"Chess is the Drosophila of artificial intelligence. However, computer chess has developed much as genetics might have if the geneticists had concentrated their efforts starting in 1910 on breeding racing Drosophila. We would have some science, but mainly we would have very fast fruit flies."
-John McCarthy
As far as I know, the major difficulty in writing a strong go playing program isn't the search space, but the fact that there are so many opposing aims that it's very hard to write a good heuristic. For instance, players have to decide wether to go for speed or security in their play. Deciding whether to expand territory quickly and risk invasion, or to build up a small stronghold is a major factor in the game.
In all fairness, it does provide a means to distribute content to people for free. How many ad-funded websites have you seen today which otherwise wouldn't exist? Paid advertisements mean cheap newspapers, free TV programs for the end user. For businesses, they provide an incredibly useful business model (Google, anyone?). I think it's a bit rich to say that ads don't help anyone, anywhere. However, I agree that it can go to far on occasion.
I would really like to see a larger chart than the one they give. Cycles which are 64 and 62 years long respectively will begin to shift out of phase with each other eventually, and after (I think) 32 cycles they will be 180 degrees out of phase. If the biodiversity cycles still are still the same when the two are out of phase, it would discredit the theory.
Of course, this means you have to go back almost two billion years, when the only life was a kind of blue-green sludge (at best).
Just because the technology is available doesn't mean it will be adopted.
If YouTube started displaying forced ads before their user-made videos, something tells me they'd have very sudden and very large drop in market share. It would then be in someone else's interest to start up a site without ads.
Who still uses WEP? Any wireless router bought in the last few years will support WPA encryption instead. That said, it seems like a lot of vendors use WEP as the default encryption scheme. That's just irresponsible if you ask me.
From TFA: "Digital animation. Massive supercomputing power will let movie makers create characters and scenarios so realistic that the line will be blurred between animated and live-action movies."
Cheers for the link, I found this baby:
UPDATE OWNER_USER.all_candidates SET name = filter(translate(REPLACE(REPLACE
(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(r eplace(replace(replace(replace
(REPLACE(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(r eplace(replace(replace(replace
(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(r eplace(REPLACE(REPLACE(
name,
CHR(1),null),CHR(2),null),CHR(3),null),CHR(4),null ),CHR(5),null),CHR(6),null),
CHR(7),null),CHR(8),null),CHR(9),null),CHR(10),nul l),CHR(11),null),CHR(12),
null),CHR(13),null),CHR(14),null),CHR(15),null),CH R(16),null),CHR(17),null),
CHR(18),null),CHR(19),null),CHR(20),null),CHR(21), null),CHR(22),null),CHR(23),
null),CHR(24),null),CHR(25),null),CHR(26),null),CH R(27),null),CHR(28),null),
CHR(29),null),CHR(30),NULL),CHR(31),NULL))),
[... repeated nearly verbatim for the 32 other columns in the table...]
));
I'm a fourth year CS and maths student. I'm hearing the term "bad code" being thrown around a lot, and frankly this thread is scaring the hell out of me. What exactly is meant by bad code? Is it buggy code which is difficult to correct? Poorly commented code? Inefficient code? I'd appreciate if someone could link me a few examples.
P.S. I sincerely doubt a link to microsoft.com will get you modded +5 funny
At $500 a go, those would want to be some pretty special hookers.
I prefer mine to be the $10 motel variety. Plus, you can put your cigarettes out on them.
I find it amazing that they can find an object which emits absolutely no light, halfway across the galaxy, and yet it's still so hard to find planets. I know they find the black holes by their accretion discs, but I still think it's remarkable.
Soul calibur 2 is amazing. You can get away with button-bashing if you're inexperienced (which it makes it fun for beginners), but once you really learn the game it's incredibly skillful. You need good strategy and excellent reflexes to do well, and the possibility of a ring-out can have you flinging your controller at your opponent's head.
I think combinatorics would be very useful for most CS students. I took a course in it and often find it useful for data structure and/or algorithm design.
On a different note, I think a broad mathematical education in first-year would be good for CS students. Many students are sadly lacking in a sound knowledge of mathematics. For example, the other day I overheard two final year students arguing about whether Pi is exactly 22/7.
Slashdot Mirror
"Chess is the Drosophila of artificial intelligence. However, computer chess has developed much as genetics might have if the geneticists had concentrated their efforts starting in 1910 on breeding racing Drosophila. We would have some science, but mainly we would have very fast fruit flies." -John McCarthy
Actually, backgammon was essentially 'solved' in the 80's by a program known as TD-gammon, which used Temporal difference learning along with self play. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_difference_l earning
As far as I know, the major difficulty in writing a strong go playing program isn't the search space, but the fact that there are so many opposing aims that it's very hard to write a good heuristic. For instance, players have to decide wether to go for speed or security in their play. Deciding whether to expand territory quickly and risk invasion, or to build up a small stronghold is a major factor in the game.
