My recent correspondence with Vasik Rajlich

[Graham Banks]

Moderators do not read each and every post.

You seriously want to tell me that Graham did not read the initial posting?

Of course - this morning after I took a look. The thread to that point had remained all night, so was obviously fine with the other two mods. You can't realistically blame me for everything. We all have to sleep.
Besides, if this thread was to be moved there are a few others that would need to go with it. I'm not prepared to do that on my own.

Cheers,
Graham.

[benstoker]

you might consider that the mods live in different time zones, and some mods are not actually active anymore.

So you kind of admitted that this thread belongs into EOF.

Fine.

But it's still here.

Comments with a different opinion are usually moved within 10 minutes.

Banks should move all messages from Jeremy to the secret society EOF since his sig has a link to the open chess forum and that forum may contain links to documents that cast huge doubt on the charge that ippo = rybka.

[Albert Silver]

Moderators do not read each and every post.

You seriously want to tell me that Graham did not read the initial posting?

I'm not the moderator, but am trying to suggest good form: yelling in a thread is really not the way to go about it.

Anyhow, exceptions do occur especially at times of crisis. I was involved in such a crisis, and though election declarations and discussions were supposed to be redirected to the Help and Suggestions forums, the rampant accusations suggested this was a form of censorship and cover-up. As a result, we left them in the main forums for that period.

I am not saying this is the case here, but considering the nature of the current crisis and debacle, it would not surprise me if the mods had decided to leave this here, hopefully to let the members form their own opinions.

[alpha123]

(5) It seems to be guesswork. I'd estimate that 40% of the points are wrong, 40% are standard chess/computer chess concepts, and 20% are direct Fruit influence on Rybka.

Sigh... That's the same old Vasik nonsense we are used to. It's quite easy for him to say something is wrong, but he has yet to demonstrate anything proving it. I talked to him about my webpage before posting it, and the only example he could come up with of something that was wrong was the PSTs, which is one of the most clear-cut pieces of evidence.

Yes, I wondered whether you would pick up on that point. If he has given Sven permission to publish his email, it would appear that he is willing to publicly cast aspersions on your competence and indirectly that of Bob Hyatt without providing any evidence.

I cannot see how the permission to publish emails, based on my question whether I may do so, should by any means be related to competence of other people, even more to aspersions about that. Appears very far-fetched to me.

Sven

“I'd estimate that 40% of the points are wrong”, That implies that Zach’s analysis is riddled with mistakes.
“40% are standard chess/computer chess concepts”. That implies that Zach is unable to recognise standard computer chess concepts when they are staring him in the face..

In other words, he is saying that at least 80% of Zach’s work is either inaccurate or incompetent. That sounds to me to be a serious slur on Zach’s ability. He has made those slurs without providing a shred of evidence and he has allowed you to publish them in that form.

If I were to make such serious aspersions on the competence of a colleague, I would not dream of allowing them to go public without providing concrete examples. It appears that Vas Rajlich does not adhere to that standard.

Now just wait till Rondo starts to own Rybka....

Peter

[bob]

Moderators do not read each and every post.

You seriously want to tell me that Graham did not read the initial posting?

I'm not the moderator, but am trying to suggest good form: yelling in a thread is really not the way to go about it.

Anyhow, exceptions do occur especially at times of crisis. I was involved in such a crisis, and though election declarations and discussions were supposed to be redirected to the Help and Suggestions forums, the rampant accusations suggested this was a form of censorship and cover-up. As a result, we left them in the main forums for that period.

I am not saying this is the case here, but considering the nature of the current crisis and debacle, it would not surprise me if the mods had decided to leave this here, hopefully to let the members form their own opinions.

Here I have to agree. I've been a moderator too often to count, and I simply do not read every post. Will not read every post. I choose the topics I am interested in and ignore the rest.

To get moderator action, reporting the post is the simplest way, because the moderators all get email delivered to their normal email account pointing out that there is a problem and providing a link to the post in question. If the rules of the road for moderators was that they had to read every last post, I would never run again...

[bob]

(5) It seems to be guesswork. I'd estimate that 40% of the points are wrong, 40% are standard chess/computer chess concepts, and 20% are direct Fruit influence on Rybka.

Sigh... That's the same old Vasik nonsense we are used to. It's quite easy for him to say something is wrong, but he has yet to demonstrate anything proving it. I talked to him about my webpage before posting it, and the only example he could come up with of something that was wrong was the PSTs, which is one of the most clear-cut pieces of evidence.

Yes, I wondered whether you would pick up on that point. If he has given Sven permission to publish his email, it would appear that he is willing to publicly cast aspersions on your competence and indirectly that of Bob Hyatt without providing any evidence.

