Slashdot Mirror

ardmhacha writes "Magnus Carlsen was able to force a draw in the 10th game of the World Chess Championship to claim the title with a 6.5 — 3.5 score (3 wins, 0 losses, 7 draws) over Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen became the youngest ever World No. 1 in 2010, but withdrew from the 2012 championship cycle and so has only now been able to add the World Champion title to his No. 1 ranking. He won three games and lost none. His first two victories came when he was able to convert small advantages in the endgame into wins. The third (in game 9) came after a blunder from Anand."

ardmhacha writes "Magnus Carlsen was able to force a draw in the 10th game of the World Chess Championship to claim the title with a 6.5 — 3.5 score (3 wins, 0 losses, 7 draws) over Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen became the youngest ever World No. 1 in 2010, but withdrew from the 2012 championship cycle and so has only now been able to add the World Champion title to his No. 1 ranking. He won three games and lost none. His first two victories came when he was able to convert small advantages in the endgame into wins. The third (in game 9) came after a blunder from Anand."

ardmhacha writes "Magnus Carlsen was able to force a draw in the 10th game of the World Chess Championship to claim the title with a 6.5 — 3.5 score (3 wins, 0 losses, 7 draws) over Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen became the youngest ever World No. 1 in 2010, but withdrew from the 2012 championship cycle and so has only now been able to add the World Champion title to his No. 1 ranking. He won three games and lost none. His first two victories came when he was able to convert small advantages in the endgame into wins. The third (in game 9) came after a blunder from Anand."

New submitter smarq2 writes "Chessbase reports that chess programmer IM Vasik Rajlich has solved the King's Gambit chess opening with technical means. 3000 processor cores, running for over four months, exhaustively analyzed all lines that follow after 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 and came to some extraordinary conclusions." Update: 04/02 22:11 GMT by U L : Skuto points out that this is the same person who was found guilty of plagiarizing GNU Chess and Crafty.

vmartell writes "The 16th World Computer Chess Championship is now in progress in Beijing, as part of the Computer Games Championship. Currently in the lead are Rybka 3.0, recognized as the world's strongest chess engine and Hiarcs, another commercial engine. Another curiosity is a Java ME based engine running on a Nokia phone, which is currently being trounced by the other engines. A very interesting sideline: before the computer tournament, a Women's Grandmaster played two games against Rybka. The result? Rybka won both games!"

Frederic Friedel writes: "In their efforts to talk to alien civilizations human beings are currently engaged in sending pictures based on a rectangular array of dots, arranged from left to right and top to bottom. But is this stategy sound? For instance what if the aliens do not see in pictures at all, or if they think in vector graphics rather than bitmap? On ChessBase.com grandmaster John Nunn proposes sending them a trading machine instead."

Frederic Friedel writes: "In their efforts to talk to alien civilizations human beings are currently engaged in sending pictures based on a rectangular array of dots, arranged from left to right and top to bottom. But is this stategy sound? For instance what if the aliens do not see in pictures at all, or if they think in vector graphics rather than bitmap? On ChessBase.com grandmaster John Nunn proposes sending them a trading machine instead."

Fanfan writes "Chessbase is reporting that the man vs. machine championship ended badly for the humans : The event ended in a depressing 3.5:8.5 loss by the humans to the computers. Both Fritz and Hydra scored a remarkable 3.5 points out of four games, while an out-of-form Junior ended up with 1.5 points after the only computer loss in this tournament (to 14-year-old Sergey Karjakin)."

azaris writes "The powerful computer chess engine Hydra, running on a sixteen-way Linux cluster, is taking on the many times world champion engine Shredder in a match between the two chess super computers in Abu Dhabi, according to ChessBase.com. So far, Hydra is leading by two clear victories." S!: ChessBase also points to the announcement of a "64,000 square meter International Chess City" in Dubai, planned to cost US $2.6 billion, which "will feature 32 buildings designed to mirror the image of a traditional black and white game board."

