You describe Correspondence Chess. They did it in the old days by sending moves on a postcard. Tournaments ran for several years. Today, they do it by email. There would still have to be some time limit. Otherwise I just refuse to send a move if I realise I'm losing. Wait till my opponent dies of old age(or boredom) and claim the win.
An experimental match was conducted in Europe this year between Karpov and Anand. They played over-the-board games but were allowed to use computers for analysis. Viewers could see the computer screens to get an idea of what the players were doing. Anand won handily, primarily because he is much more computer-savvy than Karpov.
How exactly does one become a grand master in chess? Do you have to win a certain # of matches against highly ranked opponents? Is there a chess board somewhere that deems one a 'grand master'?
The world chess federation adopted a rating system devised by Professor Arpad Elo. Players start off with a base value and have points added or subtracted to their rating on the basis of how they fare against their opponents in a tournament. So if your rating is 2400 and the average rating of your opponents in a tournament is 2300, you are expected to have a positive score against them(ie. win more than lose). Your rating goes up if you score more than the expected amount, down if you score less.
Grandmaster and International Master titles are awarded when players maintain a certain level of play(determined by calculating number of points that should be scored depending on opponents' ratings) over a certain number of games. There are other requirements, such as a minimum of three grandmasters playing in a tournament for it to qualify as one where grandmaster ``norms'' may be awarded. A collection of at least two grandmaster ``norms'' spanning a certain number of games(I think 24) qualifies one for the grandmaster title. There are exceptions and other means of being awarded a title. The winner of the world junior championship is awarded a grandmaster norm. If a non-grandmaster qualifies for the Candidates' cycle(to determine a challenger for the world champion), the grandmaster title is automatically awarded. With the political turmoil that exisits in the chess world, this Candidates' tournament no longer exists.
The GM and IM titles are awarded for life. Ratings change depending on one's performance. A minimum number of rated games must be played per year for a player's rating to be listed. You can search rating lists here.
Just because some guy with a Pakistani or Indian sounding name says that Pakistan is breaching the line doesn't mean its _just_ Pakistan.
Read the press briefing at the Whitehouse on July 4, 1999, after Bill Clinton had talks with the Pakistani prime minister and told him to get his forces back behind the Line of Control.
Let me apply this situation to our own situation in the 1700s. What if France hadn't helped us against Britian?
France did what they did because of their enmity with Britain. What about Quebec today? Should Quebec secede from Canada? What about Ireland, and Scotland? What about the Basques in Spain? All of these countries have a democractic framework.
I'd like to see how much of what the Indian muslims want their government to do gets done. India is democratic only if your Hindu.
False. Fundamental Rights are guaranteed to all under the Indian Constitution.
if India is so open to religions, then why is the government funding a campaign to drive out catholics? Please explain. We have see reports about 6 churches being destoryed and christians being persecuted, please explain why India is doing this?
Please provide unbiased, reliable, verifiable sources of your claims. It can be argued that the United States, with its many church burnings[1][2], is a greater threat to Christianity.
I disgree with your statements on the Muslims of East Pakistan being abused by West Pakistan. It sounds like more FUD to me.
...and us pissing off another country or two sitting on the security council.
This is a real danger. US actions have made the UN and Security Council increasingly irrelevant in the last few years. The US government attitude runs on the lines of I'm taking the ball home if you don't play by my rules. Dues to the tune of millions of dollars to the UN have been witheld. Continuing action against Iraq is being undertaken with a rather elastic view of previous Security Council resolutions. The Kosovo intervention was without the Security Council's approval(since Russia would have vetoed any military action). This is going to make other countries justifiably scared. Can the EU expect to be bombed in the future if the banana dispute is not resolved in favour of the US? Independent-minded countries like France and China will be giving serious thought to countering the growing US influence.
Your 80-person class needs to work a little harder to do some authoritative research. There are a number of factual errors in your long reply. I shall address a few of them.
I did not say that the LoC was breached in 1972. I said it was demarcated in 1972. Since then, the border has always been in a state of tension. Both sides shell each other regularly. The line is often breached by Pakistan-trained terrorists trying to sneak into the state of Jammu and Kashmir. You don't have to take my word for it. Read the report Pakistan, Kashmir and the Trans-Asian Axis. The author, Yossef Bodansky, is currently Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional warfare for the U.S. Congress, as well as a contributing editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy. He has written widely for such specialized journals as Jane's Defense Weekly and Global Affairs.
