DrTodd13

Consciousness transfer to a human-like robotic body and brain may be down the road but in the interim, we will soon (soon being relative, 50 or 100 years...not necessarily too close) have the capability to produce nanobots that can go in and repair all damage due to time from the body. Lifespans of 1000s of years or indefinite may be possible. If such technology is indeed possible, I doubt God will allow humans to possess it. I can't constrain God but He did at one point reduce human lifespan to around 120 years for a reason and I don't see that reason as having changed. Another version talks about how each man is appointed once to die and so while very long lifespans might be allowed, indefinite postponement of death might not be. For the person that said he once was a Christian but was now an atheist. I hope that you realize that being an atheist requires as much faith as being a deist or theist. In the continuum of likelihood of God's existence, both extremes require faith. In many cases it is impossible to prove a negative and this is one such case. You can't prove that God doesn't exist so you can be rational and say that the probability is low that he exists but to conclude to a certainty that He doesn't exist is not a scientific rational conclusion, it is an irrational faith/belief. And yes, I am agnostic about flying purple dinosaurs as well. I think the odds that they exist on earth or elsewhere are very low but I can't make the statement that they don't exist.

I've tinkered with this convention as well. I have found it useful in some systems as it frees up 2♠ for another useful bid. I don't think it is fair to characterize something that I did for a constructive reason to be a "purely destructive method." Sure, there are hands where 2♥ will lose but there are hands where it will gain and you have to add in the benefits of the freed up 2S bid that counteract any negatives of the 2♥ bid. Ultimately, the majority will get their way. If they don't like facing this bid it will be outlawed under GCC. If the pros like it, it will be allowed under super-chart. They should just be honest and say there isn't any rhyme or reason about what is allowed versus disallowed other than people's reaction to the bid. There is no objective standard. It is all subjective and they should admit that. It is no benefit to classify things as destructive. If enough people want to play something and it becomes mainstream then it will be accepted and allowed. If one side introduces randomness and the other side tries to battle randomness with fixed definitions then you may certainly not have room to express all hand types. It may turn out that the best way to battle randomness is with more randomness. Find a way to double such that the 2♥ responder can't determine what opener's suit is and let him bid 2♠ only to have opener correct to 3♥ which can now be defeated. People don't like to be forced out of their comfort zones so they would sooner ban something than have to adopt a complex defense, especially one based on randomness, to battle it.

Sorry for wasting your time Ben. :unsure: I agree with what you say though. The more I read the less sure I am. There aren't any disinterested parties here and I don't know how to really draw a good conclusion short of becoming a climatologist. GW proponents even admit The lag is a fact. Even on here I've got GW proponents to admit to this but they trot out the "well maybe the first part of the warming has some other cause but that latter 4/5 is definitely from the CO2." This result violates Occam's razor so you better have a damned good reason for believing this to be the case. Does anybody have any documents which refutes the stuff presented in this documentary with scientific papers? I'm a bit surprised the whole cosmic ray influence made it into this documentary because I only heard about that for the first time pretty recently. I thought it was based on a pretty new paper.

Ah....ad hominem...the last resort when you don't know enough to refute with facts.

Weird. The link works for me. I just tried clicking on it. And I'm not introducing doubt. I'm only posting a link. ;) Seriously, try going to google video and searching for global warming swindle and you'll probably find it.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Wake up folks. Politicians love a complicated tax code because it allows them to try to engineer society by rewarding or punishing certain behaviors and they also love it because it lets them payback their big contributors. To create a flat tax is the equivalent of depriving politicians of some degree of power. Reducing their own power is not something that politicians generally do.

You mean just like most openings bids in most systems? Fred Gitelman Bridge Base Inc. www.bridgebase.com It is all a matter of degree again isn't it? The rules seem to indicate that if the difference is a matter of a few points but keeping the same hand shapes then it doesn't require a pre-alert. For 3N though, the point difference seems to be larger and some hand types are present in one variety but not in another. It is a judgement call but for me this is sufficient to qualify for inclusion in the stated rule.

