was raised and educated to believe that spelling and grammar counted...that the coherent presentation of your information was at least as important as the information
This is racism and elitism. Grammer might be more important than the message for you, but not for real people.
This reminds me of the Parisians. Someone can study French for years as a second language, as a hobby. They can go on vacation in Paris, and instead of demanding the waiter speaks to you in English, you try to talk to him in French: "Je prendre un cafe au lait". He then looks at you with a snobby face and you know he is judging your French, the accent was off, perhaps you did match the noun gender agreement (something that does not exist in english).
Meanwhile, you go to Italy on vacation. You only know 100 or so words of Italian. But people love you for trying to communicate in their langugae.
It is all about snobbery. People who think they are better than other people SUCK!
And back to your point about grammer in the USA. How can you compare two Americans, one who lives in a rich suburb and has small classes to a person who attends in a poor urban school where his class size is double yours? Are you willing to judge his english grammer at the same level as yours even though he did not have your advantages?
You just can not spell a word the way it sounds. English is like French in this regard.
And if you want to make it even more messy, how about asking what English really is?
Centre? or Center? Are you American or British? Two countries, one language. It is not simple enough to say that Americans speak American.
I have been asking people what English evolved from? Some say English is a Germanic language. Others say we share a common heritage with Latin. But we are not a Romance language, not like French or Spanish or Italian. BTW, it is interesting to know, if you learn any one of those languages, you have learned 50% of all others in the same family.
And English grammer is very different than the rest of the world:
In the USA we would say: "I like her". In France or Russian, the sentance would be "I her like".
I will leave everyone with words from the great Mark Twain.
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it.
The best thing we can do, if we want people who know good English, is to teach them a foriegn language early in life. Start teaching French or German in the 7th or 8th grade. By knowing a second language, one can learn about their own. No native speaker thinks about word placements in English because they say "what sounds right". But when the study of French or German starts, and words are not in the order we would expect, it causes reflection on our own language.
It will also bring more world peace. I doubt Americans would be so quick to eat their Freedom Fries and beg for war if they could read a newspaper from Europe, instead of being brainwashed my Fox News. While Bush might like to think Texas is big, the world is much bigger.
php won't require lots of reference, once you learn something, you won't need to look it up. but with mysql, you will want a reference.
the other reason, once someone learns php, they will probably want to move on to another language. save the $50 from the php book and use it for a Java book.
that is if people are like me and have limited money. get the most bang for the buck. there is no reason to have a book that you use once and then don't need. it is better to buy books you will keep using.
i learned MySQL while writing a forum based application using JSP. MySQL is very fast, very user friendly, and it never failed me. But it does require a good reference book, otherwise you will go mad. and if you will be using MySQL on a network, make sure to password protect it, please.;)
My advice to everyone who wants dynamic websites is to use MySQL for the database, it is very good. But don't use PHP, use JSP and Tomcat.
There are many reasons why I would give this advice:
PHP websites are more vulnerable to worms. Just six months ago, many PHP run forums were shut down and destroyed. The exploit was something that worked only with PHP forums.
Java is the better language to learn. It is more like a true programming language than PHP. The reward for the time spent learning a language is greater with Java than with PHP.
I always thought of PHP as more of a scripting langugae, and not a true language. No large PHP applications exists out there. But there are tons of enterprise Java applications.
you would do better getting 1 meg down and gaurenteed 384 kbps up than the 2 megs down and 256 up.
how many people can log into a 256 kbps up without causing everyone to crawl at a snails pace. once you get 20 people logged in at the same time, it will become so slow. you will have to disable graphics.
I am dumbfounded. 100 megs a second?? Is that what they said. That is a whole HUGE milf file in less than 3 seconds.
Seriously, before I could only have a player about a quarter the size of my monitor, if I tried to expand the size of the porn any more, it would not be clear. Her skin would not look smooth and soft. Now I can watch porn the way it was intended to be, in High Definition.
And before people start bashing me, anwser one question? How much money is made in porn on the web every year? How much money does Amazon make on the web? See... the web is there for porn, everything else is icing on the cake.
To the people of IRAN, if you censor your web, you will never get 100 megs a second. The moment you let people masturbate, the porn industry will come to Terahn and give you 100 megs a second!! But along with titles such as "Touched by Alah", you will have to let people have "Mr. Azerja, the goatfucker". Actually, I am sorry for that last joke. Please forgive me. I am going to burn in hell for that one.
What else is 100 megs a second good for? TV on demand? I wonder how the DirectTV and Dish will counter these fast speeds that cable has. What will DSL do? I hate supporting cable providers, because back when they were the only choice (for cable tv), they were the worst customer service pricks around-
Me: "Hi, I saw your advertisment for $29.95 instal with two months of HBO for half price with basic service"
Them: "Hey, hold on one second... *strange noise*... Okay, what did you want???
Me: "I'd like to order cable service, can you come out this Saturday?"
Them: "No way. Let me look... ahh, okay, we can come out in three weeks, the 13th."
Me: "Any way you can come sooner?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Okay I guess, what time can you be here?"
Them: "We will be there between the hours of 8am and 7pm."
Me: "WHAT??? I'd like to not wait all day"
Them: "Hold on, I have another call."
CLICK- call disconected.
Second Call
Me: "Hi, I was just disconnected"
Them: "Oh, yeah, what do you want again?"
Me: "I'd like to order service"
Them: *noise of chips crunching* "Yeah, fine, okay".
Me: "How do I order service"
Them: "Let me get to that screen. I am going to need to put you on hold again"
Me: "NOOOOOOO"
CLICK- call disconected
Third Call
Me: "You hung up on me again!"
Them: "No I didn't, I put you on hold"
Me: "Whatever, I want to order cable service"
Them: "Sure thing, we can get to you in four weeks, on the 20th"
Me: "You just told me three weeks, now it is four?"
Them: "Yeah, we had a mad dash of orders since I last talked to you"
The only good thing about the cable industry is they are so fucking currupted, it is easy to steal from them. I know people who had free HBO for 10 years just because they slipped the instal guy $20 bucks. Now that things are going digital, it does not work as well, because you need that box. And RTF Gold does not descrable all the pay-per-view stuff. But the one trick that is left, if you only want basic service and internet, is to order just the internet and then split the cable. You will get basic programming for free.
