Scenario: Four contestants, who we will call A, B, C, and D, have to guess the price of an item without going over.
Problem: What are the optimum strategies for each player?
<Think, think, … still thinking!>
Contestant A should just try to hit the price minus a dollar.
Contestant B ?
Contestant C?
Contestant D should always bids either one dollar if everyone’s over bid or one dollar over the highest bid.
Your thoughts?
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Leave a Comment » | 
FUN | 
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Posted by reinkefj
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101214/D9K3LU500.html
‘Jeopardy!’ to pit humans against IBM machine
Dec 14, 7:12 AM (ET)
By DAVID BAUDER
*** begin quote ***
NEW YORK (AP) – The game show “Jeopardy!” will pit man versus machine this winter in a competition that will show how successful scientists are in creating a computer that can mimic human intelligence.
Two of the venerable game show’s most successful champions – Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter – will play two games against “Watson,” a computer program developed by IBM’s artificial intelligence team. The matches will be spread over three days that will air Feb. 14-16, the game show said on Tuesday.
The competition is reminiscent of when IBM developed a chess-playing computer to compete against chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
*** end quote ***
Now this will demonstrate something interesting to me. I doubt it will make great TV.
What’s next?
I know a robot playing Wheel of Fortune.
A pair of robot playing the Newlywed Game is just sick. Reminds me of the Will Smith movie “I, Robot”.
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Leave a Comment » | Technology | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
I think that Apple’s ‘reputation’ is unwarranted. Here’s where I start to pull at some threads in the King’s ‘garment’.
OK, I wanted to know what today’s date was.
The screen tells me that it’s Sunday at 1620. But what’s the date? So I go to the ‘System Preferences’ screen and sure enough I’ve checked ‘Show date and time’.
I see day and time, but no date.
An obvious oversight.
But, if this is obviously flubbed, makes you wonder what else is screwed up?
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Leave a Comment » | MAC OSX | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2277740/
Wall Street on Track for Second-Most Profitable Year Ever
*** begin quote ***
Exciting news from Wall Street! Thanks to low-interest rates and an influx of capital from the Fed’s emergency lending program and the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Bloomberg reports that 2010 is on track to be the second most-profitable year in Wall Street history. “Even if this quarter only matches the third, [Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley’s] revenue will top that of any year except 2009,” reporter Michael Moore writes. A third of the banks’ revenue comes from trading and investment banking, which were still flush with government money during the first quarter of 2010.
*** end quote ***
So, they make out and the taxpayers get screwed?
What’s wrong with this picture?
New rule: “Publicize the losses and privatize the profits.”
We need a game changer. And, what was wrong with electing Ron Paul?
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Leave a Comment » | Ranting | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121200857.html
Suicide bomber kills 6 troops in Afghanistan
By Ernesto Londoño Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 12, 2010; 2:58 PM
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KABUL – Six U.S. troops were killed Sunday when a man rammed a minivan packed with explosives into a newly built military installation in Kandahar Province, U.S. and Afghan officials said.
*** end quote ***
I think Ron Paul was right; “take the first thing smoking coming home”!
# # # # # posted 2010-12-13 08:33
Leave a Comment » | ADMINISTRIVIA | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
Sen. Sanders To Rich “Crybabies”: “When Is Enough, Enough?”
*** begin quote ***
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), a socialist, said “greed is like an addiction” and compares it to heroin and nicotine. “This reckless uncontrollable greed is like a disease,” Sanders said.
*** end quote ***
Argh! The word “socialist” says it all. Turn the question around. “When has the Gooferment taken enough from ‘its’ slaves?” The Bible only commands a tithe, 10%. Today, we can not calculate what the Gooferment Slaveholder takes from us. THere are taxes hidden in everything.
*** begin quote ***
Sanders asks how can anyone be proud to call themselves a “multimillionaire?”
*** end quote ***
Since a multimillionaire has to induce people to give them “certificates of appreciation” (i.e., money) and no one has asserted them using force or committing fraud, one must assume that they provided a valuable product or service. Politicians and bureaucrats excluded, of course, because they get their loot by force and fraud upon the “We, The Sheeple”.
Shame on Senator Socialist for his disrespect of people who serve others successfully.
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Leave a Comment » | Political, SOCIALISM | Tagged: SOCIALISM | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
… and they want me to rebuy it!
