Topic: Got my BFL Single today and I'm raffling it away for 0.5BTC! - page 6. (Read 29329 times)

That'll do pig. That'll do.

Is a golden showers booth close enough?

A cryptographically secure, transparent, and verifiable one (with escrow coming in 2013).

For his next feat, Matthew N. Wright will attempt to operate a lemonade stand...

Goddamnit. OpenOffice calc moved my calculation references when I pasted them. One moment.


EDIT: What happened is that the COUNTIF statement was counting starting the row of the referencing record, instead of starting at the top. To put it plainly, it was only checking rows below the current row instead of starting at the top of the page as it should have. I'm modifying each row in the B column manually to make sure this is done right.

Matt, the modulo (%) operator returns a remainder.

7 % 5 returns 2

So (hash) modulo (ticket #) will return a a random ticket number.

The hash looks like a complicated jargon of words but that is because it is represented in a different number format (Humans use base10 since we have 10 fingers, Computers use base 2 since switches can be on or off, hexadecimal is base16)

Base 2 - 0 1
Base 10 - 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Base 16 - 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

The last part of the hexadecimal hash can be converted into a decimal number (base 10), and the modulo operator can be used to choose the winner.

Since the hash is random and unpredictable, this will be the best way to choose a winner that can be independently verified.

The reverse bias has an extremely low chance of happening, and we can either accept it, or use the next block.  Your call.

I favor this method a lot more since it can be verified by anyone.  It is worth the wait

Now what some people were worried about was this.

*If the hash decimal equivalent is too large, then the last repeating remainder would not include all the tickets.  This would give earlier tickets just the slightest advantage.  This phenomenon happens since the max ticket number does not divide into the hash evenly.  The chances of this are extremely low, and the bias can even be ignored.

I can explain this more if you would like.  But it has been covered already by other posters.  

Just post here if you want me to re sum everything up in a single place.  Its not really complicated at all.

Checking.,

we would not be Bitcoin enthusiasts if we did not over intellectualize everything


now here is my vote on how we settle this and pick our winner :

My hash appears in the referrer column 3 times, but the row with it in the purchaser column has 0 in the referrals column, and I only have 1 ticket credit.

Row is 152, hash is 3c7c2cc979c12fc5074efe3a15f852b40f837437d12653b1ffc71f35dd7697f3

I've got the penny, you get the molecules.

I say we boil water and count the number of Steam molecules that evaporate within a 30 second window, determined from when a penny is dropped from the top of a Sky scraper and hits the ground.

I guess we could do it more complicated than that, use the diameter of our Sun to map out a pie chart for the shares and agree on a 1 minute window to count the surface explosions, where the most explosions in a certain area within that minute dictates the winner.

Hah!  I'd love to see a pinwheel with 47,000 individual slices...

lol .5btc isn't much. I think its fun. At the least, we got this fun discussion and show for .5btc.

Holy shit, can this get any more complicated? Note to future self: don't do BTC raffles.

It's alright. They want to set a precedence and I get that. I also agree with them, as a troll, that if the results are not independently verifiable, it's no-good. Since this won't be the last raffle I run here for fun, I see it as a learning experience at the expense of everyone else. Might as well use it.

You insult me, sir.

I'd create a pinwheel with perfectly measured pie slices in accordance to shares, and stream myself throwing a dart at the spinning wheel to choose the winner.

I have to agree with Matt you guys are making this too complicated. Keep in mind guys raffles are for people who can't do math.

At some point you just need to draw a line in the sand and say you are doing it this way whatever that way may be and if people don't like it then they don't participate.

Yes I did buy a couple tickets but I think the current method is more then fair.

Oh and I know many people who use random.org and just stream the pick on ustream or justin tv.

Yeah we discussed this on page 6 when I brought it up the first time in jest
Yes those shares at the beginning of the list will get 1 extra chance in 2.7Million than those after the point where the final rollover stops.
Bringing it up again after the fact is rather pointless.

Just use random.org.  Use a cell phone to stream the pick live on ustream, so that everyone knows you're not cheating, and you're done!  Viola!