Having said that, I wonder what the sweet spot for broadband and tv service is, including stealing? Anyone have the gigantic dishes? Anyone know how to get all the premium stations and pay per view for free?
Back in the day when I was looking at IDE's, there was not that much choice (for free ones).
There was netbeans and eclipse, which looked identical to me. I never could use either of them because I did not have a good enough system (PIII 1ghz with 512 megs). A friend with a slightly faster system and 1 gig of ram was able to run it.
And the learning curve to eclipse was pretty high for all the functions it had. At least that was my impression trying to run. But I gave up on Eclipse fairly quickly.
At the time, I was using textpad http://www.textpad.com/, and it was awesome for a while. But I soon found I needed more features than just compiling and a nice error report. I needed something to keep track of programs that were multiple classes.
I wish I could remember the name of the program. I was like textpad, very clean, no extra anything from a basic instal. But what made it different was you could import new modules (functions). Instead of having an overwhelmin experiance with Eclipse, that has everything built in, the cool thing about the blah-bare IDE was if you wanted a specific tool, you could import it and learn it. Later if you needed a second tool, you could import it. It kept the IDE clutter free.
Would you want the newest and most experimental nuclear research facility in your neighborhood?
They should build these plants in less populated areas, like Africa. In addition to the research center, they can build a hotel, maybe create some jobs.
I hope the by-products from this nuclear plant, all the magnets, and the other uncountable changes won't ruin the soil or rain, and affect the quality of french wines. I keep hearing that next to Fermi Labs, there are now snakes with two heads and albino deer, all this stuff did not exists before they started their research.
Here's the absolute truth why I left Star Trek. I left Star Trek because it was seriously interfering with my career in feature films. I was in a situation where I was constantly having to pass on really good movie roles because I was on the series. I had a film career before Star Trek. People knew me before Star Trek. As a matter of fact, at Comic Con, a lot of people came up to me and said, "I started watching Star Trek because you were on it and I was fan of yours from Stand By Me and I stopped watching it after you left." I had a lot of people say that to me.
Truth be told, the only role I knew him in was TNG. TNG was a great sci-fi series. I wonder how much of a mistake it was leaving that show. I am sure everyone on the show cashed in for the last seasons, when the show was established. But he was not my favorite actor. The one I really missed was Doctor Crusher. She was a hot red head. Why did she leave the show? I always wanted a couple of seasons of her and the captin having a soap opera. Picard: "Damn it Beverly, not now, I have Klingons to deal with. Number 1 raise sheilds. Data, take my wife to her quarters... no, delay that order *thinks about Tasha*, no, Troy, you take Beverly to my private quarters".
I was going to be in this movie... and the shooting schedule for Valmont would have carried me over about a week into the regular season schedule into Star Trek. I would have had to sit out the first episode of the year... I said to the people on Star Trek, "I need to be written out of this particular episode, because I'm going to do this movie... they said, "We can't write you out because the first episode of the season is all about you. It focuses entirely on your character and it's your story..."... A couple of days before the season was ready to premiere, they wrote me out of the episode entirely.
This is so funny. Sad for you, for sure. But it sucks that people are treated that way. And it is not in studios that it happens. Chances are actors get treated better than the average joe. You should quit your bitching. They paid you, didn't they?
So are you going to reply to me or what?
Sadly, the answer to this question is most likely not.
LOL. Wait another 10 years until all you have is "I was once on TNG". LOL. ROFL. Muahahaha. See you at the conventions. Maybe, after Spock is done on stage anwsering questions, they will let you on stage with the guy who played the ferengi.
Since so many people have already met Anne, we felt that it was appropriate to include pictures of her in the gallery
There has to be naked pictures of her on-line, somewhere. Maybe she is wearing jordi's visor and Will is hitting it from the back, and yelling in a scottish accent "I'm giving her all I've got".
Too bad it does not list what he is doing now? Someone should tell him the world needs more burger flippers and janators. Is he too proud to do those jobs. Only reason I am so sardonic is because this guy complains in his blog. He was on TNG, a great show. And he complains. Ugh.
do you understand the difference between an american perspective and a world persepctive?
Once again, I ask, what is a world perspective? Who decides? You? Your group of people? Or my group of people? How about the people that live together?
There is no world perspective. There never will be. You will have a hard time getting people who live in the same area, with the same religion, to agree to a complete set of values. Now try and toss in a value that is incompatibe with their beliefs.
I'll give you an example. Women who must wear cloth that covers their whole body in many muslim areas. Is that evil? Is it against human values, or against your values? Many muslim women move to the USA, and continue to wear those dresses that cover the body and face. Were they brainwashed? Are they stupid? Or do they have values that are different than yours.
a nationality is a tribe, a false arbitrary geopolitical boundary
I disagree. A nationality is more than that. It is a common family. It is history. It is my grandfather living next door to your grandfather, and about all of us sharing some values in common. If you and I today decide we want values different than what our grandparents had, that is our right. But if someone from a different part of the world wants to change us, that is wrong.
People feel better when they live next to others with a common idea about life and happiness. I doubt a priest would have a happy life next to a porn star. If my community is more like the priest, than that is our right. If your community is more like the porn star, that is your right.
What it comes down to is self determination. People have a right to pick their own lives. That does not include having a different country destabalize your economy or force different viewpoints.
But why can't 120 agnostics, or otherwise get a say? I'm not knocking Christmas, but don't force people to act out a scene from the bible which they don't believe in, that's not fair either.
What I was reffering to was not a school ordered play. It is something the drama club was doing. They did not force anyone to participate in the christmas play. But it was a huge sucess the past years, the tickets would sell out, the town loved it. And the drama club raised money.
The school tried to offer an alternative to the people who did not want a christmas play, the school offered them to have equal use of the auditorium to put on their own show. But the muslim sued the school anyways. He said since it was on taxpayer funded land, and the school was paid by taxes, the school could not have a religious play, even if it was only the christmas carol.
This is certainly an interesting problem for "liberals" like me. Which is better? Pushing Western-style Democracy on people that have said they don't want it, or allow what they do want even though we find it repugnantly oppressive to dissenting views and certainly sexist and homophobic?
Think of values as ethnic food. Places that serve food that you find pungent and offensive to the senses, with strong nasty smells. Now imagine a place where people can't get enough of this food. They love it, they smile and are so happy when they eat it. Yet, to you, it makes you sick in the stomach.
