Be on the lookout for other stories from South America: - Cannibalism - Murder Spree - Violent Insanity - People missing - Further mystery disease - Riot / uprising - corpse mutilation
Ooops! I see the Heinlein good / bad discussion is taking place scant comments down from here. Oh well, if you care to shout me down your efforts are better saved for the "Re:Umm??? I thought Heinlein..." thread...
I don't want to come off as a troll / flamebait, but since curmudgeon99 took the time to express that Heinlein is/was cool I figure I can let it be known that some take the position that he isn't so cool.
If you don't want to hear about why I don't like Heinlein you should stop reading here. I encourage you to retain your own position on the matter, everyone gets an opinion.
[begin rant] I'm no authority on Heinlein. I've only read about... maybe 6 or 8 of his books. It was enough to convince me not to read any more of them. So you know - "Time Enough for Love", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "The Number of the Beast", "The Moon is Harsh Mistress", "Starship Troopers", "Glory Road", "The Cat Who Walks Though Walls" (I think). One about the backyard nuclear shelter that gets nuked into the future, what was it called? Maybe some others, I don't recall. Here, I'll state just two of my criticisms.
- Cast of Charecters The same people kept showing up in the random sampling of H books I read. Again and again. Their repetition becomes boring and vain. Here they are: 1) The Old Man - physically past his prime, this charecter is an analogue of H himself, and as such is naturally craftier than everyone else in the universe. 10 years ago he could have bested the universe in a fistfight as well, but that's the past. 2) The Young Man - This charecter is also H. He is unreasonably competent at everything except out-foxing the old man. The young man inevitably (meekly) becomes the protege of the old man, flattering H himself that the best of all young men should follow him, and that as a young man he himself could both identify and was fit to follow his ubermensch older self. 3) Beautiful, sexually liberated women - Of course all the women are beautiful and want to have sex with young Heinlien (and old Heinlien, when he can figure a way to justify it)! If these women were powerful female plot drivers then I could at least look at some of his work as pro-feminist. But the women (of course as unsuprisingly-suprisingly competent as the men) are none the less mostly just sex toys for the Heinlein figures. =P (NOTE: The Old Man may not be present in books written before H was himself old.)
- Cool Idea Injection Don't get me wrong - I love a cool idea. But if you're writing a book and you want to put a cool idea in it, shouldn't it fit with the rest of the narrative? In Number of the Beast we have to run from the mysterious alien assasins! Hmm what do we need? I know, SWORDS! You know, back in the day I was the best swordsman on earth, trained by ninjas, and I killed 7 giants with one blow! Oh really, I also am a fabulously trained swordsman, and my master was an italian assasin! Here, allow me to chop this alien! Right, enough about swords, I won't mention them for the rest of the book. That just doesn't make any sense. Why would either one of these charecters (the Old Man and the Young Man, that is) be trained with a sword, let alone BOTH of them, completely randomly? If this is to be the case, shouldn't it be to some end? No, the impression is that H got up one morning, decided that swords were cool, wrote a couple of paragraphs about it, and the next day decided he liked something else. Now I consider Number of the Beast to be kinda sketchy, but in Stranger in a Strange Land (a high point!) Old Man demonstrates to Yound Man how Unreasonably Trained / Perfected one of his harem of Beautiful, Sexually Liberated Women is. "Dorcas, what color is that house over there?" "This side is white." OOO Dorcas is so highly trained as a witness that she never assumes anything! EVAR! Does this fact ever resurface? Not that I recall. Nevermind the fact that never making an assumption would cripple your functioning in real life. It's never a problem for Dorcas. But then, she's (Unsuprisingly) Suprisingly Capable.
It goes on. By the time I decided to stop reading Heinlein the books had become an exercise in how far I could roll my eyes without straining myself. The collected works of H undoubtedly contain some worthwhile stuff, and he certainly deserved to be published. But he was somewhat short of being a literary badass ninja. Arthur C. Clark and countless others could kick his ass.
