Type setting and word processing are different applications. Word processing is about getting words on a page, while type setting is about adjusting where the line and page breaks occur to produce the most visually pleasing result. The difference between Word and LaTeX is like the difference between Word and Publisher; they solve very different problems.
I sympathize with your predicament. One of the biggest problems with LaTeX/TeX is that while it has a strong mathematical foundation (see the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm), it's front end is a badly designed macro-based programing language.
Macro-based langauges can work, but most of them are just a pain to work with (M4 anyone?). Unfortunately, Knuth didn't have the advantage of a lot of language research that has been don't in the past few decades.
On top of this the layers that have been built on top TeX to make it "easier" have insulated users so much that they don't understand what is really going on when TeX formats a document. If you're doing simple stuff that's okay, but imagine trying to drift a car if you didn't know how the searing wheel controls the front wheels instead of the back wheels.
Simple answer: LaTeX implements proper "optimal" line breaking, while most word processors implement "greedy" line breaking. This means that LaTeX will produce the "best looking"(*) word wrap. See "Word Wrap" on Wikipedia for just the tip of the iceberg.
(*) "Best looking" in this case has a precise mathematical definition. See the Wikipedia reference for more details. Finding definitions of "best looking" that actually look good and that are mathematically tractable (some involving figure placement are NP-hard) is an open area of research.
What sets TeX apart from other formatting systems is that it has a mathematical foundation. At it's core, TeX has a metric for how "good" a document looks and formats it to optimize that metric. Someone who wants to make a better TeX will have to have a thorough understanding of the math behind it (e.g. some "goodness" metrics are known to be NP-hard). See "Knuth-Pass line breaking" for just the tip of the iceberg on this.
So, yes, it will take someone who is a wiz at math, computer science and user interfaces (?) to overthrow TeX.
Type setting is a very different task than word processing. Proper type setting involved heavy math in order to optimize the formatting of the document. Look up the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm for the most basic example (there are better algorithms now days). These sorts of formatting tweaks are things that OpenOffice and MS Word just don't do.
I don't think YouTube is trying to run a loudness war, but rather trying to fix up a lot of amateurish recordings that are uploaded with bad audio. I can't tell you how many recordings on the net are either way to quiet (e.g. I can't hear speech even at max volume) or too loud and that change in mid-video (e.g. person walks away from or closer to mic). Despite their good intentions, though, it seems to have fallen prey to the "Clippy" effect.
What YouTube needs to do is have a little check-box on uploads that indicates whether to apply the auto-balance. And in case an uploader asks for no auto-balance when they really shouldn't (e.g. they think they know but don't) there should be a side link to listen to the auto-balanced version.
Typing rhythm (not speed) over short letter sequences should be reliable. For example, the rhythm for "T-H-E" and other common short words should not be effected by thinking pauses since most people type in word length bursts though there may need to be a scaling factor (i.e. I'm guessing the rhythm of "T-H-E" will be the same whether it is typed slowly or quickly).
The non-consumer chip market still focuses on "Customer Service", it's mostly the (consumer?) software market that is so arrogant.
Freescale (f.k.a. Motorola) or Atmel give away CPU samples and hardcopy user documentation for the asking. (My team did this to get the parts for a school project.) I suspect this is because they are selling to other companies so each "sale" amounts to so much money that it is worth the cost of giving the first few away. But even beyond that, good customer service has a tangible cost for the companies that are buying these chips (e.g. better documentation leads to shorter development times and cheaper development costs (engineering time is *expensive*)) so that may be effecting the quality of service as well.
17 USC 177 has something to say on this. Specifically subsection (b) allows you to pre-install on some hardware and then sell the hardware along with the original copies. (I'm told the term "exact copy" used in that subsection includes any mechanized copy including WAV to MP3 conversion.)
What it doesn't allow is the selling of "adaptations" but someone with more legal background will have to expound on where the line between "exact copy" and "adaptation" lies. My guess is that if Psystar patched the OS to make it run on their hardware, then it is an adaptation, but if they only patch the OS with a script that runs the first time the user logs on then they might be all right as far as this clause goes. (The DMCA could still get them.)
