Yah, was about to post about the same. Spidey Super Stories are very good. Simple stories, usually two per comic, with a structure as much like an episode of Scooby-Doo as anything else. There are also kids involved helping Spiderman. I bought almost a complete set of them for my 4-year-old superhero-obsessed nephew a few years back on eBay and he's worn them out for years. You can also just read the regular comics and bowdlerize the content a bit where needed as you go along. I was surprised at how violent even some of my pre-Frank Miller Marvel silver age books were when thinking about them from a little kid's perspective for the first time. And all the taunting isn't so great either. It seems like half the dialogue is taunting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidey_Super_Stories
As Notorious B.I.G. put it, Mo Money Mo Engineers. I'm just finishing a book that has a long section on this exact topic and I'll karma whore with a link to this excellent paper with handy charts:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/pr_rev2.pdf "Skill Biased Financial Development: Education, Wages and Occupations in the U.S. Financial Sector." Scroll down to Figure 6 in particular, which compares the salaries of people with graduate degrees when they go into finance or engineering. They were roughly equitable for decades and then split in the late 80s. Currently, controlled for education level, people with grad degrees make 110K in finance vs 80K for engineers. Even the tight tech job market of the dot-com years didn't close the gap much. The paper also has good stuff on job risk and other factors.
After talking with plenty of people in both sectors, I was surprised the bankers are quick to admit that it's a "quants beget quants" situation. The more sophisticated analysis and arcane devices they come up with, the greater the demand for math and similar hard science PhDs to figure them out, improve them, and keep up with the competition. (MIT and other schools are now offering Financial Engineering, of course.) The managers of the banking companies have even less understanding of these things than the average Fortune 500 tech CEO has about the cutting edge engineering going on in the company he runs. They can only go on what the models and results say, which, considering how unregulated these markets are, means they are basically testing powerful new drugs on the general population.
All of this research hasn't made me think more regulation is the solution, however, at least not how people take that to mean. Monitoring and making data public is essential. Even the banks would appreciate an outside agency that could provide perspective on an industry that is still basically a black box even to the participants. (Current derivative market: $1.4 quadrillion. Enjoy.) That's really what is lacking, sunlight and the context to understand what is really happening system-wide. Goldman and others figure out ways to shave points here and there, but they're making money on concessions, not on the movie tickets.
Getting vaguely back on topic, the conclusion of the book I'm working on is that this is a cultural problem, not just a money problem. Risk aversion is at a peak after building for decades and the relative sure thing of a good salary on Wall St is beating out the chance to change the world or become the next [insert tech billionaire here] in Silicon Valley. This isn't about the current downturn, it's been going on for decades. The American appetite for risk is disappearing. In the same industry, this is why we see half of Valley startups being launched by immigrants these days. Not just because they are qualified, which of course they are, but because they have the entrepreneurial spirit.
Two of the book's co-authors are VC and angel veterans (Max Levchin, Peter Thiel) and they argue strongly that this is having serious effects even among those staying in tech. Instead of working on a big idea for years, some of the best and brightest are cashing out in various ways. Selling their IP, going with a quick-to-market improvement instead of the Big Idea, etc. It's hard to criticize someone for making a buck, but cumulatively it's a slow-moving disaster for innovation -- both by having less in tech and by having more on Wall St.
Something similar happened to me over a month ago. Two legit Skype charges on the credit card I have used with them. Identical, for a small amount. I hadn't made any purchases and was concerned about fraud. (Though I wondered why someone who had gotten my card info would spend it on $20 of Skype credit.)
I talked with the Skype support people, who were understanding and responsive, but not informative. I canceled my card, changed passwords, etc. Skype reversed the charges without my having to get MasterCard to do it. But they said only they would "investigate" how these charges appeared and would not give me any more information than that when I asked. So no idea if it was a Skype accident, fraud, or what. I don't use the automatic billing option.
"Where a proper space operaâ"from Star Wars to 2000â(TM)s Scientological BattleÂfield Earthâ"advertises with chilly pride its remoteness from life as we know it, the retooled Battlestar Galactica has plunged into the burning issues of the day. Suicide bombers, torture, occupation, stolen elections. Homosexuality, reproductive rights, religious fundamentalism, genocide. All of it grappled with, workshopped outâ"diegetically, you might say. With crater-voiced Edward James Olmos in the role of Adama, and the Galactica itselfâ"rather gaily lit in its â(TM)70s incarnationâ"now steeped in an atmosphere somewhere between that of a diving submarine and a backstreet in the Victorian East End, Moore and Eick have pushed and pushed at the hot buttons. UnÂaddressed as yet: steroid abuse, the slow-food movement, and the declining standard of international travel. But thereâ(TM)s still half a season to go."
Nice argument. "If you don't like it, leave." Always a classic. Perhaps some people love their country and want to live there but don't like the way it's being run. Imagine that. That's why an Other Russia slogan is "For Russia, Against Putin."
I thought we were discussing Russia. What does Iraq or the US have to do with anything? This is a fairly sophisticated audience for such amateur trolling, I would hope. Same for the distraction about Georgia and Ukraine. I was pointing out that similar groups of largely US govt and Soros-funded activists following a similar blueprint led to the overthrows of the named countries and that Russia took preventative measures. This was relevant to the LiveJournal discussion, unlike anything in your response.
You don't seem to be aware of what The Other Russia even is. Social group? It's a broad, non-ideological coalition of political and human rights groups, from liberals to nationalists. The only thing our members have in common is the desire to have free and fair elections.
