On Dec 20, 6:04 am, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

Here is what is really, really sad about this case.
If David Kane were to follow your excellent
advice posted above, he would, in short order, be
far better equipped to deal with life in general.

Yeah, like *that's* anywhere near as important as
chess! ;D


When someone engages in logical fallacies, it is
like having a car with sugar in the gas tank

I've heard this is a very bad thing. If one wants
to indulge a hankering for light, "sweet" crude, far
better to try Shell's super-unleaded, straight-up
or with a twist of lime.


or a computer running Microsoft Vista

Ouch! That hurt. Look, unless you fork
over the big bucks for an Apple computer,
or are a Linux freak, Microsoft is just a
(harsh) fact of life.


; performance is
degraded when it doesn't have to be. Alas, instead
of seeking out a tool that will greatly improve his
ability to think, he chooses to reject that tool.
And for what? To not "lose" an argument on USENET
that nobody but him cares about?

I'm not actually "arguing" with the boy; I'm
trying to steer him in the right direction. I
think an "argument" is where you get
emotionally involved-- like when there is
only one piece of pizza left and you both
want it.


That's a big
price to pay for such a small payoff. Even worse,
he doesn't even get that small payoff! The only
person here who thinks David Kane is "winning" is
David Kane himself. What a sad, sad waste...

When I finish posting this, I will be setting up a
30 day killfile to make any post with strings such
as "David Kane wrote" near the top go away, because
I suspect that he is now hoping to have his insults
reach me through replies.

Ridiculous; who's going to reply to that
idiot?!!


So as a _final_ comment
upon his various personal attacks, and an example
of best practices in USENET flaming , I leave him
with this:

----------------------------------------------------

Dear David "Fallacy Boy" Kane:

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we
say in Texas, you couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions
printed on the heel. You are a canker, an open wound. I would rather
kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You took your last vacation in
the Islets of Langerhans.

You just lost me. Langerhans?


You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little
worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a
cad, and a weasel. I take that back; you are a festering pustule on a
weasel's rump. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench,
a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same
species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at
the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut.
Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are
a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. You are a technicolor yawn.
And did I mention that you smell?

You are a squeaking rat, a mistake of nature and a heavy-metal bagpipe
player. You were not born. You were hatched into an unwilling world
that rejects the likes of you. You didn't crawl out of a normal egg,
either, but rather a mutant maggot egg rejected by an evil scientist
as being below his low standards. Your alleged parents abandoned you
at birth and then died of shame in recognition of what they had done
to an unsuspecting world. They were a bit late.

Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting
to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a
nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able
to access it ever so much more rapidly. If cluelessness were crude
oil, your scalp would be crawling with caribou.

You are a thick-headed trog. I have seen skeet with more sense than
you have. You are a few bricks short of a full load, a few cards short
of a full deck, a few bytes short of a full core dump, and a few
chromosomes short of a full human. Worse than that, you top-post. God
created houseflies, cockroaches, maggots, mosquitoes, fleas, ticks,
slugs, leeches, and intestinal parasites, then he lowered his
standards and made you. I take it back; God didn't make you. You are
Satan's spawn. You are Evil beyond comprehension, half-living in the
slough of despair. You are the entropy which will claim us all. You
are a green-nostriled, crossed eyed, hairy-livered inbred
trout-defiler. You make Ebola look good.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid,
nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an
ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with
you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in
a land that reality forgot. You are not ANSI compliant and your markup
doesn't validate. You have a couple of address lines shorted together.
You should be promoted to Engineering Manager.

Do you really expect your delusional and incoherent ramblings to be
read? Everyone plonked you long ago. Do you fantasize that your
tantrums and conniption fits could possibly be worth the $0.000000001
worth of electricity used to send them? Your life is one big
W.O.M.B.A.T. and your future doesn't look promising either. We need to
trace your bloodline and terminate all siblings and cousins in order
to cleanse humanity of your polluted genes. The good news is that no
normal human would ever mate with you, so we won't have to go into the
sewers in search of your git.

