Chess 960 - new version of standard chess

The current form of chess was derived from the oldest form of game called ‘Shatranj’ (Chaturanga in Sanskrit). The standard form of chess is a board game played between two players, played on a square-checkered board with 64 squares. The official rules of chess are maintained by World Chess Federation and are described in FIDE Handbook.

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-->The initial setup of the standard chess board



Now, think about a chess board with the starting position of the main pieces is chosen at random. This is called shuffle chess. Anyways, Chess 960 is not just randomizing the starting positions but it maintains the chances of Castling too.

Chess 960 was introduced by the former world chess champion Bobby Fischer and is a variant of shuffle chess. This type of chess is also known to be Fischer Random Chess.Chess960 was officially introduced in 1996 and the first tournament was held in Yugoslavia in the spring of 1996.

-->An example of initial setup of Chess 960
The goal behind the introduction of Chess 960 was to eliminate the complete dominance of openings preparation in standard chess and to replace it with creativity and talent. As the starting position is random it is not possible to fix every move of the game. From the first move, both players have to come up with original strategies and cannot use well-known thinking patterns.
Before starting the game, the positions of the pieces are randomly set up, subject to certain rules, and then the game is played in the same way as standard chess. As usual, all the pieces have the normal moves and each player’s objective is to checkmate the opponent’s king.

Starting positions, rules for determining starting position, rules for castling are different from standard chess. However, the random placement of pieces makes talent and creativity more important than memorization of opening moves.

PEANUTS @ NUT’SHELL

Well, how long it takes for the credit of peanuts?

Is Hari Sadu still alive?

Naukri needs a name update for Hari Sadu.

I suggest M. Hari Sadu, M for MORON

The rest the same; Hitlor, Arrogant, Rascal, Idiot, Shameless, etc

Am still waiting for the peanuts,

After all that’s what we get at the end of day!

RACE

the choice was obvious. he wins and they call me runner up. good that they didn’t call me loser! am not loser because there were other losers behind me!

so is victory just relative? who knows and who cares? 

people celebrate with winner, why don’t you see the tears of a loser?

i got the glimpse of trophy that’s when i realized the loss! the cup was mine before! i have been using it for a couple of years now and its gone to another hand. is the cup comfortable in someone else's hands? oh whatever...

how come its gone to him? to winner someone said because u worth it... i still believe that someone was wrong!

You!

Way back

Begun with hand in hand

Somewhere in the pathway

Did realize that am all alone

Couldn't see you gone!

Present

Oh damn am awake

in the middle of the night!

Was that just a dream?

Hell! Am I nuts? 

Facebook and Privacy Concerns!

Undoubtedly, Facebook has become the most popular social networking websites of today. There are news that they are going to place their users info into ‘Pages’ or public forums. This is based on demographic and geographic information a user entered into their profile. Your privacy is questioned here because personal details of members of ‘Pages’ will be always public.

When you list an interest in your profile, Facebook will automatically add you to a page of users with this interest. This can happen with the users from same location too. Once a page is created and you are a member of this page, your information is either listed public or you will have to choose not to list.

Scene becomes ridiculous when you had blocked your boss from viewing your profile information and after joining a Facebook Page it becomes available. Imagine the situation when your boss sees that you have joined a forum named “My Stupid Boss”!!!

However, before linking your profile with any page, Facebook warns you. Make sure you choose to list in the right pages to keep your privacy. Most users might not be interested in listing pages according to their sex and religious views etc.

Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD)!!!

Facebook has quickly become one of the most popular social networking websites on the internet. It has thrashed Myspace in its popularity. Nowadays Facebook is available on your computer as well as through most mobile devices like cell phones and I-Phones. And it has developed some downsides too.

People like professional singers, artists, and musical groups have created their own Facebook pages and they use them as their latest works’ advertisement. While majority of people use Facebook to enhance their lives in part-time activities, most of the youngsters spend time on Facebook or any other socializing website to make new friends and play online games.

