My problem though, is when people intentionally buffer car you into a wall, or take an impossibly tight corner knowing that they're just going to hit your car and cause you to spin out
But when someone does this, it's still better to have a fair chance to return the favor;-)
If there were a risk of crashing into a wall and killing your character then I imagine the simulation would be closer to real life.
Well, I think that's a matter of taste. I prefer indestructible or at least very robust cars for a racing simulation, so a mistake is not the end of the game and there is still a change to catch up.
In racing games my motivation comes from competing with friends. That's why we still play NFS3, the best racing game with split-screen mode on pc.
Although I don't think that FPS Shooters turn nice kids into killers and have played plenty of FPS myself, I do not like the violence in games.
I'm always wondering why the game industry is spending billions in development, and all they come up with is "go in and kill". I for one would love to play games where it is more like "go in and be smart" or "go in and be quick".
Sports and racing games prove that there is no need for a (simulated) life and death situation to motivate players.
I refuse to believe that games have to involve violence to be accepted by the masses. This looks like a bad feedback between the game industry trying to sell games while not taking any risks on one side and the consumer getting experienced in that type of games on the other side.
If a consumer is experienced in a particular type of game, he more likely buys another game of the same type. So the gaming industry develops the next title of that genre and the stupidity continues.
Another reason why game companies seldom develop a completely new game-concept is that they fear no one is actually willing to invest the training required to have fun with the game.
In the end, a ban of violence in games could lead to much better quality games. But the freedom of choice is more important to me.
Maybe I should add, that these these statements are not new.
After the school shoot-out in erfurt 2002 the government introduced an age-rating on video games, although Mr. Beckstein and his political friends demanded the full ban of violent computer games.
If you want a balanced report on this, read this article
He is the Minister of Interior of Bavaria, and Bavaria is just one of 16 states (Bundesland) in germany.
That's like calling Arnold Schwarzenegger president of the united states.
And besides that, he isn't even very popular in germany (at least outside bavaria).
To give you a picture of his political position: The conservatives (CDU) are the largest party in germany at the moment, althouth they are only supported by about 35% across germany.
In bavaria, things are a lot different. Bavaria is so conservative, that the more moderate CDU is split into two partys. The party in bavaria is called CSU, so the rest of germany does not link the radical positions of the CSU to the conservatives outside bavaria.
That works incredible well: the CSU dominates bavaria around 60% for decades, with political statements like the above. And Mr. Beckstein is often the one saying the radical statements.
Shall I mention that Mr. Beckstein is a huge fan of the Bush administration whereas most germans are not?
SyncML is supported by iTunes, but only over Bluetooth, which isn't supported by some phones. (Windows Mobile phones for example, they only support SyncML over ip)
you're right, i should have written "accidently" in my post. I was referring to the slashdot database that forced them to disable threading for a few hours.
By semi-free i was referring to the dual licensing model. If you want to use mysql in a closed source environment (and do not want to reprogram the client libraries) you need to pay royalties. That's what I meant with "semi-free".
Of course I consider the GPL itself as "free enough" for the server (unlike some of the bsd fanboys).
But as a freelancing developper, I often have to develop closed-source applications and for that I need at least LGPL client libraries, which mysql doesn't provide AFAIK.
In my world it's easy to convince a paying customer to release improvements for existing open-source projects as open source or donate to open-source projects. But it's a tough job to convince them to open-source everything they pay for and propably want to sell.
Mysql has a GPL/Commercial dual licensing model. And because connection to mysql means linking to the client, which is "derivative work" in terms of the GPL, you can only use GPL'ed software with mysql. Unless you pay them to use their commercial license of course.
OTOH PostgreSQL is released under the BSD license, which has none of these restriction.
If you really have the knowledge of DBMS, you should be thankful for the options! You sound like abandoning features to force you into discipline.
Sometimes you have to balance development time against performance, not to mention the statements you as an administrator type by hand, where performance might not be an issue.
And in addition to that, I can assure you that there are lots of cases where subselects are REALLY fast in postgresql. Even faster than aggregates and group by. Never underestimate the power of the query optimization in postgresql, since 8.0 this is really good.
I'm using postgresql since the 5.x days, when it indeed was slower than mysql.
