Hrm... may not work with a lot of setups. From "shred --help":
CAUTION: Note that shred relies on a very important assumption:
that the filesystem overwrites data in place. This is the traditional
way to do things, but many modern filesystem designs do not satisfy this
assumption. The following are examples of filesystems on which shred is
not effective:
* log-structured or journaled filesystems, such as those supplied with
AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, etc.)
* filesystems that write redundant data and carry on even if some writes
fail, such as RAID-based filesystems
* filesystems that make snapshots, such as Network Appliance's NFS server
* filesystems that cache in temporary locations, such as NFS
version 3 clients
* compressed filesystems
...Since many of the latest distributions (like RH7.2 and MDK-8.1) offer journalized FSs (ext3 by default even), shred will fail. RAIDs will fail too.
Note as well that, unless you specify the -x option, it *will* attempt to shred the final block completely, beyond the end of the file (thus killing the hidden data).
I had the same task, and used
Gramofile under linux - it worked like a charm, automating the first two steps you mentioned (creating the wav, processing it).
You plug the turntable to your PC's line-in, start gramofile, which will begin recording when it hears sound and create a big wav per side. It then finds the silence spots to break into tracks, has a large number of filters for noice reduction, volume normalization and others, and you can run the resulting wavs through oggenc or whatever encoder you want. It's pretty cool, free as in willy, works on linux, what else do you want, a GUI?
Well, when I used it, it had no Gui (had a text-mode interactive interface, bit ugly, but more than sufficient). Recommended.
The message I hear in many/. discussions on porn is sort of "It's the parent's responsibility, it must never be censored! Let the child deal with it!". While I do not disagree with much of this, there are many things to consider when you have an *actual* flesh-and-blood child (which most of you, I gather, do not).
I myself have recently spawned, and I am having some philosophical considerations about this issue...
My first reaction was (and still kind of is) 'Anything goes! let them go nuts! I'll teach them enough for them to realize the difference'. I was very free when I was a kid, I had access to a lot of stuff that for my times was pretty rough at an early age, and I came up OK, didn't I? I mean, I am now a respected professional yadda-yadda-yadda-you-know-what-I-mean.
On the other hand, thruth be told, the most 'shocking' stuff I had access then was pretty different to what's out there now. I am almost 30 now, as a reference, and some of my big 'sins' were watching 'Caligula' (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0080491) when I was about 14 y.o., browsing through playboy (and, if I was lucky, Hustler), downloading some gifs (or similar) 50x100 pixel pics of Samantha Fox and XuXa. That's only covering 'sex', one of the areas of concern, let's not even begin about violence, gore, racism, nazism, politics, censorship (for crying out loud!), guns-and-ammo, and a dozen other categories to be aware of in the discussion.
Nowadays, my child would be able to right now (not to say in the three more years it'll take him to learn to read, type and click), to download a five-minute mpeg clip of a dog fucking a girl, a lady sucking a horse's dick, a guy roasting and eating the corpse of a baby (thanks rotten.com), goatse.cx, fecaljapan.com (or whatever that stream of shit is called), simulated snuff and rape films (maybe even not simulated - haven't looked that hard), escort services for his area code, and so on and on and on... All that without even a creditcard (not that it would be too hard for him to figure *that* part out when the time comes).
I trust I will teach him right. I will be supervising him, I know he's smart (already), and I don't want the US government to tell me how to raise him (moreso since I'm not American nor live in the US). I am not really against him downloading Pamela Anderson and whats-his-face video and jerking his brains off when he's 13, but I'm not really confortable with the penis-piercings and eunuch pages (not unix, eunuchs!) at http://www.bmezine.com/extreme/free/index.html, just to name one of many.
So, what to do? Nobody said that parenting was easy! They don't come with an 800 support number (I know, I've checked!) and the user manual is pretty sketchy (sorta "if (poo) change_diaper();"). I guess I'll rough it and try to stay on top of it.
But, to the point of the article, the.kids thing sounds great, in a perfect world. But we ain't in one, especially the gringos' one. It would be cool if I could setup a filter with only.kids allowed through it and be pretty comfortable until the kid is, let's say, eleven, but it just ain't gonna happen. I don't trust them (whomever "them" is this week) enough. As always, it ends up on "who watches the watchers?".
