A Common Sense Proposal to all Vas & Rybka Doubters

[Terry McCracken]

And you, if still a mod would remove this investigation, correct?

A hypothetical question Terry.
Life is too enjoyable not being a mod to even worry about it!

Thanks...I've got my hypothetical answer.

[chrisw]

George,

If nobody bothers to give your post a serious response, please don't misinterpret that.

It is, as you say in your language, "bullshit".

Tell me Zach - what will you do if you're proven to be wrong?
You guys have caused such a stink over this issue, that your names would likely be tarnished in the computer chess scene forever. It would be difficult for anybody to take any of you seriously ever again.

He is doing what he believes to be the right thing. Some agree, some disagree. However threats of tarnished image do not help and its an empty threat anyway.

I think Zach is doing fine. He is not making personal attacks, on the one occasion he got something wrong he said so straight away and he is assembling data and putting an argument together in a reasonable and rational way. I'm also very confident that if he gets to the point where he finds the evidence does not support the theory he'll say so.

[ozziejoe]

I'm also very confident that if he gets to the point where he finds the evidence does not support the theory he'll say so.

I've been a scientist for 15 years now, and i can say, even in the best instances, people are not motivated by some neutral desire to find the truth. People are driven to be right and they eagerly look for evidence to support the position. things are often antagonistic between the opposing sides.

Often the truth is discovered when people are angry and desire to be right.. (e.g. weren't some of newton's advances driven by his desire to prove Hook wrong).. However, it is also true that people tend to not give up their positions, even when faced with contrary evidence. They may slighly modify their theory to accomadate the evidence or simply say the evidence does not apply or is wrong.


So what I'm saying is: the odds are that neither side will ever agree that the other is right.


So what can you do? Let go of the battle, once you realize it is leading nowhere.

best
Joseph









[/quote]

[PauloSoare]

Well said, Uri. And a magic word: "bitboards".

Paulo Soares

[PauloSoare]

What do you think about this post of Uri, Zach?

http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopi ... 56&t=23258

Paulo Soares

[bob]

Bob

He's not really a primary player in this at this point. It should be left to Zach and the others who are gathering evidence to present it.

After the stuff i read that he said today, i was shocked. I want to see what he says after a one on one with Vas- sort of a Rybka- Crafty matchup, so to speak.

What have I said that is shocking? That you will not "accidentally" produce a couple of hundred lines of identical code here, a couple of hundred lines there? That is all I have stated from the beginning. _IF_ there is duplicate code to any significant extent (not single lines, but blocks of code) then there is no way it is an "accident". If that is shocking, not much I can say. Anybody that deals with large numbers of programming assignments on a regular basis will say the same.

"This post was just so much nonsense that it is hard to believe a _real_ programmer would write such garbage. That makes him look worse than had he remained silent, in fact."

That is shocking alright. But what is shocking is not what I wrote. That someone would claim that you could produce duplicate blocks of code by pure accident is beyond belief.

The above was attributed to Vas by you. Word_for_word. Thats what did it for me. Quite simply- it is time for you to put up or shut up! Dont waste your time explaining the above to me. Go one on one with Vas- make that quote to him, and lets see who shuts who up.

I don't need to go "one on one" with anybody about the above. There is a _ton_ of published research on this topic. There is freeware available to assist in detecting plagiarism in student assignments. I have said it before, since I know where every line in Crafty came from, feel free to take my source and find blocks of source that are identical with another program. Either (a) you won't find them or (b) someone is guilty of plagiarism.

There is nothing to debate, it does _not_ happen. And anyone that tries to claim that it does is simply trying to cover something else up.

[bob]

Bob

He's not really a primary player in this at this point. It should be left to Zach and the others who are gathering evidence to present it.

After the stuff i read that he said today, i was shocked. I want to see what he says after a one on one with Vas- sort of a Rybka- Crafty matchup, so to speak.

What have I said that is shocking? That you will not "accidentally" produce a couple of hundred lines of identical code here, a couple of hundred lines there? That is all I have stated from the beginning. _IF_ there is duplicate code to any significant extent (not single lines, but blocks of code) then there is no way it is an "accident". If that is shocking, not much I can say. Anybody that deals with large numbers of programming assignments on a regular basis will say the same.

This is no accident but also proves nothing.
No accident because programmers do not start from scratch but start from known ideas that they read.

If the task is to write chess programs when people start from no idea that they read then you can expect more difference but if people learn about bitboards and learn tricks to write faster firstone function then you cannot
blame them for not being original and writing a slower code.

