For non programmers

Not logged inRybka Chess Community Forum

Forum RybkaChess Help Search Register Login

Topic Rybka Support & Discussion / Rybka Discussion / For non programmers (locked)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

By Adam Hair (**)

Date 2011-07-31 02:42

> Well, as a cc enthusiast I certainly don't wanna see Rybka, VR & his legacy go down the tubes because I firmly believe that a genius like VR is still able to come up with several more & very precious contributions to computer chess and especially chess programming.
>
> He has certainly proven that he's actually one of the best chess programmers and thus I'm sure he's still perfectly capable of accomplishing several more chess-programming miracles in the future (e.g. Rybka 5, although I'm afraid it will - again - be disassembled immediately and then be cloned by VR's Ippo-spongers ...). Guess why nobody will disassemble & clone Hiarcs, Rondo etc. ? They just aren't worth the effort.
>
> If somebody's intention is to 'produce' a super-strong chess engine today he'll certainly choose to RE Rybka 3 or Rybka 4 for his filthy intentions.
>

Here is the main problem that I have with some Rybka fans. They express much disgust and anger over the fact Rybka was reverse-engineered (more than once, though the evidence that Ippolit is a derivative of Rybka is not quite there yet). I can understand those feelings. Yet, the evidence that earlier Rybka's are derivative of Crafty and then Fruit is stronger than any evidence thus far showing Ippolit is a derivative of Rybka 3. And Rybka fans tend to dismiss the evidence without thorough thought.

1)Either the evidence is dismissed as the byproduct of a witch hunt conducted against Vas.
(There is a perception of a witch hunt, despite the probable true intent of the investigation. Unfortunately, it does not seem that Bob understands how such a perception could be propagated by some of his remarks.).

2)The evidence is dismissed due to some personal animosity against a member of the investigation. In other words, Dr. Hyatt.
(Too many people's impetus in debating against the evidence is the desire to oppose Bob. And it shows in weak arguments that show a lack of thought and understanding involving copyright and plagiarism and programming. Or spurious arguments that are espoused by people who posses sufficient knowledge yet don't care, as long they have anything plausible or implausible to throw at Bob.)

3)Or it is labelled as a minor offense in light of the advance in Elo Vas obtained.
(This view is ignores somewhat that much of Fruit 2.1's evaluation had not been tuned. A big deal is made of the fact that Fruit 2.1 is around 2780 Elo (CCRL scale) while Rybka 1.0 beta 32-bit is ~2890Elo and 64-bit is ~2950Elo. What is not noted is that the last Fruit beta from Fabian, Fruit 05/11/03, is ~2890 Elo. This can lead one to believe that, at least early on, Vas' great advancement came from tuning and less from code improvement.)

> So if VR really would be forced to retire from chess programming (due to that upcoming FSF lawsuit) it won't be any good for computer chess as a whole and even less so for those who've enjoyed using the clearly best chess engine
> (or some dubious clone of it) for the purpose of analyzing their blunders (which they've played in their recent games of chess).
>
> So no, it's not like a little, buggy & utterly redundant chess engine is - (don't get me wrong on this! I really appreciate everyone who's willing to take on the tedious work of programming any chess program!) - is about to go down the tubes if VR retires, it's more like the major carthorse of computer chess going down the tubes, which certainly has attracted a lot of people by itself - people, who would've never been interested in computer chess at all otherwise, in case Rybka & VR hadn't ever shown up.
>

That is all well and good. The only problem is that the group of people that follow computer chess due to Vas and Rybka seem to forget that there are people that were in the community before Rybka existed and will still be around if Vas leaves computer chess behind.

> It's just Rybka's very human-like way of playing chess (clearly the result of VR being an IM) which sets Rybka apart from Fruit & most other chess engines.
>

It seems to me that much of that credit belongs to Larry Kaufman, though I willingly admit a fair amount of ignorance about this.

> When watching Rybka's play I sometimes get the impression that it's possessed by the spirits of Capablanca & Bobby Fischer, due to it's positional way of playing chess (and compared to most other chess programs Rybka seems to follow long-term and very logical
> strategic plans - hence watching its play looks like watching the play of a human chess master.)
>
> Until 2005 the overall play of most chess engines seemed to be way more aimless (although they were nevertheless 'monsters' in tactical positions), and this has really only changed since an IM decided to program Rybka 1 in 2005.
>
> The times of 'mechanical' and 'uninspired' computer play in chess are certainly over by now, and that's definitely owed greatly to VR and his efforts of programming Rybka.

I certainly can not debate your impression of Rybka's style. However, I have read about people's impression with other engines, which seem to run counter of your description of 'mechanical' and 'uninspired'. And I have seen Rybka's style depicted as 'boring'. All in all, you are describing the feelings that watching Rybka invokes within you. Nothing wrong with that at all. But, those same feelings seem to impede an objective assessment of the situation.

