:: 15-Jan-2000 14:50 (Saturday) ::

The updated psearch for CSC was activated last night at about 00:00 Indiana/Alabama
time. Apart from an initial hesitation (which might be attributable to the RC5-64
stats run) it seems to be running fine. Please let me know if you discover
otherwise. Thanks to all those who tested it out. The link from my previous .plan
is now going away.

I’m planning to make the same change for RC5-64 in the near future, to keep the two
projects as similar as possible. Team searches will have to wait, I’m afraid. I’m
starting to direct my efforts to some client architecture issues.

Not to get all “gushy” or anything, but I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone
who has stuck with us through some unexpected side-trips. distributed.net is
nothing without the huge numbers of volunteers who load and run the clients. The
trust you put in us is the real foundation of what we’re building. I hope we can
continue to deserve that trust in the years to come.

Now, wipe that tear from your eye, and let’s find those keys!

Moo!

:: 13-Jan-2000 19:18 (Thursday) ::

With Decibel and Nugget’s help, I have put together a new version of psearch
for CSC. We expect this version to lighten the load on tally, because more
of the “meat” is written in SQL. Please test it and let me know what you
find. Point your browser at

http://stats-bwilson.distributed.net/csc/

then enter your search-text (under Participant) and hit Search. (The
project summary information you’ll see is static – it won’t keep up with
tonight’s stats-run).

Some highlights:

* Searches will return up to 50 rows, sorted in rank order. If more than
50 rows match the search, the 50 highest-ranked matches will be shown.

* Characters which Sybase interprets as wildcards (‘%’ and ‘_’) are now
treated as literal characters. Before, if you included one of these
characters in your search, Sybase would treat them as wildcards, making
it harder to find some e-mail addresses. Don’t worry if you were using
this feature – I’ve included the ability to pass them through in the
future.

* You must type at least three characters to search. Regrettably, we can’t
justify allowing people to search for all e-mail addresses containing ‘@’
or ‘e’. If you search for ‘com’, you’ll get what you deserve, but three
characters should be enough to search for ‘.fi’ or other country codes.

* If your search contains an @ character, the database will be scanned
first using “begins-with” logic, on the assumption that you probably
typed an entire e-mail address. If that search does not produce data,
the search will be performed again using “contains” logic.

I plan to allow testing until after the stats run on Friday so you can even
test *during* the stats run. Please send your comments to
bwilson@distributed.net (you can copy decibel and nugget if you like).

:: 15-Dec-1999 17:22 (Wednesday) ::

At long last the baby is here. Ethan James Wilson was born at 12:40 a.m. Saturday, Dec 11 (06:40 Saturday UTC, for all
you stats freaks). He was 8 pounds, 13.5 ounces and 20 inches. Tricia and Ethan both came home Monday, and we’re trying to
figure out what “normal” means all over again.

As you know, we will be starting work on OGR soon. OGR brings a whole mess of problems to what you know of stats today.
When keymaster hands out an OGR node, there’s no way of knowing how much work that node will require – it can even vary by
CPU. To give full credit for your work, stats will have to keep track of how much work you actually had to perform.
(You’d certainly like more credit for 10 nodes of 1000 effort than someone who did 10 nodes of 100 effort.) It’s also not
possible to say how much work we’ll have to do at the project level, so concepts like “percent done” and “odds of finishing
today” are pretty meaningless.

On top of this, we’re learning some things about managing multiple projects in a single database. Currently, a new project
means a new family of SQL tables, PHP scripts, a new import and a new stats run. For our sanity, we’d like to reduce the
duplication as much as is reasonable. I’m putting together some prototypes of options for the next generation of stats so we
can poke and prod them to see how well they work. If you notice some drool on the stats database, that’s probably because I’m
holding Ethan while typing. I’ll get it all mopped up before we do anything to the stats you know and love.

I’m also informally collecting ideas for ways we can rank individuals and teams across multiple projects. In particular, we
want to allow participation in any open project to contribute to the overall ranking. As it stands now, there’s a lot of
motivation for teams to stick with RC5-64 to protect their ranking, instead of helping out with CSC. Just think how fast we
could be demolishing CSC with a keyrate in the 80’s instead of the 20’s!

Happy cracking!

:: 07-Dec-1999 14:56 (Tuesday) ::

I guess now that I have a .plan, I really ought to have a plan.

By way of introduction, I’m the guy who eats, drinks and
breathes SQL. I also have a Real Job, a wife and a baby on the
way. Whatever time is left after all of the above usually
goes to Starcraft. If you want to know more, check out my home
page at http://www.geocities.com/bruce-wilson

At the moment, I’m trying to help Nugget and Decibel stay out
of trouble, and to avoid opening any big cans of worms
with stats until (a) the changes Nugget and Decibel and I have
discussed are in place and working, (b) I have a good feel for
the flow of the data, and (c) my wife delivers the baby (any
day now).

Moo!