The game code is opensource and moddable. This is how most people develope cheats. It's just the engine code that we don't have the source to...
The only way to prevent cheats is to encrypt all data packets between the client and server so they cannot be altered by a proxy sitting in between the 2. Proxy cheats (intercept the client's data packet and alter each packet where the fire button is pressed to give a headshot) are dirt simple to implement, and are not detectable through server side or client side programs (except quirks in the proxy are detectable by the server, such as known aim bots that do certain movement patterns. This is detected much like AV's detect viruses)
So the answer isn't really to keep the game closed to keep cheats out. The answer is to keep the packets secured and unaltered while traversing the internet.
That really is the solution for bandwidth problems.. P2P developers need to be worried about off net traffic. Even as little as comparing PINGs from other nodes would drastically reduce interstate and international internet traffic. There is no reason to connect to off net users before trying to connect to users on the same or near network as you... Maybe allow users to connect to a small number of off network nodes to get a better horizon from gnutella/kazaa, but mostly connect to local nodes. If every ISP installed a freenet node, Kazza node, and a Gnutella node that only routed requests and did not offer files, and then only allowed you to connect through them, P2P traffic wouldn't be an issue. This would allow the ISP to create a local P2P network of the user's choice (and possibly bridge the local users together) and all the local content could instantly be available, and nothing stored [not even file lists] on the ISP's end to avoid DMCA issues.
I have not seen a single P2P application that has this capability. until it happens, P2P will be a huge bandwidth problem for ISP's, universities, and businesses.
I can't believe it has been years since Napster, and yet it is the only P2P application in existance that lets you sort available downloads by ping (read: relative distance on the network).
I could say the same thing about a little known british monopoly in America called Chartwells. They own exclusive food contracts on some 80% of the american universities which say they will give 15% of profits back to the university. Then, once they get the contract, they jack up all their prices 20%, and pay their workers slave wages (work study) simply because they are on campus and can get away with it. After they kick off all other on campus competition which existed before them, the university is locked in, and can't turn back.
Their cafeteria contracts are even worse. They lock the university into a housing contract that forces on campus residents to purchase a minimum food contract (around 10 meals a week). The price for this is around $6 per meal. In actuality, the food quality is so low (the highest employee turnaround in the region) and they produce so little food that not everyone can or will eat all of their meals in a given week (they stop making food for dinner at 6:00pm, and you must get there at 5:30 if you want food that isn't cold because of the long lines). This causes the actual per meal price to raise to over $10 per meal on average(for food plan students, which is 100% of on campus students, plus off campus people who purchase one).
Our student newspaper uncovered a bunch of illegal tactics they have been doing for years and caused our university to start a new food purchase program that will give us food vouchers around town in lieu of meals from Chartwells, but this behaviour goes on around the country, in almost every university in America, and has been so for years (and will likely continue for a long time).
Your right, it is plain wrong in today's american english.
At minimum, he is wrong in american english. I have no idea how the british do things. The dictinary says you can use data as plural or singular form with the same spelling. The parent doesn't know what he is talking about.
Technically speaking, yes, 33bit is just twice the amount of distinct numbers that can be represented vs 32bit. 64 bit is actually 2^32 tims as many dinsinct combinations that can be represented vs 32 bit.
However, 64 bit means there are actually TWICE as much representation, which leads to exactly 2^32 times as many different possible pieces of data.
So depending on whether you call the representation of a number size of information, or the different combinations possible the size of information, depends on if this logic is correct or not. For the former, 64 bit just processes 2x as much information. For the latter, 64 bit is actually 2^32 times as much information. It's really an issue of definition...
Here's a short breakdown to help with the visualization of this concept...
In base10, you can represent 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (10^32) numbers with 32 Decimal digits.
In base2, you can represent 4 294 967 296 (2^32) numbers with 32 Binary digits.
-- Now, double the representation...
In base10, you can represent 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (10^64) numbers with 64 decimal digits. this is exactly 10^32 tims as many possible data combinations.
In base2, you can represent 18446744073709551616 (2^64) different numbers with 64 binary digits (bits). This is exactly 2^32 times as many possible data combinations.
It's funny that the fate of Apple's main profit generator (business machines) depends so much on companies like Adobe, Quark, and Macromedia...
