distributed.net staff plans

bovine [26-Oct-2008 @ 09:52]

bovine@distributed.net — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:52:00 GMT

:: 26-Oct-2008 09:52 GMT (Sunday) ::

Dear friends,

It is with great excitement that we announce our upcoming project to
find the Optimal Golomb Ruler with 26 marks. Optimal Golomb Rulers
have many applications including sensor placements for X-ray
crystallography and radio astronomy. Golomb rulers can also play a
significant role in combinatorics, coding theory and
communications. Dr. Golomb was one of the first to analyze them for
use in these areas.

New clients and proxies will be required to support the new project,
which we are calling "OGR-NG". The new clients will have version
2.9101.507 or higher. Clients with version numbers prior to this will
only be able to work on the RC5-72 project. Similarly, Personal Proxy
version 343 or higher is required.

Updated clients and proxies are being made available for early-adopter
testing at http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php for many
major platforms. Builds for additional platforms are gradually being
produced and will be made available on that page as soon as
possible. If you do not feel comfortable helping with this
early-adopter testing and reporting bugs, then we recommend waiting
for a few days when we will move those clients to the official release
page. Not all of our public keyservers have finished upgrading to the
new version, so not all will have OGR-NG workunits yet. Stats for the
new project will also be launching in a couple of days. As with all of
our pre-release software, we encourage you to file bug reports for any
problems you find at http://bugs.distributed.net/

The OGR node rate for these new clients may appear to be slower than
those for the OGR-25p2 project. This isn't a cause for concern. The
effective search rate for the overall project is actually more
efficient as these new clients are using an improved algorithm. The
new algorithm is named FLEGE (Feiri-Levet Enhanced GARSP Engine). It
has been developed by Didier Levet and Michael Feiri over the course
of the past few months. We are especially grateful to them for this
Herculean effort. In technical terms, the number of elements in the
'choose lookup table' has been increased from 48K to 2M
elements. Although this will slightly increase the size of the dnetc
binary, this optimization will significantly reduce the number of
nodes that we have to search through, sometimes a node improvement of
ten-fold or more.

We estimate that OGR-26 will take much less time to complete than
OGR-25 and will probably be more similar to OGR-24, in terms of
computational effort. Beyond that, we're looking forward to OGR-27 and
OGR-28 because the current solutions to at least one of the two is
very likely not optimal. OGR-26 is on the way and must be done first
since higher-order rulers depend on the proven optimality of previous
ones.

We are grateful for your continuing support and enthusiasm.

bovine [25-Oct-2008 @ 23:14]

bovine@distributed.net — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:14:00 GMT

:: 25-Oct-2008 23:14 GMT (Saturday) ::

distributed.net is proud to announce the completion of OGR-25!

A little over eight years ago, distributed.net users undertook the
search for the optimal 25 mark Golomb Ruler. This year sees the
successful conclusion of that effort. We have proven conclusively by
the exhaustive search of all possible rulers that the previously
predicted 25-mark ruler is indeed the most optimal one.

The total length of the ruler is 480, with marks at positions: 0 12 29
39 72 91 146 157 160 161 166 191 207 214 258 290 316 354 372 394 396
431 459 467 480. (This ruler may alternatively be expressed in terms
of the distance between those positions, which is how dnetc displays
them: 12-17-10-33-19-...)

This shortest ruler was found by two independent computers. The
initial report was received on October 10th, 2007 and a second,
matching result was returned on March 24th, 2008. However it was not
until the final stub was returned and verified that we could rule out
the possibility of a still-shorter ruler. This final stub was returned
on October 24th, 2008 drawing to a close the complete search of all
possible stubs. Due to the nature of an exhaustive search,
distributed.net users have also proven that the above solution is
unique (the ruler's mirror notwithstanding).

To celebrate the successful end of yet another distributed.net project
all our contributors are invited for a drink...when we find a place
large enough to host the 124,387 people that participated in this
particular distributed effort. :)

As previously mentioned, a successful match of the shortest ruler was
found by two independent computers. We'll be sending those two users
some free distributed.net swag and shirts for their noteworthy
contributions to the project. We'll also be sending some swag to the
user that submitted that last confirmed stub. (At the time of writing,
we had not yet received permission from those three users regarding
the publication of their identities.)

bovine [25-Oct-2008 @ 06:36]

bovine@distributed.net — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 06:36:00 GMT

:: 25-Oct-2008 06:36 GMT (Saturday) ::

Dear friends,

It is a great pleasure for us to announce that OGR-25p2 was fully
completed a just short while ago! We'll be providing some final
details regarding the mathematical results from the project
completion, as well as the details of our new project, later today.

