:: 23-Feb-2000 19:43 (Wednesday) ::

Statsbox will be offline briefly while we add new drives. Thanks for your
patience.

:: 16-Feb-2000 22:14 (Wednesday) ::

As most of you have discovered, OGR-24 is underway, although lacking stats.
Throughout the coming days, we’ll be working to get OGR stats online and
functional. While the structure of the OGR stats data doesn’t significantly
differ from the previous RC5/DES/CSC tables, we feel that this is an
appropriate time for us to make some changes to the underlying tables and
the stats updating code. This is why there will be a delay in
implementation.

Additionally, we’ve received two donations from participants who have
asked that their donation be earmarked as prize money for the participant
who “wins” OGR-24 by finding the optimal 24-mark golumb ruler. We plan
on putting some money into the mix as well, and perhaps setting aside some
money for a nonprofit as we’ve done in previous efforts.

It may not amount to anything more than a few hundred dollars and some
cow from omahasteaks.com, but we do intend to offer some form of prize
for OGR contests as our budget permits.

:: 02-Feb-2000 03:56 (Wednesday) ::

I’m bored, can’t we have a .plan update or something?

Sure thing. Moo.

Everyone’s been busy lately, lots of organizational issues going on behind the
scenes. We started to do a more widespread OGR beta rollout this past week
and turned up another deal-killer bug so we’ve halted further client builds.
Apparently the OGR client doesn’t save work properly if you quit in the first
1% of a block. (I’m a bit fuzzy on the exact details). Either way, Greg
says he’s got enough info to reproduce the problem at will, so I think we’re
close to a resolution.

There’s also another project, post-OGR, starting to materialize. No details
yet, but I hope to be in a position to announce soon.

Moo

:: 19-Jan-2000 04:19 (Wednesday) ::

Yesterday we finally got in touch with the CSC winner. He’s graciously
allowed us to turn you guys loose on him by mentioning his name.

The CSC winner was Paul Ilardi, a grad student at the University of
Rochester in Rochester, NY, USA. He looked through his local proxy logs
and was able to determine that the winning machine was a Sparc Ultra 1
and he’s even snapped a picture of the box.

http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~pilardi/nano.jpg

Congratulations, Paul!

:: 16-Jan-2000 08:39 (Sunday) ::

Congratulations, everyone, on a successful conclusion to the CSC Challenge
project. There have been a lot of questions about who actually found the
key, so I thought I’d make a quick update to let everyone know what the
scoop is.

First, yes we do know who won, but we haven’t been able to contact him so
we’re not releasing his name or information. We’ve got a good email
address for him so contacting him will not be a problem. (I’m still
going to try for the traditional phone call, first)

The winner was not on a team, and lives in the United States. Beyond
that, I’d rather wait until we’ve made contact before more information
is released.

:: 14-Jan-2000 22:02 (Friday) ::

Have you tried checking under the mat?

:: 02-Jan-2000 01:43 (Sunday) ::

We tried to be clever, and it didn’t work out… We tried to recover
some of the team joins performed during the 27-Dec to 29-Dec and it
looks like our code accidently unjoined a few people from their teams.
The problem doesn’t look too widespread, but it may have affected you.
If you notice that your blocks are not being properly assigned to your
team (you’d see this in the members list), please kindly rejoin your team.

If your team doesn’t provide a member’s listing, you can verify that
you’re still properly joined to your team by editing your participant
information, which will show your current team affiliation.

Sorry for the mishap.

:: 30-Dec-1999 09:09 (Thursday) ::

It would appear that csc stats are up-to-date, although I admit I haven’t
thoroughly audited the numbers. We had to do quite a bit of “by hand”
data massaging during the recovery process, so I will take some time
tomorrow to sanity check the numbers. Stats had to be re-run from 27-Dec
to current.

rc5-64 stats are running now, and barring any problems will be on auto-pilot
for the next several hours. I’m going to take the opportunity to get
a bit of sleep and rest my eyes.

If there are any problems they will likely be related to team joining/team
changing during the previous three days. If you joined a team or change
teams recently, you might see some differences. (if you changed teams
on 28-Dec, the freshly-run stats will actually look like you changed teams
on 27-Dec). We should be able to correct these discrepancies tomorrow.

More info as we wrap up the repair. Thanks for your patience.

:: 30-Dec-1999 04:04 (Thursday) ::

blerg. Some days I wish I dug ditches for a living. :)

Still banging on stats, looking promising, but progressing slowly.

More info as the situation evolves.

Moo

:: 23-Dec-1999 20:14 (Thursday) ::

Tracked down and squashed a particularly obscure authentication bug that
has been preventing some people from joining teams and/or editing their
participant information. As near as I can tell, the problem is completely
resolved now.

If you’ve been having troubles lately in authenticating yourself with
the stats server, give it a try now. Should work just fine.

As always, if there’s a problem, feel free to fill my mailbox. :)