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23-Oct-97
Interesting bit of info: seems the RC5-56 key was found by an (ex?-)Amigan after all, 'Peter Stuer, Belgium' appears as the author in the old BootX anti-virus utility docs. So hooray :) Small clarification: the actual key in the RC5-56 effort was found on 20-Oct-07 (after 210 days), due to waiting for confirmation from RSA etc. this at first appeared to be 2 days later.
22-Oct-97
The winning key was found by Peter Stuer at the STARLab Bovine Team coordinated by Jo Hermans and centered in the Computer Science Department (DINF) of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Belgium. His PPro 200/Windows NT Workstation machine was running the lucky client that found the right key after 212 days of the effort and 47% of the keyspace. We did not win, but our most impressive 7th overall and even third daily ranking after only 63 days of participation shows that the power of the Amiga community is to be reckoned with. We are also one of the only seven teams who cracked more than one million blocks, or approximately 269,000,000,000,000 keys. This feat would have taken a single Amiga 4000 equipped with a Motorola 68060 CPU almost 80,000 years!
But don't go away just yet! The current effort (RC5-56) is over, but the next one has already begun. A number of prospective collective projects await beginning, such as Mersenne primes, SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and of course the next higher bitstrength of RC5, RC5-64. Since the new V3 clients that allow the other projects is not ready yet (and SETI will for example only start next year) a new set of V2 clients is available from Bovine to start tackling RC5-64, at least until the other projects start.
We have shown that the Amiga community can successfully compete with other platforms, even though we are currently representing a single digit percentage (if not less) of desktop computers in use today. We are convinced this will change with the patronage of Gateway 2000 and the community spirit that has made the current effort such a resounding success.
There is no Amiga RC5-64 client available yet, but there soon will be, and now we can be there from the very beginning instead of playing catch-up (though we managed that quite well :). Check out the v2 clients page for a client that you can already use. As soon as an Amiga client is available, it will be announced here. These pages will be reworked to reflect the new client's properties, please allow a couple of days. Stay tuned and visit frequently! Please hold your mail until then as well, or join the mailinglist.
Above notice was written up in a hurry, well past bedtime (I'm starting a new job in about 5 hours :), more information, a new press release and of course the start of the next project will be added soon. Stay tuned! For the full story, visit the Bovine pages.
22-Oct-97
We have broken the 1 million block barrier! Also more than 1000 Amigas are participating now. Looks like we got a nice boost from some backlog as well, hence the astounding rate of 151 MKeys/s fror yesterday. Keep on cracking :)
21-Oct-97
Philippe Duchenne has supplied a couple of AmigaDOS scripts to use the client with Miami or AmiTCP in both on and offline modes, check out the archive. Inside the scripts is some info you should read on how to use them.
20-Oct-97
After two months participation we have moved up to an overall ranking of 7th, jumping two places in a space of only hours. We are also again ranked third daily, so keep cracking! The press page is feeling a bit lonely, please submit your Amiga/RC5 sightings, or make a mention if you can't find any :)
19-Oct-97
We now have over 1000 members! The number of machines participating totals over 1750 and it looks like we'll jump two places very soon :)
18-Oct-97
Frank Sievertsen has developed a nice set of statistical pages, such as a keyrate chart and prognosis for future rankings at current speed. See the links on the stats page. Thanks Frank! Also updated the press page with a couple of mentions. Keep them coming!
15-Oct-97
Talk about steam, we are ranked third in the daily statistics for yesterday and making headway in the overall ranking as well, with 200 Trillion keys checked now (that's somethink like 200,000,000,000,000). Perl script for analyzing your logfile has been updated to v1.4.
14-Oct-97
We are really picking up steam now, over 900 members are supplying above 80 Megakeys/s! We could soon get up in the fourth position for the daily statistics, so keep cracking :) Newlook and Matthijs' Perl script for analyzing your logfile has been updated to v1.3, check it out.