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and
obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living
emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a
loathsome disease, a drooling inbred cross-eyed toesucker. You make
Quakers shout and strike Pentecostals silent. You have a version 1.0
mind in a version 6.12 world. Your mother had to tie a pork chop
around your neck just to get your dog to play with you. You think
that HTTP://WWW.GUYMACON.COM/FUN/INSULT/INDEX.HTM is the name of a
rock band. You believe that P.D.Q. Bach is the greatest composer who
ever lived. You prefer L. Ron Hubbard to Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle. Hee-Haw is too deep for you. You would watch test patterns
all day if the other inmates would let you.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are
deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of
wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted.
Spammers look down on you. Phone sex operators hang up on you.
Telemarketers refuse to be seen in public with you. You are the source
of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
May you choke on your own foolish opinions. You are a Pusillanimous
galactophage and you wear your sister's training bra. Don't bother
opening the door when you leave - you should be able to slime your
way out underneath. I hope that when you get home your mother runs
out from under the porch and bites you.

You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock.
You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted
boggish foot-licking half-twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You
gormless crook-pated tosser. You bloody churlish boil-brained clotpole
ponce. You craven dewberry ****head cockup pratting naff. You cockered
bum-bailey poofter. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You
dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill. May your
spouse be blessed with many *******s.

You are so clueless that if you dressed in a clue skin, doused yourself
in clue musk, and did the clue dance in the middle of a field of horny
clues at the height of clue mating season, you still would not have a
clue. If you were a movie you would be a double feature;
_Battlefield_Earth_ and _Moron_Movies_II_. You would be out of focus.

You are a fiend and a sniveling coward, and you have bad breath. You
are the unholy spawn of a bandy-legged hobo and a syphilitic camel.
You wear strangely mismatched clothing with oddly placed stains. You
are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just knowing that
you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go
away. You are jetsam who dreams of becoming flotsam. You won't make
it. I beg for sweet death to come and remove me from a world which
became unbearable when you crawled out of a harpy's lair.

It is hard to believe how incredibly stupid you are. Stupid as a stone
that the other stones make fun of. So stupid that you have traveled
far beyond stupid as we know it and into a new dimension of stupid.
Meta-stupid. Stupid cubed. Trans-stupid stupid. Stupid collapsed to
a singularity where even the stupons have collapsed into stuponium.
Stupid so dense that no intelligence can escape. Singularity stupid.
Blazing hot summer day on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one
minute than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. It cannot
be possible that anything in our universe can really be this stupid.
This is a primordial fragment from the original big stupid bang. A pure
extract of stupid with absolute stupid purity. Stupid beyond the laws
of nature. I must apologize. I can't go on. This is my epiphany of
stupid. After this experience, you may not hear from me for a while.
I don't think that I can summon the strength left to mock your moronic
opinions and malformed comments about boring trivia or your other
drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped
away most of your of what you wrote, because, well ... it didn't
really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was
pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a
load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after
you ...

read more »

Dammit. Just when the story was starting to get
interesting... .


-- help bot

On Dec 20, 9:17 am, "Chess One" wrote:

The emphasis is not really about proofs, or even draws - the emphasis is
about wins.

Why?

Because it encourages them by awarding them a higher score than currently in
relation to other scores - hence, it is motivational to win! More reward for
it than tacitly playing for 2 draws.

Not everyone plays for draws; why do you want to
penalize those who play in accordance with the rules
by mucking with the scoring system to prod the
cheaters into some random behavior-modification?
They will likely find other ways to "game the system".

As it is now, wins are rewarded equally as losses
are penalized, which seems sensible enough.


Why do you want to pretend that wins count
more than draws and/or losses?

Why do you write in such a manner?

Do you always answer a question with a question?


I asked what the current basis was; 0,
1/2, 1.

Wins literally count more because they get more score!

It makes no sense
to me. I see a loss as equally important as a win.

??

Probably, that idea was too deep for you to grok.
(Shrugs)


should be credited with extra points?!

if you don't want to change the rules of play, [and who does?], then you
change the reward for the result

Arbitrary changes are worthless; what is needed
are *improvements*.

The point of all is if the current scoring system is 'arbitrary'?