>
> Well, at least we Rybka supporters here on the Rybka Forum should certainly have a right to hope for the best, we'll hope that FSF won't sue VR and ruin his precious contributions to computer chess all over,
>
> that we will get & enjoy Rybka 5 someday (2012 maybe? But hurry up, Vas! End of days is said to be Dec 21st, 2012! I sure wanna have experienced Rybka 5 before everything goes down the tube !! ),
>
> and that VR may still have a prosperous future and won't retire from chess programming - with or without ICGA, this shouldn't really prevent him from releasing several more Rybka 'miracles' in the future ...
>

I hope he does continue with Rybka. Especially if that involves versions that could be purchased at a reasonable price.

> And as long as FSF doesn't choose to charge Vas until he's a broken, impoverished & old guy I sure won't give up my hope that Rybka will 'survive' this whole, malicous scenario (which was caused by his envious and former fellow programmers at talkchess,
>
> especially Prof. Hyatt, Wegner, Watchman & [YOU? Really? Do you really wanna be remembered someday as a guy who assisted the ICGA-inquisitors in their efforts of ruining the lifework of a very talented chess programmer like VR? Are you a computer chess
>
> enthusiast at all? Do you think that ICGA's life-time ban on Vas is enough of a punishment now, or do you secretly hope that FSF will sue Vas until he & Rybka are tilted from history? Because that's basically what Hyatt, Wegner & Watchman want to happen.
>
> Or so it seems to me whenever I read their posts here on the Rybka Forum. They sure can't do anything else aside from affirming their profound hate & scorn for VR & Rybka whenever they choose to post something here on the Rybka forum ... )
>
>

I understand where the charges of malice and envy comes from. I do not think some people's motives have been properly understood (nor explained well). And there are people involved in the investigation that seem to be innocent from any charge of malice and envy.

As for myself, I have neither the ability nor the inclination to aid and abet in the "ruining of Vas' life's work". I do find myself to be against plagiarism in general, having interacted with several authors (such as Miguel Ballicora) and understanding the work involved in creating an engine. And I am against what I perceive to be intellectual dishonesty and what seems to be contrived indifference to the facts. And I would be inclined to speak out about such acts committed regardless of which side of this debate that the guilty party is on.

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 16:12 Edited 2011-07-30 16:53

Can you please stop with the strawman arguments? We do not need to take the optimized assembly language and then reconstruct the source from that. We only need to prove semantic equivalence between the two pieces of code. That they do the _same_ identical operations on the _same_ identical data. The order it is done is irrelevant so long as it does not violate the data dependencies present in the original source. The instructions used do not matter so long as they provide the same semantics as the original source.

You can shout this crap all day long, but in the end, it remains crap. We have no intent to take asm and go back to C. Unless we have the _original_ C. Then any competent assembly language / C programmer can map the asm back to the _specific_ C source in question...

try again.

[edit: optimizes -> optimized typo in line 1]

By Mec

Date 2011-07-30 09:34 Edited 2011-07-30 09:37

>> My only comment is that you do _not_ need source to prove a copyright infringement. You need a good assembly language programmer / compiler person

Ok only to put this nonsense in other words:

(1) You need a judge who's biased towards FSF

(2) You need an 'expert' witness who believes the transformation of C-source code -> Machine Instruction is bijective

(3) You need lots of prejudgements done by means of passing lies to the media (in order to manipulate the public opinion, judges will find it difficult to come to a fair sentence against popularized prejudgements)

(4)
Ok, only for the record, the only thing VR would need to do is show his C (?) source code of R1 to an expert witness who isn't willing to commit perjury, and in case R1's original source code differs substantially from Fruit 2.1's sources (of course it does because

R1 uses different data structures, different search routines, different pruning techniques ... and that's exactly the point I've mentioned several times before: there are substantial differences at the source code level ...), and - bingo - the FSF's allegations won't be worth

the paper they'll be written on. And what is worse: If they'd passed several false prejudgements to the media beforehand then FSF could be charged by VR (due to libel, defamation, having damaged his commercial interests etc), and well, then that would

certainly be a case the FSF couldn't win, ever ...

So keep on dreaming your pipe dreams of -not-needing-anything-more than circumstancial evidence to prove that VR violated Copyright Law, in fact the FSF will need the 'lucky' coincidences (1) - (3) in addition to their dubious disassembly, and will also need

to pray that VR's defender is stupid enough and 'forgets' to play the checkmating move (4) (speaking in chess programming terms: you may improve your engine's overall play by using unsound pruning techniques, but in some cases your program will fail to

defend against a simple Mate-In-One threat ...)

have a nice day

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 16:09

I will say this again. If you take any piece of C code, and you have the assembly language that came from _any_ compiler you choose, it is not a hard process to prove the two are identical. It may take some time, but it is not hard. If you can't do that, fine. You don't understand assembly language nor compiling very well. But there are many that _do_.

If what you said was true, then the compiler optimizers could never have been _written_ in the first place. Because they _do_ have to be debugged. And the debugging requires doing _exactly_ what you want to claim can not be done.

That is, quite simply, baloney.