12-Oct-97
The media blitz begins! Added Press section with press releases and articles/mentions that have appeared to date concerning our effort. This section needs your input, if you see any mention anywhere in any form, please contact the team coordinator (address obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word). If you don't see any mention, make one! We need to capitalize on our success, and bring the Amiga and its community the exposure it deserves. Mail any newsservice, call your local TV station, newspaper, etc. now! Point them to to the press section and the accompanying Press Release. Forget about your lover, your pets and favourite TV shows, get out your mailer, fountain pen, telephone and let the world know! New members are highly welcome, we can and should beat any other team out there if we gather our strength. You deserve it, Amiga deserves it!
11-Oct-97
Deryk Robosson (Newlook) and Matthijs Luger have written a personal log statistics script in Perl for people who don't have access to ARexx, you can get it here. Note that it's in GZipped tar format, should you want to run it with Amiga Perl you can get UnTGZ from Aminet to extract it. Thanks Deryk and Matthijs!
09-Oct-97 (update)
The request for sending a note about machines not participating anymore does not mean you should remove machines that are, of course! Some people have mailed me they find their machine too slow for the effort, well, let me say that all those machines together are making this possible in the first place. Please don't remove any machines that are usable, no matter what speed. Remember that even if it does only one block, that block might be containing the right key.
09-Oct-97
Single digit time! We are currently ranked 9th overall! Efficiency has dropped to below 40%, there is much to gain from an improvement on this. Try running the client nightly too for example, if you didn't already. My 4000 has been cracking 49 days nonstop now without any adverse effect, the same machine the mailinglist runs on (over 100 people now :), the member administration, webpage creation etc., even the occasional multitasking game like a Freeciv client/server :) Also, if one of your machines is not in use for the client anymore, please send me a note so I can remove obsolete entries. With our current maximum keyrate we could be heading towards a #3 ranking.. (though 60% efficiency is a more realistic aim :) The Bovine stats now also have a total statistic for blocks done/number of hosts for every day of participation, check it out.
07-Oct-97 (update 2)
We have made the top 10 overall! Stats have finally caught up, and the end is not in sight :)
07-Oct-97 (update)
The official word: Stats server was taken off-line on 02-Oct because of experiments with some spam filtering (after the Brazilian joker), now one has been implemented and logs are catching up. Currently missing is only 06-Oct 12:00-23:59 and 07-Oct 01:00-present time. One batch takes 2-6 hours, so by tonight stats should be completely current again. 'In a perfect world' as the Bovine people put it, there should be no outages from now on. The missing half-day (06-Oct) also explains the low efficiency for yesterday.
07-Oct-97
Stats server is coming back on-line, though efficiency seems still too low, but the same goes for all teams, this should clear up during the day.
06-Oct-97
Fred Wright has supplied a couple of AmigaDOS scripts to make client configuration and use easier, see the usage section. Thanks Fred! These scripts might be of some help if you have problems with networking errors, if your setup is already working fine you don't really need them. Be sure to read the '!README-FIRST!' file in the archive attentively. The stats server is still off-line, but this does not impact our progress, keep cracking!
04-Oct-97
The stats server is off the deep end again, we actually lost some blocks, according to the current tables. It also reports efficiencies between 15-25% (if reachable), it's a Micro$oft product after all :) Let's hope it will be fixed soon. We are still closing in on a #10 ranking overall, keep cracking!
03-Oct-97
While closing in on the #10 overall ranking our efficiency suddenly dropped to ~25%. This is hopefully a stats server strangeness. Yesterday's sudden appearance of a Brazilian team as #2 in the daily stats turns out to be a hoax, they were flushing fake blocks, and the E-mail address had a number of references to male genitalia. Rather childish, but they have been removed now. Morten Stærkeby's log analyzer ARexx script has undergone some improvements, check it out.
