Interesting reflection on a past statement

[geots]

......In light of the clarity of the issues, your comments can only be interpreted as disingenuous.

It is sad that you are reduced to behaving in that sort of way.........

I haven't made any comments except to say that it's interesting to reflect on what Fabien said in view of what has happened since. How is that either "disingenuous" or "sad behaviour"?

Look at the responses to your post. The authors of the relevant ones felt that you were trying to imply a conclusion from Fabien’s post that was invalid. At least two of us believe that your understanding of the issue is sufficient for you to be fully aware that you were implying an invalid conclusion. Hence the comment that you are disingenuous.

Another example of your disingenuous behaviour is the way in which you subsequently implied that your underlying motive was not tendentious.

I ask you again: you find the Ippolit engines unacceptable because there are simply rumours that they contain copied code. Why then do you find the Rybka engines acceptable when there is extremely strong evidence that they contain copied code?

Firstly, as a non-programmer, I am not in a position to question whether or not the Rybka decision was correct. Therefore I haven't questioned that decision.
I have pointed out some aspects of the process that I was perturbed about (including the Leiden ultimatum since), but that's it.

Secondly, people can imply what they want, but that doesn't make them right. My motive for posting Fabien's comments was purely because I found them interesting in light of what has transpired since, nothing more, nothing less.

Regarding Rybka and other controversial engines, those tested by CCRL are marked as such in the rating lists. What does your question regarding controversial engines have to do with my post anyway?

I didn't mention CCRL. They are fully entitled to test what they like and what they do is none of my business.

Since you ask, I will tell you that the reason why I raised the issue of your double standards is because the maintenance of such standards requires, at best, a facility for self-delusion and I think that the most charitable interpretation of much of your behaviour would be that you have a facility for self-delusion.

Anytime anyone makes a statement that is construed as pro Rybka and/or anti- ICGA, you come out spewing nonsense as usual. Self-delusion my ass. You want to pile on someone- take me. I am definitely pro- Rybka, and I don't give a rat's ass what you think or say. If my statements- each and every one- don't piss you off and get under your skin- then I gotta go back and do better. Agreeing with you would be a litmus test for idiots or the panels lap dancers.

[BubbaTough]

Trust me, any reasonable experienced chess programmer reads C-sources as you read a chess book, especially when the C-source comes with comments what it is doing.

No one has a problem with someone reading a book that says pawn shelter is good and trying to translate it into code; many (but not all) do have a problem with cut and paste king shelter code, and in-between is a big messy confusing gray area.

Did not happen, take Zach's document and compare Fruit king-shelter-code vs Rybka. It's different. As I can mention 17 other differences (from minor to fundamental) and this is just a minor one.

Ed, I think you are getting defensive and saying things that are a little sillly because you think I am trying to claim something I am not. I am not making any accusations, or claiming anyone did anything. This has nothing to do with Zach's document or fruit or rybka or anything else. I am just saying what I consider an obvious truth, as someone that has coded chess programs for over 20 years, was a pretty decent OTB chess player, and works professionally in a an area at least minorly related to computer chess programming. Reading code IS NOT like reading a high level concept in a book in terms of the diversity of the resulting code. The pawn shelter example was only meant as an illustration of this as its one of many cases where looking at Toga and looking at Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess clearly will not have the same effect on most chess programmers.

Now stop trying to defend this undefendable statement with one of the only people in the thread that agrees with much of what you say .

-Sam

[kranium]

Anytime anyone makes a statement that is construed as pro Rybka and/or anti- ICGA, you come out spewing nonsense as usual. Self-delusion my ass. You want to pile on someone- take me. I am definitely pro- Rybka, and I don't give a rat's ass what you think or say. If my statements- each and every one- don't piss you off and get under your skin- then I gotta go back and do better. Agreeing with you would be a litmus test for idiots or the panels lap dancers.

George-

I know you've been hurt by the accusations against Vas...
I realize you've lost a cherished position of prestige...i.e. Vas was/is your 'friend'.
As a CCRL tester, you managed to maintain a close relationship with him, exchanged emails, etc.
You must have felt 'on top' of the CC world...and must be very hurt by the events that have unfolded.

But your anger, disappointment, resentment, etc., against Bob, Alexander Schmidt, and others in this forum is completely misplaced.
IMO, you should be angry with Vas!, who manipulated, lied, and deceived you (and others) over and over again for years...
all the while befriending testers like you, laughing...all the way to the bank!

You seem to have become a kind of lonesome 'pariah' with your 'defense to the bitter end'/'go down with the ship' mentality.
Please, think about it, and stop being Vas's martyr...making a complete fool of yourself.

PS-
If I hear you use the expression 'I don't give a rats ass' one more time, I'm gonna puke...

Norm

[Terry McCracken]

......In light of the clarity of the issues, your comments can only be interpreted as disingenuous.