Ah, then you just want to discuss the issue
of "arbitrariness"? Not real-world action?


it is interesting to consider that the current point scores for results
of chess are arbitrary. some argue that stalemate should not be rewarded as
much as other draws, and others think black wins should be rewarded more
than white wins, etc etc

Maybe the rules could be rewritten so that
stalemates count as double-forfeit losses?
Of course, you will have to throw out all your
old chess books and just trust a modified
Rybka from then on (egads).


The ratings system can be modified to better
reflect "reality" as above. Supposedly, the odds
should reflect White's inherent advantage of the
first blunder.

But, if true, that averages out over all games.

Yes. I make it twelve blunders per game, on
average. That's just me; if you count my
opponents', it goes up to twenty-seven and a
half, per Fritz.


so... whether or not we honor those ideas, what is the rational basis of
the current 0, 1/2, 1 scoring system?

Well, the half-points for draws allows for chess
tournaments to progress on a schedule, since no
drawn games need to be replayed.


It's simplistic, but does not penalize players
unfairly for being closely-matched (i.e. for
drawing more frequently than mismatched
players probably would).

I am asking what the /basis/ for the current system is.

Ah! Then you need to talk to a *historian*!

I'm a mere chess player; I can't tell you for
certain whether chess "originated" in China,
India, or was imported by aliens.


If we can say that,
then we can assess the basis of another scroring system and compare that to
the current one.

Actually, we don;t really need to know which
country in order to do that; all that is required
is logic and reason, and maybe some simple
math.


-- help bot

On Dec 20, 9:34 am, "Chess One" wrote:

Perhaps a Louis Blair could even present
a graph, showing the percentage of insults
compared to the percentage of ad hom.,
and how it varies over time-- but it's way too
much work for most folks to tackle.

I think its time to put this subject onto a sound mathematically basis, then
proceed to the rigorously discussed logic of our conclusions.

First a point of logic: Louis Blair never said he could even present a
graph, and he also never said he could not. Whether Louis Blair says
anything, is therefore utterly pointless since it has no bearing on what he
can do, unless he himself says he can or not, in his own opinion.

Of course, IM Innes has no quote of LB saying
his opinion has no bearing on the question in
question, regarding the matter we are discussing,
which I can't seem to remember for some reason.


For other
people the world is much simpler, has parameters, etc, within which we best
speculate

Alas! If only the speculators could remember
that all they are doing is that-- speculating! As
we know, many fall into self-deception, fooling
themselves into thinking they are on a fact-
finding mission and that any who don't agree
with their every whim are heinous "enemies".
:(


based on the behavior of the world, such as, to give a complicated
example:

IF: 2+2 = 4 yesterday. It is pretty darn sure it will do so today.

You must all admire the subtlety of my reasonings here!

Well, you did somehow manage to stumble on
a formula where time had no meaning; I say it
was probably blind luck.


(Plus, as ani ful no, 91.6% of statistics are meaningless, including 58% of
this one.)

Pulling "survey results" out of thin air is
not a very convincing way of making a point.
It reminds me of the old guard propaganda
style of Larry Parr (again).

It reminds you 100% of Larry Parr or Larry Parr makes 100% points from the
thin air?

A False dichotomy; it is not necessary for
his comments to be 100% like those of the
Great Parrthenium, in order for them to remind
one of his writing style; nor for LP to craft any
"points" at all.


If its the second, is it the thin air source which resolves their
not-convincingness?

Nah. It is more often the internal inconsistencies
which betray the cracks in his thinking. It reminds
me of the imbeciles who support Mr. Kasparov as
the answer to evil-dictator-Putin; a liar and cheat, a
poor "savior" makes; why not present some decent
chap, chosen at random?


or, is it because the results are gleaned from Chess
Life customers who live above 10,000 feet?

Readers of Chess Lies are not customers; they
are *victims*! That dreadful rag is plagued by
erroneous game annotations, as demonstrated
time and again by careful analysis by Fritz. It
has gotten so bad that I am almost /afraid/ to
look at any more articles in CL. :(



That can be phrased mathematically as ::

0/1 * 1/0

which, anyone knows who does quanta, is a very large number divided by a
very small one, and designed to mess with the minds of engineering students

I typed that into Fritz, and he is still working
on it; a real toughie. So far, he thinks it's
"equal/unclear".

