"You can't compare a grandmaster that has a fabulous direct knowledge of 5000-15.000 games to a database that has every important game since the invention of notation in them. "
But of course I can! And so do you. That's not the problem; the problem is that you don't consider the comparation to be "fair".
"My own database at this moment holds over 15 million games, That is far beyond what any human is capable of."
But of course it is! And the computer uses it to its advantage when playing chess so well that it becomes a stronger player than you. Again, the problem is not *saying* that a chess program is stronger than you, the problem is that you don't consider that to be "fair".
My question is "why?" Surely you don't see any problem with a car going faster than a human nor that diminishes the merit for the world's fastest 100m runner. Why don't you admit that computer programs make for stronger chess players than humans just as cars make for faster runners and done with it?
Oh... but that's because they use a superhuman database! Well, and cars use their superhuman internal combustion engines, so? Even then, it's just a matter of time that computers will win human competitors even without a database which would make them not only better but lightyears better than a human, then what? Would you commit suicide on despair of being computers "cleverer" than you then?
"If two gods were to play, white would forever win. This we *do* know as indisputable fact."
Despite your trolling, what is a known fact is that no, we don't know that. We still really don't know if chess is a first-mover-wins or not (i.e.: it's like tic-tac-toe -or even it might be the case that chess is a second-mover-wins game).
"You clearly don't understand how computer chess works. They win because they look ahead very far into the game, not just by having knowledge of previous games."
Not even that. Modern chess programs are a tad more "clever" than that: the difference is not how "far" they can look ahead (that's a trivial problem only too CPU intensive to be currently tractable) but how far they *don't* look ahead, that is, how cleverly they can throw away movement branches, so they don't expend time computing them based on strategic chess principles (and databases). For the easiest examples, you don't expend time thinking about the implications of illegal moves, nor those that "obvioulsy" put you in a losing position neither do the chess programs (and that's the key part: what's "obvious" and why).
"The program doesn't know how to play chess [,,,] every chessgame in the world that can beat me (and there are heaps of them) use databases."
Are you implying that you don't use your own database, that is, your memory? That you "make up" each game from the beginning out of just chess rules?
Wouldn't you recognize that a human player with better memory and more "flying hours" than you and able to apply that to his adavange so he would consistently win you is a better player than you?
I'd add more: for all the "mid level" players (those just a bit over the "I know the rules" up to just below elite grand masters) memory makes for the strongest tool that makes a difference, so what's the problem with computers being the same?
"I absolutely agree with you about the need for redundancy in your backup/safety systems, but as far as the hindsight thing goes this is an epic failure of the engineers and management of this plant. Clearly they have never bothered to do a safety audit on this plant or they would have realised that having one set of backup generators placed within reach of a tsunami is extremely unsafe."
Yeah. It's only that the safety systems were not within reach of a tsunami, so the nuclear plant did pass the safety audits.
Of course they are known to be within tsunami reach *now*, so safety checks will be changed.
"Ruling aside, the law will most likely be augmented to include networks and network devices in addition to computers."
Because?
What's the problem about breaking in someone's network that makes it a criminal offense instead of a civil one? This rule is quite a sensible one, why should it be overruled?
" Up to my early teens I recall taking advantage of this to gain wins in some minor competitions, but then I saw that it was not really productive and stopped engaging in that sort of thing."
100K *is* productive.
"As for "hard work", there is this mistaken belief by sycophants that clever people have to work hard to achieve impressive things"
They do when they *do* achieve impressive things.
"clever people can set themselves difficult challenges, but the majority coast along at a high level of achievement without having to put in much effort."
Then you have facts to test your hypothese against. This Even from the article either found hard competition from other gifted people in which case it's a fact he had to work hard to overqualify other people as gifted as him, or not enough clever people deemed meritable to fight for a 100K price in which case, who's really the clever one here? In any case, he achieved something valued 100K which is meritable by itself.
"Neither hard work nor achievements are necessarily good"
False. Achievements are meritable by its own definition.
"A man's value can only be measured in a particular context"
Except that money is the universal equalizer since it can be exchanged for anything. Absolutly talking Even achieved something worth 100K $, relatively talking Even achieved something worth 100K $ at the age of 17 which is even more meritable.
"so to simply say "everyone is not equally valuable" is fairly meaningless"
That's even more stupid, by your own argument. If context is all and contexts are varied, then it *must* be true that "everyone is not equally valuable" if only because the varying context.
"This may be the bit where you argue that the higher echelons of civil service, casino banking, corporate lawyering, etc are of benefit to society. If so, our conversation is over"
It is not over. That's the bit where I say I'm no one to judge it, so as long as people preferences, as showed by their facts, show them as a benefit for society, so must be it.
