GPL discussion, sense and nonsense

[thorstenczub]

)

i hope its not me )

all i remember is that i was in cologne in 1986 together with my friend siggi schuette.
we helped the crew to get the game-scores and hack them into an early version of chessbase running on ATARI ST machines, when i remember it right. then this was printed out
on PAPER and we used PRITT stick and scissors to build one MASTER bulletin.
there was only ONE BIG scissor. and there was a daily fight where this important instrument was.
i remember a dialogue with Helmut Pfleger and Vlastimil Hort about the scissor.

Siggi convinced Rank Xerox that it would be a good PR job if THEY would copy the tournament bulletins for the chess championship for all partipants on their "marvellous rank xerox" copy machines.

they did !!

so all participants got bulletins each day !

[hyatt]

No, as I said, I tested this in three programs. Glaurung, Fruit _and_ Crafty. It is easy to turn any of these off by slightly modifying the source code. I have not tested it in the past 12 months, but can do so since LMR has certainly changed a bit. I'd still bet nowhere near +200.

We will see.

http://www.open-chess.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=423

Ed

I simply looked at the source, myself. And made the changes. I have done too many of these tests that broke due to an unforseen issue. For example, one program a couple of years ago said to set null-depth to zero to disable null-move. Wrong. That killed the program because it still did null-move but using depth-0 which was not so efficient. There was some other question I had about Stockfish a few months back and to clear up the question, I just disabled the code. I believe this was the null-move verification search. Had an effect of something between 0 and +2, I don't remember specifically now. But it is a useful testing idea if you wonder why something works, and then test it to determine that it doesn't work quite as well as expected.

[hyatt]

Something is wrong there. Harry went to Cologne. Bert Gower and I were in Birmingham and operated the Cray and communicated moves back and forth to Harry in Cologne. Bert and I were both in London for the 1984 Levy challenge match. I went to Paris later to do a chess demo, but unrelated to any WCCC/WMCCC event.

Oups, thank you.

The person left on the picture looks like David Levy. Not completely sure.

Ed

It was. Don't remember when that photo was taken, however. I attended a ton of tournaments over the years.

[hyatt]

Something is wrong there. Harry went to Cologne. Bert Gower and I were in Birmingham and operated the Cray and communicated moves back and forth to Harry in Cologne. Bert and I were both in London for the 1984 Levy challenge match. I went to Paris later to do a chess demo, but unrelated to any WCCC/WMCCC event.

Oups, thank you.

The person left on the picture looks like David Levy. Not completely sure.

Ed

Yes, on the picture I posted is Levy and Bob. I meant this picture where I thought the person left was Al Gower
Maybe Chess journalist Dagobert Kohlmeyer?


Who is the guy behind Berliner by the way?

Gerd

Certainly guy with no hair (second from left) is Harry. Across from him is Hans. Don't know about the guy to Harry's left, or the person behind Hans, however.

[Sentinel]

You speak of Crafty while I had Rybka, Stockfish and Ippo.* in mind. Apparently they seem to profit a lot more.

Not from null-move and LMR. I tested all of 'em, with and without. Although it is easy enough for anyone to run the tests. The two together are nowhere near +200 Elo...

Ed is right here I'm afraid. It's going to be 200+ elo for LMR/null move combined in SF >=1.7.
To save the effort he could just ask Marco .
In Ippo it's also close to 200, and I bet the same for Rybka .

[Gerd Isenberg]

I meant this picture where I thought the person left was Al Gower
Maybe Chess journalist Dagobert Kohlmeyer?

Who is the guy behind Berliner by the way?

Certainly guy with no hair (second from left) is Harry. Across from him is Hans. Don't know about the guy to Harry's left, or the person behind Hans, however.