In any case, you will get your usual paycheck
for attempting to "defend" LP. How you manage
to live on such a small sum is beyond me; even
here, the cost of living keeps going up, and then
there are tournament entry fees, Fritz updates,
and yes, food and gasoline to buy. If only he
weren't so... cheap; you would think LP could
afford better. (Shrugs)


-- help bot

zdrakec wrote:

Having said that, we have come very far afield from the original point
of this thread, no? I remind you that the logical outcome of an evenly
played game of chess is a draw.

A game played between two humans can, logically,
quite easily result in a draw -- or in a win for either
side. That is because humans make lots of errors,
and in many cases, just one is all it takes to lose a
game of chess.

In my experience, these decisive games are more
common than the ones which result in a stalemate
or a threefold repetition of position, for instance. Part
of that is due to the influence of the clock, and part to
the fact that we take turns moving, so there are many
opportunities to win for both sides. Some players
may have a different opinion, if for example, they tend
to leave their own King exposed to perps. and mating
attacks (which I don't).


-- help bot

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit


help bot wrote:

Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

When someone engages in logical fallacies, it is
like having a car with sugar in the gas tank
or a computer running Microsoft Vista

Ouch! That hurt. Look, unless you fork
over the big bucks for an Apple computer,
or are a Linux freak, Microsoft is just a
(harsh) fact of life.

But Vista is not. I run linux where I can, but there are
several windows programs that have no Linux replacement,
such as AutoCAD and OrCAD. They all run fine in Windows
Server 2003 or Windows XP Pro. In fact, Microsoft will,
if asked, give you a licence key to downgrade the copy of
Vista installed on a new PC to XP.

You took your last vacation in the Islets of Langerhans.

You just lost me. Langerhans?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islets_of_Langerhans

Maybe later in life, after you ...

read more »

Dammit. Just when the story was starting to get
interesting... .

Look he [ HTTP://WWW.GUYMACON.COM/FUN/INSULT/INDEX.HTM ].

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

"help bot" wrote in message
...
On Dec 20, 9:17 am, "Chess One" wrote:

The emphasis is not really about proofs, or even draws - the emphasis
is
about wins.

Why?

Because it encourages them by awarding them a higher score than currently
in
relation to other scores - hence, it is motivational to win! More reward
for
it than tacitly playing for 2 draws.

Not everyone plays for draws; why do you want to
penalize those who play in accordance with the rules

Giving more points for a win penalizes people who are playing for a win?

by mucking with the scoring system to prod the
cheaters into some random behavior-modification?
They will likely find other ways to "game the system".

Speak for youself!

You are concerned about cheating, and suspect much! If indeed people do
cheat currently, I suppose they will attempt a cheat of a new system.

I am not so concerned about cheating, but awarding winning. While you may
continue to entail your point, please note that you really argue out loud
with yourself.

As it is now, wins are rewarded equally as losses
are penalized, which seems sensible enough.


Why do you want to pretend that wins count
more than draws and/or losses?

Why do you write in such a manner?

Do you always answer a question with a question?

And here we return to a facetious understanding, based on a slight
understanding of what is being said.

The point of all is if the current scoring system is 'arbitrary'?

Ah, then you just want to discuss the issue
of "arbitrariness"? Not real-world action?

Another corn-man? yawn We are not having a discussion yet - since you want
to write about what you think, but can't say so. Go back to worrying about
cheating, not the relative rewards for draws or winning

so... whether or not we honor those ideas, what is the rational basis
of
the current 0, 1/2, 1 scoring system?

Well, the half-points for draws allows for chess
tournaments to progress on a schedule, since no
drawn games need to be replayed.

Maybe that's it. And maybe that's all there is, a convenience for
multi-round tournaments. Conversely, if players in the new system conspire
to draw then they receive less reward for doing so, and no games need to be
replayed.

Phil Innes

"help bot" wrote in message
...
On Dec 20, 9:34 am, "Chess One" wrote:

First a point of logic: Louis Blair never said he could even present a
graph, and he also never said he could not. Whether Louis Blair says
anything, is therefore utterly pointless since it has no bearing on what
he
can do, unless he himself says he can or not, in his own opinion.

