HUGE, although not as canadian as they would like you to believe..)
You know, I'm not sure how it works in the US, but once someone moves to Canada, and lives in Canada, and marries a Canadian , we tend to treat them as if they were Canadians. Not to mention that most of the band is from Canada. Besides, you could easily make the same argument about the New Pornographers, seeing as vocalist Neko Case is from the US (she even has her own solo career).
Sorry about the rant, but as a Canadian, I'm proud of our independent music and the success they've found. Not to mention I love or at least respect almost(see below) all the bands you've mentioned. You might want to check out some of the side projects. Emily Haines from metric has a solo career, Torquil Campbell from stars has another band (called Memphis), and Dan Boeckner from Wolf Parade just started a new project called the Handsome Furs.
On the other hand, our mainstream music is as crappy as the worst the US has to offer. Avoid Nickelback at all costs.
Entropy is generally conserved in the universe (making the amount of entropy irrelevent), and no, the early conditions for the universe give a large amount of entropy, given a large number of particles and high temperature (although if you add inflation into the picture, things change, but this isn't part of the standard big bang theory). Thermal equilibrium had been postulated to provide a framework for physicists to study Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). The experimental confirmation of these predictions is what allows us to make this claim. You can read more at the wikipedia page for BBN, but probably the best source for an introduction to cosmology is Weinberg's 'The First Three Minutes'. It's not an easy read, but is impressive in its detail.
Many people tend to make a mistaken assumption about Big Bang Theory which tends to cause problems when topics like this one come up. The main postulates of Big Bang Theory are that
1) The universe was in thermal equilibrium at an early time and
2) The universe is isotropic, i.e. looks the same in every direction, at every point in space
(Sometimes this is written as two conditions: 'homogeneous and isotropic about a specific point', but mathematically, these are the same).
Starting from this, if you work backwards in time, you find you reach an initial singularity (the universe has zero volume), which you can call zero time. However, we expect the GR description of the universe to break down at small enough scales and high enough temperatures (the 'size' of the universe, the time t and the temperature T are all related and, in general terms, the universe gets hotter and smaller as we go back in time). So when we talk about pre-big bang theories, we talk about a situation that gives conditions 1 and 2, but does not start from a problematic singularity. In this respect, the 'zero time' we assigned to the singularity is no longer physically relevant (since we got rid of the singularity), and the age of the universe, and what we call zero time, depends on the new theory. You can even have a situation where the universe is infinite in age and cyclically growing and contracting, periodically reproducing the conditions of Big Bang Theory every so often. Whether these theories conform to our own universe is an open question.
Here's the preprint.
To me that only shows that he is both politically savvy and a liar (your arguments are from 2000, but he presented a fake 'softer side' in the 2004 presidential election as well). In my view, whether or not you are a 'true believer' is determined by your actions, not your words. And while his posturing and justifications for his actions may have changed, his actions have remained consistent. Don't forget, the people in his administration that were the most adamant about attacking Iraq (contrary to the campaign pledges you cite) were brought in from day one.
I'll take a true believer that I disagree with on some substantive issues over someone that can't decide if they are for or against something until they see the polls.
I think 8 years of 'true believer' government is quite enough. I'd rather go with a politically savvy candidate willing to change his mind than someone who will hold fast to the wrong ideas even as he witnesses their disasterous results.
Here is the exact dialog from that episode:
'Bobby: "I mean yeah, our line of work, it's always out there...bet you don't even hear it when it happens, right?"
Tony: "Ask your friend in there, on the wall"
Bobby: "(laughs) Listen to us...morbid fucks." '
Nowhere does anyone say 'everything goes black', or anything even remotely like that (and if you want to see what it looks like to 'not even hear it', I suggest you re-watch the execution of Jerry Torciano). The truth is that there are some people out there who just have to have some kind of closure to the series, people who have to see the bad guys get what they deserve. Well, that didn't happen here. Think of all the times he evaded death or capture, mostly through shear luck. Hell, look at the beginning of the episode! Are you honestly saying that the whole series was nothing more than a series of red herrings leading right up to the last second? I have more respect for the writers than that. If there was going to be a surprise hit, why bother with Phil ordering the 'decapitation' of the Family, or the entire second to last episode?
Personally, I find fans like to play guessing games now with shows, looking for symbolism and clues that aren't even there. Sometimes, what you see is what you get, and what you see is the Sopranos, presented one last time for our viewing pleasure. Remember the last lines:
'AJ:"...right. Focus on the good times."
Tony: "Don't be sarcastic."
AJ: "Isn't that what you said one time? Try and remember the times that were good?"
Tony:"I did? Well, it's true,I guess."'
I would suggest, in addition to watching the Earth for climate change, that we also watch other planets. I've read recently that some research points to part of the climate change problem being the sun itself.
I don't know who told you that, but it isn't true. Solar irradiance is a very small part of global warming. This is the conclusion in the IPCC's latest report: see this presentation from the vice chair of working group one (top link, the relevant slide is 27). The main reason we can separate the two is that heating from the sun varies with respect to altitude in a different way than anthropogenic heating (unfortunately I don't have those slides for you).