A-and Bent Larsen read them aloud to him ... or was it Lombardy? How do you read a Tarzan comic out loud anyway?

<Kreegah, says Tarzan.
I'll give you Kreegah, says Jane, unless you stop swinging from those stupid vines and come help with the baby. Did your chimp friends find any more of those absorbent washable diaper leaves in the jungle?>

Michael Moorcock - novelist, fantasy author, occasional member of Hawkwind and all-round good egg - was editor of Tarzan Comics at the age of 16. If he'd been a few years older, we might have had dialog like the above.

Great that you picked up a copy of Eclipse - let me know how you liked it when you've read it! :)

<Jess: <the so called youtube "settings" can, and often do, change without warning and for no reason.>>

I'm starting to notice that myself!

PS - the <polite> programming term for a bug is "feature". ;)

<Dom> I don't see how <REAL> ambrosia can be held responsible for rice-selling charlatans taking its name in vain?

Well, much like <CG.com>, the folks at youtube really are expert with the code, despite the fact that their customer satisfaction seems to be close to zero.

I had a major "glitch" recently which I researched extensively-

Ok for the last two weeks the view rate for my main channel suddenly shot up dramatically. About 400% in fact. So, having a gigantic ego, I was thinking "aroo maybe my channel will go viral".

However, something more sinister was afoot.

This is the actual story as best I can piece it together. Youtube froze my view count two days ago.

That's when I started looking in to it.

You know those "spam friend invites" you get on youtube?

Don't click on them and "accept."

Some of them sign you up for bot code that artificially spams your own channel with fake views of your own videos.

<youtube> has code that detects this automatically.

So it kicked in on my channel- they froze my views- then they knocked off over 5000 of them- then the view counter started working again yesterday, but at exactly the same rate it had been moving for the last year or so.

Around 250 new views per day.

Instead of 1000 views a day, which started happening a few weeks ago like I said.

So I'm actually very happy about this, because I want accurate information about my videos.

I'm seriously thinking of deleting my entire friends list.

And a disastrous one. They hated each other's guts.

Bobby was a terrible brat- but he was a teenager. Bent did not behave with anything close to a professional standard.

He was jealous that he wasn't playing in the tournament.

You know what I find irritating? When a great master dies, they canonize him and he is presented as a saint.

Sure Bent is gone and that's a shame- and yes he had a lot of devoted friends. But he also had a lot of people who found him cold, sarcastic, distant, blunt, and rude.

Has enough time passed so we are allowed to talk about this now?

I have a Russian book on <Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade> and the Russians were horrified by Larsen's attitude towards Bobby. They regarded Larsen's treatment of Bobby to be scandalously inappropriate; they couldn't understand it. From the Russian perspective, it seemed like Bent was trying to sabotage Bobby's chances. And the Russkies were no friend to Bobby either- they already thought he was a rude spoiled brat.

Denmark, especially Copenhagen, is full of cold, sarcastic, distant, blunt, rude people. I love it.

I've always been very picky about accepting friend invites, so I didn't have that problem. Everybody on my friends list is either an actual friend, or at least pretty well-known to me as a bona fide person. I get plenty of friend requests, but if I don't know'em, they get ignored - I don't believe in huge friend lists just for the heck of it.

Let me know what's up with an EMU, in your time.

I'm still a little annoyed at my current youtube view count status- mainly annoyed that I unwittingly brought it on myself by clicking "accept" to everything.

The youtube program still has a tight lock on my view count and updates- I think it's still sifting through data, because it's frozen again.

Poor Bent. One day he's top board for the Rest of the World, above Bobby, with a string of tournament wins behind him. He's a contender.

Then Spassky brilliantly rips apart his Nimzo-Larsen in 15 moves, and a few months later Fischer whacks him 6-0. That would make anyone bitter.

<Larsen> had already announced to the press in Switzerland that he refused to play board 2. So Bobby was aware of this before he arrived in Belgrade.

Two Commies recall the events of the first two days in Belgrade 1970:

<Mark Taimanov>: "When Dr. Euwe... called at Fischer's room, Bobby was lying on the sofa, his head buried in a pillow. And no sooner did Euwe begin his delicate diplomatic mission than Bobby, without even turning his head in the direction of his highly esteemed colleague, muttered that he had no objection to playing on board 2."

<Then Spassky brilliantly rips apart his Nimzo-Larsen in 15 moves, and a few months later Fischer whacks him 6-0. That would make anyone bitter.>

Also, people who are used to poor manners (in themselves or others) tend to badly underestimate the depth of the revulsion that those who had been brought up to believe in "gentlemanly" - i.e., civilized, polite, dignified... - conduct feel toward such brats/trash talkers. This is why they often try to look for other reasons for the animosity these receive, when there is really no point in looking elsewhere - *that's* where the problem is.

AJ, who keeps thinking that his critics must be America-haters, or American liberals / atheists, or people who envy his chess title etc. is another good example of the phenomenon: he truly believes these things, because these are the explanations he came up with when trying to explain to himself the undeniable fact that he is widely disliked, but could not entertain the possibility that the fault might lie in his own behavior.

Add RL and stir, you get Paranoia.

As previously noted, I'm no gentleman. But I could try to act ladylike, if necessary.

- So, what was the story yesterday?

<chessmetrics> is an absolutely crucial resource to many of us, and it was <AJ> who took the initiative to actually email <Jeff Sonas> to find out why the site was down.

<Jeff> hadn't even been aware it was down, but less than a week later he's got it back up and running.

I think <AJ> is right to focus our gratitude to <Jeff Sonas>- I already emailed him with a brief testimonial.

Anyone who's interested can contact him here (email address was dug up courtesy of <Big Crawdaddy>):

Ok to avoid spam bots I will type Jeff's email with a "A" instead of a "@"

Today I think you are an angel- I've been fumbling around that youtube help site for a week piecing together information, but never found what you just gave me:

<"Seeing issues with viewcounts across the product. The views aren't being lost, they're just getting stuck in the pipeline (hence AdSense looking normal). Eng is workin' on it now...." –ytPaul, Google Employee 7/14/11>

Not only is this message current- up to date- but unlike all the other threads I looked at- it's from google/youtube itself, not just a fellow member.

I now will name all my children "Cat's Faith" in your honor and the honor of your sister.

If I have two daughters, I will name them "Cat's Faith Thanh" and "Cat's Faith Annie."

Thanks for your comments on my posts on manners.

Actually at the moment I feel uncomfortable a bit because over the last four years I have been rude so many times it's more than a little ridiculous for me to be lecturing my friends.

I just want the end of the last flame war to stay ended that's all.

Sorry to <Dom> and <Annie> if I was too pushy!

Warm regards,
Jess

(Thanh you really put my mind at rest- I pretended I wasn't worried about that view count issue but secretly it was driving me crazy all day again today)

Re: Pronunciation- yes the Google Russian translator seems better than other sources on the internet.

<Annie> I just checked your place names against the Google translator and you are bang on it's the same.

Does this mean that Vladimir is secretly doing all the Russian vocal pronunciations for Google translate?

Anyways long (and very recently) suffering Richard has been over all day because we are finally laying sound down for <Nezhmetdinov>.

Several times I was banished from the computer room today.

Well luckily these things take so long to put together I'm sure our "Berry man" will get along in time.

Richard and I worked all day today and got a minute and a half done.

And by "done" I mean a raw segment that will undergo hours of further editing.

I want this film to look and sound as good as it can.

They are lovely, two days ago I was listening to many of their videos- great singers, sing languagers, and harp players.

I will send them a message on youtube to thank them.