A Crime by a Board of Old Imposters

The ICGA will be sorry for that crime of banning LIST the program of Fritz
Reul. LIST doesn't use bitboards as I am told so how could it be a Crafty clone
at all??
Dann Corbit had seen the source of a former version and he judged all as
completely different to CRAFTY. Ulli Tuerke (COMET) say that the two progs are
totally different in their behaviour.

These imposters should imediately retire after this tournament. People like
Bruce Moreland and other younger characters should lead the union of
computerchess. Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it is a
crime to disturb him at his home. Disgusting these imbeciles.

Rolf

Then did not Fritz Reul just comply with the ICGA, it did not seem as if
they were asking to much. He had more than enough time to at lest relpy.


"Rolf Tueschen" wrote in message
...
The ICGA will be sorry for that crime of banning LIST the program of Fritz
Reul. LIST doesn't use bitboards as I am told so how could it be a Crafty
clone
at all??
Dann Corbit had seen the source of a former version and he judged all as
completely different to CRAFTY. Ulli Tuerke (COMET) say that the two progs
are
totally different in their behaviour.

These imposters should imediately retire after this tournament. People
like
Bruce Moreland and other younger characters should lead the union of
computerchess. Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it
is a
crime to disturb him at his home. Disgusting these imbeciles.

Rolf

Lastly I am sure that he had a least 10 - 15 minutes to repond in some way
to this matter even with his exams. The fact that he did not means that he
did not care enough about it. So why should he cry now. I am sure that he
has no time to reply now given his exams and all so we will have to wait
until he has time to answer the charges. Given that I see no reason that the
WCCC should have to wait on his exams to be completed just to finish their
event.


"Rolf Tueschen" wrote in message
...
The ICGA will be sorry for that crime of banning LIST the program of Fritz
Reul. LIST doesn't use bitboards as I am told so how could it be a Crafty
clone
at all??
Dann Corbit had seen the source of a former version and he judged all as
completely different to CRAFTY. Ulli Tuerke (COMET) say that the two progs
are
totally different in their behaviour.

These imposters should imediately retire after this tournament. People
like
Bruce Moreland and other younger characters should lead the union of
computerchess. Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it
is a
crime to disturb him at his home. Disgusting these imbeciles.

Rolf

wrote:

Lastly I am sure that he had a least 10 - 15 minutes to repond in some way
to this matter even with his exams. The fact that he did not means that he
did not care enough about it. So why should he cry now. I am sure that he
has no time to reply now given his exams and all so we will have to wait
until he has time to answer the charges.

You are a bit fast in your conclusions. And you make a mistake in an important
assumption.

You write that he must have had 10 minutes. For sure. But now I say that if you
are innocent, let's assume that, and you know that it's NOT done with a short
answer and that they probably want all your code - but you know that you are
innocent, you are in a trap.

Please bear that in mind for the following reflection. He has his examins.
Something VERY important. Something that sucks all your energies. Now with such
a sudden quest you get extremely disturbed. But you also have no time to react
in a cool manner. You must ignore the whole affair. Otherwise it completely
takes your energies.

Final reflection: all this is only true if you are innocent. If you see no
case. The total opening of your code is impossible in such a case. It becomes a
kafkaesk situation. Another reason to exclude the disturbance.



Given that I see no reason that the
WCCC should have to wait on his exams to be completed just to finish their
event.


No, but they should let the operator play with LIST as usual. The decision was
wrong because there is NO case. And the formal non-answering which is a formal
violation of the rules must be regarded as a mistake in favor of the student
who has examination stress.

Again all that with the caveat that there is no case. And all what I've read
until now, there can't be a case because the two progs are completely
different.

So the commission was NOT in need of computerchess experts but
real-life-non-dickhead. But as it seems the commission was built out of all
such characters. Although all academics. But too blind to see that they had no
case at all. I am certain that they had several talks in secrecy what led them
to the belief that they had found a fantastic solution. The deliverance of the
code. They simply couldn't imagine that that couldn't be obliged to in case of
innocence. But a simple answer was also impossible for the combined reasons of
stress and absolute certainty of innocence.

