On Dalke

[hyatt]

Suppose those tiny pieces had been copied with full permission from Fabien. Would Vas then have infringed Rule 2 for not entering Fabien's name as co-author on the form? I think not. (Note that Fabien (not) giving permission is not an element of Rule 2: whether he gave it or not does not change whether Vas violated Rule 2 or not.)

Since both competed in the same event, yes it violates rule 2.

Assuming he violated Rule 2, do you agree that Vas would have still violated Rule 2 if he had had Fabien's full permission? Still "close derivates" in the same tournament, still not "all other authors" named?

Advance warning: the next step will be reminding you of people entering engines with code copied from crafty with your permission.

1. The ICGA rules have been clear. Toga was entered with Fabien's permission, as one example.

2. Programmers discussed the "shared code" idea several times. Consensus was that things like egtb.cpp were acceptable to everyone, and that's been allowed. Simplistic ideas like rotated bitboards, or 0x88, and such have also been allowed, including actual copying of some bits of code. We've never allowed anyone to copy a move generator, because there is creativity in that code. But the code to enumerate sliding piece moves is simplistic in nature, and always produces the same answer given the same position, and there has been agreement to allow that. Never anything in evaluation. never anything in the search, which includes move generation, make/unmake, SEE, ordering, etc...

So, if Vas had entered, and disclosed that parts of Fruit were in his code, and Fabien agreed he could compete (which would mean Fabien could not compete, of course) then it would have been perfectly acceptable by anyone's interpretation of the rules. There was already precedent with Toga.

[hyatt]

Until recently, for me the by far strongest argument against Vas was his lack of cooperation. However, now that I have seen a bit more of the history of this whole issue I can understand that Vas did not see any point in cooperating with a panel basically led by Bob. Bob was not the whole panel, but it takes a lot of faith to believe that the panel could have deviated from his views.

You should ask a few panel members about my participation. I did not push anyone. I didn't try to persuade anyone to vote "yes". I helped when looking at the crafty / rybka 1.6.1 evidence, because I certainly understood my code. I helped with writing parts of the final report. But ask around to see how much influence I tried to exert. I suppose I could simply copy and paste every post I made on the Wiki during the investigation, which would reveal just how far off the mark your last paragraph goes...

Yes, would you please publish all posts you made on the wiki during the Panel's investigation period.

In addition to that please also your e-mails (if any) of that period to panel members. As you might remember Ed has recently requested the panel members for permission to make public all of the Panel's wiki discussions. (A permission which was not granted BTW). However, in response to that request you have replied that such wiki release would not paint the full picture because "there were many email discussions along with the Wiki threads." (your words, Feb/13 2012). Would you therefore make public any e-mail you sent to any panel member during the panel's investigation phase?

Please realize that the mere suggestion that such emails indeed exist cast a cloud on the objectivity of the Panel, because the Charter explicitly forbade such secondary communications (for obvious reasons, I hope). You are the only one who can clear that cloud.

I took a quick look and this would be problematic because of quoted material. I can't post things I didn't write. And if I remove the quoted material in some of the posts, the posts make absolutely no sense to read... Did not think about that when I made the original statement. I'd suggested that we make everything public, but popular vote said no, and we felt obligated to stick to the privacy statement unless everyone agreed to waive it.

As far as emails go, you are reading far too much into the Wiki. It does not say "no email communication between panel members is allowable." We had tons of offline discussions about different pieces of data, looking at the asm, because some of the discussions were between just two or three people trying to clarify something and it would have made the Wiki unwieldy at best. We didn't discuss guilt or innocence via email...

[hyatt]

Regarding paragraph 6.3.2 of RYBKA_FRUIT_Mar11.pdf, it seems to be accepted now that the decompiled line "if (movetime >= 0.0) {" should have read "if (movetime > 0.0) {". In other words, the ">=" from Fruit cannot be found in Rybka.

A panel member has suggested that this error in the decompiled Rybka code was already known to him and at least one of the other the panel members in 2010, and therefore certainly at the time of the official investigation.

Is this true? If so, why was this not corrected in RYBKA_FRUIT_Mar11.pdf?

According to this panel member, it was not important. In his words:

You think that a different comparison just invalidates that entire section of the comparison? Not for me.

Could anyone explain this point? Why was it not important that the readers of this document (i.e. the other panel members, the ICGA Board, the public) were presented facts that were as accurate as possible?

