This just in: Even in simplistic AAA games with bots, the AIs are better than human players, we have to dumb them down to keep the game fun.
Thats because 99% of AAA games are twitch games. No strategy involved, just reflexes. Games like COD, Halo, et al. really limit what the player can do and it really is the fastest mouse wins. So they have to limit the reaction time of the AI to what a human is capable of.
Now if you look at strategy games like Civ IV, you had to give the AI unfair advantages to put it on equal footing with human players. But turn based strategy games have a lot of fuzzy logic. So really an AI mastering COD is not news, we can have been able to build bots with superhuman reaction time since the 90's. Wake me when they can master a city building sim as well as a good human player.
Remember when Apple was forced to remove all porn apps from the App Store?
Me neither.
Probably because Apple banned it from day 1.
I do have to love the hypocrisy here. When Apple bans something, it's "curating" a "walled garden" but when google does it they're "censoring" your "right to free expression".
But not in the constitutional freedom of speech sense. Not sure why this is even news.
Because it's Google and anything that can be twisted into sounding like Google is Baaaaaad and Ebil is news.
For those familiar with Google, this wont really be a surprise and by RTFS they aren't banning nudity, they're removing obviously pornographic videos and pictures (so your 50 shades of grey fan fiction is safe).
As it's Google's site, it's Google's rules. If you dont like them you can start your own blogging platform for explicit material with blackjack and hookers (although I believe this is already called Pornhub).
This is because the EFT terminal needs to contact the bank.
You mean the few hundred millisecond roundtrip via the network.
Again you have a strange definition of "millisecond".
There is at least a 5 second processing time. Closer to 10 seconds in most cases.
A few milliseconds doesn't even cover the time it takes the checkout operator to press the button that sends the transaction to the EFT processor for you to insert your card (my country uses chip and pin, my current card doesn't even have a magstripe).
Lets not even consider those smaller stores who need to key in the price manually because the EFTPOS system isn't linked to the register (this makes it take even longer as you have to make sure they keyed in the right price).
Needless to say, by the time you've finished fumbling about with your card and waiting for the bank to respond, I've paid in cash and out the door.
Beyond this, I dont really want to give out my card details to every shop so they can store them on poorly secured servers that get compromised every few months (well this isn't a problem in Australia as its illegal to do this, but a serious issue if you live in the US).
The second you approve of a policy that restricts action X based on moral grounds, you have defined a vulnerability that a less ethical enemy will exploit.
"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."
Wars are not won by brutality. They're won by being smarter than the enemy or as Winston Churchill once uttered:
"Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre the less he demands in slaughter".
History is filled with the destruction of empires built on brutality. Even the most successful ones barely outlasted their leaders (Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun) where as the generals we remember the most were the most innovative and intelligent of their time (I.E. Julius Ceasar, Sun Tzu). Anyone who thinks they can bludgeon their enemies into submission are simply setting themselves up for a fall.
1: Cash.
2: A big gap.
3: Debit card. (user swipes card, enters PIN, done.)
4: Credit card. (user swipes card, signs, done.)
5: Something that no longer exists in civilised nations.
Fixed that for you.
Cash is by far and away the fastest form of payment. Having to wait for the EFTPOS terminal to contact the bank takes far longer than getting change from the cashier.
While everyone else was losing money HARD (especially Microsoft), Nintendo was laughing all the way to the bank.
$24,072,504,822
Nintendo doesn't have to worry about the short term for quite a while.
The thing is, even with the Game Cube being a bit of a flop compared to the PS2 and Xbox, Nintendo still made money. They made back all the R&D and some.
So Nintendo doesn't need to worry about the lukewarm reception the Wii U got... But Sony and Microsoft need to worry about the lukewarm reception the PS4 and XBone got as they require years of good sales to get into the black, the fact they had to drop their prices so quickly after release means that the sales figures do not bode well for them.
Microsoft has deep pockets and can keep funding the Xbox from their profitable divisions but Sony is haemorrhaging money across the board. I think a better question is, how long until Sony becomes the next Sega.
Dreamcast had some issues that were hard to overcome that weren't just marketing related.
2. Incredibly easy piracy. Most of the games targeted for GD-ROM's were capable of fitting on a regular CD, and people figured out how to make easily burnable pirated games without even needing a modchip.
The thing is, easy piracy increases console sales.
Microsoft knew this with the original Xbox. It was so easily modded that everyone bought one. Same with the PS2. When the PS3 came along they lost momentum because everything was just a huge pain in the arse.