On BBO, I'm not even sure I would pre-alert but when the bid comes up I would alert and offer one of the suggested definitions of the bid described in this thread. Then I would send a message to opps saying that I know they may be unfamiliar with this treatment and offer to let them discuss a defense now in the open. Can someone tell me a precise definition of how much one has to change a system before it becomes a different system? You are going to have to say either 1) any change makes the old system into a new system or 2) you are going to have pull a number out of your ass and/or talk about "how big" the change is. Personally, I like the former definition because there is essentially no way to quantify how big some change is or to agree on how many changes of what magnitude constitute a system change. If we change to an unfamiliar system now we have to pre-alert. So for me personally, I don't buy this convention versus system discussion. If you are using an opening bid that is very unfamiliar to opponents then I think you should pre-alert it even if it is in the context an otherwise unremarkable system. Moreover, in this case, it seems that the definition of 3N does change depending on seat and vulnerability which I think qualifies it for a system pre-alert. Finally, at this point, I would forbid them from using this system in the ACBL because of the two-system rule. "Pass" is not some special call that grants magical powers. In this system, pass has one meaning for Glen and one for his partner. Her passes are equal to Glen's passes + all the weak hands Glen is opening 3N. To me, they are not playing the same system because they have a different mapping of hands onto the available calls.

Sure, people know that 4♥ can be weak and you aren't expecting to make it but if you bid 3N and say "to play," I can guarantee you that people are not going to be expecting you bidding 3N on hands where you know there is no hope of making it. I agree that any non-determinism makes something natural and unconventional into something natural and conventional. If the rules/definitions don't reflect this then the rules need to be changed.

Call it natural if you wish so long as you call it conventional also and therefore give SOs the right to regulate it. Mind you, I would regulate it because I'm an anarchist but I do being in alerting and proper disclosure which I think both should be done for this bid.

While it might sound to you "like disbelief that anyone could have the gall to want to know", it was intended to to focus on the negativity that you and a few others offered up against a non-conventional bid. I certainly don't have anything against unusual systems or conventions. For goodness sake, I play a forcing pass system almost everyday on BBO. There have been few comments about how people don't like this opening from the standpoint of its likelihood of success. I am not getting the impression that people want to stop you from using it so long as you disclose it properly. Therein lies the rub, most don't seem to believe that you are disclosing properly. Opposite a passed hand pd, non-vul, I may want to bid 3N with a classic 4m hand planning on running if/when I get doubled. If you think about it long enough you can conclude that this sort of hand does want to play 3N but I think most people hearing the explanation "I want to play 3N" will believe that you have at least some hope to make it. I don't care if the bid has 3 different meanings, 2 of which have hope of making and the third where you know you won't make it but this must be disclosed.

First, I don't think it is a good idea to teach 3NT as a minor preempt to inexperienced players. Second, a bid that is to play, and the responses are to play, except for Gerber, is quite simple to play. Third, I think, using the results of this thread, that we will be able to better describe this bid, both in initial white box text and subsequent reply to a query. As well we look forward to any others who can help us describe this bid properly. For comparison, take a 4♥ opening white vs red in third seat by expert players. This bid is not even alerted, as it is to play. Would you like to try an attempt at describing the style used by world class players? Would you try explaining when they open 1♥, 2♥, 3♥ and 4♥ in this position? If we are having a big thread trying to figure out how to explain something, then it certainly is not easier than "8 cards in clubs or diamonds with 5-9 points." Whether a beginner should play this or not is a different matter but at least stating the meaning of the bid is certainly easier than what you currently use. If you roll multiple hand types into one bid, my opinion is that it should be alerted. I am on the fence of calling it natural. To answer your question, if someone asks about their style they owe them an answer. They have worked long and hard to gain the experience to know when to bid 1, 2, 3, or 4 in this situation and why should they just hand over the information, right? I have sympathy for this point but disclosure seems to overrule it. I don't care if the explanation is long and convoluted. I think the explanation is owed and that the answer of "I don't have to educate you" or "general bridge knowledge" is not sufficient.

Do you think a player who has read two bridge books should be playing these conventions. I don't. Respectfully, you're digging a hole Glen. To say that a relative beginner would have more trouble with "any 4-level minor preempt" compared to "we can't really specify what we mean by 3N but we know we want to play it there and by the way we make this bid sometimes randomly" is really over the top. From the data I've heard so far, your relative beginner is so confused by this bid that they aren't using it! I'm sure you could teach almost any relatively new player to bid 3N on any hand they would previously have bid 4m and then teach what 4♣ pass or correct means.

