FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

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Chris Whittington
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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by Chris Whittington » Tue May 12, 2015 12:15 am

BB+ wrote:
Chris Whittington wrote:But, what I don't understand, is why it is, many years after a tournament, and using "Rule 2" as basis for an investigation tribunal, just why the investigation tribunal cannot be set up to be fair and impartial?
I feel like I'm a broken record and repeating this for the umpteen bazillionth time, but: it seems Levy originally had the idea that the Panel would be some sort of meeting-of-the-minds of both sides, they would agree on the facts, the Secretariat would sum this up, and then the Board would rule. Any disputed facts would have each side (comprised of Panel members as they individually chose) put forth their views, and the Board would try the facts if necessary.

However, despite Levy's attempts to get Rajlich to join the Panel (either alone or with his advisors), this did not happen [I prefer to plead my case with the final arbiter rather than with the accusers], and moreover a couple of notable Rajlich defenders either left the Panel or chose not to re-apply. At that point, the Panel realised that the situation was more adversarial (indeed, Rajlich himself termed the Panel members "the accusers"), and by-and-large produced something to which Rajlich should respond. I would say that the "investigation tribunal" was "fair and impartial" to the extent that most investigations would be, though if one imagines the Panel process (as opposed to the Board decision) as a "trial" then indeed it would not be, most obviously as Rajlich was not heard by the Panel (by his own choice).
chose not to reapply is about the most ridiculous characterisation I read this year. Do you want a fight or something? Probably it would feel like hurling rocks from one galaxy to another.

I leave you to chew on the sentiment in Attack of the Clones, the bias attack language has been identified to some extent by Syzgsy(sp). If Levy thought there was any chance of some sort of analysis-synthesis between a group of attackers and a lone defender (ever been in that situation?) he is even lower in EQ than I could possibly have imagined. Defender has no upside, massive downside, cannot change the minds of the biased by reason in any case, and huge stress. It's an impossible situation and to imagine anyone would voluntarily agree to enter into it is just plain dumb. Far more sensible is to wait until the attack side presents their case, and then make a decision. Which is what he did. Commercially well taken. Hwy waste your time over an unknown frame, stressed out, unable to work/against switch off the entire thing and work. Please.

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by hyatt » Tue May 12, 2015 1:56 am

There was NOTHING wrong with David's article. Absolutely nothing. He pointed out a problem that was relatively new in terms of origin (cloning/copying, I have been involved in a half-dozen of these over the past 10 years as have others - Le Petite, Voyager, etc...) and a problem that has now suddenly escalated with very strong open-source programs like (originally Crafty), then Fruit, and more recently ippolit/robbolito.

There have been similar papers written about professional sports and steroid or performance-enhancing drug / blood doping usage on the rise. Are they biased against someone, or are they generating discussion and awareness of what has become a serious problem with professional sports (and even amateur/college/high-school sports)?

Pointing out a problem shows an interest / willingness to address the problem and try to somehow help. You want to characterize that as PART of the problem. That is complete and utter nonsense. Awareness is the first step. Recognition is the second. Solving the problem is the final step. David's paper was about awareness. The problem is here. It is real. It is NOW. It needs to be addressed. Then the panel came along to recognize the problems. Solving the problem is as yet unexplored territory. Modify rules to allow clones/derivatives. Create special clone/derivative-welcome events. I'm not sure what the answer is. But at the present, it does NOT include just turning the other way when someone tries to enter an original-only event.

You guys have no technical basis for your arguments. All you can do is complain "maybe others have done this and gotten away with it..." Nobody cares. "There isn't enough evidence to convince us." There was more than enough evidence to convince a significant number of people that participated on the panel. "There was no representation for Vas' side of the discussion." You and Ed could have participated, but you let pettiness get in the way of fairness and excluded yourselves voluntarily. You keep claiming that the panel or I had not allowed you to join. False. It just took longer than you were willing to wait. That sounds like your/Ed's problem rather than ours. Vas didn't participate yet he was asked several times to do so. That was HIS shortsightedness. Even after the panel had completed its task, he continued to refuse and would apparently like to use the old "let's just delay and delay"...