But as a developper, I never accepted the shortcomings of the non-standard and really incomplete sql syntax of mysql.
The command line tool psql with tab-completion of sql syntax and less style output of query results convinced me to switch in a second.
PostgreSQL never let me down, whereas I often had problems with mysql databases. (e.g. non working databases after upgrades)
Not to mention the semi-free open-source license of mysql.
What's all the fuss about mysql again? Mysql is a commercial product that is and was inferior to postgresql since the very beginning. The performance gain was small compared to the missing features.
That's just my two cents, but I think the mysql guys did a great job marketing their product and fooling everybody into using mysql.
One of Novell's larger products is Groupwise, a full MsExchange/Outlook competitor.
With that in mind, I always have been sceptical on how far that support for the hula project will last...
There is quite good theoretical work done on this subject and there are plenty of known (not) working algorithms out there.
In a nutshell: The problem is that every tranaction changes the market itself. If you just train a neural network, then the neural network only trains for a market without it. Once more and more people start using neural networks, their predictions will become really bad.
Markowitz was way ahead of that in 1956. He asked himself "if there is an algorithm to find a perfect portfolio and everyone in the market is using it, what would that algorithm be like?". And he came up with an impressive solution, read more on wikipedia .
With his algorithm you can calculate the maximum yield portfolio for a given risk if you provide the volatility, estimated yield and corelations of the stocks. These are of course statistical values with a great error, not to mention the crap quality of existing stock market data providers.
But in the end, stock markets aren't rational. They heavily depend on psychological reactions on news. My idea would be to train the neural network with stock data AND text from several big news-pages. Maybe there is a significant connection between keywords and stock movements that can be exploited by a software.
Anyone willing to donate a Teraflop computer? (I would bring beer and pizza;-)
Well, assuming you can send information in the past with this test. And assuming again that the universe has only one space-time. (some people say it doubles on every decision, with various interpretation of "decision")
Then only those paths can exist that are consistent. That means: if you will not send the information, you will not receive them.
If you now build a causality, like "I only send the information in the future only if did not receive the information in the past" (or I kill my father) this would lead to a paradox and you simply wouldn't be able to do it. And what you are able to do in the future just leads to exact that future you are living in.
Well, at least that is a much better interpretation than anything I have seen in a movie. Which usually involve multiple time lines (energy conservation?), changing the time-line by going into the past (how can you remember a different timeline that hasn't existed) or the worst: being stuck in a time-"loop" and remembering it.
So, to your question, why bother doing the test? Because it's fun to see what happens:)
What about using the money to build a peer-reviewed open access platform?
They then could provide peer-review for free for some time and then introduce a business model that works for longer time. ( author pays for the peer review or maybe they find other funders) Propably some of the money could be used to buy a collection of papers for a head start.
In that case, they could propably become the number one open-access journal.
Although I do not support that fee, this is not a big deal. Two reason:
First: In germany, you pay a fee if you can receive some publicly funded tv or radio stations. If you pay that fee already, you do not have to pay the extra fee for the internet pc, because it is included.
The money is then used to fund some tv and radio stations, which are usually of a really good quality and have little advertising before and none after 20h. The news show "tagesschau" for example is by far the most popular tv show in germany.
The prices: If you have a radio (and/or an internet pc), you pay 5 euro something per month. if you have a tv, it's about 17 euro per month (radio/internet included).
So: You only pay the new internet fee, if you do not have a radio and you do not have a tv.
Second: If you don't want to pay, then simply say them you neither have a tv nor a radio/tv. They then come bugging you at the door, but they have no right to enter your house or apartment and even if they see a tv/radio/computer while you opened the door, it could be your neighbours machine.
There is absolutely no legislation that is able to force you to pay.
Remember the trash can patent?
I believe my girlfriend made me bring it out yesterday.
oh wait, I think I forgot it... Julia??? JULIA??... *sigh* She seems to have left me while I was reading slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
What do we get out of it? Nothing because their license says so.
What do they get out of it? A slashdot headline "Microsoft wins industry standard ..."
It looks like they already won
My problem though, is when people intentionally buffer car you into a wall, or take an impossibly tight corner knowing that they're just going to hit your car and cause you to spin out
But when someone does this, it's still better to have a fair chance to return the favor ;-)
If there were a risk of crashing into a wall and killing your character then I imagine the simulation would be closer to real life.