"Very few perform research with the aim of improving humanity's lot."
Neither so it's needed. As long as Humanity does in fact benefit from it, it's a matter of Humanity welfare, no matter what their deep motives were.
"I don't really see much value in celebrating geniuses of this sort - clearly mentally (or physically) gifted winners of prize X, Y, Z. It's like celebrating a particular race - you were born that way"
No it's not the same. By far, far range.
If you are born, say, green, then what did you do? Nothing.
If you are born intellectually gifted, then what did you do? Nothing.
BUT
If you are born intellectually gifted AND MAKE GOOD USE of that gift by, say, winning a 100K math price then that's something to celebrate.
"I prefer celebrating the love of learning and hard work"
a) Do you think Even's paper wrote itselft? It *is* a proof of love of learning and hard work.
b) Love of learning and hard work are indeed meritable. But, no, we are not snowflakes and every single one is equally valuable. Hard work is good; achievements are even better.
"The key here is that my manager respects and trusts my technical skill"
Which is only a valid approach if you *really* have the technical skills.
It's obvious when don't have the tech skills *at all* because then "it doesn't solve the problem". But what happens when you are tech savvy enough to be a danger to your environment? What if you are the king of the spaghetti code, the unmaintainable nightmare or the rube goldberg design?
"managing programmers is a completely different challenge than managing burger flippers"
And thaaat's exactly why Google can forget about technical expertise on their managers (at least for a while): because of their technicians.
Google happens to have a hard and long hiring process in order to be sure they hire top notch, aligned with the company culture, tech guys. When you have that, you can manage by listening, caring and taking out the rocks on the road for them because they will be motivated, able to do the work at hand and looking for themselves for new challenges.
But usually, developers make a lemon market, probably more or less motivated (sometimes not even so) but lacking skills. This you manage by setting clear orders and providing challenges to the troop to keep them growing and motivated and in order to do that you need a strong technical background on top of proper social skills.
So, no wonder Google found that about their managers but still that doesn't mean you can export the findings to a different company.
"How did a nuclear reactor in an earthquake-prone industrialized country get approval of any sort if it could not resist a magnitude 8.9 earthquake?"
By being approved in the seventies with what was considered state-of-the-art back then and a bit of realpolitiks: you can either be completly safe up to a never seen earthquake level and a tsunami and be ruined or you can take a slight risk and be known as a world-level economic power despite of the fact of being a not so big bunch of islands with almost no raw materials.
"Yeah, that'll solve the problem. Cause FOSS has such an easy time with distribution now, it don't need no steenking app store."
Maybe it doesn't need no stinking *Apple* app store if other contenders (I'm looking at you, Android) are clever enough to offer better conditions to open source developers.
"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell"
How are you expected to modify the software in any meaning sense without access to the sources?
"It should be ordered by priority and tackled with the top priority issue first (whether or not you already expect the software to work that way). The whole idea that you will stop adding critical new work until you have some arbitrary amount of "I thought this already worked" stuff left is kind of strange."
I think you have a point. This way, *any* software, no matter how complex it might be would be ready to release within hours:
There, done. Maybe you had a different expectation about how F #1 to #3 should work, maybe even because I, the developer, told that F #1 to #3 were due to work in a different way but, hey, that makes no difference, does it?
The fact is that there *is* a difference between something not being there and something expected to be there working in a different way than expected.
"Similarly, there is always a lack of functionality in a piece of software. There may be an expectation that it works in a certain way, but that is not a reason in and of itself to delay a release"
There is exactly the same reason to delay a release because functionality X, which is a landmark for the release not being there, and then more since "working as it's said to be working" is a landmark for each and every release.
"Why is there an expectation that the software does something, when in fact it doesn't do it?"
Slashdot Mirror
"You can't compare a grandmaster that has a fabulous direct knowledge of 5000-15.000 games to a database that has every important game since the invention of notation in them. "
But of course I can! And so do you. That's not the problem; the problem is that you don't consider the comparation to be "fair".
"My own database at this moment holds over 15 million games, That is far beyond what any human is capable of."
But of course it is! And the computer uses it to its advantage when playing chess so well that it becomes a stronger player than you. Again, the problem is not *saying* that a chess program is stronger than you, the problem is that you don't consider that to be "fair".
My question is "why?" Surely you don't see any problem with a car going faster than a human nor that diminishes the merit for the world's fastest 100m runner. Why don't you admit that computer programs make for stronger chess players than humans just as cars make for faster runners and done with it?
Oh... but that's because they use a superhuman database! Well, and cars use their superhuman internal combustion engines, so? Even then, it's just a matter of time that computers will win human competitors even without a database which would make them not only better but lightyears better than a human, then what? Would you commit suicide on despair of being computers "cleverer" than you then?
