The future of KGS

[Bantari]

Your neighbour lets you use his car. He even pays for gas. There is a proximity alert on the car to help you park. At some time, the alert stops working. Your neighbour thinks it no big deal and doesn't want to take the time to fix it. He also isn't comfortable with you taking a toolbox to the car yourself. You feel he owes it to you to fix the alert to give you the car so you can fix it. You are not grateful about using the car so far.

IMO this is the best analogy so far.

Agree.

[daal]

But why are we talking about your experiences with KGS?

Why are we talking about yours? Lag is a tricky issue, and can have causes all along the way from your box(es) to the server and back. Maybe it's not KGS's fault. Big Doug wanted to talk to you about it, and inquired about your level of computer expertise, but you brushed him off. Reminds me a bit of when you couldn't run the GoGoD CD. If something works fine for lots of folks but not for you, pointing fingers will only get you so far.

[billywoods]

Why are we talking about yours?

I'm reporting a (serious) bug. It's not relevant or helpful for you to come along and respond with how few problems you're having. It doesn't make any sense for people to be telling me that I should be really grateful for all the fun games of go I can play in theory.

(It reminds me a lot of the GoGoD thread too - lots of people ignored what I was writing, caricatured me as stupid and selfish, got very angry and called me names there too. It's disappointing. Ultimately, I want the same thing as anyone else: to improve the experience of the go community. And it pisses me off no end that I can't improve anything myself, and that the people who can improve things take my well-intended criticisms badly and respond defensively. I'll stop bothering soon, I'm sure.)

(As for BigDoug: I am not convinced in the slightest that he wasn't just being patronising, like several of the other respondents to my posts. I could be wrong. In any case, I've already made my IT expertise clear in this thread and elsewhere.)

[Splatted]

Your neighbour lets you use his car. He even pays for gas. There is a proximity alert on the car to help you park. At some time, the alert stops working. Your neighbour thinks it no big deal and doesn't want to take the time to fix it.

I chose to give the example of the car going to rust because some people think that is happening to KGS. Whether or not that is the case seems to me to be a completely different discussion; The point of my post was to consider what would be a reasonable reaction to it happening to KGS.

He also isn't comfortable with you taking a toolbox to the car yourself.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but WMS wouldn't actually have to allow anyone direct access to KGS in order for them to contribute. People could write the code and submit the fixes to him, then he could implement them (or not) at his leisure. If he doesn't accept help it's because he doesn't want it.

You feel he owes it to you to fix the alert to give you the car so you can fix it. You are not grateful about using the car so far.

Deja's earlier posts seemed to imply this kind of attitude, and that's what the argument seems to be about, but I'm not sure any of the people currently arguing actually feel this way. The point of my post was to try and find out what people think, not to prove them wrong for thinking it.

[Boidhre]

Ah, here's an example of an actual fallacy: the Straw Man Argument, where you deliberately alter (or invent) what someone else said, then attack that statement instead of the actual statement.

The above statement is not what BigDoug said. For reference, here's what he actually said:

"Can you please provide a bit of information about your background in IT development? It would make it easier for me to understand your points if I know whether I'm talking with a high school student or someone with professional IT industry experience."

To so try to twist the meaning of his words is extremely dishonest.

And, it should have been obvious that I was referring to speedchase's point not BigDoug's given my choice of terms and that I referring to the interpretation that people are making of BigDoug's post and them seeing a false analogy from it, i.e. that you cannot quickly understand what he would say if you are not an IT professional. Which isn't a great point since not all IT professionals know much about coding or managing coding projects and there is a fair bit of coding that goes on outside of the IT profession.

To be clear, I am more on BigDoug's side here than the other, I just disagree with how he phrased things there. I appreciate the actual point he was trying to make.

[Splatted]

If the act of fixing the car is something that's valuable to him then it would be selfish to expect him to give it up. (I wonder if this is where me and Billywoods disagree?)

No, I don't think we do. I'd never blame him for that. (I would still see it as very wasteful, though, as I'm sure you would too. Not only has the car rusted beyond repair, but your neighbour has wasted the opportunity to fix it and deprived everyone else of that same opportunity, which he was never going to take. And now imagine a world in which there are only four or five cars anyway, and building a car takes years, and most people can never get their hands on a car, and the gratuitous wastefulness is compounded.)