It is sad that you are reduced to behaving in that sort of way.........

I haven't made any comments except to say that it's interesting to reflect on what Fabien said in view of what has happened since. How is that either "disingenuous" or "sad behaviour"?

Look at the responses to your post. The authors of the relevant ones felt that you were trying to imply a conclusion from Fabien’s post that was invalid. At least two of us believe that your understanding of the issue is sufficient for you to be fully aware that you were implying an invalid conclusion. Hence the comment that you are disingenuous.

Another example of your disingenuous behaviour is the way in which you subsequently implied that your underlying motive was not tendentious.

I ask you again: you find the Ippolit engines unacceptable because there are simply rumours that they contain copied code. Why then do you find the Rybka engines acceptable when there is extremely strong evidence that they contain copied code?

Firstly, as a non-programmer, I am not in a position to question whether or not the Rybka decision was correct. Therefore I haven't questioned that decision.
I have pointed out some aspects of the process that I was perturbed about (including the Leiden ultimatum since), but that's it.

Secondly, people can imply what they want, but that doesn't make them right. My motive for posting Fabien's comments was purely because I found them interesting in light of what has transpired since, nothing more, nothing less.

Regarding Rybka and other controversial engines, those tested by CCRL are marked as such in the rating lists. What does your question regarding controversial engines have to do with my post anyway?

I didn't mention CCRL. They are fully entitled to test what they like and what they do is none of my business.

Since you ask, I will tell you that the reason why I raised the issue of your double standards is because the maintenance of such standards requires, at best, a facility for self-delusion and I think that the most charitable interpretation of much of your behaviour would be that you have a facility for self-delusion.

Anytime anyone makes a statement that is construed as pro Rybka and/or anti- ICGA, you come out spewing nonsense as usual. Self-delusion my ass. You want to pile on someone- take me. I am definitely pro- Rybka, and I don't give a rat's ass what you think or say. If my statements- each and every one- don't piss you off and get under your skin- then I gotta go back and do better. Agreeing with you would be a litmus test for idiots or the panels lap dancers.

Could you be more of a vulgar cretin? Compared to Keith you really are an idiot.

Along with Keith and others, I've had to put up with your insipid, crass, obnoxious abuse on this board. If you can't be an adult go elsewhere.

[Rebel]

Ed, I think you are getting defensive and saying things that are a little sillly because you think I am trying to claim something I am not. I am not making any accusations, or claiming anyone did anything. This has nothing to do with Zach's document or fruit or rybka or anything else. I am just saying what I consider an obvious truth, as someone that has coded chess programs for over 20 years, was a pretty decent OTB chess player, and works professionally in a an area at least minorly related to computer chess programming. Reading code IS NOT like reading a high level concept in a book in terms of the diversity of the resulting code. The pawn shelter example was only meant as an illustration of this as its one of many cases where looking at Toga and looking at Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess clearly will not have the same effect on most chess programmers.

In essence it's the same, knowledge. And how to do things right. As a chess player you have learned form Bobby to be careful with your pawns in front of your king and you use that knowledge on the club. For a chess programmer counts the same, add that (learned) knowledge to your EVAL. And in an existing program that's not hard at all especially not when you have a source code example in front of your nose.

Now stop trying to defend this undefendable statement with one of the only people in the thread that agrees with much of what you say .

Sam, sorry I did not realize your stance and also not remembering your name, how is your program called ?

[Gerd Isenberg]

In essence it's the same, knowledge. And how to do things right. As a chess player you have learned form Bobby to be careful with your pawns in front of your king and you use that knowledge on the club. For a chess programmer counts the same, add that (learned) knowledge to your EVAL. And in an existing program that's not hard at all especially not when you have a source code example in front of your nose.

Sure both is knowlege, but inside an open source chess program there is already a concrete implementation, while in a chess book it is more abstract and not that simple to copy or let say to translate.

Specially king safety has so many issues, same/opponent wing castling, no more castling possible, possibility of artificial castling (trapped rook), fiancetto pattern with king's bishop, pawn shelter, open- halfopen files, rams versus levers and lever possibilities, square control around the king with focus on its front-span, back rank issues or more generally the king may only move along one line and may be attacked on that line with a sliding piece, and of course material of attacker as a kind of factor specially considering the queen, and much more. There are zillions of possibilities to implement that knowledge. I agree, if you already saw a concrete implementation inside a strong open source chess program, you are probaly biased with your own implementation, and will more likely end up with something similar, considering the same features.

Now stop trying to defend this undefendable statement with one of the only people in the thread that agrees with much of what you say .

Sam, sorry I did not realize your stance and also not remembering your name, how is your program called ?

Sam is author of LearningLemming and along with Edsel Apostol co-author of Hannibal.

