What do you folks make of this ?

[Chris Whittington]

Feel free to quote this "ad hominem" you refer to. I have no idea what you are talking about, otherwise.

who cares? read your own post at CCC. I'm more interested in this .....


your argument is all very fine and dandy, were it to fit the facts of the case I referred to

your case (a) above (What matters is that (a) the two sets of values are similar or identical) is not met as the two sets of values are very different both in scale and in relation to each other. Since they are not the comparison between the code in Fruit and the lookuptable data in Rybka is completely misleading, he shouldn't have even tabled up the comparison without a huge "THIS DOES NOT PROVE ANYTHING" written next to it. I can see that skim-reading Zach's report will easily lead to the conclusion of rip-off, but actually reading it and cross-checking brings about an entirely different conclusion, namely that this report appears to have been written by the prosecution with one intent in mind. Guilt and conviction.

[Chris Whittington]

From what I understand there is nothing in Rybka 1 Beta that is a direct identical copy of Fruit.

Perhaps you should give this a looksee then.



https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

The expert witness had already found the defendant guilty. All that remained was the writing of a suitable report. The language is biased, the reader is told what to think, where there are dissimilarities the reader is assured, for example, 'this is done for optimisation reasons only' and is left to assume the dissimilarity doesn't really exist. Where Rybka uses tables, the expert witness 'recreates' the code he imagines was used to build the table data (although he never saw the code in binary form!) and unsurprisingly it matches directly with Fruit code - well, if you want to find/prove something and are sufficiently biased and committed to the result ...... Please read that last bit carefully, again: the expert witness took a lookup table of data, imagined up the code required to recreate that data (this without access to the program that created the data which he has never seen), wrote the code as identical to some Fruit source, and says "it's the same, but optimised". Ridiculous, but it gets worse in this same code section ..... for the sub-function called in the above that looks at pawn defence in front of the king returns completely different values for each program, the sub-functions are given the same name by the witness, but they do different things. And, lastly on this section, what program doesn't look in some way at open files in front of the king? Just not good enough.

In king_safety as another example both Fruit and Rybka look at piece attacks on the eight squares around the king. Er, who doesn't do this? But it is treated as a similarity proof. The expert witness skips over the fact that Rybka does it all very fast with btiboards (who wouldn't with a bb program?), while Fruit code is longer and slower, done without bb's (well it would be wouldn't it?). We're told that the 'sum of weights' for the attacks are different for each program, but the fact that pawns are treated as zero (what a surprise!!) is yet more 'proof' of similarity, while all differences (massive I would imagine) are just the result of 'optimisation' (again). Hahahaha!!!

Just for starters.

In a court the witness document would be torn apart and rapidly discredited. I am shocked that elements of comp chess community have placed so much weight on it.

Thanks for your input Chris. Many of us here are not programmers so we cannot make the assessment that you and other experts can. So then we are forced to make a conclusion based on what other experts say about the evidence or document. Zach's report was not really questioned until now (from what I have seen), so there was no reason to doubt its claims. However, other than stating you feel it is slanted and biased could you further clarify for the rest of us. Is it accurate? Could you dumb it down for the rest of us non technical idiots? Thanks

There's two 'reports' written. One, anonymous or semi-anomymous, by BB and another by the known programmer Zach Wegner. BB's report is written in a relatively neutral style, the reader is left to form his own conclusions, it comes across as a good neutral expert witness style report, difficult to criticise for bias or pre-formed conclusions.

Zach's report is written very much in adversarial style. It's less of an neutral expert witness report and more of a prosecuting lawyer's report, with desire to paint the defendant(?) in as negative a way as possible. Fair enough, Zach is not neutral, he has plenty invested in a guilty verdict. An adversarial report can't be taken as truth, truth in an adversarial system is reached by adversarial defence, in other words, Zach's report NEEDS to be attacked, adversarially - truth comes from that process.

I'm surprised it took months for the obvious hole to be seen. I guess most people just skim read because it's too difficult or skim read because they don't want to find any holes.

However, if Zach is presenting his report with material that prima facie appears damning, but actually isn't, then he is guilty of being misleading and the entire report is compromised.

Bob's duck quacks like a chicken.

[CPU]

From what I understand there is nothing in Rybka 1 Beta that is a direct identical copy of Fruit.