After Ed pointed the >= vs > comparison error out, I remembered that I had seen this a while back. I originally thought Mark Watkins might have mentioned it, and asked him. He thought it had come up on CCC in mid-2010. I did not recall this until Ed's comment. And even then, the "recollection" was vague and I still don't know exactly when/where/who mentioned it.

The reason I said "this is unimportant" is that this is a single line of code, out of all the evidence that has been shown. It is not even 0.1% of the total evidence. And as I said, "If you remove that line" nothing changes. The rest of the code around that line STILL matches between the two programs, not to mention the search and eval code included in the report.

Clear enough???

Loud and clear.

You were deliberately withholding crucial information since 2010. Worse, you hinting here Mark also knew.

What you are saying here is that Mark deliberately left the false information in his document.

Cheating the Panel. Cheating those who signed the Fabien letter.

I signed the Fabien letter MAINLY because of:

FRUIT - if (movetime >= 0.0)
RYBKA - if (movetime >= 0.0)

As it was a clear sign of copying.

And I wasn't told about the wrong decompile while the information was known.

The truth:

RYBKA - if (movetime > 0.0)

is a bomb under "0.0" gate.

And it was withhold.

That's cheating.

And I know various programmers who signed the Fabien letter that took the same road as me, "0.0" greatly worked as a catalysator to accept the rest of the documents without much criticism. They can speak up for themselves if they feel that is the right thing to do.

I would like to see Mark to clarify the matter.

Can you blame me for having a hard time to believe your side of the story especially the Mark Watkins part ?

1. Mark stated when I asked (and I assume he told you the same) that he recalled this being discussed on CCC in 2010.

2. You were a member of CCC in 2010, correct?

3. A lack of reading on your part doesn't suggest a lack of honesty on my part. Just suggests that I completely forgot about it until you raised the issue and I posted, in all honesty "I remember this was mentioned a while back..." I could have said NOTHING. I stated what I believed to be true.

End of story.

[hyatt]

Bob was not the whole panel, but it takes a lot of faith to believe that the panel could have deviated from his views.

You should ask a few panel members about my participation. I did not push anyone. I didn't try to persuade anyone to vote "yes". I helped when looking at the crafty / rybka 1.6.1 evidence, because I certainly understood my code. I helped with writing parts of the final report. But ask around to see how much influence I tried to exert. I suppose I could simply copy and paste every post I made on the Wiki during the investigation, which would reveal just how far off the mark your last paragraph goes...

It does not even matter so much what happened inside the panel. The point is that Vas had no reason to trust the process, if only for your presence. Just look at your posts from 2010.

Vas on this - http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=23966

The first is that it was clear that the ICGA had no intention of handling things in a fair manner. They made loud and unnecessary public accusations. They put vocal Rybka critics in charge. They did not investigate any other engines. And so on.

"how was this "clear"? The ICGA made no "loud and unnecessary public accusations" until after the investigation was completed. Does he mean Zach's/Christophe's initial investigation that blew the lid off of "Rybkagate"? Picked up by others of us as we looked at the growing evidence? That's just excuse-making. The part about other engines is nonsense. He KNOWS other engines were investigated and ejected from tournaments. He was participating in one event where this happened. That is just like ALL of his statements. Blaming others, making statements that are either half-true or completely false. Etc...

[hyatt]

It's Bob who incriminated Mark, not me.

And as I said I have a hard time to believe the story.

The story broke here, 5 days ago.

http://74.220.23.57/forum/viewtopic.php ... 7d8#456992

This >= vs > was mentioned by Mark Watkins during the panel discussions I believe.

Stop right here Bob. You are incriminating Mark here to hold up your point. Mark would NEVER do such a thing. If he had noticed that as you say it would be in his document and it is not.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

So if you think I am after Mark you have that wrong. I just want the truth.

Mark (and Zach if memory serves) admitted the document didn't get the final edit that it should have had. You know this already for a long time. But that didn't stop you saying breathlessly that "Mark would never do such a thing". He already told everyone he "did such a thing". But if, as Bob says, Mark made the error plain in the panel discussions then Mark did his duty to the panel and did not try to hide the error. (If Bob is mistaken and nobody knew about the error at the time, then there is still no conspiracy.) But you conveniently forget what Mark said about lack of time for the big job of a final document edit, implying a conspiracy to falsely implicate. This looks very dishonest and grasping on your part.

