>Deep Blue wasn't a very good chess program,
>compared to other programs like Fritz, however it
>had a lot of power
Do you have any EVIDENCE that Fritz is a better
chessprogram than Deep Blue, speed not included?
(You don't, because it's false. Also Deep Blue
made specific tradeoffs based on its speed. And
they could include all the knowledge they wanted
without a speed penalty because they had hardware
to play with. Fritz can't do that, and hence
it has to make compromises and stay dumber)
>And it had something else, it was designed
>completely to counter Kasparov's style, against
>any other opponent it would have played much
>weaker.
Do you have any EVIDENCE to support that?
Kasparov claimed this, but there is no reason
to believe it's true. He claimed a human made
several of the moves in the games as well.
He also invented a new tree search algorithm
which is extremely strong _when_ it can be
used.
He used a combination of this tree search and
rules (black can't win if this parttern
is present etc..) to solve it.
>about 30 at chess, 10 at checkers,
It's 38 for chess, 2.7 for 8x8 checkers (where
a comp is already world champion)
The use of tree search depends on a lot on
the tactical nature of the game. You can still
use it with a branching factor of over 100 if
the game is tactical enough. (so 5-7 ply searches
beat most humans)
But go needs more longtime planning, and you need
way more depth for that.
>Will they turn the computer off while he is
>resting? Or will it be allowed to continue to do
>exhaustive game tree searches during that time?
There would be no use to this between games,
(analyzing the starting position isnt going to
turn up much) but in case of an adjourned game
this would be fair and worthwhile.
During adjournaments most top players get sleep
while their seconds (assistants) try to figure
out how to win (or draw) the game.
>There's little reason to suspect that Deep Fritz
>would loose unless it's significantly slower (or
>it runs M$ software) than Deep Blue. Garri
>Kasparov was by far good enough to represent our
>kind...
Deep Fritz _is_ significantly slower and stupider
than Deep Blue.
And it does run on Windows. (Which is good,
because the Microsoft compilers are still faster
than GNU C for chessprograms)
And Kramnik's stile is much harder for a comp. (a
lot less tactical) I have no reason to believe the
machine stands a chance.
>To be fair, ChessBase sells just about every
>world-class PC-based non-Chessmaster program
>available. The programs are written by
>independent and rival groups. It's like saying
>that the book review pool on/. is rigged by only
>including books that Amazon will sell you.
This is true, but there are some issues.
First, ChessBase has acquired Tiger and Shredder
(which would have been _the_ strongest contenders
for the Kramnik match) very recently, perhaps
after the qualifier even.
The Tiger team wasn't even contacted about the
match.
Secondly, ChessBase is marketing 'Fritz' mainly,
and the other programs are somewhat ignored. This
is because of brand recognition. It goes even as
far that Shredder for pocket PC will be called
'Pocket Fritz' just because 'Fritz' is more known.
Most people have never heard of the other programs
either.
And which of their programs ends up playing Kramnik? Right...
The qualifier even started with a 5-0 lead for
Deep Junior, when Fritz 'miracously' came back
and won on tiebreak. This stuff can happen in
comp-comp matches, but it's a very nice
'coincidence' for ChessBase allright.
>you can buy a program that plays at over 2600 ELO
>and run it at home.
There are free ones even (Crafty being the most
well-known, ChessBase even offers a crippled
version as a plugin engine for Fritz).
>I wish they'd said what hardware they were
>running the thing on...
>Even more important is the fact that we need not
>search the full search tree (indeed Deep Blue did
>not, using instead something called singular
>extensions).
Deep Blue did not search the full tree, but
singular extensions are a different beast.
Singular extensions let the computer search
_more_ than would be needed.
The idea was to detect horizon effects and avoid
them. The overhead for doing this is large, but
the DB team believed they had so much computing
power anyway that it was worth the tradeoff.
This tradeoff was made in some other places
as well, for example Deep Blue did not use
nullmove pruning, something which nearly
every program nowaways does as which can
prune away large parts of the tree relatively
safely.DB's team decided it wasn't worth the risk
with the computing power they had.
Deep Fritz uses it very aggressively and hence
can sometimes see just as far Deep Blue could,
but also makes more mistakes because of it.
