I've just bought Spore and haven't even noticed any DRM. However, the package said Mac OS X and Windows, but on my OSX machine Spore always crashes no matter what I do. The same happened to Spore Laboratory I bought earlier. I tried to contact EA support. It took me hours to find a support web page where you could actually enter your question into a form and send it to them. They never bothered to answer. IMHO, that's fraud. Anyway, works fine on Windows.
Moreover, Spore installed an application called "EA Download Manager" that just sits around in the tray and whenever I open it shows an empty window. Now an application that just shows an empty window, that is really annoying. Summary: Nice game, but EA totally sucks.
Some points are good, but the majority is bullshit:
Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
Meaningless, since anyone has the right to demand anything anyway.
Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
Meaningless, since anyone already has the right to expect anything.
Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
As before, meaningless bullshit. Yes, people have the right to demand things.
amers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
As before, bullshit.
Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
Sure, sure. Give them the right to expect something.
Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
Now that's a special one. Thing is, people already have that right in most countries, although this might be hard to swallow for some people in the gaming or music industry.
Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
I demand that everyone now gives me 100000 dollars, and I have the right to do so.
Personally, I think it should look like a bunch of HTML 1.0 pages with colorless background and a few heading styles used sparsely. A few images here and there and post tags for ordering stuff are okay, too. Anything above that is just needless crap.
Yes, it's a good idea to enforce this style. The NATO should have the power to do that.
But as you certainly know, the difference is that with the paper ballot system the issues (stuffed boxes, lost boxes, poor counting, false counting) can be identified afterwards by recounting, whereas with electronic systems this is impossible if the forgery was done the Right Way(tm). So I don't understand why someone has modded your post insightful.
Perl advocates nowadays might deny this, but at least in the beginning Perl was never intended to be used for anything more than providing quick scripting solutions for text processing tasks to the lazy programmer. And there is nothing wrong with that, it's better than awk. When a language becomes popular, people start using it for purposes it was never intended for, and it's only fair that the mindless corporate drones don't want to encourage that. Moreover, the average manager type can barely understand a line of Perl, but is probably convinced that he could do Python programming better than professional programmers. Then, of course, Perl will be discouraged.
Personally, I stopped using Perl 10 years ago, so I don't mind.
Obligatory language flame part: By the way, Python sucks, too. I mean, "duck" typing", that's just crap. Use mzscheme instead.
Okay, you win the smartass price. I feel reminded of Usenet 10 years ago. As a professional philosopher, I'm always interested in new arguments or variations of existing ones, but I'm not interested in platitudes about QM. The problem with your posts is that free will != non-deterministic != non-predictable, as StrawberryFrog has already pointed out. I was just adding to this that there is a connection between a fairly standard view on free will (free choice of action goals) and predictability, and never gave any "definition" of free will. If you reject the term "free will" as unscientific or weird or whatever right from the start, so be it. Fine for me.
I never formulated any test and I don't think there is a definition of the human brain. No pun intended, but are you sure you wanted to use the word "definition"?
Anyway, after reading my post again, I realized that I've formulated it exactly the wrong way round.;-) My fault. Here is a slightly better version:
If it is possible for A to predict his future actions, then A cannot always have free will, because if A predicts future action b, A can no longer choose to act in a way that results in non-b. This can, but doesn't need to be an information-from-the-future paradox. It's only an information-from-the-future paradox if the information for the prediction was obtained from the future, which as far as I know is not compatible with current physics anyway.
I partially disagree. Free will of a subject A implies that A cannot reliably predict his own actions, but the reverse need not hold. If the former wasn't the case, a subject A could first predict a future action, say b, and after the prediction had been made would no longer be able to act in a way that results in non-b. In other words, after the prediction, A can no longer freely choose between b and non-b, given that it can actually predict its own future actions.
But I guess you have another concept of free will. Anyway, my concept of free will is compatible with someone else being able to predict A's future actions as long as he doesn't tell A about it. Interesting, isn't it?
Although there are many mathematical properties of ciphers you can exploit to ensure that a cipher doesn't have flaws, there is no mathematical proof of the claim that common symmetric ciphers like AES, Camellia, or Twofish are secure.
Essentially, cryptography is still a black art.
