[computer-go] Knowing nothing about it

[Chrilly]

I'm not sure sometimes if a person's arguement is for the truth or just 
politics. I'm going to assume that it's for the truth. Feng Hsu may not know 
much about chess, but he enlisted the help of one who does. His name is 
Schaffer if I remeber correctly. He was decribed as a competitive chess 
player. Feng Hsu dragged him to IBM for the Deep Blue project. This is 
before IBM. Once at IBM a grand master works with the Feng Hsu group 
constantly. Let put things in perspective. The contribution of Feng Hsu is 
that He spear headed a effective chess hardware. Is he alone reponsible for 
the success of the Deep Blue? I, and anyone with a common sense, doubt it. 
By the way I read through his book in the Bookstore in couple hours when it 
just got published. My objection is that he didn't mention any technical 
details about the Deep blue. Actually Deep Thought as well. So I didn't buy 
it.

Dan Liu

I think the title of the paper was directed against H.Berliner. But its no 
doubt, that Feng Hsu was not the big chess expert. But he had chess-expert 
in the team. E.g. in the later stages before the Kasparov match Joel 
Benjamin.
I was also interested in technical details and the book covers them only in 
the beginning on a very general level. If one buys the books for technical 
details, its a waste of money (I got the book for free and even earned money 
for writing a review, so I can not complain).
 The first Chip-Test and Deep Thought papers are much more informative. I 
think at that stage the information policy was much more honest than later. 
Thats not only a problem of IBM, but of Feng Hsu himself. I have the feeling 
that he is disappointed that his merits were not recogniced enough. Eveybody 
knows Deep Blue, but who is Feng Hsu? He feels also not treated very well by 
IBM. I think he is right in this point. He deserved much more 
recognition/honor. But he compensates this by bragging. E.g. he mentioned on 
a chat a 10x speedup by a very ingenious pruning technique which is only 
possible in hardware. But he gave no details. I contacted him and his answer 
was "M.o.A". Method of Analogy invented by the Kaissa team (the Kaissa team 
did not implement the idea, because the overhead is in software higher than 
the savings). First of all I am sure, that the maximum possible speedup is 
much lower. This was e.g. confirmed by E.Donskoy, the inventor of the 
method. According to other sources the method was implemented in Deep Blue 
but switched of, because it was too unrealiable. As the project was 
cancelled it would have been possible to report the method and the results 
in more detail. Or if everything is secret, one should not brag with 
techniques which can not be tested by others.

The book is probably not the right place for such a detailed descriptions. I 
know this from own experience. I have a regularly column in a chess-magazin. 
I mix a lot of strange stories with some computer-chess information. 
According the editor about 10% of the readers buy the magazin for this 
column. If I would write only about technical details, the column would not 
exist anymore. The editor would use the space for other topics which are 
more interesting for the majority of readers.
The book is a novel. My main criticism is that its from the novel, from the 
literaric and psychological point of view, not very good. "One Jump Ahead" 
by J.Schaeffer is a much better and convincing story. But I think its almost 
impossible to write good literature in a foreign language. Maybe there is 
also a different cultural view.
 I met once Crazy Bird on a party of the Deep Blue team. I liked him and I 
think he is not crazy at all. Actually I was already in a state were I 
considered all Americans complety crazy (a typical sign of a cultural shock) 
and he was the only "normal" one. We made some jokes that we found togehter 
a company and everyone who speaks a correct English sentence is immediatly 
fired.

Nevertheless I liked also some of the stories and there is one 
characterisation which is really great. "The man who wants to BE your 
friend" about Frederic Friedel of ChessBase. I would have liked to invent 
this sentence by myself.

Chrilly