You might notice there is no outcry over this, except for the two of you and maybe 3-4-5 people on RF. There is certainly a larger group that supports the panel's conclusions than those that don't. NO way it would ever be unanimous anyway, and there was no such requirement or I doubt any of us would have even signed on the secretariat / panel, since unanimous decisions are VERY hard to come by.

This is done, nothing will change unless Vas asks the ICGA board to reconsider the lifetime ban, and they reach some sort of agreement to confirm that the current version of Rybka satisfies the originality rule (rule 2) via some mutually agreed-on 3rd party. Until that point, all you are doing is creating noise, and not doing one single thing to create progress.

As far as your "one vs many" argument. If I were innocent, I would do everything in my power to prove it, rather than sit quietly and get slam-dunked. Wouldn't matter if it was me against one other, or me against 100 others. I would NOT sit by idly and watch all my efforts burn to the ground. IF I WERE INNOCENT, which is a big IF of course. IMHO Vas knows what he did was wrong. And he's moved on. You might consider doing the same.

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by Rebel » Tue May 12, 2015 9:10 am

BB wrote:
Chris Whittington wrote:whilst simultaneously snarking at Ed
I think my grievances with Mr. Schröder are well-known. I don't consider him to be a decent person (and have not for some time), particularly due to his underdeveloped ability to understand concepts like privacy.
You did not comment on my Assange / Snowden post.

1. That the ICGA breached Vas privacy. By your logic Levy is not decent. I don't see you utter grievances with Mr. Levy. It must be your underdeveloped ability to understand concepts like privacy.

2. Whether you agree with what Assange and Snowden did is relative. The exposed party (US government in this case) will feel hurt and will point out they (Assange and Snowden) have no concept of the Law while large parts of the world population will call Assange and Snowden heroes. In my case, me leaking only the direct competitors of Vas and what they voted, you feel the hurt party while it became an eye-opener for others. Nothing to do with privacy other than to expose abuse and wrong doing as a result of a bad procedure from the start.

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by Rebel » Tue May 12, 2015 9:59 am

BB+ wrote: I guess you are next going to argue that Dailey, Hair, and I have some "bias" in our subsequent paper on move similarity?
About the paper -

I am not going to say anything about Don and Adam, only about you.

2 points immediately spring to mind, actually their absense while avaliable to you!

The first point being debatable, the second point is most serious and smelling to bias.

Point-1 from the counter investigation.
Doch 09.980 is Don Dailey's return to the computer chess arena in 2009 after a long absence, an engine (like Rybka) coming out of nothing with an incredible CCRL rating of 2970 elo. Both Doch and Rybka seem to have no connection to Fruit, they both are relative safe and far away from the 60% gray area and only diifer a neglectful 3 percent in comparison with Fruit 2.1

Furthermore both authors don't hide the origin of their success: the open-sources. From the Doch 09.980 README file we read:

Code: Select all

     Also, much credit goes to the authors of open source chess programs. 
      Many of the ideas and techniques for doch have been borrowed from
                       these wonderful works of art.   
If Doch 09.980 is an original engine then so is Rybka 1.0 Beta.

We want to emphasize that the last thing we want is to question is the integrity of programmer Don Dailey, we don't. The above information is strictly meant as another piece of counter evidence to unmask the ICGA verdict as a regrettable moment in the history of computer chess.

---------------------------

Point-2 From the same counter investigation.
Somewhere in 2012 Mark Watkins and I agreed to an experiment. I proposed Mark to take the Fruit source code and change all evaluation values to Rybka values, then measure the percentage difference with similarity tester. Watkins took the challenge and reported a 4% increase.

From Zach's document - Simply put, Rybka's evaluation is virtually identical to Fruit's.

Meaning, if we give Fruit (or Rybka 1.0 beta for that matter) all the same evaluation values then (using Zach's words) Fruit and Rybka are virtually identical. Naturally Watkins liked the idea, enough for him to put considerable time in the idea, for me the outcome was quite an important moment.