PS. Aske Plaat's proposed improvements are not
used in any top program noawadays. They cause
troule with some of the other tricks in use and
the gain is not large enough to live with them.
>Nope, you got it wrong. Deep Thought was the
>supercomputer used to find the answer to the
>question of life, [snip]
Deep Thought was a chesscomputer made by the
same team that made Deep and Deeper Blue and
was its direct predecessor. Deep Thought was
tuned fully automatically. Deep/Deeper Blue
had manual tuning on top of that.
What do you think I got wrong?
>It was basically tuned with the assumption that
>it would be playing Kasparov and so many people
>think that a different grandmaster could have
>beaten it.
Kasparov stated this directly after the match,
but there has been no evidence to illustrate it
whatsoever.
He also claimed a human was helping the machine
as well.
>One of the tricks of 'Deep Blue' was a library
>with every game of chess played at the master
>level in the last century. That's what made it
>play like a human.
And Kasparov simply sidestepped this by making
some seldomly played moves at the start. You
can see it easily by looking at the games. The
machines opening play was all but human.
>Kasparov lost the first game because of an error
>in his training, he prepared himself to play with
>a machine and got an almost human player.
It was still a machine, but just with a lot more
chessknowledge and tactical speed than anything
else at that time. He was expecting something
like Fritz (literally!) and got something much
more powerfull.
>Well... Vladimir has a chance if its a Linux that
>Deep Fritz is running on.
Fritzie only does Windows.
For Linux, there is a free chessprogram that is
just as strong and is opensouce (not really
free software), by Robert Hyatt, a university
professor that is a former computer chess world
champion.
>I'm not sure how Deep Fritz works, but I'm fairly
>certain it does something similar on some level
>(Hence the name?).
Somewhat yes. The key process is called minimaxing.
You try to maximize your score and minimize your
opponents.
Minimaxing has been speeded up by tricks such as
alphabeta pruning, nullmoves and hashtables (and
more). A computer like Deep Fritz searches about
14 (half)moves to 17 (half)moves., and more in
difficult variations.
Searching 17 ply and thinking you are winning
is going to be no good if you actually lose the
next move. This is called the horizon effect.
Without it, the computers would be king already.
BTW. The 'Deep' in the refers to the ability
to use multiple processors (of course its nice
for sales that it sounds like 'Deep' Blue). Fritz
is a common German name. The program is being
marketed by Germans (but programmed by a Dutchman)
I don't know where you got the statement that
Deep Fritz beat Deep Blue, but it's obviously
false given that Deep Blue never played anyone
but Kasparov.
There were single-chip versions of Deep Blue on
the web for a while, so it could be that they beat
such one. But its more than 400 times slower than
the full Deep Blue.
Also, the win vs. Kasparov was in a blitz game.
Computers have long been superior in those fast
games.
This is marketing people. Many here don't seem
to realize chess in multimillion business, and
lying is ok if it makes you sell better.
>They programmed Deep Blue, for example, by
>feeding it's heuristical engine with data from
>thousands of previous games.
No, this is only partly right. They did this for
the predecessor Deep Thought, but for Deep Blue
the parameters were tuned by human chess
grandmasters.
So far noone has been able to come up with a
technique that reaches as good results via
automatic tuning as manual tuning of the
parameters.
It's interesting that the programmer of Deep
Fritz (Franz Morsch) has been mouthing off that
his program is ready for Kramnik and should be
equal to Deep Blue.
They played in the Dutch Championships last year
and couldn't even manage to win. Now they're
saying they stand a chance vs the World Champion?
Well, if he goes too hard on vodka maybe.
This match is simply marketing. They know their
computer is going to lose, but unlike IBM, those
guys actually _sell_ their chesscomputers. And
many people are going to want the one that was
good enough to play the World Champion.
They even 'fixed' the qualifier for this event
so that only their programs played (Deep Fritz
and Deep Junior are both from the German ChessBase
company), nicely blocking out the computer World
Champion (Shredder), as well as blocking out most
other strong contenders (Crafty, Tiger, Rebel,
Hiarcs, Nimzo, Diep, etc...) on false grounds.