That is how I view culture. Some places and systems of government might not be what I want. But I respect the people who live in that area. They are their own cooks, making their own lunch. Do the people of the USA know without a doubt their values are the right ones, the ones everyone should and must have? How long has the USA had its current set of values, how long until they change again?
Think of the other side of the coin. We live in the USA, and there was a HUGE stock crash, people lost everything, we are now poor. But we still have our system of values in place. Iran hits it big with oil, and is wealthy beyond their dreams. 10 years later, with that wealth, Iran now also has a powerful military. Iran decided to send observers to the USA to see how we live, and they are shocked to see people buying porn magazines on street corners, that Playboy sells millions of copies. They decide they must stop this lifestyle, for our benifit, because we don't know any better. Would we want that?
People who don't want to live in Iran will find ways out. Or they will organize and revolt. I don't think it makes the USA look any better to help these people overthrow their government, it looks like imperialism. It hurts what the USA is trying to do. If we throw out the religious government, and then open up factories, it looks like we are enslaving a people. If people who dress women up from head to toe in cloth all of a suddent see playboy at the magazine rack, they will go berzerk. Likewise, if someone comes here and tries to force a woman to conceal herself, she will get really upset and want to fight, her values were offended.
In areas where Bush was predicted to win, they just added extra polling boths. In areas where he expected to loose, limit the polling boths so people would more likely not want to wait and line and walk away.
This happened in the primaries in South Carolina. John McCain unexpectedly beat Bush in the previous primary. McCain, a republican, was getting lots of votes from independents and democrats. McCain was also a vet from the Vietnam war and highly respected because as a prisioner of war, his father who was an navy admeral could have gotten him freed. But McCain said he would rather stay in a prision than compromise his country or their values. You can take that either way, as supporting something good or bad, but the one thing you can not argue is he was a man of conviction. When it came time, his opinions really meant something to him. And South Carolina has one of the largest populations of veterans in the USA. Bush was worried they would vote for McCain, because he actually served and paid a high price for his service.
So what happened? The primary system was ran by volunteers, ordinary people who show up at the polls so people can vote. Bush had people register to voluneteer at polling places in black communities, where there were more democrats. When it came time to open the polls, none of the volunteers showed up. The polling places never opened, instead there were signs telling people to drive to the next county to vote. McCain lost that state, and all the steam from his last win. Bush went on to win with one of the largest war chests ever.
If McCain would have won South Carolina, he would have been able to raise more money. Bush would have lost some potential donors money. McCain went on to win other states after that, Michigan and others, but never could raise enough money to continue.
it is true what you say if the other country in question had a government whose policies reflected that of the governed
that is not the case in iran or china
therefore, criticism of iran and china is perfectly valid, unless you don't believe the citizens of china or iran deserve a say in how they are governed
The USA paid millions and millions of dollars to put the SHAH in power. We supported him, we gave him money, we gave him miliraty power. And what happened?
The PEOPLE of Iran threw him out. How could that happen if the people of Iran wanted USA style values? The SHAH was all about USA values, about capitalism, about trade.
What happened is the PEOPLE of Iran decided that religion was most important to their country. They wanted a government that reflected their faith.
If the PEOPLE of Iran did not want the government they now have, they would revolt. They did it against the SHAH who had far more power and money than the current government. The SHAH had every resource the USA had at his disposal.
the notion of universal human rights is more and more important in today's world, not less
What are universal human rights? My set of values might be incompatible with yours. The anwser is, if I live with people who are 90% in agreement with me, we will get along. But if you come from 7000 miles away and tell me we ALL must change to meet your definition of human values, then we will have problems and probably war. Or if a country can't wage war, then individuals flying airplanes into large buildings.
Here is one other way to look at it. In some parts of Africa it is considered a part of becomming an adult to get the genitals cut. They have been doing it for thousands of years. It is their culture, and those who don't participate never feel like real members of their community. Should the USA go over to these tribes, deep in the wilderness, and tell these tribes they must stop their culture because it is violent and against womens rights?
The anwser is the USA is telling everyone else how they must live, and that is capitalism. If the USA can't get your natural resources, they will attempt to destabalize your part of the world. If that does not cause the government to crash, they will launch war.
I will give you one example. Do you know what happened on Sept 11th? No, not in the USA, in Chile. The people of Chile held an election, and elected a communist. They USA gave his opponent millions of dollars for the next election. The USA spread lies about the current president. But the people of Chile did not believe and re-elected the communist to a second term. Nixon ordered the communist president assasinated. The guy who took over, Pinochet caused over 27,000 people to dissapear, people who were anti-USA and anti-capitalism.
If the USA has cause to go into Iraq over the deaths of 3,000 people who died in the world trade center, what rights does Chile have against the USA?
I wish nothing but the best for Iran. I hope they build nukes. I hope they rebuild the great civilization that was in the middle east, when the best universities and libraries in the world were all in the middle east. Here is a secret the USA does not want you to know. The people of Iran are nice and caring people. If you are poor, there is a better chance of someone opening his door to you in Iran and feeding you. If you are sick and have no money, there is a better chance of a doctor giving you free help in Iran than the USA.
The Iranian people are not like Jehovas witnesses. They don't force anyone to believe anything. But they do want to be respected. They want to be a religious state where the values of the majority are reflected in their newspapers and media and movies.
How is this different than what the USA does? True the USA let's its citizens speak freely. However, the government does control the flow of information to its citizens via the media. Just pick up a newspaper in Canada and the USA and you can see differences.
In the USA free speech is only possible with money. Look at elections, the candidates with the most money wins most of the time. And whenever there is a law which tries to limit how much money special interest groups can give to candidates, the courts say that money is speech, and they throw those laws out.
How much does a US Senate seat cost? 7 Million dollars? A US Congressional seat is over 1 Million dollars. Who can get this kind of cash? How? If I raise $200,000 in a fund raiser for a candidate, and that candidate wins, how much of an ear do I get? How much influance? What if I am not even from his state, will he take my call over a local constituent? I bet if I call him and say "Law Z is being voted on tomorrow, and I would really like to see you vote for it". If he does not get my $200,000 the next time, he might not win. What does he do?
There is no free speech in the USA. In the USA there is SPAM from advertising, it drowns out everything else. 10 minutes of sit coms or reality TV followed by 4 minutes of commercials. If I was more cynical, I would wonder if they were trying to train my brain to accept information in small tiny sized nuggets.
