Yea! Garry blundered and lost in time pressure. I am happy! More later…
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Yea! Garry blundered and lost in time pressure. I am happy! More later… It is a draw. I hate draws. NO FUN. It was an exciting chess game to get there though. Oh well. More thoughts later once I am home. It is a draw. I hate draws. NO FUN. It was an exciting chess game to get there though. Oh well. More thoughts later once I am home. It seems like these are happening more and more often. Kasparov is playing one of the world’s best computers at a chess tournament in NYC. I’ve been to at least one game of the last three of these tournaments I think. And watched most of the rest online. Since my schedule is pretty free now, I just signed up for all four games of this tournament. Tickets are free, first come first serve. Now, I actually suck at chess, and don’t understand most of what happens in these games. But watching them and the commentary surrounding them is fun and educational. But I must admit, I am mainly there to root for the computer. I think it is only a matter of time before the puny humans are routinely crushed, and hope to see the day that happens, and Kasp can’t even eek out one win. We probably are not there yet, but soon perhaps. Soon… I do have a couple beefs with how the computer teams have been run int he past though. Here they are: #1) While the computer chooses its own moves, the TEAM of human programmers and handlers has always decided when to offer resignations and draws, and has decided if they shuld accept draw offers. This is just wrong. The computer should have to make these decisions itself. This is a part of the game, and if the computer is truely to be the one playing, humans should not be involved in ANY decisions. #2) Even if the computer makes the decision, it should remember that it is a computer. It will see any mistakes immediately, and not make any obvious ones. The human can. Even the best human in the world. As a strategy to WIN the computer should NEVER resign, offer a draw, or accept a draw. It should force each game to conclude via the rules only. Checkmate, stalemate, draw by repeated poisition, 50 move rule or lack of time. (Or I suppose the human can resign.) First, this would give the human many more opportunities to make a mistake. A mistake the computer could take advantage of. Two, such a strategy would fluster the hell out of the human and anger him (especially Kasparov with his temper). That would make the human MORE likely to make a mistake. Third, in an extended draw sequence, the human is far more likely to get into time pressure, again increasing the chances of an error, or even running out of time. If the computer truly wants to win, it needs to fully take advantage of its strengths… which includes giving the human every possible opportunity to make a mistake. Finally, there are a lot of chess newcomers watching these things. And seeing draws accepted early in the game all the time does not really help to encourage the game in the mind of those people. These games are going to be televised on ESPN! Give the people a good show darn it! Anyway, both of those tick me off. There is no reason for a computer player to EVER agree to end a game before it has to end. Give the humans chances to make stupid mistakes! Yes, this shows some lack of respect for the opponant. But screw it. Go for the jugular. Feed Kasp the rope and let him hang himself! I’m posting this from my new phone. Just because I can! OK. Been running panther for a couple days now. Love it! Use Expose all the time. Once I had the external drive to get around the failure of the internal CD drive, all went smoothly. I like the new look too. I made myself some extra users just to try fast user switching, even though I’m the only user. On my older machine it doesn’t do the nice animation. I’ll probably turn it off since it uses a lot of space on the menu bar. I wish I could set it to just show my picture instead of the full name. The new mail is nice too. I have it set to do spam the default way again for a bit, but that will probably change before too long. As is, if I take spam out of the spam folder to file it (rather than delete it) it gets marked as not spam and screws up the spam identifying heuristics. I know I am screwed up for actually saving every single spam I get, but hey, I do. Before I had gotten around of this by setting up a seperate spam folder governed by my own custom rules. I may do that again. Things do feel a little faster. I still need a whole new computer soon though. Hopefully Q1 next year. I should start counting the pennies. :-) Panther is awesome though. Everyone needs to upgrade right away! :-) So OK, after getting Panther at the Apple Store along with a new remote for my iPod, I started driving to Latrobe to visit my friend Ron for the weekend. First sign of trouble, I got out the new remote, and discovered I had bought one that works with the new iPods, but NOT the old iPods like mine. Drat! Then hours later, around 8 UTC, I get to Ron’s place. I try to check my mail, but for whatever reason the mail server at Chris’s place isn’t responding. Oh well then, enough of that. Time to install Jaguar!!! I put the CD in the slot. It