So, please don't say this match is anything like
Deep Blue - Kasparov. Fritz is significantly slower
and stupider, no matter what they would want you
to believe. This is in no way the best chess
computer to have ever existed.
Also, don't say this is the end of human
intelligence
if Kramnik loses. Not until a go program starts
beating me, at last:)
>erm... I did this already... took about 4 days
>for my Classic P233 to convert almost 3 gigs of
>MP3 to ogg.
From quality point of view that was a very bad
decision. MP3 is lossy, converting it to OGG will
only make it sound worse.
Because of the fundamental differences between
the two codecs, the result is quite bad actually.
There was a post on the vorbis list about this
earlier today.
Slashdot Mirror
First player to move wins.
The same uninformed nonsense again.
>Deep Blue wasn't a very good chess program,
>compared to other programs like Fritz, however it
>had a lot of power
Do you have any EVIDENCE that Fritz is a better
chessprogram than Deep Blue, speed not included?
(You don't, because it's false. Also Deep Blue
made specific tradeoffs based on its speed. And
they could include all the knowledge they wanted
without a speed penalty because they had hardware
to play with. Fritz can't do that, and hence
it has to make compromises and stay dumber)
>And it had something else, it was designed
>completely to counter Kasparov's style, against
>any other opponent it would have played much
>weaker.
Do you have any EVIDENCE to support that?
Kasparov claimed this, but there is no reason
to believe it's true. He claimed a human made
several of the moves in the games as well.
--
GCP
>and they rule at Connect 4
This game has been SOLVED by Victor L. Allis.
He also invented a new tree search algorithm
which is extremely strong _when_ it can be
used.
He used a combination of this tree search and
rules (black can't win if this parttern
is present etc..) to solve it.
>about 30 at chess, 10 at checkers,
It's 38 for chess, 2.7 for 8x8 checkers (where
a comp is already world champion)
The use of tree search depends on a lot on
the tactical nature of the game. You can still
use it with a branching factor of over 100 if
the game is tactical enough. (so 5-7 ply searches
beat most humans)
But go needs more longtime planning, and you need
way more depth for that.
--
GCP
>Will they turn the computer off while he is
>resting? Or will it be allowed to continue to do
>exhaustive game tree searches during that time?
There would be no use to this between games,
(analyzing the starting position isnt going to
turn up much) but in case of an adjourned game
this would be fair and worthwhile.
During adjournaments most top players get sleep
while their seconds (assistants) try to figure
out how to win (or draw) the game.
--
GCP
>There's little reason to suspect that Deep Fritz
>would loose unless it's significantly slower (or
>it runs M$ software) than Deep Blue. Garri
>Kasparov was by far good enough to represent our
>kind...
Deep Fritz _is_ significantly slower and stupider
than Deep Blue.
And it does run on Windows. (Which is good,
because the Microsoft compilers are still faster
than GNU C for chessprograms)
And Kramnik's stile is much harder for a comp. (a
lot less tactical) I have no reason to believe the
machine stands a chance.
--
GCP
>To be fair, ChessBase sells just about every /. is rigged by only
>world-class PC-based non-Chessmaster program
>available. The programs are written by
>independent and rival groups. It's like saying
>that the book review pool on
>including books that Amazon will sell you.
This is true, but there are some issues.
First, ChessBase has acquired Tiger and Shredder
(which would have been _the_ strongest contenders
for the Kramnik match) very recently, perhaps
after the qualifier even.
The Tiger team wasn't even contacted about the
match.
Secondly, ChessBase is marketing 'Fritz' mainly,
and the other programs are somewhat ignored. This
is because of brand recognition. It goes even as
far that Shredder for pocket PC will be called
'Pocket Fritz' just because 'Fritz' is more known.
Most people have never heard of the other programs
either.
And which of their programs ends up playing Kramnik? Right...
The qualifier even started with a 5-0 lead for
Deep Junior, when Fritz 'miracously' came back
and won on tiebreak. This stuff can happen in
comp-comp matches, but it's a very nice
'coincidence' for ChessBase allright.
>you can buy a program that plays at over 2600 ELO
>and run it at home.