As far as "rybka's source differs..." Again, you show that you know _nothing_ about computer chess programming. In Crafty Search()/Quiesce() procedures, there is _no_ bitboard code at all. In the code to select the next move (a _lot_ of lines of code) there is no bitboard code. In the code to order the moves, no bitboard code. In the code to do the hashing, the repetition detection, parts of the evaluation, there is no bitboard code. The two primary places one has to change for bitboards is the move generator, and the make/unmake functions, and the SEE code if you use that.

So please, stop making ridiculous statements. I have _done_ this conversion.

By SR

Date 2011-07-30 16:17

If you take any piece of C code, and you have the assembly language that came from _any_ compiler you choose, it is not a hard process to prove the two are identical.

Its hard (actually impossible) to prove they are identical if they are not! In the case of Rybka/Fruit with know they are not identical so one obviously need a more refined analysis.

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 16:38

What on earth are you talking about? Do you realize that assembly language instructions are very simple operations. That a single C statement might expand into one or two, or in to 10 or 20 or even more assembly language instructions? Do you realize that the assembly language has to perform _exactly_ the operations specified by the C source, and not one operation more or less? I feel like I am trying to explain a compiler to a raw incoming freshman that knows absolutely nothing about programming at all...

I can absolutely tell you whether a group of assembly instructions is semantically equivalent to a group of C instructions. With 100% accuracy. There are _many_ that can do this. To suggest otherwise simply says that the compiler's output has nothing to do with the input, which would not be a very enjoyable way of programming...

By SR

Date 2011-07-30 17:32

I think you misread my post.

You wrote:
If you take any piece of C code, and you have the assembly language that came from _any_ compiler you choose, it is not a hard process to prove the two are identical. You forgot to stipulate that the two pieces of code in fact must be identical. Its just a matter of logic! If the two pieces of code are not identical its hard (in fact impossible) to prove they are identical.

But let us check your claim:
I can absolutely tell you whether a group of assembly instructions is semantically equivalent to a group of C instructions.

If you want to be nitty pity your claim is actually false as determining semantic equivalence can be shown to be undecidable. In fact this is not hard to show as one piece of code might contain an instance of the halting problem and be constructed such that the behaviour of this piece of code depend on the behaviour of the halting problem. More elaborate examples can be constructed.

You have to make your mind up whether you talk about "identity" OR "semantic equivalence". Determining semantic equivalence is not always easy and in fact is in general undecidable.

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 19:14

It is NOT undecidable. If you have a C source, and the compiler output, you CAN prove that they are semantically equivalent, precisely. Why you would say otherwise is beyond me. That would mean I could write a compiler, and then an optimizer, and NEVER prove that the output of the compiler produces results identical to what the source code specifies. That is simply ridiculous, and I can't imagine why someone wants to make such a ridiculous (and provably wrong) statement.

Visit one of the compiler newsgroups on usenet news and make your statement. Preferably bring some asbestos underwear along. The flames won't be long coming, from some _very_ well known compiler guys...

There is no "halting problem" in computer chess. No algorithms are allowed to run forever. That has no meaning in the context of a computer chess program.

And here we are applying it in the context of a given C source, and a given X86 assembly language listing. Not two black boxes where we are trying to prove semantic equivalence between them. That is a different problem. Not the problem at hand.

By siam

Date 2011-07-31 08:58

Dear Dr. Hyatt

I get the feeling that you are right about this but to make it perhaps a little more convincing for me (and perhaps other newbies):

can you please give an example of this semantically equivalency?

Regards

By bob

Date 2011-07-31 15:10

I am not sure what you are asking. If it is about something like this, here goes:

C:

for (i=0; i<N;i++) {
if (A > 0)
   A *= 2;
else
   A += 3;
}

X86 asm:

mov   eax, 0    ;i=0
loopx:
mov ebx, [A+eax]
cmp ebx, 0 ;if (A > 0)
jle    skip
shl    ebx, 1    ;A *= 2
jmp   next
skip:
   add ebx, 3 ;A += 3
next:    mov   [A+eax], ebx   ;save A
   inc eax
   cmp eax, N    ;if (i >= N) end loop
   jl    loopx

If you have the C source, you would have the first block of code, exactly. If you have a binary, you would have something similar to the X86 code above. There are lots of ways the asm might be different. For example, there is no variable "i" above. I kept the value in a register. If no code below the C code above references I, an optimizing compiler won't waste the time storing the final loop counter value (eax). If there is a reference to I later, the compiler would have to add a "mov i, eax" after the above loop to keep the semantic equivalence correct. One could replace the shift with an integer multiply instruction (mul/imul). Etc. So the issue becomes, given the above C, does the above asm code do _exactly_ the things that the C dictates, so that it will produce exactly the same output, given the same input values. And it can't do any "extra stuff" that the C code does not do...

