What is it with Slashdot and pseudo-scientific stories lately? I know Slashdot editors can't spell, I know they can't keep track of how many times they post a story, but I surely hoped they'd have the basic scientific literacy needed to spot this as purest bullshit....
Yerm... I think you're wrong about Fischer and Capablanca. These guys were great geniuses, and their games were inspiring, daring and brilliant. But if one of these two (or any of the other great grandmasters of the past, for that matter) had to play Kasparov today they would lose badly. Even if they were in peak form. The reason is that chess is a different game from what it was even as little as twenty years ago. Today's grandmasters get trained in the latest and greatest advances in opening theory, and supported in analysis by computers and massive databases. The advances in opening theory alone would be enough to give a decisive advantage in something like half the games.
But I think that even if there was some way of comparing native talent, totally divorced from training and theory, the greatest player of all time is none of the three players mentioned. Murpy would give them all a run for their money...
The "world" team can never win if moves are decided by ballot. The reason for this is that there is no chance that enough people would understand the strategy and tactics involved, so most people would vote for bad moves.
Now here's the reactionary bit, and only half tongue-in-cheek... Why would a strategy that woudn't win a chess game be good enough to run a country? What are the chances that your average punter can make the best decision on macro-economics, ethics, or foreign policy? Does anyone out there actually believe that a bunch of glorified public entertainers, voted into power by the ignorant masses, desperate to keep themselves in kickbacks and armour-plated limousines could possibly be an optimal way to reach public wellbeing?
George Bernard Shaw once said that democracy is a method of ensuring that people are governed no better than they deserve. Someone else said that its a way to allow people to oppress themselves. I'm sure you can come up with enough issues to illustrate the truth of these statements yourself...
So here's my solution. Let's take over the world, and start an open source government. No secrets, no lies, no politicians. Every suggestion gets judged purely by merit, good ones percolate to the top, bad ones disappear. Since there is no presidential term, we could affoard to take the long-term view, since we don't need to please voters, we can affoard to make unpleasant but neccesary decisions, since people are judged by merit, we never need to suffer under an ill-informed decision again...
During the first half of last year, while he was working on the book, Pike gave a semester course in Software Engineering at Sydney University. I was lucky enough to be able to attend most of it. It looks like the course was a test-bed for the book - we implemented shaney and wrote a virtual machine with a just-in-time compiler - both examples from the book, many other code snippets come straight from the lecture notes for the course - indeed much of the lecture notes look like preliminary copies of chapters from the book.
Something that can, perhaps, not be geaned from the book is the "Pike-course-experience". He started the first lecture by holding the previous year's Software Engineering textbook aloft, and loudly proclaiming that it was less than worthless, and that we shouldn't pollute our minds with it. This caused the academics in the audience (which probably included the previous year's lecturer) to gasp, faint and haemorrage. Much of the CompSci faculty attended the lectures - the sight of two rows of Professors, Assistant Professors, Lecturers, Assistant Lecturers, and Tutors nodding sagely at his every word, showing that they, at least, were in complete agreement with Pike, and in fact came to the same conclusions quite independently, is something that will haunt me for the rest of my days. The fact that Pike is perhaps one of the most opinionated men I've met in my life (regardig programming, at least), didn't make the Faculty's life any easier. At one point one of them questioned a Pike-ism with "But Dijkstra said...", and Pike shot him down with "Dijkstra was a brilliant man, but he never compiled a single line of code he wrote...". He had similar biting things to say about C++, the Sparc architecture, Apple computers, EMACS, X-Windows, Java, and others too numerous to mention...
What I carried away from the course was a subtle shift in my conception of programming. Pike is vehemently opposed to all the layers of abstraction and obfuscation we impose on ourselves in software. He had many, many elegant solutions to everyday programming problems, including gems on header files, byte-order in network programs and user interfaces. He has a keen eye for what can and should be done away with, and his coding style and ethos is a pleasure to behold. If I didn't do the course, I'd probably buy the book...
I've been reading/. for a long, long time. Like everyone else I've noticed a general decline in the quality of posts, to the extent that I very rarely read comments. Until recently, that is. Moderation is an excellent idea - not only do I now read comments more regularly, but I am even tempted to reply...
So here is my take on the restriction of moderators. Restricting moderators from moderating forums to which they post is a bad idea. The reasons are simple. Moderation is all about weeding out the insipid, ill-informed, and ill-concieved posts, and drawing attention to the well-informed and interesting posts. A moderator who is interested in a certain subject would almost certainly be better informed about it, and therefore better qualified to moderate comments about it. But if a moderator is especially interested in a subject, they would also be more likely to post about it.
The net effect would therefore be to discourage moderators from moderating topics on which they are well informed.