Adobe has already jumped ship and said their applications run faster on Intel Pentium 4 Processors. Quark and MacroMedia is already available on all the windows platforms, which have cheaper price/performance ratios (and with win2k and XP, finally a stable MS desktop)
Most of the stuff that used to be apple exclusive, or apple optimized has moved over, and there really isn't any motivation, except the "ease of use, and power of unix" that Apple brings to the desktop. Hopefully now Apple will survive on their own merits, insted of someone else's like they did in the days of Classic Mac OS.
"While technically true, saying "64-bit can process 2x faster than 32-bit" is misleading."
It's a good thing the article didn't say that.. in fact.. I will quote it here:
"IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips"
There. It says it can process twice as much information per cycle. Which is exactly what the benefit of 64 bit computing is. (along with 64 bit instructions[read: more general purpose registers are possible], and 64 bit memory addressing).
The article makes no claims of 2x performance increase. Nobody said that more information/cycle directly correlates to overall, or even specific performance. 2x the information per cycle is EXACTLY what 64 bit means, no matter how you look at it. And that is exactly what the article said. Claiming 2x performance increase would just be absurd. Kindof like your statements.
Actually not really. Your wrong. It can process instructions that are twice as long as 32 bit. But it can also do calculations on 64 bit integers. Which is exactly 2x information per cycle.
So quit it with this know it all attitude. It's wrong.
I know your trying to knock down the 64bit myths.. But in reality, 64 bit math essentially means you are processing 2x as much information per instruction..
While you are right, if you are only processing 32 bit data, then yes, there is only one benefit, and that is 64 bit memory addressing. But if you are processing 64 bit data, then yes, the article is both technically correct, and just correct in general.
Not that I like apple, or would ever pay 99 cents for a song in their database, but it is popular with a lot of people, and it is proven to work, and generate huge amounts of revenue.
What makes cable gaming different from existing gaming networks is that with existing gaming networks, all processing is done locally on the user's own machine. With cable gaming, the required processing is done by the company's machines. This minimizes the actual amount of bandwidth required to travel along physical cable lines, as well as negates the need for a game processor on the consumer end (i.e. a game console; Xbox, Playstation, etc.). The only additional hardware required on the consumer's end is a minimal amount of Random Access Memory (RAM) onboard the digital cable box that acts as buffer memory to ensure a smooth, seamless gaming experience."
How is this misinformation impressive? There is no evidence that it would take less bandwidth for the server to transmit a video stream rather than just the small data packets that most online gaming servers do. It would be proposterous for the servers to create the 3d video signal to each client. This is just beyond the physical real world right now. No server -- no matter how powerful -- is going to be able to produce such streams to any amount of gaming clients with reasonable latency. This business student can keep dreaming...
And they wonder why most businesses fail within the first 2 years.. Look at the shit they teach you in business college. This is obvious to anybody with a brain. And this kid is supposed to be a Junior.
And I claim that anybody who is bashing the movie because they don't understand half the scenes (like the rave, smith scene's, ending with neo/smith on the table) are just too stupid to grasp the philosophy of the movie, which BTW is the whole point.
If its just an action flick to you, I must ask if your IQ is anything above 25?
"I'm hoping it won't be a blatant rip off of Star Wars where everyone though Anakin was "The One" while it turns out it was his son and Anakin actually ends up being evil"
I think you missed the point of being "the one" in the star wars prequals... "The One" was supposed to bring a balance to the force. Thus, since most of the force was already lopsided tward the "good" side, anakin being "the one" (which he was) evened the score by turning "bad"
After anakin, there was never a "the one" again, and luke was just a random, not as powerful jedi that convinced his father to spare his life, thus ending the dark side. Since luke was the last jedi at that time (nobody gives any hint that there will be more jedis), the force stayed (somewhat) balanced starting from the point that anakin went to the dark side.
There is no such thing as an iPod ripoff... you see, other companies were making hard drive MP3 players (of the same size) for years before the iPod was even a concept. iPod is a ripoff in itself. And a damn expensively overpriced (yet still quality) one at that.
You should do this (keep the money on the counter until the end of the transaction) reguardless of the method you use to count change. My point is that the reciept says exactly how much change the customer should get back. That way, when he walks out the door, and he re-counts his change, he can verify that the computer says he deserves this amount, and everything is cool.
If he has no documentation on how much change he should get back, unless he is good at counting backwards (which you can't assume, as most people can barely add up coins) he won't know how much he deserves back, just like the cashier.
If the reciept says how much change he is due, and you hand him his change, and he recounts it, and finds out he is shorted a nickle, its easier to get that nickle back than it would be if the reciept doesn't say the change.