Not that we shouldn't try to prevent it, or that this isn't a new manifestation, but this sort of thing happens pretty much on every college campus, doesn't it?
But four officers couldn't remove one college student without using a taser? Give me a fucking break!
Have you ever tried to restrain anyone without seriously hurting them? It's hard to do. My sister worked with disturbed youth for a while, and had a number of stories about some 11 year old thinking that he was hard shit because it took half a dozen orderlies to restrain him. That's because nobody is allowed to sock you one in the stomach and restrain you before you get your breath back.
Most likely any of these cops could have delivered a good solid kidney punch to the guy while he was jumping up and down and yelling, and after that he would have been in no shape to continue resisting. But there are techniques for restraining someone without hurting them. Given the somewhat paradoxical nature of the task, I'll bet you can understand that they're not as effective as less restricted measures might be.
So instead of getting a couple of solid thumps and being led outside while dazed, this guy ends up with however many security types holding him down and it looks like they're kicking his ass. Maybe they are, or maybe they're just trying to hold his arms and legs in place without twisting them around and fucking up his joints or getting a sneaker to the chops.
This would be useful in high-precision formation flying
Presenting, The End of the Blue Angels, 2160 AD:
Blue 3: Blue 5, this is Blue 3, looks like you're a bit close. Please check your distance. Blue 5: Blue 3, looks like you are right. Initiating burn. B3: Not with the laser dri*Fgfje [no carrier] B2: Look out! B1: Get out of his way! B5: Huh? B4: Stay back! Uh, I gotta break formation! B1: Blue 4, stay on target! B4: Initiating burn. B2: Ahhh! Ze goggles, zey do nosF&^%% [no carrier] B5: Wait, where's Blue 3? etc...
Uhh, I was going to write more, but it just gets worse from here.
It's in that same spirit that I'm voting Republican in the next presidential election. Do you REALLY think one party rule is going to better under Democrats? I like the idea of one party controlling the White House and the other controlling Congress. It forces people to work together. Something this country BADLY needs now... and for the world as well before we damage things even more.
Mod parent up! While I haven't committed to this course of action myself, I am strongly considering it. Rudy Giuliani seems to be a nice social liberal / fiscal conservative... But anyway I find myself thinking that the reason GW Bush managed to screw up so much stuff is that he didn't have a strong opposition pointing out his hare-brained ideas. I've been identifying strongly Democrat, but maybe some of that is just 'cause GWB sucks so bad.
I loved the first Matrix movie, the second one was meh and the third one was crap in my opinion. They shouldn't have been done. But given the massive plot hole-ridden concept the original was based on, I guess they sorta painted themselves in a corner.
The Wachowski's were trapped into creating the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies by contractual obligations. The Matrix was never meant to have additional movies.
This conclusion comes from an NPR interview after the first film. The interviewer asked if there were going to be sequels. The W bros responded that they were burned out on the Matrix universe and were not interested in making sequels. Tracking down the actual interview is left as an exercise for the reader.
huzzah for you, and for Old Man Murray. I had the epiphany that adventure games suck while trying to play leisure suit larry - attmpting to make a grass skirt i needed to cut the grass. I had the ginsu knife, but it was too dull. I needed to sharpen the knife, but on what? Rocks? Sandpaper? A wheel? No, upon finding a walkthrough I was informed that I needed to sharpen the knife on the concrete steps of some building. "Of course!" I exclaimed, "This is retarded!"
Thanks for the leads. I imagined that long enough run-times would make them good, but maybe it wouldn't be practical on a large board.
I'm about 6k KGS and I have problems even if GnuGo gives me two stones, whereas I know 10k players who can crush GnuGo easily.
Interesting. I've played a lot against gnugo, a lot of my time to play has come when I am alone with a laptop but no internet. So I'm fairly tuned to it. I'm maybe about 15k, and at one point I was giving gnugo (v2.7, I think?) 3 stones on lvl 10 for approx. 50% win/loss. I knew I was much more tuned to GnuGo's play than I was to the average human's, but I didn't realize that different humans could have such divergant perceptions of GnuGo's ability.
