Goodbye Talkchess

[Rolf]

I would guess he meant to say "a Christian" -- not imply that Bob views himself as "a Christ."

Thanks for giving correction. The latter wouldnt make sense at all.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

I would guess he meant to say "a Christian" -- not imply that Bob views himself as "a Christ."

Thanks for giving correction. The latter wouldnt make sense at all.

Don't worry,we're used to your senseless statements anyway....
Your latest creation was to accuse Zach of suspecious relationships with the so called ippo cloners to improve Zappa....that was brilliant I have to admit....

[Rolf]

So anyone who may surpass Vasik in the race track of the computer chess world is a cloner,cheater
You're pathetic and legal actions should be taken upon you in my opinion....

Let's stay in the real non-criminal world because here nobody could and will ever "surpass" Vas, because Vas is simply the best. Even the invisible hippo jerks were never better, they looked like that for shortest TC. Yes, "Norman S." is a cloner, insofar illegal and criminal.

[benstoker]

So anyone who may surpass Vasik in the race track of the computer chess world is a cloner,cheater
You're pathetic and legal actions should be taken upon you in my opinion....

Let's stay in the real non-criminal world because here nobody could and will ever "surpass" Vas, because Vas is simply the best. Even the invisible hippo jerks were never better, they looked like that for shortest TC. Yes, "Norman S." is a cloner, insofar illegal and criminal.

Intoxicated on the vapors issuing from the Vas personality cult ...

[Sam Hull]

... without any need to bury references in a non-public place. That has obviously changed. For the worse, I might add.

Removing links is stupid. It doesn't change a thing.

The whole board was "buried in a non-public place" in the good old days, if you recall.

Removing links to warez, cracked software, and other illegal and questionable downloads may be "stupid" to you, but it seems pretty silly to allow such links while banning blatant promotion of legitimate software, which as you know is an explicit part of the charter.

The debate centers on where to draw the line - which is ultimately a question for duly elected mods to decide.

-Sam-

[benstoker]

... without any need to bury references in a non-public place. That has obviously changed. For the worse, I might add.

Removing links is stupid. It doesn't change a thing.

The whole board was "buried in a non-public place" in the good old days, if you recall.

Removing links to warez, cracked software, and other illegal and questionable downloads may be "stupid" to you, but it seems pretty silly to allow such links while banning blatant promotion of legitimate software, which as you know is an explicit part of the charter.

The debate centers on where to draw the line - which is ultimately a question for duly elected mods to decide.

-Sam-

No. You are quite wrong. The question is not reserved exclusively for the mods to decide. Each and every individual is free to draw that line, as you call it. If one wishes to participate in a forum free of censorship line-drawing debates and secret society sub-forums, he now has an alternative.

[Sam Hull]

No. You are quite wrong. The question is not reserved exclusively for the mods to decide. Each and every individual is free to draw that line, as you call it. If one wishes to participate in a forum free of censorship line-drawing debates and secret society sub-forums, he now has an alternative.

Vaya con Dios.


-Sam-

[benstoker]

No. You are quite wrong. The question is not reserved exclusively for the mods to decide. Each and every individual is free to draw that line, as you call it. If one wishes to participate in a forum free of censorship line-drawing debates and secret society sub-forums, he now has an alternative.

Vaya con Dios.


-Sam-

I suppose this means I am about to be censored and banned from this forum. In case this is my last post before execution, live long and prosper.

[bob]

... without any need to bury references in a non-public place. That has obviously changed. For the worse, I might add.

Removing links is stupid. It doesn't change a thing.

The whole board was "buried in a non-public place" in the good old days, if you recall.

I don't "recall" so am not sure what you mean.

Removing links to warez, cracked software, and other illegal and questionable downloads may be "stupid" to you, but it seems pretty silly to allow such links while banning blatant promotion of legitimate software, which as you know is an explicit part of the charter.

Again, do not put words in my mouth. Delete all the Warez-type links you want, doesn't bother me a bit. But when you get to "questionable" then things are a lot less clear, and there is a much greater chance of making a serious mistake. Do you have any _direct_ evidence that IP* and friends are illegal? "I think" and "it must be" are simply not good enough. We have those kinds of things pop up at most every CCT/ICGA/etc event held. But it takes actual physical evidence to make any headway. And so far, all we have for IP* is that the code _appears_ to be reverse-engineered. From what is unknown.

While the circumstances are different, we used to have a few very ugly FORTRAN functions in Cray Blitz. We converted time-critical code to assembly, then a few years later we decided we wanted a pure FORTRAN version so that we could debug and test on machines other than the Cray. So we took the assembly code, which had been _highly_ optimized, and reconstructed FORTRAN from it. Looked ugly. Was ugly. But it served its purpose. And it wasn't a clone of _anything_.

You talk as if the jury is in, and the verdict was unanimous with regard to IP* and friends. But I have not even seen an arraignment hearing yet, much less a trial. We have one statement claiming it is a clone, with nothing to support it. If we convict based on that, then hardly anybody will have a legal program, anybody can pipe up and say "that's my code" and offer nothing more. Not reasonable.

The debate centers on where to draw the line - which is ultimately a question for duly elected mods to decide.