As it was said before: "Kids! An hour of joy, twenty years of misery". Oh well...
Wolfe.
(Disclaimer - I posted something like this to an old discussion, and was pretty much the last message of the thread, so I don't think anyone read it, maybe this time it can spark a conversation).
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Sounds to me like a textbook application for VMWare - if you have a box big enough, you can create a virtual machine and install you package there. If you take a snapshot before and after, comparisons are easy.
Also, the VMWare wrapper will let you monitor anything that goes in or out the virtual machine's network connections, thus enabling you to identify the licence confirmation mechanism.
I'll go back to lurking now.
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Not to mention the best result of the commercialization of the net: broadband.
I also remember with nostalgia my usenet/gopher/ftp/MUD days (not so into BBSs), but my pr0n collection is much better with my 1.5Mbps DSL than it was with my 2800bps modem.
And no, that's not the only thing it's good for... But anyone thinking that we could have gotten here without the commercialization of the net, is in denial (and I don't mean Egypt).
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Well, this story is old and about to be archived - the only possibility for you to read this is by checking your user page... Here's hoping.
I would actually be interested in your thoughts about the Capuccino and the Espresso. I bought an Espresso a while back, and was quite happy with it, although it was a bitch to make it work with the USB ethernet. Were you ever able to make the USB ethernet work when the CD/docking was plugged on? I wasn't, and would appreciate pointers.
If you rather email me: carlos@$my_nick_here.org
Thanks,
Carlos.
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
The discussion in this topic is INCREDIBLY active! In the about eight hours it has been online, it is over 1000 posts already. I noticed over 700 only in the first hour!
And, out of the eight, it was down for about four (why has no one commented on this? From where I sat, the database seemed to be down down down from about 5:00EST till about 9:00EST), due, I imagine, to the infinite monkeys banging away their frustrations against the poor little mysql or whatever...
If this keeps going for just a bit longer (~350 more posts), it will make the Hall of Fame (http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml) in just about five or six hours of active posting! This must be a record!
So, since I was thinking about this, I took a quick look at the HoF, and found that the most active topics were counter-intuitive to the traditional Slashbot/geek/wannabe stereotype, which is good!
Out of the ten most active posts, Five are about politics (three of them about the elections in the US!), one mixed politics with DeCSS/2600, one on religion/education, one about life out of the US, one about Microsoft, and one of a skr1p7 k1dd13 posting garbage to a book review.
Yup. One on MS, One partially related to DeCSS. No gnome vs. kde, no emacs vs. vi, no napster, no GPL, no 3dfx... Interesting.
Goes to show you that the crowd here can actually talk about way more than computers. Good for you!
I also noticed that the one (maybe two, by the time I'm done writing) about MS is because they came looking for it. It is not us going out and attacking them for fanatic close-mindedness, it's them poking us with a cattle-prod - they asked for it, I guess.
When I refer a non-geek friend to read/. I normally attach the following warning. It now rings quite true:
Slashdot is an interesting but wild place - There's quite a bit to be learned and shared, but it's also uncivilized territory. Tread carefully and do not feed the trolls.
I'll go back to lurking now...
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
I give up! I have heard this, I am sure, but my brain is melting and I just cannot place it! You know, with age, memory is the first thing to go... and I forget the second.
Where is this from?
~cgr
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Of course you do! Well, at least in the US and several other countries (I wouldn't know if you happened to live in Elbonia)the pre-installed windows has been omnipresent. With your new brand computer (dell, gateway, whatever) you will have no choice but to get a windows CD, even if you did not want it. The only way to get out of it was to build it yourself (as I did), or use no-name shops that will do it for you in a rather under-the-table fashion.
Even these last ones, for a while were threatened (don't know if it actually happened) with a charge from MS for 'lost revenue', who automatically assumed that the shop preintalled windows or gave them a pirate CDR.
This has started, little by little, to change. Linux shops (like, oh, I don't know, VA Linux) don't have to pay the windows tax. Even more recently, some brands starting to 'deduct' $80 or so from the list price if you did not choose to install windows (the tiny Espresso, of which I got one, had this option).
