That's because you are using overstatement. An external CD-ROM drive costs £15. This doesn't prove CD-ROMs are obsolete; it tends to prove that hardware sold without a CD-ROM drive recognises the drives are a commodity item.

I really don't know what more to say. Even if it wasn't completely vulgar of you to speculate about my finances, I've already told you I'm a student on a very tight budget. I think this discussion ends here.

This is life in 19x19, remember. Not "life in general", which is not set up for the convenience of any of us.

If money is too tighten to mention, you are much better off not mentioning it, really. I'm not deaf, nor ignorant of students.

Just don't call "useless lumps of plastic" things that are quite the opposite. Cut your losses (a very good go principle) and don't lash out at volunteers. It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Well, what are you saying then?
To me, it seems like: "I CANNOT AFFORD your product (CD + CD reader) and its all YOUR FAULT!"

It may be that at this point of your life you cannot afford GoGoD. Does not mean the world should adjust - it only means you have to wait until you are in a better shape financially, and THEN buy it.

I hear your argument that CD/DVD is being phased out - but we are not there yet, and 99.99% of the world still has access to some kind of a reader. So, for now, whatever format GoGoD is released, its all good. Its still a TREMENDOUS value you get for your money - even when you pay for the CD + CDreader together - its still darned cheap!

And as for the argument that "you only need a part of GoGoD" - its like going to a library and demanding they sell you only the particular chapter of a book because you don't need the rest. How spoiled have we become as a community?

PS>
Geesh....If I made such a fuss about everything I cannot afford at the moment, I would not haver time for nothing else but complaining...

PS>
Hey Mark - THAT's how you rant!!

_________________
- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

To be fair, it's not really like that, as digital products are easily separable whereas a physical book is not. Also, GoGoD really is multiple products bound together in a single package (which is perfectly fine). I know I mainly just use the database part of GoGoD.

As for the larger fight that's going on, I have my opinions on it, but I think it's best to just not get involved.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

... I'm confused that you chose this part of Bantari's rant to dispute. It would be perfectly reasonable for libraries to make their books available to users as chapter-by-chapter pdfs. The files would load more quickly than a whole book, for heavily-read titles under copyright more people could be reading the book at once, and for many edited volumes, the user would only have wanted to read one essay/entry etc. anyway.

Mostly, I was baited by a stupid derailment. People told me repeatedly that I could access CDs because they had found ingenious solutions to my stupidity; Charles was consistently rude and dismissive; even Bartleby and xed_over, who made largely helpful posts, made one or two comments that made it clear they thought I was an idiot. Naively, I got annoyed and allowed myself to be goaded into talking about things I didn't really want to talk about to defend myself. I still don't want to talk about those things (or about the resulting argument about those things, or about this post, or...).

As for what I actually wanted to talk about: I'm pretty sure I made it quite clear in post 54 (and many since: 75 and the latter half of 80, for example). T Mark answered me satisfactorily immediately. But if you'd like to discuss further anything I wanted to talk about, please feel free.

An idiot? No, not in the least.
Unreasonably argumentative? Probably.

Besides, I thought you were done with this discussion.

Ok, I think you are too harsh on yourself. I did not understand what they said as meaning you were an idiot, or stupid, or whatever. More likely - spoiled and slightly self-centered.

Here is what I would have done in your place:
1. Contact the GoGoD creator/distributor asking about other options (other then CD)
2. Lacking thereof, I would suggest help (maybe for a discount) - still in private mails, mind you
3. If that too failed, I would post here with a question if anybody has an idea, maybe even a solution - if, as you suggest and believe (which is not true) that CDs are obsolete, chances are many people had the same problem as you do, and chances are - the community has solved it somehow
4. If that still fails, THEN you might get upset, but not really at the world (i.e. the GoGoD creators, the community, etc.), but rather at the current circumstances YOU find yourself in. And then you can decide to (a) do without the goodies, (b) wait until your circumstances improve, (c) do something about your circumstances (help out in the local burger joint for a couple of hours - this might get you the funds you lack,) or (d) wait until GoGoD changes its ways and joins the 21st century (maybe offer some help here too?)