As a last idea: in case that there is a true case of fraud the commission did
it all right. But that could have been tested without the exact source code
already. Because the difference of the progs is so apparent! It's not a close
decision as far as I understood.

We have a case now which is comparable with the Feinman solution of the reason
of the catastrophy of the US Space Shuttle. Feinman showed an absolutely
trivial reason. Just like here. The whole board of ICGA with included Ernst, a
not too old expert - they were all _obsessed_ by the fixation that they had to
see the code. Because it's in the rules like that. But a really trivial
reflection had shown them that they had _no_ case at all! Now they are trapped.

I see only the consequence that the all must retire. They completely failed to
do their job as academics. They have too many blind spots after such a long
history in office.

Rolf

What I find interesting is the following quote at
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1330 :

"The program List is suspected to be a clone of the program Crafty. Autor
Fritz Reul failed to prove otherwise and allowed a final deadline to pass."

So apparently an author's reputation and integrity can be maligned on
"suspicion." What is truly tragic is the "assumed guilty" posture of the
accused. LIST was *SUSPECTED* to be a clone, and was disqualified because
the author *FAILED TO PROVE* otherwise. How incredibly unjust.

Furthermore, it does not appear that the ICGA followed thier own rule:

"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers.
Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing code
written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code,
in their application details. PROGRAMS WHICH ARE DISCOVERED TO BE CLOSE
DERIVATIVES OF OTHERS (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be
declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice. For
this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must
be available on demand to the Tournament Director."

LIST was ONLY SUSPECTED of being a clone; it was NOT DISCOVERED TO BE A
CLONE. The rule, as written, places the BURDEN on the ICGA to prove it is a
close derivate of another before disqualification; it does not place the
burden on the accused to prove that it is not a derivative. Thus, the rule
is inapplicable to the present situation.

The ICGA needs a procedure to follow in resolving these disputes. Apparently
it has none, so it made a procedure up at the expense of an author's
reputation. Furthermore, the ICGA has now possibly damaged the author's
reputation beyond repair. Allegations of copyright infringement are serious
concerns in the software community. Finally, the ICGA should have
accommodated the accused author's schedule - is it too much to ask to give a
person a small reprieve while he tends to examinations rather than publicly
call into question the author's integrity in a worldwide publication on the
Internet.

A public retraction is in order, and an apology.

since you defend the programmer, then you don't think his 'reputation is
damaged beyond repair" either or you wouldn't bother trying to do just that.
cut the bull****.
"Znarf" wrote in message
t...
What I find interesting is the following quote at
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1330 :

"The program List is suspected to be a clone of the program Crafty. Autor
Fritz Reul failed to prove otherwise and allowed a final deadline to
pass."

So apparently an author's reputation and integrity can be maligned on
"suspicion." What is truly tragic is the "assumed guilty" posture of the
accused. LIST was *SUSPECTED* to be a clone, and was disqualified because
the author *FAILED TO PROVE* otherwise. How incredibly unjust.

Furthermore, it does not appear that the ICGA followed thier own rule:

"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers.
Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing
code
written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code,
in their application details. PROGRAMS WHICH ARE DISCOVERED TO BE CLOSE
DERIVATIVES OF OTHERS (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be
declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice.
For
this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must
be available on demand to the Tournament Director."

LIST was ONLY SUSPECTED of being a clone; it was NOT DISCOVERED TO BE A
CLONE. The rule, as written, places the BURDEN on the ICGA to prove it is
a
close derivate of another before disqualification; it does not place the
burden on the accused to prove that it is not a derivative. Thus, the rule
is inapplicable to the present situation.