I am the unhappy customer of some five windows licenses, of assorted versions and formats, just because of the computers I've bought for myself and family in the recent years. I did not choose to buy any of them. MS effectively helped themselves to my wallet, plucked out the money and say "thank you, here is your shiny-hologram-protected certificate of authenticity and CD/floppies".
Now it will get interesting, when they single-handedly end the pc upgrade industry.
May you live in interesting times...
I'll go back to lurking now.
Carlos.
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
There is a clear tendency to say all times gone were better. In many ways, the world does seem to be going downhill (everything from ecological devastation to copy-protected hard-disks, to having a son-of-a-bush elected by the courts as US prez).
On the other hand, I have always viewed the world as better than before for most people (larger life-spans, better information transfer, more toys, space stations and Babylon 5).
I recently had a child (my first), and I have on occasion been worried about the type of world he will inherit (he will likely have to wear sunblock to protect himself against UV rays, when the ozone thing gets tough) -- on ocassion also I've been thrilled and envious as to what he may see that I won't (trips to the moon as tourism, move towards a global government, real wearable computers, freedom from religion).
So, what's your take? Do you even care about the world that you did not choose but now you have to live on? Are you looking forward to the challenge of it all, or are you pissed about the need for the sunblock and worried you'll end up having Soylent Green for breakfast every day?
Thanks, I'll go back to lurking now.
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Well, this would be a nice time to remind the crowd that the EFF is not the only foundation out there who needs a lot of help to finance lawyers to make good laws instead of only bad ones.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is out there to battle cases of separation of Church and State, Religious Freedom for Atheists, discrimination on faith (or lack thereof) and publishes a nice monthly paper (Freethought Today), which will be mailed to you once you become a member.
I can't say if there really is a shortage or not. I personally came when there was a marked shortage in a very specific area. I will not dispute (out of ignorance) the five-year-starting-wage comment.
Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that my salary is not lower than my peers (it's actually higher, due to performance over the years, if I'm allowed the immodesty). I do work outrageous hours, but not more so than the gringo in the next cube. Overall I do not consider myself to be unjustly treated in any way.
Yes, there is the matter of aditional difficulty if I need to change employers, but it's perfectly doable (don't tell anyone, but I'm about to change jobs as we speak, H1B not withstanding).
Finally, and please don't take this the wrong way, I am not married to this country (and no one should), if for any reason the US kicks me out, my skills are sufficiently marketable for me to get a job in the UK, Australia, Yemen, Chile, Zimbabwe or the Moon. I never planned to come to the US, I'll stay for as long as it's convenient, then I'll move to where it's convenient then.
Finally, just to make sure I don't step on toes, gringo is not an offensive term, it's just the only one that doesn't sound funny for someone who thinks of "America" as the continent from Alaska to Argentina....I'll go back to lurking now.
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Great, When I was working as a laborer, the Mexicans were taking the jobs, now I'm into computers, and they still are! I knew I should have taken basket weaving
Be sure to get a hold of Basket Weaving for Dummies. And polish those language skills! You know what the second most spoken language in the US will be in five years?...(beat)... English!
Your friendly H1B-holding Mexican in highly paid technical job.
...I'll go back to lurking now.
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Another nice read by a different Levy
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 1
Another recommended book that reads like Hackers and is very focused on people (at least the first half) is "How Computers Play Chess". It is by David Levy, not Steven (any relation? I dunno), who is a Scottish International Chess Master and (past?) president of the ICCA (International Computer Chess Association), in cooperation with Monty Newborn (professor of CS at McGill University).
Published in 91, the first half of the book is about the people involved and their attempts at making a computer play chess, and ends on the first Kasparov-Deep Thought match in 89. Feng Hsiung Hsu, Shannon, Lasker, John McCarthy (yeah, that one), Botvinnik, and many others are portrayed.
The second half goes into more technicalities, talking about the CS behind the programs, hash tables, move generators and algorithms. It is certainly worth a read.
The details of my copy (don't if there's a newer edition): How Computers Play Chess
by David Levy and Monty Newborn
Computer Science Press, (c) 1991 by W.H. Freeman and Co.
ISBN: 0-7167-8121-2
Enjoy. I'll go back to lurking now...