So you base all your confidence on the fact that the few dozen civilian researchers competent enough to master the math haven't found a method to break them so far, whereas for example the NSA is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians world-wide and works on breaking ciphers for the past 60 years or so. Nobody will do an exhaustive key search to break a cipher, but perhaps this is not needed. Don't get me wrong, unless there is further evidence there is no reason to distrust our ciphers---but you also shouldn't trust them unconditionally. (except for the one-time PAD if used 100% correctly)
Well, there's "ideas" then there's "idea that is totally original and never been done before".
Of course, lots of "ideas-people" insist their idea is in the latter category
I believe that this is answer signifies part of the problem (no pun intended). There is no need for completely new story or gameplay ideas, just as there is no need for entirely new genres in fiction literature. Occasionally, someone invents a new genre, but that's not what I meant. Most modern game studios lack the skill or will to create a convincing piece of fiction. Not even dumb kids can identify with the characters in games, and most games nowadays are so full of cliches that even Rambo looks like a piece of art in comparison. Like I said, there are exceptions, but the main problem seems to be that the game publishers do not at all consider what they do as a form of art or at least "popular culture"---unlike in the movie industry, where for every 3 or 4 blockbuster trash titles something really valuable but less profitable is produced.
By the way, I have some general game engine idea that is completely novel, technically realizable, and guarantees long-term commercial success while being reusable and not tied to a particular genre.
But you would say that, wouldn't you. There is no reason to believe it, especially when you won't tell anyone what the idea is.
It doesn't matter for me whether you believe me or not. Anyway, why should I write a treatment or concept and send it to some studio just for it to be trashed? That was the main point of the example, not to emphasize my own brilliance without giving evidence;-)
It is a problem that due to the huge investment required, people are less likely to follow more risky novel ideas. But the problem is still not the lack of ideas, it's the risk in doing something unusual. If you are willing to front the millions of dollars required for your brand new idea, then please step forward.
The gaming industry has a lot to learn from the movie industry, where people risk millions all the time for often radically new ideas.
How would I know if the idea is any good before seeing it? I'm not sure that any programmer would be willing to pay money to see random ideas, and certainly not more than a trivial amount.
First, the evaluation (karma) of the offerer which is based on what people who previously bought a description thought about it. Idea seller have a reputation to loose. Second, hints can be given in more or less detail and the market regulates what kind of detail gives enough motivation to buy. Third, the descriptions cost trivial amounts. We're talking about hobby people describing things they could never realize themselves. I estimate that rough 1-2 page idea is worth $3 dollar, and a 15 page article max. $15-30. A 100 page work including technical descriptions would be more expensive. There can be several standard formats (size, number of figures, etc.) and of course categories and product domains to which the idea applies. Exclusive licenses (no selling of the idea to others and perhaps an NDA) would be much more expensive. Fourth, you can even have a license that gives away the idea for free, but gives the offerer a small percentage of the gain from the final product for some time.
Sure the whole thing is much like gambling, but many people like gambling and if the seller (e.g. a housewife in Ohio) has a really good evaluation, there must be something to her ideas. Actually I find it likely that larger companies would start to buy lots of descriptions with exclusive licenses even when 9 out of 10 of the ideas were trash...
I haven't been thinking about legal issues, though, which should be left to a lawyer. But anyway, people in the end buy a copyrighted text, not an idea.
Most people pointed out that ideas are pretty much worthless. Many of those people also claimed that in the studios people already have plenty of ideas.
If that is so, would anyone explain to me why those numerous ideas don't make it into the final products? Because after 20 years of gaming experience starting with C64, I fail to recognize the great ideas in the final games. It is in fact not easy to see even a grain of creativity in the majority of recent gaming titles and especially their story-telling sucks. What happens to those great ideas when the end product is just dull, repetitive monster-shooting?
By the way, I have some general game engine idea that is completely novel, technically realizable, and guarantees long-term commercial success while being reusable and not tied to a particular genre. No joke, I mean that seriously. But since I can't sell it and also don't want to be ripped-off, I prefer not to tell it to anyone and instead wait until some professional game developers figure it out by themselves.