So what's the deal with Kashmir? Both Pakistan and India claim Jammu & Kashmir.
Pakistan's claim, as you stated, is on the basis of it being a Muslim majority state. Indeed, that is Pakistan's raison d'etre - the idea that Muslims of the sub-continent require a separate country to protect their interests. India is a democratic, secular state. It is host to all major and several minor religions, and provides freedom of expression to all religions. Incidentally, it has a higher Muslim population than Pakistan.
When the British left India in 1947, the princely states were given a choice of joining either India or Pakistan. Except for those states that were on the border, there was effectively no choice. The Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) chose to defer accession. Then, as now in '99, the state was invaded by the Pakistan army in mufti - in the garb of ``armed tribesmen''. The Maharaja of J&K immediately signed the Instrument of Accession and the state became part of the Indian Union. An elected state assembly later confirmed the accession to India. These circumstances are very similar to the manner in which Texas became part of the United States in 1845. Pakistan's claim on J&K has as much legal standing as does Mexico's on Texas. The border as it exists today is roughly at the point when a UN-mandated cease-fire came into effect. If interested, you can look at all the legal documents related to this.
India's PR, unlike what you state, is laughably poor. It's pursual of influence via lobbying members of Congress within the US is virtually non-existent. It's managing of the media is something out of the stone age. An example of this is the propagation of this absurd idea of a bunch of ``freedom fighters'' in rag-tag clothes and poor equipment taking on the Indian army. The invading Pakistani army was equipped with the best snow gear, sophisticated equipment such as Stinger missiles, communication equipment capable of switching frequencies on the fly, and backed by logistics that would have taken several months to prepare. A good PR machine would have paraded all the evidence - captured documents, Pak army pay books, weapons with Pakistani factory markings - before the foreign media camped in Srinagar. What did the Indian government do? Bring it all down to Delhi and called some foreign ambassadors to see it.
Your writing about Bombay and East Pakistan was the biggest faux-pas. Bombay is a city on the west coast of India. It never had anything to do with Pakistan. Perhaps you refer to Bangladash, the erstwhile East Pakistan. It is an independent country today, not ``reintegrated'' with India. This is another good example of the canard spread about religious conflict. The Muslim population of East Pakistan was oppressed by their own countrymen and fellow-Muslims from West Pakistan. About a million people were massacred by the army and at one point 10 million refugees fled to India. That is a staggering number. The refugee crisis in Kosovo involved a few hundred thousand. The United States has admitted some 500,000 refugees in the last fifty years. The Indian army was forced to intervene and helped form the state of Bangladesh in 1971. Yes, Bangladesh suffers flooding and is hit by typhoons regularly. As is India, incidentally. Can India provide aid that would match what the United States can? Of course not. India's per capita GDP is $1720 compared to the US' $31500. The notion that India somehow persecutes Bangladesh on the basis of religion is absurd. India, Bangladesh and the other South Asian nations(Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives) have set up SAARC, an association that promotes and facilitates trade and other forms of cooperation between its member countries.
About the third-world banding together to overthrow the bosses, it's going to happen sometime. There is a large number of nations(India included) whose days of pre-eminence are long gone. The pendulum swings slowly, though. It's unlikely to happen in your lifetime or mine.
I am concerned, however, about two neighboring nuclear powers involved in essentially a religious war.
There is a big difference in perception here. The nuclear have-nots see possession of nuclear capability as a currency of political influence rather than something which they expect to blow up their neighbours with. Another issue is the portrayal of the nuclear have-nots(or newly-haves in the case of Pakistan and India) being irresponsible or somehow trigger-happy with nuclear weapons. Why does everyone assume that the US, China and Russia are responsible wielders of nuclear weapons? Or is this an effort to preserve political influence? The US record on non-proliferation is rather spotty. It applies strong pressure on some countries, and often turns a blind eye, say, when North Korea or China provide missile and fissile technology to other countries. Why isn't the deteriorating security situation in Russia a greater concern? It is more likely that a rogue organisation would steal a warhead or fissile material, or that with the deteriorating communication infrastructure, an army general distraught over the decline of the glory days could commandeer use of the Red Button.
