Author: Vincent Diepeveen
Date: 15:55:44 02/27/99
Go up one level in this thread
On February 25, 1999 at 08:15:14, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On February 25, 1999 at 02:20:39, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >> >>On February 24, 1999 at 22:06:34, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On February 24, 1999 at 17:48:10, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >>> >>>>On February 24, 1999 at 16:04:41, Dann Corbit wrote: >>>> >>>>>I have an email from Frederic Friedel, and I am fully convinced that Fritz did >>>>>not 'cook' anything to get the answers right. >>>> >>>>I got the same email from Frederic and i'm completely convinced that Fritz >>>>did cook. >>>> >>>>Frederic is playing the innocence himselve, but in the meantime he has >>>>ordered to make an auto232 player for fritz that doesn't allow rebel9 >>>>to learn, that exchanges colors so that other learners of other chessprograms >>>>get confused, and that's just the top of the iceberg. This top has >>>>been confirmed by Karlsson, which i honour for being so nice to admit >>>>that fritz autoplayer doesn't allow learning. >>>> >>> >>>I disagree with the above. The 'shortcoming' is in Rebel, _not_ in Fritz. >>>IE if you can't learn when alternating colors, what good is learning, since >>>_most_ real tournaments do alternate? >>> >>>I've said it before.. what you can fix on _your_ end you should. In this >>>case, it is a strange design decision indeed that says you have to play N >>>games same color to learn anything... >> >>I think this is totally wrong. Imagine programming for an OS where the >>filesystem uses 8.3 filenames, and you specify on the box that your program is >>meant to be used under that OS. >> >>Suddenly someone uses your thing in a place they aren't supposed to use it, and >>they have 256 character filenames, and you can't handle it and somehow a >>filename overwrites your piece-square table and your thing plays 1. Nh3 if you >>turn the book off. >> > > > >HOwever the auto232 protocol says _nothing_ about alternating colors, or not >alternating colors. You can play one game matches or you can play N game >matches. Shouldn't you write code to fit _all_ possible cases from the >protocol, or should you write code that just fits one possible scenario because >you "know" everyone does it that way? > >>Fine. This was a short-sighted engineering decision on the part of the >>programmer, but the program was bug-free until someone did something unexpected. >> >>The autoplayer specified by the Fritz guys was incompatible with the Donninger >>autoplayer, this is not Ed's fault. > >I wouldn't say 'incompatible'. This reminds me of my first 'learning' efforts >on ICC. People found that I learned 10 moves out of book. So at move 8-9, if >they had a good position, they would disconnect and then log back in and resume, >but without any 'learning' happening. I could have +noplayed everyone doing >that. Or I could have 'fixed it' so that a premature termination still triggers >the learning (if possible). > >I chose the latter. > > > >> >>It doesn't say on the Rebel box, "don't use some home-brew autoplayer with this >>under important circumstances that will impact my sales for years", but Ed had >>no reason to expect that this would happen. It isn't something that he should >>have had to foresee. Had Donninger done a new autoplayer, which flipped >>black/white between games, Ed would have gotten ahold of it, found the problems, >>and fixed them. > >auto232 has a definite 'new game' command. Why wouldn't you 'learn' after >getting that no matter _which_ color you just had? Personally I always >thought the N games with 1 color was 'broken', rather than alternating colors >which is more normal. if you know you get a 'store game' command, because the protocol does this for you, then why not learn after the store game command? Who would have thought they come up with the idea to make their own autoplayer, which prevented this? > > > > >> >>It doesn't sound like he had any opportunity to do this with the Fritz >>autoplayer. >> >>If the autoplayer had been so incompatible with Rebel that it crashed it, the >>SSDF wouldn't have scored all of those games as time forfeits for Rebel, nor >>would you be arguing that they should, because Ed should have had the foresight >>to predict that one of his competitors would write a incompatible version of the >>software that he had come to rely upon, and mandate to the SSDF that they use >>it, for reasons that are still impossible to understand. >> >>The only difference here is that the SSDF probably put a lot of time into >>playing the games before this bug came to light, and that time would have been >>wasted if the games had been replayed. >> >>This is probably what should have happened though, because Rebel had a bug which >>probably reduced its strength, and Ed should have had a chance to fix it. >> >>Note that *nothing* I have said should be taken to mean that there was any >>malice on the part of the Fritz guys, nor do I think that they need to have been >>malicious in order to make my arguments valid. >> >>bruce > > >Had I been in that position, from a software engineering point of view, I would >ask the question "how can a game be terminated?" And I would make sure that for >each 'answer' I have a methodology to trigger my 'learning code' if I consider >learning important. I wouldn't argue that Fritz was right in doing this a new >way. But there is blame on 'both ends' since alternating colors ought not be >a problem, since that is 'normal'.
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