If suddenly similarity tester would report sky-high numbers then certainly I would have to rethink my position from scratch.

And the Rybka-Fruit similarity went up from 54% to 58%.

Now 58% similarity is a very poor number for 2 identical evaluations.

----------------

From the LOOP case we know how a similarity percentage looks like of 2 (almost) indentical evaluations:

Code: Select all

 Fruit 2.2.1        vs  Loop 2007          84.73% (similarity) 
The fact you do not mention this experiment you have done yourself, while crucial to the subject of the artcile itself (similarity) is flat out bias and the whole document reads as a justification for your biased COMP-EVAL in where you fail to mention that EVERY eval ingrediënt between Fruit and Rybka is coded DIFFERENTLY.

I am sorry to say, but I have misjudged you.

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by Rebel » Tue May 12, 2015 11:03 am

BB+ wrote: In the case at hand, I think the phrase "lying whiner/distorter" is more directly applicable to Mr. Schröder than Mr. Whittington. In my view, the most significant error of the Secretariat was their granting of Panel access to Mr. Schröder after the investigation ended, as he seems to understand the word "private" in a very peculiar way. For instance, he joins Rajlich in complaining (4.2) to the EC about a "privacy breach" with respect to Rajlich's emails, and yet simultaneously posts and web-hosts a significant number of similarly "private" emails from Jaap, myself, Fabien, Zach, hyatt, Levy, MarkL, ... In an analogous manner, Mr .Whittington appears to conflate "public interest" with his own interest. "Any psychologist" would tell you the above type of confusions are typically a sign of a leisurely moral development.
I am fine with your characterization of me. Basically you (and of course others) from the start have underestimated what you and others have set in motion would equally backfire on you. Classic Newton's 3th Law. I easily justify myself as a whistleblower (like Assange / Snowden) to expose the dirty laundry of the ICGA. That you don't like it, that I understand, but leaks in the eye of the public are justified as long as they contain relevant "news". And notice the EU is working very hard on a Law to protect whistleblowers because they recognize their value. Suimarized as, without criticism no progress.


Rebel wrote:Bob, if I were a revengeful person, ...
"Any psychologist" would tell you that the person saying these things is indeed revengeful, but simultaneously realises that the facts of the matter run gravely against them, and so they turn to this pompous "If I/Vas were revengeful", hoping to spook the other person... :roll:
I think you missed the essence of the anology, to keep a mirror in front of Bob. Surely some sarcasm was part of it.

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Chris Whittington
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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by Chris Whittington » Tue May 12, 2015 11:08 am

hyatt wrote:There was NOTHING wrong with David's article. Absolutely nothing. He pointed out a problem that was relatively new in terms of origin (cloning/copying, I have been involved in a half-dozen of these over the past 10 years as have others - Le Petite, Voyager, etc...) and a problem that has now suddenly escalated with very strong open-source programs like (originally Crafty), then Fruit, and more recently ippolit/robbolito.

There have been similar papers written about professional sports and steroid or performance-enhancing drug / blood doping usage on the rise. Are they biased against someone, or are they generating discussion and awareness of what has become a serious problem with professional sports (and even amateur/college/high-school sports)?

Pointing out a problem shows an interest / willingness to address the problem and try to somehow help. You want to characterize that as PART of the problem. That is complete and utter nonsense. Awareness is the first step. Recognition is the second. Solving the problem is the final step. David's paper was about awareness. The problem is here. It is real. It is NOW. It needs to be addressed. Then the panel came along to recognize the problems. Solving the problem is as yet unexplored territory. Modify rules to allow clones/derivatives. Create special clone/derivative-welcome events. I'm not sure what the answer is. But at the present, it does NOT include just turning the other way when someone tries to enter an original-only event.

