Robert,Darkmoon wrote:But you have influence over those who will make juridical decisions - and you are on a panel that has yet to even convene. I think you couldn't help yourself- and, now you're trying to talk your way out of an extremely pejorative situation where you have obviously compromised yourself and the panel.bob wrote:Again, for the record, I am neither judge or jury. Just someone (one of three) that makes sure that every bit of evidence is brought into public view, and that Vas can, if he chooses, address each and every piece of evidence, point by point. And then those presenting the evidence can respond. And repeat until nothing new comes up. We don't need impartiality. We need fairness. Anyone that believes I am not fair in such undertakings is simply sadly mistaken. I am not going to hide evidence, or disallow Vas (or others) to respond to each piece of evidence presented. It _will_ be fair. I don't believe you could find any impartial people now since the evidence has been under discussion for a couple of years.Ant_Gugdin wrote:What is the basis for your certainty that Vas is innocent? I imagine that Bob would say he is certain of guilt because he has reviewed the evidence and drawn conclusions from it. Have you?geots wrote:You have said that even if found innocent, he is still guilty in your eyes. I will go you one better. If he is found guilty- he is still innocent in my eyes. Only the victim of being railroaded by a bunch of second place finishers.
That said, I think there are legitimate objections to Bob's role given that he has already expressed strong views on the subject.
As a human, I am quite capable of looking at something critically, and the concluding "Bob, you made a mistake there." When that is justified. But remember, here, I was run over by a red volkswagon. I got the license plate. A dozen people caught this on video. We have clear facial photographs. We have fingerprints from the steel bar that the driver used to bang on me as he ran over me. We have a hundred eye witnesses. We found the volkswagon at the person's house. Car is titled to him. His fingerprints inside. People saw him arrive home at a time consistent with leaving the accident scene and driving directly home. My blood on the front bumper. My fingerprints on the hood where I braced with my hands as I was hit. Etc. So I _know_ exactly what happened. No subjective guesswork. Just a clear and compelling trail from accident to person driving. That's what we have here. Clear and compelling evidence. And now we have evidence that before he copied Fruit, he copied a version of Crafty between version 16.0 and 19.0. We will quantify this more accurately. There is a lot that will be seen that has not been common knowledge yet. I am certain that a rational person, after looking at what we have already seen, much less what else will be shown, will be unable to conclude anything but "something stinks here. Badly..."
Do you really want me to somehow believe that the person that ran over me is innocent, with all the evidence we had? Yet I could still run a perfectly fair trial if called on to do so, giving him every opportunity to address each point of evidence and discredit it if possible.
please try to think about this possible scenario: a scientist is investigating a phenomenon. He/she has certain expectations based on more or less random observations that seem to conform to a hypothesis (in this case 'rybka is a derivative of program X'). Then the scientist gets down to field work, starts gathering all the facts that can be found, together with his co-researchers, etc. You can never say that a scientist is _not_ expecting a particular outcome. In other words, scientists alway have certain expectations and, as a rule, are _biased_. This perfectly normal, because each and every hypothesis is 'laden with expectations', thus biased (this can be found in any textbook on the philosophy of science, and probably even in Wikipedia).
The same is happening here, in the Rybka case. Each one of us does have some expectations and each one is biased in a way. The same applies to Hyatt, who is twice as aware of the above, being an academician (I am one, too and know how he can feel). Hyatt is most likely _not_ biased so as not to recognize the validity of the opposing party, so to speak, because he's been trained to accept falsifying evidence, one way or another, even if it goes against his deepest conviction.
That's how things stand here; what is at stake are _facts_, not _personal wishes_ or opinions, or, God forbid, personal preferences and wish for some gain.
That's how I see things --- Hyatt may be a very corrupt guy, and then you would be perfectly right and wish to not have him as one of the examiners. But we have not had any evidence that he is corrupt, on the contrary, everything we have been able to conclude about him points in the other direction: he is not out there for the money, he's out there for the truth. Besides, he is a top programmer and has taught young people for years achieving great results. My own personal spell of serving here moderator with him confirms this; he's fair and keeps his word.
best