Rybka Cluster Rental Program

[Howard E]

Jeremy[/quote]

I wager that if Vas tried to marry up the names of the talkchess users complaining about his software with sales records of purchasers, he won't find many matches.[/quote]

That may be, but the number of rybkaforum users complaining about his software most certainly has a higher hit rate, and those "complainers", even among the rabidly loyal, aren't few. There's no excuse for releasing buggy software and then leaving a fix for 7 months later. Sorry, no matter what corner of the software business you're in, that's shitty service.

Jeremy[/quote]
Agreed.
Purchase Rybka 3 and expect a promised update that never shows, ... shame on Vas.
Purchase Rybka 4 and expect a promised update that never shows, ... shame on me.

[BB+]

After some investigation, I didn't find the cost per core-hour all that bad. Amazon EC2 was something like 3 cents per core-hour at best (maybe 3x that if not in volume), and that on a 1.0 Ghz Opteron from 2007. The cluster is something like 25 cents per core-hour, but the processors are likely 5x+ more efficient. Then again, cloud computing is currently a bit pricey compared to home-use. Again, to me the only real selling point here is any software improvements (will any customer waste time measuring this? will Cimotti/Rajlich reveal this to prospective customers?). There might be one or two guys who plop down 1000 euros to take 100 cores for a joy-ride on PlayChess, but I'd have to say that for most purposes even 40 cores aimed at one position is just not the best direction. Also, EC2 (and these models in general) aim at businesses, not hobbyists. Is there a market for chess analysis?

Incidentally, I priced 32-core 128GB machines about a month ago, and I think the cost was about $7-8K. With less memory (I had a specific application in mind), this can be reduced below $5K (4x 8-core Opteron 6128 at 2.0Ghz with 16x2GB RAM at 1333Mhz -- RAM speed was often a muddle in these systems connected by HyperTransport, but I think by now such issues might be resolved). I'm not sure which engines (if any) have reasonable scaling therein. See http://www.thinkmate.com/System/A+_Server_1042G-TF

[BB+]

4x 8-core Opteron 6128 at 2.0Ghz with 16x2GB RAM

I am no overclocking expert, but there might be more performance out of a 12-core at ~4Ghz, if you can manage it. As I said, for my application I was more interesting in the 16 DIMM slots. For an extra $1160, you can get substitute the 6134 at 2.3Ghz.

[kingliveson]

4x 8-core Opteron 6128 at 2.0Ghz with 16x2GB RAM

I am no overclocking expert, but there might be more performance out of a 12-core at ~4Ghz, if you can manage it. As I said, for my application I was more interesting in the 16 DIMM slots. For an extra $1160, you can get substitute the 6134 at 2.3Ghz.

Rybka team probably did the numbers and it added up. Based on the pricing released, looks like everyday user is not currently the target. Perhaps with very good marketing, they can corner the usual suspects participating in tournaments regularly; Anand, Carlsen, Topalov, Nakamura, just to name a few. It is possible that they even have a few clients lined-up.

[Chris Whittington]

A couple of sheiks and well-heeled freaks later, I'm sure he'll be doing just fine. It doesn't change the fact that he doesn't bother to support his base users with necessary bugfixes.

Jeremy

I wager that if Vas tried to marry up the names of the talkchess users complaining about his software with sales records of purchasers, he won't find many matches.

That may be, but the number of rybkaforum users complaining about his software most certainly has a higher hit rate, and those "complainers", even among the rabidly loyal, aren't few. There's no excuse for releasing buggy software and then leaving a fix for 7 months later. Sorry, no matter what corner of the software business you're in, that's shitty service.