BTW, did anyone else notice the severe pro-India slant? I personally have no real feelings for or against either government, but that writer sure seemed to favor India
Rather than a pro-India slant, it is a case of having access to an Indian source. The author is Indian. I think he did a profile of the Indian army webmaster and tried to give the piece a ``cyberwar'' slant in a lame effort to make it interesting.
A much better example of ``cyberwar'' would have been describing how the Indian intelligence agencies managed to intercept a phone call between the Pakistani army chief, who was visiting China in an effort to garner support for the war, and one of his underlings back home. It is highly unlikely that intelligence agencies on either side would make known their successes, but this specific instance was made public by the Indian government as part of the evidence to prove that the invasion was conducted by the Pakistani army.
Who actually believes that either one of these countries is somehow acting more 'mature' than the other?
Is this an absolutely off-the-cuff remark, or is/. a forum for political discourse? Pakistani armed forces crossed the ``Line of Control''(LoC) that was demarcated in a bilateral treaty in 1972. The Indian army was defending Indian territory. They went out of their way to prevent the conflict from spreading by not targeting supply depots or crossing over to the Pakistani side of the LoC.
The answer to the rhetorical question is that there is no easy way to end conflicts. Responsible influential nations would do well to nudge adversaries towards talks, and back their words with even-handed action. The rise of Islamic militancy in central Asia can be linked almost directly to the US funding and supplying of the Taliban in Afghanistan. With that war over, many of the militants have had to turn elsewhere to continue their way of life. Many have turned back to bite the hand that once fed them. There are moral, military, political and social lessons in the United States' history of foreign policy interventions. Perhaps someone will learn them some day.
The terms of the visa do put restrictions on foreign employees. It simply isn't that easy to move to another job. Big companies like Intel et al deal with this as a matter of course because they employ thousands of foreign workers. Smaller companies do not understand and prefer not to get involved with the legal stuff. My employer did it, but reluctantly. This would be a true case of not finding workers within the United States. It's possible to move if you find yourself underpaid or have other problems, but not as easy as interviewing somewhere and starting next week.
The ``green card'' changes things completely. That's when you are at the mercy of your employer. A simple way to prevent this abuse would be to speed up the process of granting employer- sponsored green cards. The process for getting a green card takes three to four years. The H1B visa runs for a max of six years. If something goes wrong with one employer, the foreign worker doesn't have much of a chance of starting it elsewhere. The industry keeps lobbying Congress to increase the H1B quota. They don't lobby to speed up any of the steps associated with getting a green card. It's against their interests to do so.
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I think NT is a highly efficient resource hog!
I find X crashing when I use Netscape. Sometimes Netscape crashes by itself. Sometimes it takes X with it. It's rock solid otherwise.
I need a better browser. Anyone used Arena? I'm planning to try that out.
You describe Correspondence Chess. They did it in the old days by sending moves on a postcard. Tournaments ran for several years. Today, they do it by email. There would still have to be some time limit. Otherwise I just refuse to send a move if I realise I'm losing. Wait till my opponent dies of old age(or boredom) and claim the win.
An experimental match was conducted in Europe this year between Karpov and Anand. They played over-the-board games but were allowed to use computers for analysis. Viewers could see the computer screens to get an idea of what the players were doing. Anand won handily, primarily because he is much more computer-savvy than Karpov.
The world chess federation adopted a rating system devised by Professor Arpad Elo. Players start off with a base value and have points added or subtracted to their rating on the basis of how they fare against their opponents in a tournament. So if your rating is 2400 and the average rating of your opponents in a tournament is 2300, you are expected to have a positive score against them(ie. win more than lose). Your rating goes up if you score more than the expected amount, down if you score less.
Grandmaster and International Master titles are awarded when players maintain a certain level of play(determined by calculating number of points that should be scored depending on opponents' ratings) over a certain number of games. There are other requirements, such as a minimum of three grandmasters playing in a tournament for it to qualify as one where grandmaster ``norms'' may be awarded. A collection of at least two grandmaster ``norms'' spanning a certain number of games(I think 24) qualifies one for the grandmaster title. There are exceptions and other means of being awarded a title. The winner of the world junior championship is awarded a grandmaster norm. If a non-grandmaster qualifies for the Candidates' cycle(to determine a challenger for the world champion), the grandmaster title is automatically awarded. With the political turmoil that exisits in the chess world, this Candidates' tournament no longer exists.