I am a physicist and [we] are kind of snobby about being top of the pile:)
Well not quite;-J. (For that matter a lot of results in (micro) economics derive directly from the math of game theory, though I'm not sure if there is any well founded mathematical model for macro.)
As you say, proving that the defendant used a bot and proving that the defendant didn't have autorization to access the page through a bot are two different things that each have to be proven. Without a robots.txt the defendant could argue that he had implied authorization. With robots.txt that defense goes out the window.
As to proving that the defendant used a bot, well if there are 1000 HTTP requests from the same IP address you could probably conclude that the defendant is using a bot. I'm sure there are other ways to prove that a bot was used.
Of course this is all speculation and fuzzy memories of things I've been told, so if someone could find case law on this matter, that would be most illuminating.
IIRC, robots.txt is about on par with "No Trespassing" signs. It won't keep people out, but it will make it easier to win in court if someone doesn't obey it.
We should judge a candidate by their positions not their race. As far as I can tell in this regard Obama is 'just another democrat'. After listening to one of his speaches I discovered that (1) he is a very good rhetorician (that can be a good or bad thing), (2) he talks a lot about 'change' but never says from what to what, and (3) the few positions that he actually stated where just standard democratic positions.
I would be willing to stand corrected, but on the issues Obama looks like any other democrat. He talks slick, but that is about it.
Regretfully, you are mistaken. A free-market in the economic sense is very heavily regulated. Generally it is the interactions of the actors that are regulated (e.g. no price fixing) and not the particular prices or goods that are regulated (e.g. government capped rents), but is it still regulated. (Commodities markets being regulated by the SEC area good example of this.)
As to the bus example, this is a point where libertarians and economic-ists(?) would diverge. Please to not confuse others by equating the two. A libertarian would say buses should be private for reasons that you give. An economic-ist would say that if the buses behave as a non-rival good (usually they do) then the state should run it.
Truth be told economics is mostly a descriptive theory and not a prescriptive theory. This means that while the free-market exhibits many desirable traits, there are many other market forms that may fit a particular scenario better.
Ah, I see what your problem is. You are like one of those people that confuse "force" and "energy" because they think of them as intuitive concepts rather than their technical meaning. The same applies to "efficiency" and "free market".
Well I have good news for you. I too once thought economics was bologna. Then I took an Economics course and discovered is was my misconceptions rather than actual Economics that was the bologna. For example, Economics regularly advocates non-free-markets (e.g. natural monopolies). They will of course have a lower efficiency, but efficiency isn't the end-all-be-all of economics. Just like cars one might be better at miles per gallon while another has better horse power.
Seriously, take an Economics course (at least college level and preferably the "hard" one that the science people take, not the "easy" one that the... er... mathematically challenged people take). Worst case scenario, you come out of it still hating Economics but with enough understanding of it to argue about it intelligently instead of being dismissed like one of those people who confuse "energy" and "force".
In order to take the copy on a disk and put it on a hard drive, you have to have a license.
Not according to 117 USC. Subsection (a) says that making a copy (e.g. installing or in ram) that is necessary to use the program does not need the copyright owners permission. It is not clear to me whether you can re-sell it (subsection (b) seems to address this but confuses me) so this doesn't get Psystar off the hook, but you do not need a license to install legal copies.
I thought true "shrink wrap" licenses were settled as invalid. I'm speaking of the kind where you can't read the license until after you "agree" to the license by opening the shrink wrap box. Is the Apple license really "shrink wrap" or is just just "click through" or some other insanity?
The public sector has a reputation for operating fat and lazy (well, fatter and lazier than the private sector). Something about absence of market pressure.
Slashdot Mirror
See Michael Plass's 1981 dissertation for details on the NP-completeness of certain objective functions.
As many times as people keep asking the same question.
Maybe you have a point, but...
It's been a long time since I looked at XSL-FO, but I would think that it would be harder to use than LaTeX.
