U.S. Gov't DNA database

Each day, my feeling grows that Schneier on Security is my must-read blog. Amongst other good articles on security-related issues, Bruce Schneier also tracks how our individual and family privacy is being eroded by our government.

His latest post discusses a congressional measure designed to institute a national DNA database. The intent is to collect genetic data on anyone stopped on suspicion of a crime, whether you've been convicted of anything or not.

This is a terrible road to go down.

Checkers reloaded

My Checkers project in Python has been restarted. I'm having fun with it again.

Tic-Tac-Toe

Here's a very modest game project that's been sitting around a while, but I haven't finished it until tonight.

I coded this up in Python after reading about the minimax algorithm in Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. (I ignored the available Python code on their web site to challenge my programming skills.) I expected Tic-Tac-Toe to be straightforward, but the code grew a lot larger than I expected (especially for Python). The other surprising result was that standard minimax seemed to be too conservative for Tic-Tac-Toe -- the algorithm would evaluate paths with eventual wins with the same weight as quick or immediate wins. I had to tweak the algorithm slightly to compensate for this.

Now it seems to play aggressively, as it should. Of course, tic-tac-toe isn't a big test for minimax. (Or for a human for that matter!) However, maybe now I can adapt this code and resuscitate my long-abandoned Checkers project. I'm not making any promises though.

Update: I checked, and the Python code from the AIMA website (games.py) is definitely still in a rough state. I had to modify their version of Tic-Tac-Toe to even get it working, and it has the exact same problems with the standard minimax algorithm that I mentioned above. Why isn't this limitation of minimax mentioned in the book? Beats me.

Technorati not so hot

Along with the fact that I find blogpulse.com and Google's new blog search to be more effective, I notice Technorati doesn't seem to be centered around much that's technical either.

Some of the top ten searches: "Impeach Bush", "Bush Bathroom" and "Bathroom Break". And the most discussed news story is "Inventor fuels car with dead cats".

Can't we shuffle all these losers off to MSN Spaces where they belong?