Weather Storm brings us an InformationWeek article about Wal-Mart's push for suppliers to RFID tag their product shipments. Wal-Mart seems to have lost patience in waiting for its suppliers to adopt the inventory tracking initiative. From InformationWeek: "The retailer says that beginning Jan. 30, it will charge suppliers a $2 fee for each pallet they ship to its Sam's Club distribution center in Texas that doesn't have an RFID tag. The charge is to cover Sam's Club's cost to affix tags on each pallet, says a Wal-Mart spokesman. The retailer hasn't taken such a strong-arm approach yet with the more than 15,000 suppliers that still haven't complied with its request to tag pallets and cases headed for its Wal-Mart stores. Instead, it seems focused on turning its 700-store Sam's Club warehouse-outlet division into an example of RFID supply chain technology in action, down to requiring item-level RFID in 22 distribution centers by 2010."
The researchers had agents play 50 games using different RL methods. They found that methods utilizing the cross-entropy policies performed better than methods that were hand-crafted. As they explained, the basic idea of cross-entropy is that it selects the most successful actions, and modifies the distribution of actions to become more peaked around these selected actions.
During the game, the AI agent must make decisions on which way to go, which are governed by ruled-based policies. When the agent has to make a decision, she checks her rule list, starting with the rules with highest priority. In Ms. Pac-Man, ghost avoidance has the highest priority because ghosts will eat her. The next rule say that if there is an edible ghost on the board, then the agent should chase it, because eating ghosts results in the highest points.
One rule that the researchers found to be surprisingly effective was the rule that the agent should not turn back, if all directions are equally good. This rule prevents Ms. Pac-Man from traveling over paths where the dots have already been eaten, resulting in no points.
Practical Archivist (Sally J.) sez, "As long as we're celebrating Rosie the Riveter in all her glorious variety, I'd like to add this North Vietnamese welder to the mix. According to the caption, she is a 'worker of the Electrical Motor Workshop in Hanoi.'
This photo is from a collection of North Vietnamese propaganda housed at the University of Wisconsin. I worked on it when I was in library school nearly 15 years ago. Glad to discover it's still up, although it seems funny how few of the photos I was allowed to include."
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(Thanks, Sally!)
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel reports on the latest in rock-n-roll gadgetry, the attitudinal Fucking Fucker all-tube guitar amp from Metasonix, which comes with many nihilistic humor touches: "The G-1000 consists of two totally independent amplifiers, with very different preamp sections. One channel is called the HAPPY channel. The other is called the ANGRY channel."
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Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets Source: Boing Boing | 20 Jan 2008 | 1:50 pm
In a two-part column in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Robert Silverberg tells the incredible story of the Cleve Cartmill affair: in 1944, John W Campbell published a story by the writer Cleve Cartmill that laid out an eerily accurate depiction of how the atom bomb would work, prompting a panicked -- and sometimes comical -- intelligence investigation into a putative conspiracy of science fiction writers:
Campbell provided the Military Intelligence man with Cartmill???s address???in Manhattan Beach, California. The link to the top-secret Manhattan Project based in Los Alamos was too obvious to overlook. Riley sent word to the California branch office of Intelligence that Cartmill should be placed under immediate surveillance; plainly he knew too much about our hush-hush A-bomb research. Who had tipped him off ? Both Cartmill and Campbell would need further watching.
And before long it began to seem as though a whole network of science fiction writers might be involved???a chain of conspirators. For example, the report continues, "It is established that Cartmill is very friendly with [ ], Retired U.S.N.R., who is associated with [ ] at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. This [ ] formerly was doing research work at Columbia University, and he is said to have accepted some material thought to be atomic copper from [ ] in order to measure it in the mass spectroscope at Columbia University. [ ] was advised by [ ] that the device was broken. He never received the material back from [ ]. One [ ] who has written for [ ] Magazine is said to be working with [ ] also. The possibility of the transmittal through [ ] to Cartmill has not so far been resolved. . . ."
Well, now it can be told, and you are quite familiar with the names of these sinister people. The retired naval man was Robert A. Heinlein. His Philadelphia Navy Yard associate, the former Columbia man, was Isaac Asimov. The one who sent the copper to Asimov and never got it back was Will F. Jenkins, who wrote science fiction under the pseudonym of Murray Leinster. The blanked-out magazine was Astounding, and the other writer working at the Navy Yard with Heinlein and Asimov was L. Sprague de Camp.
An anonymous reader alerts us to a story about efforts to modify the United States' space exploration plans to focus on asteroid missions rather than a lunar base. Scientists, astronauts, and former NASA division directors will be meeting next month to develop an alternative to the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration. We have previously discussed the possibility of a manned asteroid mission. Quoting: "Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now fear a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the space program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars operations--the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions. The first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan. If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead be flown to an asteroid in about 2025."
dulceLeche writes "While the OLPC was not designed with the American consumer in mind, people that took part in the Give One Get One program have been having fun with their XOs. The XO has a number of limitations, but with some work you can get Opera running, chat over your mesh network, and much more. An article at Geek.com explains what a few folks were able to do with their XOs."