CGR
-- If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrm... may not work with a lot of setups. From "shred --help":
CAUTION: Note that shred relies on a very important assumption: that the filesystem overwrites data in place. This is the traditional way to do things, but many modern filesystem designs do not satisfy this assumption. The following are examples of filesystems on which shred is not effective:
* log-structured or journaled filesystems, such as those supplied with AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, etc.)
* filesystems that write redundant data and carry on even if some writes fail, such as RAID-based filesystems
* filesystems that make snapshots, such as Network Appliance's NFS server
* filesystems that cache in temporary locations, such as NFS version 3 clients
* compressed filesystems
Note as well that, unless you specify the -x option, it *will* attempt to shred the final block completely, beyond the end of the file (thus killing the hidden data).
I'll go back to lurking now.
You plug the turntable to your PC's line-in, start gramofile, which will begin recording when it hears sound and create a big wav per side. It then finds the silence spots to break into tracks, has a large number of filters for noice reduction, volume normalization and others, and you can run the resulting wavs through oggenc or whatever encoder you want. It's pretty cool, free as in willy, works on linux, what else do you want, a GUI?
Well, when I used it, it had no Gui (had a text-mode interactive interface, bit ugly, but more than sufficient). Recommended.
>Because Microsoft will make it more user
>friendly for them to use.
Ooooh, we allow exporting crypto now?
The message I hear in many /. discussions on porn is sort of "It's the parent's responsibility, it must never be censored! Let the child deal with it!". While I do not disagree with much of this, there are many things to consider when you have an *actual* flesh-and-blood child (which most of you, I gather, do not).
.kids thing sounds great, in a perfect world. But we ain't in one, especially the gringos' one. It would be cool if I could setup a filter with only .kids allowed through it and be pretty comfortable until the kid is, let's say, eleven, but it just ain't gonna happen. I don't trust them (whomever "them" is this week) enough. As always, it ends up on "who watches the watchers?".
I myself have recently spawned, and I am having some philosophical considerations about this issue...
My first reaction was (and still kind of is) 'Anything goes! let them go nuts! I'll teach them enough for them to realize the difference'. I was very free when I was a kid, I had access to a lot of stuff that for my times was pretty rough at an early age, and I came up OK, didn't I? I mean, I am now a respected professional yadda-yadda-yadda-you-know-what-I-mean.
On the other hand, thruth be told, the most 'shocking' stuff I had access then was pretty different to what's out there now. I am almost 30 now, as a reference, and some of my big 'sins' were watching 'Caligula' (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0080491) when I was about 14 y.o., browsing through playboy (and, if I was lucky, Hustler), downloading some gifs (or similar) 50x100 pixel pics of Samantha Fox and XuXa. That's only covering 'sex', one of the areas of concern, let's not even begin about violence, gore, racism, nazism, politics, censorship (for crying out loud!), guns-and-ammo, and a dozen other categories to be aware of in the discussion.
Nowadays, my child would be able to right now (not to say in the three more years it'll take him to learn to read, type and click), to download a five-minute mpeg clip of a dog fucking a girl, a lady sucking a horse's dick, a guy roasting and eating the corpse of a baby (thanks rotten.com), goatse.cx, fecaljapan.com (or whatever that stream of shit is called), simulated snuff and rape films (maybe even not simulated - haven't looked that hard), escort services for his area code, and so on and on and on... All that without even a creditcard (not that it would be too hard for him to figure *that* part out when the time comes).
I trust I will teach him right. I will be supervising him, I know he's smart (already), and I don't want the US government to tell me how to raise him (moreso since I'm not American nor live in the US). I am not really against him downloading Pamela Anderson and whats-his-face video and jerking his brains off when he's 13, but I'm not really confortable with the penis-piercings and eunuch pages (not unix, eunuchs!) at http://www.bmezine.com/extreme/free/index.html, just to name one of many.
So, what to do? Nobody said that parenting was easy! They don't come with an 800 support number (I know, I've checked!) and the user manual is pretty sketchy (sorta "if (poo) change_diaper();"). I guess I'll rough it and try to stay on top of it.
But, to the point of the article, the
As it was said before: "Kids! An hour of joy, twenty years of misery". Oh well...
