Chess variants is definitely Eurocentric and culturally offensive. Shogi and Xiangqi and Changgi are chess variants? No, chess is a Xianqi variant! A Shatranj variant! A cheap ripoff of Makruk! A copyright-infringing Chatarunga clone!
Lasker may have been higher above his opponents than Kasparov, but so was Morphy. Heck, so was Philidor. Back then there weren't as many people aspiring to be masters at chess. If Lasker were alive today he would have a lot of theory to catch up on, and not just novelties like new openings or hypermodernism. Kasparov has been above 2800 for some time now, and he has plenty of close games with people 200 Elo below him.
The chess problem in 2001 was really well set up, but unfortunately they used descriptive notation which had been overwhelming replaced with algebraic notation well before 2001!
True...someone like Mikhail Tal would probably fare poorly against computers if he played the kind of spectacular, speculative, and psychologically devastating sacrifices that made him so popular.
Actually, I think the real reason the computer drew in the latest matches against Kasparov and Kramnik was psychology more than anything else. The computer does not get stressed or fatigued when it is under pressure, nor does it lose morale after a blunder (like Kramnik) or have any fears of losing (like Kasparov).
Amazon also briefly listed the release date of Half-Life 2 as December 30, 1969. I know it's easy to get confused when you put "Half-Life 2" and "release date" in the same sentence, but isn't it a little odd considering that time started on January 1, 1970?:)
If it's clear and yellow, you've got juice there, fellow.
If it's thick and brown, you're in cider town.
Now there are two exceptions...
Re:Desktop Manager is Amazing
on
Hacking Quartz
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I would be more concerned about the fact that "secret" code is subject to change without notice. Objective-C doesn't support private methods, but leaving prototypes out of the header file makes it "pseudo-private." Aqua does have a few other unimplemented capabilities, like theoretical support for tear-off menus. Then again, we might see things like this in the future--it used to be that changing key bindings for menu items at runtime was partially coded but unsupported, but it was added as a feature to Panther.
Remember those commercials for BASF? "We don't make the things you use; we make the things you use better." Slashdot could have a similar advertisement: "We don't make the things you use; we take the things you use and imagine Beowulf clusters of them!"
At first from the lower res screenshots I thought the whole menu bar would be plastic, but I'm relieved now that I see it won't be. Still I agree it does seem a bit off--but they might fix it just like nobody liked the blue apple in the middle of the menubar.
You mean Apple will have to make its system exchange data with Windows which will use a system without the slightest thought to portability. I'm not trying to troll--this is less an issue of Apple believing in better code than it is a consequence of the fact that almost everybody uses Windows, so MS can afford to act like they are the only player, whereas Apple would be stupid to act the same.
I actually have a hypothesis that if you were to take into consideration all form of television programming everywhere, that at any given point in time M*A*S*H is playing on at least one channel somewhere.
If you want to hear what it would sound like if the fans were going full speed, trying booting in single-user mode and wait ten mintues. Your computer will sound like it's going to blow up:)
What's bizarre is that the middle button works in Safari, despite the whole one button mouse policy. I'd like to know if Steve Jobs actually uses an Apple mouse:)
Fritz 8 is good at this (and is really the one of the best chess programs out there), though it's only for Windows. It's the same program that got a draw against Vladmir Kramnik (the current world champion) though you can certainly turn the difficulty down:)
I believe that Apple Chess uses the GNU Chess engine, which is more polished than Big Bang's engine (which may very well be brute force). For example, it will spend more time calculating what appear to be promising branches in the search tree. Also it has a mechanism to roughly judge the balance of a position based on factors other than the possibility for winning material or checkmate (though computers are still much weaker than humans at this in general). GNU Chess also uses an opening book, since trying to find good moves early on based on looking ahead is pretty useless. Big Bang chess almost certainly has no opening book as it doesn't even necessarily attempt to control the center, which is the first thing you learn in opening theory.
Apple did invent the Lisa interface, however the Macintosh interface was a combination of Lisa and the Xerox PARC GUI (well, depends on you ask really). Of course poor Douglas Engelbart never gets any credit for inventing the GUI in NLS in 1968 even before UNIX was created!
Big Bang Chess certainly is cool in its integration with iChat and Mail, but as a chess program it's not too great. It doesn't support en passant (and will in fact move your pawn forward instead, a move you didn't tell it to make if you try to capture en passant). Also, I know it's mostly meant for multiplayer use, but the singleplayer is just laughable even compared to dozens of amateur chess engines. It plays like a 10-year-old.