You guys have no technical basis for your arguments. All you can do is complain "maybe others have done this and gotten away with it..." Nobody cares. "There isn't enough evidence to convince us." There was more than enough evidence to convince a significant number of people that participated on the panel. "There was no representation for Vas' side of the discussion." You and Ed could have participated, but you let pettiness get in the way of fairness and excluded yourselves voluntarily. You keep claiming that the panel or I had not allowed you to join. False. It just took longer than you were willing to wait. That sounds like your/Ed's problem rather than ours. Vas didn't participate yet he was asked several times to do so. That was HIS shortsightedness. Even after the panel had completed its task, he continued to refuse and would apparently like to use the old "let's just delay and delay"...

You might notice there is no outcry over this, except for the two of you and maybe 3-4-5 people on RF. There is certainly a larger group that supports the panel's conclusions than those that don't. NO way it would ever be unanimous anyway, and there was no such requirement or I doubt any of us would have even signed on the secretariat / panel, since unanimous decisions are VERY hard to come by.

This is done, nothing will change unless Vas asks the ICGA board to reconsider the lifetime ban, and they reach some sort of agreement to confirm that the current version of Rybka satisfies the originality rule (rule 2) via some mutually agreed-on 3rd party. Until that point, all you are doing is creating noise, and not doing one single thing to create progress.

As far as your "one vs many" argument. If I were innocent, I would do everything in my power to prove it, rather than sit quietly and get slam-dunked. Wouldn't matter if it was me against one other, or me against 100 others. I would NOT sit by idly and watch all my efforts burn to the ground. IF I WERE INNOCENT, which is a big IF of course. IMHO Vas knows what he did was wrong. And he's moved on. You might consider doing the same.
On Rybka Forum, Syzsgy posted the following quotes from the Levy "Attack of the Clones" article:

http://www.chessvibes.com/?q=reports/at ... the-clones
Attack of the clones
(...)
Genuinely achieving a great result in a top level chess tournament requires years of painstaking effort by a highly skilled and highly motivated programmer or team of programmers, yet the creation of a clone steals the glory and public acclaim from its rightful owner. The ICGA would like to see this disgusting practice stopped and those who perpetrate the cloning publicly exposed for what they are. This article is the ICGA’s opening shot in that struggle.
(...)
The Rybka-Fruit Case
In cases such as the antics of Langer and Espin very little proof is needed to establish the cloning. But in some cases there is a more sophisticated cloning effort, when the clone programmer(s) attempt to hide their actions by making changes to the code of “their” program, presumably hoping to obscure the original source of the algorithms, ideas and the original code itself.
(...)
At this point in time I do not intend to make any definitive statement of my own on these allegations, but will allow the reader to form their own opinion after reading the following.
(...)
Will someone volunteer to do this to help the ICGA on its way to stamping out these insidious practices?


He went on to say that each and every one of those quotes "disqualifies Levy as an impartial judge". Also that "bias was there right from the very beginning". You failed to respond. He is a lawyer by the way so I think I take his view on what is and what isn't debarring from judge-status as trumping yours.

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by H.G.Muller » Tue May 12, 2015 11:29 am

Indeed, allowing others to form their own opinion is a sure sign that you are not qualified to rule. The whole idea that people should be allowed to have their own opinions makes me sick. Do you also loath such people?

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by Chris Whittington » Tue May 12, 2015 12:04 pm

H.G.Muller wrote:Indeed, allowing others to form their own opinion is a sure sign that you are not qualified to rule. The whole idea that people should be allowed to have their own opinions makes me sick. Do you also loath such people?
Glib and simplistic analysis, did you look to see what readers were being invited to read.

Levy invites readers to form their own opinion after reading ..... "Simply put, Rybka's evaluation is virtually identical to Fruit's." etc. etc.

He wouldn't dream of offering his own opinion, but here's 2 and 2 to make 4 with.

