Left is right

Listening to an older Austrian lady (AUT) who speaks very little English and a young woman from New Zealand (NZ) making conversation about what side of the road cars drive on:
AUT: "You drive on left side."
NZ: "Right."
AUT: "Right? You drive on right side?"
NZ: "No, left. You also drive on the left side, right?"
AUT: "Yes, right."
NZ: "So left."
AUT: "No. Right."

Typing on the way

So yesterday while I was on a trip to a museum I thought that it would be awesome to have some gadget to take notes with. A laptop is of course best, but it's annoying to carry around all day. A smartphone is okayish, but typing on it does suck a fair bit. A good old pen & paper notebook is hard to digitize later, not to mention that it's also somewhat bulky.

So here's my wacky idea for a much better device: It basically looks like a watch and you wear it on your wrist, but it has the ability to project a keyboard into thin air right in front of your hands. Gyrosensors inside it adjust the position of the projected keyboard to compensate for your wrist movements. In addition, it projects just a very low resolution screen with two or three lines; Just enough to see the text you enter.

Then it allows you to start typing on that projected keyboard. It tracks the movement of your fingers using a camera, and turns the information into key stokes to type your text.

All the calculating power and memory for it is inside a small chip within that watch; Besides the projecting and the video recognition (which aren't small tasks, I admit) you don't need much, only a simple text editor. (Well, you can give the emacsians their shortcuts, if you want.)

The data can later be transmitted to a normal computer using for example Bluetooth or NFC.

Any thoughts on that one?

(Crossposting from Google+.)

On treating your playtesters well

With the kind permission of the original author:

===================
Theory: Finding play testers is hard because most designers don't treat them with respect.

As someone who playtests board/card games, I can say that I'm not willing to play test for most people a second time. They have not done their homework. I have no desire to do it for them.

1) I expect the game designer to have played it solo a few times before bringing it to the group. "Pretend" you don't know what the other person intends to do.
a) Does the game feel like it has interesting choices?
b) Does it feel like the choices matter? (This is often more important than their actually mattering.)
c) Does it play in roughly the right time frame?
d) What happens to players who get behind? (Make a conscious decision.)
If this is too much work for the designer, then why should the playtester spend his time on it? The designer is in effect trading their time for that of the playtesters. I won't playtest for these people again.

2) The designer should know when to stop the playtest.
If the game is clearly broken, what else can they learn right now that is a good payoff per playtester time? It is time to stop.

3) The designer should be open to feedback. For many games, the early feedback can be very negative. Accept that the playtester is trying to help you, even if you don't agree with the comments. Record them anyhow. Looking at the pattern of recorded comments later may help identify the one small change that fixes everything. If, instead, the designer gets defensive or authoritative, they won't test for you again. Clearly you knew better, why did you even ask. Realize that both initial and after significant play opinions can influence how a game is received.

4) When a dimension was identified as broken during game play or in the post mortem, I don't expect to play the game again until it, and any parallel cases in the game, are resolved (fixed, eliminated, etc.). Again, this comes back to respecting the playtesters' time.

5) Realize that playing to break the game IS part of play testing. If there are pathological corner cases, you do want to find them. If you know the game is shaky enough that people should not do this, why are you asking for their help? Either fix the issue first, or be very clear up front. I know X,Y are broken, so we won't use them this game. I'd like to see if Z is working now.

Paranoia

-- Birgit

Lernen lernenLearning to learn

Als ich vor ein paar Jahren begonnen habe zu studieren, habe ich gedacht, lernen bedeutet das:

When I started studying some years ago, I thought that learning meant this:

Ich habe vor ein paar Tagen meine letzte reguläre Prüfung abgeschlossen. Eines der Dinge, die ich in diesen letzten Jahren gelernt habe, ist, dass Lernen in Wirklichkeit das bedeutet:

I finished my last regular exam some days ago. One of the things I've learned in those last years is that learning actually means this:

-- Birgit

Linux vs. Windows (part 2)

-- Birgit

Tux logo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and authors Larry Ewing, Simon Budig, Anja Gerwinski: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tux.svg

Windows logo used in accordance with fair use regulations.

Numerik

Zitat des Tages: "Konsistenz bedeutet, dass der Algorithmus in einer gewissen grundlegenden Weise tatsächlich das gegebene Problem löst und nicht ein anderes."

Drachenrummy

Drachenrummy ist ein mitteleinfaches Spiel für Leute mit einem ausreichenden Vorrat an Würfeln und einem Standarddeck Karten.


====================================================

Drachenrummy

2–5 Spieler
ca. 30 Minuten

Ziel des Spiels ist es, möglichst viele Kartensets abzulegen, um dadurch Punkte zu sammeln.

Spielmaterial

• Wahlweise 52 oder 2x52 Standardspielkarten.
• 5 Würfel pro Spieler

Spielvorbereitung

Die Karten werden gut gemischt. Vier Karten werden als offene Auslage in die Mitte des Tisches gelegt, der Rest wird als verdeckter Nachziehstapel bereitgelegt. Jeder Spieler erhält 5 Würfel.

Spielablauf

Der Spieler mit den meisten Schuppen beginnt. Ab dann spielen die Spieler im Uhrzeigersinn.

Wer am Zug ist, führt die folgenden Aktionen aus:

1. Karten auf die Hand nehmen
   
   Falls der Spieler reservierte Karten vor sich liegen hat, darf er diese nun auf die Hand nehmen.
   