The ICGA needs a procedure to follow in resolving these disputes.
Apparently
it has none, so it made a procedure up at the expense of an author's
reputation. Furthermore, the ICGA has now possibly damaged the author's
reputation beyond repair. Allegations of copyright infringement are
serious
concerns in the software community. Finally, the ICGA should have
accommodated the accused author's schedule - is it too much to ask to give
a
person a small reprieve while he tends to examinations rather than
publicly
call into question the author's integrity in a worldwide publication on
the
Internet.

A public retraction is in order, and an apology.

"Rolf Tueschen" wrote in message
...
The ICGA will be sorry for that crime of banning LIST the program of Fritz
Reul. LIST doesn't use bitboards as I am told so how could it be a Crafty
clone
at all??
Dann Corbit had seen the source of a former version and he judged all as
completely different to CRAFTY. Ulli Tuerke (COMET) say that the two progs are
totally different in their behaviour.

These imposters should imediately retire after this tournament. People like
Bruce Moreland and other younger characters should lead the union of
computerchess. Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it is a
crime to disturb him at his home. Disgusting these imbeciles.

Rolf

You're making the same mistake as the ICGA board - namely using rumors and
here-say to reach conclusions.



If you read David Levy's letter once more you'd perhaps understand that List
wasn't banned for being a clone - rather it was banned because the author failed
to provide the source code so the board could react to its own suspicion and a
formal complaint. This is a very crucial point in this case. Normally a person
is innocent until otherwise proven and the burden of proof is on the prosecutor.
However, for the ICGA board to lift the burden of proof it needs to look at the
code, thus it's fair and just to ban a member for not providing the code on
request.



The fact that Reul is attending exams is really not important - after all, Reul
made the decision to participate in the tournament while knowing he would have
exams at the same time. I can imagine a minor inconvenience for him to have to
send his source code while attending exams - but his part of this entire
investigation should take no longer than half an hour or less. Therefore, when
you say "Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it is a crime to
disturb him at his home" you're really way out of line.



If we are to learn something from this ordeal I would say that ICGA should ask
for source code for every attending program before the tournament begins, e.g.
in a sealed envelope. If any complaints or suspicions arise the board would have
immediate access to the code without having to be in the awkward situation of
having to get hold of the programmer first. Timely reaction to such
complaints/suspicions is crucial for the tournament's integrity, for computer
chess in general and for all authors of original source code.



/UL

What about programs playing nearly all moves the same? Is it impossible
for programs that playing the same variant of opening with very open
and mutually terminating continuation where almost each move has
decisive meaning and ends up with a draw. If programs refuse to fail
in each move, there should be a suspicion that they are clones of
perfect engine.

Concerning List, what if to make List to play with several versions of
Crafty
from some test set of positions and see the difference with Crafty playing
against
itself from the same positions?

I think that the most secret place of the chess engine is its evaluation
function.
The rest of the code uses almost the same algorithms, so this shouldn't be
the secret.
The demands for the source code of the chess engines should be limited to
the
subset of source code that does not include evaluation (which should be
replaced with
dummy code). After investigation of this less secret code it can be compiled
and binary
compared with the real executable image. They must be different only in some
service
information and the part that corresponds to evaluation function. After that
if program
does not have violations in the presented source code and plays different
game
of the suspected parent program, it MUSTN'T be treated as a clone.
Also if evaluation binary machine code can be extracted from the suspected
parent program, it can be compared against suspected clone evaluation binary
code.

"Znarf" wrote in message
t...
What I find interesting is the following quote at
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1330 :

"The program List is suspected to be a clone of the program Crafty. Autor
Fritz Reul failed to prove otherwise and allowed a final deadline to
pass."

So apparently an author's reputation and integrity can be maligned on
"suspicion." What is truly tragic is the "assumed guilty" posture of the
accused. LIST was *SUSPECTED* to be a clone, and was disqualified because
the author *FAILED TO PROVE* otherwise. How incredibly unjust.

Furthermore, it does not appear that the ICGA followed thier own rule:

"Each program must be the original work of the entering developers.
Programming teams whose code is derived from or including game-playing
code
written by others must name all other authors, or the source of such code,
in their application details. PROGRAMS WHICH ARE DISCOVERED TO BE CLOSE
DERIVATIVES OF OTHERS (e.g., by playing nearly all moves the same), may be
declared invalid by the Tournament Director after seeking expert advice.
For
this purpose a listing of all game-related code running on the system must
be available on demand to the Tournament Director."

