Granted, Blizzard does stand to benefit, but I believe that the actual SC AI implementation is not likely to be usable in SC2 without quite a bit of time investment. Of course, with SC2 being somewhat close to release, they probably already have an extensive AI in place, with quite a few man-hours of development invested in it. If this conference can illuminate new AI techniques usable in the RTS genre, it might prove very beneficial for Blizzard. However, I think SC2 will be too different of a game, compared to the original SC, for the SC AI to be easily portable into whatever framework they have.

That said, I do hope that Blizzard gets something from the conference, since it would only make the game that much better when it comes out :)

I think you are forgetting something pretty important. While I'm sure Blizzard will gladly grab the AI, provided it is released under a permissible enough license, I do not think they care all that much much. StarCraft 2 is (hopefully) just around the corner, so my best guess is that they are completely focused on that. While a Brood Wars AI would be nice, it is not likely to help much for a completely new game, with a whole ton of new variables, strategies, and game play mechanics. So if Blizzard really was behind the move, this would likely be an SC2 based competition, perhaps with some special beta release of the game.

What I find more likely is that the competition organizers wanted to give AI researchers a more complex challenge than the traditional "Move a robot around a box" or "Interact with a user" project. StarCraft is a sufficiently complex, but not insurmountable challenge, allowing researchers to try out their ideas in a simple, and competitive environment. The latter being especially important in determining how each strategy stacks up, and which ones may be worth pursuing. StarCraft was just a convenient, cheap, and easily available sandbox that could be adapted for the purpose.

Very good points, you completely correct. I can't wait until someday there's actual variety in mainstream music, instead of the weird mesh we have now. The real challenge, though, is getting the message out there. Anyone with any sort of say in these matters is so far removed from places where ideas originate. These people of power are also older, thus less likely to look toward newer media for creativity. Perhaps there is sense in getting ideas like this into traditional newspapers?

On a different note, software is where I think this has the most potential (I'm a software engineer though, so the bias is obvious). League of Legends is actually doing it in a really clever way. You get the full game for free, and can work your way up to all the optional characters you can buy, or you can get the full package for the cost of a traditional game, and if that's too much, you can just buy a few individual characters for a fraction of the price. The model is ingenious; it encourages you to donate, but does not give paid members any insurmountable advantages. I'm sure trying to sell it to a corporate board would be a nightmare though.

While I am very much for people generating their own content, there is certainly room in the market for large corporate producers as well. If the world depended on individual entities to make everything, we'd be lucky to have anything more than crude hammers and drafty shacks to live in.

You asked if passive consumption of entertainment is really any good; I would venture to say that is serves some purposes. Everyone needs an escape, the human mind simply cannot deal with everything that happens in the world. This content merely provides a simple and safe avenue to reach that. Other people might work out, drink, smoke, go clubbing, waste time on the internets, or what have you.

The main issue we face today is not who produces the content, but how it is owned and handled. Right now, the only way to get something is to pay a pre-defined price for it. This has been a workable system before, since most products required you to pay a static cost for material, large scale manufacturing, delivery, sales, the wages to support all this, as well as a more fluid cost criteria for profits and R&D. With much of the content we want getting digitized, though, there are less and less static costs associated with the process. A system where the majority of the revenue goes to recoup R&D cost, and then moving to nearly pure profit, is a system that can truly support the idea of patronage.

In fact, patronage, or paying what you believe the content is worth to encourage the creation of new content, has been around for a very long time. I believe the idea needs to be updated for modern usage, for instance, by making it really simple to donate, by suggesting pre-set donations, and by adding incentives or benefits for those that do donate, while not penalizing those that do not, but that's getting into details. The fact is, you can have both corporate and individual content generators, because they would target different markets.

A common argument is that patronage would not stop piracy, but I prefer to instead see it as *nothing* will stop piracy. As long as you are selling a product that people will actually, physically have, it will be pirated, end of story. Also, when you try keeping the products out of consumers hands, or otherwise close it down, many people will simply not buy your product because it will quickly grow stale and boring. So, why fight piracy then? Instead, your business model needs to be updated to account for it, and take advantage of the human mindset behind it.

Further, a lot of pirates are actually pretty reasonable people. They will download the game, song, or movie, and if they really like it, they will buy it. The issue then becomes a matter of price. If I get a game that provided me with $30 worth of entertainment, I would be happy to pay $30 for it, but I simply will not pay $60. Some may say that I should not have downloaded the game if I was not prepared to pay for it, but that is simply not how human nature works. We are creatures of curiocity; we like to try and to explore new things, and we always want the latest and greatest. I would even venture say that trying to change this would stifle innovation, and hurt your long term profits more than anything else. The simple fact that the content is out there means that a lot of people will be interested in it. Telling people they cannot have it is like telling the oceans to part, and let you through: When you can do something like that, you get your own religion.

