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Subject: Re: question about the warning about rebroadcasting games

Author: Adrien Regimbald

Date: 07:36:43 07/09/00

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Hello,

>There is nothing wrong with your machine, Kasparovchess simply has a garbage
>interface.  Their playing zone is garbage, everything with java and javascript
>nonsense is garbage. I cannot conceive how they had so much money to invest in
>this business, years of experience to observe in ICC, and they do not have the
>brains to imitate and improve on what already exists. The ICC interface is
>simply superior, as I'm certain FICS is, or anything else that has an actual
>Windows client program.  On ICC you can watch a game with GM commentary where
>the GM moves pieces on your analysis board and explains the variations, and
>everything is fast and neat.  You can even play at the same time in another
>window if you like.  I don't even have a fast connection, but everything works
>beautifully. I had an email conversation with Kasparovchess editor-in-chief and
>general chess gadfly Mig months before Kasparovchess went online, where I tried
>to explain how they could simply improve on ICC, and that having a web-based
>interface would be garbage and would be a horrible mistake. Oh well, it's not my
>business venture.

Although I can't say for sure that this is their actual reason or not, there is
one huge reason to use Java - not everyone uses a win32 environment, and
investing a large ammount of time into a win32 dedicated interface and then
spending a lot of time porting it just to get minor support of some other OSes,
never mind complete support would most likely offset the benefit of having such
a dedicated interface.

As to comparing what's on KC to Blitzin, I haven't looked at what's on KC, but I
find Blitzin to be a wretch-worthy program, it's incredibly disgusting IMO.
Compared to the power, flexibility, and visual simplicity of WinBoard, Blitzin
is completely outclassed.  I can understand the appeal for the masses, but for
any advanced user, there are much better choices.  Perhaps if KC is simply
trying to appeal to the masses (which it most certainly seems to be), a
dedicated win32 client may have been a serious consideration for them .. but
there are many other things to consider - development cost of such an interface,
code / debug / test / repeat time (Blitzin was not created overnight), as well
as portability issues.

If the issue is simply that you like Blitzin better, I think KC made a good
choice in going with Java.  If the KC interface is buggy, slow, etc, then
perhaps they would have been better off taking some extra time to make a
dedicated client.


Regards,
Adrien.



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