   
2. Würfeln
   
   Der Spieler nimmt alle seine Würfel und würfelt. Danach muss er mindestens einen Würfel zur Seite legen. Dieser Würfel ist damit fixiert und darf nicht mehr verändert werden. Mit dem Rest darf der Spieler ein weiteres Mal würfeln. Danach muss er wiederum mindestens einen Würfel zur Seite legen, und so weiter, bis alle Würfel zur Seite gelegt sind.
   
   
3. Karten reservieren / Karten stehlen
   
   Der Spieler darf beliebig viele Karten aus der Mitte "reservieren". Um eine Karte zu reservieren, legt er die Karte vor sich ab und legt eine beliebige Anzahl von Würfeln mit derselben Augenzahl auf die Karte (zumindest aber einen Würfel).
   
   Statt eine Karte aus der Mitte zu nehmen, kann er auch eine reservierte Karte von einem anderen Spieler stehlen. Dazu braucht er mehr Würfel mit der Augenzahl, die der andere Spieler für die Reservierung benutzt hat. Er nimmt dann diese Karte vom anderen Spieler und reserviert sie mit einer höheren Anzahl eigener Würfel für sich selbst.
   
   Beispiel: Max würfelt zwei 3er und drei 6er. Er reserviert einen Herz König mit den zwei 3ern und ein Herz As mit den drei 6ern. Danach würfelt Moritz vier 6er und einen 5er. Er stiehlt das Herz As von Max und legt die vier 6er darauf. Mit dem 5er reserviert er ein Pik As aus der Mitte.
   
   
4. Kartensets ablegen
   
   Der Spieler darf Sets von Handkarten nach den normalen Rummy-Regeln ablegen, d.h. ein Set von Karten darf abgelegt werden, wenn es aus mindestens 3 Karten besteht, die
   
   • entweder alle denselben Wert und unterschiedliche Farben haben
   • oder alle dieselbe Farbe und aufeinanderfolgende Werte haben.
   Ein As kann dabei als 1 oder As verwendet werden.
   
   Außerdem kann der Spieler bereits abgelegte (eigene) Sets erweitern, wenn durch das Hinzufügen einer Karte diese Bedingungen erfüllt bleiben.
   
   Danach wird die Auslage in der Mitte wieder auf 4 Karten ergänzt, und der nächste Spieler ist an der Reihe.
   

Spielende

Das Spiel endet, wenn alle Karten vergeben sind, d.h. keine Karten mehr in der Mitte liegen und keine Karten mehr reserviert sind. Danach darf jeder Spieler noch Kartensets nach den obigen Regeln ablegen und Karten an Kartensets anlegen. Dann zählen die Spieler ihre Punkte zusammen. Die Karten 2-10 zählen jeweils 1 Punkt, die Karten Bub, Dame, König und As jeweils 2 Punkte (auch, wenn das As als 1er verwendet wird). Jede Handkarte, die der Spieler nicht ablegen konnte, zählt -1 Punkt. Der Spieler mit den meisten Punkte gewinnt.

Varianten

Als Spielvariante kann man festlegen, dass der Spieler für das Stehlen einer Karte nur mehr Würfel mit einer beliebigen Augenzahl braucht, nicht notwendigerweise mit der Augenzahl, die für die Reservierung benutzt wurde. Beispielsweise kann eine mit zwei 4ern reservierte Karte also auch mit drei 1ern gestohlen werden, nicht nur mit drei oder mehr 4ern.

Als weitere Variante kann man festlegen, dass das Stehlen möglich ist, wenn man entweder eine höhere Anzahl von Würfeln mit derselben Augenzahl oder mindestens die gleiche Anzahl von Würfeln mit einer höheren Augenzahl hat.

====================================================

-- Birgit

Linux vs. Windows (part 1)

2001: Dear Linux, you might be a decent operating system, but holy shit do take a look at Windows to see how to build a proper user interface.

2011: Dear Windows 7, you might be a decent operating system, but holy shit do take a look at Linux Mint to see how to build a proper user interface.

Verschiedene Grade von Pedanterie

Frage des Tages: Bin ich pedantischer als meine Nachbarn?

-- Birgit

Die Lehre schöner Dokumente

Mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Autors darf ich die folgende höchst amüsante Abhandlung über die korrekte Anwendung von LaTeX-Befehlen aus einer email-Diskussion zitieren -- ich finde, so schöner Humor sollte nicht ungehört verklingen:

=================================================

Lieber Herr X,

Frau Y hat mich aufgeklärt, dass Sie ihr erklärt haben, dass die
Punkte eines Dreiecks als $\mathit{ABC}$ und nicht einfach als $ABC$
zu setzen seien.

Bitte auch um entsprechende Erklärungen, damit ich auch verstehe,
warum Sie das vorziehen.

Ich hätte ja gemeint, dass A B und C drei verschiedene Punkte sind, die
eben --- wie bei einer Multiplikation --- ohne binären Operator
nebeneinanderstehen, und damit bin ich bei $ABC$.

Z

=================================================

Lieber Herr Z,

> Frau Y hat mich aufgeklärt, dass Sie ihr erklärt haben, dass die
> Punkte eines Dreiecks als $\mathit{ABC}$ und nicht einfach als $ABC$
> zu setzen seien.