I'm sure the VPN blocking policy is simply a bureaucratic decision. As soon as some senior MPAA shill caught wind that you could go through VPN to "steal" their content, the studios probably told someone near the top of the Hulu corporate chain that this should be strictly US only. From there on, it's a management decision, and outside the realm of any logic. You must remember, this is the Media industry. As I'm sure you know, being a /. reader, logic is not one of their strong points.

However, if we were to take a step back, there are pros and cons to international viewing. I think a major factor is that these companies have not realized you can offer to sell advertisement time to businesses in other countries, and then play said ads based on geolocation. You could probably even go through an intermediary, and have them handle the communication, and taxes, then send you a portion of the profit as "licensing" for next to no work on your part. However, there is also the question of licensing to consider. If the distribution rights to your content are already licensed in a country, then you can not just start offering a better service that would take customers from the broadcasters in that country. They most likely paid quite well for these rights, and have a good contract in the hands of their best lawyers. Sure, it would get you more money, and more good will to go this way, but it might also get you in legal trouble that you do not want. In that respect, their hands may really be legally tied.

All good points, which, I believe, illustrate some major problems with the current system. This is not something you can change overnight, and I'm not suggesting you try. However, it is a good goal to work towards. If you hate your job, start training for something you like. Worst case, you learn about a topic you enjoy, and don't take it anywhere. Best case, you can go into a new area and enjoy work a lot more, and lead an even more fulfilling life.

My response to fiannaFailMan later in the thread elaborates on this in a lot more detail.

Refer to the current "* Crisis."

Corruption, greed, intolerance, jealousy, and even paranoia; all of these things which are commonly attributed to human nature, I would argue first need to take root within your psyche. If you hate your work, then you will look around at others and go, "Those guys love their jobs, but I do not. Maybe if I had their position, I would like my job more." Then if you are skilled at the game of power, you will move to take the jobs you want, most likely destroying someone in the process. When you finally get there, you will find that nothing has changed; you still hate everything you are doing, though life outside your job is a bit easier now because of the extra perks you get.

Repeat this enough times, and your sub-conscious begins to believe that there is nothing more to life than money and power, since that's the only thing that has ever relieved the tedium. At that point, you will do anything to get more, and we get back to the human nature problems that all of us are so enjoying these days.

Ahh, I would venture to say that the advice is only as simplistic as you make it. In fact, entire novels could be written about the idea. If you take it absolutely literally, then it is certainly idealistic and optimistic, but I would like to highlight the critical difference with a question: Is your goal simply fun, or it is your true passion?

I did not explain the idea very well, but I would not suggest you pick something just because you did it as a hobby in high school. Instead, I say find your true calling; you'll know you got it right if you can overcome any pains to do it. After all, most people are not REALLY passionate about the roles you listed, they just see that those roles are the ones with the most money and power, and figure they should go in there to live the good life. I am saying that you need to overcome this natural desire to gravitate towards the jobs everyone idealizes, and instead move towards the job truly meant for YOU. As someone else brought up in a reply, there are people that might even love hauling trash. I happen to know such people myself.

Your example of the garage band illustrates this perfectly. The guy might enjoy music, and might even convince himself that this is what he wants, but he goes in there, and suffers constantly. What probably happened, is he saw all the media attention, money, and power heaped upon those successful in the business, and thought to himself, "Hey, I have a band. That could be me." In my view, this illustrates that he did not really understand what the job actually entailed, instead he just saw the rosy pastures, and wandered into the field, oblivious of the thorns. In his place, I would first research what it really means to run a successful band. There are plenty of artist testimonials that explain all the pains that come with the job. If that price is something I can afford to pay in order to pursue this passion, then nothing will stop me. On the other hand, if I feel a seed of doubt that it is worth it; if I think to myself, "Well, it sounds like a huge pain, but the money must be nice," then I will know immediately that this is not the job for me. In that case, I can still keep music as a hobby, so that someday, when I have more time and freedom, I may pursue it at my leisure, but when it comes to making a living, I will find something else to do.

Of course, life is not that easy. As many people pointed out, many roles are already filled in our current system, and the dependence on the huge service industry drives skilled people into dead-end jobs. Still, even in those situations you should constantly explore and expand your horizons. Who is to say your passion will not win out over the tedium of your boring life. It is certainly better than accepting that this is all there is to live. To make matters even more complex, your passions may change over the course of your life. Eventually, you may feel that you accomplished everything you wanted in your profession. Hopefully, when that day comes, you will have a small nest egg to allow you time to train yourself, and reach success in a new field.

I am with you, pick what you like, and move in that direction.