Steal your insightful comments from http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/22/ 1335255
(.)(.)(.)
In all fairness, it does provide a means to distribute content to people for free. How many ad-funded websites have you seen today which otherwise wouldn't exist?
Paid advertisements mean cheap newspapers, free TV programs for the end user. For businesses, they provide an incredibly useful business model (Google, anyone?).
I think it's a bit rich to say that ads don't help anyone, anywhere. However, I agree that it can go to far on occasion.
If you pull the legs off a walk, you can trick someone into thinking that it's a raisin...
I would really like to see a larger chart than the one they give. Cycles which are 64 and 62 years long respectively will begin to shift out of phase with each other eventually, and after (I think) 32 cycles they will be 180 degrees out of phase. If the biodiversity cycles still are still the same when the two are out of phase, it would discredit the theory. Of course, this means you have to go back almost two billion years, when the only life was a kind of blue-green sludge (at best).
I mean it is a film of a man being tortured for two hours...
Just because the technology is available doesn't mean it will be adopted.
If YouTube started displaying forced ads before their user-made videos, something tells me they'd have very sudden and very large drop in market share. It would then be in someone else's interest to start up a site without ads.
Who still uses WEP? Any wireless router bought in the last few years will support WPA encryption instead. That said, it seems like a lot of vendors use WEP as the default encryption scheme. That's just irresponsible if you ask me.
"Forget RAID, just replicate the data three times".
Just be sure not to do it on the same disk...
Just a thought: maybe this could already have happened. How would you detect a particle smaller than a proton which presumably has no charge?
Of course it doesn't exist anymore. Tried to get amarok working on an out of the box install of Suse 10.0 recently?
From TFA: "Digital animation. Massive supercomputing power will let movie makers create characters and scenarios so realistic that the line will be blurred between animated and live-action movies."
Didn't they already do that with Jar-jar?
The coastguard?
Quantum biology? Are they maybe getting a bit ahead of themselves? Someone give me a shout once they crack the proteome.
Cheers for the link, I found this baby: UPDATE OWNER_USER.all_candidates SET name = filter(translate(REPLACE(REPLACE (replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(r eplace(replace(replace(replace
(REPLACE(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(r eplace(replace(replace(replace
(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(replace(r eplace(REPLACE(REPLACE(
name,
CHR(1),null),CHR(2),null),CHR(3),null),CHR(4),null ),CHR(5),null),CHR(6),null),
CHR(7),null),CHR(8),null),CHR(9),null),CHR(10),nul l),CHR(11),null),CHR(12),
null),CHR(13),null),CHR(14),null),CHR(15),null),CH R(16),null),CHR(17),null),
CHR(18),null),CHR(19),null),CHR(20),null),CHR(21), null),CHR(22),null),CHR(23),
null),CHR(24),null),CHR(25),null),CHR(26),null),CH R(27),null),CHR(28),null),
CHR(29),null),CHR(30),NULL),CHR(31),NULL))),
[... repeated nearly verbatim for the 32 other columns in the table...]
));
I'm a fourth year CS and maths student. I'm hearing the term "bad code" being thrown around a lot, and frankly this thread is scaring the hell out of me. What exactly is meant by bad code? Is it buggy code which is difficult to correct? Poorly commented code? Inefficient code?
I'd appreciate if someone could link me a few examples.
P.S. I sincerely doubt a link to microsoft.com will get you modded +5 funny
I've never drunk a jolt in my life....
At $500 a go, those would want to be some pretty special hookers. I prefer mine to be the $10 motel variety. Plus, you can put your cigarettes out on them.
I find it amazing that they can find an object which emits absolutely no light, halfway across the galaxy, and yet it's still so hard to find planets. I know they find the black holes by their accretion discs, but I still think it's remarkable.
Soul calibur 2 is amazing. You can get away with button-bashing if you're inexperienced (which it makes it fun for beginners), but once you really learn the game it's incredibly skillful.
You need good strategy and excellent reflexes to do well, and the possibility of a ring-out can have you flinging your controller at your opponent's head.
On a different note, I think a broad mathematical education in first-year would be good for CS students. Many students are sadly lacking in a sound knowledge of mathematics. For example, the other day I overheard two final year students arguing about whether Pi is exactly 22/7.
I wouldn't expect a Nuclear accident to kill many miners. Surely they would be safe in their mines.
(sorry, I couldn't resist)
It's quite impressive that you managed to sound like Samuel L. Jackson *in text*