Sollte das tatsächlich zutreffen, will ich nicht ruhen, ehe sämtliche Dreiecke von der gemeinen Tyrannei durch \mathit befreit worden und ihrer rechtmäßigen Multiplikation wieder eigen geworden sind!

> Bitte auch um entsprechende Erklärungen, damit ich auch verstehe,
> warum Sie das vorziehen.

Ich kann es mir kaum anders erklären, als dass ich von bösen Geistern geritten ward. Inzwischen habe ich jedenfalls, Knuth sei Dank, diesen schändlichen Pfad der Unterdrückung unschuldiger Punkte hinter mir gelassen.

> Ich hätte ja gemeint, dass A B und C drei verschiedene Punkte sind, die
> eben --- wie bei einer Multiplikation --- ohne binären Operator
> nebeneinanderstehen, und damit bin ich bei $ABC$.

Sie können in dieser Sache mit meinem uneingeschränkten Vertrauen und vollster Unterstützung rechnen.

Sollte zu Unrecht Platz unterschlagen worden sein, sei dieser hiermit inklusive sämtlicher Zinsen, Zinseszinsen und Kollateralschäden bei Vier- und Fünfecken umgehend zurückgezahlt:

\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad

Für eventuell zu viel beanspruchten Raum sollte ein

\hspace{-16em}

zu Ihrer freien Verfügung für gerechten Ausgleich sorgen.

Ich hoffe inständig, dass darüber hinaus kein seelischer Schaden angerichtet wurde, der nicht durch einen angemessenen Kaiserschmarrn und entsprechenden Zwetschkenröster wieder gut gemacht werden könnte.

Mit schuldbewussten Grüßen

X

Kopien ergehen zur allgemeinen Information, Begutachtung und Beglaubigung an weitere Verfechter der Lehre schöner Dokumente.

=================================================

Late night musings

Time machines would actually be damn useful. Let's say it's 3:40am and you really need to make that phone call at 08:00am (i.e., as soon as the office opens) to make an appointment. Of course, setting your alarm clock to 07:55 am is tantamount to torture, and having to get up for a mere five minute phone call adds insult to injury.

And now just imagine there was a time manipulation device that would allow you to make a two-way phone call four hours into the future, i.e., link your time from 03:40am to 03:45am with the receptionist's time from 08:00am to 08:05am. How awesome would that be! It wouldn't affect the receptionist at all, you could make your phone call right now and go to bed, and heck, how much harm to the timeline can four hours do?

Of course, as a next step I'd call myself in the future to ask what will happen in the next update of my favourite webcomic, and by recursive usage of such phone calls (i.e., asking my future self to call its future self) I could even look arbitrarily far into the future, thus reading every single issue of the comic that will ever be published, so that if I ever have a car accident, I wouldn't need to be sad about never learning how the story ends.

I guess it's time to go to sleep before I produce even more profound insights.

-- Birgit

Shocking

Three events that almost equally shock the world these days:

• Arab world protests: ~11 000 dead, 200 000 homeless
• Japan earth quake, tsunami and nuclear fallout: ~10 000 dead, 17 000 missing, 590 000 homeless
• Knut: 1 dead polar bear

-- Birgit

Nuclear Roulette

I don't give a damn about the average risk of nuclear power as long as you don't tell me the variability.

-- Birgit

Bad hack

Reading your old code comments -- always a source of fun:

// Bad hack, n.: A piece of code that arguably

// fulfills its purpose, but does so in a very

// crude, inefficient and/or instable way, usually

// due to having been written with great haste or

// little care.

// An example of a bad hack:

Women and/or technical skills

Many people believe that women are on average less skilled in technical matters than men. Let me tell you a secret about that prejudice:

It's true!

Why yes! It totally is!

The only problem is that people frequently get the interpretation wrong of what that means.

Because you know, it's all about that nasty conditional probability thing once again. Bayes' theorem. Why "the safest way to fly is to take a bomb with you, because it's damn unlikely that there are two bombs on the same plane" doesn't work. Something closely related to and even less understood than the Monty Hall problem, which is why it has deserved to be also demonstrated with three doors.

Well, let me try to enlighten you with some very basic mathematical insights.

Starting directly with that problem would make the discussion rather abstract and theoretical and you would end up not believing me. Let's therefore stick with the lipstick example for starters. Or, since wearing lipstick is a rather binary decision -- you do or you don't --, let's generalize it to wearing make-up. Also, let's restrict it to typical western countries.

Have a look at the following diagram:

(The x-axis gives the amount of make-up usage, and the y-axis gives the number of people for each position on the x-axis.)

There is a small but not insignificant amount of women who would rather die than wear make-up. There is a small but not insignificant amount of men who plaster their faces with make-up as if it could fall apart without. But on average, women still do wear more make-up than men.

So given two random persons about whom we have no information other than one being female and the other male, which person is more likely to be wearing make-up? Answer: Quite clearly the female one.

Let's further assume that the more make-up people wear, the more they know about make-up. Which of the two persons above is therefore more likely to know a lot about make-up? Answer: Again the female one.

Let's take a third person into consideration now. We have no information about that new person other than that he or she likes wearing tons of make-up. Which of the three persons is most likely to know a lot about make-up now? Answer: Obviously the third one. Independently of whether he or she is male or female. Why? Because while we assume that the male person is probably in the lower half of the range and the female person is probably in the upper half, we know the third person to be in the very top few percent and thus, on average, better than either of the other two.