If pressed, I think you'd find most people willing to say that any mixed strategy is a destructive method just because of their unfamiliarity or distaste for them. The whole destructive method thing is really a big club that the powers-that-be can use to squash anything they don't like. There are no rules for what should or should not be categorized this way which leaves the door open for a multitude of abuses.

That is not the right way to analyze this bid. It does not matter what the overall IMP average is. It only matters what the IMP average would be for the other ways of handling the hand types being rolled into 3N. By dividing hand types in certain ways I may create a system where all the hand types except one generate great results but I have to pay the price for the other hand type. To say you shouldn't use 3N could mean a complete system change that would alter all the good results you were getting with all your other opening bids. Having said that, I don't think this applies to this particular case. You're saying you can't roll 24bal hands into your pre-existing strong artificial opening...assuming you have such an opening? If the alternative to bidding 3N is passing or preempting some long suit then you have to compare what effect 3N is getting you versus the effect of eliminating those hand types from 3N would have on your other bids. In practice though, I tend to agree with Ben. It seems this is creating randomness for no particular reason.

All the scholars are mocking this James Cameron documentary. He obviously has an agenda and is trying to push it. The names were very common in that era. Others ossuaries have been found with these same names. You can't prove anything based on the existence of a few common names. Scholars say that if that family had a tomb it would have been in Galilee and not Jerusalem. Moreover, the family was poor and would not have been able to afford such a tomb.

With regard to observing neutrinos before photons from supernovae, this certainly has to be the case for intragalactic supernovae, not intergalactic ones. Across inter-galactic distances wouldn't you expect photons to catch up to slower than light speed neutrinos? The reason I ask about escape velocity is that at one point they thought neutrinos might be a substantial fraction of dark matter but dark matter seems to be gravitationally bound to galaxies and if neutrinos have escape velocity you would expect a gradient of neutrino flux at the core of a galaxy extending outward with density inversely proportional to the cube of the distance. If neutrinos didn't have escape velocity you would expect a sharp boundary at the "edge" of the galaxy.

Is there any debate now that neutrinos have rest mass? I thought without rest mass it would be impossible for neutrino oscillation and that with rest mass neutrinos must oscillate and that since oscillation has been observed that neutrinos must have rest mass. On a side note, do neutrinos emitted near the core or near the edge have galactic escape velocities?

Sorry, but no. A psych, by definition, is a deliberate departure from agreed meaning. If a player makes a mistake, he has in no way psyched. You can't determine whether the person made a mistake or did it deliberately. If they say they made a mistake it is self-serving. If they lie in answer to a direct question from the TD, they're cheaters. While they're not likely to get caught, especially in online bridge where there's no opportunity to detect mannerisms characteristic of lying, if they do it frequently enough the pattern should emerge and they'll get punished. Yes. They would be cheaters if they lied but saying that people will track this stuff, a pattern will emerge and they'll get caught is ridiculous.

See the multi-threaded features in .NET. Of course .NET "easier" can be considered to be using a C-5 Galaxy instead of car to move stuff to Vegas. The aircraft would be faster and able to handle a lot more, but driving that C-5 is not really easier than the car, and does take a fair bit of fuel. This is what I do for a living so I know what I'm talking about. Threads and locks suck. If this is your model for parallel programming you are going to have no end of problems. There's quite a bit of research showing that any parallel model based on threads and locks will have tons of inherent problems. You can try to abstract it away in cases but the problems will always be there.

Sorry, but no. A psych, by definition, is a deliberate departure from agreed meaning. If a player makes a mistake, he has in no way psyched. You can't determine whether the person made a mistake or did it deliberately. If they say they made a mistake it is self-serving.

Unfortunately no. For memory, storage and network bandwidth you have to consider latency, capacity and bandwidth with latency usually being the determining factor for performance. 20 years ago, in the time it took for one memory operation you could do say 5 or 6 CPU operations. Now, in the times it takes for one memory operation, you can do 200 or more CPU operations. This is why on-die caches were introduced. The first processors didn't have them but now we usually have 3 levels of cache that try to reduce the number of operations to main memory since it is so terribly slow compared to a CPU cycle. The size of memory has gotten better faster than its latency (speed of light problems yo) but still not at an exponential rate. Memory bandwidth has gotten better but not exponentially with higher front-side bus rates and multiple memory ports. Storage - very similar story here. The disk is mechanical and the head can only move so fast so latency is terrible. We are talking roughly 10ms which is an eternity in CPU cycles. Again, capacity and bandwidth have gone up but not exponentially. Network - latency...speed of light man. Capacity and bandwidth the same thing for networks and again they've increased but not at the same rates as CPU performance. I don't know what you mean by software. Programmer productivity is probably what has improved the least over the years.