The Dreamcast was just a bad console with a serious dearth of good games. Even if it were just a bad console but had some good games it would have been enough to keep Sega going like Nintendo did with the Game Cube.
The British have been coming to France since the 1400's... often in great number.
One very real issue is where someone grew up
and learned the rules of the road.
As someone who's driven on the wrong side of the road in the States:)
You have to remember you have learned a bias in your own country, I would drift left and needed to correct it a bit when I first started. You kind of have to go back to the techniques you used when you were first learning to drive to keep yourself tracking straight and this is where the quality of your instruction matters. I was able to correct all my bad habits in a number of hours. Car parks confused the hell out of me because there were no lane markings.
This is how where you learned to drive really comes into it. If you learned to drive in the UK, Germany or the Nordic Nations where getting your license is quite difficult and requires a good amount of quality training then you'll find that they can quickly adapt to drive well on the wrong side of the road. If you're from a nation that hands them out on wheatbix boxes then you're going to have a bad time. The same goes with walking on paths, if you've got a modicum of intelligence, you can notice pasterns and quickly adjust your own behaviour.
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16, have you?
Do you think cyclists feel entitled to their right of way to the point where they are oblivious to oncoming collisions?
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16 have you.
Cyclists will happily turn into traffic without as second thought and expect everyone else to get out their way. I've got a nice highlight reel from my dashcam of cyclists behaving badly. Some of my favourites are people riding right at me the wrong way down the road... and they're all on the road because they hate slower pedestrians getting in their way the same way cyclists get in the way of motorists (oh the irony).
People walking with their heads buried in their phones are extremely rude, but the Lycra warriors on their bikes are the gods that the rude and inconsiderate pray to. They have no consideration for other road users and are so arrogant that they never believe anything they do can be wrong.
If that were true, don't you think after, say, six months, there wouldn't be any cyclists left because they had all been run over?
No, the cyclists are trying to get laws changed in every western country to make the driver automatically responsible for any accident with a cyclist regardless of what actually happened. One of the big reasons I have a dash cam is because cyclists are so reckless. This has only been reinforced by new research in my city (Perth, Western Australia) that cyclists are at fault the majority of the time (along the lines of 60% of collisions).
So, you can't stick a credit card into the thing. And when it breaks down nobody gets alerted.
Erm, you call the number on the machine or go talk to the petrol station attendant.
Or you could just use cash like normal people.
Traffic lights: No ability to know when they are working or not, no way to synchronize lights across the city.
Traffic management systems are very different. These are very complex systems monitored by professionals and attended to 24/7.
What the GP is saying is you dont need to connect every bloody toaster and waffle iron to the internets. One of the big reasons is they'll never be properly secured from attack.
Face it, it's not that hard to stop at a gas station on the way home from work rather than drive till there's teacup of gas left in the tank.
I have a car that averages 12L per 100 KM and has a 65L fuel tank. Unless you're running it on empty (in which case you're an idiot) you wont be struggling to get to the petrol station.
Work has an EV (I work at a university, there is a policy that all new pool cars must be hybrid or electric) and it spends more time on a flatbed being towed back to the garage for recharging than it does on the road. So how fuel efficient is a 9L diesel Cummins? Does it put out a lot of Carbons?
I live in Australia, so its not the cold that's doing it either.
I am surprised lobbies had not already obtained such a measure in Australia.
It looks outdated now that similar laws are dying in other countries. In France the law was voted but it seems the government is not willing to enforce it. Perhaps it is related to the ruling that considered Internet access is human right.
And you'll pretty much be looking at the same thing in Australia.
ISP's will pay lip service is a "voluntary" industry code, the same way the news media abides by its "voluntary" industry code (that means only the ABC and SBS are held to any kind of standard, Newscorp and Fairfax can do what they like). If an ISP does enforce the will of the rights holders they'll start to bleed customers and there's one large ISP that is pretty much assured not to do anything that stupid who would love to move up from their #2 position in the industry.
That is a good point, and near-earth objects such as asteroids and comets aren't actually trying to avoid being detected.
Could WWII RADAR detect a modern Stealth Bomber?
Why do we think anything we have could detect a starship that has its "stealth systems" on? (whatever they might be)
This has the assumption that a space craft can or will be stealthed.
Anything powerful enough to travel interstellar distances will put out an incredible amount of EM radiation. To internalise all of those emissions would be very difficult and probably require a configuration that wouldn't support a large number of troops or weapons (like stealth bombers). A stealth invasion wouldn't come by ship. It would more likely come in another form such as information that will be used by an opportunistic species to create something that will cause their demise (yes this is the plot of Species, it had one even if it was just a device to get a look a Natasha Henstridges boobs).