Aslo, please explain why you avoid the issue that you think this one aspect (>= versus >) causes the whole case to stand or fall. You imply as much at your own link, and you blow your stack on this forum on the same point with your eyes sticking out on stems exclaiming, "I feel cheated". How can you feel cheated when even your opponents agree it is an error? You already answered that this was the only point that persuaded you to sign the letter. It was not the mountain of evidence that persuaded you, only this one very little piece. Mountains cannot move you so much as the lowly mole hill. They the forest and they the jungle but you the single tree would invoke to sign the letter. They the beam but you the mote.

Your question first, that sentence you dislike so much. It has been there ever since the release of that page (October/November last year). I even held 0.0 against Vas when I turned from VIG to VII, see: http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... ?tid=22679

In retrospect I blame myself for losing my objectivity due to the volume of the alleged evidence initiated by that absurd and damning "0.0" thing which explanation on one good day you should whisper in my ear.

That was August last year. So there you have its importance. And you don't have the right to downplay my decision forming process as it as valid as anybody else who took the VII or VIG road.

Now let's return to the facts.

1. The document (March 2011) falsely state >= while Bob suggests the error was already known in 2010. Worse he is finger pointing at Mark. Not me. Bob.

Will you PLEASE stop with the lies. I did not "finger-point." I recalled, after you raised the issue, that this had been mentioned. I posted that as an honest statement. I then said "I think it might have been Mark." That is NOT "finger-pointing". I did not remember. I even asked Mark directly, and he answered that he recalled it being discussed on CCC in mid-2010. I posted that response. Yet you STILL say I am finger-pointing? you are simply a liar. An outright liar. Because you know the statement was originally an "I think it was ..." and as soon as Mark replied, I corrected it specifically and you commented on it. yet you keep up this "finger-pointing" bullshit? I don't know why I feel surprised, of course...

2. There wasn't any talk in the Panel about 0.0 let alone about the false information. I have access to the Panel talks and there is nothing.

It was not considered even a minor-point and received no mention in the ICGA report, nor in Zach's report, and only a minor comment in Mark's report. So guess why it was not discussed at length???

But it's easy for me to sent a group mail to the Panel members to verify if the error was mentioned in email or so which BTW would be a breach of the ICGA stipulations. But I prefer to await Mark's reaction first.

The ICGA had no ban on email communcation between panel members. We had lots of email discussions where 2-3 people were looking at some particular programming issue and discussing it on the wiki would have greatly increased the volume, with no gain... Decisions about the report were all done on the wiki, and discussions about guilt/innocence of copying were all done on the wiki. Significant discussions about the 1.6.1 stuff were email simply because only the final conclusions were of interest to most...

Not only wasn't that error mentioned in the wiki, the 0.0 was not discussed so far as I recall. The rybka binary is much too large to spend any time on a single line, when we had all the eval things to look at and understand...

[marcelk]

Until recently, for me the by far strongest argument against Vas was his lack of cooperation. However, now that I have seen a bit more of the history of this whole issue I can understand that Vas did not see any point in cooperating with a panel basically led by Bob. Bob was not the whole panel, but it takes a lot of faith to believe that the panel could have deviated from his views.

You should ask a few panel members about my participation. I did not push anyone. I didn't try to persuade anyone to vote "yes". I helped when looking at the crafty / rybka 1.6.1 evidence, because I certainly understood my code. I helped with writing parts of the final report. But ask around to see how much influence I tried to exert. I suppose I could simply copy and paste every post I made on the Wiki during the investigation, which would reveal just how far off the mark your last paragraph goes...

Yes, would you please publish all posts you made on the wiki during the Panel's investigation period.

In addition to that please also your e-mails (if any) of that period to panel members. As you might remember Ed has recently requested the panel members for permission to make public all of the Panel's wiki discussions. (A permission which was not granted BTW). However, in response to that request you have replied that such wiki release would not paint the full picture because "there were many email discussions along with the Wiki threads." (your words, Feb/13 2012). Would you therefore make public any e-mail you sent to any panel member during the panel's investigation phase?

Please realize that the mere suggestion that such emails indeed exist cast a cloud on the objectivity of the Panel, because the Charter explicitly forbade such secondary communications (for obvious reasons, I hope). You are the only one who can clear that cloud.

I took a quick look and this would be problematic because of quoted material. I can't post things I didn't write. And if I remove the quoted material in some of the posts, the posts make absolutely no sense to read... Did not think about that when I made the original statement. I'd suggested that we make everything public, but popular vote said no, and we felt obligated to stick to the privacy statement unless everyone agreed to waive it.