Some more pictures from WCCC 86 dramatic last round showdown from Ed's site, to recognize Schaeffer, Harry, Hans and Ed:

The 'total view', Harry changed the shirt, Kraas (blue shirt) and Schrüfer in the middle, Bobby playing Sun Phoenix, then Cray Blitz - Hitech and the unlucky Rebel versus Bebe:

[Chris Whittington]

Quite simply, in that I know a number of competitors at the time that went to those events. Bruce Moreland was one, and we had talked about a "reduction scheme" during the 1996-1997 (both) ICCA WMCCC events. Bruce talked quite a bit with SMK and he didn't reveal a thing about "reductions" to Bruce, as one example. And in the above window, both Bruce and I were experimenting with this idea as previously mentioned, we just never reached a "happy point".

Your bias is unbelievable

Have you (yourself) ever spoken with a commercial? I am asking because I never met you on any tournament. You just were never present. I am speaking of 1986 (Munich) and on. Programmers talk on tournaments, the commercial ones included. From several commercial programmers I got: Alpha/Beta, killer heuristic, iterative search, aspiration search, Q-search. I returned as well. They are not much different than you, if you have a passion it's hard to keep your mouth shut especially when you are on an event with your kindred spirits. Just enter a topic and words starts to roll. You should have tried but were not there, so how can you judge so mean?

Ed

An academic is just a commercial unable to find a way to get the masses to pay him, settled for persuading the university bean counters to pay him. The former requires at a bare minimum the ability to fool enough people for enough of the time, the latter the ability to fool one person once and get tenure.

Perhaps one day you might actually do a little research into what "tenure" is all about. It certainly is not about fooling "one person". You would have to fool a couple of dozen on-campus people, some in your department, some not. Plus the majority of your peers at other universities that are working in your field since we require 5-6 _outside_ reviewers as well.

A commercial programmer only has to fool the uninformed public that might buy his product. By a little creative manipulation of tournament results, testing agencies, and the like. I believe the tenure process is _far_ more difficult.

What if there's a giant mutually reinforcing conspiracy of people trying to hype computer chess into academia as the future of artificial intelligence blah-blah and all getting spin off financial and career advantage as a result? It's all a question of who are the suckers - taxpayers?

[Chris Whittington]

I am speaking of 1986 (Munich) and on.

1986 was cologne. i think bob was there.

ed and me were there too.

1993 was munich.

Cologne yes, my bad

But I believe only Harry Nelson of the Cray Blitz team was present.

Could I be wrong twice in one posting?

Ed

Yep, see cpw or your own photos from wccc 1986. Harry Nelson and Albert Gower. The last time Bob probably was in Europe was 1984 - the match against Levy at Advances in Computer Chess 4 in London.

Something is wrong there. Harry went to Cologne. Bert Gower and I were in Birmingham and operated the Cray and communicated moves back and forth to Harry in Cologne. Bert and I were both in London for the 1984 Levy challenge match. I went to Paris later to do a chess demo, but unrelated to any WCCC/WMCCC event.

You can see the chemistry in the body language!! They 'love' each other

[Chris Whittington]

How do you know he did not discuss it with others at maybe an ICGA event?

This is just ridiculous.
He might have also discussed it with his wife, or brother or whoever, but that is completely irrelevant.
I would even go as far to claim that if Bob doesn't know for a certain "contribution", then real contribution does not even exist.
What does a chess community has out of private discussion of couple of ICGA participants (if that really happened and is not just another Harvey's manipulation) which nobody can actually confirm???
Nothing at all, nada, zero, zip, zilch is the answer.

In the "good old days" we always had a panel discussion at each ACM computer chess tournament, and at some (at least in North America) ICCA events as well. Those were specifically to discuss ideas and such. We often had paper sessions where various more in-depth presentations were made. And the ICCA Journal was _formed_ to provide a written forum for dissemination of computer chess papers. Add 'em all up (ICCA/ICGA papers) and then count the commercial authors. Donninger is the only commercial author that comes to mind. In the late 80's and thru the 90's we had r.g.c.c. Go look at old posts there and see what was discussing actual algorithms and ideas, and who just discussed general topics with no specific ideas of any kind revealed. For all I know, computer chess might have reached the same point we are at today, with nothing but commercial authors. But the key is "for all I know" because they were certainly not heavy contributors to the body of knowledge related to computer chess.