However this is just intellectual masturbation. Humanity couldn't spot an incoming alien invasion because we aren't even looking.
Just because the hypothetical aliens are ahead of us in some respects (e.g. the ability to practically travel across interstellar distances) it does not necessarily follow that they would be ahead of us in all others.
Uh, yes, it absolutely does. If they have mastered interstellar travel, then then there is no way that they will be behind us in any other aspect.
On the positive side, this also probably means that they'd have nothing to gain by coming here or killing us off.
Other than a supply of delicious meat.
Sure it takes 14-17 years to get a viable human heifer, that will just make us more of a delicacy for our reptilian overlords.
As for why I don't care where I stick my card. It is because I am protected.
And here in lies the problem with many Australians.
You dont seem to get that even though you dont pay directly, you still pay for credit card fraud. Its socialised somewhat across all the banks customers so the people who are responsible end up paying for those who aren't, like yourself. Fraud costs Australia 1.4 Billion annually, this money doesn't come from nowhere.
Because of this, I think that people should be afforded less protection than they currently are as people are being too irresponsible.
If I was responsible for insuring the security of every step of the money transfer chain I would go back to using cash.
Many of us still use cash for our day to day transactions. Not only is it safer, faster and more convenient, we save a small fortune. The cash discount is alive and well in Australia because credit is very expensive for the merchant.
It's a one-time pad-based system and the merchant never gets the real account number or even the user's name. They get a one-time code for a specific purchase amount at a specific time.
Because maybe I know that MITM attacks aren't the only way things become compromised.
Software flaws are becoming increasingly attractive attack vectors for criminals.
Also perhaps its also because Apple has a terrible track record for taking responsibility for stuff ups and blaming the user when it all goes horribly wrong.
My experience is that smug Apple-bashers are pretty ignorant about technology in general, thanks for reinforcing that opinion.
My experience is fanboys tend to ignore the facts and go after the person making the statement, ad hominmem is easier than rational argument. Thanks for reinforcing that.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like Kryton from Red Dwarf.
No that's a head that looks like a freak formation of mashed potato.
This just in: Even in simplistic AAA games with bots, the AIs are better than human players, we have to dumb them down to keep the game fun.
Thats because 99% of AAA games are twitch games. No strategy involved, just reflexes. Games like COD, Halo, et al. really limit what the player can do and it really is the fastest mouse wins. So they have to limit the reaction time of the AI to what a human is capable of.
Now if you look at strategy games like Civ IV, you had to give the AI unfair advantages to put it on equal footing with human players. But turn based strategy games have a lot of fuzzy logic. So really an AI mastering COD is not news, we can have been able to build bots with superhuman reaction time since the 90's. Wake me when they can master a city building sim as well as a good human player.
Me neither.
Probably because Apple banned it from day 1.
I do have to love the hypocrisy here. When Apple bans something, it's "curating" a "walled garden" but when google does it they're "censoring" your "right to free expression".
But not in the constitutional freedom of speech sense. Not sure why this is even news.
Because it's Google and anything that can be twisted into sounding like Google is Baaaaaad and Ebil is news.
For those familiar with Google, this wont really be a surprise and by RTFS they aren't banning nudity, they're removing obviously pornographic videos and pictures (so your 50 shades of grey fan fiction is safe).
As it's Google's site, it's Google's rules. If you dont like them you can start your own blogging platform for explicit material with blackjack and hookers (although I believe this is already called Pornhub).
In some places it is illegal to call yourself an engineer if you isn't really one (unlike software "engineers").
I can tell you aren't an engineer.
This is because the EFT terminal needs to contact the bank.
You mean the few hundred millisecond roundtrip via the network.
Again you have a strange definition of "millisecond".
There is at least a 5 second processing time. Closer to 10 seconds in most cases.
A few milliseconds doesn't even cover the time it takes the checkout operator to press the button that sends the transaction to the EFT processor for you to insert your card (my country uses chip and pin, my current card doesn't even have a magstripe).
Lets not even consider those smaller stores who need to key in the price manually because the EFTPOS system isn't linked to the register (this makes it take even longer as you have to make sure they keyed in the right price).
Needless to say, by the time you've finished fumbling about with your card and waiting for the bank to respond, I've paid in cash and out the door.
Beyond this, I dont really want to give out my card details to every shop so they can store them on poorly secured servers that get compromised every few months (well this isn't a problem in Australia as its illegal to do this, but a serious issue if you live in the US).
To welcome our new Killer Robot overlords.
Silence meatbag.