With that in mind, I'd like to recommend that your clients are
switched over to RC5-72 as soon as is practical for you to do so. For
many of you, this is a non-issue, as your client will switch over
automatically. We will shortly be rolling out a new project which we
have been working on and hope that you can bear with us as we complete
our preparations.

We thank you for your continuing support.

Moo! ]:8)

bovine [24-Oct-2008 @ 06:39]

bovine@distributed.net — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:39:00 GMT

:: 24-Oct-2008 06:39 GMT (Friday) ::

Some clients that were previously on the pre-release page have just
been moved to the official release page:

* Solaris/SunOS [x86] v2.9015.505
* FreeBSD [4.x/x86/ELF] v2.9015.505
* FreeBSD [7.x/AMD64/ELF] v2.9015.505
* FreeBSD [6.x/AMD64/ELF] v2.9015.505
* FreeBSD [7.x/x86/ELF] v2.9015.505
* FreeBSD [6.x/x86/ELF] v2.9015.505
* Linux [ARM/eabi] v2.9015.505
* Linux [AMD64/ELF] v2.9016.506
* Linux [CellBE] v2.9016.506
* Linux [x86/ELF] v2.9016.506
* Windows 32bit [x86/Zipped] v2.9015.505
* Windows 32bit [x86/Installer] v2.9015.505

Download links are on: http://www.distributed.net/download/clients.php

bovine [30-Sep-2008 @ 16:22]

bovine@distributed.net — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:22:00 GMT

:: 30-Sep-2008 16:22 GMT (Tuesday) ::

Dear friends,

As you know, we are drawing to the conclusion of the OGR-25p2 project,
with less than 1% remaining and we estimate project completion
sometime within the next month. You can view the latest OGR-25p2
project percentages here:
http://stats.distributed.net/project/ogr_status.php

We have noted that a significant amount of work is not being counted,
due to being held out of the system for a long time and completed by
other users before it is returned. In some cases, it is returned even
after stubspaces have been closed. At the current stage of the
project, a workunit which isn't returned within two weeks of being
issued will have a high chance of being recycled and processed by
somebody else. This duplicated workunit will still be credited in
personal stats, but it won't have any value to the project.

One of the stubspaces currently open will take only two days of
concerted effort to close off. If we are to calculate at full
effectiveness, it is vital that work is completed and returned in a
timely fashion.

If your computer has a connection to our key servers or a local proxy
server, we recommend that you keep your client set to the default
buffer settings to avoid buffering an excessive amount of workunits.

Additionally, if your client is configured to participate in only
OGR-P2, we encourage you to consider enabling your clients to
participate in both OGR-P2 and RC5-72. Over the next few weeks, we
anticipate there being occasional periods of time when there will not
be any OGR-P2 workunits available, due to the recycle delays and
timeout periods. By enabling your clients to also process RC5-72, you
will ensure that your computers will not go completely idle during
these periods.

Finally, we would like to mention that we are currently finalizing a
next-generation OGR project that will further the exploration into
even higher-order Optimal Golomb Rulers. Stay tuned for more details
later.

We would like to thank you for your continued support and your ongoing
efforts to help us.

Moo! ]:8)

mikereed [15-Sep-2008 @ 00:35]

mikereed@distributed.net — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:35:00 GMT

:: 15-Sep-2008 00:35 GMT (Monday) ::

Dear friends,

It has come to our attention that a firm named 'Mystery Shoppers Inc.' has
been sending out headed letters with our logo on them. These letters contain
instructions on how to become a mystery shopper and bogus checks to cash as
'earnings'. We would like to assure you that we would never put our name to
this kind of operation. We hope that the fraudsters behind it are brought to
justice promptly. We thank you for your continuing support.

Moo! ]:8)

bovine [08-Sep-2008 @ 02:09]

bovine@distributed.net — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:09:00 GMT

:: 08-Sep-2008 02:09 GMT (Monday) ::

Dear friends,

As announced on May 21, 2007, RSA Labs officially discontinued their
sponsorship of the Secret Key Challenge and withdrew the monetary
prize they offered. However, we have been continuing to run the RC5-72
project without their sponsorship. Effective with this announcement,
will officially fund the prize using the same distribution ratios that
we would have originally used, as per
http://stats.distributed.net/misc/money.php?project_id=8

* The individual who finds the key US$1,000
* The winning individual's team US$1,000
* Free Software Foundation (winning charity) US$2,000

Although the option of privately funding the prizes had been discussed
publicly on the mailing list and we had internally decided this
several months ago, we thought it would be prudent to officially
announce this position to our participants.