Ah yes, all criticism of Putin is from "brainless cheerleading of the West." You'd make a good Nashi member with that logic. Sorry, you can be anti-Putin and not care about the US whatsoever, or think its politics are a corporate wasteland. I didn't even mention the West, let alone loving it. Putin is bad for Russia and for Russians, at least the 85% who aren't benefiting from the energy windfall. The West has been perfectly happy to deal with Putin, actually. As far as can be seen, they would love to have Putin stay for another 20 years just like they embrace dictatorship in Azerbaijan because it's convenient for pipelines and such.
Came to this late, so not sure if anyone who actually knows anything about LiveJournal in Russia or the Russian media has posted above. LiveJournal IS blogging in Russia, almost literally. Its acronym ZheZhe, for ZhivoiZhurnal, is what blogs are called generically. It has also proven relatively influential in a country where the television and major print media are under strict Kremlin control. Not as in the old Pravda days of one message one source, but with set themes to promote (temnyki), blacklists, and a long list of unmentionable topics.
Less than 20% of the Russian population is online, but outbreaks of support for otherwise ignored cases on LiveJournal have actually made it to mainstream prominence. Liberal groups (and others) have used it for organizing. All this was more than enough to set off the alarm bells of the Kremlin media masters. There have already been many cases of direct repression of bloggers and other web presences online (not just on ) using the broad extremism act. The Kremlin is wary of broader action because they don't want to make enemies of the active Russian internet community.
That's not the Putin model anyway, while what just happened to LiveJournal is exactly that. The annoying and/or potentially useful media entity is acquired by someone with tight Kremlin connections. Disloyal staff are replaced. Slowly or quickly, negative content about Putin and his administration disappears. Discussion is allowed as long as it doesn't cross the invisible line. The Putin regime has raised this to an art form, studying how the authoritarian governments of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine were toppled (all with a similar blueprint) and taking preventative action. The internet wasn't really much of a factor in those cases but with the increased penetration these days the Kremlin isn't taking any chances. They won't care about blogs not in Russian. Intimidation and a chilling effect is the point. The best repression is the kind you don't have to back up.
Despite its overwhelming control, the Putin power structure is brittle and they have to figure out how to transition this power monopoly come the March 2, 2008 presidential elections. It's no coincidence that this move "against" LiveJournal comes now. It was a potential loose end that can now be bullied, or snipped off if necessary. Notices go out to all publishers/editors/reporters/users telling them they must comply with all laws, including the extremely vague act against extremism the regime uses to confiscate materials and harass critics across the country.
The internet in Russia is in a precarious state. If it were more widespread and more heavily used as alternative media it would attract the Kremlin attention it has largely escaped so far. Other than the DDOS attacks opposition sites are hit by on a regular basis. (A la the Estonian sites during their diplomatic row with Russia. Our Russian sites kasparov.ru and namarsh.ru get hammered regularly.)
The optimists and Putin apologists inside and outside of Russia have been proven wrong again and again. Of course he won't... and he does. He doesn't care how something looks to the West as long as it doesn't affect his bottom line and the grasp on power. They have a huge amount of money at stake, the only thing he and his gang really care about. LiveJournal is just another piece in the game.
I've been running my own online publishing service since December 2002. Weekly e-mail chess training newsletters in html/pdf. It's been quite successful as a one-man show. I don't use any DRM and encourage subscribers to share with friends. Going on the "pixels are cheap" formula I priced things very low. Apart from the "lemonade game" aspect of having more subscribers with a lower price vs fewer paying more, having more happy subscribers works on word of mouth.
I could put bugs in the html and DRM into the PDF to see who is forwarding the newsletters to a dozen friends, but all you do is force people to take more care with their piracy. Since you'll never stop a determined pirate, why hassle everyone else? I'm sure this is "Doh!" material for the/. crowd.
I just watched "Reloaded" on DVD and was appalled by how obvious the CGI was in the big "army of Smith" fight scene. From all the cool "bullet time" photography and Hong Kong wire action we shifted to Street Fighter 6. It was a great looking video game, but it was still painfully obvious when they switched over. It's one thing for distant battle scene but when you are "close" enough to see facial expression, or lack thereof, it's just not cutting it. The faces were smoothed over and static.
Morpheus addressing Zion early on didn't convince either. It looked washed out and projected.
It probably didn't help that I just saw ROTK a few days ago on the big screen. I'm still amazed at how well that was done. There was barely a single moment of being distracted by obvious CGI even though it was far more ambitious than Reloaded. My suggestion, stay away from close-ups of human faces in CGI action sequences.
Even speech is still very tough. The only moments of CGI weakness in Gollum, who was staggeringly well done, were speaking close-ups, not action. So many muscles go into saying the letter "M" and it's a familiar look to every human (unlike leaping around on a mountain ledge).
Do they say anthing about my soon being able to turn off my computer without yanking the plug out of the wall (or changing the OS)? No, I'm not kidding. Used to be you couldn't get MS software to work. Now you can't get it to stop.
Fritz was the program that ended up tying for first instead of winning clear first when draw claim fiasco happened. It then lost the playoff against Shredder, the beneficiary of the fiasco.
The List program (and programmer) were disqualified for being suspected of being a derivative program and subsequently not responding to requests to inspect his code.
Eliminating the humans entirely has been suggested off and on for many years. Many of the same programs play online all the time without a human operator and engine-engine matches on the same PC are standard. Using a neutral server as intermediary would seem to be the best plan. Adding network capability wouldn't be any harder than making a GUI, certainly.