It is so refreshing to see someone really follow their passion. A huge percentage of the population today is stuck in jobs they do not like. This leads to resentment, anger, and eventually very negative release of these emotions. What's worse, the smartest of these make it to the top of the food chain, then take out all of this amassed anger on society. Had they not been pushed into fields that did not suit them, they would have most likely contributed a lot more to society, and left the positions they now occupy to those that could fill such roles while living a happier life, and contributing much more to the world.

The way I see it, the purpose of life is to do what you want, enjoy doing it, and enjoy helping others do the same. It is very unfortunate that this does not happen.

Piracy has been reigned in? When did that happen, I must have missed the memo.

Well, that's what I thought was arguing. Perhaps that wasn't what was understood. Hard to say. For me the discussion has been the purely theoretical possibility of using modern technology to send a large amount of data over frequencies that were previously used to send much less.

Tying it to the original topic, this was a roundabout way of saying you could do the same for wireless, and avoid the problem of overcrowded bands. Granted SNR would be a lot more of a problem for wireless, but you are also working at much higher frequencies, and you have other variables you can play with to improve signal quality, such as spatial multiplexing for 802.11n.

Sorry for the confusion, I did not mean to imply that infinite SNR was possible, but I was simply trying to illustrate a limit, showing that as we trend towards a higher SNR, we can grow the capacity. Obviously with 0 noise, we could have infinite capacity, but that situation is quite unrealistic, at least for now.

For your point 1, I don't recognize the formula offhand (Still need my morning coffee), but the formula is missing the R which you define right after, but has a B, which I'm guessing would be the 4k. I'll assume that's just a typo, but please let me know if I'm mistaken. If the formula is v2=4kTR, then the easiest thing to target would be the R, and not the T. We are already making progress in the area of high temperature super conductors. As those become a reality, we will get all that much closer to infinite SNR.

Remember, this is all part a discussion of whether it is possible to fit more than 56kbit/s of data into the 0-4000 Hz range. The idea of infinite SNR is getting pretty heavily into the realm of science fiction. I only used the formulas since they were brought up, in order to illustrate that they would not invalidate my point.

Ok, here's a pretty basic example; the first thing that comes to mind really. Obviously this is not something that anyone would waste time or money to build, for reasons mentioned earlier, and it would still take a fair bit of work to get off the ground.

You have a modern phone cable, which is usable for DSL signals. You have a carrier signal at 1kHz, so you sample 1000 times a second.

The data will be transferred by every frequency from 3000-4000, at 1Hz intervals (This could be much smaller, but this is for the sake of example. Normal DSL has at least this many divisions). During each sample interval, the data frequencies will have an amplitude of either 1 volts (=1), or 0 volts (=0). Transform the sampled data into the frequency domain, and analyze the 3000-4000 range. You will see a set of peaks form the 3000-4000. Each peak represents a binary 1, while each pit is a binary 0. Let's say 25% of that is checksum/protocol data, so you have every millisecond, 750 bits being sent. With a 1kHz carrier, you are now at 750 kbits/sec, using the 3000-4000Hz range, more after you add in compression.

This is all possible using modern hardware, and could probably be built with minimal investment and engineering effort. Noise at the 3000-4000Hz range could be practically non existent due to the quality of the cable and shielding, and noise at higher frequencies could be safely ignored, as it would not actually interfere with the data being transferred. Obviously, you would never see this on the market; who would pay for a 750kbit service that interferes with phone conversations, when you can pay for a 7.5mbit service for service that does not.

The main point to realize is that our hardware is already capable of picking up signal in the GHz range. For instance the difference between 1 GHz and 1.001 GHz. What this really means is we can tell the difference between something that pulses a billion times per second, and something that pulses 1 billion, and one million times per second. In other words the difference between a 1 nanosecond period, and a 999 ps period.

If you think there's a market, feel free to take this as a starting point, and roll with it.

Now first off, I'm not sure why you're trying to bring Nyquist's Theorem into this discussion. We've already established that we do not particularly care about reconstruction the analog signal, and certainly not about its accuracy. Please stop trying to change the argument.

Shannon's Limit is a much better an example. We have C = B * Log2(1+S/N). B is fixed, so we are left with the SNR as the determining factor. Now granted, there may be physical limits on how high this value could ever go, but I have not seen any proof of such, so I will not assume they exist until mathematically proven otherwise. With that in mind, any current limitation on this value is still technological (medium quality, techniques to minimize noise, etc), not physical. If you can prove the SNR fundamentally cannot go above a certain value, I would love to see it, and will gladly admit that you are correct. If not, then I thank you for proving my point: As SNR goes to infinity, so does the channel capacity follow. Q.E.D.

So you see, I do not need to change any laws, when they do not actually prevent me from doing something.