Jeremy

Above is the general world view of the consuming classes: having paid money to a manufacturor, you then "own" him via the weasel word "service". It has generally made business sense to persuade customers to return and make further purchases, although RyanAir are dismantling this model somewhat. You have no right to "service" however, getting "service" or a cash back is based pretty much on goodwill (given the disproportionate cost of making a legal claim). Goodwill is a two-way street and all the evidence is that return goodwill from computer chess consumers, represented by talkchess, does not exist. Look at it from Vas point of view .... he was on the talkchess forum and left due to a mob hostility and unpleasantness (a not uncommon reason), he made his own forum and further Rybka releases but the unpleasantness and libels continued, much of it almost certainly from people who had never paid for Rybka in the first place. So, he makes the obvious decision to cease producing his strong program for use by a partly thieving, rude, libellous and ungrateful consumer base and concentrates on something he finds more interesting with the added advantage that the unpleasant mob can't get to use it. Since he is now out of the mass software market he doesn't need to bother to provide the same mod with upgrades. All entirely understandable and my sympathies are with him and not the mob. If the decent part of the comp chess community allows the forums to be taken over by a mob of bullies who expect everything for free and for manufacturors to jump to their tune, then decent ones will suffer through their own failure to speak out.

[Chris Whittington]

4x 8-core Opteron 6128 at 2.0Ghz with 16x2GB RAM

I am no overclocking expert, but there might be more performance out of a 12-core at ~4Ghz, if you can manage it. As I said, for my application I was more interesting in the 16 DIMM slots. For an extra $1160, you can get substitute the 6134 at 2.3Ghz.

Rybka team probably did the numbers and it added up. Based on the pricing released, looks like everyday user is not currently the target. Perhaps with very good marketing, they can corner the usual suspects participating in tournaments regularly; Anand, Carlsen, Topalov, Nakamura, just to name a few. It is possible that they even have a few clients lined-up.

Not particularly this post over and above any of the others, but the assessment model is wrong. Multiplying Vas rental prices by some dreamed up number of users is not the way to value the thing. It's the spin-off of having developed a working example of a new technology, having a software engineer team in place with developed skills, being first with a new idea, showing that one can make things happen. The opportunities that will arise are unpredictable but real as others with funds to spare see possibilities, need a quality team for some related development etc. Vas is building a software development business in which the chess turns out to be just a means to an end. It's the business that will have the value, not the loss-leader showpiece product.

[Jeremy Bernstein]

A couple of sheiks and well-heeled freaks later, I'm sure he'll be doing just fine. It doesn't change the fact that he doesn't bother to support his base users with necessary bugfixes.

Jeremy

I wager that if Vas tried to marry up the names of the talkchess users complaining about his software with sales records of purchasers, he won't find many matches.

That may be, but the number of rybkaforum users complaining about his software most certainly has a higher hit rate, and those "complainers", even among the rabidly loyal, aren't few. There's no excuse for releasing buggy software and then leaving a fix for 7 months later. Sorry, no matter what corner of the software business you're in, that's shitty service.

Jeremy

Above is the general world view of the consuming classes: having paid money to a manufacturor, you then "own" him via the weasel word "service". It has generally made business sense to persuade customers to return and make further purchases, although RyanAir are dismantling this model somewhat. You have no right to "service" however, getting "service" or a cash back is based pretty much on goodwill (given the disproportionate cost of making a legal claim). Goodwill is a two-way street and all the evidence is that return goodwill from computer chess consumers, represented by talkchess, does not exist. Look at it from Vas point of view .... he was on the talkchess forum and left due to a mob hostility and unpleasantness (a not uncommon reason), he made his own forum and further Rybka releases but the unpleasantness and libels continued, much of it almost certainly from people who had never paid for Rybka in the first place. So, he makes the obvious decision to cease producing his strong program for use by a partly thieving, rude, libellous and ungrateful consumer base and concentrates on something he finds more interesting with the added advantage that the unpleasant mob can't get to use it. Since he is now out of the mass software market he doesn't need to bother to provide the same mod with upgrades. All entirely understandable and my sympathies are with him and not the mob. If the decent part of the comp chess community allows the forums to be taken over by a mob of bullies who expect everything for free and for manufacturors to jump to their tune, then decent ones will suffer through their own failure to speak out.

