Cricket and terrorism
I was in a microsoft training thingy where a bunch of the cool gys from MS US came out to teach us wee bumpkins a thing or two. All in all it was great and I did actually learn some stuff (actually I got a bit scared as the cream of australian database people were in the room and these guys made us look pretty damn lame, mind you it was on their specialty and they get paid way more than us so I guess we didn't actually suck too badly hehehe).
Durng it one of the guys mentioned that he had had someone try to explain cricket to him and he just couldn't get it.
We are talking about a guy that can do some pretty damn nifty stuff and is obviously not thick.
And it annoyed the hell out of me.
Not so much that he said it but that so many people say that kind of crap. People are always making that joke.
I figure any game you can name is roughly as complex as any other game. Especially when you get to "best in the world" competitions. Or they are pointless (like noughts and crosses / tic tac toe where there is a provable answer to the game).
I am not a fan of cricket in the way that some people are. I kind of like watching but I don't really care who wins or loses.
Having thought about the theorem (that all games are equally complex once the outcome matters and lots o money is involved) I watched the current ashes tests with a bit more care.
I have worked out what cricket is all about.
Cricket is actually a competition between technology and people.
The people actually playing the game have nothing to do with it. Outside of being the testing ground.
Umpires stand in 40 degree C heat and have one chance to make a decision. The commentators have microphones picking up whether the ball hit the bat, infrared replays showing contact points, computer generated "would it have the stumps or not" graphics and many other things.
And yet mostly the umpires are right.
Remember they have just watched a couple hundred balls being bowled with nothing happening and it is hot and they can't move for the 5 days of the match.
If the US wants to have people watching xray machines at airports they ought to hire cricket umpires.
Durng it one of the guys mentioned that he had had someone try to explain cricket to him and he just couldn't get it.
We are talking about a guy that can do some pretty damn nifty stuff and is obviously not thick.
And it annoyed the hell out of me.
Not so much that he said it but that so many people say that kind of crap. People are always making that joke.
I figure any game you can name is roughly as complex as any other game. Especially when you get to "best in the world" competitions. Or they are pointless (like noughts and crosses / tic tac toe where there is a provable answer to the game).
I am not a fan of cricket in the way that some people are. I kind of like watching but I don't really care who wins or loses.
Having thought about the theorem (that all games are equally complex once the outcome matters and lots o money is involved) I watched the current ashes tests with a bit more care.
I have worked out what cricket is all about.
Cricket is actually a competition between technology and people.
The people actually playing the game have nothing to do with it. Outside of being the testing ground.
Umpires stand in 40 degree C heat and have one chance to make a decision. The commentators have microphones picking up whether the ball hit the bat, infrared replays showing contact points, computer generated "would it have the stumps or not" graphics and many other things.
And yet mostly the umpires are right.
Remember they have just watched a couple hundred balls being bowled with nothing happening and it is hot and they can't move for the 5 days of the match.
If the US wants to have people watching xray machines at airports they ought to hire cricket umpires.