Thanks for the catch. My bad.
Sour Grapes.
Type setting and word processing are different applications. Word processing is about getting words on a page, while type setting is about adjusting where the line and page breaks occur to produce the most visually pleasing result. The difference between Word and LaTeX is like the difference between Word and Publisher; they solve very different problems.
I sympathize with your predicament. One of the biggest problems with LaTeX/TeX is that while it has a strong mathematical foundation (see the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm), it's front end is a badly designed macro-based programing language.
Macro-based langauges can work, but most of them are just a pain to work with (M4 anyone?). Unfortunately, Knuth didn't have the advantage of a lot of language research that has been don't in the past few decades.
On top of this the layers that have been built on top TeX to make it "easier" have insulated users so much that they don't understand what is really going on when TeX formats a document. If you're doing simple stuff that's okay, but imagine trying to drift a car if you didn't know how the searing wheel controls the front wheels instead of the back wheels.
Simple answer: LaTeX implements proper "optimal" line breaking, while most word processors implement "greedy" line breaking. This means that LaTeX will produce the "best looking"(*) word wrap. See "Word Wrap" on Wikipedia for just the tip of the iceberg.
(*) "Best looking" in this case has a precise mathematical definition. See the Wikipedia reference for more details. Finding definitions of "best looking" that actually look good and that are mathematically tractable (some involving figure placement are NP-hard) is an open area of research.
What sets TeX apart from other formatting systems is that it has a mathematical foundation. At it's core, TeX has a metric for how "good" a document looks and formats it to optimize that metric. Someone who wants to make a better TeX will have to have a thorough understanding of the math behind it (e.g. some "goodness" metrics are known to be NP-hard). See "Knuth-Pass line breaking" for just the tip of the iceberg on this.
So, yes, it will take someone who is a wiz at math, computer science and user interfaces (?) to overthrow TeX.
Type setting is a very different task than word processing. Proper type setting involved heavy math in order to optimize the formatting of the document. Look up the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm for the most basic example (there are better algorithms now days). These sorts of formatting tweaks are things that OpenOffice and MS Word just don't do.
I don't think YouTube is trying to run a loudness war, but rather trying to fix up a lot of amateurish recordings that are uploaded with bad audio. I can't tell you how many recordings on the net are either way to quiet (e.g. I can't hear speech even at max volume) or too loud and that change in mid-video (e.g. person walks away from or closer to mic). Despite their good intentions, though, it seems to have fallen prey to the "Clippy" effect.
What YouTube needs to do is have a little check-box on uploads that indicates whether to apply the auto-balance. And in case an uploader asks for no auto-balance when they really shouldn't (e.g. they think they know but don't) there should be a side link to listen to the auto-balanced version.
Typing rhythm (not speed) over short letter sequences should be reliable. For example, the rhythm for "T-H-E" and other common short words should not be effected by thinking pauses since most people type in word length bursts though there may need to be a scaling factor (i.e. I'm guessing the rhythm of "T-H-E" will be the same whether it is typed slowly or quickly).
The non-consumer chip market still focuses on "Customer Service", it's mostly the (consumer?) software market that is so arrogant.
Freescale (f.k.a. Motorola) or Atmel give away CPU samples and hardcopy user documentation for the asking. (My team did this to get the parts for a school project.) I suspect this is because they are selling to other companies so each "sale" amounts to so much money that it is worth the cost of giving the first few away. But even beyond that, good customer service has a tangible cost for the companies that are buying these chips (e.g. better documentation leads to shorter development times and cheaper development costs (engineering time is *expensive*)) so that may be effecting the quality of service as well.
I meant "17 USC 117" not "17 USC 177".
17 USC 177 has something to say on this. Specifically subsection (b) allows you to pre-install on some hardware and then sell the hardware along with the original copies. (I'm told the term "exact copy" used in that subsection includes any mechanized copy including WAV to MP3 conversion.)