Tradition is probably the biggest impediment. Having humans making the moves on a real board, pressing a clock, and writing the moves down allow them to use regular arbiters and the human rules for the most part. That's how we ended up with the mess this year.
The rule in question about claiming a repetition draw BEFORE you make your move is just to make sure you confirm it's a draw on your own clock time. This makes sense for humans, but since a computer can detect repetitions trivially, enforcing that rule in a comp-comp event is like having a rule about no talking or eating at the board for them.
The uber comp-chess guys are splitting hairs about whether it was the GUI or the program itself that claimed the draw, and whether or not it actually claimed anything or was just pointing out that the repetition had occurred. This is mostly foolish because of course if the computer had seen anything better to play it wouldn't have repeated the position three times whether it was aware of the implications of the repetition or not. So any such repetition should be taken as a draw.
If the programmers want to add threefold repetition awareness, and most have, in order to use it for contempt purposes, that's great. (That way they can tell it to avoid repetitions against weaker opponents or in must-win situations unless the alternative is fatal. This is what we call the contempt setting.)
At the end of the day, the letter of the law was followed correctly. Because the machine did not follow the obsolete FIDE rules and claim the draw before making the move, the claim would have been disallowed no matter what the programmer wanted to do. (One hopes.) But the event highlights several weaknesses of using human rules in machine events and in letting operators interfere with programs at all.
I've used Mapquest a lot and tried Yahoo maps on occasion. Both are far more accurate in cities than in the suburbs and often seem to be guessing out in the country. Probably 90% of my searches are in Manhattan, checking the cross streets when all I have is a street address (there are arcane formulas for this but nobody knows them). Mapquest is accurate to the friggin' meter in New York City. (And where else matters?) You can tell how many steps from the corner a store is.
But when planning a trip in southern California I found it less accurate, though rarely annoyingly so. And up in the sticks in northern California near Oregon it was simply not up to date. Highway exits and roads newer than a year or even two usually weren't represented at all.
Directions might work eventually but they are often terribly inefficient. Try asking for directions to somewhere you know very well and see what you get. I've seen it give routes that are almost circular and definitely not quickest.
There has been a chess
message board discussion where the author of the article mooted his ideas
last week. I write for ChessBase and worked on both of the last big man-machine
matches (Kramnik-Fritz 2002 and Kasparov-Junior 2003).
For those here who claiming obvious Deep Blue superiority over
current micros because of how many chips it had and how many positions per second
it looked at, some chess knowledge would help. Deep Blue only played six games
and all have been analyzed to death. We know two things. One is that Deep Blue
beat Kasparov and that's the only thing most people care about, the result.
The other is that Deep Blue's play was far from perfect.
Years of human and computer analysis can about as close as you can to the
truth in chess. With that knowledge we can compare Deep Blue's moves to
those of the current top programs such as Fritz and Junior. And we have, extensively.
The bottom line is that they play better in many places, the same in others,
and worse only in very few. The overall level of play by the micros in the same
positions from the Deep Blue games is better. With Deep Blue in pieces that
is the only way to compare the quality of their chess. Positions per second
is interesting and not irrelevant, but time marches on and knowledge is important
too.
While the humans in these matches obviously have some interest in saying that
the program they are playing is the strongest, hundreds of other analysts don't.
And Kasparov and Kramnik aren't going to make fools of themselves by recommending
moves that could be easily shown to be inferior.
Kasparov played some of the most inconsistent and nervous chess of his life
in the pressure-cooker match against Deep Blue in 1997. He resigned in a drawn
position for the only time in his career and Deep Blue's other win, in the final
game, came in a total mental collapse by Kasparov and was the shortest loss
of his career in a serious game. All credit to the Deep Blue team, mission accomplished
and all that, but it wasn't the greatest chess.
Meanwhile, humans studied and learned. Kasparov's attempts to baffle Deep Blue
by playing intentionally inferior moves was ill-advised. That era was over,
he just didn't know it. But computers still have their weaknesses, as Kramnik
showed in the first half of the Bahrain match.
The top programs today running on the fastest micro hardware available play
better chess than Deep Blue '97. But the top humans play better, and smarter,
against them than Kasparov did in 97.
Finally! After the 28.80% jump this caused in their stock price, TMTA is finally worth more than the WorldCom in my portfolio that I'm keeping as a souvenir (at 0.068 per share it's not good for anything else).
Security guard? Maybe a collectively blind one. Ten thousand people looking at the same blurry, 10fps image isn't very helpful, at least not for identifying people. Most public cams are so lo-res and slow that unless we can get the crooks to move in slow motion and put their faces to the lens for a seconds, it's going to be limited to "hey, there's someone there, wearing something red, I think. Or maybe it's an Irish Setter, or a tomato."
As usual then, it's all about the bandwidth. High-res cameras with 30fps minimum, swivel and zoom controls, and why not toss in sound? Then maybe you've got something. That something would still be a privacy catastrophe, but at least it would be a crisp, interactive privacy catastrophe.
"Your Web browser appears to be set to block cookies. SkyandTelescope.com requires a cookie file, though you may visit the site without supplying any personal information, rendering the cookie anonymous. If you believe you reached this page in error, try clicking one of the links below to access our site."
Always interesting how much interest this man vs machine stuff can still generate.
