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Comment Re:Blunder of the Century (Score 1) 47

It's pattern recognition as well. The regime, accustomed to dealing with threats, classifies the people as a threat and takes the same action they always take. It just doesn't occur to anyone what they're doing because they're in an ivory tower, much like Kramnitz alone against the computer. There's just no-one to second-guess, and if there were they'd be shushed.

Comment Re:How is this a good thing? (Score 1) 115

Confirmation bias. When intelligence succeeds, you never hear about it. ULTRA, probably the most successful intelligence operation ever, was kept secret for decades. Nobody knew what it was or how it had helped.

You need to watch it talking about the color revolutions that way. Sounds like dog whistle racism to me. Just because Obama did it doesn't mean it was wrong. Nobody could have predicted this outcome.

Comment Re:Farm (Score 1) 307

The poor schmucks stuck renting a bedroom in someone else's house wouldn't know the first thing to do with land. They would quickly find out that it's a lot of work, and it's a lot easier on the couch with an Xbox controller in their hands.

What needs to happen is that these poor shmucks gathered together in collectives, where experts can guide their work, and they can sleep peaceably night after night without worrying about being thrown out or losing their jobs. The government will do all the hard work.

Comment Blunder of the Century (Score 5, Interesting) 47

Deep Fritz 10 - Kramnik,V (2750). Man vs Machine Bonn, Germany, 27.11.2006. Kramnik played 34...Qe3?? The blunder of the century.

Kramnik played the move 34...Qe3 calmly, stood up, picked up his cup and was about to leave the stage to go to his rest room. At least one audio commentator also noticed nothing, while Fritz operator Mathias Feist kept glancing from the board to the screen and back, hardly able to believe that he had input the correct move. Fritz was displaying mate in one, and when Mathias executed it on the board Kramnik briefly grasped his forehead, took a seat to sign the score sheet and left for the press conference, which he dutifully attended.

In the post match press conference Vladimir Kramnik confirmed that he had not blundered out of exhaustion, and had been calculating very well right to the end. He had no real explanation for the oversight that happened right at the end.

Kramnik in the press conference: "It was actually not only about the last move. I was calculating this line very long in advance, and then recalculating. It was very strange, some kind of blackout. I was feeling well, I was playing well, I think I was pretty much better. I calculated the line many, many times, rechecking myself. I already calculated this line when I played 29...Qa7, and after each move I was recalculating, again, and again, and finally I blundered mate in one. Actually it was the first time that it happened to me, and I cannot really find any explanation. I was not feeling tired, I think I was calculating well during the whole game... It's just very strange, I cannot explain it."

Thus the question that everyone was asking remained unanswered: how can a player of Kramnik's caliber, a world champion who hovers around the Elo 2800 mark, overlook a mate in one move? Naturally there is no logical explanation â" we have to delve into the realm of pattern recognition and the psychology of human perception if we want to understand anything.

The rest of the article turns the board around, looks at it from Kramnik's position, and tries to get into his head to see what he was thinking. Personally, I think it's what I call "sniffing your own butt" when you get so inside yourself, you stop thinking about the rest of the world. You then perform bizarre actions which seem quite reasonable to you. This happens in groups as well. It helps to explain things like how pro-worker governments of the 20th century murdered millions of workers. There's just nobody there to second-guess your thinking, and even if there was, they would be heavily punished for speaking out and contradicting you. This is where crowdsourcing shines.

Unfortunately, Kramnik had somehow not registered the threat generated by the Fritz move 34.Nxf8. The white queen threatens mate in one on h7 (where it is protected by the knight). Black does nothing to neutralise this threat with his move 34...Qe3. And so, after he played it, Kramnik was immediately mated by the computer.

But how could he not have seen the threat after 34.Nxf8. An explanation was proffered by a very experienced chess player and trainer, Alexander Roshal, who is also the editor of the Russian chess magazine "64".

Alexander told us that the mating pattern that occurred during the game, with the white queen protected by a knight on f8 (as in the screen shot above), is extremely rare in chess. It is not one of the patterns that chess grandmasters automatically have in their repertoire. This was confirmed by a GM commentator in Bonn, who after Kramnik's move did not notice that it was a blunder and started discussing White's options â" but not the mate in one.

Comment Re:Boon to rapists? (Score 1) 369

Again with the rape thing? Jesus Christ, it's what you people are always thinking about, isn't it? You project your feelings on whatever topic is about, and say what you're thinking. Rape rape rape rape rape rape. Yes, because rapists are really big on long-term planning and are worried about DNA tests. Raaaaaape. Rape rape rape.

Comment Re:Not an American, not doing business in America. (Score 2) 102

I love your high-handed, lecturing tone. If there's one thing that people like, it's being talked down to. Is it satisfying to do that?

What makes you think Americans support this? Many Americans despise their own federal government for precisely the reasons you outlined above - they have too much power and enjoy abusing it. To act fairly would be to follow the rules. To act capriciously is to be the rules.

Comment Re:Headline 100% Wrong (Score 1) 119

I'm pointing out that the Obama administration thinks that the journalist should be currently banned from flying at all while the guy standing next to him can carry on unmolested. And that the proposed rules, once they go into effect in a couple of years, will still make strangely arbitrary distinctions between the two uses (and users).

Heh, heh, welcome to the twilight world of the kind of laws that apply to firearms. I'm glad the rest of society can enjoy the sorts of muddle-headed thinking such as the assault weapons ban of 1994.

Comment Re:TLDR - here's the list (Score 2) 213

I know we all enjoy greatly exaggerating how bad things are in 2015, but really now. Adults discussion time. Government is better now than it ever was in the past. A quick look at the history books will settle that argument in a flash. The very fact that we have global elites that hold no allegiance to the countries they were born in speaks volumes. They have much in common with each other, are alienated from their native populations, and have every incentive to work together to ensure a smooth future with no revolts.

Comment Re:Sad For My Gender (Score 0) 369

There's also the fact that paternity tests have been made illegal in certain feminist-dominated jurisdictions. Yeah, that's right, ILLEGAL. You are NOT allowed to test for it. A paternity test needs a court order. Crazy, eh?

How many men are raising cuckoos? Children who are not their own? It's got nothing to do with fairness or what's right, it's a pure power play. Women are always right, and men are always wrong. Sad, but that's exactly how it is in 2015. No social justice for half of the population.

Comment Re:Now they just need intensity from the actors. (Score 1) 165

First of all, you've got TNG classified in the wrong category. It's not science fiction, it's a drama set on a spaceship. Where's the science? There's no science in it, the writers famously wrote "technobabble" as a placeholder in their scripts and later some tech expert would come up with something meaningless like "the power of the resistors is fluctuating in a quantum state." The writers were adamant that they weren't writing science fiction, in fact they looked on sci-fi authors as some sort of lesser species of human.

The episodes have aged badly. I tried watching a few a while back and it was just painful. It was like watching the later seasons of M*A*S*H. It was cool watching them at the time, you know? The moral of the story was always a politically correct one as well, TNG was one of the earliest to be infected by that meme. As good as TV today? Compare it to Sopranos or Deadwood or Game of Thrones or any of the modern shows, it falls flat.

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