I guess my main point is that it is less confusion on both sides. Even though you know how much change YOU should get back, for consistancy sake, we can't assume EVERYONE knows. And most of the time in practice, unless the reciept says how much change is due back to the customer, he has no idea how much you owe him. Most businesses would rather give the customer documentation on what they get back, rather than forcing them to do math in their head each time they walk into a store if they don't wanna get shortchanged. It's about trust. How many times have you gotten pissed off because you didn't get a reciept, or the reciept didn't show the correct change on it? if not many, how many other people have you seen get pissed off about it? I have seen alot, and most of them could be avoided with properly documented change line on a reciept.
Most (but not all) people that think they might have enough but don't will ask the cashier to calculate the final price for them. VAT in the EU is somethinlg ike 17% I think. In the US, you will rarely run into a city with greater than 8% tax, so it is considered insignificant on small items, and on larger items, if you have the money to buy it, you probably have the money to pay the taxes too.
Looking back, I never really know how much a product costs EXACTLY before I buy it. To me, it is all rounded into change that goes into my pockets and falls out onto the floorboard when I get into my car, so I usually don't worry about it unless I'm short on cash. The niceness to this is when I clean my car out at the car wash, I make money insted of spend it:)
I have dealth with retail quite extensively. Most of the places I worked rounded up the proce of a product to.9x after the margin. This is because on low dollar products (such as a single CD-R, etc) the cost of the cashier ringing up 1 item isn't covered by that small few cents that even a very high margin might produce. On low dollar items, the.9x round up helps to cover those costs, and simplify the business plan.
This effectively gives a higher margin on low dollar products, and as the price increases, its significance falls off, as is desired in a retail setting. Not only this, but the psychology involved might not help, but it sure doesn't hurt.
The thing is you don't want to have inconsistant prices on a retail floor. each item being marked up exactly by your margin. That is just crappy. It looks nicer to the customers if you have a pricelist that looks consistant. And rounding to.9x is one of the best ways to do that, for more than just 1 reason.
carrying most kinds of coins is a hardship. When i get in my car, all my change falls out into the seat, and then into the floor of the back seat. Same goes for my couch. It depends if you wear slacks cut pants, or jeans cut pants on wether or not you can carry change without a hassel (and even then, you still have to deal with it jingling in your pockets when you walk)
The $1 bill problem has to do with class structure. Lower class people carry more $1 bills than do people with lots of cash. Just like I would never carry more than 3 quarters, a rich man would never carry more than 4 $1 bills (unless he was just being absent minded). But most people I know that don't have a lot of money end up with lots of $1 bills because it doesn't make their wallet too fat because they don't have much to begin with.
"How many times have you been in a McDonald's and watched the cashier struggle with changing a $20 bill for a $16.73 order?"
If they were doing their job correctly, they shouldn't be baffled. They should type in 20$ cash into the register, and it will tell them exactly how much to give back. You seperate that number into coins using the greedy algorithm they tought you in kindergarden.
The only people that get confused at the register are people that type in the wrong amount of cash the customer handed them. Because they try to be clever. All that does in the end is cause more confusion to more people and increases mistakes and reduces accountability. That is why cashiers are taught this in the first place.
The point of typing in the dollar amount you recieved from the customer is so the reciept says exactly what the customer handed you, and the resultant change back. Later on he can't come back and say... "hey, didn't I hand you a 20$ bill insted of a 10$ bill?"
The point isn't that your way is more confusing. It isn't. Some people just look at you strange because they don't see it often. The point is that the reciept says what actually happened. And the customer can then verify that he is getting the correct amount of change back without doing extra work. This is the entire point of a reciept in the first place, and the reason they train cashiers to use the greedy algorithm.
It's not heresay when its documented into the LSB mailing lists as being the exact reason that LSB allows so many different filesystem layouts. That reason being that they don't want to change traditional usage because people (and mostly companies) will be pissed off (ie, redhat, debian, suse, mandrake, etc). Insted they allow different layouts to attempt compatibility between eachother, which is a huge burden on package and application maintainers (and if you think about it, the only reason that there needs to be a seperate package for each application for each version of each distribution)
Slashdot Mirror
No...
The game code is opensource and moddable. This is how most people develope cheats. It's just the engine code that we don't have the source to...
