It wouldn't take much sophistication. All you'd need is a robot that could dump a corner reflector on the surface. (OK, *place* one) Since corner reflectors reflect light back in the same direction it came no matter what its orientation, practically no alignment would be required. (They'd just need to make sure the reflective surfaces aren't pointing down at the Moon's surface.)
I have to dissent - Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Tao of Physics are complete piles of doo-doo. They strain to pound the round "quantum" buzzword into the square hole of eastern religion, and it just doesn't work. Both authors make leaps of logic (when they use logic at all) to claim that modern physics somehow justifies, or reinforces, certain religions. The whole discussion devolves into a lot of oversimplified, overgeneralized, fuzzy-headed, feel-good blather that really makes little sense when scrutinized.
Check out the article on Deepak Chopra and Ayurvedic medicine at The Skeptic's Dictionary for more criticism of these books.
but the guy's point was that humans can do a lot when they have the will to do so.
Correction, Americans, not humans.
So, Americans aren't humans, or non-American humans can't do a lot when they have the will to do so?
I understand what you're getting at, but in the context of what I was saying I don't think the distinction is relevant. Americans happened to be the ones with the resources and motivation to go to the Moon, but any humans could have done this if they were in a similar position.
In my experience, any display of enthusiasm for the US space program gets you accused of some kind of blind nationalism, and I think that's unfair. The only sort of nationalist thing the original poster did was quote JFK. If I say that was a real high point for JFK, and I think it was a real display of leadership, does that make me a jingoist? I could also slam him (Bay of Pigs, anyone?), but it wouldn't be relevant to the space exploration topic.
The sarcasm's cute and all, but the guy's point was that humans can do a lot when they have the will to do so. Right now, we don't have the Red Menace(tm) to race with, and al-Qaida's not trying to go to Mars, so we lack the motivation. One can go on and on about the cynical reasons we had to explore space, the dirty politics, public ignorance, cold war, and so on, but one fact remains - whatever the reason, we decided to go to the moon within ten years (+/- a year) and we DID it, in spite of the fact that we had no clue as to what we were doing at the start. From a technical perspective, it was an incredible accomplishment, one that I find inspiring.
Sometimes people do great things for poor reasons. That doesn't mean the accomplishment is unworthy of respect.
The problem here is that you're equating ethical behavior with lawful behavior. The two aren't the same thing at all.
No, I'm not. The word "crime" in the line you cited was a poor choice on my part, but the point of my whole comment wasn't focused on crime (I assume we can agree that crime is not ethical, even though unethical acts aren't necessarily criminal).
And being ethical does put you at a serious disadvantage. Don't believe me? The explain to the rest of us why so many of the richest people in the U.S. are unethical (hint: Bill Gates didn't become the richest guy in the U.S. by behaving ethically). Explain to us why we haven't seen an ethical President for the past 30 years.
It's not up to me to explain one of your assertions. You take Bill Gates and use him as an example to prove "many" of the richest people are unethical. First you'd have to explain to me how you know this (hint: You don't.).
If being ethical didn't put one at a serious disadvantage, then we wouldn't be losing our rights on a daily basis like we have been for the past 2-3 decades, because the unethical people would be opposed by at least as many ethical people. But that just doesn't happen, does it?
So tell me, what rights did you lose today? Yesterday? Last Tuesday? To say we are losing our rights on a daily basis is such a grossly hysterical overstatement of our problems I don't think it proves anything at all.
Instead, the unethical are almost completely unopposed, because the ethical DON'T HAVE POWER. What more proof could you possibly want???
How about evidence instead of assertions? I don't buy the notion that the unethical are unopposed. Otherwise, unethical behavior would never have repercussions.
If being ethical is such a burden for you, throw your ethics away. If there isn't value in your ethics, why feel any need to adhere to them? As it is, you're just whining.
Me, I'd rather be an honest and ethical person, rather than a rich one. At least I enjoy whatever little money I have!
Are you really so naive as to believe that unethical people who have a lot of money don't enjoy it?