Perhaps you should give this a looksee then.



https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

The expert witness had already found the defendant guilty. All that remained was the writing of a suitable report. The language is biased, the reader is told what to think, where there are dissimilarities the reader is assured, for example, 'this is done for optimisation reasons only' and is left to assume the dissimilarity doesn't really exist. Where Rybka uses tables, the expert witness 'recreates' the code he imagines was used to build the table data (although he never saw the code in binary form!) and unsurprisingly it matches directly with Fruit code - well, if you want to find/prove something and are sufficiently biased and committed to the result ...... Please read that last bit carefully, again: the expert witness took a lookup table of data, imagined up the code required to recreate that data (this without access to the program that created the data which he has never seen), wrote the code as identical to some Fruit source, and says "it's the same, but optimised". Ridiculous, but it gets worse in this same code section ..... for the sub-function called in the above that looks at pawn defence in front of the king returns completely different values for each program, the sub-functions are given the same name by the witness, but they do different things. And, lastly on this section, what program doesn't look in some way at open files in front of the king? Just not good enough.

In king_safety as another example both Fruit and Rybka look at piece attacks on the eight squares around the king. Er, who doesn't do this? But it is treated as a similarity proof. The expert witness skips over the fact that Rybka does it all very fast with btiboards (who wouldn't with a bb program?), while Fruit code is longer and slower, done without bb's (well it would be wouldn't it?). We're told that the 'sum of weights' for the attacks are different for each program, but the fact that pawns are treated as zero (what a surprise!!) is yet more 'proof' of similarity, while all differences (massive I would imagine) are just the result of 'optimisation' (again). Hahahaha!!!

Just for starters.

In a court the witness document would be torn apart and rapidly discredited. I am shocked that elements of comp chess community have placed so much weight on it.

Thank you for looking into this, CW. I get the impression that many "experts" seem very biased against Rybka1, and perhaps see only what they want to see.

[Peter C]

Thank you for looking into this, CW. I get the impression that many "experts" seem very biased against Rybka1, and perhaps see only what they want to see.

You know, there is a reason the experts are biased.... they've already seen the evidence, and formed their conclusions....
Now I do admit, they really only are seeing what they want to see, but that's because they've determined that's the truth.

Peter

[Robert Flesher]

From what I understand there is nothing in Rybka 1 Beta that is a direct identical copy of Fruit.

Perhaps you should give this a looksee then.



https://webspace.utexas.edu/zzw57/rtc/eval/eval.html

The expert witness had already found the defendant guilty. All that remained was the writing of a suitable report. The language is biased, the reader is told what to think, where there are dissimilarities the reader is assured, for example, 'this is done for optimisation reasons only' and is left to assume the dissimilarity doesn't really exist. Where Rybka uses tables, the expert witness 'recreates' the code he imagines was used to build the table data (although he never saw the code in binary form!) and unsurprisingly it matches directly with Fruit code - well, if you want to find/prove something and are sufficiently biased and committed to the result ...... Please read that last bit carefully, again: the expert witness took a lookup table of data, imagined up the code required to recreate that data (this without access to the program that created the data which he has never seen), wrote the code as identical to some Fruit source, and says "it's the same, but optimised". Ridiculous, but it gets worse in this same code section ..... for the sub-function called in the above that looks at pawn defence in front of the king returns completely different values for each program, the sub-functions are given the same name by the witness, but they do different things. And, lastly on this section, what program doesn't look in some way at open files in front of the king? Just not good enough.

In king_safety as another example both Fruit and Rybka look at piece attacks on the eight squares around the king. Er, who doesn't do this? But it is treated as a similarity proof. The expert witness skips over the fact that Rybka does it all very fast with btiboards (who wouldn't with a bb program?), while Fruit code is longer and slower, done without bb's (well it would be wouldn't it?). We're told that the 'sum of weights' for the attacks are different for each program, but the fact that pawns are treated as zero (what a surprise!!) is yet more 'proof' of similarity, while all differences (massive I would imagine) are just the result of 'optimisation' (again). Hahahaha!!!

Just for starters.

In a court the witness document would be torn apart and rapidly discredited. I am shocked that elements of comp chess community have placed so much weight on it.

Thanks for your input Chris. Many of us here are not programmers so we cannot make the assessment that you and other experts can. So then we are forced to make a conclusion based on what other experts say about the evidence or document. Zach's report was not really questioned until now (from what I have seen), so there was no reason to doubt its claims. However, other than stating you feel it is slanted and biased could you further clarify for the rest of us. Is it accurate? Could you dumb it down for the rest of us non technical idiots? Thanks

There's two 'reports' written. One, anonymous or semi-anomymous, by BB and another by the known programmer Zach Wegner. BB's report is written in a relatively neutral style, the reader is left to form his own conclusions, it comes across as a good neutral expert witness style report, difficult to criticise for bias or pre-formed conclusions.

