unforum

[Flynn]

[ambskunk]

Firstly, nice work Chimera and Guin.

I second what UKV2.0 said: as the website develops, it would be great to see some of the stats relating to this labour such as total work units processed out of all possible work units and a top ten of people who have processed the most work units. I dunno how much work this would be and obviously its not a priority, but I think it would give a bit more incentive to get people using the computer to process.

We could also have a prize for the person who processes the most units when the answer is found and maybe when the solution is found, tell people the answer in order according to most number of units processed.

I'd be willing to throw a few purples into the pot for the task since I'm outta spare blacks.

[ryandrew]

We could all chip in £5 each. That would raise a pretty nice amount im sure!

[chimera245]

Just an important gotya.

It would appear that the current client has issues working on the MacBook Pro (2Ghz Intel Core Duo) using Mono/Rosetta - in that it doesn't correctly work out when to stop processing a packet.

As this may be an endian translation issue (nerd talk for which way to read bytes), I am also nervous that some of the calculations on this platform may be wrong - so for now, Intel base MACs using Mono/Rosetta are out.

Sorry

THanks hopkapi for help in tracking this down.

[chimera245]

OK - news on the MONO/Rosetta/IntelMac thing.

We look to be having more success if you are using the Intel Mono Binaries, but still have some unpredictable crashing issues.

This platform (only) should probably be avoided just for now . . .

[Guin]

as always the community has proven its power and I am overwhelmed with the generous responce that has been put forward. M any thnaks. I will PM all concerned over the next 24 hours (Im at work and need to look busy )

many thanks again

[hexDa3m0n]

Call me generous

[thelayfields]

Bridge to Shuffled

[brat-sampson]

*missed the point where it started to matter who solved before who*

This is Chimera's effort largely so I doubt many would complain if he solved his card first upon getting the answer, but surely after that I'd be surprised if he didn't just stick it up in the forum. I mean, the thing is that different people will only be able to put in as much to this as they can, if somebody has a PC and they run this as a screensaver or if they have a network of 200 dedicated to nothing else, it shouldn't really matter. I'd like to see some coloured blocks and personal statistics as much as the next guy here (and i suspect I'm probably not alone) but as to having leaderboards and incentives...isn't the old Dunkirk spirit of collaboration enough?

[duckiemonster]

Why is there this desire to turn every collaborative effort into some sort of 'nyah nyah, I did it first' competition? Surely it doesn't matter what order the solves come in?

I think most people in the Perplex City community will just get satisfaction from this bugger being slapped in the 'solved' pile, not getting a gold star for how fast their computer can run.

(And yes, 'satisfaction' also contains major kudos for the lovely people who know about this stuff and have written the shiny client thingle.)

[chimera245]

Current stats are 3046 work units processed, with 80 clients registered thus far.

[Guin]

The reason I figured on putting a little incentive / prize is that it may encourage others to get involved - even if for a few hours a day. Not to create some order of merit or hierarchy. I dont see it as causing some major problem and it adds an additional bonus to the lucky individual who finds the key.

[Fuseunderground]

[hexDa3m0n]

mine currently does a work unit every 16 minutes, and its only a PIV 2.4 GHz, think Chimera had his down below 10 minutes.....am currently trying to beg/steal/borrow everyones home PC to run this whilst we are at work!!!

hope this will be low enough for you Fuseunderground, as 20 PCs is quite a difference.....

[UKver2.0]

I agree that Guin's idea of a little prize package is better than second solve honors or whatever. The whole point, though, was to get more people working on the attack and to get the people who already are to use every spare bit of processing power they can find. If someone can point out how this is a bad idea, please do so. And I'm not trying to be an arse. If you have some sociological data that supports a theory that collaborative efforts break down as soon as incentives are introduced, I'd be glad to fight against the whole idea. As it stands, I have a few spare black cards, and a spare of almost every other card on down the line. I could burn them to see what color the flames are in an effort to solve MC's most cleaver puzzle yet or I can give them out as a carrot to finish the job. Hmm... decisions decisions...

Take my situation for example... I only have three computers that I can run on. At work I have access to many more, but it'll take some initiative on my part. Minor really, but a little incentive will push me to add a few more. I'm sure I AM the only one that such childish incentives such as leaderboards move to action, but... oh wait.