I think it's a reasonable requirement for computers to run on the same hardware and have the same software - I could get a machine rated today on a p4 and then tomorrow on an i7 - so clearly hardware is an issue.
With humans, it's possible to make rapid advancement but it's usually going to take a year or two to make a lot of improvement. With software, a change can be enormous - and there is no way to know if it's a minor change or a major change. So if I were purchasing MFGO and it had been rated at 3 dan (for example) but I was sold something else I would be annoyed. It was VERY common practice a few years ago to advertise computer chess machines deceptively. The same program on much faster hardware might have been the one that was rated, but not the one they were selling you. And sometimes they advertised a rating for a machine you were buying but you were getting an older program than the one they are quoting the rating of. So it's just my opinion, but if a program is being "officially" rated, it should not be changing arbitrarily. And it's very annoying when someone says crap like, "it's currently ranked 3 dan but most of that is based on older software" and then they tell you what they think the real rating is which defeats the whole concept of getting it rated. Don On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Dave Dyer <[email protected]> wrote: > > >"exactly the same code that was ranked" > > This is not a reasonable requirement. > > Ratings are a crude tool; it's not worthwhile to try to nail them > down beyond a rough range. Certainly there will be occasions where > programs true ratings slip due to "improvements" in the software, > or improvements in their opponents' understanding of their weaknesses. > > Humans get "code" upgrades and downgrades all the time, it's called > learning. > You just take it on faith that the human is still more or less the same > from > one day to the next. The same should apply to programs. > > _______________________________________________ > Computer-go mailing list > [email protected] > http://dvandva.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/computer-go >
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