[RC5-ANNOUNCE] [ADMIN] State of the distributed.net Address: Week of 12-28-97

[Adam L. Beberg]

State of the distributed.net Address: Week of Dec, 28th 1997

DES II:

Progress is being made on the new v2.7 clients and proxies. Things appear
to be on schedule for a rollout some time around Jan 7th for the new
hybrid clients. In order for us to take down DES as quickly as possible,
it's crucial that we all make every effort to upgrade all available CPUs
to the new clients.  As you know, the amount we win depends on how quickly
we can find the magic key, so your full support and effort will ensure us
a rapid victory.  As the client code stabilizes, more details will be
announced here in the list. 

Donations:

You can financially support distributed.net a number of different ways. 
As you know, distributed.net runs very lean and financial support is
always welcomed. 

1. Checks to:

   DCTI c/o David McNett
   125C 25th Ave NW
   Birmingham, AL 35215-3525
   Make checks payable to DCTI.
   You will receive a receipt and donations are deductable.
   You may, if you wish, specify where you want your money to be spent and 
   that request will be honored.  For instance, you may earmark funds to
   only be used to upgrade the stats server, or only be used as prize
   money for future projects. Monies not specifically directed will be
   placed in the general fund and used at the discretion of the
   distributed.net organizers.

   So far, we've raised about $100 in direct contributions, most of which 
   is earmarked for stats server upgrades.

2. A percentage of the books ordered from amazon.com through
distributed.net

   http://www.distributed.net/research/
   You can either follow a link, or if you are going to order a book over
   the net, use the box on the same page. Follow the instructions.  You
   must place your order through the distributed.net page, but you are not
   limited to just the books we've recommended.  Any amazon.com purchase
   through our page results in a portion of the proceeds going to
   distributed.net

   So far this has raised over $165

3. Eyegive.com

   Register yourself at 
   http://www.eyegive.com/html/ssi.cfm?CID=1098
   We get somewhere between 30 and 55 cents/day for each day you
   follow the banner ads there.  Their profiling seems to do a good
   job picking ads that will be of interest to you.

   So far this has raised over $467
   (Thanks to Shannon Jones for discovering this site!)

Statmaster Nugget: On Stats and the prize money

<begin Nugget>
As I'm sure you've all heard, the stats are back up with a few minor
problems.  As mentioned earlier, the stats for 19-Dec-1997 are still
pending, which we expect to take place later this week.  Also, the cpu/os
tables still have some garbage data which will need to be cleaned some
before those tables make sense again.  But, for the most part, we're good
to go again.  I *sincerely* apologize for the delays in getting the stats
back online.  I never anticipated that it would take this long to resolve. 
The new stats processing code is MUCH more stable and resiliant and should
mean better, more consistant stats in the future. 

Regarding DESII stats -- the Rc5-64 stats will be taken offline for the
duration of the DESII challenge.  This does not mean that RC5-64 stats
will be terminated, just that the database will not be available for web
queries.  In its place, we will be running DESII stats using the same
database "engine" as the RC5 stats.  All current RC5-64 participant
information and team affiliations will be inherited by the DESII stats.
distributed.net should be able to wrap up DESII so rapidly that there will
not be enough time for any normal recruitment or organization efforts to
take place.  The decision to apply RC5-64 team affiliations to the DESII
stats is for your convienence, and will most likely not be the case for
future distributed.net efforts.

Once we've washed our hands of DESII, RC5-64 stats will once again be
available. 

Integral to both DESII and the eventual completion of RC5-64 is the
soon-to-be-available charity voting engine.  This code has actually been
complete and ready to roll for some time, but we've been reluctant to add
any additional burden onto the already-overwhelmed stats server. 

With DESII and with RC5-64, *you* will decide where the money goes.  Each
individual (read: email address, NOT team) will be able to vote for one of
several charities.  Each person will get one vote per block completed. 
When we finish the challenge, all the votes will be tallied and whichever
charity has received the most votes will be given the charity split of the
money.  As with RC5-56, the RC5-64 allocation will be the standard $1K to
the winning team (or individual if the winner has no team affiliation),
$1K will be retained by distributed.net and $8K will go to the selected
charity.  One important consideration is that, unlike team affiliation, if
you change your team vote ALL PAST BLOCKS WILL BE TRANSFERRED.  Also,
distributed.net will be one of the charities available, so if you feel
that we should be taking more than $1K, make your voice heard by voting. 
(If, in the event that distributed.net is selected as the recipient of the
full $8K, the $1K that would have normally gone to distributed.net will
instead be given to the second-place charity) 

The split (winner/distributed.net/charity) for DESII has yet to be
determined.  Since the actual amount of the prize depends on when we find
the key, we may end up doing something other than flat percentages.  There
also seems to be some support for distributed.net taking a larger chunk in
order to purchase better stats server hardware and this is also being
considered.  More details will come as this issue is discussed and, of
course, discussion on the list is welcomed and will influence the final
decision. 

-/\/
<end nugget>


This is the first of what will be weekly State of the distributed.net
addresses. Hopefully this will keep people more up to date on what we're
up to.

- Adam L. Beberg
  beberg at distributed.net
  distributed.net founder
  http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/

--
To unsubcribe, send 'unsubscribe rc5-announce' to majordomo at llamas.net
rc5-announce-digest subscribers replace rc5-announce with rc5-announce-digest