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has up an article examining the rise of blogs/novels that make the transition to published books. Recent Japanese best-seller lists have been heavy with these texts, many of them actually written on cellphones for a cellphone reading audience. Commentators note the popularity of this form of literature coincides with cell providers moving to unlimited data packages. 'The affordability of cellphones coincided with the coming of age of a generation of Japanese for whom cellphones, more than personal computers, had been an integral part of their lives since junior high school. So they read the novels on their cellphones, even though the same Web sites were also accessible by computer. They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.'"
Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: a coiled cable-keeper in a shop in Melbourne (though the coil bore a label saying MADE IN USA). The cable came down from the ceiling to the cash-register, protecting the Ethernet cable that ran down from a drop-ceiling. I've been responsible for more than my share of truly ugly cable-runs with sudden drops in the middle of the room where the data needed to be -- a handsome little gizmo like this could have made my fugly hacks into decor.
Link Source: Boing Boing | 20 Jan 2008 | 7:42 am
The FBI is denying the existence of a file that details a program whereby US officials stole nuclear weapons secrets for eventual sale to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- but there's plenty of evidence for the file's existence:
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency???s Washington field office.
She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.
Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an ???outright lie???.
Weather Storm writes "Weather information from thousands of personal weather stations are being used for weather forecasting by several private and government agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Department of Homeland Security (DOH). The Citizens Weather Observation Program (CWOP) was created by a few amateur radio operators experimenting with transmitting weather data with packet radios, but it has expanded to include internet-only weather stations as well . As of September 2007, nearly 5,000 stations world-wide reported weather data regularly to CWOP's FindU database. The weather data is forwarded every 15 minutes to NOAA's Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS), checked for temporary and spatial consistency, than utilized by computer forecast models and internal forecast verification programs. In a Febuary 2007 report (pdf) DOH listed CWOP as a national assets to the 'BioWatch' Network, stating that data from personal weather station could be useful in weather forecasts for hazardous releases. In 2007, the FindU server received 422,262,687 weather reports which is a 29.5% increase over 2006." They certainly come in stylish shapes.
Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the University of East Anglia are working to develop computerized lip-reading systems. Lip-reading is extremely hard for humans to master, but a software-based system has several benefits over even the most highly trained expert. The ultimate goal of the project is to convert lip-read speech into text. 'Apart from being extremely helpful to hearing-disabled individuals, researchers say that such a system could be used to noiselessly dictate commands to electronic devices equipped with a simple camera - like mobile phones, microwaves or even a car's dashboard. England's Home Office Scientific Development Branch ... is currently investigating the feasibility of using lip-reading software as an additional tool for gathering information about criminals or for collecting evidence.'"
MySpace fixes a bug that allowed strangers to peer inside the photo galleries of some teens' private profiles. The bug, which has been around since at least October, is dealt with by MySpace barely 24 hours after Kevin Poulsen's story on the glitch appeared on the front door of Wired News.
BobB passed us a link to a NetworkWorld article, exploring the ongoing realization in business circles of the dangers online criminals pose. The piece raises the possibility that criminal elements are gaining access to US research labs in an effort to ferret out corporate and governmental information. One institute referred to in the article states: "Economic espionage will be increasingly common as nation-states use cyber theft of data to gain economic advantage in multinational deals. The attack of choice involves targeted spear phishing with attachments, using well-researched social engineering methods to make the victim believe that an attachment comes from a trusted source." We just recently discussed possible hacker involvement in several municipal blackouts.
caffiend666 writes "According to an AP news article, NASA engineers are concerned about the design for the new rocket meant to replace the shuttle. Work on the project has revealed that the first few minutes of flight could see 'violent shaking', a serious flaw that might destroy the craft soon after launch. 'NASA officials hope to have a plan for fixing the design as early as March, and they do not expect it to delay the goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. The shaking problem, which is common to solid rocket boosters, involves pulses of added acceleration caused by gas vortices in the rocket similar to the wake that develops behind a fast-moving boat.'
This hand-felted Pong pendant is on sale by its maker, Madebymoxie, through Etsy. Just the thing for the pretty retro-gamer in your life.
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(via Wonderland) Source: Boing Boing | 19 Jan 2008 | 9:07 pm
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The researchers had agents play 50 games using different RL methods. They found that methods utilizing the cross-entropy policies performed better than methods that were hand-crafted. As they explained, the basic idea of cross-entropy is that it selects the most successful actions, and modifies the distribution of actions to become more peaked around these selected actions.
Campbell provided the Military Intelligence man with Cartmill???s address???in Manhattan Beach, California. The link to the top-secret Manhattan Project based in Los Alamos was too obvious to overlook. Riley sent word to the California branch office of Intelligence that Cartmill should be placed under immediate surveillance; plainly he knew too much about our hush-hush A-bomb research. Who had tipped him off ? Both Cartmill and Campbell would need further watching.