Wolfe.
(Disclaimer - I posted something like this to an old discussion, and was pretty much the last message of the thread, so I don't think anyone read it, maybe this time it can spark a conversation).
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Also, the VMWare wrapper will let you monitor anything that goes in or out the virtual machine's network connections, thus enabling you to identify the licence confirmation mechanism.
I'll go back to lurking now.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
I also remember with nostalgia my usenet/gopher/ftp/MUD days (not so into BBSs), but my pr0n collection is much better with my 1.5Mbps DSL than it was with my 2800bps modem.
And no, that's not the only thing it's good for... But anyone thinking that we could have gotten here without the commercialization of the net, is in denial (and I don't mean Egypt).
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Well, this story is old and about to be archived - the only possibility for you to read this is by checking your user page... Here's hoping.
I would actually be interested in your thoughts about the Capuccino and the Espresso. I bought an Espresso a while back, and was quite happy with it, although it was a bitch to make it work with the USB ethernet. Were you ever able to make the USB ethernet work when the CD/docking was plugged on? I wasn't, and would appreciate pointers.
If you rather email me: carlos@$my_nick_here.org
Thanks,
Carlos.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
The discussion in this topic is INCREDIBLY active! In the about eight hours it has been online, it is over 1000 posts already. I noticed over 700 only in the first hour!
And, out of the eight, it was down for about four (why has no one commented on this? From where I sat, the database seemed to be down down down from about 5:00EST till about 9:00EST), due, I imagine, to the infinite monkeys banging away their frustrations against the poor little mysql or whatever...
If this keeps going for just a bit longer (~350 more posts), it will make the Hall of Fame (http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml) in just about five or six hours of active posting! This must be a record!
So, since I was thinking about this, I took a quick look at the HoF, and found that the most active topics were counter-intuitive to the traditional Slashbot/geek/wannabe stereotype, which is good!
Out of the ten most active posts, Five are about politics (three of them about the elections in the US!), one mixed politics with DeCSS/2600, one on religion/education, one about life out of the US, one about Microsoft, and one of a skr1p7 k1dd13 posting garbage to a book review.
Yup. One on MS, One partially related to DeCSS. No gnome vs. kde, no emacs vs. vi, no napster, no GPL, no 3dfx... Interesting.
Goes to show you that the crowd here can actually talk about way more than computers. Good for you!
I also noticed that the one (maybe two, by the time I'm done writing) about MS is because they came looking for it. It is not us going out and attacking them for fanatic close-mindedness, it's them poking us with a cattle-prod - they asked for it, I guess.
When I refer a non-geek friend to read /. I normally attach the following warning. It now rings quite true:
Slashdot is an interesting but wild place - There's quite a bit to be learned and shared, but it's also uncivilized territory. Tread carefully and do not feed the trolls.
I'll go back to lurking now...
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
I give up! I have heard this, I am sure, but my brain is melting and I just cannot place it! You know, with age, memory is the first thing to go... and I forget the second.
Where is this from?
~cgr
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Of course you do! Well, at least in the US and several other countries (I wouldn't know if you happened to live in Elbonia)the pre-installed windows has been omnipresent. With your new brand computer (dell, gateway, whatever) you will have no choice but to get a windows CD, even if you did not want it. The only way to get out of it was to build it yourself (as I did), or use no-name shops that will do it for you in a rather under-the-table fashion.
Even these last ones, for a while were threatened (don't know if it actually happened) with a charge from MS for 'lost revenue', who automatically assumed that the shop preintalled windows or gave them a pirate CDR.
This has started, little by little, to change. Linux shops (like, oh, I don't know, VA Linux) don't have to pay the windows tax. Even more recently, some brands starting to 'deduct' $80 or so from the list price if you did not choose to install windows (the tiny Espresso, of which I got one, had this option).
I am the unhappy customer of some five windows licenses, of assorted versions and formats, just because of the computers I've bought for myself and family in the recent years. I did not choose to buy any of them. MS effectively helped themselves to my wallet, plucked out the money and say "thank you, here is your shiny-hologram-protected certificate of authenticity and CD/floppies".
Now it will get interesting, when they single-handedly end the pc upgrade industry.