In this case, it's the world view of a member of the "producing class". From a purely legal perspective, Vas has absolutely no obligation to his licensees -- we can agree on that. However, if Rybka is to be a functioning business, Vas has to provide the additional "service" of fixing bugs, in order to provide the software that the user is licensing. If you buy a table from a carpenter and it turns out that one of the joints is a little funny and squeaks when weight is applied, and the carpenter hopes to have your business in the future, you can be 100% certain that a fix will be found within a reasonable amount of time and applied at a reasonable cost (it was, after all, not your fault). I expect the same from software engineers, myself included. Maybe I'm a sucker for listening to my licensees and fixing the bugs they find, absolutely gratis. I'm convinced, and experience bears me out, that goodwill sells more software. Leaving aside all questions of pride in good craftsmanship, etc.

In your description, Vas is a tormented genius/delicate flower whose feelings have been grievously assaulted by an angry mob of non-paying non-customers. Sorry, but Vas entered the business world with open eyes, and I don't give a rat's ass about his feelings -- I am a paying customer and expect the software experience I believed to be licensing when Vas took my money, and I expect that to be provided in a timely manner. As there is no demo version of Rybka with which one can test for gross errors in craftsmanship (MPV stalling, for instance), as one must rely on the "goodwill" and "trustworthiness" of the developer, I feel fully justified being ticked off.

Falling back on the straw man of "the angry mob" as any sort of rational justification for Vas' attitude toward his paying customers is a lazy and arrogant position. If you see your customers (real or potential) as a bunch of inconvenient whiners standing between you and your peace and quiet, you should probably stop selling whatever it is you're selling.

Jeremy

[Chris Whittington]

A couple of sheiks and well-heeled freaks later, I'm sure he'll be doing just fine. It doesn't change the fact that he doesn't bother to support his base users with necessary bugfixes.

Jeremy

I wager that if Vas tried to marry up the names of the talkchess users complaining about his software with sales records of purchasers, he won't find many matches.

That may be, but the number of rybkaforum users complaining about his software most certainly has a higher hit rate, and those "complainers", even among the rabidly loyal, aren't few. There's no excuse for releasing buggy software and then leaving a fix for 7 months later. Sorry, no matter what corner of the software business you're in, that's shitty service.

Jeremy

Above is the general world view of the consuming classes: having paid money to a manufacturor, you then "own" him via the weasel word "service". It has generally made business sense to persuade customers to return and make further purchases, although RyanAir are dismantling this model somewhat. You have no right to "service" however, getting "service" or a cash back is based pretty much on goodwill (given the disproportionate cost of making a legal claim). Goodwill is a two-way street and all the evidence is that return goodwill from computer chess consumers, represented by talkchess, does not exist. Look at it from Vas point of view .... he was on the talkchess forum and left due to a mob hostility and unpleasantness (a not uncommon reason), he made his own forum and further Rybka releases but the unpleasantness and libels continued, much of it almost certainly from people who had never paid for Rybka in the first place. So, he makes the obvious decision to cease producing his strong program for use by a partly thieving, rude, libellous and ungrateful consumer base and concentrates on something he finds more interesting with the added advantage that the unpleasant mob can't get to use it. Since he is now out of the mass software market he doesn't need to bother to provide the same mod with upgrades. All entirely understandable and my sympathies are with him and not the mob. If the decent part of the comp chess community allows the forums to be taken over by a mob of bullies who expect everything for free and for manufacturors to jump to their tune, then decent ones will suffer through their own failure to speak out.