Ideas are worth money. The only reason why they can't be sold is because nobody has created the market infrastructure yet. So here is another idea of mine from the early 90ies. I give it away for free, since I have a regular daytime job now and figure that I will never realize it myself anyway: Set up a web site on which you can sell descriptions of ideas, which are in turn described by little teasers. People don't buy the actual idea, they buy a description. Of course, sellers and buyers have a reputation (karma) and scammers can also be kicked out. The price varies with the level of detail (from a short paragraph to 150 pages technical documentary including sample implementation). Also, when an idea description is offered exclusively (optionally plus NDA), it's much more expensive than when it is offered to anyone. If you do this the right way (ask me if you'r ein doubt), it will be a huge success.
Anyway my impression is that business environments destroy most creativity and suppress good ideas, so large companies or game studios should better listen to the ideas of their customers.
It eliminates this terrible inconvenience of being asked "Paper or plastic?", a question that is constantly giving me headaches and is making my life more and more miserable, because I just can't decide what's the right answer. Should I take paper and be friendly to our environment? But what if it splits while I'm crossing the street? And then this scene in "The Graduate" comes to my mind:
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
So "plastic" should be the right answer. But then again, it is bad for the environment and paper bags look much better than plastic bags. What if I meet a very attractive girl on the way home, one that happens to be an enviromentalist?
The invention is great, but there is still a problem with it. It doesn't take all necessary parameters into account. What do you do with people that use plastic bags on even and paper bags on odd days? Can the system store this preference? What if I have more complicated patterns of choosing plastic vs. paper? Sometimes I don't even know in advance whether I take a paper or a plastic bag. Are my decisions perhaps based on quantum effects? Is Roger Penrose's "Quantum-Consciousness Theory" right? Is it then even possible to find the hidden variable that determines my choice?
When I discovered cloud computing independently in the early 90ies, I figured that it will always remain a niche market. I bet many people here can tell a similar story.
There are various "brilliant" ideas that aren't accepted by most people. For example, video phones whose image cannot be switched off, paid subscription to music streamed to your computer in a (presumedly) unsavable DRM-protected format, or the idea of turning your computer into a dumb front-end for some software running on a server controlled elsewhere (and perhaps even paying for it).
Admittedly, acceptance may change over time, for example many people nowadays seem to have no problems with "web apps". Given how bad browsers are as a platform, this is kind of bizarre, but anyway I personally believe that this is just a temporary phenomenon and only works in a few domains such as social networking. In the long run, people want to have a piece of software on their machine and entirely under their control. At least, that's what I want.
They are better for dispersing data over storage media than using error correction codes. In essence, an IDA transforms a file into k blocks of data, and any n (nk blocks suffice to reconstruct the file. (It doesn't matter which blocks you choose for reconstruction, as long as you have n different blocks, you're fine.)
Unfortunately there don't seem to be many tools or libraries available, so you have to implement the IDA yourself and this requires a bit of math.
Well, at least were I come from, you're taught as a child that it's completely immoral to read someone else's mail without that person's consent. And I can't see why there should be any difference between snail mail and email. Reading someone's mail is on a par with breaking (seriously made) promises and oaths or being disloyal to friends when it has severe consequences for them. Decent people just don't do it, be it legal or not.
Don't be a jerk. I understand the meaning of "public" and "vantage point" quite well, and the second line of your reply raises some doubts whether you have actually read and understood my comment.
Clearly, we have rights to photograph private property if we do it from a public vantage point.
So the fact that one of the hugest online advertising companies photographing your house so that people can watch it and hence bring more profit to your company is a public vantage point?
Perhaps I would be able to recognize a "public vantage" point if Google put their entire picture database into the public domain, available for use by anyone for any purpose at any time.
I was absolutely serious and find it entertaining that so few people consider Google and their aims as problematic. I don't care very much about privacy issues, but I'm concerned about the global information dominance Google strives for, which happens to coincide with interests of certain US govenmen agencies. Even if Google was totally your friend and completely benevolent this has far reaching consequences.
It is very easy and also very tempting to modify a secret page rank algorithm to achieve some effect you desire. Even if Google doesn't do it and doesn't want to do it now, it is only a matter of time until someone else demands it for the sake of insert your favorite reason here. And as you know, Google isn't just about web pages, they digitize all media they can get, try to invade the desktop of every computer on earth, etc.
It is a well known fact that you can control people to a large extent by the information they get. Besides, if someone repeatedly tells me "I'm your friend" and "Don't be evil" over the years, this strikes me as odd.
Google is by far the biggest threat to the national and economic security of individual countries. It is a monster, and many non-US governments will have a bad awakening when they finally realize this and it's too late.