starts to suck it in. Then there is a horrible grinding noise and the CD stops moving. The CD is stuck in there, and from the sound of it, was not doing too well. With a little proding, I manage to get the CD out. Sure enough, a couple of big scratches on it. Drat, I think, I really hope this scratch isn’t so bad it won’t work. It would really suck to have to go buy Panther AGAIN. The CD on this machine has occationally had trouble pulling CDs in. It always worked on a second try, or perhaps with the help of a little push. No biggie. So I tried again. Or tried to try again. The CD slot was completely blocked. I hit the eject button. Some whirring noises, then some grinding, then nothing. Uh oh. I was subsequently unable to get any response from the CD drive. It would not open the slot. It would not suck in a CD. Nothing. Nothing at all. I went and grabbed a screwdriver from my car and actually opened up the laptop to examine the CD drive to see if I could see anything obviously stuck. I did not see anything specifically obvious, but the mechanism was clearly jammed, and would not move. Not having the proper expertese to really diagnose, or do much about it even if I did, I put everything back together. I figure I should have at least been able to move the mechanism with my hands, but it felt like it was locked solid. I dunno. Anyway, it is busted. I am not happy. So, plan is to get up a little earlier than I had planned in the morning. One of the things Ron wants is to go out and get more memory for his computer. While we are out I’ll buy an cheap external CD-ROM drive. That will at least give me a CD again. (Although I only tend to use it once every few months… this was the first time in ages). Then I will try the Jaguar Disk. Hopefully it is still readable and workable. (I think the installer checksums everything at the beginning, so if there is an issue it will be found and it won’t install garbage.) If it it not readable, I’ll have to make a second trip out to a CompUSA or something (no Apple Store in Western PA) to get another copy of Jaguar. This is really annoying. I hope I can get something up and running. If not I will be pretty upset. Of course, this is also a sign that this almost 3 year old originial Titanium Powerbook I call Zeus is on its last legs. I beat the hell out of this machine, taking it with me everywhere, using it constantly, dropping it more than a handful of times. For the most part it has managed to keep going, although there have been a few issues over the years. I am due to buy myself a new one in Q1 next year. This one needs to last me at LEAST until January, but possibly longer depending on how my finances are going by then. An external CD I can deal with. Even buying a second Jaguar CD if I have to. I was planning on buying another for my mom anyway. Just as long as the CPU and screen hold up… Hold together Zeus! Hold together! You’re a good computer! You can do it! Anyway, I’d better catch at least an hour or two of sleep now. Sigh. I am being geeky and posting this entry while waiting in line at the King of Prussia Apple store on Panther release day. I got here a few minutes after Panther went on sale and the line was well over 1000 feet long. An hour later, and I’ve made it half way to the front. Jon from work is here with me. I’ve got the iSight up to throw some pictures of the line on the webcam. Oh well. Back to waiting in line. It will probably be at least another hour until we get into the store itself. Perhaps I should have just ordered online. :-) OK. Well, the counter will have changed by time anybody sees this. Apple has updated their website and is now counting down to Panther and offering preorders.
(via fahlman on AppleInsider) The only question for me now is if I pre-order now, or actually go to the Apple Store and fight the throngs and feel the excitement of getting it right there on the spot at the first possible moment rather than getting it the next morning FedEx. Hmmm… Anyway, all the reviews of pre-release versions of Panther that I’ve seen say it is pretty damn awesome. Adds a number of new useful features, and runs faster than Jaguar on pretty much every machine… including almost 3 year old Powerbooks like mine. I’ll need to be getting copies for both my machines at home and for my mom. I hope they offer the “Family Pack” thing again this time, and right away… looks like they do. Good. Last time I ordered the multiple copies individually at a much higher cost, then they announced the family pack a few weeks later. Grrr! Anyway, I’m leaning toward just doing the pre-order, but going to the Apple Store might be fun! It will be a madhouse! OK, maybe that wouldn’t be so much fun. This is a very good read. Kinda long. I admit toward the end I started skimming. But good stuff. It lays out a very plausible development path attempting to solve current Internet problems, which results in an end-state that, at least to me, is scary and unfriendly, with constraints and controls everywhere. I’m sure steps in these directions will happen. Hopefully good ways to undermine them will pop up as quickly as they are developed. The Digital Imprimatur (John Walker, fourmilab.ch)
(via Doc Searls) |
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