On Sat, 8 Dec 2001, Brad Greenlee wrote: > > 8. Fairness > > > > I think the key to a fair game is a really tight test program > > on day one (tsanta.pl had too many holes). It is ideal if you > > can just say "if it passes the test program, it is ok"; > > that also eliminates ambiguity about the game's semantics > > and spares you from having to describe the semantics. > > I guess ideally that's what you'd want, but I think it is a lot to ask. We > have a lot of wily characters in this group, and some will inevitably figure > out a way to "outsmart" the test program. I think the better way to do it is > the way you did it: provide a reasonable test program to makes everyone's > lives much easier, but clearly state the intent of each program.
The test program could also be "private" to the Arbiter. After the game, it is made public and people check if the test program is working. Anyway, holes of this kind allow programs that don't fit to win, rather than valid programs to fail. So it's not really a problem if the test program is "secret". > > 9. Submission Format > > > .... > > gzipped tarball or zip file. It wouldn't be too hard to > > write a little Perl server program that scanned your inbox, > > extracted the entrant's files, ran the test program on them, > > then automatically posted an updated leaderboard to fwp if > > it passed or a reject mail message to the entrant if it failed. > > Or why not have a web page to which golfers would post their programs (just > paste them in to a text field). The test program could run right then and > update the scores. The arbiter would have admin access to go in and muck > around (post a new test program, edit entries, etc.) Am I the only one to see a big security problem with these approaches? We all know how easy it is to send email from anywhere, and to stick an (obfuscated or not) unlink for glob "*" line in it... -- Philippe "BooK" Bruhat Be careful when you take one side or the other. You could wind up in the middle. (Moral from Groo The Wanderer #33 (Epic))