"If two gods were to play, white would forever win. This we *do* know as indisputable fact."
Despite your trolling, what is a known fact is that no, we don't know that. We still really don't know if chess is a first-mover-wins or not (i.e.: it's like tic-tac-toe -or even it might be the case that chess is a second-mover-wins game).
"You clearly don't understand how computer chess works. They win because they look ahead very far into the game, not just by having knowledge of previous games."
Not even that. Modern chess programs are a tad more "clever" than that: the difference is not how "far" they can look ahead (that's a trivial problem only too CPU intensive to be currently tractable) but how far they *don't* look ahead, that is, how cleverly they can throw away movement branches, so they don't expend time computing them based on strategic chess principles (and databases). For the easiest examples, you don't expend time thinking about the implications of illegal moves, nor those that "obvioulsy" put you in a losing position neither do the chess programs (and that's the key part: what's "obvious" and why).
"The program doesn't know how to play chess [,,,] every chessgame in the world that can beat me (and there are heaps of them) use databases."
Are you implying that you don't use your own database, that is, your memory? That you "make up" each game from the beginning out of just chess rules?
Wouldn't you recognize that a human player with better memory and more "flying hours" than you and able to apply that to his adavange so he would consistently win you is a better player than you?
I'd add more: for all the "mid level" players (those just a bit over the "I know the rules" up to just below elite grand masters) memory makes for the strongest tool that makes a difference, so what's the problem with computers being the same?
"I absolutely agree with you about the need for redundancy in your backup/safety systems, but as far as the hindsight thing goes this is an epic failure of the engineers and management of this plant. Clearly they have never bothered to do a safety audit on this plant or they would have realised that having one set of backup generators placed within reach of a tsunami is extremely unsafe."
Yeah. It's only that the safety systems were not within reach of a tsunami, so the nuclear plant did pass the safety audits.
Of course they are known to be within tsunami reach *now*, so safety checks will be changed.
"Ruling aside, the law will most likely be augmented to include networks and network devices in addition to computers."
Because?
What's the problem about breaking in someone's network that makes it a criminal offense instead of a civil one? This rule is quite a sensible one, why should it be overruled?
" Up to my early teens I recall taking advantage of this to gain wins in some minor competitions, but then I saw that it was not really productive and stopped engaging in that sort of thing."
100K *is* productive.
"As for "hard work", there is this mistaken belief by sycophants that clever people have to work hard to achieve impressive things"
They do when they *do* achieve impressive things.
"clever people can set themselves difficult challenges, but the majority coast along at a high level of achievement without having to put in much effort."
Then you have facts to test your hypothese against. This Even from the article either found hard competition from other gifted people in which case it's a fact he had to work hard to overqualify other people as gifted as him, or not enough clever people deemed meritable to fight for a 100K price in which case, who's really the clever one here? In any case, he achieved something valued 100K which is meritable by itself.
"Neither hard work nor achievements are necessarily good"
False. Achievements are meritable by its own definition.
"A man's value can only be measured in a particular context"
Except that money is the universal equalizer since it can be exchanged for anything. Absolutly talking Even achieved something worth 100K $, relatively talking Even achieved something worth 100K $ at the age of 17 which is even more meritable.
"so to simply say "everyone is not equally valuable" is fairly meaningless"
That's even more stupid, by your own argument. If context is all and contexts are varied, then it *must* be true that "everyone is not equally valuable" if only because the varying context.
"This may be the bit where you argue that the higher echelons of civil service, casino banking, corporate lawyering, etc are of benefit to society. If so, our conversation is over"
It is not over. That's the bit where I say I'm no one to judge it, so as long as people preferences, as showed by their facts, show them as a benefit for society, so must be it.
"Very few perform research with the aim of improving humanity's lot."
Neither so it's needed. As long as Humanity does in fact benefit from it, it's a matter of Humanity welfare, no matter what their deep motives were.
"Wet or Dry?
Weeeeeeeaaahhhh!
"If I say I don't know are you going to throw me off a bridge?"
I'll try. Then, if you manage to stay afloat that will mean you are made of wood, therefore you are a witch.
" when you're measuring a 2x4, it's far easier to divide 4' 3 3/8" by 2 than it is to divide 1.267 meters by 2."
You are kidding, aren't you?
"I don't really see much value in celebrating geniuses of this sort - clearly mentally (or physically) gifted winners of prize X, Y, Z. It's like celebrating a particular race - you were born that way"
No it's not the same. By far, far range.
If you are born, say, green, then what did you do? Nothing.
If you are born intellectually gifted, then what did you do? Nothing.