The only way to prevent cheats is to encrypt all data packets between the client and server so they cannot be altered by a proxy sitting in between the 2. Proxy cheats (intercept the client's data packet and alter each packet where the fire button is pressed to give a headshot) are dirt simple to implement, and are not detectable through server side or client side programs (except quirks in the proxy are detectable by the server, such as known aim bots that do certain movement patterns. This is detected much like AV's detect viruses)
So the answer isn't really to keep the game closed to keep cheats out. The answer is to keep the packets secured and unaltered while traversing the internet.
That really is the solution for bandwidth problems.. P2P developers need to be worried about off net traffic. Even as little as comparing PINGs from other nodes would drastically reduce interstate and international internet traffic. There is no reason to connect to off net users before trying to connect to users on the same or near network as you... Maybe allow users to connect to a small number of off network nodes to get a better horizon from gnutella/kazaa, but mostly connect to local nodes. If every ISP installed a freenet node, Kazza node, and a Gnutella node that only routed requests and did not offer files, and then only allowed you to connect through them, P2P traffic wouldn't be an issue. This would allow the ISP to create a local P2P network of the user's choice (and possibly bridge the local users together) and all the local content could instantly be available, and nothing stored [not even file lists] on the ISP's end to avoid DMCA issues.
I have not seen a single P2P application that has this capability. until it happens, P2P will be a huge bandwidth problem for ISP's, universities, and businesses.
I can't believe it has been years since Napster, and yet it is the only P2P application in existance that lets you sort available downloads by ping (read: relative distance on the network).
That is why I called him a fool... :)
I could say the same thing about a little known british monopoly in America called Chartwells. They own exclusive food contracts on some 80% of the american universities which say they will give 15% of profits back to the university. Then, once they get the contract, they jack up all their prices 20%, and pay their workers slave wages (work study) simply because they are on campus and can get away with it. After they kick off all other on campus competition which existed before them, the university is locked in, and can't turn back.
Their cafeteria contracts are even worse. They lock the university into a housing contract that forces on campus residents to purchase a minimum food contract (around 10 meals a week). The price for this is around $6 per meal. In actuality, the food quality is so low (the highest employee turnaround in the region) and they produce so little food that not everyone can or will eat all of their meals in a given week (they stop making food for dinner at 6:00pm, and you must get there at 5:30 if you want food that isn't cold because of the long lines). This causes the actual per meal price to raise to over $10 per meal on average(for food plan students, which is 100% of on campus students, plus off campus people who purchase one).
Our student newspaper uncovered a bunch of illegal tactics they have been doing for years and caused our university to start a new food purchase program that will give us food vouchers around town in lieu of meals from Chartwells, but this behaviour goes on around the country, in almost every university in America, and has been so for years (and will likely continue for a long time).
If you ask me, we need more cartels in the oil business. Maybe then we will stop artifically inflating the prices of renewable resources.
Your right, it is plain wrong in today's american english.
At minimum, he is wrong in american english. I have no idea how the british do things. The dictinary says you can use data as plural or singular form with the same spelling. The parent doesn't know what he is talking about.
Once again, the fools of slashdot speak...
Definition and usage of the word "data"
Read up.. you might learn something.
Technically speaking, yes, 33bit is just twice the amount of distinct numbers that can be represented vs 32bit. 64 bit is actually 2^32 tims as many dinsinct combinations that can be represented vs 32 bit.
However, 64 bit means there are actually TWICE as much representation, which leads to exactly 2^32 times as many different possible pieces of data.
So depending on whether you call the representation of a number size of information, or the different combinations possible the size of information, depends on if this logic is correct or not. For the former, 64 bit just processes 2x as much information. For the latter, 64 bit is actually 2^32 times as much information. It's really an issue of definition...
Here's a short breakdown to help with the visualization of this concept...
In base10, you can represent 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (10^32) numbers with 32 Decimal digits.
In base2, you can represent 4 294 967 296 (2^32) numbers with 32 Binary digits.
--
Now, double the representation...
In base10, you can represent 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 (10^64) numbers with 64 decimal digits. this is exactly 10^32 tims as many possible data combinations.
In base2, you can represent 18446744073709551616 (2^64) different numbers with 64 binary digits (bits). This is exactly 2^32 times as many possible data combinations.
It's funny that the fate of Apple's main profit generator (business machines) depends so much on companies like Adobe, Quark, and Macromedia...