Of course unethical people enjoy the money they steal from others. That's part of what makes them unethical, lack of conscience. But if you ARE ethical and DO have a conscience, you won't enjoy ill-gotten gains.
That sounds to me like something that people without money tell themselves to console themselves, sort of like telling your kid that the school bully is actually miserable, when in fact he's probably having a great time picking on other people.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Bullies tend to be insecure, unhappy people who enjoy beating people up. Well-adjusted people don't derive pleasure that way.
Well, enjoy it while you can, because the people [microsoft.com] with [mpaa.org] money [riaa.org] and [wto.org] power [whitehouse.gov] are looking to make sure you have even less money to enjoy than you have now, so that they will have even more money and power to enjoy.
Feel free to bury your head in the sand and tell yourself that it's okay, while legislation like the DMCA and SSSCA gets passed and enforced. Yes, it'll all be okay, even if you no longer have any money and are living in a corporate run police state. Because at least you'll still have your ethics!
Sheesh. Since when is "I'd rather be ethical than rich" anywhere close to "I'm happy to let unethical people rob and oppress me?" You're reaching here, to put it mildly. I can only speak for myself, I suppose, but my ethical sense that would keep me from enjoying stolen money also fuels my outrage at others who do so.
Your idea that being ethical puts you at a serious disadvantage is simply untrue. Sure, there are plenty of people who have prospered from crime, and gotten away with it to boot, but there are also plenty who lost everything, never got ahead in the first place, rotted in jail, or were killed by the other ethically challenged types they associated with. I'm sure you think this is incredibly naive and idealistic, but the world would be a much worse place for all of us if we all chucked our ethics to get ahead. There will always be notable examples of those who profit by crime, but if you look, you'll also see many who do very well (financially and/or personally) by behaving ethically. There is value in not being part of the problem.
Groening's talk of making an Enron episode reminds me of how low the Simpsons have sunk. Who, five years from now, is going to remember Enron? Hell, who cares _now_ about Enron?
Believe me, Enron will be remembered, along with words and phrases like "Watergate," "Whitewater," "S&L Collapse," "Teapot Dome," "Iran-Contra," and so on. I know it isn't good to admit it when straining to maintain a disaffected, too-cool-to-care, above politics Generation Z-ster posture, but people *do* care about Enron.
But the Simpsons went down that primrose way a long time ago, ever since they started cracking jokes about the Internet, and making episodes featuring George Bush and Bill Clinton [...]
Oh, no shit, man, who remembers US presidents? How obscure!
Once, an aspiring writer sent a manuscript to George Bernard Shaw for his comments. She had stuck two pages together towards the end to see if he actually read the whole thing, and when she got the manuscript back, she saw that the pages had not been unstuck. Angrily, she wrote back to him, complaining that he told her it was bad without having read all of it.
Shaw replied, "I don't have to eat a whole egg to know it's rotten." -- ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Re:Is any of this real?
on
Quark Stars
·
· Score: 1
Yes, we've made some discoveries, and for the most part things can be explained with the current line of thinking in Physics (Newton, Einstein, etc), but that's the problem, things are only MOSTLY explained, and certain keys are missing.
Well, if we had a complete explanation for everything, there wouldn't be much point in anyone doing science, would there? The fact that we do not know everything is hardly a "problem."
Are there any radical thinkers left? someone perhaps not starting from Newton or Einstein's work and trying to move it forward, but someone with NO preconsceptions, NO ingrained ideas, and NO outside influences?
A person who fit this description wouldn't know anything at all. The minute you get the slightest bit of education, you've been influenced by an outside entity. As soon as you know something, you have a preconception. For example, I have this weird preconceived idea that when two positive numbers are added together, the sum is larger than either of those numbers. But if that's wrong, boy am I in trouble!