Facebook is quite addictive. Once you start using it, you tend to check your friends status message at least once a day and think about posting a better status message to your profile. You become upset when you cannot find a person you are looking for online when you log in. You put off your important office work or study time just to browse through Facebook. Beware; it could be a symptom of Facebook addiction disorder (FAD) in psychological terms.

One of the most important addictions on Facebook is hundreds of online games. Mafiawar, Farmville etc are examples of some online games available in Facebook. We can spot number of adults too who play these games in office hours. Just meant to say, not only youngsters are inclined to Facebook Addiction Disorder, but adults also!

No wonder why Anthony Orsini, principal of a Middle School in N.J requested the parents of his students to put on parental control! According to Orsini there is no positive point absolutely for a middle school student to be a part of social networking site. He blames online gaming too for spoiling kids.

Suggestions made by Orsini to get your kids off Facebook addiction are as follows:

Kids should not be allowed to place a computer in their bed room. Instead place them in a public place so that everybody can see what is happening. Do not even let your kids to recharge your family laptop at their bedroom!

Orsini strongly recommends the installation and use of Parental Control software. Also every parent should check their kids’ messages at least once in a week. Further he says they do not need interactive communication devices to play online games.

Parents might be positively accepting Orsini’s suggestions. However, for adults who are Facebook addicted these points are not going to help. There will not be anyone to monitor your activities or put parental control on. Here, you should admit that you have a problem and try to get rid of that. Think about your goals on Facebook, why you really want to use Facebook or any other social networking site? Remembering birthdays, find and keep old friends? Fine, stick to that and reduce the time you spend on Facebook. Think of other things you could be doing with your time spent on Facebook such as a part time job, being with friends or family, etc.

Now, Orsini’s advices about Facebook seem to be more appropriate for adults than for kids!

Is Facebook a Real Threat to Online Ad Giants?

Facebook offers the feature to electronically meet many strangers around the world and befriend with them. As the network of friends grows, the scope of ad market is also increases.

The “like” option to any external webpage can take to the fan page of an advertiser and this is how Facebook grow their ad revenue. This seems to be a plus point for Facebook compared to other socializing websites. Others do not have this option to link fan pages and they rely on the Ads on search pages.

Ever wondered how it is possible to link external web pages to Facebook? They use Open-Graph protocol for this purpose. With Open Graph, it is much easier to link your webpage into the social graph. Just like Facebook pages, users can establish connections with social graph pages once they became the objects in the graph. So you can read an article on an online news paper and ‘Like’ it or comment on it as you do it within Facebook.

Revenue from the advertisement is the only income for Facebook. According to latest news, they are in the process of still raising the revenue through ads. They have hired some of the people who were part of developing Google’s Advertisement Network.

Their new strategy in advertising is going to make Facebook a real threat for Google Inc’s Ad networks and other competitors. Facebook’s marketing techniques are known to be ‘relationship marketing’ which differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value to the firm of keeping customers, as opposed to direct or ‘Intrusion’ marketing, which focuses upon acquisition of new clients by targeting majority demographics based upon prospective client lists.” (Source: Wikipeida).

Facebook finds the targets of an ad according to certain criteria such as country a person living, his age, sex, interests, work space, etc. They target a particular group of people with the ads. This gives more result than placing generic ads on the website.

Also to befriend with targeting people makes lot of differences and seems to be more effective. To them marketing is about making relationships than an immediate sale.

But there are negative sides too on the other hand. Fan pages of each advertisement in Facebook gives a ‘trusted referrals’. They lead to only positive reviews and recommendations. You do not get a real-life recommendation about the ads posted there.

Search engine marketing usually attracts more people. Facebook advertising might take long time to establish a relationship and convert it into sales. Hence small business owners may not prefer to invest on this.

It is also a known fact that Facebook is prone to vulnerable attacks and hacks. DoS (Denial of Service) attack happened to Facebook in the past and similar situations may make users hesitate to come back to this site.

However, kudos to Facebook’s Ad strategy. Their popularity and their demographic and geographic targeting of people can surely overcome these cons and it is going to be a beginning of a huge Ad Venture in the web space!!!