These prizes will be paid from our organization's general purpose
funds. If you would like to make donations to us and designate them
for use as a prize, we will gladly honor that request. If we receive
designated contributions exceeding the above totals, then the excess
will be paid out in proportion to the above ratios. To donate to our
organization, please see http://www.distributed.net/donation.php

Moo! ]:8)

chrisj [31-Aug-2008 @ 18:42]

chrisj@distributed.net — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:42:00 CST

:: 31-Aug-2008 18:42 CST (Sunday) ::

Stats is back online and catching up now.

Thanks for your patience. Moo!

bovine [29-Aug-2008 @ 07:00]

bovine@distributed.net — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT

:: 29-Aug-2008 07:00 GMT (Friday) ::

We're having some unexpected hardware problems with our stats server.
We hope to get it back online soon. No work will be lost during this
outage. Thanks for your patience.

bovine [21-Aug-2008 @ 20:49]

bovine@distributed.net — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:49:00 GMT

:: 21-Aug-2008 20:49 GMT (Thursday) ::

The drive replacement and the array rebuild were successful.
Thanks for your patience.

bovine [21-Aug-2008 @ 18:35]

bovine@distributed.net — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:35:00 GMT

:: 21-Aug-2008 18:35 GMT (Thursday) ::

Stats will be taken down in a few minutes to replace a failing drive
in its array. Hopefully it shouldn't be down for very long.

bovine [29-May-2008 @ 08:33]

bovine@distributed.net — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:33:00 GMT

:: 29-May-2008 08:33 GMT (Thursday) ::

Stats should be up-to-date again. A problem that occurred during our
automated log importing required some debugging to undo and correct.
No stats credits should have been lost as a result of the downtime.
Thanks for your patience.

bovine [26-May-2008 @ 06:28]

bovine@distributed.net — Mon, 26 May 2008 06:28:00 GMT

:: 26-May-2008 06:28 GMT (Monday) ::

Stats updates broke a couple of days ago due to some data import
issues. We'll get them back on-line as soon as we can diagnose and
correct the problem. Thanks for your patience.

thejet [11-May-2008 @ 18:15]

thejet@distributed.net — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:15:00 GMT

:: 11-May-2008 18:15 GMT (Sunday) ::

As you have probably noticed, we now have more detailed completion
statistics available for the OGR-25 project. By clicking on the
'%-complete' number on the main project status page, one can reach
a detailed 'stubspace completion' page. This new page outlines
the completion rates for each stubspace, as well as the overall
project stub completion information. You can reach the new page
directly at:

http://stats.distributed.net/project/ogr_status.php

In addition, for those statistics junkies out there, we have historical
information available as well at the following URL:

http://stats.distributed.net/project/ogr_status_history.php

The status history screen will display a usage message if appropriate
arguments are not supplied, which I have duplicated here for those
interested:

Usage:
project_id == The project to do stubspace reporting on
stubspace_id == [optional] The specific stubspace to report on
start_date == [optional, default: 30 days ago,
format example: 01-Apr-2008]
The date to start pulling data
end_date == [optional, default: today, format example: 01-Apr-2008]
The last date to pull data for
output_format == The output format you'd prefer [xml, csv]

Usage Example:
ogr_status_history.php?project_id=25&output_format=xml

It should be noted that the OGR completion percentages do update a
couple hours later than the rest of the statistics information
[usually around 01:30 UTC].

If anyone would like to see changes/enhancements to any of these
screens, please don't hesitate to open a bug in bugzilla and copy me
[thejet@distributed.net] in the CC field. We'll take a look and see if
we can integrate your suggestions, or better yet, submit a patch! :)
Bugzilla can be found here:

http://bugs.distributed.net/

Thanks for your participation and happy crunching!!! MOOO!!!

thejet [16-Apr-2008 @ 11:40]

thejet@distributed.net — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:40:00 GMT

:: 16-Apr-2008 11:40 GMT (Wednesday) ::

Thanks to Simon T. we've got another XML export in our stable.
The Participant Summary page is now available as an XML export.
The new page can be reached at:

http://stats.distributed.net/participant/psummary_xml.php

The page takes the following arguments [as query string parameters]:

id = The participant ID
project_id = The project ID [25 == OGR-25, 8 == RC5-72]
show_friends = Include friend statistics in a element
show_neighbors = Include neighbor statistics in a element

An example can be seen here:

http://stats.distributed.net/participant/psummary_xml.php?id=236831&project_id=25&show_friends=1&show_neighbors=1

Hopefully over the next few weeks/months we'll get a more robust implementation
to allow all of our statistics pages to be viewed in XML form, making
life much easier for those 3rd party statistics web sites to grab their
core data.