I cannot see how the permission to publish emails, based on my question whether I may do so, should by any means be related to competence of other people, even more to aspersions about that. Appears very far-fetched to me.

Sven

“I'd estimate that 40% of the points are wrong”, That implies that Zach’s analysis is riddled with mistakes.
“40% are standard chess/computer chess concepts”. That implies that Zach is unable to recognise standard computer chess concepts when they are staring him in the face..

In other words, he is saying that at least 80% of Zach’s work is either inaccurate or incompetent. That sounds to me to be a serious slur on Zach’s ability. He has made those slurs without providing a shred of evidence and he has allowed you to publish them in that form.

If I were to make such serious aspersions on the competence of a colleague, I would not dream of allowing them to go public without providing concrete examples. It appears that Vas Rajlich does not adhere to that standard.

These percentages are very plausible for me. I don't know whether many non-programmers can follow but nevertheless I suggest to all interested members to reread what I already posted five weeks ago on that topic (EO subforum). Read especially my quite detailled comments on each of the points from Zach's pages under the heading "My details". If I had to match these 11 points with the 40-40-20 estimate by Vas then I would perhaps come to similar numbers as he did.

One note @Zach here: for me claiming that something is "wrong", or "standard CC concept" does not mean anything about your competence, and also nothing personal. I just try to keep as objective as possible. If someone would make 4 wrong statements out of 11 then this does not turn him "incompetent" at all. Just to let you know. EDIT: I see no reason why Vas should view this differently.

Sven

I believe that I responded to your post back then point by point also. Your "refutation" offers _zero_ details. And I _do_ mean _zero_. When we started the analysis, we were comparing rybka binary to fruit source, and since the binary is stripped of symbols, and since it is in asm, it takes some work to go from asm back to C. And that code was posted here. And there were howls of protest because our goal was to take the binary and map it directly back to C that matches fruit. I tried to point out that C to binary is a many-to-one mapping, as there are many ways to code up an algorithm where the source looks completely different but the binary is identical. Students try this all the time by changing variable names, procedure names, switching from a for loop to a while loop, and so forth. So going blindly from asm to C is not helpful, but _if_ you ask the question, "Can I use this assembly code, in its entirety without adding instructions or having any left over, and map it back to the exact C source in fruit?" then the answer was yes in more than one instance, the first was the main loop where commands are read and the infamous do_parse() procedure is called.

If you don't accept any of that, that's your choice. But there _is_ ample evidence to show that code was copied. It is not about how much was copied, it is about was _any_ copied, and the answer is most certainly "yes". It is time to get out from behind this false cover of "not too much" or "just a little". One more time, you can't be just a little bit pregnant. Ideas are not the same as code. We are talking about _code_.

Another new excuse is "Rybka is bitboard, fruit is not, can't be copied". Baloney. Much of my early evaluation was not bitboard since I have always maintained a mailbox copy of the board to make it easy to figure out what piece is on a particular square. And I converted that code directly to bitboard code later. Are you _really_ saying that is not copied. When I copy A to B, then modify B to use a different board representation, and now B is not a copy of A. That's convoluted thinking, to be kind about it.

What if the robo* guys convert from bitboards? Are they _also_ OK by this definition, even though it looks more and more like they are already OK, based on continually arriving data.

[tomgdrums]

(5) It seems to be guesswork. I'd estimate that 40% of the points are wrong, 40% are standard chess/computer chess concepts, and 20% are direct Fruit influence on Rybka.

Sigh... That's the same old Vasik nonsense we are used to. It's quite easy for him to say something is wrong, but he has yet to demonstrate anything proving it. I talked to him about my webpage before posting it, and the only example he could come up with of something that was wrong was the PSTs, which is one of the most clear-cut pieces of evidence.

Yes, I wondered whether you would pick up on that point. If he has given Sven permission to publish his email, it would appear that he is willing to publicly cast aspersions on your competence and indirectly that of Bob Hyatt without providing any evidence.

I cannot see how the permission to publish emails, based on my question whether I may do so, should by any means be related to competence of other people, even more to aspersions about that. Appears very far-fetched to me.

Sven

“I'd estimate that 40% of the points are wrong”, That implies that Zach’s analysis is riddled with mistakes.
“40% are standard chess/computer chess concepts”. That implies that Zach is unable to recognise standard computer chess concepts when they are staring him in the face..

In other words, he is saying that at least 80% of Zach’s work is either inaccurate or incompetent. That sounds to me to be a serious slur on Zach’s ability. He has made those slurs without providing a shred of evidence and he has allowed you to publish them in that form.

If I were to make such serious aspersions on the competence of a colleague, I would not dream of allowing them to go public without providing concrete examples. It appears that Vas Rajlich does not adhere to that standard.