azaris writes "The powerful computer chess engine Hydra, running on a sixteen-way Linux cluster, is taking on the many times world champion engine Shredder in a match between the two chess super computers in Abu Dhabi, according to ChessBase.com. So far, Hydra is leading by two clear victories." S!: ChessBase also points to the announcement of a "64,000 square meter International Chess City" in Dubai, planned to cost US $2.6 billion, which "will feature 32 buildings designed to mirror the image of a traditional black and white game board."

bryan writes "'Junior' has regained the title of best computer chess program for 2004. Deep Junior previously drew Gary Kasparov 3-3 last year. From chessbase.com: 'Two programs went into the final round with equal scores: title defender Shredder and the home team of Junior. Interestingly it was another Israeli program that brought Junior the overall victory: Falcon held Shredder to a draw, while Junior demolished ParSOS.'" But, more interestingly: "The other favourite in the field, Fritz, did not have a good tournament. In round three it lost a very promising position against Falcon on time, when the computer froze and the operator did not notice this soon enough."

jvarsoke writes "ChessBrain.net broke the world's record for 'largest number of distributed computers used to play a single game' by holding a chess match between Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen and the equivalent of SETI@home (which similarly, has some people looking for a Mate). 2070 CPU's from 56 countries aided Black by running the chess program Beowulf, including a couple of University clusters. Their supernode ran Linux, and MySQL. The game was relayed by FICS. Results can be viewed here(1) and here(2)."

migstradamus writes "Anyone out there remember the BBC microcomputer? If so you probably remember the puzzle game Repton, too. ChessBase.com has a charming story about how a 3-year-old was clearly better at any computer game than the newly crowned World Chess Champion, including Repton, back in 1985. This defeat led Garry Kasparov to import Atari computers to Russia! The kid who beat him is now a 21-year-old programmer and has recreated the legendary game for free download. There's been plenty of feedback for the officially-sanctioned mini-remake, and on Jan. 21 they will release a super-hard level as part of a contest." It's worth noting that Repton has also been commercially re-released for Pocket PC and Java-enabled phones, as well as a full PC version from the original makers, Superior Software.

migstradamus writes "Anyone out there remember the BBC microcomputer? If so you probably remember the puzzle game Repton, too. ChessBase.com has a charming story about how a 3-year-old was clearly better at any computer game than the newly crowned World Chess Champion, including Repton, back in 1985. This defeat led Garry Kasparov to import Atari computers to Russia! The kid who beat him is now a 21-year-old programmer and has recreated the legendary game for free download. There's been plenty of feedback for the officially-sanctioned mini-remake, and on Jan. 21 they will release a super-hard level as part of a contest." It's worth noting that Repton has also been commercially re-released for Pocket PC and Java-enabled phones, as well as a full PC version from the original makers, Superior Software.

migstradamus writes "Anyone out there remember the BBC microcomputer? If so you probably remember the puzzle game Repton, too. ChessBase.com has a charming story about how a 3-year-old was clearly better at any computer game than the newly crowned World Chess Champion, including Repton, back in 1985. This defeat led Garry Kasparov to import Atari computers to Russia! The kid who beat him is now a 21-year-old programmer and has recreated the legendary game for free download. There's been plenty of feedback for the officially-sanctioned mini-remake, and on Jan. 21 they will release a super-hard level as part of a contest." It's worth noting that Repton has also been commercially re-released for Pocket PC and Java-enabled phones, as well as a full PC version from the original makers, Superior Software.

eval writes "According to the Chessbase website, the new sport of chessboxing has been devised 'to combine the No.1 thinking sport and the No.1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors.' Sure, it sounds like a joke, but an actual match was held not too long ago at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, which 'was packed with around 800 people' to see the world champion, 'Iepe the Joker' crowned."

eval writes "According to the Chessbase website, the new sport of chessboxing has been devised 'to combine the No.1 thinking sport and the No.1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors.' Sure, it sounds like a joke, but an actual match was held not too long ago at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, which 'was packed with around 800 people' to see the world champion, 'Iepe the Joker' crowned."

