As posted previous -- here is the PDF of the report: http://www.chessvibes.com/plaatjes/rybkaevidence/Rybka_Investigation_report.pdf

Specifically see section 2. Investigation:

2.1 Executable file analysis

Quote “Rybka 1.0 Beta and Fruit 2.1 have exactly the same evaluation features“. Disassembly of the root search analysis indicates nearly identical code and variables, even including the ordering of the variables. Appendix B on the evaluation of Rybka 2.3.2a shows “the evaluation function in Rybka 2.3.2a is substantially the same as in Rybka 1.0 Beta”. Watkins compares evaluation function features between Rybka, Fruit and four other open source programs (Phalanx, Pepito, Crafty and Faile). In section D.2.3 he shows an overlap of 18.8 out of 24 evaluation terms for Rybka-Fruit (73% overlap), with much lower overlaps than between the other programs. Crafty 19.0-Fruit eval overlap: 12.9/24 = 54%, Phalanx-Fruit overlap: 43%, Pepito-Fruit overlap 37%, Faile-Fruit Overlap 23%. This has been expanded with more statistical rigour in a separate 50+ page paper mentioned in 2.4 below.

And what's wrong with this? You are not guaranteed success, even if you have a superior product. You can write the most fantastic novel in the history of the world, but that doesn't mean you automatically get fame & fortune bestowed upon you. You still have to market it & sell it to your audience. If your marketing strategy is "publish on Amazon, sit back, and wait for the $$$ to roll in", well, good luck with that. Maybe it'll work. And maybe I'll win the lottery one day. Yay for games of chance!

The fact is, there's a lot of "worthless" content out there -- books, movies, magazines, music, websites, videos, blogs, podcasts, photos. And yet, there are those who produce great content, of all types, and make a living doing it. Amazon has simply opened up another medium for user content creation/distribution, just like Geocities and Youtube and iTunes and Flickr and what-have-you.

Not sure what your problem is -- my Windows 7 workstation (and Windows XP before that) are typically up for at least a month at a time, at least until I decided to institute a monthly reboot (just because). And my home PCs would have even longer uptimes, except for Windows 7 deciding to automatically reboot to install patches when I'm not looking.

My ubuntu box, however, seems to like to give me trouble - losing network connectivity, random errors, stopped talking to our ActiveDirectory server, etc. And it seems like I every time I log in, it's telling me a restart is required, probably due to some security update being auto-loaded. (I run it headless as a playground box and rarely use it, so I'm sure it would have better reliability if I was more proficient with it.)

But the point is -- both Windows and Linux are more than capable of providing good uptime, given proper administration. Linux (at least Ubuntu) can be just as flakey as Windows used to be, if you don't know what you are doing. And Windows can be very stable.

No, actually, that's exactly what it means. Its not "freedom" if you have severe consequences for an action.

No one can physically stop me from yelling "The president is stupid".
However, with freedom of speech, the government is prohibited from locking me up for saying that.
Contrast that with other regimes where yelling such an insult would result in a death squad knocking on your door, or you being thrown away in a deep dark jail cell forever.

GP was right -- lack of consequences are exactly what defines freedom.

For the fire example -- yes, yelling fire in a crowded theater and being fined/locked up for it is EXACTLY an infringement of the freedom of speech. However, it is an infringement that the courts decided was appropriate and still met the principle of the law (if not the letter).

That's exactly the point -- why, after 40+ years of computational progress, are we STILL using the lowest common denominator?

Yes, text works - no arguing that, its not going away.
But the point is -- we have these powerful, cryptic CLI systems, or these prettier-but-less-powerful GUIs -- why can't we have both?

The power of the CLI, with a more intuitive, aesthetically-pleasing, GUI sitting on it that doesn't require point'n'click.

Wish I had mod points!
Instead I'll just say "+5, insightful" and hope it comes true for you!

Is there, realistically, an area on Earth that does NOT have some likelihood of natural disasters?

Speaking about the US specifically, North Dakota not at much risk for earthquakes or tsunamis, but they do get tornadoes, blizzards/heavy snow, spring flooding, etc. Not to mention that its pretty far away from the population centers that actually *need* the electricity being generated, so then you are looking at transmission costs, capacity, maintenance (and of course the risks associated with those).

That is not a technology problem, that is a management problem.

Sure, its not fun when other staff get bigger & better toys/tools than you. But when that crosses the line to stealing equipment and personal attacks, there's a manager there who is not doing his duty to outline what his expectations of behavior are, and what the consequences are for violating those boundaries, and actually enforcing those consequences.

Of course, failures of management are not uncommon.