As far as emails go, you are reading far too much into the Wiki. It does not say "no email communication between panel members is allowable." We had tons of offline discussions about different pieces of data, looking at the asm, because some of the discussions were between just two or three people trying to clarify something and it would have made the Wiki unwieldy at best. We didn't discuss guilt or innocence via email...

Show, don't tell. What prevents you from disclosing all these communications on the wiki for example, only for panel members to see?

It is not up to you to decide if it is ok or not. It is not up to you to decide what part of the mails contain information suitable for the panel and what part doesn't. It is not up to you to decide what makes sense and what doesn't. You corrupted the Panel's process by allowing all that, not just at one point but repeatedly: 1. Leaking results during the investigation, 2. quoting material after the investigation without permission, 3. behind the back communications which the charter DOES forbid (no matter what you say: the charter REQUIRES communication to go through the wiki, it has no provision for keeping "unwieldy" things away from other panel members), 4. presenting misleading information in the final report, 5. not reviewing it with the panel. There is no need to marginalize this. If the process has been corrupted this much the outcome of it is nil, nada and void.

You can not repair it anymore, but you can get the facts out and let others in due time decide on what was appropriate or not.

[Rebel]

Will you PLEASE stop with the lies. I did not "finger-point." I recalled, after you raised the issue, that this had been mentioned. I posted that as an honest statement. I then said "I think it might have been Mark." That is NOT "finger-pointing". I did not remember. I even asked Mark directly, and he answered that he recalled it being discussed on CCC in mid-2010. I posted that response. Yet you STILL say I am finger-pointing? you are simply a liar. An outright liar. Because you know the statement was originally an "I think it was ..." and as soon as Mark replied, I corrected it specifically and you commented on it. yet you keep up this "finger-pointing" bullshit? I don't know why I feel surprised, of course...

Thank you for the confirmation that the info was known mid-2010 but not in the document. But let's leave Mark out of the discussion for the moment and concentrate on your role as ICGA official in charge of truth finding.

How is it then you failed to mention that >= actually is wrong whenever 0.0 came up in hundreds of postings. You had 100+ chances to inform your debating partners about the truth of one of the hottest debated issues and you did not. In fact you 2 months ago in reply to Miguel posted the false info:

http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforu ... #pid396697

Implausible.

The code was

if (movetime >= 0.0)

While all the time knowing (or you should have known!!) this would be a bomb under 0.0 gate?

Remember how Zach felt about 0.0

Coming back to R1/Fruit, yes, if you look at each example in detail, you can't say there is much hard evidence of direct code copying. As I said to Vas, I'm only completely certain that three characters were copied ("0.0").

If needed I will go to the bottom of this, I will ask each Panel member a) how strongly they felt about 0.0 and b) if they were informed that the info in Mark's document was wrong.

For sure, I would not have signed the Fabien letter.

[syzygy]

It does not even matter so much what happened inside the panel. The point is that Vas had no reason to trust the process, if only for your presence. Just look at your posts from 2010.

That was his choice. It seems the ICGA was not so amused by it. Normally, if one is accused of something they are not guilty of doing, they respond. To date, he has not. Not in any forum. Not in private with the ICGA...[/quote]
Normally if one is accused, one gets a fair trial.

[syzygy]

Suppose those tiny pieces had been copied with full permission from Fabien. Would Vas then have infringed Rule 2 for not entering Fabien's name as co-author on the form? I think not. (Note that Fabien (not) giving permission is not an element of Rule 2: whether he gave it or not does not change whether Vas violated Rule 2 or not.)

Since both competed in the same event, yes it violates rule 2.

Assuming he violated Rule 2, do you agree that Vas would have still violated Rule 2 if he had had Fabien's full permission? Still "close derivates" in the same tournament, still not "all other authors" named?

Advance warning: the next step will be reminding you of people entering engines with code copied from crafty with your permission.

1. The ICGA rules have been clear. Toga was entered with Fabien's permission, as one example.

Was Fabien named as author on the entry form?

I suppose he was: rule 2 is not about Fabien giving his permission, it is about Fabien being named as author. (Of course naming him as author requires his permission, but there are two things here.)

2. Programmers discussed the "shared code" idea several times. Consensus was that things like egtb.cpp were acceptable to everyone, and that's been allowed. Simplistic ideas like rotated bitboards, or 0x88, and such have also been allowed, including actual copying of some bits of code.