If Google wanted to, they could already nowadways influence stock markets on a large scale or heavily influence future research in just about any discipline globally or on a per region basis just by slightly modifying their page rank algorithm. From the user data collected by Google, you can already today compile a complete psychological profile of any user with static IP, including his skills, knowledge, sexual preferences, and so on.
Just about the only politician foreseeing the problems of global information dominance in the hand of one US company was Jaques Chirac who initiated a large project for developing a European search engine, but this project more or less died. I don't agree with Chirac on many points, but on this one he was right. (And no, I'm not a Frenchman.)
Frankly speaking, I'm tired of people who downplay Google privacy issues. In the long run, the problem is MUCH bigger than they can imagine.
Having just written and published a book in Latex and being a LaTeX-user for many years, I share most of your criticisms. LaTeX does its job, but it sucks. And most LaTeX enthusiasts have no clue about typesetting, even though they think they have--Many books about LaTeX have an absolutely horrible look and layout. In fact, LaTeX is partly responsible for the decline of typesetting quality in the academic domain, since many publishers nowadays expect you to deliver a book camera-ready instead of hiring a pro to do the typesetting. (You can do good typesetting in LaTeX, but that requires you to go through every paragraph and adjust and check the word spacing manually, and do a lot of other tedious things that no unpaid hobbyist typesetter does.)
So I've also been looking for alternatives for many years and have come to the conclusion that there are none. lout has a cleaner underlying programming language, but has much less extensions and has a too small user base. Then there are a number of document preparations systems, for example aft, sisu and various xml based ones. Some of them have nicer markup than LaTeX, but none of them allow you to typeset as much math as LaTeX does. They are more suitable for large organizations that want to publish the same document in various formats (html, pdf, etc.)
My advice is to use OpenOffice Writer for documents that don't contain many formulas, and use LaTeX for all math-related stuff. As long as you don't try to tweak the layout and use as few packages as possible, LaTeX is fine and there is no way around it.
Slashdot Mirror
I've just bought Spore and haven't even noticed any DRM. However, the package said Mac OS X and Windows, but on my OSX machine Spore always crashes no matter what I do. The same happened to Spore Laboratory I bought earlier. I tried to contact EA support. It took me hours to find a support web page where you could actually enter your question into a form and send it to them. They never bothered to answer. IMHO, that's fraud. Anyway, works fine on Windows.
Moreover, Spore installed an application called "EA Download Manager" that just sits around in the tray and whenever I open it shows an empty window. Now an application that just shows an empty window, that is really annoying. Summary: Nice game, but EA totally sucks.
that is Google's usual "content license", and something they need in order to offer services to their partners in the advertising business
There, fixed that for you.
Google == Evil
Some points are good, but the majority is bullshit:
Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
Meaningless, since anyone has the right to demand anything anyway.
Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game's release.
Meaningless, since anyone already has the right to expect anything.
Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
As before, meaningless bullshit. Yes, people have the right to demand things.
amers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
As before, bullshit.
Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won't install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
Sure, sure. Give them the right to expect something.
Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
Now that's a special one. Thing is, people already have that right in most countries, although this might be hard to swallow for some people in the gaming or music industry.
Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
I demand that everyone now gives me 100000 dollars, and I have the right to do so.
Personally, I think it should look like a bunch of HTML 1.0 pages with colorless background and a few heading styles used sparsely. A few images here and there and post tags for ordering stuff are okay, too. Anything above that is just needless crap.
Yes, it's a good idea to enforce this style. The NATO should have the power to do that.
But as you certainly know, the difference is that with the paper ballot system the issues (stuffed boxes, lost boxes, poor counting, false counting) can be identified afterwards by recounting, whereas with electronic systems this is impossible if the forgery was done the Right Way(tm). So I don't understand why someone has modded your post insightful.
Now even the open source guys start nagging users with stupid dialogs.
Perl advocates nowadays might deny this, but at least in the beginning Perl was never intended to be used for anything more than providing quick scripting solutions for text processing tasks to the lazy programmer. And there is nothing wrong with that, it's better than awk. When a language becomes popular, people start using it for purposes it was never intended for, and it's only fair that the mindless corporate drones don't want to encourage that. Moreover, the average manager type can barely understand a line of Perl, but is probably convinced that he could do Python programming better than professional programmers. Then, of course, Perl will be discouraged.