BUT
If you are born intellectually gifted AND MAKE GOOD USE of that gift by, say, winning a 100K math price then that's something to celebrate.
"I prefer celebrating the love of learning and hard work"
a) Do you think Even's paper wrote itselft? It *is* a proof of love of learning and hard work.
b) Love of learning and hard work are indeed meritable. But, no, we are not snowflakes and every single one is equally valuable. Hard work is good; achievements are even better.
"The key here is that my manager respects and trusts my technical skill"
Which is only a valid approach if you *really* have the technical skills.
It's obvious when don't have the tech skills *at all* because then "it doesn't solve the problem". But what happens when you are tech savvy enough to be a danger to your environment? What if you are the king of the spaghetti code, the unmaintainable nightmare or the rube goldberg design?
"Socialism is a failure. It has failed everywhere it has been tried"
Except for the fact that each and every corporation in the whole world is run under the premises of a communist regime, of course.
"managing programmers is a completely different challenge than managing burger flippers"
And thaaat's exactly why Google can forget about technical expertise on their managers (at least for a while): because of their technicians.
Google happens to have a hard and long hiring process in order to be sure they hire top notch, aligned with the company culture, tech guys. When you have that, you can manage by listening, caring and taking out the rocks on the road for them because they will be motivated, able to do the work at hand and looking for themselves for new challenges.
But usually, developers make a lemon market, probably more or less motivated (sometimes not even so) but lacking skills. This you manage by setting clear orders and providing challenges to the troop to keep them growing and motivated and in order to do that you need a strong technical background on top of proper social skills.
So, no wonder Google found that about their managers but still that doesn't mean you can export the findings to a different company.
"Seems like they don't know anything about Tartessos"
Of course. How in hell would a Spanish Classics Ph.D student know the slightest bit about Tartessos.
Did you consider that what this student fellow meant might be that Atlantis is an old memory of a Tartessian debacle?
"How did a nuclear reactor in an earthquake-prone industrialized country get approval of any sort if it could not resist a magnitude 8.9 earthquake?"
By being approved in the seventies with what was considered state-of-the-art back then and a bit of realpolitiks: you can either be completly safe up to a never seen earthquake level and a tsunami and be ruined or you can take a slight risk and be known as a world-level economic power despite of the fact of being a not so big bunch of islands with almost no raw materials.
I'd say Japan took the proper option.
"Also legal challenge is also a relatively new concept too. at least on time scales of solomon."
Dumb appreciation once we consider the Judgement of Solomon *was* a legal challenge.
"Electrons have a flavor?"
No. It's whooshquarks that have flavor.
"A fire at a fossil fuel plant won't poison an area for decades and cost hundreds of lives from cancer decades later."
Probably yes, they will.
"you cannot see radioactive contamination without instruments."
You cannot see polycyclic aromathic compounds either.
"it doesn't mean it can be used for binary distribution, which was my point."
It doesn't mean it *can't* be used for binary distribution, I meant.
"Yeah, that'll solve the problem. Cause FOSS has such an easy time with distribution now, it don't need no steenking app store."
Maybe it doesn't need no stinking *Apple* app store if other contenders (I'm looking at you, Android) are clever enough to offer better conditions to open source developers.
"The text you quote was offered as an example of what appears in the source code files. :-)"
Of course yes, since that's its intended use. But AFAIK, it doesn't mean it can be used for binary distribution, which was my point.
"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell"
How are you expected to modify the software in any meaning sense without access to the sources?
"It should be ordered by priority and tackled with the top priority issue first (whether or not you already expect the software to work that way). The whole idea that you will stop adding critical new work until you have some arbitrary amount of "I thought this already worked" stuff left is kind of strange."
I think you have a point. This way, *any* software, no matter how complex it might be would be ready to release within hours:
Functionality #1: print "hello, world"
Functionality #2: print "hello, world"
Functionality #3: print "hello, world"
There, done. Maybe you had a different expectation about how F #1 to #3 should work, maybe even because I, the developer, told that F #1 to #3 were due to work in a different way but, hey, that makes no difference, does it?
The fact is that there *is* a difference between something not being there and something expected to be there working in a different way than expected.
"Similarly, there is always a lack of functionality in a piece of software. There may be an expectation that it works in a certain way, but that is not a reason in and of itself to delay a release"
There is exactly the same reason to delay a release because functionality X, which is a landmark for the release not being there, and then more since "working as it's said to be working" is a landmark for each and every release.
"Why is there an expectation that the software does something, when in fact it doesn't do it?"
You aren't seriously saying that, are you?
"You had days????"
No we haven't. We just had one day, and it happened to be Monday.
And we couldn't send the youngsters out of our lawns since they weren't invented yet, either.