Re: computer-go: prevent cheating- NOT!

["Arthur H. Britto II" <ahbritto@xxxxxxx>]

An alternative to preventing cheating: devalue cheating.

Instead of scheduling tournaments and having prizes:

o Continually run matches over the Internet.

o Require programs to connect over the Internet

o Require programs to run 95% of the time to have a ranking.

o Publish all the games.

o Allow anyone to watch the games.

o Allow programs to run on any platform.

The most effective way to cheat is to have a person play.  Cheating for a
few hours during a tournament may be quite affordable.  However, by having
the competing programs constantly run, it will take substantial and
continual hours for a cheater or cheaters to achieve any sort of ranking.

If someone must make money from their program, they can:

o Participate in other tournaments for prize money.

o Use the notoriety of being highly ranked on this system as an endorsement
for a commercial version of their program.

Additionally, with this system the source and binary of a go program does
not need to be distributed.  This allows programmers to keep their code
confidential.

Many cheap web hosting services allow scripts (and other programs) to be run
on their servers.  So, constant Internet access need not necessarily form a
high barrier to entry.  Alternatively, perhaps one or more servers might be
shared by go programmers.   It would not surprise me if a computer or
processor manufacture would sponsor access to one or more of their machines
via the Internet.

Cheers,

Arthur Britto