finally17

Furthermore, the fact that GIB calculations are done on the user's machine is an issue with everything you ask to add to GIB. I have a 2.8 GHz machine, which obviously isn't close to superfast (I'm not sure what is a good speed for a home machine, been a couple of years since I've looked). But I know that 2.8 is faster than an awful lot of home computers still in use these days, and I keep my machine unbloated and clean (which affects memory more than CPU usage, but still). Even with that 2.8, some hands take a few seconds for GIB to do it's initial analysis. I've never timed it, but say 10. And GIB cranks CPU usage up to 100% while it's doing that (it's normally between 7 and 15%). Asking a 1 GHz machine to do the same thing would be very annoying, and your requests, while they might be fun to play around with, would just make it even harder on slower machines.

Post deleted because I changed my mind, I don't really want to have this debate. Let it suffice to say that I understood the quotes and if you disagree with me, well then you disagree.

I'm sorry you think that the fact that injustice no longer happens on the scale it once did changes anything.

I completely disagree. The source of the claims makes them laughable. Our actions can bring us to a state in which we have absolutely no legitimate stake in the discussion, and these governments reached that state long ago, and haven't left it.

Were they thrown in prison for support of a government that opposed Stalin? I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago, and from what Solzhenitsyin says, this response would not at all have been surprising. More to the point, I get people's frustration with the current government and our actions in recent years. But comparisons to China or Russia of any point in the last 75-100 years (or comparisons coming from those governments) are just stupid, short-sighted, ridiculous, ignorant of history, forgetful of the literally millions that were killed by those governments, etc etc etc. If you want to have a discussion of US human rights issues, that's fine, but for my piece, keep China and Russia out of it or it's just not a discussion worth having.

yah, the idea that restaurants jam sounds like urban myth to me.

Fixed that for you. Please don't change people's quotes, not even by 'fixing' them. 2. Of course, you can give penalties for ringing phones (which is what I would opt for) but obviously the easiest way to keep ring tones out of the playing area is to keep the phones out. 3. And to be clear: Being on call is an exceptional case reserved for medical emergencies and heads of state. An IT professional is not 'on call'. Rik To the first: It's a standard webforum joke, it was very clearly edited, lighten up a bit. To the second: Umm, no, not even close. Searching people for phones is HARD. Enforcing stiff penalties if they ring is EASY. To the third: Man, you're crazy. IT problems can cost a company boatloads of money. Of course they're "on call."

Come on Dwayne, that doesn't qualify as epic. How about this: [Epic rant thought better of and deleted] [Really I was just too lazy to come up with something epic]

Ok, I have problems with it. Married man, illegal act. Regardless of your stances on these 2 issues, the facts at hand are that someone who made a commitment broke that commitment, and that same person swore to uphold the law yet broke it. However, the article contrasts this with "corruption in government" as though the one correlates with the other. Just like the right tried to do with Clinton in the late 90s. I don't buy it. Men have sex drives; many act on them inappropriately at times. However despicable it might be, hiring a prostitute just doesn't imply future corruption to me. Most people who think differently could, with some careful and honest introspection, get over themselves and move on.

There is an exception for medical devices. Also, I don't know of any pacemaker that can communicate to other equipment, do you? Yes, actually. I just checked to make sure, and I'm not sure what they use, but modern pacemakers definitely can report recorded information and be set externally, with no needles, so I assume it's some kind of radio signal. However, the extension to this discussion is rather far-fetched and I only mention it for amusement's sake.

Not really. My goal was just to say that I'm sure they could still be detected, when you said they couldn't :). Anyway, I think it's a stupid rule. Ruling that they have to be off, penalizing if they ring or are used is one thing, but forcing people to leave them in their rooms is just going to have the effect of punishing paying customers for making the mistake of forgetting, when such forgetfulness will, the vast majority of the time, have zero effect on the game. It probably also has a gender bias, as a heck of a lot more men carry their cell phones visibly (attached to their belts) than women, who tend to have them in their purses. I don't know about this "arms race" thing, there just isn't that much incentive to cheat, at least not in anything but the upper upper echelons. But as has been said, if people want to, this ban isn't going to stop them.

I would be quite surprised if you COULDN'T detect a cell phone without the battery. Have you heard of RFID for instance? An RFID tag requires no battery, is small enough to be included on ID cards which you carry in your wallet, and can be read from pretty great distances (it depends on the tag I'm sure, but the ones on new US passports can be read from 10 meters). I don't know if cell phones generally have RFID tags in them, but there's some pretty sophisticated electronic circuitry there. It's at best naive to believe that it's not possible to develop something like RFID that would respond to the presence of that circuitry. If I were a betting man I'd definitely take the bet that such tech exists, and even that someone who knew what they were doing and had a Radio Shack in driving distance could build such a machine.

Off the top of my head: a) How strictly do you enforce the rules? --Some people get quite bothered when their partners ignore setting and opps and call the director for the slightest infraction. b ) Have you lost regular partners before for compatibility reasons? --True, folks might not answer this honestly. c) How often do you like to try new systems/gadgets? --This is sort of a subquestion of "how much emphasis do you place on system..." I think system is very important, but there's a strong difference between discussion/fleshing existing things out, and constantly changing it up. I can't stand playing with one good friend of mine, only because he insists on changing things up every time we play. I don't even get used to handling something the way we agreed the previous week, and now next week we're scrapping it for something else. d) What's your view on masterpoints? --For me, this will tell a lot about a partner that I want to know. e) What's your view on "playing up"? --Obviously, this doesn't apply to people who can't.