migstradamus writes "In a twist with interesting implications for the computer chess world, the intervention of a human programmer and a human arbiter have had a decisive impact on the World Computer Chess Championship that finished today in Graz, Austria. What happens when a programmer acts against his creation's best interest? ChessBase has an eye-witness report on the dilemma. This year's event was already controversial due to the disqualification of one of the programs midway through for being derivative of an open source program."

migstradamus writes "In a twist with interesting implications for the computer chess world, the intervention of a human programmer and a human arbiter have had a decisive impact on the World Computer Chess Championship that finished today in Graz, Austria. What happens when a programmer acts against his creation's best interest? ChessBase has an eye-witness report on the dilemma. This year's event was already controversial due to the disqualification of one of the programs midway through for being derivative of an open source program."

migstradamus writes "In a twist with interesting implications for the computer chess world, the intervention of a human programmer and a human arbiter have had a decisive impact on the World Computer Chess Championship that finished today in Graz, Austria. What happens when a programmer acts against his creation's best interest? ChessBase has an eye-witness report on the dilemma. This year's event was already controversial due to the disqualification of one of the programs midway through for being derivative of an open source program."

Shalda writes "CNN is reporting that: "Former world chess champion [Garry] Kasparov, 40, pits his genius against 'X3D Fritz,' a combination of Fritz, the most dominant chess software, with X3D Technologies company software that specializes in virtual reality." Kasparov will be looking at a virtual board through 3D VR glasses in what sounds like one of the lamest chess PR stunts ever." ChessBase has some interesting statistics trying to predict the entire match, plumping for an overall Kasparov win, but Reuters reveals today's opening encounter ended in a draw.

FFriedel writes "In a few weeks, the world's strongest player Garry Kasparov will take on X3D Fritz in a high-profile man-machine chess match. Who is the statistical favourite? Since computers have been steadily improving and are now holding their own against the very strongest human players, one would think it may be Fritz. Not necessarily, says statistician Jeff Sonas, who doesn't believe computers will inevitably surpass the top humans, and presents empirical evidence to support his claim as part of a series of articles for ChessBase."

FFriedel writes "In a few weeks, the world's strongest player Garry Kasparov will take on X3D Fritz in a high-profile man-machine chess match. Who is the statistical favourite? Since computers have been steadily improving and are now holding their own against the very strongest human players, one would think it may be Fritz. Not necessarily, says statistician Jeff Sonas, who doesn't believe computers will inevitably surpass the top humans, and presents empirical evidence to support his claim as part of a series of articles for ChessBase."

rockville writes "Brutus, a FPGA add-in PCI card developed by ChessBase and Dr. Christian Donnegar, just dominated a strong field of human players at a tournament in Germany. It's the first serious chess-playing FPGA architecture since Deep Blue was disassembled after its victory over Kasparov in 1997. Pictures of the card and a short description are here."

rockville writes "Brutus, a FPGA add-in PCI card developed by ChessBase and Dr. Christian Donnegar, just dominated a strong field of human players at a tournament in Germany. It's the first serious chess-playing FPGA architecture since Deep Blue was disassembled after its victory over Kasparov in 1997. Pictures of the card and a short description are here."

rockville writes "Brutus, a FPGA add-in PCI card developed by ChessBase and Dr. Christian Donnegar, just dominated a strong field of human players at a tournament in Germany. It's the first serious chess-playing FPGA architecture since Deep Blue was disassembled after its victory over Kasparov in 1997. Pictures of the card and a short description are here."

morgothan writes "As reported in an article on Math World the solution, or rather lack of solution has been found to the over one hundred fifty year old math problem of how many numbers of magic tours a knight can make on a standard 8x8 chessboard. It turn out that there exist one hundred forty distinct semimagic tours, but no magic tour. The solution came after 61.40 CPU-days, corresponding to 138.25 days of computation at 1 GHz, the project was completed on August 5, 2003 in which every possible enumeration was tried out. The author of the software that finally solved the problem has also put up a webpage in which he further explains the problem and his method of solving it." Thanks to Mig for pointing out a great background page on Chessbase.com.

