Houdini 2 Aquarium released

[gerold]

I really do not see the reason for the heat generated in this thread.

I have seen announcements for commercial products here on several occasions. The responses seem to be about Houdini and its origins and the ethics of its author rather than the statements in the announcement.

A new thread should be started for that purpose in my opinion.

Later.

This thread started out as an informative thread about Aquarium and Houdini.
It got disrupted by the usual suspects whose only purpose is to insult and derail the thread from its intended purpose.
Moderators see it happen, and do nothing to prevent it from happening.

Talkchess in a nutshell, I'm afraid...

Robert

Hello Robert,

Of course I realise that is the way of persons who have never served to be generous in their criticisms. I note the moderator comments with interest.

This place is not some place where members can be prevented from speaking their minds on issues which interest them and Houdini interests them. Let it not be said that here is no publicity and it is all free....

I mentioned the derailment but frankly, your point that persons seem obsessed with you and your engine seems to be true.

Sooooo, perhaps instead of expecting the moderators to delete etc. you might want to go the Rybka/rybkaforum route.

Then you can ban and delete with ease.

I admit that some of the comments are critical of you and off topic but selective deletions etc. would mangle the thread beyond my willingness to invest effort.

As I said before, I cannot wait to see what some of the critics would do instead.

Later.

Rybka/rybkaforum route. That is a good idea. Vas had the same problem when he started talking about Rybka when it first went Comm. a few years ago. That's when he stopped coming here and opened his own forum.

[Alexander Schmidt]

My claim is that the _professional_ CC programmers of Fritz, Junior, Hiarcs and Shredder repeatedly have shown themselves as at least incompetent and lazy, if not as idiots.

Is that some kind of irony?

I can't believe that one calls people, who do NOT illegaly assimilate Open Source Code, idiots.

[Zagalo]

There seems to be more than my posts asking for the same thing.

Why can you not be honest about the origins of Houdini? You can clear this up in a matter of moments by just stating the obvious, yet you continually dodge it.

I respect the membership here enough to weed out the frauds and help expose those taking advantage of them. How am I disrespecting them by trying to uncover the truth?

So here it is straight from the hip:

Is Houdini based on Robbolitto?

Care to answer honestly?

Peter

+1

I recommend replacing the "Engine Origins" forum with a "Introduce your new chess product" forum, to have a centralized controlled place for such posts and spam

[Ralph Stoesser]

My claim is that the _professional_ CC programmers of Fritz, Junior, Hiarcs and Shredder repeatedly have shown themselves as at least incompetent and lazy, if not as idiots.

Is that some kind of irony?

I can't believe that one calls people, who do NOT illegaly assimilate Open Source Code, idiots.

Replace "Code" by "Ideas and Techniques". And don't forget to remove "illegaly"...

The whole point of Open Source is to share ideas and techniques. Nothing wrong in using the best known ideas from Open Source. In contrary it is highly desirable!

[Albert Silver]

(...) it is a completely original program.

I don't find such a statement on the Houdini web page. I find

"Without many ideas and techniques from the open source chess engines Ippolit and Stockfish, Houdini would not nearly be as strong as it is now."

(apparently this hasn't been quoted enough times, still)

As a longtime member of this forum I object against the treatment Robert Houdart gets in this thread; I have not seen all other related threads. Please have some courtesy, and some taste.

I think it's good to see such first-hand infos from programmers here. Maybe they could be with fewer quality claims, to avoid the impression of advertisement (only). But that is really not a big deal.

Not sure I agree with you. I find it significant that every single engine author I have seen has expressed similar feelings to Skinner.

[tmokonen]

Please have some courtesy, and some taste.

Sympathy For The Devil?

[Dave Mitchell]

Couldn't agree with Julien more.

Robert's post is not only informative:

1) A new release is availe
2) where it is available
3) That upgrade support is offered
4) Nalimov EGTB's are supported

but right on the topic of the whole forum.

It should be welcomed!

A sparse text only notice, is not a commercial advertisement. We just had a much more commercial notice from the author of Chiron and other programs. No complaints for them, but for Robert we raise a ruckus?

Let's not be silly.

[daniel71]

Hi Robert,

Thanks so much for finally supporting the Nalimov Endgame Tablebases as I have been asking you to do this very happy nowand wiill buy software now! I'm glad you clarified support because after reading blurb on Convekta's website was not sure if support was just GUI or not. Daniel

[Laskos]

My claim is that the _professional_ CC programmers of Fritz, Junior, Hiarcs and Shredder repeatedly have shown themselves as at least incompetent and lazy, if not as idiots.

Is that some kind of irony?

I can't believe that one calls people, who do NOT illegaly assimilate Open Source Code, idiots.

Replace "Code" by "Ideas and Techniques". And don't forget to remove "illegaly"...

The whole point of Open Source is to share ideas and techniques. Nothing wrong in using the best known ideas from Open Source. In contrary it is highly desirable!

Exactly, and not only desirable, but as showing the competence in using the new ideas, applying them to your own work, and being competitive exactly in terms of the main criteria, the strength. Being so much goal-oriented, so verifiable and falsifiable, professional, competitive CC could be defined as a harder science than many hard sciences.

Kai

Edit: Forgot about the Strelka sources, which are even easier to understand than Fruit. That would be the fourth failure of the famed professional authors. In fact, a professional failure after another.

[kgburcham]

(...) it is a completely original program.

I don't find such a statement on the Houdini web page. I find

"Without many ideas and techniques from the open source chess engines Ippolit and Stockfish, Houdini would not nearly be as strong as it is now."

(apparently this hasn't been quoted enough times, still)

As a longtime member of this forum I object against the treatment Robert Houdart gets in this thread; I have not seen all other related threads. Please have some courtesy, and some taste.

I think it's good to see such first-hand infos from programmers here. Maybe they could be with fewer quality claims, to avoid the impression of advertisement (only). But that is really not a big deal.

Not sure I agree with you. I find it significant that every single engine author I have seen has expressed similar feelings to Skinner.

Albert, you mean except for Vas?

kgburcham