If enough moderators are out there moderating, healthy diversity in opinion would counteract moderators trying to promote their own opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
What is it with Slashdot and pseudo-scientific stories lately? I know Slashdot editors can't spell, I know they can't keep track of how many times they post a story, but I surely hoped they'd have the basic scientific literacy needed to spot this as purest bullshit....
[aldo putting on his serious chess hat]
Yerm... I think you're wrong about Fischer and Capablanca. These guys were great geniuses, and their games were inspiring, daring and brilliant. But if one of these two (or any of the other great grandmasters of the past, for that matter) had to play Kasparov today they would lose badly. Even if they were in peak form. The reason is that chess is a different game from what it was even as little as twenty years ago. Today's grandmasters get trained in the latest and greatest advances in opening theory, and supported in analysis by computers and massive databases. The advances in opening theory alone would be enough to give a decisive advantage in something like half the games.
But I think that even if there was some way of comparing native talent, totally divorced from training and theory, the greatest player of all time is none of the three players mentioned.
Murpy would give them all a run for their money...
The "world" team can never win if moves are decided by ballot. The reason for this is that there is no chance that enough people would understand the strategy and tactics involved, so most people would vote for bad moves.
Now here's the reactionary bit, and only half tongue-in-cheek... Why would a strategy that woudn't win a chess game be good enough to run a country? What are the chances that your average punter can make the best decision on macro-economics, ethics, or foreign policy? Does anyone out there actually believe that a bunch of glorified public entertainers, voted into power by the ignorant masses, desperate to keep themselves in kickbacks and armour-plated limousines could possibly be an optimal way to reach public wellbeing?
George Bernard Shaw once said that democracy is a method of ensuring that people are governed no better than they deserve. Someone else said that its a way to allow people to oppress themselves. I'm sure you can come up with enough issues to illustrate the truth of these statements yourself...
So here's my solution. Let's take over the world, and start an open source government. No secrets, no lies, no politicians. Every suggestion gets judged purely by merit, good ones percolate to the top, bad ones disappear. Since there is no presidential term, we could affoard to take the long-term view, since we don't need to please voters, we can affoard to make unpleasant but neccesary decisions, since people are judged by merit, we never need to suffer under an ill-informed decision again...
In short, Linus for president!
During the first half of last year, while he was working on the book, Pike gave a semester course in Software Engineering at Sydney University. I was lucky enough to be able to attend most of it. It looks like the course was a test-bed for the book - we implemented shaney and wrote a virtual machine with a just-in-time compiler - both examples from the book, many other code snippets come straight from the lecture notes for the course - indeed much of the lecture notes look
like preliminary copies of chapters from the book.
Something that can, perhaps, not be geaned from the book is the "Pike-course-experience". He started the first lecture by holding the previous year's Software Engineering textbook aloft, and loudly proclaiming that it was less than worthless, and that we shouldn't pollute our minds with it. This caused the academics in the audience (which probably included the previous year's lecturer) to gasp, faint and haemorrage. Much of the CompSci faculty attended the lectures - the sight of two rows of Professors, Assistant Professors, Lecturers, Assistant Lecturers, and Tutors nodding sagely at his every word, showing that they, at least, were in complete agreement with Pike, and in fact came to the same conclusions quite independently, is something that will haunt me for the rest of my days. The fact that Pike is perhaps one of the most opinionated men I've met in my life (regardig programming, at least), didn't make the Faculty's life any easier. At one point one of them questioned a Pike-ism with "But Dijkstra said...", and Pike shot him down with "Dijkstra was a brilliant man, but he never compiled a single line of code he wrote...". He had similar biting things to say about C++, the Sparc architecture, Apple computers, EMACS, X-Windows, Java, and others too numerous to mention...
What I carried away from the course was a subtle shift in my conception of programming. Pike is vehemently opposed to all the layers of abstraction and obfuscation we impose on ourselves in software. He had many, many elegant solutions to everyday programming problems, including gems on header files, byte-order in network programs and user interfaces. He has a keen eye for what can and should be done away with, and his coding style and ethos is a pleasure to behold. If I didn't do the course, I'd probably buy the book...
I've been reading
So here is my take on the restriction of moderators. Restricting moderators from moderating forums to which they post is a bad idea. The reasons are simple. Moderation is all about weeding out the insipid, ill-informed, and ill-concieved posts, and drawing attention to the well-informed and interesting posts. A moderator who is interested in a certain subject would almost certainly be better informed about it, and therefore better qualified to moderate comments about it. But if a moderator is especially interested in a subject, they would also be more likely to post about it.
The net effect would therefore be to discourage moderators from moderating topics on which they are well informed.
If enough moderators are out there moderating, healthy diversity in opinion would counteract moderators trying to promote their own opinions.