I imagine that if there's ever a need for user names, BBO will go through and scrap accounts that haven't been used in some time length (a couple of years or something), if they don't already do such a thing (I seem to remember someone saying they do, but that might have been some other system). Until then, if you just leave it alone, the only loss is that if someone happens to want the exact same username your father had, they won't be able to get it. The odds of this don't seem too likely.

Even if GIB were completely deterministic: At the very least you assume that GIB responds at an equal level to all bidding styles, an assumption I highly doubt is valid. Then, you'd have to assume that GIB responds equally appropriately to all defensive play issues. Basically, anything where my choices can affect the choices GIB makes, you'd need uniform "quality" of decision making across variations in the input the user gives to really say that you're removing all elements except the players. I have no clue how you would define that. That said, it could still be fun to have the tournaments, I just don't think they'd mean all that.

I actually think it's likely that this kind of rule is/soon will be at least locally illegal. There has been a lot of outcry after school shootings in recent years to allow students to have cell phones...A lot of states have changed their policies regarding this. I don't know that it's too far down the line before at least some states and municipalities start passing bills which guarantee the right to carry a cell phone. In fact, I haven't heard of any such thing, but I would not be at all surprised if some places didn't already have such a law.

The mere fact of a 4 card support for a preempt qualifies as a super-fit? Seems the term is lacking something then. Btw, I'm passing with the rest and with ease.

I was completely oblivious to that particular button for a long time too. It took asking someone "will voting on these old threads, so as to see the results, pop them up to the top on the "last post date" for people" and having them respond "well, you could just click "view results"" for me to realize it was there. I think normally I'm fairly observant. I failed that test completely.

Ok, in case anyone reads this and tries to implement it, I just discovered an odd effect. Apparently BBO is also using your browser for its "Help me find a game" option, so if you make the change I mention it will open this window in Firefox as well. Once you make your choice you're still routed correctly in BBO, but just sos ya know... I rarely use this option, was going to do some breakfast kibitzing just now when I realized it...I imagine there are other odd effects too.

In high school I bagged groceries over the summers. I won't share the grocery store (local chain anyway), but they used to make the baggers (yes, those same folks that handle all your groceries) clean the toilets, etc. And I don't mean at the end of shift or anything, we'd go clean the bathroom and go right back to handling your food in the same clothing. Looking back, it seems like it was probably a health code violation of some sort, but I was unconcerned at the time. Anyway, I usually got stuck with the task because I didn't really mind it, whereas most folks complained vehemently. I'd take 4 hours of that over 8 hours of photocopying any day.

If anyone wants real online scrabble, with time constraints and complete and correct dictionaries, and people who write software to help with wordlist and stem memorization techniques etc, and where it's my understanding most of the truly world-class hang out, there's always The Internet Scrabble Club, which has been around for a lot longer than Scrabulous. I imagine you know all of this, but in case there are others who might be interested...

I am not an expert at all on the matter of bridge, but it strikes me that skaeran perhaps inadvertently said the most important thing that's been noted: "playing a lot the first 10+ years." Obviously there are exceptional people, but in general, real expert status in any field requires time more than anything. You need experience (play), you need to learn from other people (discussion and book learning), you need to surround yourself with others of quality (more about discussion, and opposition, and generally just a good quality club to be at week in and week out), but you can have the best of all of these and you still need time coupled with patience. I recall long ago reading about a study done on the more general question of "what it means to be an expert, and what experts have in common" and one of the conclusions that was reached is that, almost regardless of field or person, about 10 years of applying yourself to the study is required for the human mind to reach a state of "expertise," and such varied things as chess master, violinist, medical doctor, and academic were all considered. Different people learn in different ways, but regardless of how you learn best (personal study, quantity of play, quality of discussion), it's going to take time and patience. Not a criticism of the particular person who said it at all (don't know TylerE from Adam), but as an aside, it strikes me that the below is one of the bigger problems with the self-ranking system: inflation due to the perceived ability of others who are ranking themselves at this level.

To make it harder, it should make a haiku, to boot. Have we used all the Ns, Es or Ss yet? B, C, K, and S are finished. I believe there is one more of the following: G, N, R, V. There are 7 Es yet to be played. Any bridge player who honestly thinks Scrabble sucks, as a game, should read "Wordfreak" by Stefan Fatsis. Many will change their minds on the issue, and all will recognize characters from the bridge world.

yes i use it often.

I can think of a # of good reasons why I don't bother: 1) i haven't actually tried on bbo, but in my previous experience you generally have to resize an avatar yourself. while it would only take 30 seconds, i'm not interested enough to spend the 30 seconds. 2) it's a bit of a pain to find a suitable picture. i'm certainly not going to put one of myself up, because while i don't mind having fellow bridge players know what i look like, i make it a point to not do that kind of thing in publicly accessible forums. 3) there are people in the world still on dial-up connections, and the more data you put on a webpage, the harder it is for those people to load the pages, the less likely they'll be to participate. a 15kb picture will add 5 seconds of load time to someone on a 56 k modem. i'm not saying this should stop you, but it stops me. it kinda boils down to being really not worth the effort. i do have to admit that i laugh at jlall's avatar...kinda wish he'd make it just a headshot and see if he can get anyone to think it's actually him. and han's always makes me do a double-take: "is he really that big of a Star Wars fan? oh, duh, idiot here"