My name is Mig Greengard and I'm doing the official live web commentary on the
Kasparov-Deep Junior match and worked with both Kasparov and one of the Junior
progammers (Shay Bushinsky) for over three years as the director of Kasparov's
now-defunct website.
There was a good attendance and a great deal of media coverage today for game
one, particularly considering it was a national holiday in the USA. (Well, almost.)
Kasparov had the white pieces in game one, which is an advantage. (Interestingly,
the Deep Junior team won the drawing of lots and could pick which color to have
in game one (and 3 and 5), and chose to start with black.)
He completely dominated the game, it was a total stomp. He played 'real' chess
instead of the dubious anti-computer style he used against Deep Blue in the
1997 match. Anti-computer chess involves trying to reach positions that computers
don't play well instead of just making what you think are the best moves. Deep
Blue showed that computers are pretty much beyond being vulnerable to these
tricks nowadays, although every once in a while you'll see a strong program
play like an idiot in a position it doesn't understand.
Kasparov prosecuted his advantage very quickly. In the press conference afterward
he showed how much he had learned about playing computers. One key, he said,
is that a computer doesn't understand results or practical chances, it only
understands the evaluation of the current position. So instead of trying to
swindle a way out of a bad position like a human Grandmaster would, by creating
maximum chaos and hoping the other guy makes a mistake, a computer just tries
to find the 'least-worst' move all the time. This is the only effective way
for computers to play chess, but in inferior positions it often makes them look
completely docile, if not pathetic.
He won't be able to do this in all six games, of course, and he'll probably
lose one just because a human can't play error-free chess for so long against
a strong opponent and computers punish errors ruthlessly. But game one showed
he's prepared to the gills, as usual, and along with the fact that he's the
strongest player in history should give him a decisive edge.
You can watch the games live with my commentary (and that of other commentators
on-site as I relay their words) at many
places on the web. Most of it is directed toward the level of the casual
fan, not the chess expert. The company I'm working with, ChessBase, publishes
Deep Junior and just about every other top chess program. (The program Fritz
just drew an eight-game match against the world's #2 rated player and current
world champion, Kramnik, in October 2001 in Bahrain. I was the webmaster and
commentator on that match as well. I think I prefer the cold here at home in
NY to the Bahraini humidity.)
As for the Deep Blue versus the current micros debate, that will be eternal
as long as Deep Blue is in pieces. It was obviously much more powerful, but
that doesn't mean it was a better chessplayer. We only have six games as evidence
of its strength. They were good, but they weren't godlike and Kasparov said
at the opening press conference that when you go over those games with Deep
Junior it's clear that it plays better in just about every moment. (Except for
two, which are the moves Kasparov has always suspected were the result of human
interference. But that's another kettle of conspiracy.) Deep Blue was far, far
ahead of its competitors in 1997, but computer chess programming has not stood
still for the past six years.
It's also worth noting that what constitutes a huge advantage in computer-computer
competition does not always translate into play against humans. A processing
power advantage of just 10% between two identical programs will cause a lopsided
score, but even a fourfold increase in processing power usually only means an
extra 30-40 rating point gain against open competition. That is, one more win
out of ten games.
I've spoken with Deep Blue's architect and other members of the IBM team on
several occasions. Their egos are almost as big as Garry's! Hsu's book on the
building of Deep Blue is almost as partisan as Kasparov's comments. They are
both very competetive people. Personally I don't think there was any human interference
in the DB match, but IBM's secretive and heavy-handed behavior needlesssly created
a great deal of circumstantial evidence and suspicion.
You can follow my reports and photos on Kasparov-Deep Junior at ChessBase.com
and I'll also be posting bits and ends at my site ChessNinja.com.
I will rarely take the word of any one reviewer, top 10 or not. They often have simple factual mistakes about products. But if you read a dozen or so comments you can usually put together a decent impression and collect useful data. Review spam campaigns like the Rush Limbaugh-led attack on Michael Moore's book are rare.
I would certainly rather have the reviews than not. I've bought many cool things from Amazon that I never would have considered or even found (music mostly) if not for the reviews and comments.
"Conserve data, backup with a friend." I regularly back up to a second hard drive and to CD-R. Every month or so I swap backup CDs with my girlfriend on the concept that it is unlikely both of our apartments burn down on the same day. It's an easy low-tech solution to offsite backup as long as you have someone you can trust that you see regularly. Do it with a co-worker or family member.
Actually, since she doesn't have a burner, she FTPs it to my machine and I burn it, which is another alternative in these days of broadband. Even with capped cable upload speeds she can send a few gigs overnight. Set up an FTP server and swap files.
If you are just backing up the same stuff, get the old media back each time so you can destroy it yourself.
Of course you should put some sort of encryption or other protection on your offsite data. Definitely do not include naked pictures of an ex-girlfriend on a backup you are keeping at your girlfriend's house. Just a suggestion.
What about all the people who used the "Nimda Distributed Backup Plan"? Infect all your machines with Nimda and let it send your files out to dozens of people around the world on a regular basis.
It's a bit low-tech, but since I moved to NY I've been getting four or five movies a week from the public library. The selection is vastly larger than my local Blockbuster, you can request things online (telnet lives!) and they send them to your local branch and then e-mail you when it comes in, you can have up to 15 requests active, you get the movies for a full week, and it's all completely free! Most films even come in DVD now. (The system is for books, too. Remember books?) It's amazing. Plus, when you pay your dollar-a-day overdue fee you get a warm fuzzy feeling for giving to the library, as opposed to handing four bucks to some mumbling chowderhead at the video megalopoly outlet. The NY site is here.