I have a friend who once did exactly as you've done. He learned how to play Go only by playing against a program... but he was crestfallen.
I have also done this to a friend.
I was never that good: 2nd kyu at my best (in 1988).
Congratulations, that beats me. But while there may have been many levels of play between you and the 5-dan, and also many levels (in the other direction) between you and the computer, that doesn't mean that there aren't several levels between the computer and a beginner. Serious study will have most any non-player beating any computer. But I feel that there is more to it than some statements seem to imply. It's a long way from 2k to 5d, but it's also a long way from 22k to 15k. Someone who doesn't play Go may read enough "Even a weak player can beat any computer" and download a Go game and find themselves beaten for several months before they can start to take games from the computer. I just hope to keep beginners from being discouraged by this.
However, the point is that you become stronger much more quickly when you play against human players: they're far more inventive and resourceful.
I agree with you. I just wish to point out how much of an accomplishment beating the computer is. It is not a great accomplishment, it does not mean that you have developed great skill. But it is an accomplishment, it isn't nothing. Trivial for a 2k, or even a 15k. But 20-25k players shouldn't feel bad about not being able to beat the computer, as "Even weak players can beat the best computers" might suggest.
Even relatively weak Go players are still able to beat the best Go programs.
I frequently see statements like this. Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't feel like these statements lead to an accurate picture of (computer) Go in non-players.
About 2 months after I started playing Go I downloaded GnuGo, and began to play against it. GnuGo is a good, serious computer go effort, but it is not the best Go AI. It took me several months to be able to beat it on skill level 2. It was a year and a half, or maybe two years before I could beat it on skill level 10. I play Go with some level of seriousness, I read books about it, I try not to play mindlessly. Did it take me so long to be able to beat GnuGo because I am stupid or a weak player? I like to think not, though I don't devote the time to it that some do.
Rather, Go has a very large number of distinct levels of ability. I saw a link, but can't find it now (try searching the internet for 'go' =P) indicating that Go has more 1-standard-deviation wide levels of play than any other game. If you play someone and your win % is within a standard deviation then you can be said to be of the same level. Go has 30-some levels.
The point being that you can be way way better than your friend, and he can be way way better than someone who doesn't play, but you're both pond-scum compared to a amateur 2-dan, and the 2-dan isn't even capable of comprehending the play of high level pro players. I am, of course, making up these relationships here but you take my meaning.
So back to computer go. The better sounding (to me) statements than the one I quoted are more like 'even the best computer go player is easily beaten by a strong amateur'. On the heirarchy of Go players, computers are fairly far down, but they're still a fair bit better than zero-level, 30k ranked, never-played-before types. You can call computers 'weak', but you still have to have a somewhat developed idea of what's going on to be able to beat the good ones.
The "Even relatively weak go players..." style comments seem to suggest that any trained monkey can start slapping stones down and beating the computer go programs, and that isn't quite true.
As a result, recent advances in Go-playing programs have actually come simply because a new "evaluation function" has arisen: random play.
This is the 'Monte Carlo' method, yes?
I read some months ago about progress in computer go made this way. I went looking to download one (hoping for a freely available version), but all I found was a small bit that played 9x9 - or maybe it was even smaller.
It's a pretty dumb "evaluation function", and isn't really even very static (so it's much slower than, say, most chess evaluation functions), but it has still resulted in a reasonable increase in program strength.
Is anyone aware of someone's 'reasonably increased strength' computer go opponent I can download (that can play a full-sized board)? I can beat GnuGo, so I am looking for a tougher opponent for when I can't find a person to play against.
Now if you position a device like the PS3 as a Sony's PlayStation Media Center, suddenly it looks like a good deal. It can play BluRay, PS1 games, PS2 games, and games "designed for the BluRay format". All for less than competing BluRay players.
It's too bad that Sony didn't do this. They might have had a better response if they had.