[A Distel]

Since you ask, I will tell you that the reason why I raised the issue of your double standards is because the maintenance of such standards requires, at best, a facility for self-delusion and I think that the most charitable interpretation of much of your behaviour would be that you have a facility for self-delusion.

Really? Some would say that you're deluded too, so I guess that makes us even. However, I suspect that much of your obnoxious behaviour towards me goes back to your having never got over being called a tosser.

Why not simply answer KI's questions?
Your agenda is completey obvious...

You (and your group) are and have been one of Rybka's staunchest and most vocal supporters for the last 5 years, arguing tooth and nail...defending Rybka.

Your recent posts appear to be no more than pitiful last ditch efforts of denial in light of the fact that it is well known and widely accepted that your were and are completely wrong.

In addition, you continue to test Rybka when others have washed their hands of it...?
Rybka..a known clone of Fruit and Crafty open sources?...and now Houdini as well?
but not IvanHoe?, against which there is not a stitch of evidence of wrongdoing?
pitiful really to see this...

you've unsuccessfully offered every possible excuse to not test Ippolit, all were ridiculous and have failed,
now you're now down to one last measly weak and ineffectual excuse to continue your misguided in-denial egocentric power trip:
'the ipppolit authors are anonymous'...
now even Ingo Bauer is copying it:

"1. Engines with an unknown author! I consider this unfair to the other authors."

both of you in a vain and desperate effort to save face...
ridiculous!

+1

[BubbaTough]

Sam, sorry I did not realize your stance and also not remembering your name, how is your program called ?

No worries. My current program is Hannibal, which is a team effort with Edsel Apostol. Before that was LearningLemming, which was private though I did give a copy to a number of people who requested it and it shows up on a few rating lists. Before that was a few different programs (the first was Pawniac in 1990) but I doubt anyone has ever head of any of them.

By the way, if more chess books read like this:

http://www.top-5000.nl/authors/rebel/chess840.htm

I would be more likely to agree with you about the similarity between reading chess books and reading chess code.

-Sam

[bob]

Trust me, any reasonable experienced chess programmer reads C-sources as you read a chess book, especially when the C-source comes with comments what it is doing.

No one has a problem with someone reading a book that says pawn shelter is good and trying to translate it into code; many (but not all) do have a problem with cut and paste king shelter code, and in-between is a big messy confusing gray area.

Did not happen, take Zach's document and compare Fruit king-shelter-code vs Rybka. It's different. As I can mention 17 other differences (from minor to fundamental) and this is just a minor one.

Eh? One program uses a function, the other uses that function at start-up and then probes a table to obtain the values at runtime? Crafty used to compute mobility at runtime, it now does it at startup and just does a table look-up at runtime. Produces EXACTLY the same score for any given position as the original. Is that REALLY "different"?

Of course it isn't...

[Rebel]

In essence it's the same, knowledge. And how to do things right. As a chess player you have learned form Bobby to be careful with your pawns in front of your king and you use that knowledge on the club. For a chess programmer counts the same, add that (learned) knowledge to your EVAL. And in an existing program that's not hard at all especially not when you have a source code example in front of your nose.

Sure both is knowlege, but inside an open source chess program there is already a concrete implementation, while in a chess book it is more abstract and not that simple to copy or let say to translate.

Specially king safety has so many issues, same/opponent wing castling, no more castling possible, possibility of artificial castling (trapped rook), fiancetto pattern with king's bishop, pawn shelter, open- halfopen files, rams versus levers and lever possibilities, square control around the king with focus on its front-span, back rank issues or more generally the king may only move along one line and may be attacked on that line with a sliding piece, and of course material of attacker as a kind of factor specially considering the queen, and much more. There are zillions of possibilities to implement that knowledge. I agree, if you already saw a concrete implementation inside a strong open source chess program, you are probaly biased with your own implementation, and will more likely end up with something similar, considering the same features.

Yes, yes, yes, 100 x yes.

Let's call the green the pre-internet times and the blue the post-internet era with its free sources and fora to share knowledge.

In the green era programmers had to reinvent every wheel, you, me, Bob, Don have been there. The result, completely different solutions, search and EVAL.

In the blue era none starts from scratch with free sources just a few mouse clicks away, that's not real. The good ones (such as Uri, Eelco etc. etc.) will study everything available and write their own code and the code they write will be influenced by what they have learned and the code will be more and more similar.

June 2005, Fruit source code release.

For the first time in history a top engine programmer releases his sources and it becomes a model for a new generation of chess programmers. Good eval, good search and how to do things right from the very start.

With such a model available it's only natural modern chess engines will produce similar search and eval semantics, the zillions of possibilities to implement things of the past narrow quickly if Fruit / Strelka / Ippo is chosen as a base.

It's the reality of 2011.

IMO.

And not related to Rybka only.