[computer-go] Silver Star 2006 anyone?

[Chrilly]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Wedd" <nick at maproom.co.uk>
To: "computer-go" <computer-go at computer-go.org>
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: [computer-go] Silver Star 2006 anyone?


> In message <f06110400c1270051f2fe@[193.57.136.156]>, Francois Grieu 
> <fgrieu at francenet.fr> writes
>>Any info on the go program "Silver Star 2006"?
>>It was recently mentionned at
>>http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=34230
>
> I assume it is a version of the program also known as "KCC Igo", 
> originally created by disassembling HandTalk.
>
> Nick
> -- 

How does one know that they have disassembled Handtalk?

There was a case in computer-chess at the WC in Portoroz (somewhere in the 
80ths). The german Mr.Langer directly used a chip of R.Lang and build around 
his own chess-computer. The R.Lang team proved the cloning by showing that 
Mr.Langers machine had exactly the same bugs.

In case of  reverse engineering it is usually not possible to reproduce the 
original code by 100%. Even with the "best" attempts of the reverser the 
programm is not bug-compatible. If one transfers. the reverse-engineered 
programm from Assembly to C its also by reverse-engineering the clone 
difficult to prove the clonining. I assume nobody has ever dissassembler KCC 
Igo, because its a terrible work to do so.
I have my doubts that reverse-engineering pays off. Personally I have 
reverse-engineered the Shredder and the Rybka search. But nothing worked in 
Hydra. Same happened for Fruit were the nicely documented code is available. 
I have also tried to improve Fruit with Hydra ideas. Did not work either. I 
have learned much more by playing against Shredder and Rybka, reverse 
engineering was just a nice intellectual challenge. Only the Rybka-team 
profited from my attempts. I found a bug in their mating-code and sended 
them the fix.
Another rule of reverse engineering is: One can only can reverse-engineer 
something where one knowns how it works. If e.g. a function is called 
recursively and the arguments are negated and flipped, its alpha and beta, 
the argument which is decremented by 1 is the search depth......

Chrilly