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Computer scientists study game theory from the perspective of computability.
Daskalakis, working with Christos Papadimitriou of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Liverpool’s Paul Goldberg, has shown that for some games, the Nash equilibrium is so hard to calculate that all the computers in the world couldn’t find it in the lifetime of the universe. And in those cases, Daskalakis believes, human beings playing the game probably haven’t found it either.
Solving the n-body problem is beyond the capabilities of the world’s smartest mathematicians. How do those rocks-for-brains planets manage to do pull it off?
Mindhacks has an interesting article about the use of robots in war. We know the U.S. is using pilotless drones to attack suspected terrorists in the mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This can save lives and presumably there are technological capabilities that are impossible for a human to replicate. But the possibility of human error is replaced by the possibility of computer error and, Mindhacks points out, even lack of robot predictability.
I went to a military operations research conference to present at a game theory session. Two things surprised me. First, game theory has disappeared from the field. They remember Schelling but are unaware that anything has happened since the 1960s. Asymmetric information models are a huge surprise to them. Second, they are aware of computer games. They just want to simulate complex games and run them again and again to see what happens. Then, you don’t get any intuition for why some strategy works or does not work or really an intuition for the game as a whole. And what you put in is what you get out: if you did not out in an insurgency movement causing chaos then it’s not going to pop out. This is also a problem for an analytical approach where you may not incorporate key strategic considerations into the game. Cliched “Out-of the-Box” thinking is necessary. Even a Mac can’t do it.
So, as long as there is war, men will go to war and think about how to win wars.
(Hat tip: Jeff for pointing out article)
Apparently we have arrived at the long run and we are not dead.
Do you remember the Microsoft anti-trust case? The anti-trust division of the US Department of Justice sought the breakup of Microsoft for anti-competitive practices mostly centering around integrating Internet Explorer into the Windows operating system. In fact, an initial ruling found Microsoft in violation of an agreement not to tie new software products into Windows and mandated a breakup, separating the operating systems business from the software applications business. This ruling was overturned on appeal and evnetually the case was settled with an agreement that imposed no further restrictions on Microsoft’s ability to bundle software but did require Microsoft to share APIs with third-party developers for a 5 year period.
Today, all of the players in that case are mostly irrelevant. AOL, Netscape, Redhat. Java. Indeed, Microsoft itself is close to irrelevance in the sense that any attempt today at exploiting its operating system market power to extend its monopoly would cause at most a short-run adjustment period before it would be ignored.
Microsoft was arguing at the time that it was constantly innovating to maintain its market position and it was impossible to predict from where the next threat to its dominance would appear. Whether or not the first part of their claim was true, the second part certainly turned out to be so. It is hard to see a credible case that the Microsoft anti-trust investigation, trial, and settlement played anything more than a negligible role in bringing us to this point. Indeed the considerations there, focusing on the internals of the operating system and contracts with hardware manufacturers, are orthogonal to developments in the market since then. The operating system is a client and today clients are perfect substitutes. The rents go to servers and servers live on the internet unconstrained by any “platform” or “network effects”, indeed creating their own.
The lesson of this experience is that in a rapidly changing landscape, intervention can wait. Even intervention that looks urgent at the time. Almost certainly the unexpected will happen that will change everything.
Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr. Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge.
The article is here. Another highlight:
Michael Ross creates his own electricity, with a gas generator perched outside his yellow-and-blue tent. For a year, Mr. Ross has stood guard at a parking lot for construction equipment, under a deal with the owner. Mr. Ross figures he has been homeless for about 15 years, surviving on his Army pension.
Inside the tent, the taciturn 50-year-old has an HP laptop with a 17-inch screen and 320 gigabytes of data storage, as well as four extra hard drives that can hold another 1,000 gigabytes, the equivalent of 200 DVDs. Mr. Ross loves movies. He rents some from Netflix and Blockbuster online and downloads others over an Ethernet connection at the San Francisco public library.
Here is a new paper on the economics of open-source software by Michael Schwarz and Yuri Takhteyev. They approach the subject from an interesting angle. Most authors are focused on the question of why people contribute to open-source. Instead these authors point out that people contribute to all kinds of public goods all the time and there should be no surprise that people contribute to open-source software. Instead, the question should be why do contributions to open source software turn out to be so much more important than say, giving away free haircuts.
The answer lies in a key advantage open-source has over proprietary software. Imagine you are starting a business and you are considering adopting some proprietary software and this will require you to train your staff to use it and make other complementary investments that are specific to the software. You make yourself vulnerable to hold-up: when new versions of the software are released, the seller’s pricing will take advantage of your commitment to the software. Open source software is guaranteed to be free even after improvements are made so users can safely make complementary investments without fear of holdup.
The theory explains some interesting facts about the software market. For example, did you know that all major desktop programming languages have open source compilers? But there are no open source tools for developing games for consoles such as the X-box.
The paper outlines this theory and describes how it fits with the emergence of open source over the years. The detailed history alone is worth reading.
There was a story on NPR about a program in Texas to decentralize border patrol efforts. Texas sheriffs are webcasting their surveillance cameras to the website bluservo.net where private citizens can login, monitor the video stream and report any suspicious activity they see.
Putting aside the political dimension of this, I see it as an interesting case study in open-source security. In the realm of computer network security, there is a debate about openness vs “security by obscurity.” For example, we may debate whether an open-source operating system like Linux is more or less secure than closed-source Windows. On the one hand, the security measures are in plain view for all the black-hats to see and try to circumvent. On the other hand, the openness enables the enourmous community of white hats to fix whatever problems they find. Which effect dominates?
The Texas sheriffs apparently side with the open-source community on this one. They seem not to be worried that the black-hat coyotes will use these cameras to figure out where to cross the border without being seen.
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