Now that we are already busy introducing new persons, let's introduce two more of them. Person D is female and wears tons of make-up. Person E is male and wears tons of make-up. Who is more likely to have a lot of knowledge about make-up now, person D or person E? Answer: Well, at this point it's pretty much 50:50.

Why is that?

Let's have another look at that diagram. We know that both persons wear [too] much make-up, which means we are only considering persons in the very right part of the diagram any more:

What can we tell about that small subset of the population?

• They all know a lot about make-up. (Keep in mind that make-up usage and thus (by our assumption) knowledge is measured by the position on the left-right axis. All persons in question are on the very right edge of that graph.)
• There are more females than males in that range. (I.e., there are more females than males who really know a lot about make-up.)
• A male and a female person being both within that range are pretty much equally likely to win a make-up knowledge quiz against each other. In this particular graph, it's even slightly more likely for the male, i.e. person E, to know more about make-up. Why? We know about person D that she is female and within the highlighted range. Amongst the females in that range, there are more towards the lower end (at the left) than at the upper end, so the average female from within this range is slightly below the center of the range. Amongst the few males in that range on the other hand, all positions are pretty much equally (un)likely, so the average male from within this range is quite exactly at the center of this range. Therefore, in this graph person E is actually an itsy bitsy tiny bit more likely to know a lot than person D. It's a damn close call though, so with sufficient approximation we can say that they are equally likely to be more knowledgeable about make-up.

(Bonus question: Remember person three from above? We only know that this person wears a lot of make-up. Is person three more likely to be male or female?)

Now let me just re-label and re-colour that graph and we'll transfer our findings to the original problem in no time.

I know that it's extremely unpopular these days to claim that women have on average less technical competence than men, but for the sake of argument, let's assume it's true:

Now let's only look at those people who are successful in technical careers. With few exceptions, people in technical careers are people with high technical skills, and vice versa. (There might be the occasional technically skilled person who still chooses to study medicine, or the occasional person who has no clue about technical matters but got hired into daddy's company anyways, but for simplicity we ignore those for now.) People with technical careers therefore mostly correspond to the right-most part of the diagram:

And now, the same conclusions apply:

• All persons who are successful in technical careers have high technical competence.
• There are more males than females who have high technical skills.
• Males and females from within the shown range are pretty much evenly matched, i.e., given two persons of whom one is a female technician and the other a male technician, it's hard to tell which one does probably know more about technical matters.

In short: It's less likely for women to go for a technical career, but those who do are quite evenly matched with their male colleagues.


What do we learn from that?

Given an entirely random male person and an entirely random female person, it's absolutely fair to assume that the male person has more technical competence. Let's assume you are at a quiz show, are given a question about the inner workings of a car engine, have no idea about the correct answer, and are allowed to use a phone joker. You can only choose whether the person to be called is female or male, and the quiz team will then pick a random (male or female) name from a phone book and call that person. Then it's very reasonable to go for a male helper.

Let's, in contrast, assume that your car broke down with a flat tyre and you don't know how to change a tyre yourself. A second car stops, a young woman gets out and offers you to change the tyre for you. Here, "You can't do that, you're a girl." is a wrong answer. (Not to mention that it's impolite.) Why? Because she already indicated to you that she can. She gave you some extra information about herself, which means that all conclusions you drew before that aren't valid any more. Your conclusions were made at a point where you had to take the entire range into consideration. Now however this new information significantly restricted the range. Therefore, take the new information and re-evaluate.

There's a very similar scenario, and it seems to happen so frequently that I'm willing to dedicate another diagram to it:

So, assume you call the tech hotline of whatever company to get help with a technical problem. A woman picks up. Again, "No, I want to speak to a man." is the wrong reaction. The person works at the tech hotline, so you can assume that she went through job interviews and technical training. It's also very likely that most employees at that tech hotline are roughly within the same skill range. In short, whether male of female, you will get to speak with an averagely skilled technician. (Good technicians usually get better jobs than working at tech hotlines, just for your information.)

This can be generalized to any job, by the way: While on average over the entire population women might be less technically skilled than men, there is virtually no difference between men and women working in the same job.


The moral of the story? There's nothing bad about prejudices. Just remain open to trashing them as soon as you get additional information about a person.

After all, while it's true that only around 20% percent of all people own a dog, there's no point in insisting that someone most likely doesn't have one once you've seen them taking it for a walk.

-- Birgit


P.S.: I admit to having shamelessly simplified away a lot of potentially important facts and factors.

Proudly Presenting: Serene Logician

Over the last years, I've spent quite some time thinking about security and, in particular, social engineering. It's something that fascinates me for the same reasons that I like mathematics and stage magic: All those things are about finding missing links in an alleged chain of evidence.

In mathematics, a missing link in a chain of evidence simply means that a proof is incomplete.

In stage magic, a missing link is what allows a magician to produce an illusion of actual magic, by demonstrating to the audience in 20 ways how he has no chance of manipulating something -- while he manipulates it in the 21st way. Indeed, stage magic is often just about providing so much proof that the audience doesn't notice any more that the chain of proof still didn't go from one end to the other. (Rest assured that whenever a stage magician says "Now I put this here so that you can make sure that I don't exchange it", he has already exchanged it long ago. And then proceeds to demonstrate in spectacular ways how he really does not exchange it again.)

