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The three common adversaries are the oblivious adversary, the adaptive online adversary, and the adaptive offline adversary.
The oblivious adversary is sometimes referred to as the weak adversary. This adversary knows the algorithm's code, but does not get to know the randomized results of the algorithm.
The adaptive online adversary is sometimes called the medium adversary. This adversary must make its own decision before it is allowed to know the decision of the algorithm.
The adaptive offline adversary is sometimes called the strong adversary. This adversary knows everything, even the random number generator. This adversary is so strong that randomization does not help against him.

This sounds as if online algorithms always had a randomizing component, which is not the case - right? --Abdull (talk) 09:12, 26 July 2008 (UTC)Reply

Article assumes too much and contains undefined terms

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In my opinion this article is way too terse and also includes terms (α-competitive, c-competitive, d-competitive) that aren't defined here and are not links to a definition. Granted that if you follow the link to "competitiveness" this article becomes much clearer, but it seems to me that this article could contain a summary of what's in "competitiveness". But even if you read "competitiveness" those three terms still remain undefined. - Dougher (talk) 20:50, 11 November 2014 (UTC)Reply