30-Sep-97 (update)
We have moved up into 11th place overall! Only a week or so left to the top ten! :) Morten Stærkeby has written an ARexx script to analyze your RC5 logfile, resulting in some interesting statistics, check it out. On the 'what the press say about the Amiga and RC5' page, excerpts from printed media or otherwise are welcome too, of course. Please state the source clearly.
30-Sep-97
We are now ranked 12th overall and 5th daily! Only 12 MKeys/s more and we could be #3 in the daily statistics, grab a hold of your math teacher, neighbour, Amiga buddy, milkman and his dog, we need your cycles :) Another good way to reach this number would be to increase efficiency by letting already participating machines run longer, for example during the night when nothing else is done anyway. It should be possible, since we are hovering at only ~40% now. A possible candidate for a PPC port has emerged, hope to say more about that soon. Re exposure: links to webpages with newsstories on our effort are welcome, a 'what the press say about the Amiga and RC5' page is planned.
29-Sep-97
We are now ranked 12th overall and 5th daily! It seems there has been no development on the PPC front yet, anyone with the inclination to port the client to PowerUp, a board and the necessary C and (PPC) asm knowledge please send me a note (you need to contact the Bovine people directly for the source/NDA etc, but please let me know). AI/Gateway have not reacted to my E-mails yet, anyone with a red telephone marked 'hotline' is welcome to prod them :)
28-Sep-97
Going strong, now 14th overall, 5th daily. We have done over 100 Trillion keys now, and the effort is over one third of the keyspace.
27-Sep-97
Another misspelled E-mail appeared, this time 'ciston' instead of 'cistron', judging from the keyrate it's an 060/50 (if it runs 24/7). It should be rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.cistron.nl! (now old address! new one is rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.xs4all.nl - obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word) Almost 2000 blocks wasted now. Telepaths apply within, there seems to be no way of reaching the five people using a wrong address now.. We have made another jump ahead, 16th overall and 6th yesterday.
26-Sep-97
And another bites the dust, #18 overall, #6 yesterday!
25-Sep-97
We have entered the top 20 overall! Currently ranked 19th overall and 7th in the last 24 hours! Since I'm getting the hang of ARexx, worked out a script to automatically break up database into alphabetical member pages :) Bovine stats seem fully working again now as well. Efficiency is below 50%, keep cracking!
24-Sep-97
Stats are nearly up to date now, we have made a big jump ahead to #23 currently! At this pace another two weeks and we're top 10 overall :) Now with the mailing list fully running, next project is to break up the ever larger member list page into alphabetically sorted subpages. Any ARexx takers? I'm still exhausted from my birthday :)
23-Sep-97
With four days still missing from the stats we are ranked at number 36 overall! Also corrected some slight errors in the stats scripts. Managed to retrieve one of the persons' E-mail address that sent out some blocks under the wrong address and another one warned in front (the *.nk address). Unfortunately there are still two others sending out under a misspelled/wrong address (rc5@amiga.cistron.net and rc5@amiga.citron.nl) with over 800 blocks now :/ It should be rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.cistron.nl (now old address!/obscured), please correct that. Mailing list is getting busy now :)
22-Sep-97
The stats are back, of sorts. Never mind the ranking currently shown, it seems to be lagging a week or two, should be catching up soon.
21-Sep-97 (update)
The Amiga RC5 Team effort mailinglist is now operational! Send 'SUBSCRIBE your@address' (without the quotes) in the body of a message to rc5-list-request(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.xs4all.nl to subscribe (obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word). You will get an introduction explaining how to unsubscribe, the rules etc. The object of the mailinglist is to discuss everything around the effort, RC5 and the client(s). Topics could be for example how to get more attention focused on the effort, help eachother with problems, what to do with the money ;)
21-Sep-97
Enhanced member stats to correctly count entries with more than one machine, including keyrates, CPU/OS stats etc. We have breached the 1000 machine limit now and have a total power of above 100 MKeys/s! Simply can't wait for the return of the Bovine stats :)
20-Sep-97
Stats server is still down, not too long now hopefully. If you get some company's webpage when following the stats link, it's a webserver of one of the Bovine admins. Also added a FAQ with the ten most asked questions, read it before you mail!