Adobe has already jumped ship and said their applications run faster on Intel Pentium 4 Processors. Quark and MacroMedia is already available on all the windows platforms, which have cheaper price/performance ratios (and with win2k and XP, finally a stable MS desktop)
Most of the stuff that used to be apple exclusive, or apple optimized has moved over, and there really isn't any motivation, except the "ease of use, and power of unix" that Apple brings to the desktop. Hopefully now Apple will survive on their own merits, insted of someone else's like they did in the days of Classic Mac OS.
"While technically true, saying "64-bit can process 2x faster than 32-bit" is misleading."
It's a good thing the article didn't say that.. in fact.. I will quote it here:
"IBM says the new Apple chip will be of the 64-bit variety, which means it can process twice as much information per cycle as existing 32-bit chips"
There. It says it can process twice as much information per cycle. Which is exactly what the benefit of 64 bit computing is. (along with 64 bit instructions[read: more general purpose registers are possible], and 64 bit memory addressing).
The article makes no claims of 2x performance increase. Nobody said that more information/cycle directly correlates to overall, or even specific performance. 2x the information per cycle is EXACTLY what 64 bit means, no matter how you look at it. And that is exactly what the article said. Claiming 2x performance increase would just be absurd. Kindof like your statements.
Actually not really. Your wrong. It can process instructions that are twice as long as 32 bit. But it can also do calculations on 64 bit integers. Which is exactly 2x information per cycle.
So quit it with this know it all attitude. It's wrong.
I know your trying to knock down the 64bit myths.. But in reality, 64 bit math essentially means you are processing 2x as much information per instruction..
While you are right, if you are only processing 32 bit data, then yes, there is only one benefit, and that is 64 bit memory addressing. But if you are processing 64 bit data, then yes, the article is both technically correct, and just correct in general.
Yea you can, look at what apple did.
Not that I like apple, or would ever pay 99 cents for a song in their database, but it is popular with a lot of people, and it is proven to work, and generate huge amounts of revenue.
What makes cable gaming different from existing gaming networks is that with existing gaming networks, all processing is done locally on the user's own machine. With cable gaming, the required processing is done by the company's machines. This minimizes the actual amount of bandwidth required to travel along physical cable lines, as well as negates the need for a game processor on the consumer end (i.e. a game console; Xbox, Playstation, etc.). The only additional hardware required on the consumer's end is a minimal amount of Random Access Memory (RAM) onboard the digital cable box that acts as buffer memory to ensure a smooth, seamless gaming experience."
How is this misinformation impressive? There is no evidence that it would take less bandwidth for the server to transmit a video stream rather than just the small data packets that most online gaming servers do. It would be proposterous for the servers to create the 3d video signal to each client. This is just beyond the physical real world right now. No server -- no matter how powerful -- is going to be able to produce such streams to any amount of gaming clients with reasonable latency. This business student can keep dreaming...
And they wonder why most businesses fail within the first 2 years.. Look at the shit they teach you in business college. This is obvious to anybody with a brain. And this kid is supposed to be a Junior.
I think you missed the point of the scene, and of the movie. You should go watch it again, or just stop watching philisophical movies.
Your right...
And I claim that anybody who is bashing the movie because they don't understand half the scenes (like the rave, smith scene's, ending with neo/smith on the table) are just too stupid to grasp the philosophy of the movie, which BTW is the whole point.
If its just an action flick to you, I must ask if your IQ is anything above 25?
"I'm hoping it won't be a blatant rip off of Star Wars where everyone though Anakin was "The One" while it turns out it was his son and Anakin actually ends up being evil"
I think you missed the point of being "the one" in the star wars prequals... "The One" was supposed to bring a balance to the force. Thus, since most of the force was already lopsided tward the "good" side, anakin being "the one" (which he was) evened the score by turning "bad"
After anakin, there was never a "the one" again, and luke was just a random, not as powerful jedi that convinced his father to spare his life, thus ending the dark side. Since luke was the last jedi at that time (nobody gives any hint that there will be more jedis), the force stayed (somewhat) balanced starting from the point that anakin went to the dark side.
There is no such thing as an iPod ripoff... you see, other companies were making hard drive MP3 players (of the same size) for years before the iPod was even a concept. iPod is a ripoff in itself. And a damn expensively overpriced (yet still quality) one at that.
You should do this (keep the money on the counter until the end of the transaction) reguardless of the method you use to count change. My point is that the reciept says exactly how much change the customer should get back. That way, when he walks out the door, and he re-counts his change, he can verify that the computer says he deserves this amount, and everything is cool.