There are free ones even (Crafty being the most
well-known, ChessBase even offers a crippled
version as a plugin engine for Fritz).
>I wish they'd said what hardware they were
>running the thing on...
8 CPU Pentium III 700Mhz was the last report.
--
GCP
>Even more important is the fact that we need not
>search the full search tree (indeed Deep Blue did
>not, using instead something called singular
>extensions).
Deep Blue did not search the full tree, but
singular extensions are a different beast.
Singular extensions let the computer search
_more_ than would be needed.
The idea was to detect horizon effects and avoid
them. The overhead for doing this is large, but
the DB team believed they had so much computing
power anyway that it was worth the tradeoff.
This tradeoff was made in some other places
as well, for example Deep Blue did not use
nullmove pruning, something which nearly
every program nowaways does as which can
prune away large parts of the tree relatively
safely.DB's team decided it wasn't worth the risk
with the computing power they had.
Deep Fritz uses it very aggressively and hence
can sometimes see just as far Deep Blue could,
but also makes more mistakes because of it.
PS. Aske Plaat's proposed improvements are not
used in any top program noawadays. They cause
troule with some of the other tricks in use and
the gain is not large enough to live with them.
--
GCP
>Nope, you got it wrong. Deep Thought was the
>supercomputer used to find the answer to the
>question of life, [snip]
Deep Thought was a chesscomputer made by the
same team that made Deep and Deeper Blue and
was its direct predecessor. Deep Thought was
tuned fully automatically. Deep/Deeper Blue
had manual tuning on top of that.
What do you think I got wrong?
>It was basically tuned with the assumption that
>it would be playing Kasparov and so many people
>think that a different grandmaster could have
>beaten it.
Kasparov stated this directly after the match,
but there has been no evidence to illustrate it
whatsoever.
He also claimed a human was helping the machine
as well.
--
GCP
>One of the tricks of 'Deep Blue' was a library
>with every game of chess played at the master
>level in the last century. That's what made it
>play like a human.
And Kasparov simply sidestepped this by making
some seldomly played moves at the start. You
can see it easily by looking at the games. The
machines opening play was all but human.
>Kasparov lost the first game because of an error
>in his training, he prepared himself to play with
>a machine and got an almost human player.
It was still a machine, but just with a lot more
chessknowledge and tactical speed than anything
else at that time. He was expecting something
like Fritz (literally!) and got something much
more powerfull.
--
GCP
>played with "fast" matches, allowing less time
>than normal championship "long" matches.
The match was fast in the sense that few games
were played, but Kasparov was allowed the full
thinking time.
>I had the idea no computer had been created that
>could beat a Grand Master human in a "long"
>match.
Those have existed for quite a while now. Most top
programs have no problems with 'weak' GrandMasters
(sub 2600 ELO rating) even at long timecontrols.
--
GCP
>Deep Blue Prototype
That should have rung a bell. Windows ruled Linux 0.01 too.
--
GCP
>Well... Vladimir has a chance if its a Linux that
:)
>Deep Fritz is running on.
Fritzie only does Windows.
For Linux, there is a free chessprogram that is
just as strong and is opensouce (not really
free software), by Robert Hyatt, a university
professor that is a former computer chess world
champion.
You can get it at
ftp://ftp.cis.uab.ebu/pub/hyatt/v18
It takes some finding to set up though
--
GCP
>I'm not sure how Deep Fritz works, but I'm fairly
>certain it does something similar on some level
>(Hence the name?).
Somewhat yes. The key process is called minimaxing.
You try to maximize your score and minimize your
opponents.
Minimaxing has been speeded up by tricks such as
alphabeta pruning, nullmoves and hashtables (and
more). A computer like Deep Fritz searches about
14 (half)moves to 17 (half)moves., and more in
difficult variations.
Searching 17 ply and thinking you are winning
is going to be no good if you actually lose the
next move. This is called the horizon effect.
Without it, the computers would be king already.
BTW. The 'Deep' in the refers to the ability
to use multiple processors (of course its nice
for sales that it sounds like 'Deep' Blue). Fritz
is a common German name. The program is being
marketed by Germans (but programmed by a Dutchman)
--
GCP
I don't know where you got the statement that
Deep Fritz beat Deep Blue, but it's obviously
false given that Deep Blue never played anyone
but Kasparov.