(You have to be kidding.)
Argh!
They will replace Snow Leopard because the machine went in with it and came out without it.
But they want me to rebuy the iWorks and iLife!
Same logic should apply.
Argh!
I hate computers. And, their enablers.
It’s either a product and it’s all my responsibilities. Or, it’s licensed, and my serial number is all that I should need.
Argh!
Now, I gotta find those disks.
# # # # # posted 2010-12-12 16:04
Leave a Comment » | MACBOOKAIR | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
The adventure continues.
My DROPBOX strategy has a flaw. For some reason, a significant portion of my PDF files were deleted. (No idea why?) Clearly, sharing among machines is a winner. BUTT (there’s always a big but) I need a ‘vaulting strategy’. The deletion could have been disastrous. But, it took four hours to recover the files. And, I immediately made a copy. So, I need a synchronization strategy for each platform. Basically a synchronization utility that copies the latest files to the sharing directory and updates back in. Have to think about that.
“Manifests” for each machine are obviously needed. I have to start that now on the other platforms. Need to have the link to the source and possibly the last distribution.
Need a data review and archiving strategy.
In next year’s storage plan, I need to have it monthly archive.
No need to save all the ‘stuff’ I am saving. Argh!
# # # # # posted 2010-12-12 13:15
Leave a Comment » | MACBOOKAIR | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
TAKEN FROM AN EMAIL WITH A POTENTIAL “TURKEY”
*** begin quote ***
Dear XXXX,
Read your message and can sympathize with the frustration that you are feeling. First, you’re “marketing”, so “market”. Have you networked with XXXXXXX at MC? Have you read the book “Job Changing at 100K”? (Ignore title; it has a great concept of ‘structured networking’.) I have some job search materials on my site http://www.reinke.cc/COMCAST4/TURKEY/index.htm (Feel free to ‘steal’ anything you find helpful.) If you offer me a LinkedIn connect, I’ll accept and you’ll have access to my contacts. http://www.jasperjottings.com/ has a slew of alumni info for networking ‘targets’. I’ll take a peek at your LinkedIn, Facebook, and other ‘stuff’ to see if I can spot anything.
/Signed/
*** end quote ***
AND AFTER A FEW MINUTES
*** begin quote ***
OK! I’m back. It appears to me that:
(1) You have, in addition to this persona, one “dead” persona on LinkedIn. Suggest that you clean that up.
(2) You have no “web presence” that I can find. No website. No blog. No domain. So, you’re not “marketing” yourself.
(3) No Facebook? (A recruiter will think “hiding something”. “Everyone”, younger that 40, has Facebook. Note: We don’t want digital dirt. But we want a “professional” Facebook, with friends and family!)
(4) LinkedIn profile makes it look like your a job hopper with lots of jobs.
[JR: Note, every promotion is listed as a separate job. It looks “job hopper ish”; not “upwardly climbing”. You have 30 seconds to communicate to the person filtering; use it wisely.]
(5) LinkedIn profile doesn’t use all the features.
Yell if I can help,
/signed/
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Leave a Comment » | JOBSEARCH | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/rounds5.1.1.html
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The transfer of money via a hawala banking system is extremely private and is unlikely to be reported or discovered by anyone other than the hawaladar, the transferor and the tranferee. In a world where bank privacy is increasingly hard to find, this is a welcome feature of hawala banking. In the hawala system, hawaladars are the brokers or facilitators of the transaction. This transactional privacy has made hawala banking an evil villain for enemies of personal privacy and financial privacy. False and exaggerated allegations of money laundering and terrorism funding through hawala money transfers and hawala transactions have incorrectly characterized the hawala network while hawala banking is actually the most efficient and ancient of all money-transferring systems.
*** end quote ***
Would seem that “the privacy invading aardvarks want to stick their nose in everyone else’s business” would be upset.
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Leave a Comment » | MONEY | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj
You are currently browsing the Reinke Faces Life blog archives for December, 2010.
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FJohn Reinke
Consultant at Technology Legacies LLC
Advisor, Computer Governance Committee at Manhattan College
Editor / Publisher at Jasper Jottings
Greater New York City Area
JJ Positraction JJ Endnotes Downsize DC
Philosophy of Liberty
I have NOT received any gagged governmental information requests
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