I do not agree. First, many of the moderators (certainly the current case) have no technical expertise to make such a determination. We _should_ hold those discussions here, in an open forum, and eventually reach a conclusion if data is presented, or take no action if none is given. I'd no more hand over my healthcare treatment to moderators that don't have an MD in their list of titles. The idea that the moderators get to make this kind of decision is _not_ what the CCC charter is all about. Moderators are supposed to deal with personal attacks, and clearly illegal posts. Not serve as both judge and jury to determine what is legal or not and then execute the guilty on sight.

-Sam-

[bob]

And finally, where is the court case if Vas violated anything at all? Who are you to defame Vas although there is no sign for any juridical issue. Is this what you understand under the famous moral nobody shall be stamped guilty until he was condemned guilty? Why are you so prejudiced towards Vas - especially when all other commercial guys don't interest you at all? Couldn't you add some clear statements for me because I need them, just because you were always the highest role model out of computer chess for me...

My first question is:

1) Can Bob support that Rybka is a derivative of Fruit? If so, I would be interested in seeing it.

2) If Bob provides the evidence, then why is the WCCC allowing Rybka to participate? My understanding is only original works can play at WCCC.

Cordially,

Sean

The evidence has been provided! Yet it is swept under the mat.

This is just like the movie "Groundhog Day". Someone asks for the evidence, the link is posted, the evidence is discussed, then someone asks for the evidence, the link is posted, the evidence is discussed, repeat until you get tired and give up seems to be the point here.

What you call "evidence" has indeed been presented and discussed, but *not* been widely accepted. You know that but ignore it, and continue giving the false impression as if everything were settled. Your repeated statement that "Rybka is a Fruit derivative" is highly exaggerated. Just as you refer to that movie above, I could say that "the link is posted, the evidence is discussed, doubts are raised, doubts are not discussed but simply called 'wrong', silence, someone asks for evidence again, the link is posted, the evidence is discussed, doubts are raised, ..." until the doubt-raisers get tired and give up. See the point? How is your view different from that?

A couple of points. The evidence has been widely accepted by those with decent programming skills and an open mind. Those that do "not" accept it do so using an old debate trick, namely if you can't defend your point, change the subject. In this case, we see:

(1) OK, fruit code was copied, but not enough to be a problem. (you can't be a "little bit pregnant" nor can you be a "little bit plagiariser").

(2) OK, fruit code was copied in R1, but it has not survived to R3. This is harder to defend since nobody wants to again reverse-engineer R3 as was done twice in R1 (once by strelka author, once by a group of us looking at the R1 binary).

(3) OK, fruit code was copied, but everybody uses alpha/beta, hash tables, all the chess 4.7 stuff, so they are copying too and it isn't a problem.

the shifting target argument has other directions as well.

Without seeing the Rybka 1.0 beta source code, or a version that is close to it, it will *never* be possible to *prove* whether Vas has copied source code or only reused ideas from Fruit 2.1. You know that, and therefore speak of "evidence" only instead of "proof", which indeed makes a difference in my understanding of English.

That is simply ignorance on your part. Why don't you look at what the University of California system developed years ago to detect this exact problem, where students copy source, change it enough so that it looks different, but is actually semantically identical. Once can _absolutely_ prove semantic equivalence between a binary and a source program. Why you don't understand that is beyond me.

In the last discussion of that topic where I participated I presented a long list of statements related to each of the points that made up the "evidence" presented by Zach on his page. There was not much discussion about that, most of my points have simply been ignored. I could say, when using your style, that the counter-evidence is there and essentially nobody complained except you and Zach, so it were valid. I don't do that, however. Instead I say: these points are still open, conclusion still missing.

You can say what you want, but it doesn't change the direct comparison between C and actual ASM extracted from Rybka 1. There's nothing to refute that. And again, if anything is copied, it is an illegal and unethical practice.

If ever these points that I raised against Zach's analysis were resolved, and the accepted conclusion were that the presented evidence is correct, then the most you might say would be that "small parts of Fruit 2.1 code have been reused in Rybka 1.0 beta", which would still be a statement very different from your "Rybka is a Fruit derivative" because:

- the amount of Fruit code that is said to be involved in "reuse" is so small compared to the overall program size, and so relatively unimportant, that it can never be viewed as being a substantial part of Fruit, so even according to the GPL it would not be sufficient to call Rybka 1.0 beta a "derived work" - all under the assumption that the presented evidence were fully correct, which I still doubt in many parts;

There you go. "I'm only partially pregnant so I didn't do anything wrong, daddy."

NO copying is permissible. Zach has presented evaluation code that was also obviously copied. Unless you believe copying "semantics" is the same as copying "ideas". Unfortunately, semantics is an implementation of an idea.

- in recent Rybka versions >= R3, the evaluation (main target of "copying" accusation) has definitely been rewritten, which we know from Larry Kaufman, and

Again, "I am only a little bit pregnant, daddy, I didn't do anything wrong."

- the Fruit author has not taken any action on that area for years, although he definitely knows the facts.

If I write a book, someone else copies parts of it verbatim, a third party discovers this, and I say nothing, then all is OK? That is a new and original definition of the term "plagiarism". How could anyone plagiarize parts of Shakespear? He's not going to complain...

Bob, you may repeat your words thousands of times, or even a million of times, but that still does not create more truth than before.

Sven

Ditto...