Instead, what you did looked like that:
THEY suck, and THEY make life uncomfortable for ME, and THEY use old technology, and why don't THEY accomodate ME, and THEY don't understands ME, and even THEIR website is bad, and yadda yadda yadda...

Do you seriously wonder why that annoys people? Regardless of the standing TM and JF have within the community.

_________________
- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

So did I. I want to be done with this discussion, and I'm sure plenty of other people want this discussion to end too. But for every one person that wants me to shut up, there's another that replies to me. I can't really win. I've said twice that I want to stop talking about irrelevant things, but here I go again:


You're misunderstanding my first post. I didn't complain about GoGoD. I complained about Charles's insistence that asking for GoGoD in non-CD formats was "technically snobbish". I told him that there were perfectly good reasons why one might want or need it in other formats, and so it would be snobbish to refuse to give it to people in other formats. T Mark then turned up and said that when people asked for other formats, they did indeed get them - that is, he agreed with me, even if he didn't agree with the way I said it. I'd like to stop talking about this, now, please. (For the third time.)

I did offer the advice that their website could use some improvement. There were a few bits of information that I'd have liked to see on the website that I couldn't find, which made me hesitate to give them money (and eventually I didn't). This is a shame both for me and for the sellers. It's friendly advice from one person wanting to spread go to another (well, two others), not criticism.


If anyone asks me for help with anything I can do, they tend to get it. Why do you think I spend my free time giving advice online? It's certainly not because I can't think of more enjoyable things to do - it's because, like everyone else here, I want to help spread go.

Hey guys... I suck at Go. How should I study shape?

You should spend your time reading pointless arguments on forums... the time you put into Go is all the same anyway.

_________________
We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

How keshi is my aji!

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Ah, but sometimes the arguments that seem not to make any points turn out to be very thick.

If I had neither hardware, I'd definitely prefer purchasing a CD reader to access something like GoGOD compared with purchasing an IPad/iPhone to access smartgo books.

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

Just a random comment ...

<sidenote> I've been putting off a "real" tablet purchase forever but my sister finally hinted to me that I should "get a library card" before Christmas and she had a Kobo under the tree for me this year from her and her husband. I hadn't realized that libraries rent you e-Books now (in Canada on a system called overdrive). It's great and seems to handle content rights, expiration, and even waiting lists on a new book very well.</sidenote>

So to the real comment ... as DRM technology gets more and more sorted out, hopefully we see more Go titles in these distribution formats. If a government institution like a public library is embracing e-book technology and has sorted out DRM issues ... we can safely say the ball is rolling.

William or other others, if you make your titles available on the Kobo store or another venue for purchasing Adobe .epub files I would be delighted to see you directly benefit from the purchase by buying it there.

Just in case ... here is a link where authors can go through the steps of submitting their manuscripts to the store and apply DRM to the files:
http://www.kobo.com/writinglife

I know that this is a really old thread, but after downloading GoGoD, for $15, I was a bit surprised to discover it only contains sgf games. No big deal as the price was so low, but after reading this thread I thought that I would be getting a copy of Shape Up!

I think shape is dependent on context; in one of my games I could've killed a group by playing an empty triangle, but instead I rejected that notion because "Hurr empty triangle is bad" and played a hane instead, giving him two eyes.

I can try to dredge up the game to verify if anyone's not sure about what Mr.Dan told me. It does sound suspect.

Yes, Abssinica, you learned an important lesson. Of course, everything depends on the context.
If the empty triangle was the best move for that board position, then it's correct!

Its appearance doesn't matter; what matters is its function.
If it works, good! If it doesn't, it's no good!

The blanket idea that "the empty triangle is bad" is a trap, like all other proverbs. Congrats, an important lesson for you.

Keep in mind that in Go, often times there are very strong strategy and tactics, so strong that they may not actually occur in pro games, because your opponent will prevent you from doing these things, often times pros have to win ugly, though they may have used good shape as a tactical threat through out the game. I think this concept confuses many beginners when studying concepts in fuseki and shape, which don't have an obvious dead group on the board.