bovine [15-Feb-2008 @ 18:04]

bovine@distributed.net — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:04:00 GMT

:: 15-Feb-2008 18:04 GMT (Friday) ::

As was previously indicated last month, OGRp2 results from the older
PlayStation 3 (CellBE) Linux clients earlier than version 2.9015-505
will no longer be accepted. If you are still using the older version,
you are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible. See this
announcement for further details:

http://n0cgi.distributed.net/cgi/planarc.cgi?user=bovine&plan=2008-01-10.05:48

mikereed [05-Feb-2008 @ 00:40]

mikereed@distributed.net — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:40:00 GMT

:: 05-Feb-2008 00:40 GMT (Tuesday) ::

Dear friends,

We have recently been in communication with a number of vendors of anti-virus
software, regarding their false detections of dnetc. Many of them have been
brought around to our point of view that dnetc is benign, peaceful and able to
happily co-exist on a busy workstation. Our attempts to bring McAfee around to
our point of view have failed, despite our best efforts.

We would like to re-open hailing frequencies with McAfee and we need your help
to do this. On their site is a page describing dnetc as a 'potentially unwanted
program'. You can see it here:- http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100867.htm

At the side of the page is a link 'Rate This Potentially Unwanted Program'. We
would like as many of you as possible to visit the page and let McAfee know
that dnetc should not be detected.

We remain grateful for your continued support and enthusiasm.

Moo! ]:8)

mikereed [03-Feb-2008 @ 21:54]

mikereed@distributed.net — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:54:00 GMT

:: 03-Feb-2008 21:54 GMT (Sunday) ::

Dear friends,

We are coming towards the final stages of the OGR-25 project.
Our network has come under some strain in recent days, due to
the amount of OGR work being processed. We are aware that
some of the stubs being issued are very small. This is making
calculating buffer requirements difficult for those of us who
like to keep a close eye on things.

In the default configuration, an instance of dnetc which
cannot receive OGR stubs to work on will switch over
seamlessly to the RC5-72 project. We recommend to leave this
behaviour in place, if only to ease the load on our network
at this busy time.

If you have disabled the RC5-72 project in your client
configuration, your client may sit idle for a time while we
continue to experience difficulties with network connections.

We expect that the network connection difficulties will
continue into Monday, as this is historically the busiest
day of the week for our system. Please bear with us as we
work to resolve the shortages. We thank you for your
support.

Moo! ]:8)

mikereed [24-Jan-2008 @ 01:59]

mikereed@distributed.net — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:59:00 GMT

:: 24-Jan-2008 01:59 GMT (Thursday) ::

Several new client versions have been moved from the pre-release page
to the official release page.

*PC-DOS, MS-DOS [x86] v2.9015.504
*OS/2 [x86] v2.9015.504
*Linux [MIPS/ELF] v2.9015.504
*Linux [x86/ELF] v2.9015.504
*Linux [CellBE] v2.9015.505

Download links for all supported platforms can be found at
http://www1.distributed.net/download/clients.php

Moo! ]:8)

bovine [10-Jan-2008 @ 05:48]

bovine@distributed.net — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:48:00 GMT

:: 10-Jan-2008 05:48 GMT (Thursday) ::

Dear friends,

We have recently detected an infrequently occurring bug in the
released CellBE Linux client that is primarily used for PlayStation 3
systems. The bug in the CellBE core only affects OGRp2 results by
sporadically altering the node counts in completed packets sent back
to our servers. RC5-72 results by the same client are not affected by
this bug. No other operating systems or platforms are affected.

An updated client (dnetc505-linux-cellbe) is available on the
pre-release page (http://www.distributed.net/download/prerelease.php)
and will be moved to the official release page shortly. We encourage
all PlayStation 3 and CellBE users to upgrade to the new client as
soon as it is convenient to do so. If this isn't possible, we
recommend that you disable OGRp2 in your existing dnetc configurations
(http://faq.distributed.net/?file=176).

The nature of the bug allows us to continue to rely on most of the
OGRp2 results that have already been contributed by affected clients.
However, to do so, we must make some back-end accommodations to
require that the secondary validation pass be completed by some other
non-CellBE client. We would like to limit how long we must continue
to perform this burdensome special processing step by encouraging
people to upgrade to the newer, unaffected version of the client.

Results from the affected CellBE Linux client versions will continue
to be accepted until February 16, 2008. After this time, no further
OGRp2 results will be credited to stats from CellBE Linux clients
earlier than version 2.9015-505. Previously credited user and team
stats will not be affected. Thanks for your attention!

Moo! ]:8)