![]() No one would ever buy 40,000 words, but it should give you a sense of the thoroughness of the work. Now, Siracusa is a one-man team that could, who wrote enough words on Tiger to be paid $65,000 if he had a contract for typical, entry-level magazine writing, so he deserves a lot of respect, even when we disagree. While I dearly wish someone would steer them in the direction of the eternally neglected Finder, I can’t help but be proud of the little OS team that could. The productivity of Apple’s Mac OS X development team has increased tremendously since 10.0 they’re now firing on all cylinders. If this is what Apple can do with 18 months of development time instead of 12, I tremble to think what they could do with a full two years-let alone the length of time it took for Mac OS X 10.0 to first ship. There’s an unprecedented number of substantial, totally new features and technologies: Spotlight, Core Image and Video, Quartz 2D Extreme, Dashboard, and Automator, just to name a few. ![]() Every major bundled application has been improved. The performance improvements are immediately noticeable. It offers substantial improvements over Panther in all important areas. Tiger is the best version of Mac OS X yet. After reviewing everything there is to review, including purely aesthetic tweaks, I’ll give away his ending (since it’s obvious by the time you get to part 6, anyway): It’s the magnum opus of the Tiger world, and is so comprehensive it devotes five parts wholly to metadata. In that vein of noblesse oblige, John Siracusa at Ars Technica wrote the longest review of an operating system I have ever seen, at 21 parts and more than 40,000 words. Those of us fortunate to install soon after the release found ourselves an important source of knowledge for those who had not and, as always, there’s a certain degree of noblesse oblige from those with blogs to help out those in need of help. The latest one, Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, is here, swiftly coming to dominate every printed word in the end of April and the beginning of May. So it’s no small wonder that Apple chose the names of large, swift cats to describe their OS X releases.
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![]() (Many players have searched for the perfect chess opening. The perfect chess opening is one where you develop every piece in a single move to its best possible square, and then leave it there. How do I develop my pieces so that I don't lose any tempos along the way, and if possible I gain tempos at my opponent's expense? The answer to that question is Chess Opening Theory. In the opening, developing your pieces is everything. Chess players would say "Black has gained a tempo on the queen".Īnd that right there is opening theory in microcosm. Instead of developing another piece, you've got to waste this tempo re-locating a piece you'd already developed. If your queen gets attacked by a knight, you've got to move it or lose it. A tempo is an opportunity to move something.ĭoesn't Black always get one tempo for every tempo White gets? Not quite. In business-speak, there's an opportunity cost to moving the queen.Įach turn is a precious commodity, which we call a tempo. If your queen is doing something this turn, bad luck, the rest of your pieces have to stay put. She has lost 1 tempo.Ĭhess is a turn-based game, but an unusual one: you can only move one piece each turn except when castling. White would like to play a useful move like Nf3 too, but because her queen is attacked, she doesn't have time. Nf6 next and gain a tempo on the queen.īlack has made the move she wanted to make anyway, which was. If she was a hockey player, she would be offside.īut more importantly, Black is going to play. Now, what does White's queen think she's doing on h5? Everything she can attack is defended. Where did Black go wrong here? Let's allow Black to take back the move 3.Nc6 and replace it with 3.Qe7! which defends the f7 and e5 pawns simultaneously (diagram B). That's two attackers on f7, and still only one defender.īlack notices that the queen on h5 is threatening the pawn on e5, and so defends it with the innocent 3.Nc6? (diagram A). It's now got one attacker and one defender.īlack isn't entirely sure what's going on, and so copies White again: 2.Bc5. Then White brings out the f1-bishop, as planned: 2.Bc4. If you're not sure what 1.e4 means (or where f7 is), you need this quick course in algebraic notation from the Chess Wikibook. The plan is to quickly develop the queen and f1-bishop in such a way that they both attack that f7 pawn. Developing a piece means moving it off the back rank and putting it somewhere more useful. The queen and f1-bishop, which were stuck on the back rank, can now be developed. ![]() If you can attack it with two pieces while it's defended by only one, you've won it for free. It's a weak pawn because it's defended only by the Black king. The trick is to carry out a lightning attack on the weak f7 pawn. Otherwise we'd have solved chess, and no one would play it. Yes, it is possible! But only if your friend doesn't see it coming. How can I beat my friend in, like, four moves? Beating your friend in four moves The question that cuts right to the heart of what it means to be a competitive board game player: Now it's time to answer that $64,000 question that's on the tip of every new chess player's tongue. (If you have doubts about any of that, head over to the Chess Wikibook first!) You've learned that moving your bishops and knights off the back row and controlling territory is a good plan, and letting many of your pieces be captured for free is a bad one. |
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