An oppressive government is censoring internet connections! Get out!
Nope, the government is not censoring anything. Government is what the people choose. The USA put in a puppet government, the SHAH, who we supported with USA money. What happened? The PEOPLE of Iran overthrew him because they did not want a western style of government.
It is not that hard to overthrow a government. People have done it throught history, many, many times.
Iran has every right to be a religious state, to pass laws saying they will not tolerate certain views or lifestyles. I kinda admire them. They are not letting 1 idiot tell 100 other people they all must change. It is like in the USA, when 1 muslim can tell a school with 100 christians they can not have a christmas play because the school is violating their rights of seperation of church and state.
But even previous 'liberal' Iranian governments have been putting together a sophisticated Internet filtering system to prevent their citizens from visiting 'questionable' websites and censoring dissent.
Who ever said that every country on the planet must have USA values?
Maybe the people of Iran don't want to watch the stuff we do. Does 1 person who wants to see that content have the right to tell 1,000,000 other people to put up with his crap?
Even in the USA we have community standards. There are some small pockets inside the USA where it is illegal for adult companies to send DVD's. There are places in the USA where the communities want old fashioned values, they want to be able to keep the front door unlocked at night.
If I have an idea for a device that hasn't been made before, I can patent the idea then openly market it without fear that someone else will come along and out-muscle me in the marketplace.
If you trully have an idea nobody else has thought of, how long will you have market share? Say you make a device that makes cars run off water. People put water in your device, and gasoline comes out of the other side. Forget about the fact that it is not possible, but you make a machine that pulls gasoline out of water and the air. You will make billions of dollars.
Now, it will take other companies months and months just to figure out how your machine works. It will take them months to manufacture the first prototype. You should have at least six months in the marketplace without competition.
What good are patents for? With gas prices at over 2 bucks a gallon, your device could sell for a high price, all profit. What reason do you have to offer your product at walmart prices, and with a low per unit profit?
But if 10 companies come out in 6 months to 1 year, all making the same product, the market benifits. You, the original inventor, you must get lean. You must either convince people your product is better in some way, or you have to price it in accordance with competition.
Since you were first, you will have built a name. You will have an advantage like that of an incumbant in office. You have an advantage, you don't need any more.
There is another benifit to society. If you make your money in a year, then the competition gets too great and you are forced out, you can go back to the drawing board. You had one very good year where you made lots of money. Now you can sit on that money and drink wine and travel, or you can go back to the drawing board and develop something else. But why should the law let you whord your idea, and exists for no other reason that to defend it?
On the worst case scenereo, you don't even have any products, you just purchase a ton of patents and sue people. Say you are microsoft, you buy patents you can later use to stop companies from offering products.
We have been informed by DLO that they consider our PodBuddy to be an infringement of their company's U.S. patent #6,591,085, and, that they will file suit against us, if we launch the PodBuddy.
We disagree with DLO's claim, and, we believe that our PodBuddy is so utterly different from their company's TransPod product that there can be no question of infringement. But, we are not able to fund the sort of protracted legal battle that would be required to prove our point in court. So, we are forced to kill the PodBuddy.
So a small company has a product, gets a letter threatening a lawsuit, and they fold because they can not afford a lawyer?
I sure hope Walmart never takes this approach.
Come to think of it, I wish they did. They should have patented the mail in rebate.
I want to let the many thousands of you who have contacted us since January about wanting a PodBuddy that I have asked Jeff Grady, the owner at DLO to produce the product for you. And, I have offered him all of our development work, prototypes, production tooling, intellectual property releases, several purchase orders we have here from national buyers, and, our entire list of email inquiries from folks like you. Our price to Jeff?... the $23,000 we have invested in just the hard injection mold tooling. His answer?... No way. He is not interested.
What? He can't sell his product, so he wants to sell his email addresses.
My statement to Jeff was that the PodBuddy would likely sell about five times as many units as his TransPod. And, that, if we can't build it, then he should build it. After all, he's the one using a patent to keep a better, more desirable competitive product off the market.
Now this is where I would like to hear from a lawyer. What if I have an idea. I have no plans to make this idea come to market, but I have an idea. Can I patent it and sit on it, like some people who buy websites and force a third party to pay a huge fee to buy it?
And what about ideas that would naturally come to everyones mind? What if someone patented air conditioning in cars as blowing cold air? Or if someone patented cordless phones? There seems to be so many things which could be patented, then we would have only one choice in the market. Didn't the Sherman Act pass to stop these kinds of things from happening?
It seems to me the more wording lawyers add to make patentes less prohibitive, the more prohibitive they get because only a lawyer will be able to support or defend a claim. We should just do away with patents all together. Let anyone who can build a product. Let the best product, the best priced product, and the one with most quality win. I bet the original will still gain market share for being first. After that they will have to compete. What is wrong with that??
Though your invocation of a god suggests you're unlikely to be reasonable
You are a bigot. Better lock those doors the next time you drive though a black neighborhood. [saracsm] It is not that they are poor that increases crime, it is because they are black[/sarcasm]
Nothing except degree makes any of man's abilities "special". We are just smart apes.
We are not apes. We are humans. Science is only a bunch of theories. I believe we were created by God. We came from somewhere. What do you believe? The Big Bang? Where did that come from?
The first american is not listed until #19. That is not possible. There are 7 russians on the list before the first american. This has to be a lie.
Let me tell you my logic.
The USA has the biggest economy, the best army, we do everything the best. It is not like we steal or lie or cheat to deprive others of what is theirs.
Okay... there was a heavy element of sarcasm there.
But honestly, looking at that list, is there anything it can tell us about a countries intellectual power? Or could it be just as easy to replace the title of the paper from "Top 100 Chess players" to "Autism list"? Does being good at chess correlate to anything else? Does chess score indicate IQ? Does chess scores indicate earning power? Anyone have a t-shirt that says "I play chess... Love me before I become rich"?
And why is Bobby Fisher not listed. Do people lose their rankings if they don't play for a set time. It seems only fair for a person to keep their ranking when they retire.
And this gives me one interesting idea. I wonder if instead of a super computer, we can recreate one man. If we can take the thinking process of one person, and program a computer. That way, people who live 400 years from now will be able to play me.