Personally, I stopped using Perl 10 years ago, so I don't mind.
Obligatory language flame part: By the way, Python sucks, too. I mean, "duck" typing", that's just crap. Use mzscheme instead.
Okay, you win the smartass price. I feel reminded of Usenet 10 years ago. As a professional philosopher, I'm always interested in new arguments or variations of existing ones, but I'm not interested in platitudes about QM. The problem with your posts is that free will != non-deterministic != non-predictable, as StrawberryFrog has already pointed out. I was just adding to this that there is a connection between a fairly standard view on free will (free choice of action goals) and predictability, and never gave any "definition" of free will. If you reject the term "free will" as unscientific or weird or whatever right from the start, so be it. Fine for me.
I never formulated any test and I don't think there is a definition of the human brain. No pun intended, but are you sure you wanted to use the word "definition"?
Anyway, after reading my post again, I realized that I've formulated it exactly the wrong way round. ;-) My fault. Here is a slightly better version:
If it is possible for A to predict his future actions, then A cannot always have free will, because if A predicts future action b, A can no longer choose to act in a way that results in non-b. This can, but doesn't need to be an information-from-the-future paradox. It's only an information-from-the-future paradox if the information for the prediction was obtained from the future, which as far as I know is not compatible with current physics anyway.
I partially disagree. Free will of a subject A implies that A cannot reliably predict his own actions, but the reverse need not hold. If the former wasn't the case, a subject A could first predict a future action, say b, and after the prediction had been made would no longer be able to act in a way that results in non-b. In other words, after the prediction, A can no longer freely choose between b and non-b, given that it can actually predict its own future actions.
But I guess you have another concept of free will. Anyway, my concept of free will is compatible with someone else being able to predict A's future actions as long as he doesn't tell A about it. Interesting, isn't it?
They will awake the Man in the Moon.
Although there are many mathematical properties of ciphers you can exploit to ensure that a cipher doesn't have flaws, there is no mathematical proof of the claim that common symmetric ciphers like AES, Camellia, or Twofish are secure.
Essentially, cryptography is still a black art.
So you base all your confidence on the fact that the few dozen civilian researchers competent enough to master the math haven't found a method to break them so far, whereas for example the NSA is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians world-wide and works on breaking ciphers for the past 60 years or so. Nobody will do an exhaustive key search to break a cipher, but perhaps this is not needed. Don't get me wrong, unless there is further evidence there is no reason to distrust our ciphers---but you also shouldn't trust them unconditionally. (except for the one-time PAD if used 100% correctly)
Well, there's "ideas" then there's "idea that is totally original and never been done before".
Of course, lots of "ideas-people" insist their idea is in the latter category
I believe that this is answer signifies part of the problem (no pun intended). There is no need for completely new story or gameplay ideas, just as there is no need for entirely new genres in fiction literature. Occasionally, someone invents a new genre, but that's not what I meant. Most modern game studios lack the skill or will to create a convincing piece of fiction. Not even dumb kids can identify with the characters in games, and most games nowadays are so full of cliches that even Rambo looks like a piece of art in comparison. Like I said, there are exceptions, but the main problem seems to be that the game publishers do not at all consider what they do as a form of art or at least "popular culture"---unlike in the movie industry, where for every 3 or 4 blockbuster trash titles something really valuable but less profitable is produced.
By the way, I have some general game engine idea that is completely novel, technically realizable, and guarantees long-term commercial success while being reusable and not tied to a particular genre.
But you would say that, wouldn't you. There is no reason to believe it, especially when you won't tell anyone what the idea is.
It doesn't matter for me whether you believe me or not. Anyway, why should I write a treatment or concept and send it to some studio just for it to be trashed? That was the main point of the example, not to emphasize my own brilliance without giving evidence ;-)
It is a problem that due to the huge investment required, people are less likely to follow more risky novel ideas. But the problem is still not the lack of ideas, it's the risk in doing something unusual. If you are willing to front the millions of dollars required for your brand new idea, then please step forward.
The gaming industry has a lot to learn from the movie industry, where people risk millions all the time for often radically new ideas.
How would I know if the idea is any good before seeing it? I'm not sure that any programmer would be willing to pay money to see random ideas, and certainly not more than a trivial amount.