nado writes "There's a new article on Chessbase.com which has GM John Nunn showing you his chess-orientated PC upgrade to a double Xeon system, with some Fritz benchmarks." Elsewhere in the article, John Nunn discusses the unique computer needs for chess computation: "One of the problems with currently available processors is that they are not particularly well suited to the integer calculations used for chess. A Pentium 4 will be slower at chess than a Pentium 3 of an equivalent clock speed."

nado writes "There's a new article on Chessbase.com which has GM John Nunn showing you his chess-orientated PC upgrade to a double Xeon system, with some Fritz benchmarks." Elsewhere in the article, John Nunn discusses the unique computer needs for chess computation: "One of the problems with currently available processors is that they are not particularly well suited to the integer calculations used for chess. A Pentium 4 will be slower at chess than a Pentium 3 of an equivalent clock speed."

FFriedel writes "For over two years now ChessBase has been working on Brutus, a 'mini Deep Blue' running on an FPGA platform. What is taking them so long? Apparently the project has moves in a somewhat different direction. The author of Brutus, Dr Christian Donninger, revealed he was approached by the US National Science Foundation to participate in the development of a bionic chess interface."

FFriedel writes "For over two years now ChessBase has been working on Brutus, a 'mini Deep Blue' running on an FPGA platform. What is taking them so long? Apparently the project has moves in a somewhat different direction. The author of Brutus, Dr Christian Donninger, revealed he was approached by the US National Science Foundation to participate in the development of a bionic chess interface."

FFriedel writes "For over two years now ChessBase has been working on Brutus, a 'mini Deep Blue' running on an FPGA platform. What is taking them so long? Apparently the project has moves in a somewhat different direction. The author of Brutus, Dr Christian Donninger, revealed he was approached by the US National Science Foundation to participate in the development of a bionic chess interface."

FFriedel writes "For over two years now ChessBase has been working on Brutus, a 'mini Deep Blue' running on an FPGA platform. What is taking them so long? Apparently the project has moves in a somewhat different direction. The author of Brutus, Dr Christian Donninger, revealed he was approached by the US National Science Foundation to participate in the development of a bionic chess interface."

Maltov writes "World Chess Champion V. Kramnik ties his match against the software Fritz. Details here. You can also check out a picture gallery and a short history of computer chess."

Maltov writes "World Chess Champion V. Kramnik ties his match against the software Fritz. Details here. You can also check out a picture gallery and a short history of computer chess."

iskander writes "Man and Machine were content to draw in game 7 of the Brains in Bahrain match. Now it's all down to the final game, in which Kramnik will enjoy the advantage of playing with white. It is worth noting that game 6, in which Kramnik may have resigned too early, was found to be a probable draw with best play, and that Kasparov lost to Deep Blue by tossing a drawable game. However, whereas Kasparov could only excuse himself (unconvincingly) by claiming that Deep Blue had been assisted by a human during play, Kramnik could simply request the adjudication of game 6 on the grounds of infractions committed by Deep Fritz, who is rumored to have heckled Kramnik with its Shakespearean chatter througout the game. :) So, will Dirty Fritz win it all or will Humanity's champion "rise above the chatter" and win back the crown for us? If you think you know, you may want to place a bet or register your opinion on the ChessLines survey soon, because the match ends tomorrow."

iskander writes "Man and Machine were content to draw in game 7 of the Brains in Bahrain match. Now it's all down to the final game, in which Kramnik will enjoy the advantage of playing with white. It is worth noting that game 6, in which Kramnik may have resigned too early, was found to be a probable draw with best play, and that Kasparov lost to Deep Blue by tossing a drawable game. However, whereas Kasparov could only excuse himself (unconvincingly) by claiming that Deep Blue had been assisted by a human during play, Kramnik could simply request the adjudication of game 6 on the grounds of infractions committed by Deep Fritz, who is rumored to have heckled Kramnik with its Shakespearean chatter througout the game. :) So, will Dirty Fritz win it all or will Humanity's champion "rise above the chatter" and win back the crown for us? If you think you know, you may want to place a bet or register your opinion on the ChessLines survey soon, because the match ends tomorrow."

