Truck and Barter

Evolutionary Game Theory at Time Zero

Computer and social scientists in Europe are building an entirely virtual world from the group up to examine the development of society and culture. The programs will operate agents (independent of human control) in a massive system that features the development of language, building structures, eating, and mating.

The experiment will see about 1000 agents live together in a simulated world hosted on a network of 50 computers based at the various institutions involved. Each agent will be capable of various simple tasks, like moving around and building simple structures, but will also have the ability to communicate and cooperate with its cohabitants. Though simple interaction, the researchers hope to watch these characters create their very own society from scratch. Every character in the simulated world will need to eat to survive, and will be able to learn from their environment through trial and error - learning, for example, how to cultivate edible plants with water and sunlight. In addition, characters will be able to reproduce by mating with members the opposite sex and their offspring will inherited a random collection of their parents "genetic" traits.

Read more here at the NEW-TIES home page. It doesn't appear to have any economists listed among the "consortium", though I imagine them all to be diligent data gatherers. The biggest question, to me, however, isn't answered in either the article or on the website: do the agents have the ability to trade?

Google Hacks (UPDATED)

I suppose I'm drifting a bit afield from economics, even if the question of information is highly relevant to the topic, but I thought these things might be of enough interest to post. (Kevin may edit this to improve the signal:noise ratio I'm clearly harming. But since Google has long been of interest around these parts...)

Google-Traffic: Combining Google Maps with traffic data from Traffic.com, you can now take a look at the major road conditions and trouble points on your commute home. (If you live in the listed cities, anyway.)

Google Housing: Maps and Craig's List come together to show you the location of the next place you might call home.

NYC and Chi-Town Hacks: See where the stops on the subway or the El are situated on Google Maps.

UPDATE: Here's another one for the Chicago audience. Chicagocrime.org offers an interactive Google Map paired with crime data.

hat's that smell? Did someone leave the modem on?

Here's an interesting new technological twist:

SAN DIEGO, CA-May 3, 2005 – Nethercomm Corporation, the leading innovator of subterranean broadband communications, announces the development of Broadband-in-Gas (BiG) Technology. This technology is designed to effectively multiply the current available bandwidth of cable television and all other broadband systems with data capacities exceeding ten gigabits. Broadband-in-Gas delivers unmatched levels of connectivity by making use of Ultra Wideband technology to wirelessly broadcast information in a way that is both safe and reliable by using the private spectrum isolated within natural gas pipelines.

In the case of both natural gas and broadband internet access (NB: PDF), usage increases with household income. If the infrastructure works like they claim it does, it certainly seems like they'll have a natural customer base naturally inclined towards adopting the service. The more interesting question, to me, is whether an effective bundling of the two by gas companies might help increase the usage of natural gas.

A possible 10+ gigabits of transfer capacity? Forget my DVR, I'd just watch everything on my computer.

Transaction Costs By Any Other Name...

non-scientific, though interesting in it's own right, survey by Computer Economics purports to show that the lower costs of Open Source Software are not, in fact, the biggest perceived advantages.

The survey indicates that IT decision makers value “reduced dependence on software vendors” as the most important advantage of open source. This indicates that software buyers must feel some level of dependence on proprietary software vendors, from which they desire freedom. Such dependence includes reliance on the vendor for maintenance and support and the necessity for the buyer to accept version upgrades that the buyer may not need or want.

This might be overgeneralizing the issue, to some extent, but I would tend to include this in with the "lower cost" advantage. The savings from not waiting around for support, for not having to fight with the sales reps about how much maintenance was included under the original sales contract, being limited to inferior choices among other software because of interoperability issues...the avoidance of large costs due to potential hold-up problems, generally, can be significant. That the respondents didn't identify them as "costs" doesn't matter if, in fact, the benefit of avoidance is being able to reinvest time and energy into things more productive for the company. Rightly or wrongly, open source is seens as facing this problem far less than vendor-specific products. On the other hand, one must hope that the open source community decides to become interested in solving a particular software need that your company may have. With no profit to respond to, it could well be that the best programmers are spending their days addressing what they believe is a desperate need for a really good OS X emulator.

Dayton goes WiFi

The city of Dayton, Ohio, now has a wifi "hot spot" all over downtown:

You can now surf the Internet for free in Downtown Dayton.

Your wireless computer, P.D.A., or cell phone can now surf the Internet for free if it's Wi-Fi equipped.

The free service is available within one square mile around downtown.

The city will pay about $5,000 a year for it, but most of the cost is paid for by the advertisers.