In this case, it's the world view of a member of the "producing class". From a purely legal perspective, Vas has absolutely no obligation to his licensees -- we can agree on that. However, if Rybka is to be a functioning business, Vas has to provide the additional "service" of fixing bugs, in order to provide the software that the user is licensing. If you buy a table from a carpenter and it turns out that one of the joints is a little funny and squeaks when weight is applied, and the carpenter hopes to have your business in the future, you can be 100% certain that a fix will be found within a reasonable amount of time and applied at a reasonable cost (it was, after all, not your fault). I expect the same from software engineers, myself included. Maybe I'm a sucker for listening to my licensees and fixing the bugs they find, absolutely gratis. I'm convinced, and experience bears me out, that goodwill sells more software. Leaving aside all questions of pride in good craftsmanship, etc.

In your description, Vas is a tormented genius/delicate flower whose feelings have been grievously assaulted by an angry mob of non-paying non-customers. Sorry, but Vas entered the business world with open eyes, and I don't give a rat's ass about his feelings -- I am a paying customer and expect the software experience I believed to be licensing when Vas took my money, and I expect that to be provided in a timely manner. As there is no demo version of Rybka with which one can test for gross errors in craftsmanship (MPV stalling, for instance), as one must rely on the "goodwill" and "trustworthiness" of the developer, I feel fully justified being ticked off.

Falling back on the straw man of "the angry mob" as any sort of rational justification for Vas' attitude toward his paying customers is a lazy and arrogant position. If you see your customers (real or potential) as a bunch of inconvenient whiners standing between you and your peace and quiet, you should probably stop selling whatever it is you're selling.

Jeremy

Exactly my point, he has stopped development for the consumer base of endusers. Development now appears (to me anyway) to be more concentrated on dealing with distributors, other manufacturors, other businesses and quite possibly investors. This way he gets the fun of being a business guy without the horrors of having to deal with the internet phenomenon of the masses allowing at least the vocal part of themselves to become a mob led by thugs? Wasn't that also partly the reason *you* left talkchess?

[Jeremy Bernstein]

In this case, it's the world view of a member of the "producing class". From a purely legal perspective, Vas has absolutely no obligation to his licensees -- we can agree on that. However, if Rybka is to be a functioning business, Vas has to provide the additional "service" of fixing bugs, in order to provide the software that the user is licensing. If you buy a table from a carpenter and it turns out that one of the joints is a little funny and squeaks when weight is applied, and the carpenter hopes to have your business in the future, you can be 100% certain that a fix will be found within a reasonable amount of time and applied at a reasonable cost (it was, after all, not your fault). I expect the same from software engineers, myself included. Maybe I'm a sucker for listening to my licensees and fixing the bugs they find, absolutely gratis. I'm convinced, and experience bears me out, that goodwill sells more software. Leaving aside all questions of pride in good craftsmanship, etc.

In your description, Vas is a tormented genius/delicate flower whose feelings have been grievously assaulted by an angry mob of non-paying non-customers. Sorry, but Vas entered the business world with open eyes, and I don't give a rat's ass about his feelings -- I am a paying customer and expect the software experience I believed to be licensing when Vas took my money, and I expect that to be provided in a timely manner. As there is no demo version of Rybka with which one can test for gross errors in craftsmanship (MPV stalling, for instance), as one must rely on the "goodwill" and "trustworthiness" of the developer, I feel fully justified being ticked off.

Falling back on the straw man of "the angry mob" as any sort of rational justification for Vas' attitude toward his paying customers is a lazy and arrogant position. If you see your customers (real or potential) as a bunch of inconvenient whiners standing between you and your peace and quiet, you should probably stop selling whatever it is you're selling.

Jeremy

Exactly my point, he has stopped development for the consumer base of endusers. Development now appears (to me anyway) to be more concentrated on dealing with distributors, other manufacturors, other businesses and quite possibly investors. This way he gets the fun of being a business guy without the horrors of having to deal with the internet phenomenon of the masses allowing at least the vocal part of themselves to become a mob led by thugs? Wasn't that also partly the reason *you* left talkchess?