My FirstOne() function has been copied by many. It is simply a way of accessing the single instruction BSF. I have repeatedly said that I am not talking about a single line of code. But _blocks_ of identical lines. That is a difference. The examples shown have been 200 lines and up. that will _not_ happen "innocently".


firstone is only one example so it does not seem obvious to me that few hundrends of lines of equivalent code is a proof for using copy and paste
without looking at the code(I need to look at the lines to decide).

Here is an example about different bitboard programs that is not the case of fruit and rybka because fruit is not a bitboard program.

Based on looking at the code of strelka
one bitboard dictate many bitboards so if one bitboard is the same many bitboards are going to be the same.
If you use A1=0,B1=1,...H1=7,A2=8,...H8=63 you can expect arrays of bitboard of the squares that the king control to be the same and you have 64 numbers(squares that the king control at A1 squares that the king control at B1,....)

In writing a book, you use the letters a-z also. We are not talking about copying individual characters. Or individual numbering schemes, of which there are a finite (and small) number of alternatives (four for numbering squares using bitboards for example. So let's get back to the topic at hand. Duplicate blocks of code in the engine. we are not talking about silly examples like an array of numbers that equate specific chess squares to specific bits. We are talking about parts of an engine, such as the search, the evaluation, communication with the outside world, etc. Simple functions that convert a square number to a two-character algebraic coordinate and such is not what is being discussed.

Same is for squares that the knight control and squares that the pawns control and for bitboards that tell you information about blocking squares and continue in this way.
All these constants can be easily hundreds of lines of code so you get hundrends of lines that are basically the same.

Nobody is discussing such arrays of constants, this has been dismissed in discussions about things like endgame tables where everybody is using the same exact everything. Arrays used in evaluation are a different thing because those are creative, rather than just enumerations.

You can have different functions to generate them but
the programmer may simply use constant array and in this case the constant array is the same.

Uri

And nobody cares about that kind of similarity. Everyone uses 1, 2, 3, etc as well. We are looking one level higher than that.

[bob]

Bob

He's not really a primary player in this at this point. It should be left to Zach and the others who are gathering evidence to present it.

After the stuff i read that he said today, i was shocked. I want to see what he says after a one on one with Vas- sort of a Rybka- Crafty matchup, so to speak.

What have I said that is shocking? That you will not "accidentally" produce a couple of hundred lines of identical code here, a couple of hundred lines there? That is all I have stated from the beginning. _IF_ there is duplicate code to any significant extent (not single lines, but blocks of code) then there is no way it is an "accident". If that is shocking, not much I can say. Anybody that deals with large numbers of programming assignments on a regular basis will say the same.

This is no accident but also proves nothing.
No accident because programmers do not start from scratch but start from known ideas that they read.

If the task is to write chess programs when people start from no idea that they read then you can expect more difference but if people learn about bitboards and learn tricks to write faster firstone function then you cannot
blame them for not being original and writing a slower code.

firstone is only one example so it does not seem obvious to me that few hundrends of lines of equivalent code is a proof for using copy and paste
without looking at the code(I need to look at the lines to decide).

Here is an example about different bitboard programs that is not the case of fruit and rybka because fruit is not a bitboard program.

Based on looking at the code of strelka
one bitboard dictate many bitboards so if one bitboard is the same many bitboards are going to be the same.
If you use A1=0,B1=1,...H1=7,A2=8,...H8=63 you can expect arrays of bitboard of the squares that the king control to be the same and you have 64 numbers(squares that the king control at A1 squares that the king control at B1,....)

Same is for squares that the knight control and squares that the pawns control and for bitboards that tell you information about blocking squares and continue in this way.
All these constants can be easily hundreds of lines of code so you get hundrends of lines that are basically the same.

You can have different functions to generate them but
the programmer may simply use constant array and in this case the constant array is the same.

Uri

Thank God for people like Uri, Dann and Chris Whittington who are looking at this subject with no bias and no agendas.

Best, Uri

And in the case of the previous post, without any sane reasoning either.

[bob]

Well said, Uri. And a magic word: "bitboards".

Paulo Soares

Perhaps "well said" but also "completely irrelevant. We all count using digits 0-9. We write using characters a-z and A-Z. We are not talking about copying an array that converts a square number (0-63) into an algebraic coordinate (a1-h8). We are talking about blocks of code (instructions, executable, etc) that are duplicates. All this other stuff is just nonsense.

[bob]

George,

If nobody bothers to give your post a serious response, please don't misinterpret that.

It is, as you say in your language, "bullshit".

Tell me Zach - what will you do if you're proven to be wrong?
You guys have caused such a stink over this issue, that your names would likely be tarnished in the computer chess scene forever. It would be difficult for anybody to take any of you seriously ever again.

Not going to happen. There is enough evidence already to make things "stink" if there is a logical and acceptable explanation for it, fine. Prosecutors do not become "tarnished for life" if they lose a case.