FFriedel writes "In October classical chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik is scheduled to play Deep Fritz in Bahrain. Now Garry Kasparov, who lost his title to Kramnik in 2000, but is still ranked as the strongest player in the world, has announced that he will play the computer chess world champion Deep Junior in Jerusalem at almost exactly the same time. Both programs are distributed by ChessBase. In 1997 Kasparov lost his famous match against Deep Blue."

FFriedel writes "In October classical chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik is scheduled to play Deep Fritz in Bahrain. Now Garry Kasparov, who lost his title to Kramnik in 2000, but is still ranked as the strongest player in the world, has announced that he will play the computer chess world champion Deep Junior in Jerusalem at almost exactly the same time. Both programs are distributed by ChessBase. In 1997 Kasparov lost his famous match against Deep Blue."

FFriedel writes "In October classical chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik is scheduled to play Deep Fritz in Bahrain. Now Garry Kasparov, who lost his title to Kramnik in 2000, but is still ranked as the strongest player in the world, has announced that he will play the computer chess world champion Deep Junior in Jerusalem at almost exactly the same time. Both programs are distributed by ChessBase. In 1997 Kasparov lost his famous match against Deep Blue."

FFriedel writes "In October classical chess world champion Vladimir Kramnik is scheduled to play Deep Fritz in Bahrain. Now Garry Kasparov, who lost his title to Kramnik in 2000, but is still ranked as the strongest player in the world, has announced that he will play the computer chess world champion Deep Junior in Jerusalem at almost exactly the same time. Both programs are distributed by ChessBase. In 1997 Kasparov lost his famous match against Deep Blue."

FFriedel writes "Michael Jordan tried it with baseball, and it, like, didn't work out too well for him. But what about a professional Shogi champion switching to chess? Yoshiharu Habu, one of the most gifted players in the history of the ancient Japanese game, has taken a casual interest in chess - and already reached IM strength. He is currently playing in a tournament in Paris, where chess grandmaster Joel Lautier interviewed him." Shogi is a very odd game if you're used to chess. Most of the pieces have biases toward forward motion, and when you capture an enemy piece, you can bring it back into play for your side.

FFriedel writes "Michael Jordan tried it with baseball, and it, like, didn't work out too well for him. But what about a professional Shogi champion switching to chess? Yoshiharu Habu, one of the most gifted players in the history of the ancient Japanese game, has taken a casual interest in chess - and already reached IM strength. He is currently playing in a tournament in Paris, where chess grandmaster Joel Lautier interviewed him." Shogi is a very odd game if you're used to chess. Most of the pieces have biases toward forward motion, and when you capture an enemy piece, you can bring it back into play for your side.

Frederic Friedel sent in an interesting submission. It's an interview with the current world's chess champion, Vladimir Kramnik, in which they talk about the upcoming year in chess competitions, but also get into [Deep Blue] and where computer chess playing is versus several years ago, with a comparison between Deep Blue and Fritz. If you want more info, check out Chessbase for additional news.

Frederic Friedel sent in an interesting submission. It's an interview with the current world's chess champion, Vladimir Kramnik, in which they talk about the upcoming year in chess competitions, but also get into [Deep Blue] and where computer chess playing is versus several years ago, with a comparison between Deep Blue and Fritz. If you want more info, check out Chessbase for additional news.

Slashback tonight with more book reviews, more on the Human vs. Machine Duel in the Desert, more on the Star Wars sequel name -- just generally more.

Quick, Danny, write faster! Danny Yee has written additional reviews of Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright , Naomi Klein's No Logo , and John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles . (You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz, Warren A. Layton, and Hemos.)

From the Persian for "King" Frederic Friedel of Chessbase contributed some links which are especially interesting in light of the recently announced match between Deep Fritz and Vladimir Kramnik. He points to this link and this other link, saying "The latter has some nice quotes from Kramnik."

In addition, Frederic has links with more on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, and Fritz in Space.

But the name is already perfect for a MAD parody ... RFINN writes: "If you haven't heard by now, Lucasfilm announced the name of Episode II. It's going to be called 'Attack of the Clones.' If you're like me, this stirs up pictures of Jedi running from giant red tomatoes and such. Do your civic duty and help change the name that has become the laughing stock of the sci-fi movie going community (and some of the actors themselves) by signing a petition to be sent to George Lucas."