19-Sep-97
Forget normalized, the stats are off-line currently due to a machine upgrade. We are ranked somewhere around number 40 :) Also, more than 500 Amigas are now participating in the effort! The notion of distributing the award money evenly is now getting silly, there would be nothing left after postage/bank transfers, should we win. Discussion on this issue is welcome, but please hold your mail until the mailinglist is up. The trial list is now fully functional, final testing has begun, announcement will follow in a matter of days.
18-Sep-97 (update)
The Bovine stats seem to have normalized now, though update frequency remains a mystery. Currently we are the fifth fastest team! With the full power of the member list we would be at number three even. Efficiency is below 40% currently, though even at this rate we have a real chance to enter the top 10 overall before the key is found. In the first month of the effort, starting with a lone A4000, we have reached the top 50, that is the power of the Amiga :) Two people still are flushing blocks with a misspelled E-mail address (the one at the top is the only correct one), more than 600 blocks wasted for the effort.. Also caught up with new form entries now, next on the wishlist vs. time is getting the mailinglist up :) The time has also come for broad exposure in the general media, try to get as much PR as possible, in whatever form. Let us properly mark the rebirth of the Amiga with the exemplary success of this effort!
18-Sep-97
We are currently ranked at number 44 overall and number 10 in the daily stats! Efficiency is dropping, keep those machines cracking! Added more statistics to the stats page.
17-Sep-97
The stats still seem to be a bit haphazard, but back on track, we are currently ranked at number 48 overall and number 10 in the daily stats! Also, another new misspelled E-mail address appeared, and two others are still sending out blocks as well.. Please check your ID line in the rc5v2.ini file! In addition to the member list page, the stats at the top have now also been added separately to speed up loading for people only interested in overall machine stats.
16-Sep-97
Break out the champaigne, it seems the stats are in fine working order after all; we are currently ranked at number 50 overall and number 6 in the daily list! Also the first statistics script is now in use on the member page, though it might be separated for faster access at a later date. Also an apology to everyone who entered a form in the last couple of days, since it has not been automated yet and I am very short on time it will take a couple of days more.
15-Sep-97
Four people supplied the effort with ARexx scripts for the approximation of total key power from the member list, many thanks to kingrollo / phil, Greg Scott, Bjorn Axelsson and Strepsil! Strepsil is even right now busy creating a script to automatically add new members from form output, which will help immensely in keeping up to date (hm, currently trailing ~200 forms..). The count scripts will be used when the stats have normalized (#64 now, looks real enough :) and the trailing forms have been added. First tests reveal 50-60 MKeys/s, way to go Amiga team :)
15-Sep-97 (wee hours)
Dex Kennedy did one better (right after I added the other one :), the anim GIF button has now been optimized to below 4 KB! Excellent work guys! Also received ARexx scripts from at least three people (about 140 mails behind..), these will be used in the next couple of days when I find the time (or $5000 or so to quit my current slave job ;)
14-Sep-97 (update)
Oliver Roberts was kind enough to supply the effort with an optimized version of the animated GIF button which is almost 10 KB smaller, thanks! He used PPaint to optimize it BTW. If you have copied the button locally, you can copy the new one over it and save download time and quota.
14-Sep-97
Well, we entered the top 100 with a bang one could say (at number 65), except the stats are broken again. Today's stats say we are ranked number 60, but that is incorrect as well I presume. Check out the explanation on the Bovine site. Don't worry, your blocks aren't lost, keep cracking!
