Dweeb!

I just heard that Jonathan Schaeffer published a revised version of his book on Chinook, One Jump Ahead. I own it, and it was one of the things that motivated me to work on checkers. In the new version, some new material was added on the solution of checkers by the Chinook team, which probably also makes good reading. I also get mentioned in the book - although I'm rather on the receiving end:


"Darse Billings and many other people were upset at the junk that was being posted on the web. Darse sent out the following message:

Who the hell is this dweeb? I read the report of the Las Vegas tournament and was appalled with his obnoxious and slanderous comments against Jonathan. Someone should teach him some manners.
Personally, I see no reason for Jonathan to accept a challenge from NEMESIS - CHINOOK doesn't have to prove anything to anywone. The program did enough talking eight years ago - long before the pipsqueaks started squeaking. But if he does grant them a match, I hope it will only be after sufficient preparation to blow them out of the water. Punks."


Darse (and Schaeffer with his Junk) is referring to my report on the Las Vegas world championship (As a side note, Darse was not on the Chinook team, and not a checkers programmer - exactly what his qualifications would be to judge the claims in my report remains a mystery to me).


Well, at least I learned some new English curse-words :-)