Author: Jim Bodkins
Date: 20:12:44 01/11/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 11, 2004 at 22:11:02, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >On January 11, 2004 at 16:42:15, martin fierz wrote: > >>On January 11, 2004 at 16:11:06, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >> >>>On January 10, 2004 at 16:24:59, Jim Bodkins wrote: >>> >>>>The US doesnt play chess really. USCF has 90,000 members out of 1/3 billion >>>>people and just went bankrupt (over about $300,000 - chump change to a pro >>>>basketball player) and had to sell its store to an english firm. Most of the top >>>>US players (USCF) are immigrants not native. >>>> >>>>I'm a native American, so dont get mad. We play baseball not chess. Chess isnt >>>>culturally a part of the US at all. People (Garry) come here mainly because of >>>>money not chess. Chess software doesnt interest most programmers in my >>>>experience. OS's, databases etc do. >>>> >>>>The US will get hammered, but the guys will probably have fun anyway. >>>> >>>>... oh, and we do Mars missions. :) >>> >>>I believe people on this message board have forgotten their history. :) Shannon >>>was American, the revolutionary programs MacHack and CHESS were American, the >>>world champions Belle, Deep Thought, and Cray Blitz were American. >> >>you are forgetting the first computer chess programmer - alan turing, not >>exactly american :-) > >My bad. I'll change my point. The majority of groundbreaking work on computer >chess was done by Americans. > >>>I'd say computer chess is a fairly significant part of American culture. >> >>and this is the wrong way round: some americans made very significant >>contributions to computer chess. but "part of the american culture"?? there are >>many things that come to my mind when i think about american culture, both >>positive and negative (think football, baseball, everbody having guns, free >>speech, the whole idea of the american dream etc). but certainly not computer >>chess... > >I was speaking relatively, of course, in response to Jim's post that Americans >suck at computer chess because chess itself is not part of our culture. I'd say >that computer chess is most definitely a part of our computer science culture. I >suppose you could argue semantics about "significant." > >-Tom I never said suck. We are clever ne'er-do-wells. :) As a programmer, I know many. Chess just isnt a major part of our culture. It is enough a part of the programming subculture to be of interest in a general way but not enough to drive people to dedicate their lives to it. Someone mentioned money. Wonder if that was serious? :)
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