RE: Plagiary problem

[Scott Dossey <sdossey@xxxxxxxx>]

	Elmer Elevator said:

	>>During the last round of the plagiarism 
	>>controversy, one wag thoughtlessly asked a 
	>>question something like this: 
	>>
	>>How can a filched program play better Go 
	>>than the program from which it is 
	>>filched? 
	>>
	>>... and I don't recall anyone satisfactorily 
	>>answering that. 


	That was indeed answered.

	You forget, the three top winners of Fost were two alleged handtalk
clones and goemate.

	If all three were handtalk, handtalk, I imagine, beats itself half
the time.  Somebody has to win, and it might as well be a plagiarized
version as a non-plagiarized version.

	Goemate, however, is not handtalk.  It is Chen Zhixing's new go
playing program and it hasn't been "tuned" yet to the level that handtalk
has.  Handtalk can beat it.  Chen Zhixing entered Goemate rather than
Handtalk because it is his latest program, and he has information about how
well it performed at the competitions.

	So it makes perfect sense. 

	Also someone mentioned there's more money in chess than Go:

	>It seems to me that part of the thing about coding go has 
	>less to do w/ becoming millionaires and
	>that it is an interesting problem.. (I'm guessing that a 
	>generic chess proggie makes more money than 
	>your typical go program). 

	>        -avi 

	I agree with you hear, Elmer Elevator.  I too disagree with this
statement for two reasons:

	1.  In order to make much money with game programs you pretty much
have to be close to the best.  In order to steal best chess program, you'd
have to break into IBM, and you'd have to spend lots of money on expensive
hardware.  In go you can just plagiarize Handtalk.

	2.  The Asian market for go programs is huge.   Go is a bigger game
worldwide in terms of population for chess.  If you are a contest winner,
you can sell your program all over Asia.

	-Scott Dossey

	I'm typing up my whole take on the Go plagiary problem--based on the
evidence on Chen Zhixing's web site (www.wulu.com)  I advise anybody who is
well versed in assembly language to read this site if you want to get a good
grasp on why the accusations of plagiary exist and what evidence there is.