Man, companies have been trying to come up with ways to sell people additional computer setups since the slowdown in 2000. Mostly they've been trying to do it with talk about "digital convergence" and the computer for their A/V setup. And it seems like a reasonable idea since the advent of the big flatscreen TV has pretty much doubled the price of a television in the "pretty nice" catagory (at least that's the way it seems to me).
But people just don't give a crap about digital convergence. Computers are computers, and television is television, and consoles are consoles. Companies everywhere are trying to cross these lines and penetrate new markets, but it's a product that nobody wants. One of two things will make this actually come true:
1) Someone will make the killer computer/tv/console cross-genre app 2) Hardware gets cheap enough that the digital convergence device and the cheap VCR/DVD/whatever device cost approx the same (~$100 or less).
I don't know if 1 is even possible, and every time hardware prices drop for 2 the computer vendors move to a more expensive hardware platform to keep margins up.
Kutaragi: "PS3 is not a games machine" the press, the consumers, parents, PTA, RIAA, LAPD, the world, etc.: "Whatever, stupid."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: NOBODY WANTS DIGITAL CONVERGENCE, EXCEPTING THE PEOPLE WHO SELL IT.
Would the better literacy and general education not yield more technology which would result in increased production?
It is of course a spiral. More of this leads to more of that leads to more of the other, which comes back to more of this.
One theory I read attributes western advancement (specifically agricultural advances, earlier than the industrial revolution) to the work of monks living monaseries with nothing to do but pray, garden, and read / write / think.
Actually no, frostbite isn't an issue. In vacuum, there is no heat transfer through convection. The only way to lose heat is through thermal radiation.
No, you'd lose heat as any liquid on your skin boiled away, wouldn't you?
Also you'd pick up heat from the sun. You mention radiation, but not how much of it ends up as heat. Doesn't the space station actually require cooling to keep people alive? I don't know what the final balance works out as...
80% of everything is crap, and that includes rap (pop or underground). But don't pretend that Bluegrass, folk, metal, new age, lo-fi, electronic, 70's music, or your favorite genera are any different.
You can pretend that the artists of yesterday were all super-awsome, but the fact is that you are not remembering the music that isn't memorable. There was plenty of crap in the 70's ( 80's, 60's 30's, 17th century, whatever), but nobody keeps it around because it was crap. All that's left from the past is the stuff someone thought was good. The illusion this creates is that music today is lame. It's like watching a sports highlights reel from the 70's and then watching a random game from today and being dissapointed that there isn't the same sense of narrative or drama.
Personally I blame the movement to genre-homogenious radio station formats for the quality of pop music, but that doesn't mean people aren't making good music in every / any genre. And just because you don't like rap doesn't mean it sucks in an absolute sense any worse than whatever it is you like to listen to.
I just checked with my friend who has an iPhone, and it -does- have hard buttons for volume on the side. So as much as he hates them, he didn't go crazy.
Pffft! You don't know the half of it! That screen may not have any physical buttons on it, but what does it show pictures of? BUTTONS! The first time we showed it to Jobs he just about shat a kitten. Nearly killed my intern. The only way we ever eventually got it by him was making a 'Steve Jobs Edition' special phone. We told him it was voice operated. Actually, we had Joe from accounting sitting outside the demo room and logged into the thing remotely. Steve was like "DIAL. 1. 9. 5. 2. 8. 5. 4. 4. 7 oops I mean 8. 7. 0." He was real impressed that our speech-to-text engine caught his mistake (of course he said it was on purpose). But damn, if he ever thought you had to actually touch those icons on screen his liver would probably explode. And apart from your skin, your liver is totally the biggest organ.
Slashdot Mirror
Zombies, people! Zombies!
Be on the lookout for other stories from South America:
- Cannibalism
- Murder Spree
- Violent Insanity
- People missing
- Further mystery disease
- Riot / uprising
- corpse mutilation
Organize before they rise!
Vernor Vinge actually IS a super-ninja badass.
I'll have to check out Apartness, thanks.
Ooops! I see the Heinlein good / bad discussion is taking place scant comments down from here. Oh well, if you care to shout me down your efforts are better saved for the "Re:Umm??? I thought Heinlein..." thread...