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by BB+ » Tue May 12, 2015 2:26 pm

Rebel wrote:Young Zach understood and wasn't afraid to speak out. And it didn't hurt him. In fact I respect him for that.
My recollection is that when "Young Zach" left (in no small part due to your antics) he stated that he voted based on the evidence as he saw it, and that he had couldn't say on what other Panel members based their vote. I took it mean that he would rather have had a (long) enumeration: "Regarding evidence X, do you find it convincing, and do you think it is relevant to Rule #2", and everyone would say yes/no/abstain on each. You can try to contact him to find out his opinion, but I doubt he will respond as he concluded that anything he said would be twisted, decontextualized, and used against him on top-5000.nl
Chris Whittington wrote:chose not to reapply is about the most ridiculous characterisation I read this year.
If you had no intention of re-applying, due to the smell of Hyatt/Levy exclusion, then why exactly did you waste my time trying to get me to liaise the situation in the first place? Simply to plead with me not to join the Panel?
Rebel wrote:You did not comment on my Assange / Snowden post.
Do I have to comment on every fanciful political parallel that you concoct?
Rebel wrote:I easily justify myself as a whistleblower
Whistleblowers are usually for things in the public interest, often with (gasp) actual governments involved, and affecting significant sections of a population. I fail to see how the ICGA situation (relevant to maybe 100 people at best, of the highly esoteric "computer chess" special-interest group) is much comparable. There is much more of a "public interest" in being trustworthy and keeping private things private.

Or to cite (following Mr. Whittington) Wikipedia on whistleblowing: Whistleblower protection laws and regulations guarantee freedom of speech for workers and contractors in certain situations. Are you a worker or a contractor with the ICGA?
Rebel wrote:That the ICGA breached Vas privacy. By your logic Levy is not decent.
The ICGA published the whole Rajlich/Levy correspondence, of which Levy was part, and as a matter of record in the investigation. When asked, it seems they removed it. You, on the other hand, publish snips and pieces, whatever fits your purpose, sometimes with asking, other times with not. A typical "conversation" with Mr. Schröder goes like this: "I'd like to post your (email) comments on my webpage. Can I do that?" Answer: no. A few weeks later, "Coming back to your comments about X, I'm done with subject and for completeness would like to record your views too. Everyone else has agreed, and I'll edit it as you see fit." Answer: no. A couple of months later: "I still feel that adding your comments to my webpage would help give the full picture blah blah." Answer: no reply to email. Webpage then says: "I contacted X about his comments, but he refused to respond." Some more time passes. Another email, another lack of reply. Webpage changed to: "I have contacted X, and since he no longer seems interested in the subject I have decided to record his comments so that they are not lost to posterity." (Of course, the comments are snipped down and variously highlighted in whatever manner Mr. Schröder prefers).

Incidentally, I was recently contacted by someone who had I not heard from for awhile (no, not Zach), saying that he had accidentally tripped over this thread, and that he didn't think I needed any more "ammunition" against Ed on the privacy issue, but in any case that I could mention XYZ (which I have not, up to this point). So I'm not exactly alone in my opinions here.
Rebel wrote:they both are relative safe and far away from the 60% gray area
This is your invention of the "60% gray area". As argued in Section 7 of the paper, 60% (under the given testing conditions) is much beyond merely "gray".
Rebel wrote:neglectful 3 percent in comparison with Fruit 2.1
Your so-called "neglectful 3 percent" is more than a standard deviation! :!: [Already on your clone.htm page Adam says "the standard deviation of the data was 2.86" for the 99 families, while depending on the comparison pool 3% is as high as 1.4σ]. Either you are ignorant in statistics (which I doubt), or are simply being disingenuous. Similarly with (see page 58 of Rybka Reloaded) your listing of "Different FEN parsing" and "different Zobrist hash keys" as Rybka/Fruit differences that Zach and I "missed", as if they would have anything to do with a Rule #2 violation. I might expect such silliness from Riis, but with you? :?:
Rebel wrote: Now 58% similarity is a very poor number for 2 identical evaluations.
The actual numbers, as noted in the middle of page 19, were 56% and 60% similarity [see my email mid-April 2012]. Further, again as noted in the paper, having identical evaluation functions is only part of the picture, as by making search changes the move selections could vary (cf. Thinker).
Rebel wrote:The fact you do not mention this experiment you have done yourself
I personally did not do the experiment you mention (LOOP/Fruit at 84%). It was part of Adam Hair's original data set over 378 engines. However, as explained in the paper, there was a family-based filtration (as Mr. Whittington had desired with EVAL_COMP) which tended to remove "obvious" clones -- indeed Adam's initial data analysis already preferred to discuss the 99 "families", or as Adam states: The 99 engines listed above can be used to make judgements on the level of similarity found between engines from the larger group and other, supposedly unrelated engines. Before listing the highest move-matchings in the list of 378, he gives the five most extreme examples after delimiting by family (there are some pairs in the unique engines sample that have greater then 59.46% (5σ) moves matched). I do not see why you concentrate on the extremal numbers in the data from the full 378 engines, as opposed to those from the "unique engines" sample (which we also further pared down from 99 to 86 in an alternative analysis), as the latter are much more relevant when making comparisons. The fact that ProgramX/CloneY matches at 85% does not say much about whether 60% should be considered a large percentage for a presumably unrelated pair.