I bet I can beat every supercomputer on Earth.. If you just allow me to pull the plug;)
Or a really powerfull magnet.
But then again, I could put some CN in anyones food and have the same effect.
The differance between a person and a computer is people can learn. A computer can not. I played chess for many years, and I did not get better by reading books or studying past games. I got better by playing.
Chess can never be reduced to a number of possible moves just like art can never be reduced to a number of strokes. God gave us something which seperates us from all other things on earth. We are unlike anything else.
If all a computer can be is logic, I wonder if anyone has found a way to force a shutdown loop, to do something so illogical the computer can not continue.
In 50 years will chess club be dominated by nerds who know how to build computers and write software or by the humans who take the time to learn the game? Society is becoming more and more oriented towards computers and I wouldnt be surprised if in the future people judge their skill based on who can write a better program for their computer, rather than knowing how to play the game itself. It's just too bad these computers don't give lessons.
It is one of the reasons I hate playing chess online. There are not many, but every now and then I run into someone who is running chessmaster on their computer. They just want to win, they don't want to play the game.
Chess is a relaxing game. It is supposed to be intellectually pure and honest.
It is too bad that Vegas never started with chess tables. That would be something to do, better than blowing money on the slots. There would be no cheating. Maybe in order to play you would have to register with the casinos, and they would keep track of your wins and losses and give you a score so people would know your level.
Slashdot Mirror
This is racism and elitism. Grammer might be more important than the message for you, but not for real people.
This reminds me of the Parisians. Someone can study French for years as a second language, as a hobby. They can go on vacation in Paris, and instead of demanding the waiter speaks to you in English, you try to talk to him in French: "Je prendre un cafe au lait". He then looks at you with a snobby face and you know he is judging your French, the accent was off, perhaps you did match the noun gender agreement (something that does not exist in english).
Meanwhile, you go to Italy on vacation. You only know 100 or so words of Italian. But people love you for trying to communicate in their langugae.
It is all about snobbery. People who think they are better than other people SUCK!
And back to your point about grammer in the USA. How can you compare two Americans, one who lives in a rich suburb and has small classes to a person who attends in a poor urban school where his class size is double yours? Are you willing to judge his english grammer at the same level as yours even though he did not have your advantages?
And if you want to make it even more messy, how about asking what English really is?
Centre? or Center? Are you American or British? Two countries, one language. It is not simple enough to say that Americans speak American.
I have been asking people what English evolved from? Some say English is a Germanic language. Others say we share a common heritage with Latin. But we are not a Romance language, not like French or Spanish or Italian. BTW, it is interesting to know, if you learn any one of those languages, you have learned 50% of all others in the same family.
And English grammer is very different than the rest of the world:
In the USA we would say: "I like her". In France or Russian, the sentance would be "I her like".
I will leave everyone with words from the great Mark Twain.
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it.
The best thing we can do, if we want people who know good English, is to teach them a foriegn language early in life. Start teaching French or German in the 7th or 8th grade. By knowing a second language, one can learn about their own. No native speaker thinks about word placements in English because they say "what sounds right". But when the study of French or German starts, and words are not in the order we would expect, it causes reflection on our own language.
It will also bring more world peace. I doubt Americans would be so quick to eat their Freedom Fries and beg for war if they could read a newspaper from Europe, instead of being brainwashed my Fox News. While Bush might like to think Texas is big, the world is much bigger.
why?
php won't require lots of reference, once you learn something, you won't need to look it up. but with mysql, you will want a reference.
the other reason, once someone learns php, they will probably want to move on to another language. save the $50 from the php book and use it for a Java book.
that is if people are like me and have limited money. get the most bang for the buck. there is no reason to have a book that you use once and then don't need. it is better to buy books you will keep using.
i learned MySQL while writing a forum based application using JSP. MySQL is very fast, very user friendly, and it never failed me. But it does require a good reference book, otherwise you will go mad. and if you will be using MySQL on a network, make sure to password protect it, please. ;)
There are many reasons why I would give this advice:
I always thought of PHP as more of a scripting langugae, and not a true language. No large PHP applications exists out there. But there are tons of enterprise Java applications.
you would do better getting 1 meg down and gaurenteed 384 kbps up than the 2 megs down and 256 up.
how many people can log into a 256 kbps up without causing everyone to crawl at a snails pace. once you get 20 people logged in at the same time, it will become so slow. you will have to disable graphics.
Seriously, before I could only have a player about a quarter the size of my monitor, if I tried to expand the size of the porn any more, it would not be clear. Her skin would not look smooth and soft. Now I can watch porn the way it was intended to be, in High Definition.
And before people start bashing me, anwser one question? How much money is made in porn on the web every year? How much money does Amazon make on the web? See... the web is there for porn, everything else is icing on the cake.
To the people of IRAN, if you censor your web, you will never get 100 megs a second. The moment you let people masturbate, the porn industry will come to Terahn and give you 100 megs a second!! But along with titles such as "Touched by Alah", you will have to let people have "Mr. Azerja, the goatfucker". Actually, I am sorry for that last joke. Please forgive me. I am going to burn in hell for that one.
What else is 100 megs a second good for? TV on demand? I wonder how the DirectTV and Dish will counter these fast speeds that cable has. What will DSL do? I hate supporting cable providers, because back when they were the only choice (for cable tv), they were the worst customer service pricks around-
Me: "Hi, I saw your advertisment for $29.95 instal with two months of HBO for half price with basic service"
Them: "Hey, hold on one second... *strange noise*... Okay, what did you want???
Me: "I'd like to order cable service, can you come out this Saturday?"
Them: "No way. Let me look... ahh, okay, we can come out in three weeks, the 13th."
Me: "Any way you can come sooner?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Okay I guess, what time can you be here?"
Them: "We will be there between the hours of 8am and 7pm."
Me: "WHAT??? I'd like to not wait all day"
Them: "Hold on, I have another call."
CLICK- call disconected.
Second Call
Me: "Hi, I was just disconnected"
Them: "Oh, yeah, what do you want again?"
Me: "I'd like to order service"
Them: *noise of chips crunching* "Yeah, fine, okay".
Me: "How do I order service"
Them: "Let me get to that screen. I am going to need to put you on hold again"
Me: "NOOOOOOO"
CLICK- call disconected
Third Call
Me: "You hung up on me again!"