What a social engineer does is not much different, and again, the crux is that somewhere in the chain of evidence there must be a missing link. Just think of a fake plumber in front of your door who can show you an ID with his photo and the name of "his" company. You can verify that the photo and his face match. You can verify that the name and his name tag match. You can verify that the hologram on the ID card is real. You can verify that the company exists. You can verify that the phone number on the ID card matches the real phone number of the company. You can phone the company and verify that they have an employee of that name. Maybe they can even confirm that he is supposed to come to you today. And still that man in front of your door has never ever worked for that company. Where's the missing link?

Anyways, I have a thing for finding such missing links, and obviously also a certain skill for it. And given that I'm planning to write about those more frequently now, I've decided to dedicate a blog to them.

Proudly presenting:

Serene Logician

You can expect some presenting of basic principles, and a lot of ranting about the daily security lunacies. Posting frequency will vary and I'm not committing myself to any schedule, but there are some postings already in planning, and from experience I run across a post-worthy example every few weeks.

I'd also like to express my sincere apologies to those of you who are already reading my other blogs (plural) for adding another one to the list. On the upside, it's a public one so you can just add it to Google Reader and don't have to open yet another tab for it.

-- Birgit

P.S.: The missing link is the ID card. There's no way to prove that it's genuine, since you most probably have no idea how an ID card of that company is supposed to look like.

The company's confirmation that this employee is really scheduled to visit you can be achieved by calling the company beforehand, pretending to be you (i.e., the visited person) and really requesting the real employee of that name to come to you. When this appointment is then canceled last-minute, chances are high that the secretary at the company isn't notified about the cancellation yet when you call her, and will confirm the appointment.

A cheer to freeware

(Zur deutschen Version.)

Every time I re-setup my computer I realize that more and more freeware is running on it. In former times, setting up a computer meant inserting 20 CD-ROMs one after another -- MS Windows, MS Word, MS Office, Paint Shop Pro, ... --, today setting up means to me: First installing Windows, then downloading the most recent versions of all other programs.

Therefore, a cheer to freeware -- which by the way is according to certain sources in the USA a very communist construct ;) --, thanks to which I by now use hardly any proprietary software any more except for Windows.

Here's a list of great freeware programs (or in some cases shareware or demo versions) that are usually installed on my computers:



Basics:

Acrobat Reader / Foxit Reader

Reading .pdf files

GhostView / GhostScript

Reading .ps files

PDF24 Creator

Creating and editing of .pdf files

pdf995

Creating .pdf files by a printer driver

TortoiseSVN

Version control with SVN

CDBurnerXP

Burning CDs and DVDs

7-Zip

File compression program for (almost) all formats

cygwin

Linux emulator

DOSBox

DOS emulator

Creating and editing of documents:

nodepad++

Text editor and source code editor

LibreOffice

Office programs: Text editing, spreadsheet processing, presentations, ...

MikTeX

Compilation of LaTeX documents

WinShell

LaTeX editor

Asymptote

Programming language and compiler for creation of vector graphics

GeoGebra / Euklid DynaGeo

Creation and editing of interactive geometry sketches

Programming:

eclipse

Development environment

Java JDK

Java (development kit and Virtual Machine)

Visual C++ Express

C++ (development environment and compiler)

Python

Python

SWI Prolog

Prolog (development environment and compiler)

Graphics:

IrfanView

Display of image files

Gimp

Image editing

Paint.net

Image editing

Inkscape

Editor for vector graphics

autostitch

Assembling large images from multiple photos (image stitching)

Music and multimedia:

iTunes

Music playback, download and playback of podcasts, managing of files on an iPod

VLC Media Player

Playback of videos and DVDs

Winamp

Music playback

Amarok

Music playback

VirtualDub

Video recording and editing

NoteWorthy Composer (Demo)

Creation of sheets of music

Internet:

Firefox

Browser

Chrome

Browser

Thunderbird

Email and newsgroup client

IMAPSize

Backup of IMAP email accounts

PuTTY

SSH and Telnet client

WinSCP

FTP and SFTP client with GUI

pidgin / qip

Instant messenger (for ICQ, AIM, ...)

ChatZilla

IRC client

Skype

Skype client (for internet telephony)

Apache

Webserver (for local testing of homepages)

Vuze

client for peer-to-peer filesharing

Antivirus:

Avira AntiVir

Anti-virus software

Spybot

Anti-spyware program

Datenbanken:

MySQL

MySQL data base system

NaviCat Lite

GUI for MySQL

lG Birgit


Edit (2011-02-18): Add Foxit Reader and PDF24 Creator.

Edit (2011-02-24): Update OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice.

Personenschaden

Ich hatte schon vor Ewigkeiten angekündigt, wie sehr ich es liebe, mich über Euphemismen auszulassen, und heute ist endlich ein passender Anlass dafür. Und weil's so schön ist, beginne ich gleich mit einem von meiner persönlichen Top-10-Liste der schönsten Euphemismen.

Das Wort des Tages lautet: "Personenschaden".

"Personenschaden" ist ein Wort, das unwillkürlich an "Wildschaden" erinnert, und auch genau so verwendet wird: Nämlich dann, wenn eine Person vor einen fahrenden Zug gelaufen ist. Meist vorsätzlich.