That's what I thought. It seems odd to me that I feel like I agree with everyone and yet they're still arguing...

[Boidhre]

It seems odd to me that I feel like I agree with everyone and yet they're still arguing...

Welcome to the Internet, or politics. Whichever.

[speedchase]

And, it should have been obvious that I was referring to speedchase's point not BigDoug's given my choice of terms and that I referring to the interpretation that people are making of BigDoug's post and them seeing a false analogy from it, i.e. that you cannot quickly understand what he would say if you are not an IT professional. Which isn't a great point since not all IT professionals know much about coding or managing coding projects and there is a fair bit of coding that goes on outside of the IT profession.

To be clear, I am more on BigDoug's side here than the other, I just disagree with how he phrased things there. I appreciate the actual point he was trying to make.

I still didn't make that claim in any way, so it is still a straw man.

I chose to give the example of the car going to rust because some people think that is happening to KGS. Whether or not that is the case seems to me to be a completely different discussion; The point of my post was to consider what would be a reasonable reaction to it happening to KGS.

It's NOT going to rust, so any analagy in which the car goes to rust is a false analogy to the current situation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but WMS wouldn't actually have to allow anyone direct access to KGS in order for them to contribute. People could write the code and submit the fixes to him, then he could implement them (or not) at his leisure. If he doesn't accept help it's because he doesn't want it.

I believe WMS would have to give them access to the code in order to do this, which he doesn't want to do, because with the code, you could figure out how the encryption works (or something).

[Kirby]

...
Sure, wms does most of the final decision making, but even if it is on a wishlist with like a hundred votes, that means only like 0.3% of the KGS population cares. I'm not saying he shouldn't try to do it if he gets around to it, but criticizing him for focusing on other things that are much more important like the HTML client just silly.
....

In this case, more than criticism, I was correcting an inaccuracy in BigDoug's post. It's one thing not to criticize someone for not doing X. But it's another thing to claim that someone does X when they actually don't.

[Kirby]

...
Sure, wms does most of the final decision making, but even if it is on a wishlist with like a hundred votes, that means only like 0.3% of the KGS population cares. I'm not saying he shouldn't try to do it if he gets around to it, but criticizing him for focusing on other things that are much more important like the HTML client just silly.
....

In this case, more than criticism, I was correcting an inaccuracy in BigDoug's post. It's one thing not to criticize someone for not doing X. But it's another thing to claim that someone does X when they actually don't.

[Kirby]

Your neighbour lets you use his car. He even pays for gas. There is a proximity alert on the car to help you park. At some time, the alert stops working. Your neighbour thinks it no big deal and doesn't want to take the time to fix it. He also isn't comfortable with you taking a toolbox to the car yourself. You feel he owes it to you to fix the alert to give you the car so you can fix it. You are not grateful about using the car so far.

And in my case, one of the neighbor's henchmen comes along and kicks me out of the car onto the road because of a misunderstanding. I try to clear the misunderstanding up, and tell my neighbor that I was hurt by what the henchman did, and my neighbor tells me to go **** off because I don't pay him anything for his car.

Now, if I get the opportunity, I would like to take his car and crash it into a wall. I've got other cars I can use anyway, and his car isn't any better than those.

[imabuddha]

And in my case, one of the neighbor's henchmen comes along and kicks me out of the car onto the road because of a misunderstanding. I try to clear the misunderstanding up, and tell my neighbor that I was hurt by what the henchman did, and my neighbor tells me to go **** off because I don't pay him anything for his car.

Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0
Help, help! I'm being repressed!

[BigDoug]

Why are we talking about yours?

I'm reporting a (serious) bug. It's not relevant or helpful for you to come along and respond with how few problems you're having. It doesn't make any sense for people to be telling me that I should be really grateful for all the fun games of go I can play in theory.

Before I answer your question directly, I'll tell you a little bit about my background so that you can understand the reason for my question. In real life, I'm a project manager in the IT industry. For a project to be successful, it's essential to understand what assumptions are being made and what the various expectations are. People have a variety of expertise and varying degrees of technical and business jargon and specialised vocabularies. Therefore, having everyone share the same understanding of what's required is essential.

