Interesting reflection on a past statement

[Rebel]

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.

Good to know.

[BubbaTough]

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.

Hmmphff. When I say it you argue, and when Gerd says it you agree. I guess he is just more eloquent than me .

-Sam

[Rebel]

Hmmphff. When I say it you argue, and when Gerd says it you agree. I guess he is just more eloquent than me .

The communication qualities of the human race are greatly overestimated, just blame it in my sloppy english

[geots]

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

Norman, I will break my rule of not answering threads this time. Because you are really an ok guy, if you would stop always finding something about CCRL to complain about.

2ND- there are so many misunderstandings that I thought I would try to clear up a few.


1. I have not been hurt by any accusations against Vas. There would be no reason for me to feel hurt.

2. I have lost a cherished position of prestige? ... Yea, Vas was and still is my friend. But I doubt it was as close a friendship as many in CC had/still have with him. Being his friend has nothing to do with prestige- I cannot connect the dots there.

3. I am not really sure being a CCRL tester has/had a bearing on the friendship.

4. I do not know how being his friend would put me "on top" of anything. I think too much is being read into a simple friendship. Maybe too much is assumed because I have stood by him thru this whole sordid affair. Again- where me being hurt by this... is beyond me. I cannot imagine a scenario in any of this where I would "feel hurt." It's simply not true- not even close to true.

5. Why do you think I have any anger or resentment toward Schmidt? I have not once tried to deny him or anyone else their opinions in this Rybka issue. Never once. But when I don't agree with them- and say I don't- that is when shit has repeatedly hit the fan. He made false statements- I challenged him- and he still would not admit he was wrong. Couldn't prove I had said what he accused me of- because it doesn't exist.
But he tried to skirt around that instead of being man enough to admit it. How is that my fault?

6. How did Vas manipulate me, lie to me and deceive me? If I were to admit he is guilty- which I DON'T- how would he have lied, deceived, and manipulated me? Can't have had anything to do with manipulating me to test his engine- because I am still testing it now. And will continue to. He has not deceived me or lied to me, as the discussion of this whole mess has never actually come up. He is much more interested in discussing the Washington Redskins. If the time comes he wants to discuss it- we will discuss it.

7. "As a tester he has befriended me, and he is laughing all the way to the bank." This one is really off the charts. Have no idea how you reach this conclusion. Competent testers are not a rarity. And he never asked me to do any private beta testing for him. I do not think that you realize that every beta, following beta, version, upgraded version with an "a", "c", "n", whatever- before he went commercial- I have each and every one of them. Then after he went commercial- I have every beta, every version he sold, and every update to every version. If he wrote it, I have it. And from the first free beta to the last commercial version he has put out- it has cost me NADA- i.e., not one dime have I spent. It was all given to me free.
So if he is laughing at me- I missed the joke and the punch line.

8. "Lonesome pariah"...... I may be a lot of things- but trust me- lonesome is not one of them. I guess it might be that you think this whole issue is a lot more serious than I do. Vas' biggest problem is not you guys. His biggest problem- IMO, is spend less time on clusters and more time on getting back on top of the elo list. Not sure what it can be attributed to, at least not 100% sure- but his sales have increased since all this silly crap began. And in that sense, you are probably correct- no doubt on his way to the bank he is laughing at some people- trust me however- I am not one of them.

9. Making a fool of myself? If believing there was a lot of evidence that was made to fit a guilty theory, when it could have been interpreted different ways by diff. experts- yea, I am a fool.

If thinking the panel did more things wrong than right in the way they conducted their business- yea, I'm a fool.

If you took people on the panel, and could show them a map of Norway and tell them it was code- yet they were given the opportunity to vote (whether they did or not)- THAT IS INSANE. Again put me down again as a fool for believing that.

Testers were invited to be on the panel. I am as good as any that exist-and trust me again- letting me onto the panel would have been ridiculous! Put me down for a fool there as well.

They don't even have the guts to tell us exactly who the 14 voters were. Are they ashamed of themselves? Do they think they will be put on a "hit list" and eliminated? Are they scared to defend their positions? Shit, mark me down as a fool again.

10. And I'm not going down with any ship, because there is no ship going down. But if there were, I might not be worthy of the credit you give me there. And do you even have the slightest clue how many people think Vas was railroaded and just don't even come on here any longer- or if they do- they don't discuss it. As Sven Schule said, Talk Chess is no place to have a proper discussion of the issue- they are all nuts. He is far from the only person who feels that way.