The GM and IM titles are awarded for life. Ratings change depending on one's performance. A minimum number of rated games must be played per year for a player's rating to be listed. You can search rating lists here.
Read the press briefing at the Whitehouse on July 4, 1999, after Bill Clinton had talks with the Pakistani prime minister and told him to get his forces back behind the Line of Control.
France did what they did because of their enmity with Britain. What about Quebec today? Should Quebec secede from Canada? What about Ireland, and Scotland? What about the Basques in Spain? All of these countries have a democractic framework.
False. Fundamental Rights are guaranteed to all under the Indian Constitution.
Please provide unbiased, reliable, verifiable sources of your claims. It can be argued that the United States, with its many church burnings[1] [2], is a greater threat to Christianity.
Read about Bangladesh's independence, especially about the holocaust and the US involvement.
This is a real danger. US actions have made the UN and Security Council increasingly irrelevant in the last few years. The US government attitude runs on the lines of I'm taking the ball home if you don't play by my rules. Dues to the tune of millions of dollars to the UN have been witheld. Continuing action against Iraq is being undertaken with a rather elastic view of previous Security Council resolutions. The Kosovo intervention was without the Security Council's approval(since Russia would have vetoed any military action). This is going to make other countries justifiably scared. Can the EU expect to be bombed in the future if the banana dispute is not resolved in favour of the US? Independent-minded countries like France and China will be giving serious thought to countering the growing US influence.
Your 80-person class needs to work a little harder to do some authoritative research. There are a number of factual errors in your long reply. I shall address a few of them.
I did not say that the LoC was breached in 1972. I said it was demarcated in 1972. Since then, the border has always been in a state of tension. Both sides shell each other regularly. The line is often breached by Pakistan-trained terrorists trying to sneak into the state of Jammu and Kashmir. You don't have to take my word for it. Read the report Pakistan, Kashmir and the Trans-Asian Axis. The author, Yossef Bodansky, is currently Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional warfare for the U.S. Congress, as well as a contributing editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy. He has written widely for such specialized journals as Jane's Defense Weekly and Global Affairs.
So what's the deal with Kashmir? Both Pakistan and India claim Jammu & Kashmir.
Pakistan's claim, as you stated, is on the basis of it being a Muslim majority state. Indeed, that is Pakistan's raison d'etre - the idea that Muslims of the sub-continent require a separate country to protect their interests. India is a democratic, secular state. It is host to all major and several minor religions, and provides freedom of expression to all religions. Incidentally, it has a higher Muslim population than Pakistan.
When the British left India in 1947, the princely states were given a choice of joining either India or Pakistan. Except for those states that were on the border, there was effectively no choice. The Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) chose to defer accession. Then, as now in '99, the state was invaded by the Pakistan army in mufti - in the garb of ``armed tribesmen''. The Maharaja of J&K immediately signed the Instrument of Accession and the state became part of the Indian Union. An elected state assembly later confirmed the accession to India. These circumstances are very similar to the manner in which Texas became part of the United States in 1845. Pakistan's claim on J&K has as much legal standing as does Mexico's on Texas. The border as it exists today is roughly at the point when a UN-mandated cease-fire came into effect. If interested, you can look at all the legal documents related to this.
India's PR, unlike what you state, is laughably poor. It's pursual of influence via lobbying members of Congress within the US is virtually non-existent. It's managing of the media is something out of the stone age. An example of this is the propagation of this absurd idea of a bunch of ``freedom fighters'' in rag-tag clothes and poor equipment taking on the Indian army. The invading Pakistani army was equipped with the best snow gear, sophisticated equipment such as Stinger missiles, communication equipment capable of switching frequencies on the fly, and backed by logistics that would have taken several months to prepare. A good PR machine would have paraded all the evidence - captured documents, Pak army pay books, weapons with Pakistani factory markings - before the foreign media camped in Srinagar. What did the Indian government do? Bring it all down to Delhi and called some foreign ambassadors to see it.