I don't want to come off as a troll / flamebait, but since curmudgeon99 took the time to express that Heinlein is/was cool I figure I can let it be known that some take the position that he isn't so cool.
If you don't want to hear about why I don't like Heinlein you should stop reading here. I encourage you to retain your own position on the matter, everyone gets an opinion.
[begin rant]
I'm no authority on Heinlein. I've only read about... maybe 6 or 8 of his books. It was enough to convince me not to read any more of them. So you know - "Time Enough for Love", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "The Number of the Beast", "The Moon is Harsh Mistress", "Starship Troopers", "Glory Road", "The Cat Who Walks Though Walls" (I think). One about the backyard nuclear shelter that gets nuked into the future, what was it called? Maybe some others, I don't recall. Here, I'll state just two of my criticisms.
- Cast of Charecters
The same people kept showing up in the random sampling of H books I read. Again and again. Their repetition becomes boring and vain. Here they are: 1) The Old Man - physically past his prime, this charecter is an analogue of H himself, and as such is naturally craftier than everyone else in the universe. 10 years ago he could have bested the universe in a fistfight as well, but that's the past. 2) The Young Man - This charecter is also H. He is unreasonably competent at everything except out-foxing the old man. The young man inevitably (meekly) becomes the protege of the old man, flattering H himself that the best of all young men should follow him, and that as a young man he himself could both identify and was fit to follow his ubermensch older self. 3) Beautiful, sexually liberated women - Of course all the women are beautiful and want to have sex with young Heinlien (and old Heinlien, when he can figure a way to justify it)! If these women were powerful female plot drivers then I could at least look at some of his work as pro-feminist. But the women (of course as unsuprisingly-suprisingly competent as the men) are none the less mostly just sex toys for the Heinlein figures. =P (NOTE: The Old Man may not be present in books written before H was himself old.)
- Cool Idea Injection
Don't get me wrong - I love a cool idea. But if you're writing a book and you want to put a cool idea in it, shouldn't it fit with the rest of the narrative? In Number of the Beast we have to run from the mysterious alien assasins! Hmm what do we need? I know, SWORDS! You know, back in the day I was the best swordsman on earth, trained by ninjas, and I killed 7 giants with one blow! Oh really, I also am a fabulously trained swordsman, and my master was an italian assasin! Here, allow me to chop this alien! Right, enough about swords, I won't mention them for the rest of the book. That just doesn't make any sense. Why would either one of these charecters (the Old Man and the Young Man, that is) be trained with a sword, let alone BOTH of them, completely randomly? If this is to be the case, shouldn't it be to some end? No, the impression is that H got up one morning, decided that swords were cool, wrote a couple of paragraphs about it, and the next day decided he liked something else. Now I consider Number of the Beast to be kinda sketchy, but in Stranger in a Strange Land (a high point!) Old Man demonstrates to Yound Man how Unreasonably Trained / Perfected one of his harem of Beautiful, Sexually Liberated Women is. "Dorcas, what color is that house over there?" "This side is white." OOO Dorcas is so highly trained as a witness that she never assumes anything! EVAR! Does this fact ever resurface? Not that I recall. Nevermind the fact that never making an assumption would cripple your functioning in real life. It's never a problem for Dorcas. But then, she's (Unsuprisingly) Suprisingly Capable.
It goes on. By the time I decided to stop reading Heinlein the books had become an exercise in how far I could roll my eyes without straining myself. The collected works of H undoubtedly contain some worthwhile stuff, and he certainly deserved to be published. But he was somewhat short of being a literary badass ninja. Arthur C. Clark and countless others could kick his ass.
[end rant]
I guess I'll have to be the first:
NEWSFLASH - COLLEGE BOOKSTORE RIPS OFF STUDENTS!!
Not that we shouldn't try to prevent it, or that this isn't a new manifestation, but this sort of thing happens pretty much on every college campus, doesn't it?
But four officers couldn't remove one college student without using a taser? Give me a fucking break!
