Neowin.net

World chess champion Garry Kasparov defeated computerized challenger Deep Junior on Sunday in the first of six games pitting human wit against computer logic.

Kasparov forced the Israeli-programmed Deep Junior into a position from which it could not win, compelling the human moving its pieces to resign four hours into the game.

Both players' queens, the most powerful pieces on the board, were captured by the end of the game, leaving them to use less powerful knights, bishops and rooks. That gave the advantage to Kasparov, who used white pieces and moved first.

"Once he was able to remove the queens from the board, it was just arithmetic," said commentator and international grand master Maurice Ashley.

Early in the game, Deep Junior stunned experts when it paused for 25 minutes to contemplate a countermove to Kasparov's attack. Kasparov was able to parlay that into dominance for the remainder of the game, Ashley said.

"The entire time there was no doubt of his superiority during the game," Ashley said.

View: Chess champ takes on 'Deep Junior' (Neowin Archive - 24 Jan)
News source: CNN

Osmani said he has developed an algorithm that speeds up the way information is handled inside the browser. The technique takes advantage of the features of a particular type of server used widely on the Internet.

The browser handles multiple requests for information, he said. So, instead of a single stream of information, several streams are processed simultaneously. In essence, the task of bringing over a Web page is divided into a set of smaller tasks, cutting the time it takes to reassemble a Web page on the computer screen.

But the judges evaluated Osmani's browser without even considering its speed, as they could not independently benchmark it and lacked complete access to the browser's source code, Taylor said.

Osmani won't reveal more of the code because he is exploring the possibility of patenting or copyrighting aspects of his browser. Some judges said they were unsure whether the process would work in the real world, but others believe it could.

One judge, Intel Ireland's head of process engineering, Leonard Hobbs, said: "Certainly the capability is there. The technique he invented seems unique."

But Hobbs de-emphasized the speed claims. "What impressed us most of all is he absolutely knew what he was doing. It was a complete work, a whole." Osmani's project demonstrated "the science of the Web," he said.

MIT principal researcher with Media Lab Europe, Gary McDarby, said he was astonished by the teen's "years ahead" programming skills. Even if the speed claims prove false, McDarby said, "What he's certainly doing conceptually is raising the bar for the commercial companies."

The browser is based on the version of Microsoft Internet Explorer that third-party developers use. But rather than using Visual Basic, Osmani used an older language called Borland C++, which meant he also had to use some Microsoft tools to translate from one language to another.

These processes generate thousands of extra lines of code -- a point raised by critics on sites like Slashdot and Fark, who couldn't see how any single developer could write the one-million-plus lines first claimed for the browser.

Osmani, an entirely self-taught programmer who got his first PC at 10, said his computing heroes are Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak ("because they were hackers and hands-on"), as well as hacker Kevin Mitnick.

The teenager, who says he'd like to attend Harvard University, was inspired to start work on his browser after a previous winner, Sarah Flannery, received worldwide attention for a new cryptographic algorithm. The algorithm eventually proved to be breakable, but only after top international scientists spent months trying to crack it.