Of course, IM Innes has no quote of LB saying
his opinion has no bearing on the question in
question, regarding the matter we are discussing,
which I can't seem to remember for some reason.

Of course, Corn Fed has no quote of LB or myself
saying an opinion has no bearing on the question in
question, regarding the matter we are discussing,
which Corn- Fed forgot for some reason.


based on the behavior of the world, such as, to give a complicated
example:

IF: 2+2 = 4 yesterday. It is pretty darn sure it will do so today.

You must all admire the subtlety of my reasonings here!

Well, you did somehow manage to stumble on
a formula where time had no meaning; I say it
was probably blind luck.

Jealous! Besides, I redid the calculation again today, using Christmas
walnuts, and 2+2 still equal 4. That ain't luck, its science.

If its the second, is it the thin air source which resolves their
not-convincingness?

Nah. It is more often the internal inconsistencies
which betray the cracks in his thinking. It reminds
me of the imbeciles who support Mr. Kasparov as
the answer to evil-dictator-Putin; a liar and cheat, a
poor "savior" makes; why not present some decent
chap, chosen at random?

Possibly decent American chaps should do it?
Who in this government should run Russia?

Do not neglect to propose yourself either,
there are many many cornfields there!
Black earth....!

or, is it because the results are gleaned from Chess
Life customers who live above 10,000 feet?

Readers of Chess Lies are not customers; they
are *victims*! That dreadful rag is plagued by
erroneous game annotations, as demonstrated
time and again by careful analysis by Fritz. It
has gotten so bad that I am almost /afraid/ to
look at any more articles in CL. :(

The dreadful rag might be indexed! For a real subscription price USCF could
also chuck the entire year onto a searchable CD. Then it could offer for an
extra 5 bucks the whole thing in print, with a spine, and also indexed
[leaving out ads and such, it would still be thick enough].

As for analysis, depends who is analysed

That can be phrased mathematically as ::

0/1 * 1/0

which, anyone knows who does quanta, is a very large number divided by a
very small one, and designed to mess with the minds of engineering
students

I typed that into Fritz, and he is still working
on it; a real toughie. So far, he thinks it's
"equal/unclear".

Don't worry, Son of Sanny couldn't solve the fortress problem I set him, and
its only 101 plies.

In any case, you will get your usual paycheck
for attempting to "defend" LP. How you manage
to live on such a small sum is beyond me; even
here, the cost of living keeps going up, and then
there are tournament entry fees, Fritz updates,
and yes, food and gasoline to buy.

I get paid in emeralds from the secret fund.

If only he
weren't so... cheap; you would think LP could
afford better. (Shrugs)

You think, rubies?

PI


-- help bot

"Chess One" wrote in message
. ..

"help bot" wrote in message
...
On Dec 20, 9:17 am, "Chess One" wrote:

The emphasis is not really about proofs, or even draws - the emphasis is
about wins.

Why?

Because it encourages them by awarding them a higher score than currently in
relation to other scores - hence, it is motivational to win! More reward for
it than tacitly playing for 2 draws.

Not everyone plays for draws; why do you want to
penalize those who play in accordance with the rules

Giving more points for a win penalizes people who are playing for a win?

by mucking with the scoring system to prod the
cheaters into some random behavior-modification?
They will likely find other ways to "game the system".

Speak for youself!

You are concerned about cheating, and suspect much! If indeed people do cheat
currently, I suppose they will attempt a cheat of a new system.

I am not so concerned about cheating, but awarding winning. While you may
continue to entail your point, please note that you really argue out loud with
yourself.

As it is now, wins are rewarded equally as losses
are penalized, which seems sensible enough.


Why do you want to pretend that wins count
more than draws and/or losses?

Why do you write in such a manner?

Do you always answer a question with a question?

And here we return to a facetious understanding, based on a slight
understanding of what is being said.

The point of all is if the current scoring system is 'arbitrary'?

Ah, then you just want to discuss the issue
of "arbitrariness"? Not real-world action?

Another corn-man? yawn We are not having a discussion yet - since you want
to write about what you think, but can't say so. Go back to worrying about
cheating, not the relative rewards for draws or winning

so... whether or not we honor those ideas, what is the rational basis of
the current 0, 1/2, 1 scoring system?