Slashdot Mirror
Yah, was about to post about the same. Spidey Super Stories are very good. Simple stories, usually two per comic, with a structure as much like an episode of Scooby-Doo as anything else. There are also kids involved helping Spiderman. I bought almost a complete set of them for my 4-year-old superhero-obsessed nephew a few years back on eBay and he's worn them out for years. You can also just read the regular comics and bowdlerize the content a bit where needed as you go along. I was surprised at how violent even some of my pre-Frank Miller Marvel silver age books were when thinking about them from a little kid's perspective for the first time. And all the taunting isn't so great either. It seems like half the dialogue is taunting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spidey_Super_Stories
As Notorious B.I.G. put it, Mo Money Mo Engineers. I'm just finishing a book that has a long section on this exact topic and I'll karma whore with a link to this excellent paper with handy charts:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/pr_rev2.pdf
"Skill Biased Financial Development: Education, Wages and Occupations in the U.S. Financial Sector." Scroll down to Figure 6 in particular, which compares the salaries of people with graduate degrees when they go into finance or engineering. They were roughly equitable for decades and then split in the late 80s. Currently, controlled for education level, people with grad degrees make 110K in finance vs 80K for engineers. Even the tight tech job market of the dot-com years didn't close the gap much. The paper also has good stuff on job risk and other factors.
After talking with plenty of people in both sectors, I was surprised the bankers are quick to admit that it's a "quants beget quants" situation. The more sophisticated analysis and arcane devices they come up with, the greater the demand for math and similar hard science PhDs to figure them out, improve them, and keep up with the competition. (MIT and other schools are now offering Financial Engineering, of course.) The managers of the banking companies have even less understanding of these things than the average Fortune 500 tech CEO has about the cutting edge engineering going on in the company he runs. They can only go on what the models and results say, which, considering how unregulated these markets are, means they are basically testing powerful new drugs on the general population.
All of this research hasn't made me think more regulation is the solution, however, at least not how people take that to mean. Monitoring and making data public is essential. Even the banks would appreciate an outside agency that could provide perspective on an industry that is still basically a black box even to the participants. (Current derivative market: $1.4 quadrillion. Enjoy.) That's really what is lacking, sunlight and the context to understand what is really happening system-wide. Goldman and others figure out ways to shave points here and there, but they're making money on concessions, not on the movie tickets.
Getting vaguely back on topic, the conclusion of the book I'm working on is that this is a cultural problem, not just a money problem. Risk aversion is at a peak after building for decades and the relative sure thing of a good salary on Wall St is beating out the chance to change the world or become the next [insert tech billionaire here] in Silicon Valley. This isn't about the current downturn, it's been going on for decades. The American appetite for risk is disappearing. In the same industry, this is why we see half of Valley startups being launched by immigrants these days. Not just because they are qualified, which of course they are, but because they have the entrepreneurial spirit.
Two of the book's co-authors are VC and angel veterans (Max Levchin, Peter Thiel) and they argue strongly that this is having serious effects even among those staying in tech. Instead of working on a big idea for years, some of the best and brightest are cashing out in various ways. Selling their IP, going with a quick-to-market improvement instead of the Big Idea, etc. It's hard to criticize someone for making a buck, but cumulatively it's a slow-moving disaster for innovation -- both by having less in tech and by having more on Wall St.
Something similar happened to me over a month ago. Two legit Skype charges on the credit card I have used with them. Identical, for a small amount. I hadn't made any purchases and was concerned about fraud. (Though I wondered why someone who had gotten my card info would spend it on $20 of Skype credit.)
I talked with the Skype support people, who were understanding and responsive, but not informative. I canceled my card, changed passwords, etc. Skype reversed the charges without my having to get MasterCard to do it. But they said only they would "investigate" how these charges appeared and would not give me any more information than that when I asked. So no idea if it was a Skype accident, fraud, or what. I don't use the automatic billing option.
Still cached here at the moment: http://bit.ly/b14Bx
At least until the lawyers notice and take a number in the long line of people trying to get things out of Google's cache.
Atlantic Mag on BG, Jan09
"Where a proper space operaâ"from Star Wars to 2000â(TM)s Scientological BattleÂfield Earthâ"advertises with chilly pride its remoteness from life as we know it, the retooled Battlestar Galactica has plunged into the burning issues of the day. Suicide bombers, torture, occupation, stolen elections. Homosexuality, reproductive rights, religious fundamentalism, genocide. All of it grappled with, workshopped outâ"diegetically, you might say. With crater-voiced Edward James Olmos in the role of Adama, and the Galactica itselfâ"rather gaily lit in its â(TM)70s incarnationâ"now steeped in an atmosphere somewhere between that of a diving submarine and a backstreet in the Victorian East End, Moore and Eick have pushed and pushed at the hot buttons. UnÂaddressed as yet: steroid abuse, the slow-food movement, and the declining standard of international travel. But thereâ(TM)s still half a season to go."
Nice argument. "If you don't like it, leave." Always a classic. Perhaps some people love their country and want to live there but don't like the way it's being run. Imagine that. That's why an Other Russia slogan is "For Russia, Against Putin."
I thought we were discussing Russia. What does Iraq or the US have to do with anything? This is a fairly sophisticated audience for such amateur trolling, I would hope. Same for the distraction about Georgia and Ukraine. I was pointing out that similar groups of largely US govt and Soros-funded activists following a similar blueprint led to the overthrows of the named countries and that Russia took preventative measures. This was relevant to the LiveJournal discussion, unlike anything in your response.