Whoever wrote that article is either misinformed or intentionally dumbed stuff down too much. You may have seen in the news recently a report from Intel about a 1.8 Teraflop chip with 80 cores. This was using a 60nm or larger process so it doesn't have anything to do with hafnium. Hafnium will be used for 45nm products coming out sometime this year. The 1.8 Teraflop chip is not really a foray into high performance computing. The functions investigated by this test chip will go into mainstream desktop and server chips. Nobody working on this problem has an answer to the memory problem. You'd like a non-NUMA organization but increasing memory ports is not an answer. They'll probably make the memory interfaces serial and then will have plenty of pins for many distinct memories which will dramatically increase memory bandwidth at the cost of programming simplicity. There are essentially two kinds of programs...embarrasingly parallel and all the rest. Things like raytracers fall into the embarassingly parallel group. You can divide up the picture into chunks and each processor works on its own chunk and the processors don't have to talk to each other or exchange data much to do their work. The existing programming model doesn't make it easy to write these sorts of programs but due to the limited interaction between processors it is not all that difficult either. The current programming model includes C, C++, Java, .NET. There is nothing special about Java or .NET that fundamentally makes it a better environment for parallel programming. Conversely, there are a range of other programming models all of which you've probably never heard of that do make it easy to write such programs. However, these other programs models only work on certain types of problems and it is not useful for general purpose parallel programming. Trying to take non-embarrasingly parallel programs that are currently sequential and make them parallel is usually a very difficult undertaking. Even expert parallel programmers make tons of errors doing this. Some errors may not show up for years. There is a lot of research going on for how to make writing general purpose programs in parallel easier but it is not clear how much they help or who the winner will be.

Hafnium is pretty rare. I remember seeing a story a couple years ago about a possible military use for hafnium where they would "pump" hafnium so that its electrons would remain in artificially higher orbits. Then there was a theory that you could trigger a cascade where all the electrons would collapse to their normal orbits releasing a lot of energy, i.e., kaboom. It was later shown that the chain-reaction to release all the energy at once was not possible but nevertheless the article did discuss how expensive these weapons would be due to the relative rarity and expense of hafnium. Processor dies are really pretty small. What most people think of as the chip is actually the package. The internal die is more on the order of 1 square centimeter. Not a lot of hafnium would be used for each die so expense and rarity are less an issue for Intel. A lot of people are confusing compute power for network bandwidth. Most computers have enough power to play full-screen video but real-time full-screen video would be an enormous bandwidth hog. An HDTV signal uses about 25Mbps. Standard definition uses between 4 and 7Mbps. At the moment, most broadband users would be lucky to get 4Mbps. Smaller video at crappier resolution is more doable of course but this is thinking like an end-user which most people are. The problem for video is at the source. Say the video stream is 1Mbps. Currently everything BBO does is unicast. If you extend that model to video then you would need 1000Mbps just for video if you have 1000 people watching vugraph. This sort of bandwidth is prohibitively expensive. You could use something like Peer-to-Peer TV to dramatically reduce the bandwidth requirements at the source. Just saying "open the BBO interfaces" is not as simple as it seems. If you start out designing a closed system, it is really tempting to send all 4 hands to every player at the start of the hand and rely on the client to only display the appropriate one. This makes the programming easier as the same message can be sent to each player rather than a different message for each player. This sort of protocol is unacceptable for an open interface since clients could simply display all 4 hands. The other problems with open interfaces have been noted in previous messages but nothing stops people from having a suit calculator running now. It is true that if you open the interface somebody could integrate one which would make cheating more tempting. From Fred's perspective, faster processors would mean being able to sustain a higher number of people online at a time. However, the trend now is not towards single-threaded performance but multi-threaded performance. Much of BBO is still single-threaded, as I understand it, so this trend might not benefit BBO very much. Going into the BBO server and parallelizing it will be difficult and have all the problems of writing parallel code. If you've ever done it you'd know it isn't easy.