I'd like to have a better understanding of what "simplistic" means. Crafty contains over 15k lines of code written by others. Have you entered Nalimov, Kadatch and Edwards as co-authors of crafty on the ICGA entry form?

If not, then those 15k lines are all "simplistic" and from the point of view of rule 2 everybody is free to include that kind of code in his program without mentioning the author on the entry form.

(I KNOW that you have permission from Nalimov, Kadatch and Edwards, but rule 2 requires all authors to be named on the entry form, even those that gave permission. Leaving them out is only allowed if they are not an "author" in the sense of rule 2, so only if their contributions are "simplistic".)

Now the question arises: why was the fen parsing and UCI protocol parsing stuff investigated at all? This is all "simplistic" code of the kind found in those 15k lines.

[hyatt]

Until recently, for me the by far strongest argument against Vas was his lack of cooperation. However, now that I have seen a bit more of the history of this whole issue I can understand that Vas did not see any point in cooperating with a panel basically led by Bob. Bob was not the whole panel, but it takes a lot of faith to believe that the panel could have deviated from his views.

You should ask a few panel members about my participation. I did not push anyone. I didn't try to persuade anyone to vote "yes". I helped when looking at the crafty / rybka 1.6.1 evidence, because I certainly understood my code. I helped with writing parts of the final report. But ask around to see how much influence I tried to exert. I suppose I could simply copy and paste every post I made on the Wiki during the investigation, which would reveal just how far off the mark your last paragraph goes...

Yes, would you please publish all posts you made on the wiki during the Panel's investigation period.

In addition to that please also your e-mails (if any) of that period to panel members. As you might remember Ed has recently requested the panel members for permission to make public all of the Panel's wiki discussions. (A permission which was not granted BTW). However, in response to that request you have replied that such wiki release would not paint the full picture because "there were many email discussions along with the Wiki threads." (your words, Feb/13 2012). Would you therefore make public any e-mail you sent to any panel member during the panel's investigation phase?

Please realize that the mere suggestion that such emails indeed exist cast a cloud on the objectivity of the Panel, because the Charter explicitly forbade such secondary communications (for obvious reasons, I hope). You are the only one who can clear that cloud.

I took a quick look and this would be problematic because of quoted material. I can't post things I didn't write. And if I remove the quoted material in some of the posts, the posts make absolutely no sense to read... Did not think about that when I made the original statement. I'd suggested that we make everything public, but popular vote said no, and we felt obligated to stick to the privacy statement unless everyone agreed to waive it.

As far as emails go, you are reading far too much into the Wiki. It does not say "no email communication between panel members is allowable." We had tons of offline discussions about different pieces of data, looking at the asm, because some of the discussions were between just two or three people trying to clarify something and it would have made the Wiki unwieldy at best. We didn't discuss guilt or innocence via email...

Show, don't tell. What prevents you from disclosing all these communications on the wiki for example, only for panel members to see?

It is not up to you to decide if it is ok or not. It is not up to you to decide what part of the mails contain information suitable for the panel and what part doesn't. It is not up to you to decide what makes sense and what doesn't. You corrupted the Panel's process by allowing all that, not just at one point but repeatedly: 1. Leaking results during the investigation, 2. quoting material after the investigation without permission, 3. behind the back communications which the charter DOES forbid (no matter what you say: the charter REQUIRES communication to go through the wiki, it has no provision for keeping "unwieldy" things away from other panel members), 4. presenting misleading information in the final report, 5. not reviewing it with the panel. There is no need to marginalize this. If the process has been corrupted this much the outcome of it is nil, nada and void.

You can not repair it anymore, but you can get the facts out and let others in due time decide on what was appropriate or not.

I am not going to take the time to go through 1.5 years of email to pick the ones where anything related to Rybka was discussed. This does NOT "subvert" the ICGA investigation. The panel raised issues with pieces of evidence and we discussed on the wiki. We also had questions about a specific topic, that was of interest to just 2 or 3 of us, and those were often discussed via email, resolved, and then presented on the wiki, to keep the volume manageable. Nothing underhanded. Nothing secretive. As we discussed 1.6.1, part of the initial investigation was dealt with via email. And COMPLETE summary was posted. Nothing was hidden, it was all presented in an orderly way, without the disjoint and discontinuous effect one gets when using a message board (this one for example). A single thread is not "orderly". My response to your post rarely directly follows your post if others have inserted questions...

So get off the "secretive and subversive" angle here, that was not what happened...