Sold! to the man with the large contingent of lawyers! ncmusic writes "For all of you readers that have been following Bid For Power the DragonballZ Q3 mod. Funimation has issued a cease and desist order to the group. Funimation has excluse rights to DBZ in the US (and EU I think) and has sold exclusive video game rights to Infograms. Below is the announcement made on the site about the order. My question to the slashdot community is do you think this is fair? BFP is a FREE mod to an already existing game. Have their been any other precedence set for making mods based on characters from copyrighted work? And what advice do you have for the Bid For Power group?

'As many of you know Funimation owns the copyrights to Dragonball Z in the USA and has sold the exclusive rights to publish video games to Infogrames. On December 1st, 2000, the Bid For Power team received a cease and desist order from Funimation.

However, they seemed receptive to the notion of allowing Bid For Power to be released so long as certain conditions were met. We were put in touch with Infogrames who asked us, among other things, to recreate Bid For Power on Wild Tangent, a java-based engine, which would then be posted on the Dragonball Z website for people to play. This engine is incapable of running something as detailed as Bid For Power and we would have had to start work from scratch. Most of the team rejected the idea and talks went downhill from there. Without contact with Infogrames or Funimation the progress of Bid For Power slowed down even though we were sitting on a finished product and had been for some time.

We began dealing with Funimation directly in April when they asked us to send videos of gameplay to them so that they could have TOEI Japan review it. We sent the videos and heard nothing until we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation.'"

So the confirmed-as-rumor rumor has become real? This is the sort of thing that would be best kept in the realm of rumor.

Slashback tonight with more book reviews, more on the Human vs. Machine Duel in the Desert, more on the Star Wars sequel name -- just generally more.

Quick, Danny, write faster! Danny Yee has written additional reviews of Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright , Naomi Klein's No Logo , and John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles . (You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz, Warren A. Layton, and Hemos.)

From the Persian for "King" Frederic Friedel of Chessbase contributed some links which are especially interesting in light of the recently announced match between Deep Fritz and Vladimir Kramnik. He points to this link and this other link, saying "The latter has some nice quotes from Kramnik."

In addition, Frederic has links with more on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, and Fritz in Space.

But the name is already perfect for a MAD parody ... RFINN writes: "If you haven't heard by now, Lucasfilm announced the name of Episode II. It's going to be called 'Attack of the Clones.' If you're like me, this stirs up pictures of Jedi running from giant red tomatoes and such. Do your civic duty and help change the name that has become the laughing stock of the sci-fi movie going community (and some of the actors themselves) by signing a petition to be sent to George Lucas."

Sold! to the man with the large contingent of lawyers! ncmusic writes "For all of you readers that have been following Bid For Power the DragonballZ Q3 mod. Funimation has issued a cease and desist order to the group. Funimation has excluse rights to DBZ in the US (and EU I think) and has sold exclusive video game rights to Infograms. Below is the announcement made on the site about the order. My question to the slashdot community is do you think this is fair? BFP is a FREE mod to an already existing game. Have their been any other precedence set for making mods based on characters from copyrighted work? And what advice do you have for the Bid For Power group?

'As many of you know Funimation owns the copyrights to Dragonball Z in the USA and has sold the exclusive rights to publish video games to Infogrames. On December 1st, 2000, the Bid For Power team received a cease and desist order from Funimation.

However, they seemed receptive to the notion of allowing Bid For Power to be released so long as certain conditions were met. We were put in touch with Infogrames who asked us, among other things, to recreate Bid For Power on Wild Tangent, a java-based engine, which would then be posted on the Dragonball Z website for people to play. This engine is incapable of running something as detailed as Bid For Power and we would have had to start work from scratch. Most of the team rejected the idea and talks went downhill from there. Without contact with Infogrames or Funimation the progress of Bid For Power slowed down even though we were sitting on a finished product and had been for some time.

