Ippolit 2nd release

[bob]

Rybka 4 will be out in about a month or so. It will be all that Ipollit is and much much more. It will be the chess engines hardcore users have been dreaming about, with lots of goodies yet not seen on any engine ...

How do you know all that?

The only negative thing this time though (for hackers that is) is that it will have a heavy padlock on its code. Hopefully that will not be intrusive enough to hurt performance.

If this is the true(and unfortunately it won't be easy at all to find out as we would not have the unlocked version of R4 to compare) then i guess many people will not buy the program. I will be one of them.

There is no copy protection that can't be broken. All it does is hurt the legit users, not the thieves. I used to take great delight in doing this, just to see if I could. One can do wonders with a debugger, if he knows assembly language fairly well.

My only comment: I absolutely refuse to buy _any_ software that requires that I insert the CD every time I want to use the program (and I am not talking chess engines here since I don't buy/use commercial ones). On my laptop, I often have the CD/DVD drive removed to make room for an extra battery. I will not buy software that requires any sort of "dongle" (a device plugged into a printer/serial/usb port needed to "unlock" the software). If I found something I _really_ wanted, I would buy it and defeat the copy-protection to make it actually usable again. I would not give away copies, but I do refuse to deal with draconian copy-protection methodologies.

I didn't read inserting CDs or dongles mentioned anywhere. Furthermore, since Rybka is purchased and sold online, that might be quite difficult. I'm guessing something more along the lines of activation, but I am not in the know.

That's even easier to defeat. You do start off as a valid customer. So you can see what exactly is going on. You can't depend on a network sanity check whenever the program is started since the program might be used offline most of the time, legitimately.

[bob]

Rybka 4 will be out in about a month or so. It will be all that Ipollit is and much much more. It will be the chess engines hardcore users have been dreaming about, with lots of goodies yet not seen on any engine ...

How do you know all that?

The only negative thing this time though (for hackers that is) is that it will have a heavy padlock on its code. Hopefully that will not be intrusive enough to hurt performance.

If this is the true(and unfortunately it won't be easy at all to find out as we would not have the unlocked version of R4 to compare) then i guess many people will not buy the program. I will be one of them.

There is no copy protection that can't be broken. All it does is hurt the legit users, not the thieves. I used to take great delight in doing this, just to see if I could. One can do wonders with a debugger, if he knows assembly language fairly well.

My only comment: I absolutely refuse to buy _any_ software that requires that I insert the CD every time I want to use the program (and I am not talking chess engines here since I don't buy/use commercial ones). On my laptop, I often have the CD/DVD drive removed to make room for an extra battery. I will not buy software that requires any sort of "dongle" (a device plugged into a printer/serial/usb port needed to "unlock" the software). If I found something I _really_ wanted, I would buy it and defeat the copy-protection to make it actually usable again. I would not give away copies, but I do refuse to deal with draconian copy-protection methodologies.

Bob can I ask why you don't use or buy chess engine software? Don't you need the best to test Crafty? I heard you say this several times here, it sounds kind of arrogant as if you can't learn anything from commercial programs, what's your beef with the commercials. I don't really believe that you would admit to hacking a program for fun but not test it. Even if you did it for fun don't you feel somewhat dishonest?

I can't run windows applications on our cluster. So that simply is not an option. So far, I have been successful in finding open-source programs that are strong enough to satisfy my testing requirements.

[M ANSARI]

What I meant is in actual coding of the software so that it would not be so easy for someone to decompile and steal the code. I am sure that there are ways to make things more difficult, with Rybka 3 it apparently was too easy as no steps were done to prevent that.

I remember Vas saying exactly the same thing for Rybka 3, when Strelka was out.

Actually with R3, there was a huge rush to release the engine on time as Chessbase and Chess OK were involved and putting a lot of pressure so I don't think he managed to put enough safeguards. This time it seems Vas is taking his time. To be honest I am an Architect and Civil engineer and would not know source code from a frying pan, so I have no clue if it would help ... but Vas definetely thinks he left his front door wide open, and plans to at least not do that with R4. My only hope is that this does not hurt performance, or carry too much overhead.

[Uri Blass]

What I meant is in actual coding of the software so that it would not be so easy for someone to decompile and steal the code. I am sure that there are ways to make things more difficult, with Rybka 3 it apparently was too easy as no steps were done to prevent that.

I remember Vas saying exactly the same thing for Rybka 3, when Strelka was out.

Actually with R3, there was a huge rush to release the engine on time as Chessbase and Chess OK were involved and putting a lot of pressure so I don't think he managed to put enough safeguards. This time it seems Vas is taking his time. To be honest I am an Architect and Civil engineer and would not know source code from a frying pan, so I have no clue if it would help ... but Vas definetely thinks he left his front door wide open, and plans to at least not do that with R4. My only hope is that this does not hurt performance, or carry too much overhead.

