Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 12:36:39 12/10/03
Go up one level in this thread
On December 10, 2003 at 13:25:30, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: >On December 10, 2003 at 13:19:49, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: > >>On December 10, 2003 at 10:48:21, Matthew Hull wrote: >> >>>You can still do this with a local FICS server, authors present. >> >>But what's the advantage of autoplay then? > >In terms of time I mean. Either people are there or they aren't. > >You're basically trying to get people to be not there but that's >exactly the opposite of the intention of such an event. That's not true. In 1978 I had a box with multiple serial ports that could connect programs together with no operator. It kept up with the "chess clock" and chess board positions itself and served as a referee. Ken Thompson and I (and a few others) repeatedly asked the ICCA to lets mandate everyone be automatic-interface next year. The answer "some commercial stand-alone units don't have serial ports and we would be excluding them." My answer was "tough, let 'em add a serial port. A UART is embarassingly cheap." You see where that went. Today it would be xboard/winboard compatibility to use xboard/winboard on a local chess server at the tournament site. Or else a custom interface that could talk ICC language if the author would rather roll his own interface (IE Ferret). People would still attend just as today. They just get taken out of the manual-control loop. More relaxed. More conversation time. Less nerves. Easier to take restroom or meal breaks. without disrupting ongoing games at all, since no human intervention is needed after the things are powered up and connected to the local server. > >I don't mind people having CCT's. I'm just not very interested in >them. Nobody says "only CCT's" although they are certainly the future. But manual events are pretty droll as well. Just look at all the problems that arise. _NONE_ would happen on a local server with no human intervention. Or if a problem did arise, it would be perhaps tournament-wide due to a power or equipment failure. That's rare enough to ignore. And easy enough to recover from if a dual-redundant server is deemed necessary. > >-- >GCP
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