You don't seem to be aware of what The Other Russia even is. Social group? It's a broad, non-ideological coalition of political and human rights groups, from liberals to nationalists. The only thing our members have in common is the desire to have free and fair elections.
Ah yes, all criticism of Putin is from "brainless cheerleading of the West." You'd make a good Nashi member with that logic. Sorry, you can be anti-Putin and not care about the US whatsoever, or think its politics are a corporate wasteland. I didn't even mention the West, let alone loving it. Putin is bad for Russia and for Russians, at least the 85% who aren't benefiting from the energy windfall. The West has been perfectly happy to deal with Putin, actually. As far as can be seen, they would love to have Putin stay for another 20 years just like they embrace dictatorship in Azerbaijan because it's convenient for pipelines and such.
Came to this late, so not sure if anyone who actually knows anything about LiveJournal in Russia or the Russian media has posted above. LiveJournal IS blogging in Russia, almost literally. Its acronym ZheZhe, for ZhivoiZhurnal, is what blogs are called generically. It has also proven relatively influential in a country where the television and major print media are under strict Kremlin control. Not as in the old Pravda days of one message one source, but with set themes to promote (temnyki), blacklists, and a long list of unmentionable topics.
Less than 20% of the Russian population is online, but outbreaks of support for otherwise ignored cases on LiveJournal have actually made it to mainstream prominence. Liberal groups (and others) have used it for organizing. All this was more than enough to set off the alarm bells of the Kremlin media masters. There have already been many cases of direct repression of bloggers and other web presences online (not just on ) using the broad extremism act. The Kremlin is wary of broader action because they don't want to make enemies of the active Russian internet community.
That's not the Putin model anyway, while what just happened to LiveJournal is exactly that. The annoying and/or potentially useful media entity is acquired by someone with tight Kremlin connections. Disloyal staff are replaced. Slowly or quickly, negative content about Putin and his administration disappears. Discussion is allowed as long as it doesn't cross the invisible line. The Putin regime has raised this to an art form, studying how the authoritarian governments of Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine were toppled (all with a similar blueprint) and taking preventative action. The internet wasn't really much of a factor in those cases but with the increased penetration these days the Kremlin isn't taking any chances. They won't care about blogs not in Russian. Intimidation and a chilling effect is the point. The best repression is the kind you don't have to back up.
Despite its overwhelming control, the Putin power structure is brittle and they have to figure out how to transition this power monopoly come the March 2, 2008 presidential elections. It's no coincidence that this move "against" LiveJournal comes now. It was a potential loose end that can now be bullied, or snipped off if necessary. Notices go out to all publishers/editors/reporters/users telling them they must comply with all laws, including the extremely vague act against extremism the regime uses to confiscate materials and harass critics across the country.
The internet in Russia is in a precarious state. If it were more widespread and more heavily used as alternative media it would attract the Kremlin attention it has largely escaped so far. Other than the DDOS attacks opposition sites are hit by on a regular basis. (A la the Estonian sites during their diplomatic row with Russia. Our Russian sites kasparov.ru and namarsh.ru get hammered regularly.)
The optimists and Putin apologists inside and outside of Russia have been proven wrong again and again. Of course he won't... and he does. He doesn't care how something looks to the West as long as it doesn't affect his bottom line and the grasp on power. They have a huge amount of money at stake, the only thing he and his gang really care about. LiveJournal is just another piece in the game.
Saludos, Mig Greengard
Editor, http://theotherrussia.org/
I've been running my own online publishing service since December 2002. Weekly e-mail chess training newsletters in html/pdf. It's been quite successful as a one-man show. I don't use any DRM and encourage subscribers to share with friends. Going on the "pixels are cheap" formula I priced things very low. Apart from the "lemonade game" aspect of having more subscribers with a lower price vs fewer paying more, having more happy subscribers works on word of mouth.
/. crowd.
I could put bugs in the html and DRM into the PDF to see who is forwarding the newsletters to a dozen friends, but all you do is force people to take more care with their piracy. Since you'll never stop a determined pirate, why hassle everyone else? I'm sure this is "Doh!" material for the
I just watched "Reloaded" on DVD and was appalled by how obvious the CGI was in the big "army of Smith" fight scene. From all the cool "bullet time" photography and Hong Kong wire action we shifted to Street Fighter 6. It was a great looking video game, but it was still painfully obvious when they switched over. It's one thing for distant battle scene but when you are "close" enough to see facial expression, or lack thereof, it's just not cutting it. The faces were smoothed over and static.
Morpheus addressing Zion early on didn't convince either. It looked washed out and projected.
It probably didn't help that I just saw ROTK a few days ago on the big screen. I'm still amazed at how well that was done. There was barely a single moment of being distracted by obvious CGI even though it was far more ambitious than Reloaded. My suggestion, stay away from close-ups of human faces in CGI action sequences.
Even speech is still very tough. The only moments of CGI weakness in Gollum, who was staggeringly well done, were speaking close-ups, not action. So many muscles go into saying the letter "M" and it's a familiar look to every human (unlike leaping around on a mountain ledge).
I dunno. I'm not sure I want my cell phone to know where my browser has been.
Getting all your employees to do it is the main problem. There is no way you're going to get the consistency you need.
Another reason is liability. Having a company you can sue is nicer than having to cut your own throat by firing someone who screws up.