Your writing about Bombay and East Pakistan was the biggest faux-pas. Bombay is a city on the west coast of India. It never had anything to do with Pakistan. Perhaps you refer to Bangladash, the erstwhile East Pakistan. It is an independent country today, not ``reintegrated'' with India. This is another good example of the canard spread about religious conflict. The Muslim population of East Pakistan was oppressed by their own countrymen and fellow-Muslims from West Pakistan. About a million people were massacred by the army and at one point 10 million refugees fled to India. That is a staggering number. The refugee crisis in Kosovo involved a few hundred thousand. The United States has admitted some 500,000 refugees in the last fifty years. The Indian army was forced to intervene and helped form the state of Bangladesh in 1971. Yes, Bangladesh suffers flooding and is hit by typhoons regularly. As is India, incidentally. Can India provide aid that would match what the United States can? Of course not. India's per capita GDP is $1720 compared to the US' $31500. The notion that India somehow persecutes Bangladesh on the basis of religion is absurd. India, Bangladesh and the other South Asian nations(Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives) have set up SAARC, an association that promotes and facilitates trade and other forms of cooperation between its member countries.
About the third-world banding together to overthrow the bosses, it's going to happen sometime. There is a large number of nations(India included) whose days of pre-eminence are long gone. The pendulum swings slowly, though. It's unlikely to happen in your lifetime or mine.
There is a big difference in perception here. The nuclear have-nots see possession of nuclear capability as a currency of political influence rather than something which they expect to blow up their neighbours with. Another issue is the portrayal of the nuclear have-nots(or newly-haves in the case of Pakistan and India) being irresponsible or somehow trigger-happy with nuclear weapons. Why does everyone assume that the US, China and Russia are responsible wielders of nuclear weapons? Or is this an effort to preserve political influence? The US record on non-proliferation is rather spotty. It applies strong pressure on some countries, and often turns a blind eye, say, when North Korea or China provide missile and fissile technology to other countries. Why isn't the deteriorating security situation in Russia a greater concern? It is more likely that a rogue organisation would steal a warhead or fissile material, or that with the deteriorating communication infrastructure, an army general distraught over the decline of the glory days could commandeer use of the Red Button.
Rather than a pro-India slant, it is a case of having access to an Indian source. The author is Indian. I think he did a profile of the Indian army webmaster and tried to give the piece a ``cyberwar'' slant in a lame effort to make it interesting.
A much better example of ``cyberwar'' would have been describing how the Indian intelligence agencies managed to intercept a phone call between the Pakistani army chief, who was visiting China in an effort to garner support for the war, and one of his underlings back home. It is highly unlikely that intelligence agencies on either side would make known their successes, but this specific instance was made public by the Indian government as part of the evidence to prove that the invasion was conducted by the Pakistani army.
Is this an absolutely off-the-cuff remark, or is /. a forum for political discourse? Pakistani armed forces crossed the ``Line of Control''(LoC) that was demarcated in a bilateral treaty in 1972. The Indian army was defending Indian territory. They went out of their way to prevent the conflict from spreading by not targeting supply depots or crossing over to the Pakistani side of the LoC.
The answer to the rhetorical question is that there is no easy way to end conflicts. Responsible influential nations would do well to nudge adversaries towards talks, and back their words with even-handed action. The rise of Islamic militancy in central Asia can be linked almost directly to the US funding and supplying of the Taliban in Afghanistan. With that war over, many of the militants have had to turn elsewhere to continue their way of life. Many have turned back to bite the hand that once fed them. There are moral, military, political and social lessons in the United States' history of foreign policy interventions. Perhaps someone will learn them some day.
I'm an Indian programmer working in Michigan.
The terms of the visa do put restrictions on
foreign employees. It simply isn't that easy
to move to another job. Big companies like
Intel et al deal with this as a matter of course
because they employ thousands of foreign workers.
Smaller companies do not understand and prefer
not to get involved with the legal stuff. My
employer did it, but reluctantly. This would
be a true case of not finding workers within the
United States. It's possible to move if you find
yourself underpaid or have other problems, but
not as easy as interviewing somewhere and starting
next week.
The ``green card'' changes things completely.
That's when you are at the mercy of your employer.
A simple way to prevent this abuse would be to
speed up the process of granting employer-
sponsored green cards. The process for getting
a green card takes three to four years. The H1B
visa runs for a max of six years. If something
goes wrong with one employer, the foreign worker
doesn't have much of a chance of starting it
elsewhere. The industry keeps lobbying Congress
to increase the H1B quota. They don't lobby
to speed up any of the steps associated with
getting a green card. It's against their
interests to do so.