First, the evaluation (karma) of the offerer which is based on what people who previously bought a description thought about it. Idea seller have a reputation to loose. Second, hints can be given in more or less detail and the market regulates what kind of detail gives enough motivation to buy. Third, the descriptions cost trivial amounts. We're talking about hobby people describing things they could never realize themselves. I estimate that rough 1-2 page idea is worth $3 dollar, and a 15 page article max. $15-30. A 100 page work including technical descriptions would be more expensive. There can be several standard formats (size, number of figures, etc.) and of course categories and product domains to which the idea applies. Exclusive licenses (no selling of the idea to others and perhaps an NDA) would be much more expensive. Fourth, you can even have a license that gives away the idea for free, but gives the offerer a small percentage of the gain from the final product for some time.
Sure the whole thing is much like gambling, but many people like gambling and if the seller (e.g. a housewife in Ohio) has a really good evaluation, there must be something to her ideas. Actually I find it likely that larger companies would start to buy lots of descriptions with exclusive licenses even when 9 out of 10 of the ideas were trash...
I haven't been thinking about legal issues, though, which should be left to a lawyer. But anyway, people in the end buy a copyrighted text, not an idea.
Most people pointed out that ideas are pretty much worthless. Many of those people also claimed that in the studios people already have plenty of ideas.
If that is so, would anyone explain to me why those numerous ideas don't make it into the final products? Because after 20 years of gaming experience starting with C64, I fail to recognize the great ideas in the final games. It is in fact not easy to see even a grain of creativity in the majority of recent gaming titles and especially their story-telling sucks. What happens to those great ideas when the end product is just dull, repetitive monster-shooting?
By the way, I have some general game engine idea that is completely novel, technically realizable, and guarantees long-term commercial success while being reusable and not tied to a particular genre. No joke, I mean that seriously. But since I can't sell it and also don't want to be ripped-off, I prefer not to tell it to anyone and instead wait until some professional game developers figure it out by themselves.
Ideas are worth money. The only reason why they can't be sold is because nobody has created the market infrastructure yet. So here is another idea of mine from the early 90ies. I give it away for free, since I have a regular daytime job now and figure that I will never realize it myself anyway: Set up a web site on which you can sell descriptions of ideas, which are in turn described by little teasers. People don't buy the actual idea, they buy a description. Of course, sellers and buyers have a reputation (karma) and scammers can also be kicked out. The price varies with the level of detail (from a short paragraph to 150 pages technical documentary including sample implementation). Also, when an idea description is offered exclusively (optionally plus NDA), it's much more expensive than when it is offered to anyone. If you do this the right way (ask me if you'r ein doubt), it will be a huge success.
Anyway my impression is that business environments destroy most creativity and suppress good ideas, so large companies or game studios should better listen to the ideas of their customers.
It eliminates this terrible inconvenience of being asked "Paper or plastic?", a question that is constantly giving me headaches and is making my life more and more miserable, because I just can't decide what's the right answer. Should I take paper and be friendly to our environment? But what if it splits while I'm crossing the street? And then this scene in "The Graduate" comes to my mind:
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
So "plastic" should be the right answer. But then again, it is bad for the environment and paper bags look much better than plastic bags. What if I meet a very attractive girl on the way home, one that happens to be an enviromentalist?
The invention is great, but there is still a problem with it. It doesn't take all necessary parameters into account. What do you do with people that use plastic bags on even and paper bags on odd days? Can the system store this preference? What if I have more complicated patterns of choosing plastic vs. paper? Sometimes I don't even know in advance whether I take a paper or a plastic bag. Are my decisions perhaps based on quantum effects? Is Roger Penrose's "Quantum-Consciousness Theory" right? Is it then even possible to find the hidden variable that determines my choice?
When I discovered cloud computing independently in the early 90ies, I figured that it will always remain a niche market. I bet many people here can tell a similar story.
There are various "brilliant" ideas that aren't accepted by most people. For example, video phones whose image cannot be switched off, paid subscription to music streamed to your computer in a (presumedly) unsavable DRM-protected format, or the idea of turning your computer into a dumb front-end for some software running on a server controlled elsewhere (and perhaps even paying for it).
Admittedly, acceptance may change over time, for example many people nowadays seem to have no problems with "web apps". Given how bad browsers are as a platform, this is kind of bizarre, but anyway I personally believe that this is just a temporary phenomenon and only works in a few domains such as social networking. In the long run, people want to have a piece of software on their machine and entirely under their control. At least, that's what I want.