Do they say anthing about my soon being able to turn off my computer without yanking the plug out of the wall (or changing the OS)? No, I'm not kidding. Used to be you couldn't get MS software to work. Now you can't get it to stop.
Fritz was the program that ended up tying for first instead of winning clear first when draw claim fiasco happened. It then lost the playoff against Shredder, the beneficiary of the fiasco.
The List program (and programmer) were disqualified for being suspected of being a derivative program and subsequently not responding to requests to inspect his code.
Eliminating the humans entirely has been suggested off and on for many years. Many of the same programs play online all the time without a human operator and engine-engine matches on the same PC are standard. Using a neutral server as intermediary would seem to be the best plan. Adding network capability wouldn't be any harder than making a GUI, certainly.
Tradition is probably the biggest impediment. Having humans making the moves on a real board, pressing a clock, and writing the moves down allow them to use regular arbiters and the human rules for the most part. That's how we ended up with the mess this year.
The rule in question about claiming a repetition draw BEFORE you make your move is just to make sure you confirm it's a draw on your own clock time. This makes sense for humans, but since a computer can detect repetitions trivially, enforcing that rule in a comp-comp event is like having a rule about no talking or eating at the board for them.
The uber comp-chess guys are splitting hairs about whether it was the GUI or the program itself that claimed the draw, and whether or not it actually claimed anything or was just pointing out that the repetition had occurred. This is mostly foolish because of course if the computer had seen anything better to play it wouldn't have repeated the position three times whether it was aware of the implications of the repetition or not. So any such repetition should be taken as a draw.
If the programmers want to add threefold repetition awareness, and most have, in order to use it for contempt purposes, that's great. (That way they can tell it to avoid repetitions against weaker opponents or in must-win situations unless the alternative is fatal. This is what we call the contempt setting.)
At the end of the day, the letter of the law was followed correctly. Because the machine did not follow the obsolete FIDE rules and claim the draw before making the move, the claim would have been disallowed no matter what the programmer wanted to do. (One hopes.) But the event highlights several weaknesses of using human rules in machine events and in letting operators interfere with programs at all.
I've used Mapquest a lot and tried Yahoo maps on occasion. Both are far more accurate in cities than in the suburbs and often seem to be guessing out in the country. Probably 90% of my searches are in Manhattan, checking the cross streets when all I have is a street address (there are arcane formulas for this but nobody knows them). Mapquest is accurate to the friggin' meter in New York City. (And where else matters?) You can tell how many steps from the corner a store is.
But when planning a trip in southern California I found it less accurate, though rarely annoyingly so. And up in the sticks in northern California near Oregon it was simply not up to date. Highway exits and roads newer than a year or even two usually weren't represented at all.
Directions might work eventually but they are often terribly inefficient. Try asking for directions to somewhere you know very well and see what you get. I've seen it give routes that are almost circular and definitely not quickest.
There has been a chess message board discussion where the author of the article mooted his ideas last week. I write for ChessBase and worked on both of the last big man-machine matches (Kramnik-Fritz 2002 and Kasparov-Junior 2003).
For those here who claiming obvious Deep Blue superiority over current micros because of how many chips it had and how many positions per second it looked at, some chess knowledge would help. Deep Blue only played six games and all have been analyzed to death. We know two things. One is that Deep Blue beat Kasparov and that's the only thing most people care about, the result. The other is that Deep Blue's play was far from perfect.
Years of human and computer analysis can about as close as you can to the truth in chess. With that knowledge we can compare Deep Blue's moves to those of the current top programs such as Fritz and Junior. And we have, extensively. The bottom line is that they play better in many places, the same in others, and worse only in very few. The overall level of play by the micros in the same positions from the Deep Blue games is better. With Deep Blue in pieces that is the only way to compare the quality of their chess. Positions per second is interesting and not irrelevant, but time marches on and knowledge is important too.
While the humans in these matches obviously have some interest in saying that the program they are playing is the strongest, hundreds of other analysts don't. And Kasparov and Kramnik aren't going to make fools of themselves by recommending moves that could be easily shown to be inferior.
Kasparov played some of the most inconsistent and nervous chess of his life in the pressure-cooker match against Deep Blue in 1997. He resigned in a drawn position for the only time in his career and Deep Blue's other win, in the final game, came in a total mental collapse by Kasparov and was the shortest loss of his career in a serious game. All credit to the Deep Blue team, mission accomplished and all that, but it wasn't the greatest chess.
Meanwhile, humans studied and learned. Kasparov's attempts to baffle Deep Blue by playing intentionally inferior moves was ill-advised. That era was over, he just didn't know it. But computers still have their weaknesses, as Kramnik showed in the first half of the Bahrain match.
The top programs today running on the fastest micro hardware available play better chess than Deep Blue '97. But the top humans play better, and smarter, against them than Kasparov did in 97.
Finally! After the 28.80% jump this caused in their stock price, TMTA is finally worth more than the WorldCom in my portfolio that I'm keeping as a souvenir (at 0.068 per share it's not good for anything else).
Security guard? Maybe a collectively blind one. Ten thousand people looking at the same blurry, 10fps image isn't very helpful, at least not for identifying people. Most public cams are so lo-res and slow that unless we can get the crooks to move in slow motion and put their faces to the lens for a seconds, it's going to be limited to "hey, there's someone there, wearing something red, I think. Or maybe it's an Irish Setter, or a tomato."
