No one benefits from reCAPTCHA being broken. No one
You couldn't be more wrong. Sure, breaking reCAPTCHA would create a headache for website admins (including me, for example), but in order to break reCAPTCHA someone has to devise a better text recognition program. And that's great news! This is an example of a general side effect of the cat and mouse game that are captchas. Captcha's are a simple form of Turing Test, where website admins are trying to determine who is a computer and who is a real human being. Every time a captcha gets broken, we get a sophisticated new algorithm for doing something that previously only humans could do (or only humans could do well, at least).
There are other possible problems, aside from the legal ones.
Don't get me wrong, this is a neat idea; the laissez-faire anarchist in me is salivating. But its not immediately clear if the claims these guys are making are valid (or even possible).
One warning flag though: I can't help but notice their prediction of expected deflation (from the wiki article).
Before you go invest real money in this (however it is one would go about doing that...), you'd better be sure this isn't a very clever pyramid scheme.
Please don't forget that it is a subset of "religious people" who are fighting to discredit science and impose their beliefs via government and laws.
While I agree it is important to stress that it is just a subset, when the elected representatives of a state work towards the interests of that subset, then we have a problem.
http://xkcd.com/154/
And in-game physics, where performance is hugely important (and expensive), whereas the exact floating point accuracy of a given force will make a negligible difference. Most rigid body physics systems that you'd find in a game will settle towards an equilibrium regardless of small random perturbations anyways. And many physics simulators introduce this kind of slight randomness in the first place, so there really is nothing to be lost here.
I remember that early on in the Google Android SDK releases there was mention of voice recognition, and I was sorry to see it go in the final release.
Perhaps this means we'll soon see voice recognition re-introduced to Android?
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No one benefits from reCAPTCHA being broken. No one
You couldn't be more wrong. Sure, breaking reCAPTCHA would create a headache for website admins (including me, for example), but in order to break reCAPTCHA someone has to devise a better text recognition program. And that's great news! This is an example of a general side effect of the cat and mouse game that are captchas. Captcha's are a simple form of Turing Test, where website admins are trying to determine who is a computer and who is a real human being. Every time a captcha gets broken, we get a sophisticated new algorithm for doing something that previously only humans could do (or only humans could do well, at least).
There are other possible problems, aside from the legal ones. Don't get me wrong, this is a neat idea; the laissez-faire anarchist in me is salivating. But its not immediately clear if the claims these guys are making are valid (or even possible). One warning flag though: I can't help but notice their prediction of expected deflation (from the wiki article). Before you go invest real money in this (however it is one would go about doing that...), you'd better be sure this isn't a very clever pyramid scheme.
I just can't help but observe that the congressman is, himself, shouting fire in an attempt to incite panic.
Please don't forget that it is a subset of "religious people" who are fighting to discredit science and impose their beliefs via government and laws.
While I agree it is important to stress that it is just a subset, when the elected representatives of a state work towards the interests of that subset, then we have a problem. http://xkcd.com/154/
And in-game physics, where performance is hugely important (and expensive), whereas the exact floating point accuracy of a given force will make a negligible difference. Most rigid body physics systems that you'd find in a game will settle towards an equilibrium regardless of small random perturbations anyways. And many physics simulators introduce this kind of slight randomness in the first place, so there really is nothing to be lost here.
you are aware that U.S. citizens are being held at Guantanamo?
No, but there is a Canadian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr, who was 15 years old at the time of the alleged crimes.
I remember that early on in the Google Android SDK releases there was mention of voice recognition, and I was sorry to see it go in the final release. Perhaps this means we'll soon see voice recognition re-introduced to Android?