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distributed.net Contest Setback
meisenst writes "distributed.net is reporting that there was a problem earlier on in the CSC project (a few weeks ago) and that about 25% of the blocks will have to be re-done. Their announcement is here." We've gotten more than a few submissions about distributed.net showing more than 100% of all packets processed, but held off posting it until we had the official word. And here it is.
distributed.net is made up of humans, people make mistakes. It's not the end of the world, but it is a little annoying.
On the plus side, with the current key rates the remaining 25% will be cracked within a week or two.
The other plus is that the key may not be at the very end of the remaining 25% of the keyspace and therefore we will finish even quicker!
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
There is actually more than one problem with CSC, which is causing it to go over 100%
.plan, stating that 9-12% of the keyspace was being duplicated.
First: dbaker (Daniel Baker), released an official anno uncement explaining that the same blocks were being issued to multiple clients, to attempt to detect cheaters.
Then dbaker released another anno uncement in his
Second: nugget (David McNett), released an announcement stating that there had been a problem with the keymaster generating invalid blocks, resulting in 25% of the keyspace being duplicated.
So, one remaining question is, are they still sending out ~10% 'verification blocks'? Or have they abandoned that to allow us to complete the project faster?
We have reached 112% due to verification blocks and could reach 140% due to 25% of the keyspace being corrupt. However, if 12% of the 25% new blocks are duplicated, then we could reach about 155%...
--
David Taylor
davidt-sd@xfiles.nildram.spam.co.uk
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