Author: Slater Wold
Date: 21:04:58 04/30/02
Go up one level in this thread
On April 30, 2002 at 23:49:39, Russell Reagan wrote: >On April 30, 2002 at 16:01:33, Slater Wold wrote: >>I think anyone found 'hacking' a chess program, or its book, should face a >>severe punishment. Anyone claiming something is their, when in fact it is not, >>should be punished. > >If someone has the skill to disassemble a binary executable and figure out how >something with the complexity of a chess program works from the ASM level, then >good for them. They earned the right to use what they learned. Note that I said >"to use what they learned", not "they earned the right to copy and paste". For >example, let's pretend that the alpha-beta algorithm wasn't widely known and >only a few programs used it. If someone begins analyzing the chess engine's code >and after a long hard time of trying to break the program down and figure it >out, someone finally figures out how the alpha-beta algorithm works, I think >they should be able to use that. Binary distribution does not translate to "you >can't look at this and learn from it." I don't think people should go around >just taking huge chunks of code out of other people's binary distributions or >source code distributions, but you can learn a lot from them and if you take the >time to do so, I see nothing wrong with using what you've learned. So when you >say, "anyone found hacking a chess engine", I think you are mistakenly throwing >people into a category that they do not belong. Hacking a file to derive a >general method isn't so bad. Hacking a file to derive some set data, such as an >opening book, is more questionable, but not entirely 100% worthy of "severe >punishment". Geez, it's a game people. Have some fun and lighten up. I just gotta say, if I was the author, and someone else was stealing MY ideas, I would be pissed. Especially if that's how I made my living. Even if they were only "learning". Screw that, come up with your own ideas. Don't hack others. And it's NOT a game. It's a program. A program like all the others. Just because it plays chess doesn't mean anything. It supports people, it makes livings, just like all other software companies do. >>I am not defending these people, I am simply stating the fact that it would be >>easier to encrypt the books, than to go after those stealing it. > >If you encrypt the book, that does absolutely nothing to protect the data. The >reason is that if someone is skilled enough to hack binary executables, then >they will be talented enough to hack the binary executable and reverse engineer >the decrtyption algorithm. If it's in the binary, it's not secure. So basically >if the program is going to be able to decrypt the file, so is anyone else who >wants to bad enough. Granted it's something probably 99.999999% of the world >wouldn't be able to do, but there's always someone who can get that kind of job >done. Nothing is unhackable. That has been proven time and time again. It's like that old saying, "locks only keep honest people honest". But they DO detour would-be thieves. If someone wants something bad enough, they'll get it. Be it your car, belongings, or in this case, opening book. However, the more you do to detour a thief, the less thieves will attempt to get your stuff. I've seen cars with locks, the Club, and alarm systems. 3 anti-thief devices. You'd be a stupid criminal to go after that one. And most, wouldn't. >Russell
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