Heads-up Limit Hold Them Poker is solved.

[kingnat]

Because science.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6218/145

[Savy]

When I read an article regarding this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30718558

says

And the algorithm had a strategy so close to optimal "it can't be beaten with statistical significance within a lifetime of human poker playing"

So it may aswell be solved in poker terms but certainly not really solved.

[a500lbgorilla]

Reminds me of some backgammon bot that had such an effective learning algorithm it actually shifted the meta game of pro play.

[a500lbgorilla]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD-Gammon

[spoonitnow]

Unfortunately someone did their marketing job well, and it hasn't actually been solved in the sense that poker players would appreciate (though I'm sure the general public would).

It's exciting though.

[Renton]

Can someone explain to me why a scientific paper costs money to read? Doesn't this kind of violate like seven laws of science?

[a500lbgorilla]

I sure as hell can't. Shit should be free. All the real profits of science are in the economy of thought.

[spoonitnow]

Can someone explain to me why a scientific paper costs money to read? Doesn't this kind of violate like seven laws of science?

To keep out the riff-raff.

[wufwugy]

Can someone explain to me why a scientific paper costs money to read? Doesn't this kind of violate like seven laws of science?

I think it is science in action. You are the first person I saw to explicitly state that we should apply values to everything

[wufwugy]

I sure as hell can't. Shit should be free. All the real profits of science are in the economy of thought.

I wonder what you mean by that.

[Renton]

Well I don't have any basic beef with the act of selling a research paper, I just feel like it goes against the interest of whoever wrote it, which is presumably to get critique and improve the collective knowledge of the human race, both processes which are retarded by the restriction of access.

Though there is the whole question of whether non-scarce resources (i.e. data, music, movies, patented designs) should be free. Intellectual property laws as they currently exist cause a lot of problems.

[eberetta1]

I sure as hell can't. Shit should be free. All the real profits of science are in the economy of thought.

Agree, sort of reminds me that justice only goes to those that can afford justice.

[Sin Uggla]

It costs money because the publisher is a company for profit. The riff-raff is kept out by peer review, which is for free.

Many argue that research results should be free, resulting in what is called "open access publishing". The problem is that journals such as Science and Nature still have such a high reputation that the fact that a researcher is able to publish his researcher in these high impact journals has a strong influence on his success in applying for jobs and for research grants.

[The Bean Counter]

I work for an academic publisher and have worked for a research-led uni in the past. Academic publishing can be an expensive business, but also highly profitable if you get it right and can benefit from economies of scale. Couple of points worth noting if interested:

A decent chunk of the revenue generated works its way back into the academic community. The academic publisher will be looking to cover their costs and generate a contribution to overheads and profit, but they typically don’t own the title they are publishing. The publisher will pay a royalty to the academic society that owns the title, who will then re-invest that in funding research and promoting the study of their subject. Societies could self-publish, but they wouldn’t benefit from the economies of scales publishers realise (who generally wouldn’t be in business without the incentive of making some money).

Academics can make their research freely available if they wish via Open Access journals, as long as they’re willing to pay a couple of $k to a publisher to do so. Some of the funding providers will pay for this (or require the article to be OA after a certain number of years as a minimum), but generally there’s an expectation that the article is published in a high quality journal, which OA journals typically are not. In fact, an academics job at an institution and the success of their career is often contingent upon being published in good quality journals. Thus the majority of academics are against their research being made freely available via Open Access journals (plus there's a huge amount of ego and snobbery in the academic community).

[spoonitnow]

Agree, sort of reminds me that justice only goes to those that can afford justice.

Peasant problems.