Well, I suppose we'll get to see what works and what doesn't. My first guess is that the $5K a year the city "pays" now will skyrocket before long. Either the idea will grab so many people the system can't handle the load (imagine all those businesses deciding the skip paying for private broadband access for a couple of years, then trying to run webcasts through the same line every one at every fast food joint is trying to use to download the new Nelly single) and the city will be on the hook to expand it even more, or, and I think more likely, it will experience the same result as wifi spots in other downtown locals that see highly variable traffic that doesn't exhibit much of a demand, meaning that the advertisers may not realize a benefit for what they've paid out. In fact, I don't see the argument that swayed these "advertisers". In the case of heavy demand beyond just the local kids surfing blogs and Friendset, I'm not sure how patient people would be with a heavy does of advertising. Personally, I'd pay to get a clean line and avoid having even more ads pouring at me. If the demand isn't heavy, who's going to see the advertising?

From the city's plan, it looks as though the advertising comes in the form of branded pages (such as log-on, and possibly frames?). Who pays attention to those, I'm not sure. And I'd predict a hack to be out in about 24 hours. The big plus I do see for the advertisers, however, is that the general audience is so oblivious to protecting computers from viruses and intrusion, that it won't dawn on people that without pricey software (or expert users versed in good open source stuff) this is the electronic version of licking the floor in a public restroom.

Robot Game Theory

Did you ever play with Legos?

Me, I spent my time trying to find all the little tiny Lego pieces that I had lost in the carpet before my Dad stepped on one is his bare feet and ended up tossing all of them into the trash.

This guy decides to model evolution.

A little modification, and it seems like you could have your own kitchen-floor version of Hawk-and-Dove. At the very least, it's an ingenious use of everyday items to expore a complex concept. On a larger scale, and with more programming savvy, I would imagine it could be possible to test various strains of mutations, resistance, stability of equilibria, etc.

evolution

when two robots reproduce, each recieves a copy of the other’s genetic code. the outcome for each possible action for each life routine is a random choice between the two parent codes. this alone would result in some pretty booring children, given that both parents are initialized with the same code, so i added a roughly 1 percent chance that a mutation will occur for each action that is copied.

the idea is that a robot which is better capable of maneuvering around without getting stuck will have a better chance of finding another robot and procreating.

If Jason Striegel, the author of the hack, were to post his code, I just might be induced to spend a couple hundred bucks making a ton of these one weekend. Yes, it does sound fun. And yes, I do understand that I have a problem.

Open Networks

I really should thank one of my neighbors for leaving their wireless network open for me to hop on. My own internet access went from poor before a technician "fixed" it the other day to very bad this morning to nonexistent this afternoon. I could be irritated that the problem wasn't fixed after the first visit, but the prompt service from Comcast has helped keep me calm.

Ian has posted his thoughts on Muni wifi. Carrying on some of his thoughts as I freeload on my neighbors, I am somewhat impressed by Comcast's prompt service in addressing the problem even though it's not fixed. Why some people think that government is best at delivering services is beyond me. If I was on a government network, it's not a wild guess that it would not be the next day that a technician is sent to my apartment to address the matter. After all, if in countries with socialized medicine the waiting lists lasts more months, how long long would it take to get a technician to fix my cable modem?

As Ian points out, Muni wireless does nothing to enhance competition and would mostly likely reduce broadband offerings. It's hard to compete with free, although AOL seemed to against the likes of NetZero. Right now, I'm happy somebody left their wireless network open. Thankfully, there is another provider besides Comcast in the area.

Edit: I forgot to say that while I should thank my neighbors for the free bandwith, it may cause them to close it down. It's better to have a backup,

T.V. Downloads

In a previous post I refered to an Inquirer article concerning why it was a smart move to have a worldwide release date for video games. The gist was that by staggering release times, an incentive is created for people to pirate the desired material, in that case it Half-Life 2 avoided creating one. A story on the BBC website makes the same point about T.V. shows and how Great Britain has become the leading downloader:

New episodes of 24, Desperate Housewives and Six Feet Under, appear on the web hours after they are shown in the US, said a report.

Web tracking company Envisional said 18% of downloaders were from within the UK and that downloads of TV programmes had increased by 150% in the last year.

About 70% were using file-sharing program BitTorrent, the firm said.

"It's now as easy to download a pirate TV show as it is to programme a VCR," said Ben Coppin from Envisional.

A typical episode of 24 was downloaded by about 100,000 people globally, said the report, and an estimated 20,000 of those were from within the UK.

...

According to Jupiter Research 40% of homes with broadband say it helps them pick and choose the programmes they want to see or that friends have recommended.

This should come as no surprise and just shows that technology is a ahead of yet another segment of the entertainment world. The article does note that this could potentially decrease revenue from syndicating the program overseas. We have seen movies and video games move to a single worldwide release date, T.V. probably isn't far behind

More Gmail Invites

Gmail has just given me 50 invites. If anyone is still left without Gmail leave a comment with your e-mail address.