That's why I asked you about your IT industry background. If you told me that you're a high school student taking your first programming class, then I'd use different terms and concepts than if you told me you have 20 years as a developer in commercial environments.

Now let's get back to your paragraph above. You state as a matter of fact that the lag is caused by a KGS bug. I don't agree with this yet. We haven't yet eliminated your computer, your cables, your firewall, your wireless router (if you have one), your local network infrastructure and so on and so on. There are lots of things which can cause lag. To state as fact that the only cause is KGS code is simply premature.

Because you see this lag being caused by a bug, you are apparently frustrated that Bill hasn't fixed it. However, if the cause is not the KGS code, then the cause of the problem is outside of KGS' control. Diagnosing and fixing connectivity faults can be quite complex in some circumstances. (In a previous job, we spent considerable time and hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing a communications problem for a bank.) Simply assigning the cause to KGS without actual proof of it originating there isn't going to solve the problem.

(As for BigDoug: I am not convinced in the slightest that he wasn't just being patronising, like several of the other respondents to my posts. I could be wrong. In any case, I've already made my IT expertise clear in this thread and elsewhere.)

Before you assign negative intentionns to me, why don't you consider why I'd intentionally patronise you. You raised a question about KGS and I tried to answer your question. If I have a question about go and someone asks me my rank in order to find out how best to explain it to me, I don't take that as a personal affront. Personally, I'd expect someone to speak with a 6D differently than a 15K. That's not to say that the 15k is in any way inferior. It's just a matter of know what terms and concepts are best to use when speaking with the person. (Note that I'm not implying that I'm a 6d and you're a 15k or vice versa -- this is a example only.)

I've worked in the IT industry for many years. I would be personally affronted if a fellow professional made fun of someone because he or she is a student or works in another industry. I don't know what you received your university degree in, but the odds are good that you're much more knowledgeable in that field than I am. If I politely ask you a question in good faith, I would expect you to try to answer it and not make fun of me for not being as knowledgeable as you.

In addition, the odds are also quite good that someone else in this thread is more knowledgeable about these technical issues than me. And if that person tried in good faith to help, I would not assume that he or she is patronising. I'd assume that the person is simply trying to help.

[duckweed]

Your neighbour lets you use his car. He even pays for gas. There is a proximity alert on the car to help you park. At some time, the alert stops working. Your neighbour thinks it no big deal and doesn't want to take the time to fix it. He also isn't comfortable with you taking a toolbox to the car yourself. You feel he owes it to you to fix the alert to give you the car so you can fix it. You are not grateful about using the car so far.

And in my case, one of the neighbor's henchmen comes along and kicks me out of the car onto the road because of a misunderstanding. I try to clear the misunderstanding up, and tell my neighbor that I was hurt by what the henchman did, and my neighbor tells me to go **** off because I don't pay him anything for his car.

Now, if I get the opportunity, I would like to take his car and crash it into a wall. I've got other cars I can use anyway, and his car isn't any better than those.

I don't think that is an appropriate response....

So you been banned once ... maybe its time to move on.

Just delete the kgs entry in the windows registry, connect to kgs using the java built-in support for sock proxies and login using a secondary account next time you get banned.

And behave yourself.

[daal]

Your neighbour lets you use his car. He even pays for gas. There is a proximity alert on the car to help you park. At some time, the alert stops working. Your neighbour thinks it no big deal and doesn't want to take the time to fix it. He also isn't comfortable with you taking a toolbox to the car yourself. You feel he owes it to you to fix the alert to give you the car so you can fix it. You are not grateful about using the car so far.

And in my case, one of the neighbor's henchmen comes along and kicks me out of the car onto the road because of a misunderstanding. I try to clear the misunderstanding up, and tell my neighbor that I was hurt by what the henchman did, and my neighbor tells me to go **** off because I don't pay him anything for his car.

Now, if I get the opportunity, I would like to take his car and crash it into a wall. I've got other cars I can use anyway, and his car isn't any better than those.

I can't help but wonder if you weren't sitting in the driveway honking the horn to keep the pigeons from pooping on your neighbor's car when out of the blue he yanked the keys only to give them back a day later without a word of apology. He never even responded to your letter about the chemical reaction of bird poop on metallic paint so you just kept on using his car for ten years looking for the right trees to park it under.