Well, we're talking about different thugs. I don't consider Vas' angry customers to be a mob led by thugs. They are dissatisfied consumers and I completely identify with that dissatisfaction. If some portion, even a large, loud portion, of those angry voices are non-paying non-customers, well, that's the price of doing business, and the price of being at the top -- you think that Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt cry themselves to sleep at night?

The thugs that catalyzed my decision to leave talkchess are the pure result of that internet phenomenon you describe -- a relatively unremarkable clique of self-proclaimed experts and their suggestible hangers-on who feel entitled telling everyone else how to live their lives. But there's virtually no overlap between this "mob of thugs" and the one you're complaining about.

Jeremy

[Chris Whittington]

In this case, it's the world view of a member of the "producing class". From a purely legal perspective, Vas has absolutely no obligation to his licensees -- we can agree on that. However, if Rybka is to be a functioning business, Vas has to provide the additional "service" of fixing bugs, in order to provide the software that the user is licensing. If you buy a table from a carpenter and it turns out that one of the joints is a little funny and squeaks when weight is applied, and the carpenter hopes to have your business in the future, you can be 100% certain that a fix will be found within a reasonable amount of time and applied at a reasonable cost (it was, after all, not your fault). I expect the same from software engineers, myself included. Maybe I'm a sucker for listening to my licensees and fixing the bugs they find, absolutely gratis. I'm convinced, and experience bears me out, that goodwill sells more software. Leaving aside all questions of pride in good craftsmanship, etc.

In your description, Vas is a tormented genius/delicate flower whose feelings have been grievously assaulted by an angry mob of non-paying non-customers. Sorry, but Vas entered the business world with open eyes, and I don't give a rat's ass about his feelings -- I am a paying customer and expect the software experience I believed to be licensing when Vas took my money, and I expect that to be provided in a timely manner. As there is no demo version of Rybka with which one can test for gross errors in craftsmanship (MPV stalling, for instance), as one must rely on the "goodwill" and "trustworthiness" of the developer, I feel fully justified being ticked off.

Falling back on the straw man of "the angry mob" as any sort of rational justification for Vas' attitude toward his paying customers is a lazy and arrogant position. If you see your customers (real or potential) as a bunch of inconvenient whiners standing between you and your peace and quiet, you should probably stop selling whatever it is you're selling.

Jeremy

Exactly my point, he has stopped development for the consumer base of endusers. Development now appears (to me anyway) to be more concentrated on dealing with distributors, other manufacturors, other businesses and quite possibly investors. This way he gets the fun of being a business guy without the horrors of having to deal with the internet phenomenon of the masses allowing at least the vocal part of themselves to become a mob led by thugs? Wasn't that also partly the reason *you* left talkchess?

Well, we're talking about different thugs. I don't consider Vas' angry customers to be a mob led by thugs. They are dissatisfied consumers and I completely identify with that dissatisfaction. If some portion, even a large, loud portion, of those angry voices are non-paying non-customers, well, that's the price of doing business, and the price of being at the top -- you think that Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt cry themselves to sleep at night?

The thugs that catalyzed my decision to leave talkchess are the pure result of that internet phenomenon you describe -- a relatively unremarkable clique of self-proclaimed experts and their suggestible hangers-on who feel entitled telling everyone else how to live their lives. But there's virtually no overlap between this "mob of thugs" and the one you're complaining about.

Jeremy

If there are valid complaints, well fine, but the whole mess over at talkchess seems to me to be a mass assault on all fronts where perhaps validly complaining users are just mixed in with the haters. How to begin to even tell them apart, and why bother, there's no satisfying the hater community. Maybe you ought to stop being angry, get over it and move on. Vas is out of enduser computer chess as far as I can tell, driven out by his experience. btw, when a successful commercial programmer brings out a new release there are armies of hangers on of other programs who try to sabotage the release with lies of bugs that don't exist, bad reports and so on. There's only one defense against that; render the forum where it happens as unimportant by the simple expedient of ignoring it. Which is what ALL commercial programmers do, is it not?