Scientists get this kind of accusation a lot. They think they know everything, they're hidebound egoists who only care about self-aggrandizement, and so on. This is simply wrong. Good scientists generally spend most of their time trying to prove themselves wrong. Scientific knowledge advances when ideas are falsified, not by theories being "proven." (Another thing - The word "theory" means a body of knowledge about a subject - It's not the opposite of "fact." A lot of theories are well-founded anough to constitute "fact." Gravitational theory, for example. We don't completely understand how it works, but it would be perverse to claim it's outright wrong.) So when a scientist proposes something, everyone does their best to shoot holes in it, and the process of fixing the holes, roughly, is how theory converges towards truth, or fact, if you like.
Many (most?) scientists are not lacking in ego, and when that ego is put to use in the service of checking someone else's work, it increases our understanding, it doesn't limit it.
Activision was a wonderful company when they were doing these 2600 games (of course, it wasn't called 2600 at the time). It's hard to imagine this now, but a third party company making games for a system was pretty novel then. And the coolest thing, other than the gameplay, was the way they credited the game authors. They had their pictures on the boxes and included a little bio. After a while, you got to look forward to new games from your favorite developers. It gave each game just a little extra touch of personality.
My only complaint, about the article, is that, the author, uses commas, where they, don't belong.
Adults still insist they have lessons to teach the next generation. But the young have come to believe, with increasing justification, that their elders know much less than they do, and have little worth passing along. All they have to offer are boring and outmoded educational systems, political structures that no longer work, and exhausted forms of fading, sacrosanct, heavily subsidized "culture."
This is true in one sense: Our elders don't have much to teach us about pompous, self-congratulatory, pseudo-intellectual drivel. This remains the purview of JonKatz.
Katz must spend a lot of time dreaming up weak premises on which to base huge tracts of near-meaningless text designed to prove somehow the superiority of the young geek worldview and that this narrow segment of society represents the whole of the modern world. Fact is, he just sounds like another sullen and disaffected teenager who's certain his profound thoughts have never been thought before and that his elders are a bunch of idiots. Just like the thousands of generations that went before him.
Ignore the older generation at your peril. They might not be able to write long shell scripts in their heads or dominate NFL2K1 on seganet, but they have the experience to have seen Katz's brand of self-absorbed whining many times before. When "the young" are "the old," something that will happen very quickly, they'll look back at a new generation patting itself on the back on scorning them and then they will understand that, as some French guy said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
*sigh* This comment is typical of people who don't know anything about competitive chess. Every time there's a major chess event, we chess fans have to put up with the same lame-ass jokes about how boring chess is, always from people who barely know a thing about the game. I can laugh at myself, but hearing the same, predictable, uninformed barbs about how boring chess is and what losers follow the game over and over and over gets really old. If you don't know anything about chess, how about shutting up about it?
Outside the US, people have more appreciation for chess. Here, it's assumed it's just slow and boring, to a large degree because there aren't any laser light shows, bellowing wrestlers, or bone-crunching tackles. While it can be slow, it's also a major competition involving two of the world's best in an intense fight for a place in history. The tension is incredible, and I can state from personal experience that playing in serious competition (even on my low level) is exciting and exhausting. I used to play football, and I can tell you the competition in chess is every bit as fierce, if not physically violent.
Kramnik has a lot of fans who are really pumped to see their man beat the most unbeatable player of the last 15 years. An upset like this *is* a lot of excitement, at least for people who have a clue about the game.
Why seeing a chess fan dance is any worse than seeing anyone else dance is beyond me.
So now there are two main claimants to the title of World Chess Champion: Kramnik and Alexander Khalifman, who won the FIDE championship knockout tournament in Las Vegas last year. Bobby Fischer is out there somewhere calling himself World Champion, but he's stated he would only play Fischer Random chess from now on, so he's out of the picture. He's also a raving lunatic paranoid antisemite.
Many people consider Khalifman the "real" champion, because his title is sanctioned by FIDE, the world chess federation. Others think the FIDE Championship has been devalued since they went to a single-tournament championship. Its detractors call it "speed chess," and not without justification. I get the sense that most people still think Kasparov is the most legitimate champion, mainly because he keeps showing himself to be the best player in the world.It's rather shocking to see Garry lose -- it just doesn't happen. Until now.