I tried to write the X86 stuff to make it readable. I would likely change things a bit. For example, the first instruction could be xor eax, eax which is just another way of zeroing eax, with a slightly shorter instruction. I would probably invert the loop and go i=100, 99, 98, ..., 1, rather than 0, 1, ..., 99. And then use the "loop" instruction which would replace the last 3 instructions with just 1. I would have to change the addressing just a bit to use [A - 1 + eax]. And end up with something like this:

mov   ecx, 100    ;i="99"
loopx:
mov ebx, [A-1+ecx]
cmp ebx, 0 ;if (A > 0)
jle    skip
shl    ebx, 1    ;A *= 2
jmp   next
skip:
   add ebx, 3 ;A += 3
next:    mov   [A-1+ecx], ebx   ;save A
   loop   loopx

Same results, more optimized. Requires a little more work to see that it does exactly the same as the C code (because the loop is inverted and goes from 99 to 0 rather than 0 to 99).

That's the idea...

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 06:36

There has never been a ruling for the FSF in any country other than Germany, and in that case it was not a debate about whether copying took place or not, but rather that the infringing party did do a verbatim copy but did not recognize the legality of a free source license. This is clearly not the case with Rybka and Fruit as code that is considered "copied" had been translated and modified quite a bit. Unlike commercial software companies or media companies, the FSF is more about building bridges with the programmer rather than blowing his house up .... so I am sure they would look with distaste at how the ICGA proceeded in their name. Most likely there has already been contact with FSF by some of the ICGA members and if the outcome was positive for the ICGA we would have heard it. I am now almost sure that the FSF feels there is no case here and have just dismissed the entire episode. FSF would handle a violation of its license in a much more different way, and would first silently and discretely contact Vas and ask him to change code which they felt did not comply with the license. They would only elevate to a higher level if they felt there was no response. I know that Vas was not contacted by FSF (by the way ICGA is NOT FSF) ... at least not until 2 weeks ago.

By Harvey Williamson (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 07:28

> I am now almost sure that the FSF feels there is no case here

You obviously missed this that was posted yesterday:

License Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation (to Fabien) "I reviewed the analysis of the similarities between Fruit and Rybka, and found it pretty compelling. I think this is something that we could absolutely pursue as a compliance case"

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 11:35

Well if so then that is great news. The sad part though is that should have been the FIRST course of action. The ICGA should have at least seen how the FSF would handle the issue and only then proceeded with their case. The ICGA would have had a lot more credibility if it had at least some sort of output from the FSF. I think if the questioning had come from FSF, then for sure Vas would engage them. As for the ICGA, I really am sorry to say they have zero credibility. Sure it is their tourney and they can do what they want, but their course of action was totally unprofessional and wrong IMHO.

By Harvey Williamson (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 11:37

This is just wrong. sporting bodies ban/sanction people all the time for breaking their rules. They do not have to go to court to do it.

I hope Vas does decide to cooperate with the FSF. Not sure how they will react to him saying, 'sorry I do not have any of the source code.'

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 17:21

I am pretty much sure you mean Rybka 1.0 beta, as that seems to be the only Rybka version that "might" have come close to violating some GPL license. So I guess they could tell him to cease distributing Rybka 1.0 beta or to change or remove the parts that they feel is infringing on the license. I am pretty sure Vas has Rybka 1.0 beta sources, it is just Rybka 3 that source code is lost on (by that I mean the exact gold version that was compiled). So far Rybka 3 and Rybka 4 do not seem to have any controversy, so I doubt they would ask to look at that source code without giving a good reason. I hope they do engage in a dialogue and get this thing sorted out either way.

By Arrière Pensée (Gold)

Date 2011-07-31 17:33 Edited 2011-07-31 17:35

My concern would be that if the report given to the FSF is fraught with poor science-will the FSF do their own research into this issue or rely solely upon what is given them by the ICGA? If the data preparation was given over to Dr. Hyatt and there were errors in his compilation?

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 22:09

Well for one Vas would put up a defense. Probably the best expert to defend Vas would be Vas himself. It is very possible that Vas might have had wrong assumptions of what is legal under GPL, after all he is not a lawyer but a programmer. Usually the FSF would factor this in and from what I read they are usually not trying to destroy a programmer, but rather just making sure he is aware of a missteps, if they did occur, and correct them. Then again Hyatt and Zach and many of the other ICGA group are not lawyers either ... so chances are that they might also not know what is legal and not. I know that in my field I get surprised every day with stuff my lawyers come up with even though I have been doing what I do for more than 25 years. What I really do not want to see is that the FSF decides there is no case, and we still have the ICGA guys refusing to retract their comments.

By Arrière Pensée (Gold)

Date 2011-07-31 22:20

I have no idea about these proceedings - but if your intuitions are accurate then it really does fall to Vas to present his case with the best preparation possible. I would imagine the FSF is going to be very careful and accurate in their adjudication. If they go with the ICGA then I would think the jig is up. If they should determine in favor of Vas then the ICGA will have to deal with negative press.

By Watchman (***)

Date 2011-07-31 22:30

>I would imagine the FSF is going to be very careful and accurate in their adjudication.