If he has no documentation on how much change he should get back, unless he is good at counting backwards (which you can't assume, as most people can barely add up coins) he won't know how much he deserves back, just like the cashier.
If the reciept says how much change he is due, and you hand him his change, and he recounts it, and finds out he is shorted a nickle, its easier to get that nickle back than it would be if the reciept doesn't say the change.
I guess my main point is that it is less confusion on both sides. Even though you know how much change YOU should get back, for consistancy sake, we can't assume EVERYONE knows. And most of the time in practice, unless the reciept says how much change is due back to the customer, he has no idea how much you owe him. Most businesses would rather give the customer documentation on what they get back, rather than forcing them to do math in their head each time they walk into a store if they don't wanna get shortchanged. It's about trust. How many times have you gotten pissed off because you didn't get a reciept, or the reciept didn't show the correct change on it? if not many, how many other people have you seen get pissed off about it? I have seen alot, and most of them could be avoided with properly documented change line on a reciept.
Most (but not all) people that think they might have enough but don't will ask the cashier to calculate the final price for them. VAT in the EU is somethinlg ike 17% I think. In the US, you will rarely run into a city with greater than 8% tax, so it is considered insignificant on small items, and on larger items, if you have the money to buy it, you probably have the money to pay the taxes too.
:)
Looking back, I never really know how much a product costs EXACTLY before I buy it. To me, it is all rounded into change that goes into my pockets and falls out onto the floorboard when I get into my car, so I usually don't worry about it unless I'm short on cash. The niceness to this is when I clean my car out at the car wash, I make money insted of spend it
I have dealth with retail quite extensively. Most of the places I worked rounded up the proce of a product to .9x after the margin. This is because on low dollar products (such as a single CD-R, etc) the cost of the cashier ringing up 1 item isn't covered by that small few cents that even a very high margin might produce. On low dollar items, the .9x round up helps to cover those costs, and simplify the business plan.
.9x is one of the best ways to do that, for more than just 1 reason.
This effectively gives a higher margin on low dollar products, and as the price increases, its significance falls off, as is desired in a retail setting. Not only this, but the psychology involved might not help, but it sure doesn't hurt.
The thing is you don't want to have inconsistant prices on a retail floor. each item being marked up exactly by your margin. That is just crappy. It looks nicer to the customers if you have a pricelist that looks consistant. And rounding to
carrying most kinds of coins is a hardship. When i get in my car, all my change falls out into the seat, and then into the floor of the back seat. Same goes for my couch. It depends if you wear slacks cut pants, or jeans cut pants on wether or not you can carry change without a hassel (and even then, you still have to deal with it jingling in your pockets when you walk)
The $1 bill problem has to do with class structure. Lower class people carry more $1 bills than do people with lots of cash. Just like I would never carry more than 3 quarters, a rich man would never carry more than 4 $1 bills (unless he was just being absent minded). But most people I know that don't have a lot of money end up with lots of $1 bills because it doesn't make their wallet too fat because they don't have much to begin with.
"How many times have you been in a McDonald's and watched the cashier struggle with changing a $20 bill for a $16.73 order?"
If they were doing their job correctly, they shouldn't be baffled. They should type in 20$ cash into the register, and it will tell them exactly how much to give back. You seperate that number into coins using the greedy algorithm they tought you in kindergarden.
The only people that get confused at the register are people that type in the wrong amount of cash the customer handed them. Because they try to be clever. All that does in the end is cause more confusion to more people and increases mistakes and reduces accountability. That is why cashiers are taught this in the first place.
The point of typing in the dollar amount you recieved from the customer is so the reciept says exactly what the customer handed you, and the resultant change back. Later on he can't come back and say... "hey, didn't I hand you a 20$ bill insted of a 10$ bill?"
The point isn't that your way is more confusing. It isn't. Some people just look at you strange because they don't see it often. The point is that the reciept says what actually happened. And the customer can then verify that he is getting the correct amount of change back without doing extra work. This is the entire point of a reciept in the first place, and the reason they train cashiers to use the greedy algorithm.
It's not heresay when its documented into the LSB mailing lists as being the exact reason that LSB allows so many different filesystem layouts. That reason being that they don't want to change traditional usage because people (and mostly companies) will be pissed off (ie, redhat, debian, suse, mandrake, etc). Insted they allow different layouts to attempt compatibility between eachother, which is a huge burden on package and application maintainers (and if you think about it, the only reason that there needs to be a seperate package for each application for each version of each distribution)