Have you ever tried to restrain anyone without seriously hurting them? It's hard to do. My sister worked with disturbed youth for a while, and had a number of stories about some 11 year old thinking that he was hard shit because it took half a dozen orderlies to restrain him. That's because nobody is allowed to sock you one in the stomach and restrain you before you get your breath back.
Most likely any of these cops could have delivered a good solid kidney punch to the guy while he was jumping up and down and yelling, and after that he would have been in no shape to continue resisting. But there are techniques for restraining someone without hurting them. Given the somewhat paradoxical nature of the task, I'll bet you can understand that they're not as effective as less restricted measures might be.
So instead of getting a couple of solid thumps and being led outside while dazed, this guy ends up with however many security types holding him down and it looks like they're kicking his ass. Maybe they are, or maybe they're just trying to hold his arms and legs in place without twisting them around and fucking up his joints or getting a sneaker to the chops.
This would be useful in high-precision formation flying
Presenting, The End of the Blue Angels, 2160 AD:
Blue 3: Blue 5, this is Blue 3, looks like you're a bit close. Please check your distance.
Blue 5: Blue 3, looks like you are right. Initiating burn.
B3: Not with the laser dri*Fgfje [no carrier]
B2: Look out!
B1: Get out of his way!
B5: Huh?
B4: Stay back! Uh, I gotta break formation!
B1: Blue 4, stay on target!
B4: Initiating burn.
B2: Ahhh! Ze goggles, zey do nosF&^%% [no carrier]
B5: Wait, where's Blue 3?
etc...
Uhh, I was going to write more, but it just gets worse from here.
something that functions even better than the iPhone for a much cheaper price.
Just wait a year or so, and you'll be able to get that from Apple.
It'll be better, but it won't be any cheaper.
It's in that same spirit that I'm voting Republican in the next presidential election. Do you REALLY think one party rule is going to better under Democrats? I like the idea of one party controlling the White House and the other controlling Congress. It forces people to work together. Something this country BADLY needs now... and for the world as well before we damage things even more.
Mod parent up! While I haven't committed to this course of action myself, I am strongly considering it. Rudy Giuliani seems to be a nice social liberal / fiscal conservative... But anyway I find myself thinking that the reason GW Bush managed to screw up so much stuff is that he didn't have a strong opposition pointing out his hare-brained ideas. I've been identifying strongly Democrat, but maybe some of that is just 'cause GWB sucks so bad.
I mean really, what's the point in doing the same thing as everyone else ?
Back in school I used to think this. Then the teacher would say something like "Everyone else came up with what I was looking for except you, Adam."
Doh!
It's not the Wachowskis, it's the people who control them. And we already knew that about those guys anyway.
I loved the first Matrix movie, the second one was meh and the third one was crap in my opinion. They shouldn't have been done. But given the massive plot hole-ridden concept the original was based on, I guess they sorta painted themselves in a corner.
The Wachowski's were trapped into creating the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies by contractual obligations. The Matrix was never meant to have additional movies.
This conclusion comes from an NPR interview after the first film. The interviewer asked if there were going to be sequels. The W bros responded that they were burned out on the Matrix universe and were not interested in making sequels. Tracking down the actual interview is left as an exercise for the reader.
huzzah for you, and for Old Man Murray. I had the epiphany that adventure games suck while trying to play leisure suit larry - attmpting to make a grass skirt i needed to cut the grass. I had the ginsu knife, but it was too dull. I needed to sharpen the knife, but on what? Rocks? Sandpaper? A wheel? No, upon finding a walkthrough I was informed that I needed to sharpen the knife on the concrete steps of some building. "Of course!" I exclaimed, "This is retarded!"
Thanks for the leads. I imagined that long enough run-times would make them good, but maybe it wouldn't be practical on a large board.
I'm about 6k KGS and I have problems even if GnuGo gives me two stones, whereas I know 10k players who can crush GnuGo easily.
