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Submission + - Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory to Win at 'Jeopardy'

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: USA Today reports that Arthur Chu, an insurance compliance analyst and aspiring actor, has won $102,800 in four Jeopardy! appearances using a strategy —- jumping around the board instead of running categories straight down, betting odd amounts on Daily Doubles and doing a final wager to tie — that has fans calling him a "villain" and "smug". Arthur's in-game strategy of searching for the Daily Double that has made him such a target. Typically, contestants choose a single category and progressively move from the lowest amount up to the highest, giving viewers an easy-to-understand escalation of difficulty. But Arthur has his sights solely set on finding those hidden Daily Doubles, which are usually located on the three highest-paying rungs in the categories (the category itself is random). That means, rather than building up in difficulty, he begins at the most difficult questions. Once the two most difficult questions have been taken off the board in one column, he quickly jumps to another category. It's a grating experience for the viewer, who isn't given enough to time to get in a rhythm or fully comprehend the new subject area. "The more unpredictable you are, the more you put your opponents off-balance, the longer you can keep an initial advantage," says Chu. "It greatly increases your chance of winning the game if you can pull it off, and I saw no reason not to do it." Another contra-intuitive move Chu has made is playing for a tie rather than to win in "Final Jeopardy" because that allows you advance to the next round which is the most important thing, not the amount of money you win in one game. "In terms of influence on the game, Arthur looks like a trendsetter of things to come," says Eric Levenson. "Hopefully that has more to do with his game theory than with his aggressive button-pressing."

Submission + - What Snowden and Manning Don't Understand About Secrecy 4

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Investigative journalist Mark Bowden writes in the Atlantic that what is troubling about Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden is not that they broke the oaths they swore when they took their classified government jobs, but the indiscriminate nature of their leaks proceeding from a Julian Assange-influenced, comic-book vision of the world where all governments are a part of an evil plot against humanity. Bowden, the author of "Black Hawk Down" and "The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden", says there are many legitimate reasons for governments to keep secrets among them the need to preserve the element of surprise in military operations or criminal investigations, to permit leaders and diplomats to bargain candidly, and to protect the identities of those we ask to perform dangerous and difficult missions and the most famous leakers in American history were motivated not by a general opposition to secrecy but by a desire to expose specific wrongdoing. "Mark Felt, the “Deep Throat” who helped steer Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate reporting, understood that the Nixon Administration was energetically abusing the powers of the presidency. Daniel Ellsberg copied and leaked the Pentagon Papers because they showed that the White House and Pentagon had never really believed the lies they were telling about the Vietnam War." There have been a few things in the Manning and Snowden leaks that might have warranted taking a principled stand says Bowden, but the great bulk of what they delivered shows our nation’s military, intelligence agencies, and foreign service working hard at their jobs — doing the things we the people, through our elected representatives, have ordered them to do. "Both Manning and Snowden strike me not as heroes, but as naifs. Neither appears to have understood what they were getting themselves into, and, more importantly, what they were doing."

Comment Re:so pony up, Microsoft want agile extreme only (Score 1) 413

by GoatCheez (#44697187) Attached to: Devs Flay Microsoft For Withholding Windows 8.1 RTM
I agree with everything you said except for your last statement. Microsoft has stated multiple times the 8.1 upgrade is free for everyone with windows 8.

There really is not a lot that is different. As far as UI changes go, on the desktop, there is a button to bring you to the metro interface (that they call a "start button").
Also, the metro interface has a way to browse all applications now. Those are the only noticeable UI changes I've seen.

Under the hood, they've added a 3D printing driver interface.

So, really, there is not much to worry about and the available preview version should be adequate for testing. I still wish we could test on the final version however.

Comment Re:Well what do you know.... (Score 1) 264

by GoatCheez (#44624959) Attached to: <em>Urban Terror</em> Code Stolen
Zynga never actually stole all of the assets and represented it as their own. Even they are smart enough to know how dumb of an idea that is. Zynga will consistently steal the ideas for games however, which while still despicable, is much more legal. They've still had to settle with people despite walking that tightrope - but they have been able to afford to do so.

Comment Re:Well what do you know.... (Score 5, Interesting) 264

by GoatCheez (#44617861) Attached to: <em>Urban Terror</em> Code Stolen
I have to agree. Stealing the source to sell the game on Steam? In what world does anyone think that they could get away with that? Even major corporations aren't that stupid. It's literally the dumbest idea I've ever heard. When a thief steals something that isn't money, they have to sell it "underground" or just keep it for their own personal treasure. They don't sell it in an auction or through an ad in the paper because it would be obvious they stole it and the stolen goods would be returned, and the thief would gain nothing. How would the thief in this case think that they would never get caught? Change the color of some textures? Fucking asinine.

Submission + - US Promises Not to Kill or Torture Snowden 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The WSJ reports that Attorney General Eric Holder promises Edward Snowden won't be tortured or face the death penalty in a new letter hoping to persuade Russia not to grant him asylum or refugee status. Holder's letter, dated Tuesday, notes that press reports from Russia indicated Snowden sought asylum in part based on claims he could be tortured or killed by the US government. It is common for the US to promise not to seek the death penalty against individuals being sought in other countries, because even America's closest allies won't turn over suspects if they believe that person might be executed. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture found Bradley Manning's detention was 'cruel and inhuman'.

Submission + - 'Pink Mass' Has Made Westboro Baptist Church Founder's Mom Gay (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: On Sunday, July 14, the Satanic Temple, a New York-based organization that seeks to foster "benevolence and empathy among all people" through Satan, performed a ritual called a "pink mass" at the Mississippi gravesite of Catherine Idalette Johnston, mother of WBC founder Fred Phelps Jr. The aim? To "turn" the WBC founder's mom gay for all eternity.

"Upon completion of the pink mass ceremony, Catherine Johnston is now gay in the afterlife," notes the Satanic Temple website, which has the cheeky URL www.westboro-baptist.com. "Fred Phelps is obligated to believe that his mother is now gay ... [and] if beliefs are inviolable rights, nobody has the right to challenge our right to believe that Fred Phelps believes that his mother is now gay." The latter assertion appears to be a play on the WBC's own stance that their beliefs are totally infallible.

Vice reports that the idea for the pink mass came about in April, after the WBC threatened to protest the funerals of the Boston Marathon bombing victims. The website compared the the pink mass to "the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead, only much gayer."

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