**NEW RC5 Contest**

[spdsk8r]

I'm going to be hosting a new RC5 contest as long as Virus wants to help. I'm still waiting for a response from him, but for more information and to sign up - go to my page:

http://www.execpc.com/~spdsk8r/
-Main Page

http://www.execpc.com/~spdsk8r/contest.html
-Contest Page

[Virus]

As far as the giving prizes to the top producers. I can't see it working all that well. If we don't get anyone storing block on purpose. Then Radocon and Tazzzman will for sure win. I know radocon can dump 80,000 blocks tommorow if you tempt him. Or else you are going to see the everyones keyrates suddenly drop tommorow. As they store up until the contest. All these stored blocks are going to increase the chance of duplicates and hurt the team's overall.

A lot of us are already running all that we can and can't pull the rabbit out of our a** in order to win. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif This way isn't going to attract any new or doment members.

I thing it would be better to base it as if every block submitted acts as an entry. Then the winners are picked from those entries.

[Joel Kleppinger]

That's how we did the last RC5 contest, and it seemed to work well. Your best bet is to start it without warning and end it on an announced date.... and hopefully the stats won't be down for 3 months starting just prior to the ending date (do I sound bitter? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif).

Good luck with it.

[spdsk8r]

Virus is right though, it is really unfair! I think I'll take each block as an entry as you did in the last contest.

BTW, what program did you use to do the drawing?

[bkehoe]

Hi,

Great. Now there is some hope for me, not just the top 3 in the proxy!

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Brendan

[spdsk8r]

Only 3 people have signed up so far, so I don't know if there will be a contest http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

Try sending a newsletter Brendan... Some people don't visit Sysopt much so they wouldn't know!

If you send one, make sure to direct them to my site so they can sign up. Otherwise it would be kind of pointless http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Thx

[bkehoe]

No, remove the link to jon now, so that I can get something. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Only joking! I am going to set up a script on my web server, to send the messages - it would be handier than using Arrow.

Will send tomorrow.

Brendan.

[hai]

yeah, I signed for fun. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Joel Kleppinger]

Scott wrote a little script to select the 5 winners randomly from all the entries.

[spdsk8r]

Think he'd let me use the script?

[Joel Kleppinger]

Well, I dunno what language he wrote it in, but I'm pretty sure it's not compiled, especially not for an x86.

I'll just try to explain the idea. On day 1, you record all the totals for the people involved in the overall team. On the last day, you also record all the totals for the poeple on the team. Then, you simply subtract to get the blocks they did during that timeperiod (while also including new users).

Then, (I'm not sure if this is what Scott did, but it makes sense to my brain) generate a text file that has the persons email address on a single line for the number of 2^28 blocks they submitted. You'll want to write something that will do this or it will take forever. Then simply run a random number generator from 1 to whatever number the last line is and then go to the line number in the file and that email address is your winner. Ultra-edit 32 ( www.ultraedit.com (http://www.ultraedit.com) ) and some other editors will seek to line # to get you there a bit faster. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif Oh, and don't open this file in WordPad - it'll take a year. I suggest Ultra-edit which has a much better text engine (and does the line numbers, too)

Alternately, you could simply store each email address on a single line then start at the first address and have a field next to it that stores the max line number it would have taken up (say, 4000 for the first person (who would have done 4000 blocks)). In this manner, you could drastically reduce the size of your text file.

I think that's right or at least close to how Scott did it. I'm not the world's best programmer by any means -> it'd take me several days to get it coded in C, but it's possible someone here could do it much, much faster if you needed parts of it coded. At least, it's a thought.

Hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by Joel Kleppinger (edited 07-22-99).]

[spdsk8r]

I have absolutely NO programming experience at all! I have never written a program before, and don't intend to for a while.

Would someone out there be kind enough to do this for me??

BTW, have you found any of the parts to send Joel? I'll understand if you need to keep them...

[Virus]

The easiest way to do it. Is to program it into the present ppstats-RC5-6.8.pl file. Since it already has the log files to draw from and the structure to calculate stats for specific time periods. The only problem is separating particapants from all the pproxy members. Unless you want to open it up to all pproxy members.

I'll just have to find some time to fit it in before I have to rebuild the server. I already have the backup server up, running, and ready to take over. So i'll see what happens tomorrow (or today for GMT).

[grizco]

whats an RC5 contest? I've never heard of it before.

[Virus]

RC5-64 is a contest put out by RSA labs (encryption developer company). Usually only big super computers or beowulf networks are able to compete. Distributed.net has developed the software to join up large numbers of average joe citizen's computers. And have each of them crack small segments of the overall project while not interfering with the daily operation of the computers.

They also created stats and teams to keep joe citizen interested.

RC5-64 is not the only contest d.net has been and will be involved in. DES-III was just completed back in january in a record 22 hour and I can't remember how many minutes. In the near future d.net will be in the ORG-23 and CSC contests.