Thanks for your reply, Christophe. The old LPP contestants would count for zero percent because they already have the job done for the old protocol years ago.  But, even using your math,  5% or 10%, was enough to make nearly all the old LPP contestants threaten to boycott the contest in protest. 

By surrendering to the old LPP contestant activism, the AISB condemned their own new NodeJS LPP protocol. The old LPP is heavy duty network operating system based, or real machine based.  The new LPP is lightweight NodeJS based, or virtual machine based. So this is a battle between old real machines versus young virtual machines.

Controversy like this should make the contest more interesting this year.  And, as always, my discussion here is only polite and reasonable.  When I debate, I do so in a friendly, controlled manner.

∞Pla•Net - Aug 1, 2017:

..., was enough to make nearly all the old LPP contestants threaten to boycott the contest in protest.

Not quite sure where you got that information from. Nobody boycotted it in protest, as far as I am aware.

The following is proffered in a calm, civil manner.

The magic of a typical old protocol entry (like Mitsuku) is that it brute forces the contest with several hundred thousand records blasting the judges. It remains to be seen whether a typical old protocol entry may be made compatible to a lightweight JavaScript runtime protocol. 

To quote the AISB ruling, “Finalists will be offered help on making their entry compatible with the new protocol, for the final.” The AISB contest supports two protocols. So, all contestants must be offered help on making their entry compatible with all contest protocols, for the final. Please lend your support to my request for help from the AISB to make my new protocol entry compatible with the old protocol.

∞Pla•Net - Aug 1, 2017:

Please lend your support to my request for help from the AISB to make my new protocol entry compatible with the old protocol.

Sure. I would much rather it be an AI contest than a “who can understand the quirks of the protocol” affair. Happy to offer my support to your request.

In all likelihood, the AISB will use Denis Robert’s shim to upgrade old-protocol entries to the new protocol, and that will be the “help” that finalists will get. There is no need to make new-protocol entries backwards compatible with the old protocol, they’re already good to go. I can’t imagine how you concluded that your entry would need to work with both protocols from what you literally just quoted.

- making their entry compatible with the new protocol

This debate is friendly.  Please do not take any offence.  There is no backward compatibility. Sadly mentioned, Denis’ shim is discontinued ActiveX, even VBScript is discontinued. So, there is only forward compatibility from old real machine to young virtual machine.  Compiled code is being forced to execute as byte code.  Therefore, all entries must be offered equal help for it to be fair.

But your entry already works with the new node.js server protocol, does it not?

Don,

The NTFS based protocol is high performance. The Node.JS based protocol is lightweight. It’s not like comparing apples to oranges.  It’s like comparing apples to orange seeds. Why should the high performance protocol get all the help in the contest and the lightweight protocol get none?

My theory is the lightweight Node.JS protocol was handicapped with message-mode because character-mode requires high performance NTFS.  And, I am not talking about simulating a typewriter in Node.JS.  I’m talking about live contest entries blasting the Node.JS server with a million or more keystrokes in character-mode to simultaneously process. If my theory holds, and Node.JS can not replace the high performance of NTFS in the protocol, then how is it going to provide for high performance needs of the contest entries?

The whole point of this discussion is not to disparage the AISB in any way, but to point out reasons why this AISB contest is going to be the one to watch.  Forget the hype that this is a protocol upgrade.  Virtual machines are always disguising their limitations using hype words like “deprecated”, even “virtual” means fake.  This is a battle between the old real machines and young virtual machines.  I predict the old real machines will win, unless they fail to play by the new rules, which is a possibility.

Regrettably, my new-protocol contest entry white screened in alpha testing while trying keep up with the constant contest rule changes from high performance NTFS to lightweight Node.JS and back again from lightweight Node.JS to high performance NTFS, last minute.  Even the web browser developer tools reported no errors or warnings which was very odd.  The latest ruling suggests there may be help available from the AISB for contestants.  My new-protocol contest entry could sure use that help.