Well, the half-points for draws allows for chess
tournaments to progress on a schedule, since no
drawn games need to be replayed.

Maybe that's it. And maybe that's all there is, a convenience for multi-round
tournaments. Conversely, if players in the new system conspire to draw then
they receive less reward for doing so, and no games need to be replayed.


The systems you have proposed is not all that different from the BAP (Ballard
anti-draw point) system that has been experimented with: 3 for Black
win, 2 for White win, 1 for Black draw, 0 for everything else.

Its features are that (1) it provides an incentive for both sides to play to win
(2) it removes the imbalance of the existing scoring in favor of White.

The tests with it taught much are were a measured success. No last round
pseudo-games!

On Dec 21, 11:50 am, "Chess One" wrote:

The emphasis is not really about proofs, or even draws - the emphasis
is about wins.

Why?

Because it encourages them by awarding them a higher score than currently
in relation to other scores - hence, it is motivational to win! More reward
for it than tacitly playing for 2 draws.

Not everyone plays for draws; why do you want to
penalize those who play in accordance with the rules

Giving more points for a win penalizes people who are playing for a win?

Some people aren't very bright... .

Penalizing *everyone* by switching to a funky
scoring system is not the answer to the problem.
If you have a problem with certain players agreeing
to what you have called "tacit draws", then you
need to target *them* (i.e. the "tacit draw-mongers)
specifically. It's like locusts: you don't go and kill
every living thing with a neutron bomb; you target
the pests and leave other creatures out of it. So
you bring in flying monkeys, which of course eat
all the locusts (and you thought they only liked
little dogs named Toto).


by mucking with the scoring system to prod the
cheaters into some random behavior-modification?
They will likely find other ways to "game the system".

Speak for youself!

You are concerned about cheating, and suspect much! If indeed people do
cheat currently, I suppose they will attempt a cheat of a new system.

As I said, some people aren't very bright.

That has been one of the points I've been making
here for a long, long time. Around here, there were
(I can't say what the status is now) clock-flippers,
deliberate illegal moves in time scrambles, and God
only knows what else. It was a problem for the few
who were in contention for a prize; so much so that
some folks would not enter a tournament if certain
known cheaters showed up.


I am not so concerned about cheating, but awarding winning. While you may
continue to entail your point, please note that you really argue out loud
with yourself.

Nobody is "arguing" here; but I find it amusing
that you would think everything must somehow
be perceived as such; it reveals a good deal
about *you*. :D


For future reference, I would like to point out the
fact that I see many of the folks posting here as
complete imbeciles, so I would never try to "argue"
with them, as if that were going to accomplish
anything. I try to keep emotion out of it, and
instead focus on those "lurkers" who might run
across this stuff without knowing what's what;
this is why, for instance, I have continued to reply
to David "Red Herring" Kane, among others. It's
not just for his benefit (he's very likely too dumb to
profit by it); it's for the benefit of others, who may
not realize what herrings are or where they
school.

Just so you know, I have nothing against changing
the current scoring system, and in fact I believe the
current ratings system is a mess. But we need to
see some sort of /rational/ approach to such issues,
not merely huffing and puffing and breast-beating.
I'm not holding my breath.


-- help bot

On Dec 21, 5:59 am, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:

When someone engages in logical fallacies, it is
like having a car with sugar in the gas tank
or a computer running Microsoft Vista

Ouch! That hurt. Look, unless you fork
over the big bucks for an Apple computer,
or are a Linux freak, Microsoft is just a
(harsh) fact of life.

But Vista is not. I run linux where I can, but there are
several windows programs that have no Linux replacement,
such as AutoCAD and OrCAD. They all run fine in Windows
Server 2003 or Windows XP Pro. In fact, Microsoft will,
if asked, give you a licence key to downgrade the copy of
Vista installed on a new PC to XP.

Is Windows XP Pro a 64-bit OS?

Some of the chess programs offer more-expensive
versions which purportedly run faster, but they fail
to explain that most factory Windows PCs can't run
the programs because even if the PC has more bits,
the OS may not. In fact, my laptop says it has 64
bits (Turioun 64) , but the standard OS doesn't (fully)
support it.


-- help bot