In message <669331.97002...@web39802.mail.mud.yahoo.com>, terry mcintyre
<terrymcint...@yahoo.com> writes
----- Original Message ----
From: Gian-Carlo Pascutto <g...@sjeng.org>
Heikki Levanto wrote:
> No amount on crypto-mumbo-jumbo will solve the problem that the server will
> have to trust the program, and its author. Signing can provide some little
> assurance that the program running today is the same as was running
> yesterday, but that's about all. As long as we can write our own programs,
> there is no way to stop us from cheating in them, intentionally or by
> accident.
Very true.
To the people that point to timeseal on the chess servers: both the
binaries and the protocol itself are trivially reverse engineerable. I
know of at least 2 people (not counting myself) who have done this.
Because the client side is fully under your control, you can cheat all
you want with this system. But you can also write a client for a
non-supported platform :)
The only reason why this doesn't create more problems is that the people
who have the ability to do this reverse engineering usually have better
things to do with their time than to cheat on chess servers.
It's like copy protections: it stops some people, but it sure as hell
ain't "secure" in any meaningful sense.
Ok, it is clear that others know far more than me about timesealing, and
related issues. I shall shut up and learn from their postings.
So it's trustworthy enough the people accept it as a palliative for net
lag, in an environment where most people can be trusted. From browsing
chess-specific web sites, there are customs and procedures for dealing
with cheats. In this day and age, unless you're in the boonies, only so
much "net lag" is believable.
Your country must have a better telecom infrastructure than mine. I
live on the edge of Oxford, England. Until 2000, I had a lot of netlag.
I played on KGS then, and recorded several pings to it in excess of
500,000 milliseconds. But that winter there was a flood which got into
the local telecom conduits, and after they replaced the cables, I ceased
to observe netlag.
However in the most recent game I played on KGS, just last night, my
opponent (near Liverpool) and I bother suffered from lag, I estimate of
around ten seconds each.
Nick
Preserving one's reputation is a good enough incentive for most people
to do the right thing.
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Nick Wedd n...@maproom.co.uk
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