Author: Rolf Tueschen
Date: 03:08:31 03/06/04
Go up one level in this thread
On March 05, 2004 at 19:44:56, Ed Schröder wrote: >On March 05, 2004 at 18:23:44, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: > >>On March 05, 2004 at 15:51:47, Thoralf Karlsson wrote: >> >>>On March 05, 2004 at 03:54:57, Afzal Siddique wrote: >>> >>>>Hello All, >>>> >>>>http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=105063596 >>>> >>>>Afzal >>> > >>>I have never asked Vincent Diepeveen for money in order to test his program. > >>That is correct. You told me that you were lacking hardware that much that >>without another machine or 2 you would not be able to garantuee me that diep >>would be soon at the list. > >So from that statement (we don't have enough PC's to test Diep) you concluded >Thoralf was asking you to send him 2 PC's? > >Ed Dear Ed, please stop playing these games and let me answer for VD. Yes, of course, a young programmer MUST understand the words of TK this way! Period. VD wanted to reach the goal that his program was tested as soon as possible. Understandable wish. Now the responsible man from SSDF says that he could only do this if he had more resources - BUT of course he hasn't yet. OF COURSE this does NOT say word for word that Vincent should send hardware as soon as possible. But the implication is absolutely clear. Taken that VD WOULD have done this, the SSDF certainly wouldn't have rejected the kind present. But all this is only part of the overall general problem!!! And we should thank VD that he has published this here in CCC. The other aspect of the problem is that a company like ChessBase has more resources than just a young programmer. THEY make an invoice with an autoplayer and whoopieee, the SSDF is accepting it. Later it was found out that this autoplayer gave FRITZ an edge. At that moment also Ed Schröder began to jump up and down. A kind of war began. So here we come to the final aspect of this problem. Speaking in terms of history. Overall, these parts of the "SSDF problem" could be defined as follows: *** the SSDF is held by amateurs, by certainly sympathetic hobby freaks *** due to a lack of resources SSDF had to test by hand in the early days *** due to that same aspect SSDF became open for manipulative tools *** in consequence gifts of hardware alone _could_ influence the results This is all, what Vincent is saying and this is correct. If the SSDF were really independent, they would test completely without contacts with the programmers. They would buy the progs in shops and they would test them. They would test in the spirit of the potential clients, the end-users. The whole communicating with the programmers and their companies makes the SSDF object of almost invisible manipulations. Also herefore Vincent gave perfect examples. The invoice of special "books" and "learning files" is obviously a tool to manipulate the results of the tests because the programmers want to react themselves on the reactions of the other collegues with newer program versions on _their_ progs. Obviously this has no longer something to do with independent and reliable testing standards. To make this absolutely clear: a test, once begun, does NOT allow a tester to later make all kind of replacements or manipulative novelties because that simply and perfectly destroys the validity of the tests! (Just to tell the truth to many testers here around: you should NOT update your progs in a test "tournament" because that makes the whole tournament invalid. For that same reason the disqualifying of LIST in Graz three rounds before the end faked the whole results.) [ I must beg the reader in a general question. Please do not read something into this message, just because I may have used the improper wordings. Since I am a foreign English speaker, I have no sense for the objective and concrete meaning of certain words. Please take my words in its meant context of the whole message. To make this clear, I do NOT bash the SSDF and its amateur testers. Nobody does that if he wants to be taken for serious. And if I accept their amateur status in the beginning of this message, then it is impossible that my critic later could be taken as insulting abuse. Because mistakes in the test proceedings must be called mistakes ALSO if amateurs make the tests. If the amateurs couldn't know or couldn't avoid the mistakes then bad luck, but the fact remains that these mistakes happened. - All this is a bit difficult to differentiate but for one time I wanted to add this in case of the usual protest on my messages about the SSDF. ] Rolf
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