We began dealing with Funimation directly in April when they asked us to send videos of gameplay to them so that they could have TOEI Japan review it. We sent the videos and heard nothing until we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation.'"

So the confirmed-as-rumor rumor has become real? This is the sort of thing that would be best kept in the realm of rumor.

Slashback tonight with more book reviews, more on the Human vs. Machine Duel in the Desert, more on the Star Wars sequel name -- just generally more.

Quick, Danny, write faster! Danny Yee has written additional reviews of Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright , Naomi Klein's No Logo , and John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles . (You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz, Warren A. Layton, and Hemos.)

From the Persian for "King" Frederic Friedel of Chessbase contributed some links which are especially interesting in light of the recently announced match between Deep Fritz and Vladimir Kramnik. He points to this link and this other link, saying "The latter has some nice quotes from Kramnik."

In addition, Frederic has links with more on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, and Fritz in Space.

But the name is already perfect for a MAD parody ... RFINN writes: "If you haven't heard by now, Lucasfilm announced the name of Episode II. It's going to be called 'Attack of the Clones.' If you're like me, this stirs up pictures of Jedi running from giant red tomatoes and such. Do your civic duty and help change the name that has become the laughing stock of the sci-fi movie going community (and some of the actors themselves) by signing a petition to be sent to George Lucas."

Sold! to the man with the large contingent of lawyers! ncmusic writes "For all of you readers that have been following Bid For Power the DragonballZ Q3 mod. Funimation has issued a cease and desist order to the group. Funimation has excluse rights to DBZ in the US (and EU I think) and has sold exclusive video game rights to Infograms. Below is the announcement made on the site about the order. My question to the slashdot community is do you think this is fair? BFP is a FREE mod to an already existing game. Have their been any other precedence set for making mods based on characters from copyrighted work? And what advice do you have for the Bid For Power group?

'As many of you know Funimation owns the copyrights to Dragonball Z in the USA and has sold the exclusive rights to publish video games to Infogrames. On December 1st, 2000, the Bid For Power team received a cease and desist order from Funimation.

However, they seemed receptive to the notion of allowing Bid For Power to be released so long as certain conditions were met. We were put in touch with Infogrames who asked us, among other things, to recreate Bid For Power on Wild Tangent, a java-based engine, which would then be posted on the Dragonball Z website for people to play. This engine is incapable of running something as detailed as Bid For Power and we would have had to start work from scratch. Most of the team rejected the idea and talks went downhill from there. Without contact with Infogrames or Funimation the progress of Bid For Power slowed down even though we were sitting on a finished product and had been for some time.

We began dealing with Funimation directly in April when they asked us to send videos of gameplay to them so that they could have TOEI Japan review it. We sent the videos and heard nothing until we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation.'"

So the confirmed-as-rumor rumor has become real? This is the sort of thing that would be best kept in the realm of rumor.

Slashback tonight with more book reviews, more on the Human vs. Machine Duel in the Desert, more on the Star Wars sequel name -- just generally more.

Quick, Danny, write faster! Danny Yee has written additional reviews of Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright , Naomi Klein's No Logo , and John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles . (You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz, Warren A. Layton, and Hemos.)

From the Persian for "King" Frederic Friedel of Chessbase contributed some links which are especially interesting in light of the recently announced match between Deep Fritz and Vladimir Kramnik. He points to this link and this other link, saying "The latter has some nice quotes from Kramnik."

In addition, Frederic has links with more on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, and Fritz in Space.

But the name is already perfect for a MAD parody ... RFINN writes: "If you haven't heard by now, Lucasfilm announced the name of Episode II. It's going to be called 'Attack of the Clones.' If you're like me, this stirs up pictures of Jedi running from giant red tomatoes and such. Do your civic duty and help change the name that has become the laughing stock of the sci-fi movie going community (and some of the actors themselves) by signing a petition to be sent to George Lucas."

