Friday, August 19, 2005  Conference Crashers          1. If FOCS
& STOC were more reasonably priced then there would not be a
problem. But when it was in the US recently you had to pay 200$
for flight, >200$ hotel, 400$ registration, it comes to close to
a thousand dollars. There is no reason for it not to be much
cheaper...    2. Yeah, we could drastically lower hotel expenses
by having it at the campgrounds of state parks.    3. It is a
surprise to me that there are "gate crashers" into theory
conferences. May be my experience is isolated, but I haven't
known for a fact anyone who attended talks at a conference
without paying the registration fee. Do many people consider
gate crashing a serious issue at our conferences? Of course, it
is hard to seek statistics on the problem to evaluate its
impact.    4. First, let me state clearly that the conference
being expensive does not excuse crashing it. Mercedes are
expensive, but I don't steal one... I go without. And conference
organizers are often willing to tak