I wonder how do you know what Vas plans.

[Uri Blass]

looking at the rybka forum I guess that it is based on the following post

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... #pid191873

I doubt if Vas is right that every problem has a solution and I guess that the problem is that today there are better tools to translate exe file to C..

[Sylwy]

What I meant is in actual coding of the software so that it would not be so easy for someone to decompile and steal the code. I am sure that there are ways to make things more difficult, with Rybka 3 it apparently was too easy as no steps were done to prevent that.

I remember Vas saying exactly the same thing for Rybka 3, when Strelka was out.

Actually with R3, there was a huge rush to release the engine on time as Chessbase and Chess OK were involved and putting a lot of pressure so I don't think he managed to put enough safeguards. This time it seems Vas is taking his time. To be honest I am an Architect and Civil engineer and would not know source code from a frying pan, so I have no clue if it would help ... but Vas definetely thinks he left his front door wide open, and plans to at least not do that with R4. My only hope is that this does not hurt performance, or carry too much overhead.

I wonder how do you know what Vas plans.

Maybe a kind of petroleum sponsors ? Who knows ?

[M ANSARI]

What I meant is in actual coding of the software so that it would not be so easy for someone to decompile and steal the code. I am sure that there are ways to make things more difficult, with Rybka 3 it apparently was too easy as no steps were done to prevent that.

I remember Vas saying exactly the same thing for Rybka 3, when Strelka was out.

Actually with R3, there was a huge rush to release the engine on time as Chessbase and Chess OK were involved and putting a lot of pressure so I don't think he managed to put enough safeguards. This time it seems Vas is taking his time. To be honest I am an Architect and Civil engineer and would not know source code from a frying pan, so I have no clue if it would help ... but Vas definetely thinks he left his front door wide open, and plans to at least not do that with R4. My only hope is that this does not hurt performance, or carry too much overhead.

I wonder how do you know what Vas plans.

Maybe a kind of petroleum sponsors ? Who knows ?

Not everyone who comes from a country that has and sells oil is in the petroleum business and has petro dollars. But then again I can understand such ignorance from someone who has not travelled outside his little village. For your information not all people from the gulf have oil wells in their backyard and petrodollars stashed under their beds. At least in your case, it is never too late to learn something new and hopefully this revelation will add to your limited knowledge of how things are in other parts of the world.

With regards to Vas and Rybka, I do correspond with Vas quite often by email like many other posters on this board. So I do ask about things especially when a controversial topic comes up ... as again do many people on this forum. I have bought every single version of Rybka that has come out and so you could say I am a sponsor of sorts ... just like many thousands of other Rybka "sponsors". I assure you that "petroleum" does not sponsor Rybka or Vas

[Albert Silver]

What I meant is in actual coding of the software so that it would not be so easy for someone to decompile and steal the code. I am sure that there are ways to make things more difficult, with Rybka 3 it apparently was too easy as no steps were done to prevent that.

I remember Vas saying exactly the same thing for Rybka 3, when Strelka was out.

Actually with R3, there was a huge rush to release the engine on time as Chessbase and Chess OK were involved and putting a lot of pressure so I don't think he managed to put enough safeguards. This time it seems Vas is taking his time. To be honest I am an Architect and Civil engineer and would not know source code from a frying pan, so I have no clue if it would help ... but Vas definetely thinks he left his front door wide open, and plans to at least not do that with R4. My only hope is that this does not hurt performance, or carry too much overhead.

I wonder how do you know what Vas plans.

In all honesty, I don't understand why this would be so mysterious. Either Vas told him, or he stated this somewhere.

[Albert Silver]

Maybe a kind of petroleum sponsors ? Who knows ?

Not everyone who comes from a country that has and sells oil is in the petroleum business and has petro dollars. But then again I can understand such ignorance from someone who has not travelled outside his little village.

You're more sensitive than I. I wouldn't even have bothered replying or at best, I'd have poked fun at them. As a Brazilian, you wouldn't believe the things I've heard about Brazil over the years. Once, a few years ago, while waiting in Kennedy Airport, I was drawn into a conversation with a fellow who was amazed when I mentioned the internet.

"You have Internet in Brazil?" (the comment alone told the whole story)

"Yes, as you know, the entire country is covered with palm trees..."

(nods his head)

"so we placed the cables at the tops to avoid issues with crocodiles eating through them. It is a chronic problem in some areas."

"Wow, I never imagined..."

Albert

[Robert Flesher]

I am not a programmer so forgive my grand imagination. However, would it not be nice it the original programmer could have a self destruct protection build into his software. Then any tampering triggers the hidden command and BOOM! the software destroys/deletes itself. Kinda like a "Mission Impossible, "this message will seft destruct!" . Would be a damned good way to get back at the low life hackers.

/real world back on



Cheers,

Robert