Robert the Roof,

Once again you display your derrière rather than understanding.

what to say...

By Watchman (***)

Date 2011-07-31 22:25

>It is very possible that Vas might have had wrong assumptions of what is legal under GPL

And it is very possible at 3 years old I had wrong assumptions of what a toliet was used for... :roll:

"The lack of (the sense of personal responsibility) that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me."

By Nick

Date 2011-07-31 08:23

Hi Majd, hope you are well. One thing any FSF inquiry can be sure of, there are six tables in the Zach document in turn titled:

Pawns
Knights
Bishops
Rooks
Queens
Kings

They show Fruit code side-by-side with Rybka code. However, the Rybka code is imaginary and not in Rybka, Bob Hyatt admits this, and so the code in these tables is not evidence at all of code copying.

Best regards,
Nick

By Rebel

Date 2011-07-31 08:33

Nick, your statement is true, your conclusion is premature. The right column is best-guess code how Vas might have created the PST's with an external utility and then imported the calculated PST values into Rybka. See my OP (opening post).

By Nick

Date 2011-07-31 08:47 Edited 2011-07-31 08:55

Hi Rebel, the way I read the forum is by "unread posts", it's not clear which thread Majd's post was in to me, so didn't see that you are basically saying exactly the same thing in your OP!

The accusers didn't have the source code that Vas used to create the Rybka PST's so they invented almost identical code to Fruit, effectively framing Vas and Rybka. Why didn't their best guess code look different? There are N ways of writing that code, how come they picked the one that looked exactly like Fruits? How they hoped to get away with such a blatantly dishonest tactic in an open forum is beyond me.

And I know that you know that Vas' object code for PST generation would never be in Rybka anyway, as he generates his PSTs at home and links them into the Rybka executables that he releases (one of the reasons that the Rybka executables are bigger than other chess engines on disk). So I don't see how that code could be relevant to any code copying investigation.

So I'm not totally sure how my conclusion is premature, but if you've more info to the nail in the PST-code coffin I'll watch with interest!

Best regards,
Nick

By Rebel

Date 2011-07-31 09:35

Hi Nick, yes I can understand the confusion :wink:

If you go through the PST subject at Open Chess you will notice that both Zach Wegner and Mark Watkins (aka BB+) take my criticism in the appropriate way. Technical they could be right. Technical their story might be true. I am just asking for a different presentation of the evidence.

>So I'm not totally sure how my conclusion is premature, but if you've more info to the nail in the PST-code coffin I'll watch with interest!

Something is on the roll. Stay tuned.

By Trotsky (****)

Date 2011-07-31 09:11

Agree. Zach's theory is coherent, perfectly well argued. It is indeed a best guess though.

The problem was in how Bob Hyatt (also Mark Lefler) used that PST section of the Zach document to badly mislead the citizens of computer chess. Waving the columns of "identical" fantasy code to show "code copying" and lying about the "identical" nature of all the PST tables.

By Trotsky (****)

Date 2011-07-31 09:00

there are actually ten tables in Fruit and eleven in Rybka. Reason for the increase from the obvious six being that different tables are used for opening and endgame.

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 19:12

Hey Nick all is well, good to hear from you ... I am running around in europe playing golf and escaping from our 53c heat. I guess you are in the same boat I am in and trying to sort through all this. I just hope this is not some sort of attempt to malign Vas and Rybka. I know success can be hard to swallow, especially if it comes from a relative unknown. What I really can't understand is how this is all being portrayed as a simple "cut and paste" of Fruit code, with basically no useful input from Vas. I mean in an era where getting 15 ELO a year out of your engine seemed like a good deal, someone comes along and blasts a couple of hundred ELO past everyone ... I mean come on ... he must have come up with something that is pretty spectacular and innovative. Trying to make it seem like the success Rybka had was due to copying of a much weaker engine really doesn't make much sense to me.

By Nick

Date 2011-07-31 19:32

> I am running around in europe playing golf and escaping from our 53c heat.

I do like your life :) Yes I heard it's very hot down Q8 way. A few of us went to Sandwich to see Darren Clarke win the UK Open Golf championship a few weekends ago, I was quite encouraged to see a portly man, in his early 40's who clearly enjoys the finer things in life, manage to win. What is your handicap down to now? (Mine is "the clubs" - boom boom! actually ~20).

I'm very glad that Rybka came along, hopefully this situation will eventually be resolved in a way that both sides can find acceptable and everyone can move on. Vas seems fine about everything, the last email conversation I had with him was about central planning vs. market economies and the one before that was about optimal strategies for attracting the opposite sex :) We haven't discussed the ICGA decision at all.

By Rebel

Date 2011-07-29 18:36

If Zach's report "should not be readable by non-technical persons" what the hell do you think you were doing running around public forums waving the Zach paper and telling all and sundry to "look at the side by side source code, all identical"?