13-Sep-97
Almost in the top 100 now with 103. Our current rate is ranked number 8 of all contestants! At this rate we should be in the top 50 in a couple of days :) The cistron.net address is still active though, 56 blocks gone for our effort :/
13-Sep-97 (wee hours)
As The ever-alert Barron put it: 'We have another lunatic now.. rc5@amiga.cistron.net...' (/me runs hiding) Let's bring out the really embarrassing notice again shall we? :) Sorry to all the folks who have checked their E-mail entry 20 times already =) Actually cistron.net is strictly taken a correct alias for cistron.nl, as is cistron.com, but not for our team effort. This is the single most important identifying bit by which the Bovine servers know what team to add the blocks to, get it wrong and it is wasted for the effort. It should be rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.cistron.nl (now old address!/obscured) Fortunately the stats page now also holds a cryptic 'click here and something might happen' link, where you can view IP numbers. Unfortunately, it is a global setting which I have disabled because we have anonymous members as well, until they change it so the coordinator can view it separately with a password it is of no use.
12-Sep-97 (update)
Lots of news (weekend is here :) - stats seem to be more frequent now (hourly?), we are ranked 108 at last check! Mailing list is imminent, have to work out some things first though, expect it to be operational within a few days. Should facilitate the task of helping echother with client/setup problems a lot. ARexx buffs are welcomed to write a script that calculates total power from the member page (disregarding N/A's etc.), as well as one that adds a new line to the member page using the form output (contact me (obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word) for example output from various browsers etc.). Please use a local copy of the member list for any testing, my quotas are limited. The misspelled E-mail address seems to have been corrected, thanks, whoever it was :) Please contact me (obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word)/the Bovine people to see if they can add the blocks to our effort and delete the misspelled address (same for other one too). The Bovine people have been contacted about moving our team into the platform advocacy section from the miscellaneous teams part on the team listing page, this has not happened yet. A friendly mail to rc5help@slacker.com (the Bovine effort helpdesk) might help..
12-Sep-97
Even better than yesterday, current total ranking: 125, number 11 in the daily top 100. Caught up some on the new members forms, though the mailbox is filling up again, as it should :) 25% of the keyspace is done now.
11-Sep-97
Current total ranking: 149, number 12 in the daily top 100! We're going strong :) I have trouble keeping up with adding new members as well, over 40 in the batch now. Please don't resubmit, will catch up in the weekend.
10-Sep-97
We are currently ranked number 170 total, #15 in the last 24 hours! Another influx from the AWD announcement, now over 330 machines (there are a couple of people with up to 120 machines (!) in labs not listed because of the irregular participation). The popularity of these pages proves to be such that I have to move the members page to an alternative account, don't worry, a redirection is in place.
9-Sep-97
Press Release posted on Amiga Web Directory. We are currently ranked number 178 total, #17 in the last 24 hours! At this kind of improvement rate we'll be in the top 100 by next week :) The misspelled E-mail discovered yesterday has not sent in blocks yesterday, hopefully the problem was corrected. I still would like a confirmation :) The other one is still sending out keys under a wrong E-mail address after 13 days. What a waste..
8-Sep-97
Another misspelled E-mail address appeared, this time 'costron' instead of the right 'cistron'. Please check your 'id=...' line in the rc5v2.ini file, it should read id=rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.xs4all.nl (obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word). The person using 'citron' is also still sending out blocks. Number 15 in the top 100, up to 201 in total, keyrate down somewhat, keep those machines rollin'! Have to get in the total top 100 before the key is found :)
7-Sep-97
We have made a very nice jump up to number 14 in the daily top 100! Current ranking improved to 222, and over 10 Trillion keys done. New structure for the pages, should load faster now (and cost me less quota ;)
6-Sep-97
We have entered the first 8 bits :) Current ranking: 255, stats server seems to be fluctuating a bit (dropped one to 26 in daily top 100, even though our keyrate seemingly grew by 25%). Another barrier broken: more than 200 machines in the effort now.
5-Sep-97
Current ranking: 295, still number 25 in the top 100. This weekend a special treat: courtesy of Lazaruz 20 PPros are doing their thing (mm, 9 MKeys/s? :) until Monday morning, expect a nice temporary boost in the stats :)
4-Sep-97
We have moved up to number 25 in the daily top 100! Total ranking has also improved by 47 places to number 342.