Public Goods or Not, Lighthouses Saying Auf Wiedersehen

Looks like the superiority of GPS systems is resulting a bit of creative destruction along the German coast:

The popularity of the satellite-based global positioning system has led to the closure of lighthouses along the German coast. Many more may soon be extinguished. But critics question whether the new system is reliable and safe enough to warrant the closure of these historical beacons of safety.

One of the traditional pedagogical tools for telling econ students about public goods is to use the example of a lighthouse. As a fast example, it seems like a good one: you can't exclude one ship from seeing it while allowing others, and the use by one ship of a lighthouse as guidepost doesn't restrict others ships from using it. Of course, when anything seems too "just-so", there's usually something you're not being told. Read down through this description of public goods for some of the real story behind lighthouses.

The side opposing the shuttering of the lighthouses makes, in my opinion, an bad argument:

Bauermeister fears hobby captains are losing more and more of their skills as a result of modern technologies. If their GPS systems were to malfunction, they could face serious danger. "The sense of orientation is one that must be constantly trained," he cautions. "Those who now only rely on GPS are losing this important ability, which can save lives in dangerous situations."

Even civil engineer Eusterbarkey concedes there will be "disadvantages" for small ship operators if the lighthouses close. Though the 15 lighthouses on the North Sea cost German taxpayers about €400,000 a year to operate, money alone should not be a reason for shutting them down. "The overriding principle has to be safety on the high seas," he says.

Individuals that decide to ply the Germans seas without proper training and without the appropriate tools are choosing to take risks. The public receives no benefit from it, and isn't really in danger of being hurt the way drunk drivers end up hurting others. The larger companies, on the other hand, have invested time and money into preparing for the eventuality of a GPS failure. Seems to me that Germans (and others) are being taxed to protect someone's sense of nostalgia.

iPod Shuffle Not Random Enough?

Via Craig Newmark I read this article on MSNBC.

The crux of the piece seems to be one writer's attemt to figure out if there's something odd going on behind the function of his iPod Shuffles randomization process. It seems he's not the only one who's questioning the results of randomness.

There is an unintended consequence of the allure of Shuffle: it is causing iPod users to question whether their devices ''prefer'' certain types of music.

I'll second Craig's comment that people seem not to understand randomness. While the MSNBC writer should personally be ashamed that, given a chance to speak with Steve Jobs he actually brought up the possibility that the Shuffle function wasn't truly random since it seemed to hit some songs more than others, he does by the end of the article find someone to explain that true randomness doesn't mean a complete lack of groupings or "odd" patterns. Even the NYT piece touches on it briefly.which is too bad, really, since the iPod and iPod Shuffle could be great hooks to actually inform people about randomization and randomized processes.

The same issue arose in the show Numb3rs. (Newmark the Younger was positive on the show; I found it to be tedious in plotting and overly mystical about the actualy numbers, which seemed counter to the point of the show.) The "math genius" brother asked people to scatter themselves "randomly" around a room. When their spacing proved relatively even through the space, the ah-ha! moment came when he mentioned that true randomness exhibits groupings by sheer chance. Thus, clearly, the pattern of murders on map could be said to be "too perfect" in its attempt at randomness. Not well written, I think, but at least someone had the nerve to try bringing the issue up in prime-time.

For more information I would recommend the book Fooled by Randomness. Well written and free from the level of technical detail that a statistics text might have.

New Google Tool

Busy at work, so it's back to quick hits for posts.

Google's launched another search engine to beta: Google Suggest.

As you type, it tries to guess what you might be trying to look for based on the popularity of other searches starting with similar letters. Of course, type in the wrong (or right, depending on your view) first couple of letters, and the suggestions might be an insight into the minds of other people that you wish you didn't get.

In other Google news, Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford are going to scan in books to make their contents searchable on the 'net.

Interesting Technology

Tim Oren had a link to an article about some biometric technology which is being rolled out in Japan. The article doesn't mention the level of security the technology offers although I did find an article which mentions it being lower than iris scanning. Ultimately, what will drive the adoption of such technologies isn't if they are foolproof, but the benefits they bring. Fraud is here to stay no matter what technology is put into place and people will find a way around it.

Of course, technology has always had an oppressing effect on the underclass. Gone are the days when you could mug somebody and know they'll have cash on hand. There is an odd chance that the victim hasn't written their code on the card after all. Of course, this will only enhance the role education plays in crime. Earnings growth of criminals with college degrees will outstrip those of high school drop outs. Thus, the little guy will get crushed by corporate America once again and become their slaves. Corporate America, organize crime, what's the difference?

I will mention one other thing, such technology has benefits outside of security. For instance, it was damn unpleasant being locked out of my mom's house for six hours over Thanksgiving weekend when I left her house without a key. There was a keypad to get into the garage, but I forgot the code. It would be problematic to forget taking my eyes with me when leaving the house. If iris scanning becomes available for home security, I'm buying one.