If Zach's report was "designed to be read by technical persons" why didn't you read it with sufficient engagement such you would not have been misleading everyone with "all six PST tables were direct multiplicative of Fruits", when that statement is untrue in both quantity and quality (as proper reading of Zach's paper would have told you?)

That yes.

As usual you said it better than me.

By Graham Banks (****)

Date 2011-07-29 20:23

> If Zach's report "should not be readable by non-technical persons" what the hell do you think you were doing running around public forums waving the Zach paper and telling all and sundry to "look at the side by side source code, all identical"?
>
> If Zach's report was "designed to be read by technical persons" why didn't you read it with sufficient engagement such you would not have been misleading everyone with "all six PST tables were direct multiplicative of Fruits", when that statement is untrue in both quantity and quality (as proper reading of Zach's paper would have told you?)
>
> That yes.
>
> As usual you said it better than me.

And why were non-programmers allowed on the panel?

By Trotsky (****)

Date 2011-07-29 20:43

Very good question which I also wanted to ask, after seeing the "not-for-non-programmers" stuff. How were these potential voters of guilt and punishment recommendations supposed to be able to deal with this "difficult technical material" other than by reading the "conclusions" and listening to the "experts" waving the side-by-side "identical" source code.

The "verdict" of the panel was a result of addition of the following factors

1. the six year hate campaign on talkchess

2. the REDACTED wiki forum discussions where the panel were subjected to opinions and factoids from "experts" which us humble ones are not allowed to read

3. the documentation which very few read properly if at all and which programmers Hyatt and Lefler demonstrably failed to read properly and generated FALSE conclusions from

4. a general group think in which critical thinkers had been specifically excluded

A farce.

By bob

Date 2011-07-29 21:11

Yeah. Your kind of "critical thinking" is _exactly_ what we needed. The report would have taken another 5 years to complete, and some would have left completely because they got tired of seeing your fantasy explanations over and over and over.

that was _exactly_ what we needed...

By AWRIST

Date 2011-07-29 21:22

Therefore this can be called undemocratic panel. And it had to be censored and deleted what might have caused grievance among the competition of Vas, that they had to show their source-codes too. That would have been a desaster and all would have left. So basically the whole panel was a cheat.

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 02:32

No, it remained a rational and functional panel, rather than degrading into a flame-war that went nowhere.

By POSITRON (**)

Date 2011-07-30 02:49

hi bob, i only want to tell you that i think there is a lot of person who read your post and all other post, and is very clear base in the arguments who is biase and who is not, who only want blindness to defend a case that simply dont have defense.

Normally i can see in your post very good arguments, very logical and expose with simplicity and when i read the responses you get in much case i see personal attacks, 0 arguments or very bad arguments. So i only want you to know that is good you continue writing, because there is a lot of person who dont write much but read all and you help very much to clarify the situacions.

thanks

Manuel

By Prima

Date 2011-07-30 03:29

> hi bob, i only want to tell you that i think there is a lot of person who read your post and all other post, and is very clear base in the arguments who is biase and who is not, who only want blindness to defend a case that simply dont have defense.
>
> Normally i can see in your post very good arguments, very logical and expose with simplicity and when i read the responses you get in much case i see personal attacks, 0 arguments or very bad arguments. So i only want you to know that is good you continue writing, because there is a lot of person who dont write much but read all and you help very much to clarify the situacions.
>
> thanks
>
> Manuel

+1.

I feel the same way too. Bob easily clarifies the situation with facts, coupled with sound logic and analogies.

By Homayoun_Sohrabi_M.D. (***)

Date 2011-07-30 03:11

Greetings Dr Hyatt, it's a privilege to share this page with you.   You and ICGA have been repeatedly accused here of basically having a personal axe to grind against VR and you have consistently stated that this notion is incorrect.
May I ask you sir about your personal relationship with Vas.   Could you kindly tell us when you met him and how your relationship went from there?   What was your overall impression of him and his programs in the early years? Did you communicate with him from time to time? Did you consider him a friend? Prior to this ICGA issue, was there actually a point where your relationship deteriorated?

In your opinion, how did your colleagues at ICGA generally view Vas? I am refering to time well before this ICGA ruling came up.   Were there a lot of animosities between the two? Is it true that a lot of ICGA people hated Vas because of the prior censorship on this site?

I would like to finish by saying kudos to you for actively participating in this forum and answering questions and debating people.   I can not understand why Vas is not doing the same, this is HIS forum after all. Anyways, thank you for your time.

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 03:19

I have _never_ met him. Closest I have come is chatting with him on ICC during the CCT events, or else communicating in CCC back before he became a commercial author and quit posting.

I can't answer about anyone else's personal relationship with Vas. I've not been to an ICCA event in the last 10 years or so, the events are too long, and the expenses are too high for me to attend. As a result, I've not seen any interactions at all.

I know of no animosity of any kind prior to the complaint being filed. I assume he was accorded the same respect as all past ICGA participants have been accorded.

You will _always_ have a group of "conspiracy theorists" when anything negative happens. That can't be helped. But this example is so egregious, it really was one that could not just be "ah well, it's not a big deal."