Moreover, we discuss this further in Section 4.3, upon noting the comparisons a la Riis (where eg Rybka/Fruit is compared to an obvious clone pair like Houdini/Strelka) are not particularly useful. Similarly, we also didn't list numbers for intra-family comparisons like Robbolito/IPPOLIT/IvanHoe/Igorrit/..., which presumably again would be quite high. This is hardly a form of "bias", but rather a necessary filtration (removing obvious clones) to make the paper sensible and sensitive to the question of move similarity distribution in (presumably) unrelated engines (and indeed, we discuss what it can really mean to be "unrelated", particularly in the Internet age).
Rebel wrote:in where you fail to mention that EVERY eval ingrediënt between Fruit and Rybka is coded DIFFERENTLY.
This is an utterly irrelevant point. It is trivial that a bitboard engine will be coded "DIFFERENTLY" than a mailbox engine. :idea: This is also why most of the first 48 pages of your Rybka Reloaded (analysing Zach's work) is essentially worthless, as you concentrate on some inapplicable standard called "code theft". The EVAL_COMP analysis was whether the evaluation features matched, not how they were coded. For the purposes of Rule #2 originality, the exact coding does not matter, as emphasised many times in many places, eg Levy in his ChessBase interview, or me in my rebuttal to Riis.
Chris Whittington wrote:did you look to see what readers were being invited to read. Levy invites readers to form their own opinion after reading ..... "Simply put, Rybka's evaluation is virtually identical to Fruit's."
And after reading Rajlich's reply: Aside from that, this document is horribly bogus. All that "Rybka code" isn't Rybka code, it's just someone's imagination. But then, maybe it is just my making of excuses for Levy that lead me to quote both parts, rather than just one... :roll:

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Re: FIDE Rules on ICGA - Rybka controversy

Post by hyatt » Tue May 12, 2015 4:04 pm

Chris Whittington wrote:
hyatt wrote:There was NOTHING wrong with David's article. Absolutely nothing. He pointed out a problem that was relatively new in terms of origin (cloning/copying, I have been involved in a half-dozen of these over the past 10 years as have others - Le Petite, Voyager, etc...) and a problem that has now suddenly escalated with very strong open-source programs like (originally Crafty), then Fruit, and more recently ippolit/robbolito.

There have been similar papers written about professional sports and steroid or performance-enhancing drug / blood doping usage on the rise. Are they biased against someone, or are they generating discussion and awareness of what has become a serious problem with professional sports (and even amateur/college/high-school sports)?

Pointing out a problem shows an interest / willingness to address the problem and try to somehow help. You want to characterize that as PART of the problem. That is complete and utter nonsense. Awareness is the first step. Recognition is the second. Solving the problem is the final step. David's paper was about awareness. The problem is here. It is real. It is NOW. It needs to be addressed. Then the panel came along to recognize the problems. Solving the problem is as yet unexplored territory. Modify rules to allow clones/derivatives. Create special clone/derivative-welcome events. I'm not sure what the answer is. But at the present, it does NOT include just turning the other way when someone tries to enter an original-only event.