I strongly suspect computer chess would not exist as we know it if not for the early pioneers that did share ideas freely.

Let's re-phrase this shall we? In the pre-1980's when there were no available microprocessors the only people with access to computers were the various university nerds and socioopaths sharing basement space with the cockroaches and whirring discs nobody knew what to do with. They thought "Hey, wow, awesome, now there's meaning to my life of pizza, late nights with the cockroaches and no girls and maybe I can make some headway in the university departmental building game that has so far eluded me!" The goal was a commercial career at the university, nobody having thought what miniaturisation would bring, so publishing 'papers' and 'sharing' nonsense became all the rage. Then those bastard commercials with their microprocessors and low cost of entry came along, surprisingly enough occupying slightly more of the real world space where people and ideas compete for limited wealth and then anyone could do it (beard, body odour, stammering, never washing and total clamminess with the girls being the only requirement).

Is the CC topic about computer chess or computer comedy? Even though you don't realize it, we _did_ have microcomputers in computer chess tournaments in the "pre-1980's". In 1978 I used a z80 to run my electronic chess board that many have seen pictures of. Kathe Spracklen remarked "You have more computer power just sensing squares on your chess board than I have in my program" (I believe she was 6502-based at the time. The z80 was introduced in 1976... I know that in 1978 "Sargon" was playing chess in tournaments, including the ACM event. As always, your history lesson has been "tried and found wanting".

Quibbling again, surely not
Under 100 sterling GB pounds mass market homecomputers didn't exist until ZX80 and the colour version Sinclair Spectrum and there was no mass market at all for games until 1980-1, that market first getting going in the UK, hence the 'commercials' you love to hate (and incorrectly define) never got going until 1980 onwards. Before 1980 you either had to build your own computer or else pay way too much money to get one (way too much = no mass market, and certainly not for software).

[Chris Whittington]

How do you know he did not discuss it with others at maybe an ICGA event?

This is just ridiculous.
He might have also discussed it with his wife, or brother or whoever, but that is completely irrelevant.
I would even go as far to claim that if Bob doesn't know for a certain "contribution", then real contribution does not even exist.
What does a chess community has out of private discussion of couple of ICGA participants (if that really happened and is not just another Harvey's manipulation) which nobody can actually confirm???
Nothing at all, nada, zero, zip, zilch is the answer.

In the "good old days" we always had a panel discussion at each ACM computer chess tournament, and at some (at least in North America) ICCA events as well. Those were specifically to discuss ideas and such. We often had paper sessions where various more in-depth presentations were made. And the ICCA Journal was _formed_ to provide a written forum for dissemination of computer chess papers. Add 'em all up (ICCA/ICGA papers) and then count the commercial authors. Donninger is the only commercial author that comes to mind. In the late 80's and thru the 90's we had r.g.c.c. Go look at old posts there and see what was discussing actual algorithms and ideas, and who just discussed general topics with no specific ideas of any kind revealed. For all I know, computer chess might have reached the same point we are at today, with nothing but commercial authors. But the key is "for all I know" because they were certainly not heavy contributors to the body of knowledge related to computer chess.

I strongly suspect computer chess would not exist as we know it if not for the early pioneers that did share ideas freely.

The usual totally distorted idea of 'what is a commercial?' Narrow definition appears to be anyone who wrote and published and sold a program.

Better definition would be anyone who made some money or career out of computer chess. You could even add to that the academics who would be commercial if they could find someone to publish their stuff, and you can certainly add all the academics anyway who made a department or a career out of computer chess.

Bob is commercial, Hsu is commercial (sold himself to IBM) etc.