By AWRIST

Date 2011-07-30 10:41

Bob wrote I know of no animosity of any kind prior to the complaint being filed. I assume he was accorded the same respect as all past ICGA participants have been accorded.

If the 5 year long hate campaign hadnt been that evil, one could laugh about the chuzpah, hypocrisy and outright lying that is presented here. So, we enter a new step of the campaign where already naive questions are part of the game which is more, it's a real war, because a huge legal impact is involved. But facts remain facts, especially if they are kept in the archives. talkchess.com is the best address so far. So, everyone interested could read all this, the campain is history and on the record. The highlights with unrefutable evil and no conspiracy junk never were hidden, but aggressively presented on talkchess.com and its forum CCC. A couple of examples for everlasting evil in the community.

1. It all started with Christophe Theron from France retired author of Tiger who declared that if he would forget any moral that then he could also have a Tiger as strong as Rybka.

2. There is a guy with many pseudos one is Norman Schmidt, who is provenly selling clones. When I asked Bob out of interest how he could cooperate with such a guy, he answered me with his knowledge he's of big help against Vas. That was at least 2 years before any complained was filed against Vas. So, here we have the spiritus rector of the campaign using criminal elements, Bob explained that also the FBI would do it this way. When I missed any official authorization (state institutions surely have) Bob knew no answer until now the ICGA gave him the chance to preside a secretariat for the prosecution. Still all the illegal actions remain illegal like stealing code and proudly opening the code for all to be invited to put it into their closed source codes. The crimes cant be justified backwards by a complaint 6 years later. This is all lynch justice.

3. A typical lie against Vas is that he stopped talking after he went commercial in 2006. Since then Vas has answered and elaborated here in his forum, while talks on talkchess.com had been censored. Of course it's aggressive and evil to expect that in return all the Vas haters in disguise should be allowed to continue their hate campaign here in this forum.

4. Without the basics of science the whole scandal of this mobbing and scapegoating of Vas could never be fully understood. For sure the problems can never be understood with programmer intelligence alone. In the end it's a cultural problem, how societies handle the problem of deviant behavior and the defining of what is called a crime. It would make no sense to define a whole population as criminals if they are all doing it but the all still have fun especially in smaller fields like commercial computerchess, where historically all tricks from the past are taken for free. This scandal is so crazy because the field is so small. There are some academic guidelines from the past, Bob was into their foundation most of the time, but the application of the computer stuff to chess isnt a bigger industry with real money.

Still the human factor with all the evil sides of hate and envie are poisoning the daily life of otherwise peaceful chessplayers. We should never forget that competition engine vs engines is fine but beyond that it's a training tool for millions of chessplayers. It is enough crazy to quarrel here when outside in real life players seek the best help and it can only be designed by true idiots that one of the best should be criminalised if his program is already a trademark in the chess clubs. Is it really the dream to destroy the smallest incomes only to then let stolen entities flood the market for free? Is that been thought through also by others than a somewhat strange guy like Bob who also controls the traffic in a forum and the email entry of his university but apart from that he also is a normal teacher who teaches the new chapter in technology called informatics. Big deal! Should he really be allowed to destroy the training tools of average chessplayers?

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 15:59

Rolf, you have not gotten it yet, you don't get it now, and you won't _ever_ get it until you actually compete for something. The animosity is not directed at Vas. It is directed at his _actions_. I find it very difficult, if not impossible, to actually "hate" someone. But I don't find it difficult at all to hate an action they perform. Cheating is at the top of that list. The idea behind competition is "fair competition." That's why there are anti-doping rules, equipment specifications that are very tightly defined, so many rules in a game so that every plays by the same set of rules that prevent any advantage from being gained by things outside the rules, that's why chess is played with a clock, so that both sides get the same amount of time. Etc. And that is why the ICGA has adopted the "original code" rule, because this is just another competition between a relatively small group of people, and the people competing have clearly defined what they want to allow and what they don't...

How could someone "hate" another if they have never met, never spoke? That is a problem inside _your_ head. Not in mine, nor in anyone's on the panel or in the ICGA.

You just don't get it.

By AWRIST

Date 2011-07-30 16:59

Bob, is it lack of information then? I for one, I mean personally I dont hate nobody, actually, but that is not how many people are functioning or how would you explain that people have prejudices and think on that basis these others could well be killed? Did you never even read about that phenomenon?

I believe you, Bob, but what you write begs for the question if that topic is really something you are able to figure. You say you cant even hate another person. Fine by me. And you want to imply that then there never could be a hate campaign that you had presided? Please note, that I dont talk about mainly your mind frame but about the consequences for the target. I know that you have corrected me that you didnt hate Vas, you wouldnt even know him, but you hated what was done with Rybka. That is another difficulty because you pretend that you seperate the man from his baby. Although you know that you yourself are very sensible if someone dares to touch Crafty which is also well seperated from you as a human being. Either this is false or if it's correctly described, then how do you think Vas is feeling when he does not perfectly ignore what you are saying about Rybka?

