From the code: (2) For these purposes, 'the occult' includes, for example, invocation of spirits, tarot and attempts to contact the dead or demons. (No, I'm not making that up; see the pdf, section 10.3.)
I have to admit, I don't see what is frustrating about this. Perhaps it's because I'm an academic game theorist, and not a psychologist.
"In other words, I'll be impressed when someone is able to pin down what makes one shape strong and another weak precisely enough to put it in an algorithm."
It's as simple as this: one shape is stronger than another if it leads to a win more often than the other. What else would one want? The computer is trying to win. Therefore, it chooses one move over another if that move is more likely to win. That's what humans do, too, when evaluating the strength of positions.
"They could just let individual air lines react to market forces."
Or maybe at least a few politicians realize that, if airlines can so openly collude on prices, they can probably collude on any other policies that generates the most revenue.
You would agree that a monopoly airline would not have to react to "market forces" right? They could make whatever rules (e.g. charge for cell phone access) earn them the most revenues. Well what makes you think that a mere handful of collusive airlines acts much differently than a monopoly?
This is no free market. If you want a textbook example of barriers to entry, use the airline industry.
"but the conclusion of the paper is that there's not enough data to answer the question!"
Depends on what you think the question was. If you are trying to reject a hypothesis that one mean is bigger than the other, you're right, there's not.
But if the question is about magnitude of the difference between means, then there is enough data to construct a confidence interval of only a few percentage points in width, centered close to zero. That was the supposed point of the paper: the gain, if any, is small.
Now you can criticize that question if you want (as many have: any small gain is worth it if the cost is zero), but this is not a data problem.
"One wonders what they could achieve in a free and open society. But alas, they have, at least for the time being, chosen to handicap themselves with a system that turns all their genius to idiocy.
The rest of us should observe, and take notes for our own societies."
Note taken!
('Apparently it doesn't matter what kind of society we choose.')
"Will whoever modded the parent a troll please share his or her logic?"
I did not/would not have modded him troll, but I can guess the simple logic at doing so.
He appears to have the all-too-common opinion that there is no such thing as a profitable but risky opportunity. I teach intro probability and decision making (among other things), and you would not believe how many people reason that, if there is uncertainty, it's "impossible" to make a good decision. The reasoning is "Well, since something bad might happen, you might end up regretting your decision." Ugh. Those are people for whom "probability", "expected value", etc., will forever remain magical, abstract terms with no application in the real world.
Before my rant goes too far off topic, back to the GP, who said:
"It is stock market after all, nobody can guarantee the outcome even with insider news."
So insider information should be ok?! After all, "there are no guarantees"?! Nonsense! And I can imagine there being at least a few mods who would consider it so obvious that this is nonsense, that they modded him troll, thinking there could be no other excuse.
Now I'm the one wondering how he got so many insightful mods!
"Just have a picture of something simple and ask what it is (a dog for instance), or have a very simple question like, "Is Paris Hilton a whore?""
No matter how you tweak the captcha idea, the spammers can simply transplant the entire "task" to the person who wants porn.
Before I realized this, I was thinking of convoluted things like: having a huge list of questions about a huge collection of photos, embedding the question itself in a captcha, then asking the person to answer the question. But what's to stop the spammers from serving up virtually the entire page (from say, Yahoo!), asking the human to solve it, and then delivering the porn? It's a method you can't beat. If the intended subjects (Yahoo customers) can solve it, so can anybody else, on behalf of the spammer.
"You can already count to 1024 on your fingers if you use binary."
At first I was going to correct you: it's 1023. However, I now realize that like many lonely slashdotters, you probably have figured out how to get to 2047....
Re:speaking of proprietary
on
Open Source Math
·
· Score: 5, Funny
"While it was typeset with TeX (open), only the PDF (closed and uneditable) is provided."
Indeed. Now we are left wondering whether the TeX code is buggy. Like maybe an extra character accidentally slipped into the file.
therefore mathematics software should %not
be open source!
Slashdot Mirror
in 40 years some kid will laugh at your pathetic attempt at geek coolness when you mention the Bluewater and say "wow your old..."
Forty more years of the kids saying "your"? Kill me now! :)
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority also forbids advertising related to the occult. Coincidence? I think not.
From the code:
(2) For these purposes, 'the occult' includes, for example, invocation of spirits, tarot and attempts to contact the dead or demons. (No, I'm not making that up; see the pdf, section 10.3.)
That's all the proof I need.
Well, if the disks are being replicated promiscuously, I already figured it was Democrats doing it. :)
They are just very expensive people, however many there are.
I have to admit, I don't see what is frustrating about this. Perhaps it's because I'm an academic game theorist, and not a psychologist.
"In other words, I'll be impressed when someone is able to pin down what makes one shape strong and another weak precisely enough to put it in an algorithm."
It's as simple as this: one shape is stronger than another if it leads to a win more often than the other. What else would one want? The computer is trying to win. Therefore, it chooses one move over another if that move is more likely to win. That's what humans do, too, when evaluating the strength of positions.
And by the way, I think MoGo does more than just simulate.
"I think if we're going to randomly speculate it is much more fun to put my pink to my mouth and say he is making a 'million dollars!'"
It certainly sounds like more fun!
"They could just let individual air lines react to market forces."