Damn it all got messed up. The point was: n is smaller than k, and n different blocks out of the k original blocks suffice for reconstruction.
They are better for dispersing data over storage media than using error correction codes. In essence, an IDA transforms a file into k blocks of data, and any n (nk blocks suffice to reconstruct the file. (It doesn't matter which blocks you choose for reconstruction, as long as you have n different blocks, you're fine.)
Unfortunately there don't seem to be many tools or libraries available, so you have to implement the IDA yourself and this requires a bit of math.
Well, at least were I come from, you're taught as a child that it's completely immoral to read someone else's mail without that person's consent. And I can't see why there should be any difference between snail mail and email. Reading someone's mail is on a par with breaking (seriously made) promises and oaths or being disloyal to friends when it has severe consequences for them. Decent people just don't do it, be it legal or not.
Don't be a jerk. I understand the meaning of "public" and "vantage point" quite well, and the second line of your reply raises some doubts whether you have actually read and understood my comment.
Clearly, we have rights to photograph private property if we do it from a public vantage point.
So the fact that one of the hugest online advertising companies photographing your house so that people can watch it and hence bring more profit to your company is a public vantage point?
Perhaps I would be able to recognize a "public vantage" point if Google put their entire picture database into the public domain, available for use by anyone for any purpose at any time.
I was absolutely serious and find it entertaining that so few people consider Google and their aims as problematic. I don't care very much about privacy issues, but I'm concerned about the global information dominance Google strives for, which happens to coincide with interests of certain US govenmen agencies. Even if Google was totally your friend and completely benevolent this has far reaching consequences.
It is very easy and also very tempting to modify a secret page rank algorithm to achieve some effect you desire. Even if Google doesn't do it and doesn't want to do it now, it is only a matter of time until someone else demands it for the sake of insert your favorite reason here. And as you know, Google isn't just about web pages, they digitize all media they can get, try to invade the desktop of every computer on earth, etc.
It is a well known fact that you can control people to a large extent by the information they get. Besides, if someone repeatedly tells me "I'm your friend" and "Don't be evil" over the years, this strikes me as odd.
Google is by far the biggest threat to the national and economic security of individual countries. It is a monster, and many non-US governments will have a bad awakening when they finally realize this and it's too late.
If Google wanted to, they could already nowadways influence stock markets on a large scale or heavily influence future research in just about any discipline globally or on a per region basis just by slightly modifying their page rank algorithm. From the user data collected by Google, you can already today compile a complete psychological profile of any user with static IP, including his skills, knowledge, sexual preferences, and so on.
Just about the only politician foreseeing the problems of global information dominance in the hand of one US company was Jaques Chirac who initiated a large project for developing a European search engine, but this project more or less died. I don't agree with Chirac on many points, but on this one he was right. (And no, I'm not a Frenchman.)
Frankly speaking, I'm tired of people who downplay Google privacy issues. In the long run, the problem is MUCH bigger than they can imagine.
Having just written and published a book in Latex and being a LaTeX-user for many years, I share most of your criticisms. LaTeX does its job, but it sucks. And most LaTeX enthusiasts have no clue about typesetting, even though they think they have--Many books about LaTeX have an absolutely horrible look and layout. In fact, LaTeX is partly responsible for the decline of typesetting quality in the academic domain, since many publishers nowadays expect you to deliver a book camera-ready instead of hiring a pro to do the typesetting. (You can do good typesetting in LaTeX, but that requires you to go through every paragraph and adjust and check the word spacing manually, and do a lot of other tedious things that no unpaid hobbyist typesetter does.)
So I've also been looking for alternatives for many years and have come to the conclusion that there are none. lout has a cleaner underlying programming language, but has much less extensions and has a too small user base. Then there are a number of document preparations systems, for example aft, sisu and various xml based ones. Some of them have nicer markup than LaTeX, but none of them allow you to typeset as much math as LaTeX does. They are more suitable for large organizations that want to publish the same document in various formats (html, pdf, etc.)
My advice is to use OpenOffice Writer for documents that don't contain many formulas, and use LaTeX for all math-related stuff. As long as you don't try to tweak the layout and use as few packages as possible, LaTeX is fine and there is no way around it.