Just out of curiosity -- what do you hire developers to do?
I'm sort of assuming that its to "develop code". So if my assumption is correct, wouldn't you want them to develop code as quickly, efficiently, and as bug-free as possible? I will also make the assumption (based on links in other posts and the TFA itself) that a second monitor improves this productivity.

And finally, if I'm a developer who knows that I work best with the right tools, and I start a job where I don't feel I'm being given the best tools to do my best work -- then you'd stomp me in my face? Do you like to drive around with your emergency brake on, too, to cure your engine of its sense of "entitlement" (of low friction)?

There is no "need" vs "want" -- I'm now convinced that's a made-up, over-simplified dichotomy. Its really about costs vs benefits.

What's the true cost of a second monitor? If you are really diligent, you could factor in capital/acquisition cost, operational cost (how much electricity does it cost), maintenance cost (how much will it add in support calls, failure & replacement rates, etc), and even opportunity cost (if you buy this, what can you no longer afford to buy?).

And then you calculate the benefits -- typically much more difficult. But given the sibling post's example, at $155/hr, if a second monitor makes him 10% more effective, that means its worth effectively $15.50/hr. This could manifest in multiple ways -- he could do 10% more work per client (handle more scope creep / logic changes without going over budget); he could get the work done 10% faster and build customer goodwill (and ultimately handle more customers), or he could just be a happier developer and more likely to stick around longer (meaning less turnover and lower hiring replacement costs).

If benefits > costs for your target time-frame, then yes, you do it.
If not, then you don't. Or you re-evaluate your costs & benefits to ensure you took everything into account.

Amazon could drop the in app purchases.

Actually they can't -- that's the sticky part of all of this. Apple is mandating that any app that directs you to a website for purchasing ebooks, has to allow purchasing in-app (eg not via the website), and, oh yeah, the e-book price is fixed (by the publisher), at 30% commission for the seller, and Apple takes a 30% cut of revenue.

So... you can't bypass Apple when purchasing, and Apple takes your entire commission from the publisher, leaving you with... all the costs.

That must be the "???" to get to "Profit!"

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/apple-reportedly-blocks-sony-reader-app-could-spell-war-with-kindle/

This doesn't even make any sense -- what am I missing? A 50-50 chance of falling out of the sky? I'm assuming that's hyperbole, but I'm not grasping the concept here.

For what its worth, the wiki article (linked in another post) indicates the 777 has been involved in 7 "incidents", although the only fatality was a ground crew worker who suffered fatal burns during a refueling fire.

Understood, but if you are "no designer", have no resources to hire one, and are "not happy to ask for favours", then why do you complain that sites that are better designed are ranked higher than you? I went to some of the copy-cat websites you listed and frankly, their designs are better (at least on the homepage -- I didn't spend THAT much time on them). You may have better content & all the blood, sweat, and tears put into compiling the data, but you still have to present it in meaningful way.

Your front page looks like an abandoned blog; ads on the top, a post from Feb 2011 and then some 2010 posts, and some random search links and car factoids on the right side. In a 3 second glance at your site, I have NO IDEA what this site is about. Some of your copy-cats -- bam, first glance, I know exactly why this web page exists.

Don't take this as criticism about you personally or endorsement of copy-cat behavior (its neither) -- just constructive feedback that your website is not doing your passion justice in terms of presentation, and that some design revamping & appropriate SEO may reap some substantial dividends.

Third parties would spring up to provide cables to connect the router you already have to this DC outlet in place of the wall-wart.

I sort of did something like this once; for some reason or another I had an ethernet switch without a working transformer. I simply chopped off the DC power plug, soldered it onto the 12v pins on a 4-pin molex, and plugged it into my PC power supply. As long as the PC was up, so was the network! I might even have run a small LAN party this way for a weekend.

The truth is, all those wall warts could be our saviors -- many electronic devices already accept DC direct, you just need a supply for them. You just need something like a "power hub" (analogous to a USB hub) -- a single AC/DC transformer with 4-8 12v DC outputs on it, and a pile of cables (maybe with interchangeable tips), to fit the devices you have.

Sibling post got it right -- "market forces" are, by definition, supply & demand. That means that you have some portion of the demand curve that is NOT MET (because the price -- decided by the intersection of supply & demand -- is above their desired price).

So until you are willing to live in a society where people who can't pay for their own health care DON'T GET IT (and get sick, and die, and infect others, and are a burden on the economy), then no, market forces cannot work.

Incidentally, that's not really so different from what we have now -- except that those who don't have health insurance still have a safety net (the ER), where they can go when they have waited long enough for poor medical conditions to become severe and get them treated, at ER-prices, instead of dealing with them in a doctor's office when they were minor (and relatively cheap to address). Worst of both worlds.