I'd really like to see Kramnik play Khalifman for the Undisputed Championship of the World. It's like boxing. Of course, FIDE has these knockout championship tournaments every year, so Kramnik would probably be unable to play a match before the new FIDE champ is determined. Most people don't give Khalifman that much of a chance to repeat because he's considered a fairly middlin' grandmaster, rather than one of the elite. The older system, a three year cycle of grueling matches, always selected players who had proven convincingly they are the two best players in the world (the champ didn't have to go through the cycle. He just waited for the candidates' match winner.). The new knockout system seems to make chance a much greater factor, and Khalifman's victory seems to support that theory.
ChuckleBug
Re:The tunnels! The tunnels!
on
Solaris
·
· Score: 1
Yes, the infamous "driving scene" is, in my opinion, the worst scene I've ever had to sit through. It's just a transitional scene, but it goes on, and on, and on... You keep watching, just because, throughout the entire 20 minutes of mind-numbing driving, you're sure it's "going to end now."
I saw it with my brother-in-law at a theater that made a big deal about it being "uncut." This is one case where some cutting was desperately needed.
Lem's works are great. Solaris left me with a lingering melancholy. A strange story, both in content and form.
I didn't mean to say that people should sends posts starting with "Moody has no integrity, he's a bad journalist" and going on to say nothing of value. I meant for people to point out how he used stats that even the provider said shouldn't be used to judge an OS, and then went and combined and ignored stats at will. That is clearly unethical, and pointing that out speaks volumes about his integrity.
First, you did start out with such a statement. My point is that even if you go on to argue facts, editors, who get great, huge, steaming piles of cranky feedback, won't even read the rest of it!
I also take issue with equating bad reasoning with a lack of ethics. He is in error, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has no integrity. He could, for example, simply be stupid. You need more evidence when you make a charge like this.
Seriously, nothing personal, but I think your letter takes the absolute wrong approach, and I highly doubt it will be read. Most feedback on this sort of thing is too long, and tries to bring up too many issues. Short and sweet does the trick. The sentence
I would also appreciate it if one of your editors would have a chat with him about journalistic integrity and how even a columnist shouldn't misrepresent statistics to further an agenda.
is just plain bad. Can you imagine an editor saying, "Gee, this guy's right. Let's sit Fred down and talk about his journalistic integrity." I guarantee you the editor will have no more interest in the rest of your comments if you make officious and condescending remarks like this.
If you decide to feed the troll and read the article, send a comment to ABCnews.com through the aforementioned contact page. A flood of comments questioning Moody's "integrity" might prompt action on ABC's part. Or not. Either way, take the opportunity to call out Moody on this one.
No, no, NO! Attacking his integrity is simply ad hominem attacking and I doubt any editor will read past the first sentence. This kind of attack is easy.
You need to argue the facts. They aren't on Moody's side. Simply point out that a mindless bug count is a meaningless way to compare OS's. Stick to the facts, and you can't be easily dismissed. Rants about the guy's "integrity" will simply make you sound like a sour grapes-wielding zealot, the very sort they expected to enrage.
Please, stay with the facts, and you'll be much more likely to be heard.
Slashdot Mirror
It wouldn't take much sophistication. All you'd need is a robot that could dump a corner reflector on the surface. (OK, *place* one) Since corner reflectors reflect light back in the same direction it came no matter what its orientation, practically no alignment would be required. (They'd just need to make sure the reflective surfaces aren't pointing down at the Moon's surface.)
Check out the article on Deepak Chopra and Ayurvedic medicine at The Skeptic's Dictionary for more criticism of these books.
but the guy's point was that humans can do a lot when they have the will to do so.
Correction, Americans, not humans.
So, Americans aren't humans, or non-American humans can't do a lot when they have the will to do so?
I understand what you're getting at, but in the context of what I was saying I don't think the distinction is relevant. Americans happened to be the ones with the resources and motivation to go to the Moon, but any humans could have done this if they were in a similar position.
