Message@Home

[gamer007]

From http://distributedcomputing.info/ :

Message@Home is a test project for PerlBOINC, a Perl-language-based port of the BOINC platform. The project is attempting to decode a message split into 7-symbol-long parts, each part encoded with the MD5 algorithm. Both PerlBOINC and the Message@Home client are in development and early stages of testing, and new user account creation may frequently be disabled.

The project uses a BOINC-based client. See the BOINC platform information for the latest version of the BOINC client.

Join a discussion forum about this project.

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NeoGen has joined the project and made the team as seen in Top Teams. At the moment Message@Home has account creation disabled.

NG, please tell us how M@Home is going so far.

[NeoGen]

Hey gamer

Yea, I was the only one of our team to manage to get in the alpha stage of the project.
On a user's point of view it's been going nicely. It's a simple project, quite stable and work flows pretty much everyday. The devs have put a cap of 12 wu's per day per cpu to make sure that everyone got work and because altough work flows regularly, it is created in small batches of about 2000 units per day only.
Mine (AMD XP 2000+) crunches a workunit in about 1 hour, and since I have 2 boinc installations running, I can get enough work to have my cpu running it all day long.
The application has no screensaver for now, it is said that it will have sometime around beta stage of the project. To beta stage of the project is also scheduled the account reopening, but it is not said when will that happen.

Basically, it's a test project, much like pirates. They've come up with an app to decode (by brute force) an MD5 encrypted message, but the real purpose of the project is the development of the boinc system in PERL, which opens new possibilities to many programmers out there who may not be confortable with the current boinc solution.
Right now it's pretty much everything running on PERL, with a few bits still under conversion. To the end user there may be only a few minor aesthetic glitches on the website, but they're being taken care of in due time. The real priority for now is perfecting the scheduler, it has even a few innovations against the common boinc scheduler already.

I'll keep an eye on it, and when account creation opens again, I'll post about it :)


EDIT
Would it be fair to add this project to our stats page? I mean... guess who's gonna get the yellow band :P :lol:

[NeoGen]

Hey ppl!

http://message.boincstats.com/

Anyone wanting an account here can apply for one now. Just go to the site and fill in the usual form.
They don't say when they'll give you the account, but at least you're subscribed and will get an account at some point.

Come on over and help me push the team up!

Special thanks already go to AquaJoe, who has dedicated a handful of machines to this project under my account last week, when account creation was still not possible, and has already doubled our points! :)

[gamer007]

Thanks for notifying us NG. I just registered and now waiting. :)

[NeoGen]

Almost a week has gone by and no one has entered our team yet :-(

Anyway, here's some good news to cheer us up

Once again, status update.

Last night, the server hung up again, just like it has done a few times when we were setting it up, but the reason for that is unknown. It was rebooted, and seems to be running ok now. The database server restarted without errors, the database has not been damaged.

We are creating the new subproject for M@H. It does not really fit under this name, but we think we should not create a new project for it.

The project is RSA Factoring Challenge. You can read about it in RSA Security Labs web site. We will take challenge for RSA-640.

If we manage to get the factors for the given number, there is a $20,000 prize. The distribution of the prize is not determined yet, but we are thinking of distributing the prize funds like distributed.net RC5 challenge. But of course, we have to win the money first :)

The biggest challenge for this project is the size of the numbers needed to be processed. This cannot be done using standard integral c++ types, we need to create our own routines for handling the numbers. There is already a class for large numbers in the works, with addition, subtraction, multiplication and comparison of integers with 256 or even more digits. Division is in the works, but it currently has some errors. The classes will be optimised for best performance once the project is finished.

The SMTP problem on the server has fixed itself :) Emails are being sent from the webspace, the account creation will be opened freely (without waiting list) in a few days. The waiting accounts will be sent all at that time, and before that new accounts will be activated 15/day.

The scheduler has not seen many changes since last update. Work generator will need to be rewritten with new XML parser as in current scheduler, to support multiple projects and workunit names starting with other name than "test1".

Now we're crunching for the big bucks! :twisted:

[AQUAJOE]

Well Neo we trippled the Message@home score last week.

[Empty_5oul]

good job neo and aqua.
nice teamwork.

[gamer007]

Nice.

I'm still waiting for my account. :-(

[bwhite]

Nice.

I'm still waiting for my account. :-(

Same here :-(

[NeoGen]

Well Neo we trippled the Message@home score last week.

Indeed we did Aqua. :)
Mostly thanks to you because my XP 2000+ can only output about 150 credits a day even working 24 hours/day.
Without your push we wouldn't be in the top 10 as we are now.