What it doesn't allow is the selling of "adaptations" but someone with more legal background will have to expound on where the line between "exact copy" and "adaptation" lies. My guess is that if Psystar patched the OS to make it run on their hardware, then it is an adaptation, but if they only patch the OS with a script that runs the first time the user logs on then they might be all right as far as this clause goes. (The DMCA could still get them.)
I am a physicist and [we] are kind of snobby about being top of the pile :)
Well not quite ;-J. (For that matter a lot of results in (micro) economics derive directly from the math of game theory, though I'm not sure if there is any well founded mathematical model for macro.)
As you say, proving that the defendant used a bot and proving that the defendant didn't have autorization to access the page through a bot are two different things that each have to be proven. Without a robots.txt the defendant could argue that he had implied authorization. With robots.txt that defense goes out the window.
As to proving that the defendant used a bot, well if there are 1000 HTTP requests from the same IP address you could probably conclude that the defendant is using a bot. I'm sure there are other ways to prove that a bot was used.
Of course this is all speculation and fuzzy memories of things I've been told, so if someone could find case law on this matter, that would be most illuminating.
IIRC, robots.txt is about on par with "No Trespassing" signs. It won't keep people out, but it will make it easier to win in court if someone doesn't obey it.
We should judge a candidate by their positions not their race. As far as I can tell in this regard Obama is 'just another democrat'. After listening to one of his speaches I discovered that (1) he is a very good rhetorician (that can be a good or bad thing), (2) he talks a lot about 'change' but never says from what to what, and (3) the few positions that he actually stated where just standard democratic positions.
I would be willing to stand corrected, but on the issues Obama looks like any other democrat. He talks slick, but that is about it.
Regretfully, you are mistaken. A free-market in the economic sense is very heavily regulated. Generally it is the interactions of the actors that are regulated (e.g. no price fixing) and not the particular prices or goods that are regulated (e.g. government capped rents), but is it still regulated. (Commodities markets being regulated by the SEC area good example of this.)
As to the bus example, this is a point where libertarians and economic-ists(?) would diverge. Please to not confuse others by equating the two. A libertarian would say buses should be private for reasons that you give. An economic-ist would say that if the buses behave as a non-rival good (usually they do) then the state should run it.
Truth be told economics is mostly a descriptive theory and not a prescriptive theory. This means that while the free-market exhibits many desirable traits, there are many other market forms that may fit a particular scenario better.
Ah, I see what your problem is. You are like one of those people that confuse "force" and "energy" because they think of them as intuitive concepts rather than their technical meaning. The same applies to "efficiency" and "free market".
Well I have good news for you. I too once thought economics was bologna. Then I took an Economics course and discovered is was my misconceptions rather than actual Economics that was the bologna. For example, Economics regularly advocates non-free-markets (e.g. natural monopolies). They will of course have a lower efficiency, but efficiency isn't the end-all-be-all of economics. Just like cars one might be better at miles per gallon while another has better horse power.
Seriously, take an Economics course (at least college level and preferably the "hard" one that the science people take, not the "easy" one that the ... er ... mathematically challenged people take). Worst case scenario, you come out of it still hating Economics but with enough understanding of it to argue about it intelligently instead of being dismissed like one of those people who confuse "energy" and "force".
In order to take the copy on a disk and put it on a hard drive, you have to have a license.
Not according to 117 USC. Subsection (a) says that making a copy (e.g. installing or in ram) that is necessary to use the program does not need the copyright owners permission. It is not clear to me whether you can re-sell it (subsection (b) seems to address this but confuses me) so this doesn't get Psystar off the hook, but you do not need a license to install legal copies.
I thought true "shrink wrap" licenses were settled as invalid. I'm speaking of the kind where you can't read the license until after you "agree" to the license by opening the shrink wrap box. Is the Apple license really "shrink wrap" or is just just "click through" or some other insanity?
Hmm, three flames/trolls in a row from the same author that get modded insightful. Must be some kind of market inversion.
The public sector has a reputation for operating fat and lazy (well, fatter and lazier than the private sector). Something about absence of market pressure.