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Subject: Re: CCT5 rules... can't we change them?

Author: Sune Fischer

Date: 15:10:23 11/17/02

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On November 17, 2002 at 15:40:53, Russell Reagan wrote:

>On November 17, 2002 at 04:19:47, Sune Fischer wrote:
>
>>A team of world class programmers should have no trouble implementing this
>>feature in their GUI if they so desired, so it really sounds like on poor excuse
>>to me.
>
>Hi Sune,
>
>This logic is in direct contrast to the reasons for adding these rules in the
>first place. One argument I heard was that it was simply "too easy" for an
>operator to force a move or whatever. With the new rule, it forces someone who
>wants to cheat to "do more work" (a tiny amount, but "more"). Before, a
>commercial participant could "just play", but now the commercial participant has
>to "do more work". So, why do you expect some participants to "do more work" to
>support an automatic protocol, but you don't expect that others will not "do
>more work" to get around the rule and cheat anyway?

1) I never said it would prevent anyone from cheating, as you remember I said it
would be "easy" to cheat once you dive into the code of the GUI.

2) Why must the majority always settle for less, just so the commercials can
have it their way? Kibitzing is better for everyone, it doesn't _prevent_
cheating, but it certainly makes it harder, and I refuse to believe that team
fritz can't figure out how to copy a few lines of winboard code into their GUI
to support this. It is the most lame excuse ever, they are professional
programmers and they have 2 months to do this, it shouldn't take more than an
hour or so!
Obviously they don't want to - fine, just don't blame it on the kibitzing rule!


>I agree that it will make the games more interesting, but that is the only
>reason I can see so far for such a rule. If you want to have the rule for that
>reason, I'm all for it, but I wish people would stop acting like this is such a
>great rule that's going to put an end to cheating once and for all.

I'm not part of that group, if you really want to cheat you can always find a
way. But, now it would at least require some skill to cheat, so you would have
to be a (good?) programmer and know what you were doing. If you were good, you'd
probably also have a good program and wouldn't need to cheat. Ultimately any
cheater only cheats himself of course, impossible to be proud of a result you
know is fake.
We just don't want John Doe from Sangrila come and take the win with a fritz
clone, claiming of course that it really is his engine playing :)

>Just say that the rule is for the purpose of making the games more interesting,
>and leave it at that, because what this rule does for cheating is kind of like
>putting up a paper wall to keep people from sneaking into your backyard and
>stealing stuff. The theif has to do "more work" to get in your backyard now,
>just like the programmer has to do "more work" to cheat. As I posted the other
>day, it's about 3 new lines of code to cheat with this new rule.

People have been known to cheat when it wasn't automated, why not fix a
"security-hole" we know to be there? That is not the same as saying there aren't
other ways cheat, but I don't really see any people saying that either :)

-S.

>Russell



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