Or maybe at least a few politicians realize that, if airlines can so openly collude on prices, they can probably collude on any other policies that generates the most revenue.
You would agree that a monopoly airline would not have to react to "market forces" right? They could make whatever rules (e.g. charge for cell phone access) earn them the most revenues. Well what makes you think that a mere handful of collusive airlines acts much differently than a monopoly?
This is no free market. If you want a textbook example of barriers to entry, use the airline industry.
Not only him, but most of the others too.
It's a lucky thing the summary was good, because the only thing I could learn from the linked abstract is that "Francesco" is a Japanese name.
Approximately 99.99% of Slashdotters can describe the Prime Directive, and how it works in a land of make believe.
A significantly lower percentage sees how it would apply in current-era Earth.
There were six questions in the study. Those with low error rates were omitted from the analysis. The error rates were:
Q1 2%
Q2 2%
Q3 12%
Q4 7%
Q5 2%
Q6 9%
The author then decides, after the experiment, to delete Q1,Q2,Q4,Q5 from the analysis.
Why is Q4 any different from Q6?! The paper does not even report the results on Q4 so we can do the math ourselves.
"but the conclusion of the paper is that there's not enough data to answer the question!"
Depends on what you think the question was. If you are trying to reject a hypothesis that one mean is bigger than the other, you're right, there's not.
But if the question is about magnitude of the difference between means, then there is enough data to construct a confidence interval of only a few percentage points in width, centered close to zero. That was the supposed point of the paper: the gain, if any, is small.
Now you can criticize that question if you want (as many have: any small gain is worth it if the cost is zero), but this is not a data problem.
"One wonders what they could achieve in a free and open society. But alas, they have, at least for the time being, chosen to handicap themselves with a system that turns all their genius to idiocy. The rest of us should observe, and take notes for our own societies."
Note taken! ('Apparently it doesn't matter what kind of society we choose.')
"Will whoever modded the parent a troll please share his or her logic?"
I did not/would not have modded him troll, but I can guess the simple logic at doing so.
He appears to have the all-too-common opinion that there is no such thing as a profitable but risky opportunity. I teach intro probability and decision making (among other things), and you would not believe how many people reason that, if there is uncertainty, it's "impossible" to make a good decision. The reasoning is "Well, since something bad might happen, you might end up regretting your decision." Ugh. Those are people for whom "probability", "expected value", etc., will forever remain magical, abstract terms with no application in the real world.
Before my rant goes too far off topic, back to the GP, who said:
"It is stock market after all, nobody can guarantee the outcome even with insider news."
So insider information should be ok?! After all, "there are no guarantees"?! Nonsense! And I can imagine there being at least a few mods who would consider it so obvious that this is nonsense, that they modded him troll, thinking there could be no other excuse.
Now I'm the one wondering how he got so many insightful mods!
"Being at the "top of its market" is a liability...Microsoft, on the other hand, has nowhere to go but down"
That's why I never want to be the world's wealthiest person. My rank could only get worse from there!
"McFact No. 7: On appeal, a judge lowered the award to $480,000, a fact not widely publicized in the media."
Which seems to reinforce the GP's assertion that the original judgment was unreasonable.
"Just have a picture of something simple and ask what it is (a dog for instance), or have a very simple question like, "Is Paris Hilton a whore?""
No matter how you tweak the captcha idea, the spammers can simply transplant the entire "task" to the person who wants porn.
Before I realized this, I was thinking of convoluted things like: having a huge list of questions about a huge collection of photos, embedding the question itself in a captcha, then asking the person to answer the question. But what's to stop the spammers from serving up virtually the entire page (from say, Yahoo!), asking the human to solve it, and then delivering the porn? It's a method you can't beat. If the intended subjects (Yahoo customers) can solve it, so can anybody else, on behalf of the spammer.
"why not have one against another to resolve international conflicts"
I'm going to name mine Goliath. And, I'm sorry Dave, but there's no way your scrawny little bot is going to win.
"Sometimes a solution for task A comes from task B."
And you need to be doing A&B simultaneously in order to make the connection?!
I'm going to have to agree with the others: moderators are all multitasking.
"I move that whomever uses /that/ phrase be summarily shot."
I agree, but... Oh, the irony!
"Part of the problem is that Laws have become so stict that it prevents exersizing justice."
Which crystal ball did you use to see the penalty these people are actually going to get?
Here's a deal for you: Mail me $20. After you do, I will mail you back up to $1 million. I eagerly await your reply.
"You can already count to 1024 on your fingers if you use binary."
At first I was going to correct you: it's 1023. However, I now realize that like many lonely slashdotters, you probably have figured out how to get to 2047....
"While it was typeset with TeX (open), only the PDF (closed and uneditable) is provided."
Indeed. Now we are left wondering whether the TeX code is buggy. Like maybe an extra character accidentally slipped into the file.
therefore mathematics software should %not
be open source!
Now we'll never know.
"But imagine how many nearly identical conference/research papers they can conjure up by slowly increasing the sample size they report on! "
And here I was going to say: "Yes, but a larger sample size makes it less likely they can get some anomalous result that makes headlines."
I like yours better. Which reminds me, let's get back to debating this whole "42" thing...
hansshotfirst (tagging beta)
Even the names aren't sacred anymore!