"Der Zug hat Verspätung wegen Personenschaden" heißt daher meist so viel wie: "Der Zug hat Verspätung, weil jemand vor den Zug gesprungen ist und wir gerade dabei sind, seine Überreste mit dem Hochdruckreiniger aus dem Fahrwerk zu sprühen."

Nahe verwandt übrigens: "Sie ist vor den Zug gegangen." Was eine ungleich harmlosere Beschreibung ist als "Sie hat beschlossen, ihrem Leben ein Ende zu setzen, und dabei noch einen unschuldigen Zugfahrer zu traumatisieren, indem sie ihm bei voller Fahrt vor den Zug gesprungen ist."

Zu den nennenswerten Zahlen und Fakten: Allein in Deutschland finden im Durchschnitt jede Woche 15 Schienensuizide statt, mit einer leichten Häufung im April und September sowie an Montagen und Dienstagen. Im Laufe seiner Dienstzeit erlebt ein durchschnittlicher deutscher Lokführer 2 bis 3 Suizide. Etwa jeder elfte Zugführer macht ein Mal im Leben eine schwere posttraumatische Belastungsstörung durch, ein Drittel davon bleibt dauerhaft arbeitsunfähig. Die Deutsche Bahn unterhält ein eigenes Sanatorium für Lokführer, die durch Schienensuizide traumatisiert wurden.

Den Euphemismus gibt es übrigens aus demselben Grund, aus dem man auch trotz der erschreckend hohen Anzahl solcher Fälle so selten davon hört: Weil aus Angst vor Nachahmungen bewusst nicht darüber berichtet wird -- siehe Werther-Effekt.

Nicht, dass die Euphemismen-Tretmühle nicht ohnehin schon längst zugeschlagen hätte. Der neue Begriff lautet daher jetzt "Notarzteinsatz am Gleis". Und bedeutet immer noch "Zusammenkratzen von Leichenteilen".

Schachrätsel

Wie holt Weiß am Zug hier den entscheidenden Vorteil?

-- Birgit

Life -- A review

Life is a game, some people say. Well, if it's a game, then it has deserved a review.

I shall assume that most people are familiar with the basic rules, so I'll skip directly to the discussion about some concepts, some strategies, and replay value.

Some flawed concept

There are various concepts that are frowned upon in games, and for a reason. Unfortunately, life sports quite a few of them.

One big factor is randomness. There are various game elements that appear to be completely random (in spite of actually following certain hidden rules), and, worse than that, unnecessarily random, and not adding much to the game play.

Let's start with random starting positions. While random setup helps to keep game play varied, in this case the random starting positions just have too much influence on the kind of options a player has and their winning chances. Some starting positions are just too strong and others too weak. A player starting in certain regions of Africa for example has low chances of going for an academic career, and almost no chance of getting far ahead on the money track. Also, in many cases, the starting position already more or less determines the entire strategy and outlook of a player, and sometimes leaves very little choice. The most egregious cases here are of course those where a player is forced into a certain role and possibly even killed before even getting old enough to take own decisions, let alone reach age of consent. Child soldiers, child pornography and child prostitution are the worst (and unfortunately not exactly rare) cases here. But even those aside, for example players starting in conflict regions or very religious societies usually have very low chances of completely staying out of those things, even after reaching adulthood.

Closely related to that is a certain running leader problem, especially in terms of power and money. Players who are at some point ahead in one of these fields usually will gather more and more, while players starting low have almost no chance of catching up.

Similarly, random player attributes have an unduly large influence. The most prominent example here is gender, which is randomly assigned to players when they start playing, and even though there are some special rules that will allow changing it later, they have so many drawbacks that few people will actually use them. Closely related to that is sexual orientation, though that is one random factor that I personally find quite interesting, because it gives some players a kind of side quest without completely spoiling the game experience for them if they don't complete it. Still, depending on the starting position it might be too much of a disadvantage in some situations, especially in those where public display of queer orientation is threatened with severe social consequences and even death penalty.

Another completely unbalanced random player attribute is disability, both physical and mental. Physical disability such as blindness or dwarfism can have a huge impact on the options available to a player, like for example career choices. As far as mental disabilities are concerned, I wouldn't dare evaluating how much they really influence the player's game experience for the better or the worse, but I certainly find the concept unnecessary.

One more very random element is love, a game mechanism that more or less randomly adds strong emotional connections between players. Worse than that, these connections don't necessarily go both ways; In fact, they surprisingly often don't. Which wouldn't be so bad, if one-way love connections didn't have such detrimental effects on affected players. Reciprocal connections on the other hand usually offer a very big boost to both involved players. Not surprisingly, many players therefore consider this concept one of the best things about the game, even though it reduces predictability. But given how random everything is already, a little bit of extra randomness is probably a small price to pay.

The one concept that truly sucks however and makes playing utterly unpleasant at times is player elimination. Interestingly though, in contrast to other games with player elimination that I have played, the big problem with player elimination in life is not that the eliminated players sitting out are bored -- at least not that I'm aware of --, but rather the negative effect that the elimination of a player has on the players remaining in the game.


Discussion of Strategies

As with many complex games, the best strategies are often very hard to figure out. It's already quite complicated to find the reasonably good ones.

   Pure strategies

As far as life is concerned, many players seem to go for money as their main winning strategy. While that strategy by itself is not horribly bad, I personally have the feeling that those players are missing quite a bit of the game play. Also, looking at the outcomes of players who go for that strategy, it seems to stagnate at some point rather than going infinitely upwards, and can even genuinely backfire in some cases.