If I have an opinion on any subject- I don't throw a leaf into the wind to see if my stance is popular.

And I don't have someone who keeps up with how many people feel the way I do- and if or when it gets down to a certain figure- I'm outta here. I don't operate like that.

The truth is, I have a right to my thoughts and opinions- and others should respect that. No matter what they think. But when you read the way some people respond to me- if you didn't know better- you would think I shot their kid, or slept with their wife. They need to loosen up- the whole thing is just not that important.

And yea, if this is the way ICGA handles all their business- I have little or no respect for them. Does anyone here have a close relative in the group? If not- you could have fooled me.

No matter what it's about, I will have opinions and I will speak them when I choose to. And if no one makes it personal- I won't make it personal.



gts

[Harvey Williamson]

Testers were invited to be on the panel. I am as good as any that exist-and trust me again- letting me onto the panel would have been ridiculous! Put me down for a fool there as well.


gts

One day you might get a fact right. No Testers were invited onto the Panel. A few applied to join it and most were accepted.

[bob]

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.

This is nonsense. If it were true, everyone's king safety would look similar. That is ANYTHING but the truth. This statement that once you look at code you will write nearly identical code is, to be kind, a crock. The "zillions of possibilities" narrow only if one COPIES code... There is not even any uniform agreement about what should be done in king safety, beyond simple global ideas like the pawn shelter and pieces close to the king.

This should be discussed in "wishful thinking 101".

[Gerd Isenberg]

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.

I don't like the idea to legalize cloning as a radical solution of the current problems.

Despite the socialization of strong engine knowledge, and the danger in coming close to implement the same set of eval features in the same manner, which cardinality even seems to decrease under the current paradigms, we and tournament organizers should still condemn 1:1 copying of vast parts of eval and/or search including trivial translation concerning the board representation.

IMHO.

[stevemulligan]

Where, in the ICGA rules, does it say "if parts of your code were written by someone else, you must identify them as authors on your program?" Oh yes, that would be rule # 2, would it not?

It might have started with that, but if the rules say you have to cooperate with the ICGA when allegations of cheating are made then Vas getting kicked out isn't about copying code at all. It didn't get to that point.

Looking at binaries isn't enough to make a ruling about cheating. I think a lot of people are upset about this point. In my opinion the evidence reported certainly was enough to warrant a review in which Vas refused to participate.

Does the ICGA run open source only brackets as well as open/closed? For me the open source tournaments would be the most interesting to watch anyways.

[Rebel]

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.

I don't like the idea to legalize cloning as a radical solution of the current problems.

1. I am not talking about cloning which IMO is to take source code as a whole, modify it and then call it your own. Copying is wrong.

2. It's not wrong to implement everything you learned from free sources in your own existing engine in your own written code.

Despite the socialization of strong engine knowledge, and the danger in coming close to implement the same set of eval features in the same manner, which cardinality even seems to decrease under the current paradigms, we and tournament organizers should still condemn 1:1 copying of vast parts of eval and/or search including trivial translation concerning the board representation.

Absolutely. And spoken in general.

But when it's about Rybka (1) did not happen, but (2) did and Vasik never made a secret about it. I am preparing a document about that because I feel this historic event needs an alternative view and I hope to finish it soon. Perhaps we can talk then in the Programmer section.

Anyways, these strong sources are out there and are not going away and are a threat for fair play and somehow we need find solutions to beat the clones. I will offer 2 brainstorm ideas.

[Gerd Isenberg]

1. I am not talking about cloning which IMO is to take source code as a whole, modify it and then call it your own. Copying is wrong.

2. It's not wrong to implement everything you learned from free sources in your own existing engine in your own written code.

Despite the socialization of strong engine knowledge, and the danger in coming close to implement the same set of eval features in the same manner, which cardinality even seems to decrease under the current paradigms, we and tournament organizers should still condemn 1:1 copying of vast parts of eval and/or search including trivial translation concerning the board representation.

Absolutely. And spoken in general.

But when it's about Rybka (1) did not happen, but (2) did and Vasik never made a secret about it. I am preparing a document about that because I feel this historic event needs an alternative view and I hope to finish it soon. Perhaps we can talk then in the Programmer section.

Anyways, these strong sources are out there and are not going away and are a threat for fair play and somehow we need find solutions to beat the clones. I will offer 2 brainstorm ideas.

The problem is if (2) becomes too close to (1).