In my experience, any display of enthusiasm for the US space program gets you accused of some kind of blind nationalism, and I think that's unfair. The only sort of nationalist thing the original poster did was quote JFK. If I say that was a real high point for JFK, and I think it was a real display of leadership, does that make me a jingoist? I could also slam him (Bay of Pigs, anyone?), but it wouldn't be relevant to the space exploration topic.
The sarcasm's cute and all, but the guy's point was that humans can do a lot when they have the will to do so. Right now, we don't have the Red Menace(tm) to race with, and al-Qaida's not trying to go to Mars, so we lack the motivation. One can go on and on about the cynical reasons we had to explore space, the dirty politics, public ignorance, cold war, and so on, but one fact remains - whatever the reason, we decided to go to the moon within ten years (+/- a year) and we DID it, in spite of the fact that we had no clue as to what we were doing at the start. From a technical perspective, it was an incredible accomplishment, one that I find inspiring.
Sometimes people do great things for poor reasons. That doesn't mean the accomplishment is unworthy of respect.
The problem here is that you're equating ethical behavior with lawful behavior. The two aren't the same thing at all.
No, I'm not. The word "crime" in the line you cited was a poor choice on my part, but the point of my whole comment wasn't focused on crime (I assume we can agree that crime is not ethical, even though unethical acts aren't necessarily criminal).
And being ethical does put you at a serious disadvantage. Don't believe me? The explain to the rest of us why so many of the richest people in the U.S. are unethical (hint: Bill Gates didn't become the richest guy in the U.S. by behaving ethically). Explain to us why we haven't seen an ethical President for the past 30 years.
It's not up to me to explain one of your assertions. You take Bill Gates and use him as an example to prove "many" of the richest people are unethical. First you'd have to explain to me how you know this (hint: You don't.).
If being ethical didn't put one at a serious disadvantage, then we wouldn't be losing our rights on a daily basis like we have been for the past 2-3 decades, because the unethical people would be opposed by at least as many ethical people. But that just doesn't happen, does it?
So tell me, what rights did you lose today? Yesterday? Last Tuesday? To say we are losing our rights on a daily basis is such a grossly hysterical overstatement of our problems I don't think it proves anything at all.
Instead, the unethical are almost completely unopposed, because the ethical DON'T HAVE POWER. What more proof could you possibly want???
How about evidence instead of assertions? I don't buy the notion that the unethical are unopposed. Otherwise, unethical behavior would never have repercussions.
If being ethical is such a burden for you, throw your ethics away. If there isn't value in your ethics, why feel any need to adhere to them? As it is, you're just whining.
Me, I'd rather be an honest and ethical person, rather than a rich one. At least I enjoy whatever little money I have!
Are you really so naive as to believe that unethical people who have a lot of money don't enjoy it?
Of course unethical people enjoy the money they steal from others. That's part of what makes them unethical, lack of conscience. But if you ARE ethical and DO have a conscience, you won't enjoy ill-gotten gains.
That sounds to me like something that people without money tell themselves to console themselves, sort of like telling your kid that the school bully is actually miserable, when in fact he's probably having a great time picking on other people.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Bullies tend to be insecure, unhappy people who enjoy beating people up. Well-adjusted people don't derive pleasure that way.
Well, enjoy it while you can, because the people [microsoft.com] with [mpaa.org] money [riaa.org] and [wto.org] power [whitehouse.gov] are looking to make sure you have even less money to enjoy than you have now, so that they will have even more money and power to enjoy.
Feel free to bury your head in the sand and tell yourself that it's okay, while legislation like the DMCA and SSSCA gets passed and enforced. Yes, it'll all be okay, even if you no longer have any money and are living in a corporate run police state. Because at least you'll still have your ethics!
Sheesh. Since when is "I'd rather be ethical than rich" anywhere close to "I'm happy to let unethical people rob and oppress me?" You're reaching here, to put it mildly. I can only speak for myself, I suppose, but my ethical sense that would keep me from enjoying stolen money also fuels my outrage at others who do so.