Another popular but in my humble opinion very much overrated strategy are drugs. They might give a very short immediate boost, but on the long run the strategy always shows an overall downhill trend. So far I haven't met a single player for whom the strategy ever worked out.

Love is a third strategy that is used often, with the player concentrating all efforts on finding and retaining a permanent love relationship. Given how random the concept of love is (as described above), this appears an ill-conceived idea, and while it goes well often enough, it indeed also often goes horribly and painfully wrong, to the point of players dedicating more resources than reasonably justifiable or even comprehensible to gaining, preserving or regaining love. The possible end results are stalking, pathological jealousy, erotomania, suicide, and a whole branch of psychotherapists making a living of it.

Escapism is the fourth of the big strategies, usually achieved through excessive computer gaming and/or submersion in imaginary worlds. In combination with the drug strategy it can lead to long phases of almost complete loss of connection with the outside world. In combination with the love strategy it is expressed through excessive intake of mediocre literature such as Rosamunde Pilcher and soap operas, combined with the firm belief in their realism. It can also lead to sickly sweet plans of marrying in white and living happily ever after, usually without ever accomplishing them. While many players go through a phase of escapism during their transition from childhood to adulthood, continuing the strategy beyond that age can lead to drastically reduced chances of actual accomplishment in the game. Disturbingly, the strategy is just good enough that most players who get stuck in it at some point decide to actively try to perpetuate it. And indeed abandoning the strategy at a later stage often comes with rather severe consequences -- such as realizing how many years of their life they already wasted with it --, which ironically makes continuing the strategy a very tempting choice.

Closely related is the strategy of complete submersion in work, with the only exception that instead of imaginary worlds and problems, real ones are used. The most important positive factor here is constant positive feedback from the immediate environment. The big drawback is that the strategy requires a lot of time and energy and leaves little space for change or even choice. Again, the strategy is just good enough that many players choose to stick with it, even though it stagnates soon and has little chance of achieving high results. On the upside, it has also a low risk of complete failure and can thus be considered a rather safe strategy.

A strategy that is almost diametrically opposite to the previous strategy is trying to enjoy life as it is without putting any effort into changing anything about it, or even into maintaining the status quo. As mentioned in the discussion about random starting position above, some strategies are not available everywhere, and this one can only be used effectively in regions with a strong social support system, i.e., Europe. In those situations, the main drawback of the strategy really is that it is frowned upon by other players (because it drains their resources) and might therefore lead to rather adverse reactions by them. Also, it gives very little positive feedback or direct reward. For those two reasons, the strategy is only usable for players who have a thick skin amongst their random attributes, as well as a rather strong self-esteem that doesn't need positive feedback for retention. For players who have those attributes and live in a suitable region, the strategy can work out very well, though.

Diametrically opposite to that (and therefore again close to the work strategy) is the constant strive for approval, respect and/or attention from the environment. The "disease to please" is one form, another one is the "disease to impress". Different as those two might seem, what they and all related strategies have in common is that they heavily depend on positive feedback from the social group. While those strategies work well as long as this positive feedback can be achieved, they drain quite some energy, and on the long run heavily erode self-esteem. Given that many of the other strategies presented here require self-esteem to work properly, it's often hard to get away from this strategy after having used it for some time. But also using this strategy for a longer time has many disadvantages, because it needs a constant increase in intensity to work. This is mostly due to the environment getting used to the player's behaviour and requiring higher dosages of it in order to still give the same amount of positive feedback. For example, people might compliment someone on being slim, but after a while they get used to it, so in order for them to still notice it, the person in question needs to become even slimmer. For someone depending on this strategy, this might well be a jump start into anorexia nervosa. Other frequently found extreme forms are codependency (also known as helper syndrome), workaholism, plastic surgery (taken to the extreme by certain celebrities), various forms of attention seeking, and of course loss of any kind of individuality.

Adventure seeking finally is a strategy that is popular especially amongst younger players, and usually pursued either by extreme sports or extensive traveling. While a good addition to any of the previous strategy, it's barely usable as a stand-alone strategy, mostly because the world at some point runs out of [reasonably safe] sports or [reasonably safe] places.

Many other popular strategies are very similar to those already described. Going for power for example is very similar to going for money, with similar advantages and drawbacks. Religion is mostly a more community oriented version of escapism. Excessive partying doubles as drug usage and attention seeking. Focus on learning is similar to the working strategy. Extreme altruism is another variant on the approval seeking strategy, and can double as working strategy (in social work) and even triple as escapism by concentrating on other persons' problems instead of the own ones. Gambling and other behavioural addictions are close to drug usage, both in effects and outlook. Spending a lot of time on the Internet can slide between escapism and approval/attention seeking, depending on the online activities. (Bloggers such as me seek approval, trolls seek attention, and youtube watchers seek distraction from their own lifes.) Intense sex seeking behaviour [outside of relationships] can either be a very cynical form of the love strategy, or a variant of approval seeking. Hopeless romanticism is a mixture of the love strategy and escapism. Strategies based on friends and family are closely related to the love strategy. And so on.

   Mixed strategies

Now that I've presented a bunch of strategies that don't work, let's look into strategies that do. As with many games, the strategies that work best are mixed strategies. Looking at all the strategies above, they all only go wrong in their extreme forms, but can give good results as long as their drawbacks can be absorbed somehow.

