Daily Archives: 9/9/2005

Brainwagon Radio: Computer Chess at the Computer Hitsory Museum

Last night, I attended an event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View entitled “The History of Computer Chess”. It was a panel discussion by some of the pioneers in the field: Monty Newborn, Murray Campbell, John McCarthy, Ed Feigenbaum and David Levy. My daily podcast gives some of my brief impressions. I didn’t learn a whole lot, since I’ve read quite a bit about computer chess and search, but I found the discussion enjoyable and given the increasing age amongst the panel members, I was glad to see these gentlemen talking about the forty-something year pursuit of computer chess in person. The Computer History Museum is having an open house this Saturday, I think I’ll be back with my wife to visit it (it seems like a great facility) and I’ll be joining as a member.

More on Scoble…

I must admit, I find Robert Scoble to be a fascinating blogger. I think it is because I see him just as a person who is in most respects intelligent and thoughtful, but whose thought processes are significantly hindered by a desire to be good at his job, and his job is to promote Microsoft and make it look fashionable to the world. He was kind enough to reply to my teasing of Microsoft, and (predictably) still trying to promote optimism about Microsoft.

He begins:

Yeah, we still have tons of problems to work through (yes, Mini Microsoft, I am reading you) and yes, we’re a big company with our politics, our slow-moving groupthink, our bureacracies and fiefdoms. Yes, we have given everyone lots of reasons to throw insults our way. Treated our customers and partners horribly. Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve shipped something significant. Yes, we have missed out on several new trends like the iPod and search. Yes, Steve Jobs’ accusation that we’re just copying his company has looked pretty true.

Yes Robert. And yet, you assert that next week, we will all be kissing and making up? Don’t you think that’s the teensiest bit presumptuous? It’s like saying to your spouse “Yeah, I cheated on you. I slept around, spent your money, got drunk and generally made an ass out of myself, but just wait until Monday. Monday, you’ll love me again!”

Yeah.

I’ll make my bold prediction for next week: nothing that Microsoft will announce will be of even the remotest interest to me. I make this prediction confidently because Microsoft has shown a remarkable constancy in their actions which directly oppose the interest of both software developers and consumers.

For instance, computer security on Windows has been a genuine nightmare. Don’t think so? Then why has an entire industry been created to generate software whose sole purpose is to keep my machine from getting infected from the virus or spyware du jour? Why do some people consider throwing away their PC rather than try to delouse it?

Of how about IE? The browser that has a broken implementation of the box model, which it steadfastly refuses to fix, causing web designers the world over, countless hours of trying to exploit other bugs in the implementation so that they can make a webpage behave the way they wish?

Or how about it’s shameless war against consumers in promoting technologies like HDCP, which obsoletes people’s old monitors, and interjects cryptographic negotiation in every interaction between a computer and the screen to which it is attached?

I could go on: the predatory business practices, Windows Me (shudder), or the pollution of the Internet with faulty DNS implementations. To be enthusiastic about Microsoft requires the excusing of dozens of evils, be they political, economic or technical. I doubt that some video on Channel 9 is going to change that.

Addendum: One more prediction: whatever Microsoft is announcing, it won’t be anything which is ready to ship to consumers. They probably won’t even have a release date planned (although given the Longhorn, errr… Vista fiasco, it’s not clear we’d believe any date they tossed out either). One positive thing about Apple: when they announce a product, typically it’s ready to be purchased. You can decide right then whether you want the product, and you can act on it immediately. Google has found this basic strategy to be useful as well. Bam, Google Mail. Bam, Google Maps. Bam, Google Talk. Microsoft begins talking about things months if not years before anything is ready to ship, and therefore, they diffuse any possible spin that anyone could have to be spread out over the same time period.

I’ll tune back into Channel 9 next week, and see how I did in my predictions.