Sold! to the man with the large contingent of lawyers! ncmusic writes "For all of you readers that have been following Bid For Power the DragonballZ Q3 mod. Funimation has issued a cease and desist order to the group. Funimation has excluse rights to DBZ in the US (and EU I think) and has sold exclusive video game rights to Infograms. Below is the announcement made on the site about the order. My question to the slashdot community is do you think this is fair? BFP is a FREE mod to an already existing game. Have their been any other precedence set for making mods based on characters from copyrighted work? And what advice do you have for the Bid For Power group?

'As many of you know Funimation owns the copyrights to Dragonball Z in the USA and has sold the exclusive rights to publish video games to Infogrames. On December 1st, 2000, the Bid For Power team received a cease and desist order from Funimation.

However, they seemed receptive to the notion of allowing Bid For Power to be released so long as certain conditions were met. We were put in touch with Infogrames who asked us, among other things, to recreate Bid For Power on Wild Tangent, a java-based engine, which would then be posted on the Dragonball Z website for people to play. This engine is incapable of running something as detailed as Bid For Power and we would have had to start work from scratch. Most of the team rejected the idea and talks went downhill from there. Without contact with Infogrames or Funimation the progress of Bid For Power slowed down even though we were sitting on a finished product and had been for some time.

We began dealing with Funimation directly in April when they asked us to send videos of gameplay to them so that they could have TOEI Japan review it. We sent the videos and heard nothing until we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation.'"

So the confirmed-as-rumor rumor has become real? This is the sort of thing that would be best kept in the realm of rumor.

Slashback tonight with more book reviews, more on the Human vs. Machine Duel in the Desert, more on the Star Wars sequel name -- just generally more.

Quick, Danny, write faster! Danny Yee has written additional reviews of Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright , Naomi Klein's No Logo , and John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles . (You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by Michael Sims and Jon Katz, Warren A. Layton, and Hemos.)

From the Persian for "King" Frederic Friedel of Chessbase contributed some links which are especially interesting in light of the recently announced match between Deep Fritz and Vladimir Kramnik. He points to this link and this other link, saying "The latter has some nice quotes from Kramnik."

In addition, Frederic has links with more on Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, and Fritz in Space.

But the name is already perfect for a MAD parody ... RFINN writes: "If you haven't heard by now, Lucasfilm announced the name of Episode II. It's going to be called 'Attack of the Clones.' If you're like me, this stirs up pictures of Jedi running from giant red tomatoes and such. Do your civic duty and help change the name that has become the laughing stock of the sci-fi movie going community (and some of the actors themselves) by signing a petition to be sent to George Lucas."

Sold! to the man with the large contingent of lawyers! ncmusic writes "For all of you readers that have been following Bid For Power the DragonballZ Q3 mod. Funimation has issued a cease and desist order to the group. Funimation has excluse rights to DBZ in the US (and EU I think) and has sold exclusive video game rights to Infograms. Below is the announcement made on the site about the order. My question to the slashdot community is do you think this is fair? BFP is a FREE mod to an already existing game. Have their been any other precedence set for making mods based on characters from copyrighted work? And what advice do you have for the Bid For Power group?

'As many of you know Funimation owns the copyrights to Dragonball Z in the USA and has sold the exclusive rights to publish video games to Infogrames. On December 1st, 2000, the Bid For Power team received a cease and desist order from Funimation.

However, they seemed receptive to the notion of allowing Bid For Power to be released so long as certain conditions were met. We were put in touch with Infogrames who asked us, among other things, to recreate Bid For Power on Wild Tangent, a java-based engine, which would then be posted on the Dragonball Z website for people to play. This engine is incapable of running something as detailed as Bid For Power and we would have had to start work from scratch. Most of the team rejected the idea and talks went downhill from there. Without contact with Infogrames or Funimation the progress of Bid For Power slowed down even though we were sitting on a finished product and had been for some time.

We began dealing with Funimation directly in April when they asked us to send videos of gameplay to them so that they could have TOEI Japan review it. We sent the videos and heard nothing until we emailed them in July asking that we be allowed to release in August, since no objections had be made from TOEI Japan that we knew of. We were then sent another Cease and Desist order by way of Funimation.'"

So the confirmed-as-rumor rumor has become real? This is the sort of thing that would be best kept in the realm of rumor.