Y. B. Normal
Ziv Caspi can't keep his mouth shut.
Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. Subscribe to "Y. B. Normal" in Radio UserLand. Click to see the XML version of this web page. Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog. blogchalk: Ziv/Male/31-35. Lives in Israel/Tel Aviv/Central and speaks Hebrew. Spends 20% of daytime online. Uses a Normal (56k) connection.  
Updated: 2002-09-22; 2:30:41 PM.
 

Sunday, July 07, 2002
The First International RoShamBo Programming Competition 5:37:22 PM • comment []Google It!

BoingBoing has a very interesting reference to a Rock-Paper-Scissors software competition. While the winning software is not in any way optimal as BoingBoing makes it to be, it is interesting to note that it works by having a large set of various "expert" algorithms, each specialized to beating one category of opponent, and then a selection algorithm that switches between them.

This sounds very much like universal experts, a topic I was once going to write my MSc thesis about.

Original article: Part 1, Part 2. Don't miss: winning program's explanation.

XBox Freon 5:16:08 PM • comment []Google It!

Paul Thurrott writes:

Purchasing an Xbox and UltimateTV device today would cost consumers $500 to $600; presumably a combination device would cost much less.

For some reason, people confuse devices such as UltimateTV with products such as TiVo. Although the two appear to be doing a similar thing (record a TV broadcast program on a hard disk for later viewing and other tricks), they are differ technically, and even more so in market positioning.

UltimateTV is an all-digital device. It can record only digital broadcasts. Specifically, it receives only DirecTV satellite broadcasts, which means you can't use it if you use any other TV service. The reason is simple: digital TV signals are encrypted to prevent theft of service, and different broadcasters use different encryption mechanisms.

TiVo, on the other hand, is an analog/digital hybrid. It sits between your STB and your TV, thus getting an analog video signal. A special chipset in the device does A2D conversion and compression before storing the program on your hard disk. Because TiVo sits after your STB, it works with both satellite providers  (DirecTV and DISH), as well as all CATV systems.

The crucial point is this: if you want to create a device that can record any TV signal, regardless of who your service provider is, your device must be able to accept the only signal that all providers ultimately generate: NTSC. Otherwise, you must sign contracts which each provider, because each provider has total control of who can decrypt the signal (not to mention that the actual decryption algorithm is also a carefully guarded secret by so-called CA companies).

As a result, if Microsoft wants Freon to work regardless of service provider, it must make it an analog/digital hybrid. While this is not too difficult to do, UltimateTV is not that device. 

© Copyright 2002 Ziv Caspi.

 
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