[AQUAJOE]

:wav:

NO Problem!! I"m glad to assist and give boosts where needed.

Hopefully some more of us will get accounts soon so we can take some of the task of holding AMD Users in the top 10 off you.

[Brucifer]

What is a "handful" of machines???? :) When I pick mine up it is a handful with just one...................... heh heh <just being a smart a$$> :D

[Brucifer]

Interesting info, specially on the RSA640 challenge attempt. I've managed to be a real sucker for most of the RSA challenges. I also went through the creating an account scene and am now waiting for the actual event to happen. I'm also intrigued on the perl issue as that is going to be real interesting. Off hand though it seems there will be some real speed concerns...

[NeoGen]

I posted after the status update asking what algorithms would he be using to crack the rsa and rytis said he would do something like trial division.
Now that is a speed concern in my oppinion. I posted again afterwards saying that trial division would take a lifetime or more, and that he should see about known algorithms like Number Field Sieve, and its variants.

[AQUAJOE]

AH Nerds :shock:

Have no clue as to what you guys are talking about.

[NeoGen]

:lol: :lol:

Don't worry. What you don't know, can't hurt you. :P

[NeoGen]

Quick Status 2005-08-19
RSA Factoring Challenge application has been prepared. We will submit it sunday or monday, depending on that if the scheduler updates required to support two applications are finished.

I am now leaving until Sunday evening (although I may be available shortly tomorrow). If you have any questions, Pentium100 will try to answer them while I am not here.

Currently estimated WU completion times are the same as message7 application.

From what I gathered on their message boards they're going ahead with the trial division method, so I have my doubts if we'll ever see the end of the challenge.
Oh well... as long as work keeps flowing and credits keep pumping...

[Brucifer]

]

From what I gathered on their message boards they're going ahead with the trial division method, so I have my doubts if we'll ever see the end of the challenge.
Oh well... as long as work keeps flowing and credits keep pumping...


Heh...... that would be unique.... a boinc project that never ran out of work! :)

It would be interesting to see what they are using for routines, etc., as the "glue" is perl... ??? So right there is going to be a time eater before any of the intensive math gets rolling. But I'm just awaiting for this thing to start rolling!

In comparison, take rc5-72, and the client that distributed.net has for that... and it looks like it will run forever also. So this indeed is going to be something to behold! :)

[NeoGen]

2005-08-21 18:47 GMT RSA Factoring Challenge Project Launched
The project for real scientific (and financial) value has been launched - the RSA Factoring Challenge RSA-640 sub-project has been started. The WUs are being generated at a slow rate to make sure the new project application is stable, but the work generation for message7 application has been turned off, at least for a while. More details will follow later, see RSA Labs website for challenge details.

They've started.
I got two "rsa640 4.0" wu's already but haven't crunched them yet.

[gamer007]

W00t! I got my email for my account. :)

Time to start crunching.

I'm in, got 4 rsa640 WUs and 1 message7. :)

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to join the team. :oops:

[NeoGen]

Finally, I'm not alone anymore! :D

[NeoGen]

Hey, people are popping up in our team now.
Vaughan has also got in, and there's a 4th member there too but we can't know who it is because at this time it doesn't have credits.

[gamer007]

Yay! :) Let's boost up our standing [where ever we are]. I've disabled work from my other projects. I'm giving this project my full priority.

[NeoGen]

We're ranked 8th out of 63 teams right now. But unless we get a strong boost we'll be 9th in a couple of days. Team "Boinc@Australia" is currently close behind us and coming up with great strenght.

And we keep growing :) Just a while ago I saw 4 people on the team, and now we're 5. bwhite has joined us, and the 5th member has not credits yet so we can't tell who it is.

EDIT: Vaughan, now that you're in the project too I turn over team management to you. I have just now made the "change team founder" thing. Go by the site and check if the team was passed over to you.

[gamer007]

NG, know how the server decides the quota per day? I'm getting 9/day. Since I choose to get no work from my other projects, will it increase?

[AQUAJOE]

You should get 15 a day per machine.

In most cases that is not enough to fill all the time so you may need to keep another project going in the off time.

[NeoGen]

I've seen the maximum quota already to 25/day. But you have to keep sending back good results for them to keep increasing little by little.
Even so you really should have a backup project to work when you reach your quota limit on message.

[gamer007]

I will, when I run out of WUs from my other projects that are still in my queue from crunching.

This is already looking like a stable project. :)