Your idea that being ethical puts you at a serious disadvantage is simply untrue. Sure, there are plenty of people who have prospered from crime, and gotten away with it to boot, but there are also plenty who lost everything, never got ahead in the first place, rotted in jail, or were killed by the other ethically challenged types they associated with. I'm sure you think this is incredibly naive and idealistic, but the world would be a much worse place for all of us if we all chucked our ethics to get ahead. There will always be notable examples of those who profit by crime, but if you look, you'll also see many who do very well (financially and/or personally) by behaving ethically. There is value in not being part of the problem.
Groening's talk of making an Enron episode reminds me of how low the Simpsons have sunk. Who, five years from now, is going to remember Enron? Hell, who cares _now_ about Enron?
Believe me, Enron will be remembered, along with words and phrases like "Watergate," "Whitewater," "S&L Collapse," "Teapot Dome," "Iran-Contra," and so on. I know it isn't good to admit it when straining to maintain a disaffected, too-cool-to-care, above politics Generation Z-ster posture, but people *do* care about Enron.
But the Simpsons went down that primrose way a long time ago, ever since they started cracking jokes about the Internet, and making episodes featuring George Bush and Bill Clinton [...]
Oh, no shit, man, who remembers US presidents? How obscure!
"John F. Who????"
Once, an aspiring writer sent a manuscript to George Bernard Shaw for his comments. She had stuck two pages together towards the end to see if he actually read the whole thing, and when she got the manuscript back, she saw that the pages had not been unstuck. Angrily, she wrote back to him, complaining that he told her it was bad without having read all of it.
Shaw replied, "I don't have to eat a whole egg to know it's rotten."
--
ENDUT!
HOCH HECH!
Yes, we've made some discoveries, and for the most part things can be explained with the current line of thinking in Physics (Newton, Einstein, etc), but that's the problem, things are only MOSTLY explained, and certain keys are missing.
Well, if we had a complete explanation for everything, there wouldn't be much point in anyone doing science, would there? The fact that we do not know everything is hardly a "problem."
Are there any radical thinkers left? someone perhaps not starting from Newton or Einstein's work and trying to move it forward, but someone with NO preconsceptions, NO ingrained ideas, and NO outside influences?
A person who fit this description wouldn't know anything at all. The minute you get the slightest bit of education, you've been influenced by an outside entity. As soon as you know something, you have a preconception. For example, I have this weird preconceived idea that when two positive numbers are added together, the sum is larger than either of those numbers. But if that's wrong, boy am I in trouble!
Scientists get this kind of accusation a lot. They think they know everything, they're hidebound egoists who only care about self-aggrandizement, and so on. This is simply wrong. Good scientists generally spend most of their time trying to prove themselves wrong. Scientific knowledge advances when ideas are falsified, not by theories being "proven." (Another thing - The word "theory" means a body of knowledge about a subject - It's not the opposite of "fact." A lot of theories are well-founded anough to constitute "fact." Gravitational theory, for example. We don't completely understand how it works, but it would be perverse to claim it's outright wrong.) So when a scientist proposes something, everyone does their best to shoot holes in it, and the process of fixing the holes, roughly, is how theory converges towards truth, or fact, if you like.
Many (most?) scientists are not lacking in ego, and when that ego is put to use in the service of checking someone else's work, it increases our understanding, it doesn't limit it.
--
ENDUT!
HOCH HECH!
My only complaint, about the article, is that, the author, uses commas, where they, don't belong.
ChuckleBug
This is true in one sense: Our elders don't have much to teach us about pompous, self-congratulatory, pseudo-intellectual drivel. This remains the purview of JonKatz.
Katz must spend a lot of time dreaming up weak premises on which to base huge tracts of near-meaningless text designed to prove somehow the superiority of the young geek worldview and that this narrow segment of society represents the whole of the modern world. Fact is, he just sounds like another sullen and disaffected teenager who's certain his profound thoughts have never been thought before and that his elders are a bunch of idiots. Just like the thousands of generations that went before him.