You must have a very strange definition of "instantaneous".
Because I have travelled extensively, including the US and transactions have always taken longer than just using cash. Every single time.
This is because the EFT terminal needs to contact the bank.
The second you approve of a policy that restricts action X based on moral grounds, you have defined a vulnerability that a less ethical enemy will exploit.
"As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."
Wars are not won by brutality. They're won by being smarter than the enemy or as Winston Churchill once uttered:
"Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre the less he demands in slaughter".
History is filled with the destruction of empires built on brutality. Even the most successful ones barely outlasted their leaders (Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun) where as the generals we remember the most were the most innovative and intelligent of their time (I.E. Julius Ceasar, Sun Tzu). Anyone who thinks they can bludgeon their enemies into submission are simply setting themselves up for a fall.
1: Cash.
2: A big gap.
3: Debit card. (user swipes card, enters PIN, done.)
4: Credit card. (user swipes card, signs, done.)
5: Something that no longer exists in civilised nations.
Fixed that for you.
Cash is by far and away the fastest form of payment. Having to wait for the EFTPOS terminal to contact the bank takes far longer than getting change from the cashier.
I wouldn't be so quick to write Nintendo off just yet.
If we look at the 1998 .. 2010 year data from this console profit table
While everyone else was losing money HARD (especially Microsoft), Nintendo was laughing all the way to the bank.
$24,072,504,822
Nintendo doesn't have to worry about the short term for quite a while.
The thing is, even with the Game Cube being a bit of a flop compared to the PS2 and Xbox, Nintendo still made money. They made back all the R&D and some.
So Nintendo doesn't need to worry about the lukewarm reception the Wii U got... But Sony and Microsoft need to worry about the lukewarm reception the PS4 and XBone got as they require years of good sales to get into the black, the fact they had to drop their prices so quickly after release means that the sales figures do not bode well for them.
Microsoft has deep pockets and can keep funding the Xbox from their profitable divisions but Sony is haemorrhaging money across the board. I think a better question is, how long until Sony becomes the next Sega.
Dreamcast had some issues that were hard to overcome that weren't just marketing related.
2. Incredibly easy piracy. Most of the games targeted for GD-ROM's were capable of fitting on a regular CD, and people figured out how to make easily burnable pirated games without even needing a modchip.
The thing is, easy piracy increases console sales.
Microsoft knew this with the original Xbox. It was so easily modded that everyone bought one. Same with the PS2. When the PS3 came along they lost momentum because everything was just a huge pain in the arse.
The Dreamcast was just a bad console with a serious dearth of good games. Even if it were just a bad console but had some good games it would have been enough to keep Sega going like Nintendo did with the Game Cube.
The British have been coming to France since the 1400's... often in great number.
As someone who's driven on the wrong side of the road in the States :)
You have to remember you have learned a bias in your own country, I would drift left and needed to correct it a bit when I first started. You kind of have to go back to the techniques you used when you were first learning to drive to keep yourself tracking straight and this is where the quality of your instruction matters. I was able to correct all my bad habits in a number of hours. Car parks confused the hell out of me because there were no lane markings.
This is how where you learned to drive really comes into it. If you learned to drive in the UK, Germany or the Nordic Nations where getting your license is quite difficult and requires a good amount of quality training then you'll find that they can quickly adapt to drive well on the wrong side of the road. If you're from a nation that hands them out on wheatbix boxes then you're going to have a bad time. The same goes with walking on paths, if you've got a modicum of intelligence, you can notice pasterns and quickly adjust your own behaviour.
3. Bicyclists
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16, have you?
Do you think cyclists feel entitled to their right of way to the point where they are oblivious to oncoming collisions?
You haven't ridden a bike since you were 16 have you.
Cyclists will happily turn into traffic without as second thought and expect everyone else to get out their way. I've got a nice highlight reel from my dashcam of cyclists behaving badly. Some of my favourites are people riding right at me the wrong way down the road... and they're all on the road because they hate slower pedestrians getting in their way the same way cyclists get in the way of motorists (oh the irony).
People walking with their heads buried in their phones are extremely rude, but the Lycra warriors on their bikes are the gods that the rude and inconsiderate pray to. They have no consideration for other road users and are so arrogant that they never believe anything they do can be wrong.
If that were true, don't you think after, say, six months, there wouldn't be any cyclists left because they had all been run over?
No, the cyclists are trying to get laws changed in every western country to make the driver automatically responsible for any accident with a cyclist regardless of what actually happened. One of the big reasons I have a dash cam is because cyclists are so reckless. This has only been reinforced by new research in my city (Perth, Western Australia) that cyclists are at fault the majority of the time (along the lines of 60% of collisions).