You guys have no technical basis for your arguments. All you can do is complain "maybe others have done this and gotten away with it..." Nobody cares. "There isn't enough evidence to convince us." There was more than enough evidence to convince a significant number of people that participated on the panel. "There was no representation for Vas' side of the discussion." You and Ed could have participated, but you let pettiness get in the way of fairness and excluded yourselves voluntarily. You keep claiming that the panel or I had not allowed you to join. False. It just took longer than you were willing to wait. That sounds like your/Ed's problem rather than ours. Vas didn't participate yet he was asked several times to do so. That was HIS shortsightedness. Even after the panel had completed its task, he continued to refuse and would apparently like to use the old "let's just delay and delay"...

You might notice there is no outcry over this, except for the two of you and maybe 3-4-5 people on RF. There is certainly a larger group that supports the panel's conclusions than those that don't. NO way it would ever be unanimous anyway, and there was no such requirement or I doubt any of us would have even signed on the secretariat / panel, since unanimous decisions are VERY hard to come by.

This is done, nothing will change unless Vas asks the ICGA board to reconsider the lifetime ban, and they reach some sort of agreement to confirm that the current version of Rybka satisfies the originality rule (rule 2) via some mutually agreed-on 3rd party. Until that point, all you are doing is creating noise, and not doing one single thing to create progress.

As far as your "one vs many" argument. If I were innocent, I would do everything in my power to prove it, rather than sit quietly and get slam-dunked. Wouldn't matter if it was me against one other, or me against 100 others. I would NOT sit by idly and watch all my efforts burn to the ground. IF I WERE INNOCENT, which is a big IF of course. IMHO Vas knows what he did was wrong. And he's moved on. You might consider doing the same.
On Rybka Forum, Syzsgy posted the following quotes from the Levy "Attack of the Clones" article:

http://www.chessvibes.com/?q=reports/at ... the-clones
Attack of the clones
(...)
Genuinely achieving a great result in a top level chess tournament requires years of painstaking effort by a highly skilled and highly motivated programmer or team of programmers, yet the creation of a clone steals the glory and public acclaim from its rightful owner. The ICGA would like to see this disgusting practice stopped and those who perpetrate the cloning publicly exposed for what they are. This article is the ICGA’s opening shot in that struggle.
(...)
The Rybka-Fruit Case
In cases such as the antics of Langer and Espin very little proof is needed to establish the cloning. But in some cases there is a more sophisticated cloning effort, when the clone programmer(s) attempt to hide their actions by making changes to the code of “their” program, presumably hoping to obscure the original source of the algorithms, ideas and the original code itself.
(...)
At this point in time I do not intend to make any definitive statement of my own on these allegations, but will allow the reader to form their own opinion after reading the following.
(...)
Will someone volunteer to do this to help the ICGA on its way to stamping out these insidious practices?


He went on to say that each and every one of those quotes "disqualifies Levy as an impartial judge". Also that "bias was there right from the very beginning". You failed to respond. He is a lawyer by the way so I think I take his view on what is and what isn't debarring from judge-status as trumping yours.

Doesn't matter to me what HIS opinion is. I'd bet every judge in the land says the SAME things about criminal activity. Yet they are NOT self-recusing due to their bias against criminal acts. That particular argument has no merit whatsoever. Levy's paper identified a problem, nothing more. The problem is STILL present. I saw a judge on TV last week talking about intentions to try to drive drug trafficking out of the state. Is he biased? I saw a judge in Mississippi last night discussing the problems in law enforcement where police are being killed almost daily of late. Is he biased? Both of these are going to be sitting on the bench when trials are held.

It is utterly stupid to claim that because a judge is biased AGAINST illegal acts that he is no longer qualified to sit on the bench. I doubt you can find anyone that "just doesn't care" nor would anyone want such a person on the bench.

This is a ridiculous point to argue.

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