LIST was ONLY SUSPECTED of being a clone; it was NOT DISCOVERED TO BE A
CLONE. The rule, as written, places the BURDEN on the ICGA to prove it is
a
close derivate of another before disqualification; it does not place the
burden on the accused to prove that it is not a derivative. Thus, the rule
is inapplicable to the present situation.

The ICGA needs a procedure to follow in resolving these disputes.
Apparently
it has none, so it made a procedure up at the expense of an author's
reputation. Furthermore, the ICGA has now possibly damaged the author's
reputation beyond repair. Allegations of copyright infringement are
serious
concerns in the software community. Finally, the ICGA should have
accommodated the accused author's schedule - is it too much to ask to give
a
person a small reprieve while he tends to examinations rather than
publicly
call into question the author's integrity in a worldwide publication on
the
Internet.

A public retraction is in order, and an apology.

"Alexander Belov" wrote in message
...
What about programs playing nearly all moves the same? Is it impossible
for programs that playing the same variant of opening with very open
and mutually terminating continuation where almost each move has
decisive meaning and ends up with a draw. If programs refuse to fail
in each move, there should be a suspicion that they are clones of
perfect engine.

Concerning List, what if to make List to play with several versions of
Crafty
from some test set of positions and see the difference with Crafty playing
against
itself from the same positions?

I think that the most secret place of the chess engine is its evaluation
function.
The rest of the code uses almost the same algorithms, so this shouldn't be
the secret.
The demands for the source code of the chess engines should be limited to
the
subset of source code that does not include evaluation (which should be
replaced with
dummy code). After investigation of this less secret code it can be
compiled
and binary
compared with the real executable image. They must be different only in
some
service
information and the part that corresponds to evaluation function. After
that
if program
does not have violations in the presented source code and plays different
game
of the suspected parent program, it MUSTN'T be treated as a clone.
Also if evaluation binary machine code can be extracted from the suspected
parent program, it can be compared against suspected clone evaluation
binary
code.

As a clear addition, the source code have to be compiled with the same
version
of compiler and its settings as a binary from tournament.
Comparison of evaluation code is possible under the same condition for both
programs.

Rolf Tueschen wrote:
The ICGA will be sorry for that crime of banning LIST the program of
Fritz Reul. LIST doesn't use bitboards as I am told so how could it be a
Crafty clone at all??

The allegation is that substantial portions of the code came from Crafty.
There's much more to Crafty than its bitboard-based move generation
routines.


Dann Corbit had seen the source of a former version and he judged all as
completely different to CRAFTY. Ulli Tuerke (COMET) say that the two
progs are totally different in their behaviour.

It doesn't matter how different they are in behaviour. For example, I
could take a copy of the Crafty source and change the evaluation routines
so that all the pieces have negative value. This would play completely
different moves from Crafty but is certainly not my original work and
therefore would be disqualified from the WCCC (well, it would be if people
could stop laughing at it).


Fritz Reul has his examins in mathematics this week so it is a crime to
disturb him at his home.

As has been pointed out, *he* chose to enter this competition which he
knew was going to be at the same time as his exams. If he didn't want to
be disturbed, he shouldn't have entered the WCCC. And, tell me, how long
does it take to

tar cz ~/src/list-current/ | uuencode -m | mail

? OK, maybe he's not using Unix but firing up Winzip and Outlook doesn't
take long, either.

The tournament rules say that you mustn't steal anyone else's code and
that you must co-operate with any investigations. Nobody knows whether
he's stolen anyone else's code because he hasn't revealed his source.
Everyone knows that he hasn't co-operated with an investigation, though,
and that's why he was disqualified.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Psychotic Postman (TM): it's like a
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ man who delivers the mail but it wants
to kill you!