Them: "No I didn't, I put you on hold"
Me: "Whatever, I want to order cable service"
Them: "Sure thing, we can get to you in four weeks, on the 20th"
Me: "You just told me three weeks, now it is four?"
Them: "Yeah, we had a mad dash of orders since I last talked to you"
The only good thing about the cable industry is they are so fucking currupted, it is easy to steal from them. I know people who had free HBO for 10 years just because they slipped the instal guy $20 bucks. Now that things are going digital, it does not work as well, because you need that box. And RTF Gold does not descrable all the pay-per-view stuff. But the one trick that is left, if you only want basic service and internet, is to order just the internet and then split the cable. You will get basic programming for free.
Having said that, I wonder what the sweet spot for broadband and tv service is, including stealing? Anyone have the gigantic dishes? Anyone know how to get all the premium stations and pay per view for free?
For a system with 2.5 gigs, I expect you have more RAM than it needs. How much does Eclipse use up when you start it?
There was netbeans and eclipse, which looked identical to me. I never could use either of them because I did not have a good enough system (PIII 1ghz with 512 megs). A friend with a slightly faster system and 1 gig of ram was able to run it.
And the learning curve to eclipse was pretty high for all the functions it had. At least that was my impression trying to run. But I gave up on Eclipse fairly quickly.
At the time, I was using textpad http://www.textpad.com/, and it was awesome for a while. But I soon found I needed more features than just compiling and a nice error report. I needed something to keep track of programs that were multiple classes.
I wish I could remember the name of the program. I was like textpad, very clean, no extra anything from a basic instal. But what made it different was you could import new modules (functions). Instead of having an overwhelmin experiance with Eclipse, that has everything built in, the cool thing about the blah-bare IDE was if you wanted a specific tool, you could import it and learn it. Later if you needed a second tool, you could import it. It kept the IDE clutter free.
That was my only knock of the software. It would be so slow. William. Shatner. could. deliver. a. line. quicker.
For those who don't need a full blown IDE, just something to write java in and compile, try textpad. It is lightning quick.
But I bet with faster CPU's, eclipse is alright now. But it was so slow on a PIII 1ghz with 512 megs. So slow.
They should build these plants in less populated areas, like Africa. In addition to the research center, they can build a hotel, maybe create some jobs.
I hope the by-products from this nuclear plant, all the magnets, and the other uncountable changes won't ruin the soil or rain, and affect the quality of french wines. I keep hearing that next to Fermi Labs, there are now snakes with two heads and albino deer, all this stuff did not exists before they started their research.
Truth be told, the only role I knew him in was TNG. TNG was a great sci-fi series. I wonder how much of a mistake it was leaving that show. I am sure everyone on the show cashed in for the last seasons, when the show was established. But he was not my favorite actor. The one I really missed was Doctor Crusher. She was a hot red head. Why did she leave the show? I always wanted a couple of seasons of her and the captin having a soap opera. Picard: "Damn it Beverly, not now, I have Klingons to deal with. Number 1 raise sheilds. Data, take my wife to her quarters... no, delay that order *thinks about Tasha*, no, Troy, you take Beverly to my private quarters".
I was going to be in this movie... and the shooting schedule for Valmont would have carried me over about a week into the regular season schedule into Star Trek. I would have had to sit out the first episode of the year... I said to the people on Star Trek, "I need to be written out of this particular episode, because I'm going to do this movie... they said, "We can't write you out because the first episode of the season is all about you. It focuses entirely on your character and it's your story..."... A couple of days before the season was ready to premiere, they wrote me out of the episode entirely.
This is so funny. Sad for you, for sure. But it sucks that people are treated that way. And it is not in studios that it happens. Chances are actors get treated better than the average joe. You should quit your bitching. They paid you, didn't they?
So are you going to reply to me or what?
LOL. Wait another 10 years until all you have is "I was once on TNG". LOL. ROFL. Muahahaha. See you at the conventions. Maybe, after Spock is done on stage anwsering questions, they will let you on stage with the guy who played the ferengi.
Since so many people have already met Anne, we felt that it was appropriate to include pictures of her in the gallery
There has to be naked pictures of her on-line, somewhere. Maybe she is wearing jordi's visor and Will is hitting it from the back, and yelling in a scottish accent "I'm giving her all I've got".
Too bad it does not list what he is doing now? Someone should tell him the world needs more burger flippers and janators. Is he too proud to do those jobs. Only reason I am so sardonic is because this guy complains in his blog. He was on TNG, a great show. And he complains. Ugh.
Once again, I ask, what is a world perspective? Who decides? You? Your group of people? Or my group of people? How about the people that live together?
There is no world perspective. There never will be. You will have a hard time getting people who live in the same area, with the same religion, to agree to a complete set of values. Now try and toss in a value that is incompatibe with their beliefs.
I'll give you an example. Women who must wear cloth that covers their whole body in many muslim areas. Is that evil? Is it against human values, or against your values? Many muslim women move to the USA, and continue to wear those dresses that cover the body and face. Were they brainwashed? Are they stupid? Or do they have values that are different than yours.
a nationality is a tribe, a false arbitrary geopolitical boundary
I disagree. A nationality is more than that. It is a common family. It is history. It is my grandfather living next door to your grandfather, and about all of us sharing some values in common. If you and I today decide we want values different than what our grandparents had, that is our right. But if someone from a different part of the world wants to change us, that is wrong.
People feel better when they live next to others with a common idea about life and happiness. I doubt a priest would have a happy life next to a porn star. If my community is more like the priest, than that is our right. If your community is more like the porn star, that is your right.
What it comes down to is self determination. People have a right to pick their own lives. That does not include having a different country destabalize your economy or force different viewpoints.
What I was reffering to was not a school ordered play. It is something the drama club was doing. They did not force anyone to participate in the christmas play. But it was a huge sucess the past years, the tickets would sell out, the town loved it. And the drama club raised money.
The school tried to offer an alternative to the people who did not want a christmas play, the school offered them to have equal use of the auditorium to put on their own show. But the muslim sued the school anyways. He said since it was on taxpayer funded land, and the school was paid by taxes, the school could not have a religious play, even if it was only the christmas carol.
Think of values as ethnic food. Places that serve food that you find pungent and offensive to the senses, with strong nasty smells. Now imagine a place where people can't get enough of this food. They love it, they smile and are so happy when they eat it. Yet, to you, it makes you sick in the stomach.