Well, I think that's a matter of taste. I prefer indestructible or at least very robust cars for a racing simulation, so a mistake is not the end of the game and there is still a change to catch up.
In racing games my motivation comes from competing with friends. That's why we still play NFS3, the best racing game with split-screen mode on pc.
*sigh* you're right.
Maybe there will be more non-violent games in the future as the consumers grow older.
Although I don't think that FPS Shooters turn nice kids into killers and have played plenty of FPS myself, I do not like the violence in games.
I'm always wondering why the game industry is spending billions in development, and all they come up with is "go in and kill". I for one would love to play games where it is more like "go in and be smart" or "go in and be quick".
Sports and racing games prove that there is no need for a (simulated) life and death situation to motivate players.
I refuse to believe that games have to involve violence to be accepted by the masses. This looks like a bad feedback between the game industry trying to sell games while not taking any risks on one side and the consumer getting experienced in that type of games on the other side.
If a consumer is experienced in a particular type of game, he more likely buys another game of the same type. So the gaming industry develops the next title of that genre and the stupidity continues.
Another reason why game companies seldom develop a completely new game-concept is that they fear no one is actually willing to invest the training required to have fun with the game.
In the end, a ban of violence in games could lead to much better quality games. But the freedom of choice is more important to me.
Maybe I should add, that these these statements are not new.
After the school shoot-out in erfurt 2002 the government introduced an age-rating on video games, although Mr. Beckstein and his political friends demanded the full ban of violent computer games.
If you want a balanced report on this, read this article
He is the Minister of Interior of Bavaria, and Bavaria is just one of 16 states (Bundesland) in germany. That's like calling Arnold Schwarzenegger president of the united states.
And besides that, he isn't even very popular in germany (at least outside bavaria).
To give you a picture of his political position: The conservatives (CDU) are the largest party in germany at the moment, althouth they are only supported by about 35% across germany.
In bavaria, things are a lot different. Bavaria is so conservative, that the more moderate CDU is split into two partys. The party in bavaria is called CSU, so the rest of germany does not link the radical positions of the CSU to the conservatives outside bavaria.
That works incredible well: the CSU dominates bavaria around 60% for decades, with political statements like the above. And Mr. Beckstein is often the one saying the radical statements.
Shall I mention that Mr. Beckstein is a huge fan of the Bush administration whereas most germans are not?
SyncML is supported by iTunes, but only over Bluetooth, which isn't supported by some phones. (Windows Mobile phones for example, they only support SyncML over ip)
you're right, i should have written "accidently" in my post.
I was referring to the slashdot database that forced them to disable threading for a few hours.
By semi-free i was referring to the dual licensing model. If you want to use mysql in a closed source environment (and do not want to reprogram the client libraries) you need to pay royalties. That's what I meant with "semi-free".
Of course I consider the GPL itself as "free enough" for the server (unlike some of the bsd fanboys).
But as a freelancing developper, I often have to develop closed-source applications and for that I need at least LGPL client libraries, which mysql doesn't provide AFAIK.
In my world it's easy to convince a paying customer to release improvements for existing open-source projects as open source or donate to open-source projects. But it's a tough job to convince them to open-source everything they pay for and propably want to sell.
Mysql has a GPL/Commercial dual licensing model. And because connection to mysql means linking to the client, which is "derivative work" in terms of the GPL, you can only use GPL'ed software with mysql. Unless you pay them to use their commercial license of course.
OTOH PostgreSQL is released under the BSD license, which has none of these restriction.
... is create a smallint index on an int column ;-)
If you really have the knowledge of DBMS, you should be thankful for the options! You sound like abandoning features to force you into discipline.
Sometimes you have to balance development time against performance, not to mention the statements you as an administrator type by hand, where performance might not be an issue.
And in addition to that, I can assure you that there are lots of cases where subselects are REALLY fast in postgresql. Even faster than aggregates and group by. Never underestimate the power of the query optimization in postgresql, since 8.0 this is really good.
I'm using postgresql since the 5.x days, when it indeed was slower than mysql.
But as a developper, I never accepted the shortcomings of the non-standard and really incomplete sql syntax of mysql.
