Thursday, July 13, 2006
Random Musings
I've just been hanging around at home these few weeks. Sometimes kenny will ask the few of us to parkway for lunch, but on tues we went to his house instead. He cooked spaghetti, but dwin claims it's fried noodles. I wasn't watching so I don't know which it is. Anyway, thanks to the sauce, it still tasted like spaghetti. Played some NFS on his computer, then dwin chris and I went to the parkway macs when kenny had to go off for tuition. Dwin had brought his laptop along as he wanted to prod chris into finishing up his new blog design. They finished it there, then dwin asked for something unique to place on his blog. Since he has a fetish for penguins, I suggested making a penguin which will dive off the side of a post, accelerating as it goes. Erm, he took me seriously and sent me a prototype the same night, done with javascript. Helped him debug it, but he probably would have found the error in the next 5 mins anyway. Now, it's up on his blog, but it can only be seen on screens with a horizontal resolution higher than 1200. If you have a large enough screen, go to Dwin in my links and check it out.
Read the Sports page today and it said Singapore won't be sending the U23 team to the Asian Games. It seems they didn't do well enough in the SEA games. I think that's a very short sighted position. How do we intend to qualify for the World Cup if our players don't even get a chance to play in regional tournaments? It's pretty silly to base the criteria on past games performance. It's just like playing solitaire showdown. If I'm playing with an equally good opponent, the chances of winning should be 50%. Just because he has won the last 3 games doesn't mean he'll win the 4th one. Note that this fails when playing with jeryl, I tend to lose many games in a row as the condition of equally matched opponents is not met.
More importantly, the team could have improved since the last tournament, but now they no longer have a chance to prove their worth. It reminds me of what happened in primary school. In P2, the teacher picked the players for the telematch by asking who played in P1. At that time, it seemed like a vicious cycle to me. After P1, no one else will stand a chance if the teachers pick the same people every year, just because they are the ones with experience. Are our soccer players just going to languish in the S-league? With no hope of playing in more prestigious tournaments and gaining valuable international experience? Maybe that's why few people will consider soccer as a career.
Another absurd belief is the one which assumes that time will lead to a team which will finally qualify for the World Cup. A little bit of thought will tell you how absurd this is. Saying "Maybe we'll get there in 50 years" doesn't make sense. Players age and are replaced. The new players are not the old ones, good veterans don't necessarily lead to a good young team. It's true that they can mentor younger players, but the younger players must develop their own style and skills. After 50 years, a few generations will have passed, and unless something is done about getting more people into professional soccer, we'll still be in the same place. More time won't make us give birth to kids who are natural talents.
I've just borrowed a book titled "Say No to Microsoft". The views in there are very biased, but considering the title, they would be. However, I don't like some statements which may mislead people. The author says that he has never used Outlook and has never been infected by an email virus. The next sentence "Coincidence?" suggests that Outlook users are at great risk. Well I've used Outlook and Outlook Express for a long time and I've never been infected too. I think it all comes down to being careful and paranoid when it comes to email attachments.
It is true that non-Windows operating systems are at lower risk of virus attacks, but will that still be true if they have greater market share? Perhaps it will be, their code may be more robust. However, the greater user base will make them more attractive for hackers, and the more robust code will only serve as a greater challenge. That said, I still like the concept of the open source movement. They should be able to rise to the challenge of a virus quickly and close off the weakness, probably much faster than Microsoft can.
Read the Sports page today and it said Singapore won't be sending the U23 team to the Asian Games. It seems they didn't do well enough in the SEA games. I think that's a very short sighted position. How do we intend to qualify for the World Cup if our players don't even get a chance to play in regional tournaments? It's pretty silly to base the criteria on past games performance. It's just like playing solitaire showdown. If I'm playing with an equally good opponent, the chances of winning should be 50%. Just because he has won the last 3 games doesn't mean he'll win the 4th one. Note that this fails when playing with jeryl, I tend to lose many games in a row as the condition of equally matched opponents is not met.
More importantly, the team could have improved since the last tournament, but now they no longer have a chance to prove their worth. It reminds me of what happened in primary school. In P2, the teacher picked the players for the telematch by asking who played in P1. At that time, it seemed like a vicious cycle to me. After P1, no one else will stand a chance if the teachers pick the same people every year, just because they are the ones with experience. Are our soccer players just going to languish in the S-league? With no hope of playing in more prestigious tournaments and gaining valuable international experience? Maybe that's why few people will consider soccer as a career.
Another absurd belief is the one which assumes that time will lead to a team which will finally qualify for the World Cup. A little bit of thought will tell you how absurd this is. Saying "Maybe we'll get there in 50 years" doesn't make sense. Players age and are replaced. The new players are not the old ones, good veterans don't necessarily lead to a good young team. It's true that they can mentor younger players, but the younger players must develop their own style and skills. After 50 years, a few generations will have passed, and unless something is done about getting more people into professional soccer, we'll still be in the same place. More time won't make us give birth to kids who are natural talents.
I've just borrowed a book titled "Say No to Microsoft". The views in there are very biased, but considering the title, they would be. However, I don't like some statements which may mislead people. The author says that he has never used Outlook and has never been infected by an email virus. The next sentence "Coincidence?" suggests that Outlook users are at great risk. Well I've used Outlook and Outlook Express for a long time and I've never been infected too. I think it all comes down to being careful and paranoid when it comes to email attachments.
It is true that non-Windows operating systems are at lower risk of virus attacks, but will that still be true if they have greater market share? Perhaps it will be, their code may be more robust. However, the greater user base will make them more attractive for hackers, and the more robust code will only serve as a greater challenge. That said, I still like the concept of the open source movement. They should be able to rise to the challenge of a virus quickly and close off the weakness, probably much faster than Microsoft can.
posted by cosine @ 9:43 PM 
Comments:
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their argument is that if they agree to send the U23 soccer team for the Asian Games, they would have to send many other sports teams which have not performed as well too. Unwilling to commit more resources maybe, on something that bears little or no return...?
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