That is my only point of interest. There is a topic of prgramming details and I leave that alone and then there is another topic with a human problem. I would expect from someone like you, a real name in computerchess, that you dont simply skip the human factor. That was the reason why I tried to bring you together 2 years ago. But you as the number 1 in computerchess behaved as if you had something to fear, as if you should better avoid such a talk. I told myself, he's on a roll. When you told me about Norm the Cloner or about your attitude towards the pseudo unknowns, I told myself he's on a roll. I simply couldnt understand that.

5 years ago when Theron spread his evil propaganda long before any evidence and you didnt protest as a scientist I told myself Bob is on a roll, he has an axe to grind and you admitted that you didnt like how he simply left the building. But I knew where he was. He was here in his forum answering thousands of questions, that was after he was mobbed on CCC for his alleged overexaggerated talking about Rybka. Dont you recall that Rybka was practically banned? On the German forum that is mainly sponsored by ChessBase the name Rybka was ignored and banned too. Where did you live at the time?

What I never understood that you as a scientist behaved like a mopster for this and against that. I had hoped that at least you were neutral and just examining the incoming opinions and facts. And I saw that you behaved like the leader of a campaign.

The irony is (Chris tried to explain it) that Vas probably did exactly what you would advise and had hoped for that someone starts with you and then understands more and more and then goes right through the ceiling. Is he cheating? Dont you support him?

Tell me something about it. I have many more questions in special the one about the taking in computerchess tournament competition as such.

By bob

Date 2011-07-30 17:29

Chris is simply spouting nonsense. I did not advise ANYONE to copy the crafty source and then use it in a tournament or claim it as their own original work. The license agreement (which extends copyright law) is quite clear. The statement he makes is simply nonsense...

By Watchman (***)

Date 2011-07-30 20:21

I can remember years ago looking at one of your papers, Bob, about how Crafty was there to be used as you have said so many times:

Use to test your own ideas on your system w/o having to start from scratch and writing your own engine (and in the mean time become discouraged and give up, because of the length and complexity of writing a chess engine). Your intent was clear enough to me. Seems others want to twist and pervert someone's good intentions.

"Here's a car for you to test. You wanna pull the carb and stick on a Holley double pumper and see the performance increase... by all means try it. Just don't enter it as your car in some drag competition."

By George Speight (***)

Date 2011-07-31 09:57

I'll tell you something now. Rolf isn't a technical guy, but he has an uncanny mind for events and the way they actually started. He is right. Theron started the whole sick mess out of pure jealousy. I read the posts where he started and if he was right it was blind luck. Rephrased: Theron left me with the impression he was so jealous he was seeing double. I can't read his mind, so apologies for the assumption of truth. Along skipped Zac, and they headed into the forest to find the best cloner of the 21st century- cloning in 4 diff. countries under 5 aliases. And who should they find but Norman, sleeping in Papa Bear's bed. And off they went on their course of justice.

gts

By bob

Date 2011-07-31 14:39

I do not see that. CT was long inactive at that point in time. I find it difficult enough to believe that simple jealousy would lead to such an investigation, much less by someone that had not competed in several years...

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 19:29

Maybe you don't realize it, but you certainly made it very clear that you did not like what Vas was doing very early on and resented that it was a commercial venture. You obviously see computer chess from a completely different angle, and on several occasions you were quite vocal against Rybka getting free publicity on CCC due to the plethora of Rybka posts. You also clearly despised the fact that Vas gained a lot of information from programmers like yourself, but was not willing to share new successful innovations that helped propel the ELO of Rybka. I can see how that can make you angry, as you are graciously sharing anything and everything by providing free source code of Crafty ... but I think it is not fair that you expect the same of others. I just hope that this has not been a factor in how you handled the ICGA-Rybka event.

By George Speight (***)

Date 2011-07-31 09:38 Edited 2011-07-31 10:05

Again, a statement best left unsaid. We already know it was unanimous. I wouldn't give the perception that an "innocent" vote could be a 1st cousin once-removed from a flame-war. It causes it to begin to look as if expediency was paramount. Bob, just stick with technical issues and you'll be ok. No analogies- end result is 3 possibilities, and 2 are terrible. (I should apply to be your post manager)

Best,

gts

By M ANSARI (*****)

Date 2011-07-31 11:39

You see ... that is the problem. If there is a voice that disagrees, it is immediately disregarded as "Vas idolizer" or "Vas groupie" or "flamer" or "non programmer so you know diddly shit" etc... It would be better if you accept the fact that some simply disagree with your findings and accept that.

By bob

Date 2011-07-31 14:37

Doesn't bother me at all. However, at least here, about 6 or so that disagree only disagree because "this can't be so." No quantity of evidence is sufficient. Examples like the Crafty-Rybka issue simply don't count - too long ago. Etc...

By POSITRON (**)

Date 2011-07-30 02:48

Topic Rybka Support & Discussion / Rybka Discussion / For non programmers (locked)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10