As usual then, it's all about the bandwidth. High-res cameras with 30fps minimum, swivel and zoom controls, and why not toss in sound? Then maybe you've got something. That something would still be a privacy catastrophe, but at least it would be a crisp, interactive privacy catastrophe.
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There was a good attendance and a great deal of media coverage today for game one, particularly considering it was a national holiday in the USA. (Well, almost.) Kasparov had the white pieces in game one, which is an advantage. (Interestingly, the Deep Junior team won the drawing of lots and could pick which color to have in game one (and 3 and 5), and chose to start with black.)
He completely dominated the game, it was a total stomp. He played 'real' chess instead of the dubious anti-computer style he used against Deep Blue in the 1997 match. Anti-computer chess involves trying to reach positions that computers don't play well instead of just making what you think are the best moves. Deep Blue showed that computers are pretty much beyond being vulnerable to these tricks nowadays, although every once in a while you'll see a strong program play like an idiot in a position it doesn't understand.
Kasparov prosecuted his advantage very quickly. In the press conference afterward he showed how much he had learned about playing computers. One key, he said, is that a computer doesn't understand results or practical chances, it only understands the evaluation of the current position. So instead of trying to swindle a way out of a bad position like a human Grandmaster would, by creating maximum chaos and hoping the other guy makes a mistake, a computer just tries to find the 'least-worst' move all the time. This is the only effective way for computers to play chess, but in inferior positions it often makes them look completely docile, if not pathetic.
He won't be able to do this in all six games, of course, and he'll probably lose one just because a human can't play error-free chess for so long against a strong opponent and computers punish errors ruthlessly. But game one showed he's prepared to the gills, as usual, and along with the fact that he's the strongest player in history should give him a decisive edge.
You can watch the games live with my commentary (and that of other commentators on-site as I relay their words) at many places on the web. Most of it is directed toward the level of the casual fan, not the chess expert. The company I'm working with, ChessBase, publishes Deep Junior and just about every other top chess program. (The program Fritz just drew an eight-game match against the world's #2 rated player and current world champion, Kramnik, in October 2001 in Bahrain. I was the webmaster and commentator on that match as well. I think I prefer the cold here at home in NY to the Bahraini humidity.)
As for the Deep Blue versus the current micros debate, that will be eternal as long as Deep Blue is in pieces. It was obviously much more powerful, but that doesn't mean it was a better chessplayer. We only have six games as evidence of its strength. They were good, but they weren't godlike and Kasparov said at the opening press conference that when you go over those games with Deep Junior it's clear that it plays better in just about every moment. (Except for two, which are the moves Kasparov has always suspected were the result of human interference. But that's another kettle of conspiracy.) Deep Blue was far, far ahead of its competitors in 1997, but computer chess programming has not stood still for the past six years.
It's also worth noting that what constitutes a huge advantage in computer-computer competition does not always translate into play against humans. A processing power advantage of just 10% between two identical programs will cause a lopsided score, but even a fourfold increase in processing power usually only means an extra 30-40 rating point gain against open competition. That is, one more win out of ten games.
I've spoken with Deep Blue's architect and other members of the IBM team on several occasions. Their egos are almost as big as Garry's! Hsu's book on the building of Deep Blue is almost as partisan as Kasparov's comments. They are both very competetive people. Personally I don't think there was any human interference in the DB match, but IBM's secretive and heavy-handed behavior needlesssly created a great deal of circumstantial evidence and suspicion.
You can follow my reports and photos on Kasparov-Deep Junior at ChessBase.com and I'll also be posting bits and ends at my site ChessNinja.com.
I will rarely take the word of any one reviewer, top 10 or not. They often have simple factual mistakes about products. But if you read a dozen or so comments you can usually put together a decent impression and collect useful data. Review spam campaigns like the Rush Limbaugh-led attack on Michael Moore's book are rare.
I would certainly rather have the reviews than not. I've bought many cool things from Amazon that I never would have considered or even found (music mostly) if not for the reviews and comments.
Mig
"Conserve data, backup with a friend." I regularly back up to a second hard drive and to CD-R. Every month or so I swap backup CDs with my girlfriend on the concept that it is unlikely both of our apartments burn down on the same day. It's an easy low-tech solution to offsite backup as long as you have someone you can trust that you see regularly. Do it with a co-worker or family member.
Actually, since she doesn't have a burner, she FTPs it to my machine and I burn it, which is another alternative in these days of broadband. Even with capped cable upload speeds she can send a few gigs overnight. Set up an FTP server and swap files.
If you are just backing up the same stuff, get the old media back each time so you can destroy it yourself.
Of course you should put some sort of encryption or other protection on your offsite data. Definitely do not include naked pictures of an ex-girlfriend on a backup you are keeping at your girlfriend's house. Just a suggestion.
What about all the people who used the "Nimda Distributed Backup Plan"? Infect all your machines with Nimda and let it send your files out to dozens of people around the world on a regular basis.
It's a bit low-tech, but since I moved to NY I've been getting four or five movies a week from the public library. The selection is vastly larger than my local Blockbuster, you can request things online (telnet lives!) and they send them to your local branch and then e-mail you when it comes in, you can have up to 15 requests active, you get the movies for a full week, and it's all completely free! Most films even come in DVD now. (The system is for books, too. Remember books?) It's amazing. Plus, when you pay your dollar-a-day overdue fee you get a warm fuzzy feeling for giving to the library, as opposed to handing four bucks to some mumbling chowderhead at the video megalopoly outlet. The NY site is here.
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