There were single-chip versions of Deep Blue on
the web for a while, so it could be that they beat
such one. But its more than 400 times slower than
the full Deep Blue.
Also, the win vs. Kasparov was in a blitz game.
Computers have long been superior in those fast
games.
This is marketing people. Many here don't seem
to realize chess in multimillion business, and
lying is ok if it makes you sell better.
--
GCP
>They programmed Deep Blue, for example, by
>feeding it's heuristical engine with data from
>thousands of previous games.
No, this is only partly right. They did this for
the predecessor Deep Thought, but for Deep Blue
the parameters were tuned by human chess
grandmasters.
So far noone has been able to come up with a
technique that reaches as good results via
automatic tuning as manual tuning of the
parameters.
Developing one could very well be a breakthrough.
--
GCP
It's interesting that the programmer of Deep
:)
Fritz (Franz Morsch) has been mouthing off that
his program is ready for Kramnik and should be
equal to Deep Blue.
They played in the Dutch Championships last year
and couldn't even manage to win. Now they're
saying they stand a chance vs the World Champion?
Well, if he goes too hard on vodka maybe.
This match is simply marketing. They know their
computer is going to lose, but unlike IBM, those
guys actually _sell_ their chesscomputers. And
many people are going to want the one that was
good enough to play the World Champion.
They even 'fixed' the qualifier for this event
so that only their programs played (Deep Fritz
and Deep Junior are both from the German ChessBase
company), nicely blocking out the computer World
Champion (Shredder), as well as blocking out most
other strong contenders (Crafty, Tiger, Rebel,
Hiarcs, Nimzo, Diep, etc...) on false grounds.
So, please don't say this match is anything like
Deep Blue - Kasparov. Fritz is significantly slower
and stupider, no matter what they would want you
to believe. This is in no way the best chess
computer to have ever existed.
Also, don't say this is the end of human
intelligence
if Kramnik loses. Not until a go program starts
beating me, at last
--
GCP
>A computer can only be as good as the person who
>programmed it to play chess!
This is so wrong...
This is like saying that a computer is only as
good in mathematics as the programmer that programmed it.
Don't think so.
--
GCP
>Is .ogg a more compact method? Can I fit more of
.ogg than .mp3 at
>my collection onto CDROM in
>equal sound quality?
Yes.
(Phew, that one was easy)
Welcome to the Vorbis world.
--
GCP
>Unless ogg uses a conceptually different .mp3->.ogg.
>technique to compress audio it should be
>possible to create a lossless converter for
It does. That is why the transcoding artifacts
are so bad.
Ogg is so different because they needed to avoid
the patents, and hence invent newer and better
stuff.
--
GCP
FUD
Ogg Vorbis plugins are available for most
players you mentioned, and there _are_ portables
who support it.
--
GCP
There's oggdrop.
It's a square with an icon of a fish. You drag
and drop your files on the fish and it starts
spinning. When it stops spinning your oggs
are ready.
--
GCP
>Have the software patents affected anyone here
>personally?
YES!
They make the hardware players and commercial
software packages more expensive.
--
GCP
>Ogg is apparently not the best (but who's to
>trust those musically inclined people)... so
>what's the purpose of this article?
The test was _highly_ flawed and that has been
pointed out noumerous times.
In independant double-blind tests, Vorbis has
come out ahead each time, along with AAC and
MPC.
--
GCP
>erm... I did this already... took about 4 days
>for my Classic P233 to convert almost 3 gigs of
>MP3 to ogg.
From quality point of view that was a very bad
decision. MP3 is lossy, converting it to OGG will
only make it sound worse.
Because of the fundamental differences between
the two codecs, the result is quite bad actually.
There was a post on the vorbis list about this
earlier today.
--
GCP
>Good point. How does 'ogg' compare to mp3pro?
Current ogg's have lesser quality than mp3pro
*AT 64KBPS*. At higher bitrates it is the other
way around.
Since 64kbp sounds quite atrocious even with
mp3pro, and higher bitrate mp3pro is not freely
available (and pointless even), this is a no-
brainer.
--
GCP