That is how I view culture. Some places and systems of government might not be what I want. But I respect the people who live in that area. They are their own cooks, making their own lunch. Do the people of the USA know without a doubt their values are the right ones, the ones everyone should and must have? How long has the USA had its current set of values, how long until they change again?
Think of the other side of the coin. We live in the USA, and there was a HUGE stock crash, people lost everything, we are now poor. But we still have our system of values in place. Iran hits it big with oil, and is wealthy beyond their dreams. 10 years later, with that wealth, Iran now also has a powerful military. Iran decided to send observers to the USA to see how we live, and they are shocked to see people buying porn magazines on street corners, that Playboy sells millions of copies. They decide they must stop this lifestyle, for our benifit, because we don't know any better. Would we want that?
People who don't want to live in Iran will find ways out. Or they will organize and revolt. I don't think it makes the USA look any better to help these people overthrow their government, it looks like imperialism. It hurts what the USA is trying to do. If we throw out the religious government, and then open up factories, it looks like we are enslaving a people. If people who dress women up from head to toe in cloth all of a suddent see playboy at the magazine rack, they will go berzerk. Likewise, if someone comes here and tries to force a woman to conceal herself, she will get really upset and want to fight, her values were offended.
This happened in the primaries in South Carolina. John McCain unexpectedly beat Bush in the previous primary. McCain, a republican, was getting lots of votes from independents and democrats. McCain was also a vet from the Vietnam war and highly respected because as a prisioner of war, his father who was an navy admeral could have gotten him freed. But McCain said he would rather stay in a prision than compromise his country or their values. You can take that either way, as supporting something good or bad, but the one thing you can not argue is he was a man of conviction. When it came time, his opinions really meant something to him. And South Carolina has one of the largest populations of veterans in the USA. Bush was worried they would vote for McCain, because he actually served and paid a high price for his service.
So what happened? The primary system was ran by volunteers, ordinary people who show up at the polls so people can vote. Bush had people register to voluneteer at polling places in black communities, where there were more democrats. When it came time to open the polls, none of the volunteers showed up. The polling places never opened, instead there were signs telling people to drive to the next county to vote. McCain lost that state, and all the steam from his last win. Bush went on to win with one of the largest war chests ever.
If McCain would have won South Carolina, he would have been able to raise more money. Bush would have lost some potential donors money. McCain went on to win other states after that, Michigan and others, but never could raise enough money to continue.
it is true what you say if the other country in question had a government whose policies reflected that of the governed
that is not the case in iran or china
therefore, criticism of iran and china is perfectly valid, unless you don't believe the citizens of china or iran deserve a say in how they are governed
The USA paid millions and millions of dollars to put the SHAH in power. We supported him, we gave him money, we gave him miliraty power. And what happened?
The PEOPLE of Iran threw him out. How could that happen if the people of Iran wanted USA style values? The SHAH was all about USA values, about capitalism, about trade.
What happened is the PEOPLE of Iran decided that religion was most important to their country. They wanted a government that reflected their faith.
If the PEOPLE of Iran did not want the government they now have, they would revolt. They did it against the SHAH who had far more power and money than the current government. The SHAH had every resource the USA had at his disposal.
the notion of universal human rights is more and more important in today's world, not less
What are universal human rights? My set of values might be incompatible with yours. The anwser is, if I live with people who are 90% in agreement with me, we will get along. But if you come from 7000 miles away and tell me we ALL must change to meet your definition of human values, then we will have problems and probably war. Or if a country can't wage war, then individuals flying airplanes into large buildings.
Here is one other way to look at it. In some parts of Africa it is considered a part of becomming an adult to get the genitals cut. They have been doing it for thousands of years. It is their culture, and those who don't participate never feel like real members of their community. Should the USA go over to these tribes, deep in the wilderness, and tell these tribes they must stop their culture because it is violent and against womens rights?
The anwser is the USA is telling everyone else how they must live, and that is capitalism. If the USA can't get your natural resources, they will attempt to destabalize your part of the world. If that does not cause the government to crash, they will launch war.
I will give you one example. Do you know what happened on Sept 11th? No, not in the USA, in Chile. The people of Chile held an election, and elected a communist. They USA gave his opponent millions of dollars for the next election. The USA spread lies about the current president. But the people of Chile did not believe and re-elected the communist to a second term. Nixon ordered the communist president assasinated. The guy who took over, Pinochet caused over 27,000 people to dissapear, people who were anti-USA and anti-capitalism.
If the USA has cause to go into Iraq over the deaths of 3,000 people who died in the world trade center, what rights does Chile have against the USA?
I wish nothing but the best for Iran. I hope they build nukes. I hope they rebuild the great civilization that was in the middle east, when the best universities and libraries in the world were all in the middle east. Here is a secret the USA does not want you to know. The people of Iran are nice and caring people. If you are poor, there is a better chance of someone opening his door to you in Iran and feeding you. If you are sick and have no money, there is a better chance of a doctor giving you free help in Iran than the USA.
The Iranian people are not like Jehovas witnesses. They don't force anyone to believe anything. But they do want to be respected. They want to be a religious state where the values of the majority are reflected in their newspapers and media and movies.
In the USA free speech is only possible with money. Look at elections, the candidates with the most money wins most of the time. And whenever there is a law which tries to limit how much money special interest groups can give to candidates, the courts say that money is speech, and they throw those laws out.
How much does a US Senate seat cost? 7 Million dollars? A US Congressional seat is over 1 Million dollars. Who can get this kind of cash? How? If I raise $200,000 in a fund raiser for a candidate, and that candidate wins, how much of an ear do I get? How much influance? What if I am not even from his state, will he take my call over a local constituent? I bet if I call him and say "Law Z is being voted on tomorrow, and I would really like to see you vote for it". If he does not get my $200,000 the next time, he might not win. What does he do?
There is no free speech in the USA. In the USA there is SPAM from advertising, it drowns out everything else. 10 minutes of sit coms or reality TV followed by 4 minutes of commercials. If I was more cynical, I would wonder if they were trying to train my brain to accept information in small tiny sized nuggets.
Nope, the government is not censoring anything. Government is what the people choose. The USA put in a puppet government, the SHAH, who we supported with USA money. What happened? The PEOPLE of Iran overthrew him because they did not want a western style of government.