Ignore the older generation at your peril. They might not be able to write long shell scripts in their heads or dominate NFL2K1 on seganet, but they have the experience to have seen Katz's brand of self-absorbed whining many times before. When "the young" are "the old," something that will happen very quickly, they'll look back at a new generation patting itself on the back on scorning them and then they will understand that, as some French guy said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
ChuckleBug
Outside the US, people have more appreciation for chess. Here, it's assumed it's just slow and boring, to a large degree because there aren't any laser light shows, bellowing wrestlers, or bone-crunching tackles. While it can be slow, it's also a major competition involving two of the world's best in an intense fight for a place in history. The tension is incredible, and I can state from personal experience that playing in serious competition (even on my low level) is exciting and exhausting. I used to play football, and I can tell you the competition in chess is every bit as fierce, if not physically violent.
Kramnik has a lot of fans who are really pumped to see their man beat the most unbeatable player of the last 15 years. An upset like this *is* a lot of excitement, at least for people who have a clue about the game.
Why seeing a chess fan dance is any worse than seeing anyone else dance is beyond me.
ChuckleBug
Many people consider Khalifman the "real" champion, because his title is sanctioned by FIDE, the world chess federation. Others think the FIDE Championship has been devalued since they went to a single-tournament championship. Its detractors call it "speed chess," and not without justification. I get the sense that most people still think Kasparov is the most legitimate champion, mainly because he keeps showing himself to be the best player in the world.It's rather shocking to see Garry lose -- it just doesn't happen. Until now.
I'd really like to see Kramnik play Khalifman for the Undisputed Championship of the World. It's like boxing. Of course, FIDE has these knockout championship tournaments every year, so Kramnik would probably be unable to play a match before the new FIDE champ is determined. Most people don't give Khalifman that much of a chance to repeat because he's considered a fairly middlin' grandmaster, rather than one of the elite. The older system, a three year cycle of grueling matches, always selected players who had proven convincingly they are the two best players in the world (the champ didn't have to go through the cycle. He just waited for the candidates' match winner.). The new knockout system seems to make chance a much greater factor, and Khalifman's victory seems to support that theory.
ChuckleBug
I saw it with my brother-in-law at a theater that made a big deal about it being "uncut." This is one case where some cutting was desperately needed.
Lem's works are great. Solaris left me with a lingering melancholy. A strange story, both in content and form.
ChuckleBug
I think Apple's next machine should be called the Paqintosh.
ChuckleBug
First, you did start out with such a statement. My point is that even if you go on to argue facts, editors, who get great, huge, steaming piles of cranky feedback, won't even read the rest of it!
I also take issue with equating bad reasoning with a lack of ethics. He is in error, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has no integrity. He could, for example, simply be stupid. You need more evidence when you make a charge like this.
Seriously, nothing personal, but I think your letter takes the absolute wrong approach, and I highly doubt it will be read. Most feedback on this sort of thing is too long, and tries to bring up too many issues. Short and sweet does the trick. The sentence
I would also appreciate it if one of your editors would have a chat with him about journalistic integrity and how even a columnist shouldn't misrepresent statistics to further an agenda.
is just plain bad. Can you imagine an editor saying, "Gee, this guy's right. Let's sit Fred down and talk about his journalistic integrity." I guarantee you the editor will have no more interest in the rest of your comments if you make officious and condescending remarks like this.
ChuckleBug
No, no, NO! Attacking his integrity is simply ad hominem attacking and I doubt any editor will read past the first sentence. This kind of attack is easy.
You need to argue the facts. They aren't on Moody's side. Simply point out that a mindless bug count is a meaningless way to compare OS's. Stick to the facts, and you can't be easily dismissed. Rants about the guy's "integrity" will simply make you sound like a sour grapes-wielding zealot, the very sort they expected to enrage.
Please, stay with the facts, and you'll be much more likely to be heard.
ChuckleBug