"There are several reasons why one should prefer LaTeX to a WYSIWYG word processor like Microsoft Word: portability, lightness, security are just a few of them"
I agree with most points but seriously, lightness? Have you ever downloaded it? The program is about 750MB (Source: http://www.tug.org/protext/), and that's for software without an elegant UI. To compare, the ENTIRE office package is around the 500MB, that's Word+Excel+Outlook+OneNote+Groove.It does produce very nice results, but it isn't light (in terms of space).
"You missed the part where I pointed out that current major competitions don't accept arbitrary languages."
In this competition, if you wanted to use another language, you just needed to make a starter package (a stupid bot) and some instructions to get the compiler working on their end. So in this competition, arbitrary languages where accepted.
Well, you should understand that at the end the bot had to be pretty complex to be competitive. Fast prototyping wasn't so important, as most of the theory was already there. But only a few managed to get them working together. In this case a prototyping language didn't have an advantage (like with most project with >4k lines, it's hard to oversee).
And secondly, most bots relied on minimax, which is a brute force algorithm. Performance was a big difference. For example, a friend of mine ported my code from C# to C++ (from compiled language to other compiled language) and got in the top 50 (I finished 81st), this without any changes to the algorithm.
The problem with Java was that it was impossible to get it running fast enough. You had 1 second of thinking time, but with Java you could barely access 0.05s, while compiled languages like C/C++ or even C# could easily use 0.95s without having any timeouts (which leads to disqualification).
Well, actually the purpose of patents IS to allow you to get rich. Why? Well, by protecting the invention, you allow the inventor to make money with it for some time. This means that if you put millions in R&D, you have a guarantee that if there's a result, you can also win back the investment. Do you really think pharmaceutical companies would pour so much money into research if whatever they invented was immediatly copied by another company which doesn't put any money in R&D.
But I agree that patents are sometimes absurd, software patents are quite absurd most of the time.
Well, I must disagree on most points. As the archos has a sd card reader, the memory isn't an issue (16GB modules are quite easy to find), the chip is low power but that's not bad, as it'll have more autonomy, (that's why the iPad has the A4), and most importantly, Archos IS a brand. A quite good one at that. The build quality is excellent (well, I can't vouch for this product, but Archos is a good brand).
Personally I think speeding IS a reason. It's true that people can keep safe distances without speed limits, however it's undeniable that people who go much faster than the average speed are dangerous. Limiting the speed is one way to try to get everyone to drive the same speed. It's a system and as long as everyone sticks to it, there are less accidents. If you change the system, no problem, but don't give this as an example to declare a country a police-state. Your speed is completely in your control.
Isn't this a case where entropy shows it isn't possible? Once you degrade the quality/quantity of the information, you can't get it back. You can find a clever way to hide what you did, but this doesn't add information, you're just interpolating. This isn't bad however, as we normally don't use all data we could (do you look at your pictures with 400% zoom factor?), and a rescaled image can highlight some detail you would have missed.
By the way, those bazillion dollars aren't wasted, because if you take the image, don't throw away pixels, but do as if it were a bigger image which had lost pixels, you can get something useful out of it.
I'm not, I mean seriously, if you make a machine that "produces" energy, you have to be the worlds biggest idiot to sell it for 10'000$. It's like selling a chicken that lays golden eggs, you just don't. You keep it and make profits.
Well, that's too bad. I would happily pay 100'000 for a machine that "produces" energy. I mean, you build a few, connect them to the grid, sell the electricity and you've got you're money back in no time.
Well, no, that's not the answer. It's not important how the mass is transformed into energy, nor how much. He's just saying that if it's possible to transform x kg of something into y energy and back again (the second part being the real challenge), could I make a machine that "creates" energy?
But isn't ActionScript completely open? And the flash framework is open too. You don't need Flash CS4 to use flash. You can also program it with a third party IDE and then use the free compiler. This would be quite comparable.
Well, it is sold as a drug, in the sense that on the package it says that it cures a sickness, which is the point of a drug. I'm not saying that it doesn't work (sometimes the placebo effect is everything you want, for example when a child hurts himself, he'll be happy as soon as he has taken a pill, no matter which one), but I think it's a bit strange to sell a bit of sugar with a very small quantity of active substance for 1000 times the production cost.
Well, yes. But as FF+Chrome+Safari have more than a third of the marketshare, you can start writing parts of a website that work better with HTML5. For example, an application that uses the application cache to be usable offline, and tell IE users they could have an offline experience by changing browser. This means that everything still works, but people with HTML5 browsers will have a better experience.
Looks nice! I would just make one change, that is to give a texture to the white "apples" (that's what they are in the original game I think).
Just one other comment, did you notice that all shaders mover around constantly? For example, the texture of the border of the playing field is turning anti-clockwise constantly. This also happens with the obstacles in the center.
@mqander (for some reason I can't reply directly):
Yeah, you're probably right. I had also forgotten about those chess databases, those are quite powerful. The problem is probably that the last commercial chess AI I used dates from ~1995, when they weren't that smart yet. Or, more accurately, the computers didn't have enough computing power to be strong and at the same time take a reasonable amount of time before playing.
Disclaimer: I don't play a lot of Go, I could be completely wrong.
That's probably due to the fact that in Go there are less intermidiary goals. In chess capturing a piece, defending a piece or simply making your position better by putting a bisshop on a diagonal can be seen as a step towards winning. Thus a chess AI doesn't need to go very deep before knowing which strategies are bad. For example, chess AI's written in JS often don't go much deeper than two steps ahead but still play quite decently.
But with Go you need to build chains made of several (often > 10) stones. And that sort of calculation is very heavy for brute-force style AI, which is about all a computer can resort to at this moment.
Hmm, so this would mean that a normal player sees the game as just a bunch of pieces, whereas a pro looks at the position (strategy, advantages for one player, etc). Well, it would explain some things about pros, but what does this mean when you train with an AI? I mean, yes, you get more experience, but a typical game for a computer is not a typical game for a computer at all. It would be nice to know which AI Magnus Carlsen used to train and compare it's playstyle to that of pros. Maybe his strategy is just different enough to catch people with something they don't expect/know and give him a slight advantage.
I agree, it's not a case of "What works for me must work for everyone" but more a case of "applying theory helps learning, especially when it's fun". I still haven't found anyone who doesn't like any game, so as long as there are a few different possibilities it DOES work for everyone.
> ranging from the subtle to the not-so-subtle (do they even have canvas?)
That's the beauty of this thing. It works with svg -> supported by all browsers (with the obvious exception of IE, although I think it shouldn't be too hard to change it to support VML).