A couple of points.

1. Allowing the email to be posted is simply "a way of saying something without _really_ saying something, particularly without saying something with concrete supporting evidence." So it is just a way to side-step the issue, once again.

2. I personally believe that he knows that we know, and we know that he knows that we know. And that there is no possible refutation, so avoiding the topic and hoping it eventually blows over is the best alternative strategy to confronting it head on.

So don't hold your breath waiting on evidence. This "I don't have time" is a crock. Years ago Berliner accused me of cheating at the 1986 WCCC event that we won. I helped Levy, Newborn, Marsland, and Thompson evaluate the claim by providing whatever data they asked for. They wanted to run certain moves thru the version of Cray Blitz we used in that game. I made arrangements for Cray time (dedicated SMP crays are not exactly easy to come by) and had Cray restore the version from that date from their backups and had them confirm with Levy that they did daily backups and that there was no possible way anyone could have somehow created a faked version and put it into their backup system. I took Berliner's claims, point by point, and contacted other programs for the 3-4 moves he pointed out "would _never_ be played by a computer." I had the programmers involved then send sample output from _their_ program to Levy (Ken Thompson started the ball rolling since he was involved and immediately tested the positions on Belle and found it would play the same moves.) I spent a lot of time. In 1986, during my _first_ year of Ph.D. studies, while I was preparing for the Level I Ph.D. exam given Jan of 1997 (the WCCC was Summer of 86, the cheating claim surfaced around October. Yet I _still_ found the time to defend our hard work (we had 3 of us working on this program). Even with Level I exam preparation in full swing.

So I don't buy this "no time at the moment." One will make time, _if_ one actually has a way of refuting the claim, which we did to _everybody_'s satisfaction. The final letter from Levy took Berliner's claim, point by point, and directly refuted each and every one with hard evidence. Why can't we get that here? Perhaps there is no hard evidence to refute the claim? So why does everyone keep waiting for something that is not going to come (This is about the fruit/rybka point). And then what about the Rybka/IP* issue? One has to ask "why??" And there are not many _reasonable_ possible explanations, if you are fair in trying to answer that "Why?"

So, the situation "is what it is, and it isn't going to change."

Not much point in keeping the hope alive.

Dr. Hyatt, we have debated in the recent past (with me coming from the non-technical side of things) BUT I will say that I completely agree with you here! I do not buy the "I don't have time for it", excuse either.

If Vas had some mysterious personal reasons for not wanting to present evidence, I would give benefit of the doubt on that. BUT "I don't have time" is not a valid excuse from Vas in any way shape or form.

[Roger Brown]

Dr. Hyatt, we have debated in the recent past (with me coming from the non-technical side of things) BUT I will say that I completely agree with you here! I do not buy the "I don't have time for it", excuse either.

If Vas had some mysterious personal reasons for not wanting to present evidence, I would give benefit of the doubt on that. BUT "I don't have time" is not a valid excuse from Vas in any way shape or form.

Hello Tom,

In the above quote I could replace Dr. Hyatt with your name and the rest of your post would be mine as well. Whoa, a cloned post!

Time cannot be a reason, not when so much of it has elapsed already.

I hope that there will be some resolution one way or another.

Soon.

Later.

[bob]

Dr. Hyatt, we have debated in the recent past (with me coming from the non-technical side of things) BUT I will say that I completely agree with you here! I do not buy the "I don't have time for it", excuse either.

If Vas had some mysterious personal reasons for not wanting to present evidence, I would give benefit of the doubt on that. BUT "I don't have time" is not a valid excuse from Vas in any way shape or form.

Hello Tom,

In the above quote I could replace Dr. Hyatt with your name and the rest of your post would be mine as well. Whoa, a cloned post!

Time cannot be a reason, not when so much of it has elapsed already.

I hope that there will be some resolution one way or another.

Soon.

Later.

If one cares about his/her reputation, then one will take the necessary time to defend it when necessary. One will take the necessary time to produce supporting data if it is available. This only makes good sense. He is stuck on opposite sides of the issue here. On one hand, it is pretty certain that he copied parts of fruit, which is forbidden. Others besides him have provided evidence and he's provided no refutation. On the other hand, he has stated that ip* was (originally) an exact copy of Rybka (now amended to a copy but with lots of changes made to it) but has (again) provided no evidence of any kind.

this kind of behaviour completely mystifies me? If he could refute the first claim, or validate the second claim, either would disappear. Yet they continue to live lives of their own because of a lack of interest/data/time/etc...

[Alexander Schmidt]

You seriously want to tell me that Graham did not read the initial posting?

Of course[/quote]

When I wrote that you answered in the thread already.

And the thread is still there, so just admit that you are not impartial.

Cheers
Alex