So, you can't stick a credit card into the thing. And when it breaks down nobody gets alerted.
Erm, you call the number on the machine or go talk to the petrol station attendant. Or you could just use cash like normal people.
Traffic lights: No ability to know when they are working or not, no way to synchronize lights across the city.
Traffic management systems are very different. These are very complex systems monitored by professionals and attended to 24/7. What the GP is saying is you dont need to connect every bloody toaster and waffle iron to the internets. One of the big reasons is they'll never be properly secured from attack.
I have a car that averages 12L per 100 KM and has a 65L fuel tank. Unless you're running it on empty (in which case you're an idiot) you wont be struggling to get to the petrol station.
Work has an EV (I work at a university, there is a policy that all new pool cars must be hybrid or electric) and it spends more time on a flatbed being towed back to the garage for recharging than it does on the road. So how fuel efficient is a 9L diesel Cummins? Does it put out a lot of Carbons?
I live in Australia, so its not the cold that's doing it either.
I am surprised lobbies had not already obtained such a measure in Australia.
It looks outdated now that similar laws are dying in other countries. In France the law was voted but it seems the government is not willing to enforce it. Perhaps it is related to the ruling that considered Internet access is human right.
And you'll pretty much be looking at the same thing in Australia.
ISP's will pay lip service is a "voluntary" industry code, the same way the news media abides by its "voluntary" industry code (that means only the ABC and SBS are held to any kind of standard, Newscorp and Fairfax can do what they like). If an ISP does enforce the will of the rights holders they'll start to bleed customers and there's one large ISP that is pretty much assured not to do anything that stupid who would love to move up from their #2 position in the industry.
They will find a way to twist the law so that it only applies to the big corps and not the little guy.
I think you mean to say they already have.
High priced lawyers are a huge barrier to entry for anyone who wants to sue.
That is a good point, and near-earth objects such as asteroids and comets aren't actually trying to avoid being detected.
Could WWII RADAR detect a modern Stealth Bomber?
Why do we think anything we have could detect a starship that has its "stealth systems" on? (whatever they might be)
This has the assumption that a space craft can or will be stealthed.
Anything powerful enough to travel interstellar distances will put out an incredible amount of EM radiation. To internalise all of those emissions would be very difficult and probably require a configuration that wouldn't support a large number of troops or weapons (like stealth bombers). A stealth invasion wouldn't come by ship. It would more likely come in another form such as information that will be used by an opportunistic species to create something that will cause their demise (yes this is the plot of Species, it had one even if it was just a device to get a look a Natasha Henstridges boobs).
However this is just intellectual masturbation. Humanity couldn't spot an incoming alien invasion because we aren't even looking.
Just because the hypothetical aliens are ahead of us in some respects (e.g. the ability to practically travel across interstellar distances) it does not necessarily follow that they would be ahead of us in all others.
Uh, yes, it absolutely does. If they have mastered interstellar travel, then then there is no way that they will be behind us in any other aspect.
On the positive side, this also probably means that they'd have nothing to gain by coming here or killing us off.
Other than a supply of delicious meat.
Sure it takes 14-17 years to get a viable human heifer, that will just make us more of a delicacy for our reptilian overlords.
Ah, yes, that gospel of truth, The Daily Mail.
Every now and then, even the Daily Fail gets something right.
Why, always, 11, ... ?
Because most ordinary news goes to 10, our news goes to 11.
And here in lies the problem with many Australians.
You dont seem to get that even though you dont pay directly, you still pay for credit card fraud. Its socialised somewhat across all the banks customers so the people who are responsible end up paying for those who aren't, like yourself. Fraud costs Australia 1.4 Billion annually, this money doesn't come from nowhere.
Because of this, I think that people should be afforded less protection than they currently are as people are being too irresponsible.
Many of us still use cash for our day to day transactions. Not only is it safer, faster and more convenient, we save a small fortune. The cash discount is alive and well in Australia because credit is very expensive for the merchant.
Because maybe I know that MITM attacks aren't the only way things become compromised.
Software flaws are becoming increasingly attractive attack vectors for criminals.
Also perhaps its also because Apple has a terrible track record for taking responsibility for stuff ups and blaming the user when it all goes horribly wrong.
My experience is fanboys tend to ignore the facts and go after the person making the statement, ad hominmem is easier than rational argument. Thanks for reinforcing that.
And I suspect so did the GP.
Why do you think Apple Pay is remotely secure. Apple is good at keeping its users hemmed in and docile, not security.