Take love for example. The big problem here is not that the strategy is inherently flawed, it's just that it can go down very far in unlucky circumstances. It's therefore very dangerous as a pure strategy, but can work very well if combined with another strategy to fall back to in case things go wrong. Indeed some of the strongest strategies I've seen put a very strong emphasis on love, but always have a backup strategy ready and can pull out when things go badly. In short, love can be a very valuable part of a mixed strategy, as long as a player "knows when to fold 'em". Admittedly, most of us probably need to fall hard once or twice before learning that hope is not a strategy (though hopeless romantics will argue about that).

Similar to a good finance portfolio, a good life strategy therefore contains a lot of very different aspects, which might well mean combining all of the pure strategies mentioned before. A good portfolio might for example contain some "safe" strategies, such as work or learning, and some risky but profitable ones like love or adventure seeking.

   Tactics

Reminder for the not so game theory savvy people out there: Strategy is the long term plan, tactics is the short term procedure used to carry out the strategy. Some of these tactics could also be considered smaller strategies, since they are not broad enough to be used as pure strategies, but are rather long-term for tactics.

Other than strategies, the available tactics in life are rather manageable, but often underestimated. Some examples of notable tactics in life are:

• Health care. Almost obligatory part of every strategy.
• Humour. Very valuable for almost all strategies (except maybe religion), but often underrated.
• Self-confidence. Also valuable in virtually all strategies.
• Relaxation, inner calmness. Popular especially in eastern traditions, useful in almost all strategies.
• Distraction. Basically a short-term version of escapism, and as such quite useful in some situations.
• Self-pity. Efficient for cushioning setbacks, but counterproductive when used excessively.
• Social interaction. Almost all strategies involve a lot of interaction amongst humans and therefore benefit from interaction skills.
• Empathy. Closely related, it is also valuable in virtually all strategies.
• Honesty. Roughly balanced between positive and negative effects. If used consequently, the positive effects will after some time start to prevail, and can therefore be part of a long term strategy.
• Arrogance, devaluation. Frequently used as a counter mechanism in strategies that drain self-esteem. Helps to create a false feeling of self-esteem by looking down onto others, but causes enough other problems on its own, especially in strategies dependent on positive feedback from other people.
• Passive-aggressive behaviour. Wide spread, though not very effective.
• Denial. Prevents some of the negative effects of realizing that a strategy went wrong, but also prevents or at least reduces motivation for change.
• Copying. Imitating another player's strategy as a substitute for developing one for your own. Requires similar goals and player attributes in order to work at all, and is dangerous even in those cases. Can also be played as a stand-alone strategy, or, more precisely, as a tactics without a strategy to serve. Depending on whether one or more persons are copied it's either akin to following someone else home after having forgotten one's own address, or randomly following people in a shopping mall hoping to find what you are looking for, without even knowing what you are looking for.
• Perfectionism. While it sometimes can improve things, it often is just a huge waste of time. (For example, it just made me spend a lot more time onto this posting than I had planned.)
• Last but certainly not least: Reflection. Helps evaluating the current situation and fine tuning or modifying both strategy and tactics.

One game option that should not go unmentioned at this point is suicide, i.e. a voluntary premature opt-out of the game. I generally wouldn't consider it a good option unless you don't mind missing a significant part of the game, your current game score is already below zero and it's very likely that from that point it will only go further down, or at least stay significantly far below zero for a significantly long time. Of course, "significant" here is a very subjective measure. Suicide certainly doesn't give a positive end result, but I acknowledge that in some situations, the best thing to hope for is to end non-negative. That being said, I personally have the feeling that many people are opting for it too quickly as a fast way to reset their score to zero, rather than trying to go through the negative phase and getting back into the positive region again.


Replay value

What kind of replay options are available depends a lot on the religious system used. In some systems, for example Christianity and Atheism, there is basically no replay possible. Christianity offers a kind of follow-up game though that I haven't tested yet.

Other systems offer replay, either with or without preservation of information. While some players fancy the idea of starting over new while keeping all the information gathered in the first play, I personally think that making up your strategy as you go along is part of the fun of the game.

The alternative is starting over without the gathered information (or simply in an environment where the gathered information is useless, which can be achieved quite effectively by random starting positions and values). The second game would therefore start basically with the same preconditions as the first. While I wouldn't mind another round under these conditions, I don't really see the point.

Rather interesting however is the karma variant, in which the starting position in the next game depends to some extent on the performance in the previous one, making it somewhat similar to card games like Career Poker.

Verdict

Life is an extremely complex game, and figuring out good strategies is in fact one of the most interesting things about it. As with many other games, how much fun you have playing it depends a lot on how you play it and how well you play. Let's face it, Chess is no fun either when you have no idea what's going on, and/or when you throw a tantrum about every lost piece.

Still, there is a lot of randomness and a lot of unbalanced concepts. Even things that follow rules often appear to happen randomly. Don't get me wrong, randomness can very well keep a game interesting, but in this case it's just too much for my taste, especially because there is no effective mechanism to level it out. Also the imbalance between randomly assigned player attributes is just gross.

I very much like the basic idea of the game and most of the time enjoyed playing it so far, but at this stage I'd consider it an early prototype at best.

-- Birgit