Neil Schemenauer's Web Log

Last weekend I found Feng-Hsiung Hsu's book Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer That Defeated the World Chess Champion at the local library. If you have any interest in chess or computer chess, I highly recommend it.

It's amazing to me that people still can't accept that Kasparov lost the second match. They say that the Deep Blue team cheated or that he didn't really lose because he resigned too early, or because he made a blunder in the opening of game 6.

Another thing that amazed me is how strong Deep Blue was for the second match. I was thinking that PC software on modern SMP machines would be getting close by now. Nope, not by a long shot.

From The Register:

The router would grab a random HTTP connection every eight hours and redirect it to Belkin's (push) advertised web page.

I like this quote from the original Usenet thread:

I am not impressed with this pullback. I am not impressed with Belkin posting a semi-apology on the front web page. Nothing short of complete unconditional repentance with no attempt at justification will buy me on this one. I would not settle for anything less than the real world equivalent of "We're dumber than squirrels; we hear voices and do as they command; I have broccoli in my socks."

William and I climbed Old Rag mountain yesterday. The weather was great. We got off to a late start and left the parking lot at 3:00pm. We climbed quickly and reached the summit at around 4:45pm. After a few photos and some snacks we started to head down. Luckily we made it past the challenging rocky parts before it got too dark. I couldn't find my headlamp so the only light we had was a green glowstick. We took it easy the rest of the way down and didn't have any problems. We reached the car at about 6:30pm. Overall, a very enjoyable hike.