The command line tool psql with tab-completion of sql syntax and less style output of query results convinced me to switch in a second.
PostgreSQL never let me down, whereas I often had problems with mysql databases. (e.g. non working databases after upgrades)
Not to mention the semi-free open-source license of mysql.
What's all the fuss about mysql again? Mysql is a commercial product that is and was inferior to postgresql since the very beginning. The performance gain was small compared to the missing features.
That's just my two cents, but I think the mysql guys did a great job marketing their product and fooling everybody into using mysql.
One of Novell's larger products is Groupwise, a full MsExchange/Outlook competitor. With that in mind, I always have been sceptical on how far that support for the hula project will last...
There is quite good theoretical work done on this subject and there are plenty of known (not) working algorithms out there. ;-)
In a nutshell: The problem is that every tranaction changes the market itself. If you just train a neural network, then the neural network only trains for a market without it. Once more and more people start using neural networks, their predictions will become really bad.
Markowitz was way ahead of that in 1956. He asked himself "if there is an algorithm to find a perfect portfolio and everyone in the market is using it, what would that algorithm be like?". And he came up with an impressive solution, read more on wikipedia .
With his algorithm you can calculate the maximum yield portfolio for a given risk if you provide the volatility, estimated yield and corelations of the stocks. These are of course statistical values with a great error, not to mention the crap quality of existing stock market data providers.
But in the end, stock markets aren't rational. They heavily depend on psychological reactions on news. My idea would be to train the neural network with stock data AND text from several big news-pages. Maybe there is a significant connection between keywords and stock movements that can be exploited by a software.
Anyone willing to donate a Teraflop computer? (I would bring beer and pizza
I for one welcome the slow news day.
It is great to code/install/assemble/whatever one day without the interruption of disturbing slashdot stories.
Well, assuming you can send information in the past with this test. And assuming again that the universe has only one space-time. (some people say it doubles on every decision, with various interpretation of "decision") :)
Then only those paths can exist that are consistent. That means: if you will not send the information, you will not receive them.
If you now build a causality, like "I only send the information in the future only if did not receive the information in the past" (or I kill my father) this would lead to a paradox and you simply wouldn't be able to do it. And what you are able to do in the future just leads to exact that future you are living in.
Well, at least that is a much better interpretation than anything I have seen in a movie. Which usually involve multiple time lines (energy conservation?), changing the time-line by going into the past (how can you remember a different timeline that hasn't existed) or the worst: being stuck in a time-"loop" and remembering it.
So, to your question, why bother doing the test? Because it's fun to see what happens
What about using the money to build a peer-reviewed open access platform?
They then could provide peer-review for free for some time and then introduce a business model that works for longer time. ( author pays for the peer review or maybe they find other funders) Propably some of the money could be used to buy a collection of papers for a head start.
In that case, they could propably become the number one open-access journal.
There are rumors, that the distribution of the public tv channels via internet are done just as an argumant for that fee...
Although I do not support that fee, this is not a big deal. Two reason: First: In germany, you pay a fee if you can receive some publicly funded tv or radio stations. If you pay that fee already, you do not have to pay the extra fee for the internet pc, because it is included. The money is then used to fund some tv and radio stations, which are usually of a really good quality and have little advertising before and none after 20h. The news show "tagesschau" for example is by far the most popular tv show in germany. The prices: If you have a radio (and/or an internet pc), you pay 5 euro something per month. if you have a tv, it's about 17 euro per month (radio/internet included). So: You only pay the new internet fee, if you do not have a radio and you do not have a tv. Second: If you don't want to pay, then simply say them you neither have a tv nor a radio/tv. They then come bugging you at the door, but they have no right to enter your house or apartment and even if they see a tv/radio/computer while you opened the door, it could be your neighbours machine. There is absolutely no legislation that is able to force you to pay.
You post a story and noone cares?
Remember the trash can patent? ... *sigh* She seems to have left me while I was reading slashdot.
I believe my girlfriend made me bring it out yesterday.
oh wait, I think I forgot it... Julia??? JULIA??
I actually believe that it can be done, what I do not believe is that it's the first car completely designed on a computer.
as the first car designed entirely by computer Just out of curiosity: Who actually does believe that?