May you live in interesting times...
I'll go back to lurking now.
Carlos.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
On the other hand, I have always viewed the world as better than before for most people (larger life-spans, better information transfer, more toys, space stations and Babylon 5).
I recently had a child (my first), and I have on occasion been worried about the type of world he will inherit (he will likely have to wear sunblock to protect himself against UV rays, when the ozone thing gets tough) -- on ocassion also I've been thrilled and envious as to what he may see that I won't (trips to the moon as tourism, move towards a global government, real wearable computers, freedom from religion).
So, what's your take? Do you even care about the world that you did not choose but now you have to live on? Are you looking forward to the challenge of it all, or are you pissed about the need for the sunblock and worried you'll end up having Soylent Green for breakfast every day?
Thanks, I'll go back to lurking now.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
(In the spirit of the Great Maker - JMS)
- Who are you? (not your name, not your job, not what others think of you -- who are you?)
- What do you want? (not for dinner, not 'when I grow up' -- what do you want?)
- Why are you here?
- Where are you going?
- Do you have anything worth living for?
Ah, how I miss B5.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Well, this would be a nice time to remind the crowd that the EFF is not the only foundation out there who needs a lot of help to finance lawyers to make good laws instead of only bad ones.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is out there to battle cases of separation of Church and State, Religious Freedom for Atheists, discrimination on faith (or lack thereof) and publishes a nice monthly paper (Freethought Today), which will be mailed to you once you become a member.
Go on! Don't hesitate! Join now!
For additional information, see also the Secular Web at http://www.infidels.org/
I'll go back to lurking now...
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
I can't say if there really is a shortage or not. I personally came when there was a marked shortage in a very specific area. I will not dispute (out of ignorance) the five-year-starting-wage comment.
...I'll go back to lurking now.
Speaking only for myself, I can tell you that my salary is not lower than my peers (it's actually higher, due to performance over the years, if I'm allowed the immodesty). I do work outrageous hours, but not more so than the gringo in the next cube. Overall I do not consider myself to be unjustly treated in any way.
Yes, there is the matter of aditional difficulty if I need to change employers, but it's perfectly doable (don't tell anyone, but I'm about to change jobs as we speak, H1B not withstanding).
Finally, and please don't take this the wrong way, I am not married to this country (and no one should), if for any reason the US kicks me out, my skills are sufficiently marketable for me to get a job in the UK, Australia, Yemen, Chile, Zimbabwe or the Moon. I never planned to come to the US, I'll stay for as long as it's convenient, then I'll move to where it's convenient then.
Finally, just to make sure I don't step on toes, gringo is not an offensive term, it's just the only one that doesn't sound funny for someone who thinks of "America" as the continent from Alaska to Argentina.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Great, When I was working as a laborer, the Mexicans were taking the jobs, now I'm into computers, and they still are! I knew I should have taken basket weaving
...I'll go back to lurking now.
Be sure to get a hold of Basket Weaving for Dummies. And polish those language skills! You know what the second most spoken language in the US will be in five years?...(beat)... English!
Your friendly H1B-holding Mexican in highly paid technical job.
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Another recommended book that reads like Hackers and is very focused on people (at least the first half) is "How Computers Play Chess". It is by David Levy, not Steven (any relation? I dunno), who is a Scottish International Chess Master and (past?) president of the ICCA (International Computer Chess Association), in cooperation with Monty Newborn (professor of CS at McGill University).
Published in 91, the first half of the book is about the people involved and their attempts at making a computer play chess, and ends on the first Kasparov-Deep Thought match in 89. Feng Hsiung Hsu, Shannon, Lasker, John McCarthy (yeah, that one), Botvinnik, and many others are portrayed.
The second half goes into more technicalities, talking about the CS behind the programs, hash tables, move generators and algorithms. It is certainly worth a read.
The details of my copy (don't if there's a newer edition):
How Computers Play Chess
by David Levy and Monty Newborn
Computer Science Press, (c) 1991 by W.H. Freeman and Co.
ISBN: 0-7167-8121-2
Enjoy. I'll go back to lurking now...
CGR
--
If you want to live in a country ruled by religion, move to Iran.
Test