Interesting. I've played a lot against gnugo, a lot of my time to play has come when I am alone with a laptop but no internet. So I'm fairly tuned to it. I'm maybe about 15k, and at one point I was giving gnugo (v2.7, I think?) 3 stones on lvl 10 for approx. 50% win/loss. I knew I was much more tuned to GnuGo's play than I was to the average human's, but I didn't realize that different humans could have such divergant perceptions of GnuGo's ability.
I have a friend who once did exactly as you've done. He learned how to play Go only by playing against a program ... but he was crestfallen.
I have also done this to a friend.
I was never that good: 2nd kyu at my best (in 1988).
Congratulations, that beats me. But while there may have been many levels of play between you and the 5-dan, and also many levels (in the other direction) between you and the computer, that doesn't mean that there aren't several levels between the computer and a beginner. Serious study will have most any non-player beating any computer. But I feel that there is more to it than some statements seem to imply. It's a long way from 2k to 5d, but it's also a long way from 22k to 15k. Someone who doesn't play Go may read enough "Even a weak player can beat any computer" and download a Go game and find themselves beaten for several months before they can start to take games from the computer. I just hope to keep beginners from being discouraged by this.
However, the point is that you become stronger much more quickly when you play against human players: they're far more inventive and resourceful.
I agree with you. I just wish to point out how much of an accomplishment beating the computer is. It is not a great accomplishment, it does not mean that you have developed great skill. But it is an accomplishment, it isn't nothing. Trivial for a 2k, or even a 15k. But 20-25k players shouldn't feel bad about not being able to beat the computer, as "Even weak players can beat the best computers" might suggest.
Even relatively weak Go players are still able to beat the best Go programs.
I frequently see statements like this. Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't feel like these statements lead to an accurate picture of (computer) Go in non-players.
About 2 months after I started playing Go I downloaded GnuGo, and began to play against it. GnuGo is a good, serious computer go effort, but it is not the best Go AI. It took me several months to be able to beat it on skill level 2. It was a year and a half, or maybe two years before I could beat it on skill level 10. I play Go with some level of seriousness, I read books about it, I try not to play mindlessly. Did it take me so long to be able to beat GnuGo because I am stupid or a weak player? I like to think not, though I don't devote the time to it that some do.
Rather, Go has a very large number of distinct levels of ability. I saw a link, but can't find it now (try searching the internet for 'go' =P) indicating that Go has more 1-standard-deviation wide levels of play than any other game. If you play someone and your win % is within a standard deviation then you can be said to be of the same level. Go has 30-some levels.
The point being that you can be way way better than your friend, and he can be way way better than someone who doesn't play, but you're both pond-scum compared to a amateur 2-dan, and the 2-dan isn't even capable of comprehending the play of high level pro players. I am, of course, making up these relationships here but you take my meaning.
So back to computer go. The better sounding (to me) statements than the one I quoted are more like 'even the best computer go player is easily beaten by a strong amateur'. On the heirarchy of Go players, computers are fairly far down, but they're still a fair bit better than zero-level, 30k ranked, never-played-before types. You can call computers 'weak', but you still have to have a somewhat developed idea of what's going on to be able to beat the good ones.
The "Even relatively weak go players..." style comments seem to suggest that any trained monkey can start slapping stones down and beating the computer go programs, and that isn't quite true.
As a result, recent advances in Go-playing programs have actually come simply because a new "evaluation function" has arisen: random play.
This is the 'Monte Carlo' method, yes?
I read some months ago about progress in computer go made this way. I went looking to download one (hoping for a freely available version), but all I found was a small bit that played 9x9 - or maybe it was even smaller.
It's a pretty dumb "evaluation function", and isn't really even very static (so it's much slower than, say, most chess evaluation functions), but it has still resulted in a reasonable increase in program strength.
Is anyone aware of someone's 'reasonably increased strength' computer go opponent I can download (that can play a full-sized board)? I can beat GnuGo, so I am looking for a tougher opponent for when I can't find a person to play against.