3-Sep-97
Yesterday's sudden jump turns out to be a backlog, the rate has now normalized again. This still means that we are doing over 1 Trillion keys a day, and are now ranked number 29 in the daily top 100! Current total ranking has also improved to 389.
2-Sep-97
It seems we have some serious (invisible) computing power helping out, yesterday's rate was almost double the member list's total :) Whoever it is, thanks, but we would like to have some information on it if those machines are going to be on the effort for a longer time, it will be kept confidential if you wish. We jumped to number 453 overall, and are now number 31 in the daily top 100! Another barrier broken: 100 members now participate in our effort, and we have done 5 Trillion keys. I'm sorry to say that this column must not be read by everyone, there is still someone with a misspelled E-mail address sending out blocks. That's 41 up to now.. Please triple check the 'id=..' line in your rc5v2.ini file! It should read rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.xs4all.nl (obscured to thwart spambots, replace the at with @ and remove the capitalized word)
1-Sep-97
The missing day is in, current ranking: #654, #42 in the daily top 100! Efficiency around 70%. Someone is still using a misspelled E-mail address (cistron it should be)!
1-Sep-97
With still one day missing from the stats, we have reached the 42nd place in the daily top 100! Total ranking: 782. I shall refrain from using too much exclamation marks from now on :) Efficiency has also improved to ~70%, way to go team! (oops :)
31-Aug-97
pSi kindly supplied the effort with a great animated GIF button, thanks! See the instructions on how to add this to your own homepage. No stats for today yet, guess we'll have to wait for tomorrow to see how far up in the top 1000 we jumped :)
30-Aug-97
The milestones are falling by the wayside as if it's nothing: We have entered the daily top 100 at #74! Also we are almost in the top 1000 now at #1022 and the number of machines in the effort is now more than 100. Someone is still sending blocks under the wrong E-mail, please correct that. Efficiency has improved again to ~55%, keep those machines switched on! :)
29-Aug-97
Phil Vedovatti (Aes) of NewIcon fame kindly supplied the effort with a great logo, thanks Phil! Also thanks to Newlook, whom I kept badgering about one, Phil beat you to it :) A button à la 'Amiga RC5 NOW!' would still be nice.
29-Aug-97
Someone misspelled the E-mail address, it should be rc5(at)amiga.REMOVETHIS.cistron.nl (now old address!/obscured), not rc5@amiga.citron.nl. Don't waste those keyblocks!. We have passed the 1 Trillion keys! And jumped up another 300 places, now in the 1400s. Efficiency still only around 40%, try to run the client whenever you can.
28-Aug-97
Stats stats stats! Almost 1 Trillion keys done, in the first week of the effort we have made good over 8000 places (since last update up another 1000 into the 1700s), and almost made the daily top 100! Note that we're running at less than 35% efficiency, try to run the client whenever you can. With current total power around 7000 KKeys/s we should be in the daily top 50 even. Also try to get people around you to join, the more the faster our progress, and the more exposure for the Amiga.
27-Aug-97
Stats server seems to be on the move again, though it's still backlogged a couple of days. We have made another jump of 3000 places up and are now in the top 3000! :)
25-Aug-97
Added submit form to keep new data tidy, use this form to send us your data. Stats server is still down, could be up any moment..
23-Aug-97
The stats updates have been suspended (for all teams) for the weekend due to some enhancement work being done, this means no blocks lost, only a bigger jump ahead on Monday ;) Keep cracking!
22-Aug-97
During the first day of the project we jumped more than 4000 places ahead (without counting dupes!), and the list of participants is growing steadily, many running their machines 24 hours a day. Keep up the good work!
21-Aug-97
It seems the server statistics are incorrect, the rates are much too low. We are told this is due to a backlog and will fix itself
20-Aug-97
Started Amiga RC5 Team effort
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