OK, it looks great but what is this all about?
RC5 is a distributed challenge which harnesses the power of
thousands of computers worldwide to break a RC5 encrypted
message. The aim is to find the right key
among 264
possible keys (a needle in a haystack).
The challenge should take a couple of years to be solved. Check out
RC5 for more details.
Why do you participate in the RC5 challenge?
There is a $2,000 prize for the lucky winner who finds the right
key! Well, the chance to win is slim and I do not even think
about it. I participate because I find it interesting to share
computing power.
distributed.net should
soon introduce some other distributed
projects.
Can I also participate?
Sure! It is simple, just download the
RC5 client and
follow the installation instructions.
How did you build the history graph? I want to create mine too!
I first wrote a
sh/sed/awk/gnuplot-3.7
script which extracts the history data from the
RC5 history stat web page and creates the gif graph.
It worked well on my Linux box but turned out to be slow
and not portable so I rewrote it as a
Perl script.
It works on Unix or Windows. Windows users can
download gnuplot here. Read
the man page
more for details.
I also wrote a CGI perl
script. My ISP does not support CGI scripts but feel
free to use it.
Update (2002/06/29): Special thanks to
Tony Tonns who informed me that the stat format had changed
and who submitted a patch
for the RC5 Perl script to grok the new
format. Time to update your script
rc5_history.pl users.
Can I build graphs for all members of a team?
Yes. I wrote another Perl
script that creates graphs for all members of a team.
Checkout the result
for the LinuxFR
RC5 team.
Who else uses the RC5 graph script?
Here are some cool folks and teams who sent me emails
saying that they use the script for their RC5 stats:
[NBC GIGA Fan Team]
[Team Ibbenbueren]
[Team Da Family]
[Team amd3dnow]
[Team Stel]
[Spunge]
[jfedor]
[Tony Tonns]
[Redowl]
[Jamie]
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