A historical perspective:4 222
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=
Now if you position a device like the PS3 as a Sony's PlayStation Media Center, suddenly it looks like a good deal. It can play BluRay, PS1 games, PS2 games, and games "designed for the BluRay format". All for less than competing BluRay players.
It's too bad that Sony didn't do this. They might have had a better response if they had.
Man, companies have been trying to come up with ways to sell people additional computer setups since the slowdown in 2000. Mostly they've been trying to do it with talk about "digital convergence" and the computer for their A/V setup. And it seems like a reasonable idea since the advent of the big flatscreen TV has pretty much doubled the price of a television in the "pretty nice" catagory (at least that's the way it seems to me).
But people just don't give a crap about digital convergence. Computers are computers, and television is television, and consoles are consoles. Companies everywhere are trying to cross these lines and penetrate new markets, but it's a product that nobody wants. One of two things will make this actually come true:
1) Someone will make the killer computer/tv/console cross-genre app
2) Hardware gets cheap enough that the digital convergence device and the cheap VCR/DVD/whatever device cost approx the same (~$100 or less).
I don't know if 1 is even possible, and every time hardware prices drop for 2 the computer vendors move to a more expensive hardware platform to keep margins up.
Kutaragi: "PS3 is not a games machine"
the press, the consumers, parents, PTA, RIAA, LAPD, the world, etc.: "Whatever, stupid."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: NOBODY WANTS DIGITAL CONVERGENCE, EXCEPTING THE PEOPLE WHO SELL IT.
Would the better literacy and general education not yield more technology which would result in increased production?
It is of course a spiral. More of this leads to more of that leads to more of the other, which comes back to more of this.
One theory I read attributes western advancement (specifically agricultural advances, earlier than the industrial revolution) to the work of monks living monaseries with nothing to do but pray, garden, and read / write / think.
Actually no, frostbite isn't an issue. In vacuum, there is no heat transfer through convection. The only way to lose heat is through thermal radiation.
Evaporation, yo.
you only lose heat as fast as you radiate
No, you'd lose heat as any liquid on your skin boiled away, wouldn't you?
Also you'd pick up heat from the sun. You mention radiation, but not how much of it ends up as heat. Doesn't the space station actually require cooling to keep people alive? I don't know what the final balance works out as...
80% of everything is crap, and that includes rap (pop or underground). But don't pretend that Bluegrass, folk, metal, new age, lo-fi, electronic, 70's music, or your favorite genera are any different.
You can pretend that the artists of yesterday were all super-awsome, but the fact is that you are not remembering the music that isn't memorable. There was plenty of crap in the 70's ( 80's, 60's 30's, 17th century, whatever), but nobody keeps it around because it was crap. All that's left from the past is the stuff someone thought was good. The illusion this creates is that music today is lame. It's like watching a sports highlights reel from the 70's and then watching a random game from today and being dissapointed that there isn't the same sense of narrative or drama.
Personally I blame the movement to genre-homogenious radio station formats for the quality of pop music, but that doesn't mean people aren't making good music in every / any genre. And just because you don't like rap doesn't mean it sucks in an absolute sense any worse than whatever it is you like to listen to.
I just checked with my friend who has an iPhone, and it -does- have hard buttons for volume on the side. So as much as he hates them, he didn't go crazy.
Pffft! You don't know the half of it! That screen may not have any physical buttons on it, but what does it show pictures of? BUTTONS! The first time we showed it to Jobs he just about shat a kitten. Nearly killed my intern. The only way we ever eventually got it by him was making a 'Steve Jobs Edition' special phone. We told him it was voice operated. Actually, we had Joe from accounting sitting outside the demo room and logged into the thing remotely. Steve was like "DIAL. 1. 9. 5. 2. 8. 5. 4. 4. 7 oops I mean 8. 7. 0." He was real impressed that our speech-to-text engine caught his mistake (of course he said it was on purpose). But damn, if he ever thought you had to actually touch those icons on screen his liver would probably explode. And apart from your skin, your liver is totally the biggest organ.
* I am not an actual apple employee
Masses 136kg, weighs nothing.
Masses 9.32 slugs, you commie!