Zach's report is written very much in adversarial style. It's less of an neutral expert witness report and more of a prosecuting lawyer's report, with desire to paint the defendant(?) in as negative a way as possible. Fair enough, Zach is not neutral, he has plenty invested in a guilty verdict. An adversarial report can't be taken as truth, truth in an adversarial system is reached by adversarial defence, in other words, Zach's report NEEDS to be attacked, adversarially - truth comes from that process.

I'm surprised it took months for the obvious hole to be seen. I guess most people just skim read because it's too difficult or skim read because they don't want to find any holes.

However, if Zach is presenting his report with material that prima facie appears damning, but actually isn't, then he is guilty of being misleading and the entire report is compromised.

Bob's duck quacks like a chicken.

Thanks for the clarification Chris!

We have tried to discover the truth, but it is seems we cannot see the forest from the trees. Subsequently, I no longer care, and as far as I am concerned Ipp* and its family are fine for me to use. After all, I purchased Rybka 4.0 ( & every prior version). In the end Vas doesn't care if your happy, he wants your money. And, thats not going to happen if accused, "bastard children" are on his heels ready to dethrone daddy.

For me the debate has ended. I grow tired of pissing in the wind. After all folks we have wasted to many moments of ours live on this useless issue.

[Gino]

I agree, those of us non-programmers need to focus on chess and use all engines in our search for the truth.

[BB+]

There's two 'reports' written. One, anonymous or semi-anomymous, by BB and another by the known programmer Zach Wegner. BB's report is written in a relatively neutral style, the reader is left to form his own conclusions, it comes across as a good neutral expert witness style report, difficult to criticise for bias or pre-formed conclusions.

I might point out that, in the infancy of its preparation, my report on Rybka/IPPOLIT was oriented at being disseminated on the Rybka forum, and thus I couched some of it to rebut some of the preconceived opinions commonly seen there. With the publishing of the report at a place where the sentiments run oppositely, I think I would have made a few things more clear. For instance, in Section 1.2, I now add: It should be obvious from a perusal of this document that there are many similarities in ideas, and that the IPPOLIT maker(s) knew the Rybka workings quite well.

[Uly]

In the end Vas doesn't care if your happy, he wants your money.

Then why is he issuing a Rybka 4.1 free update for his customers?

[kingliveson]

Feel free to quote this "ad hominem" you refer to. I have no idea what you are talking about, otherwise.

who cares? read your own post at CCC. I'm more interested in this .....


your argument is all very fine and dandy, were it to fit the facts of the case I referred to

your case (a) above (What matters is that (a) the two sets of values are similar or identical) is not met as the two sets of values are very different both in scale and in relation to each other. Since they are not the comparison between the code in Fruit and the lookuptable data in Rybka is completely misleading, he shouldn't have even tabled up the comparison without a huge "THIS DOES NOT PROVE ANYTHING" written next to it. I can see that skim-reading Zach's report will easily lead to the conclusion of rip-off, but actually reading it and cross-checking brings about an entirely different conclusion, namely that this report appears to have been written by the prosecution with one intent in mind. Guilt and conviction.

I agree with you that we need to stay on track, and keep it on topic. That said, I completely disagree with respect to two sets of values being identical data not met. Going on Vas' own words:

Generally, code theft is easy to show - just show the two sections of identical code, side-by-side. There isn't much to debate in such cases.

Rybka 1.0 beta is free. Take a look at the binary starting from address 004092E0 and compare it to Fruit protocol.cpp beginning from line 430 onwards -- there are lines there copied verbatim, line for line. And it does not stop there of course. Not that am breaking new grounds here by any means, but I think the case is pretty much shut. It doesn't mean that we take anything away from his accomplishments. He stood on shoulders of those before him, and it's only right for him to carry a little weight.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

In the end Vas doesn't care if your happy, he wants your money.

Then why is he issuing a Rybka 4.1 free update for his customers?

Because without it, he will not be receiving our money in the future.

I think that Vas gets a pretty bad rap most of the time, but he's made it pretty clear that his customers are not his top priority, at least not at the moment.

Jeremy