Slashdot Mirror
Chess variants is definitely Eurocentric and culturally offensive. Shogi and Xiangqi and Changgi are chess variants? No, chess is a Xianqi variant! A Shatranj variant! A cheap ripoff of Makruk! A copyright-infringing Chatarunga clone!
Lasker may have been higher above his opponents than Kasparov, but so was Morphy. Heck, so was Philidor. Back then there weren't as many people aspiring to be masters at chess. If Lasker were alive today he would have a lot of theory to catch up on, and not just novelties like new openings or hypermodernism. Kasparov has been above 2800 for some time now, and he has plenty of close games with people 200 Elo below him.
Computers are getting better at chess, but so are humans. In fact some people think that computers are getting better no faster than humans.
The chess problem in 2001 was really well set up, but unfortunately they used descriptive notation which had been overwhelming replaced with algebraic notation well before 2001!
Acutally, a closed-source engine has been banned over accusations of copying. I guess with open-source there's no worry :)
Actually, I think the real reason the computer drew in the latest matches against Kasparov and Kramnik was psychology more than anything else. The computer does not get stressed or fatigued when it is under pressure, nor does it lose morale after a blunder (like Kramnik) or have any fears of losing (like Kasparov).
I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!
Amazon also briefly listed the release date of Half-Life 2 as December 30, 1969. I know it's easy to get confused when you put "Half-Life 2" and "release date" in the same sentence, but isn't it a little odd considering that time started on January 1, 1970? :)
If it's clear and yellow, you've got juice there, fellow.
If it's thick and brown, you're in cider town.
Now there are two exceptions...
I would be more concerned about the fact that "secret" code is subject to change without notice. Objective-C doesn't support private methods, but leaving prototypes out of the header file makes it "pseudo-private." Aqua does have a few other unimplemented capabilities, like theoretical support for tear-off menus. Then again, we might see things like this in the future--it used to be that changing key bindings for menu items at runtime was partially coded but unsupported, but it was added as a feature to Panther.
Can I have some money now please?
What comes after OS X?
Emacs is more or less an OS with a bit of hacking.
The DMCA steps on me...I don't like the DMCA, it makes this song illegal, oh yeah...
Why would they? "Here's your code back; by the way, now it's a microkernel."
At first from the lower res screenshots I thought the whole menu bar would be plastic, but I'm relieved now that I see it won't be. Still I agree it does seem a bit off--but they might fix it just like nobody liked the blue apple in the middle of the menubar.
You mean Apple will have to make its system exchange data with Windows which will use a system without the slightest thought to portability. I'm not trying to troll--this is less an issue of Apple believing in better code than it is a consequence of the fact that almost everybody uses Windows, so MS can afford to act like they are the only player, whereas Apple would be stupid to act the same.
I actually have a hypothesis that if you were to take into consideration all form of television programming everywhere, that at any given point in time M*A*S*H is playing on at least one channel somewhere.
If you want to hear what it would sound like if the fans were going full speed, trying booting in single-user mode and wait ten mintues. Your computer will sound like it's going to blow up :)
What's bizarre is that the middle button works in Safari, despite the whole one button mouse policy. I'd like to know if Steve Jobs actually uses an Apple mouse :)
Fritz 8 is good at this (and is really the one of the best chess programs out there), though it's only for Windows. It's the same program that got a draw against Vladmir Kramnik (the current world champion) though you can certainly turn the difficulty down :)
I would use Konfabulator but I prefer GNOME to KDE.
I believe that Apple Chess uses the GNU Chess engine, which is more polished than Big Bang's engine (which may very well be brute force). For example, it will spend more time calculating what appear to be promising branches in the search tree. Also it has a mechanism to roughly judge the balance of a position based on factors other than the possibility for winning material or checkmate (though computers are still much weaker than humans at this in general). GNU Chess also uses an opening book, since trying to find good moves early on based on looking ahead is pretty useless. Big Bang chess almost certainly has no opening book as it doesn't even necessarily attempt to control the center, which is the first thing you learn in opening theory.
Apple did invent the Lisa interface, however the Macintosh interface was a combination of Lisa and the Xerox PARC GUI (well, depends on you ask really). Of course poor Douglas Engelbart never gets any credit for inventing the GUI in NLS in 1968 even before UNIX was created!
Big Bang Chess certainly is cool in its integration with iChat and Mail, but as a chess program it's not too great. It doesn't support en passant (and will in fact move your pawn forward instead, a move you didn't tell it to make if you try to capture en passant). Also, I know it's mostly meant for multiplayer use, but the singleplayer is just laughable even compared to dozens of amateur chess engines. It plays like a 10-year-old.