It is not that hard to overthrow a government. People have done it throught history, many, many times.
Iran has every right to be a religious state, to pass laws saying they will not tolerate certain views or lifestyles. I kinda admire them. They are not letting 1 idiot tell 100 other people they all must change. It is like in the USA, when 1 muslim can tell a school with 100 christians they can not have a christmas play because the school is violating their rights of seperation of church and state.
Who ever said that every country on the planet must have USA values?
Maybe the people of Iran don't want to watch the stuff we do. Does 1 person who wants to see that content have the right to tell 1,000,000 other people to put up with his crap?
Even in the USA we have community standards. There are some small pockets inside the USA where it is illegal for adult companies to send DVD's. There are places in the USA where the communities want old fashioned values, they want to be able to keep the front door unlocked at night.
If you trully have an idea nobody else has thought of, how long will you have market share? Say you make a device that makes cars run off water. People put water in your device, and gasoline comes out of the other side. Forget about the fact that it is not possible, but you make a machine that pulls gasoline out of water and the air. You will make billions of dollars.
Now, it will take other companies months and months just to figure out how your machine works. It will take them months to manufacture the first prototype. You should have at least six months in the marketplace without competition.
What good are patents for? With gas prices at over 2 bucks a gallon, your device could sell for a high price, all profit. What reason do you have to offer your product at walmart prices, and with a low per unit profit?
But if 10 companies come out in 6 months to 1 year, all making the same product, the market benifits. You, the original inventor, you must get lean. You must either convince people your product is better in some way, or you have to price it in accordance with competition.
Since you were first, you will have built a name. You will have an advantage like that of an incumbant in office. You have an advantage, you don't need any more.
There is another benifit to society. If you make your money in a year, then the competition gets too great and you are forced out, you can go back to the drawing board. You had one very good year where you made lots of money. Now you can sit on that money and drink wine and travel, or you can go back to the drawing board and develop something else. But why should the law let you whord your idea, and exists for no other reason that to defend it?
On the worst case scenereo, you don't even have any products, you just purchase a ton of patents and sue people. Say you are microsoft, you buy patents you can later use to stop companies from offering products.
We need to get rid of patents.
We disagree with DLO's claim, and, we believe that our PodBuddy is so utterly different from their company's TransPod product that there can be no question of infringement. But, we are not able to fund the sort of protracted legal battle that would be required to prove our point in court. So, we are forced to kill the PodBuddy.
So a small company has a product, gets a letter threatening a lawsuit, and they fold because they can not afford a lawyer?
I sure hope Walmart never takes this approach.
Come to think of it, I wish they did. They should have patented the mail in rebate.
I want to let the many thousands of you who have contacted us since January about wanting a PodBuddy that I have asked Jeff Grady, the owner at DLO to produce the product for you. And, I have offered him all of our development work, prototypes, production tooling, intellectual property releases, several purchase orders we have here from national buyers, and, our entire list of email inquiries from folks like you. Our price to Jeff?... the $23,000 we have invested in just the hard injection mold tooling. His answer?... No way. He is not interested.
What? He can't sell his product, so he wants to sell his email addresses.
My statement to Jeff was that the PodBuddy would likely sell about five times as many units as his TransPod. And, that, if we can't build it, then he should build it. After all, he's the one using a patent to keep a better, more desirable competitive product off the market.
Now this is where I would like to hear from a lawyer. What if I have an idea. I have no plans to make this idea come to market, but I have an idea. Can I patent it and sit on it, like some people who buy websites and force a third party to pay a huge fee to buy it?
And what about ideas that would naturally come to everyones mind? What if someone patented air conditioning in cars as blowing cold air? Or if someone patented cordless phones? There seems to be so many things which could be patented, then we would have only one choice in the market. Didn't the Sherman Act pass to stop these kinds of things from happening?
It seems to me the more wording lawyers add to make patentes less prohibitive, the more prohibitive they get because only a lawyer will be able to support or defend a claim. We should just do away with patents all together. Let anyone who can build a product. Let the best product, the best priced product, and the one with most quality win. I bet the original will still gain market share for being first. After that they will have to compete. What is wrong with that??
You are a bigot. Better lock those doors the next time you drive though a black neighborhood. [saracsm] It is not that they are poor that increases crime, it is because they are black[/sarcasm]
Nothing except degree makes any of man's abilities "special". We are just smart apes.
We are not apes. We are humans. Science is only a bunch of theories. I believe we were created by God. We came from somewhere. What do you believe? The Big Bang? Where did that come from?
Let me tell you my logic.
The USA has the biggest economy, the best army, we do everything the best. It is not like we steal or lie or cheat to deprive others of what is theirs.
Okay... there was a heavy element of sarcasm there.
But honestly, looking at that list, is there anything it can tell us about a countries intellectual power? Or could it be just as easy to replace the title of the paper from "Top 100 Chess players" to "Autism list"? Does being good at chess correlate to anything else? Does chess score indicate IQ? Does chess scores indicate earning power? Anyone have a t-shirt that says "I play chess... Love me before I become rich"?
And why is Bobby Fisher not listed. Do people lose their rankings if they don't play for a set time. It seems only fair for a person to keep their ranking when they retire.
And this gives me one interesting idea. I wonder if instead of a super computer, we can recreate one man. If we can take the thinking process of one person, and program a computer. That way, people who live 400 years from now will be able to play me.
Or a really powerfull magnet.
But then again, I could put some CN in anyones food and have the same effect.
The differance between a person and a computer is people can learn. A computer can not. I played chess for many years, and I did not get better by reading books or studying past games. I got better by playing.
Chess can never be reduced to a number of possible moves just like art can never be reduced to a number of strokes. God gave us something which seperates us from all other things on earth. We are unlike anything else.
If all a computer can be is logic, I wonder if anyone has found a way to force a shutdown loop, to do something so illogical the computer can not continue.
It is one of the reasons I hate playing chess online. There are not many, but every now and then I run into someone who is running chessmaster on their computer. They just want to win, they don't want to play the game.
Chess is a relaxing game. It is supposed to be intellectually pure and honest.
It is too bad that Vegas never started with chess tables. That would be something to do, better than blowing money on the slots. There would be no cheating. Maybe in order to play you would have to register with the casinos, and they would keep track of your wins and losses and give you a score so people would know your level.