the pause on my script is a little tricky. I recommend taking these two lines out:

IfWinNotActive, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox, , WinActivate, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox,
WinWaitActive, Support Field - Mozilla Firefox,

That way, you can at the very least just switch to a different page or window to stall the script.

3/13/2009 2:01:43 PM

Well then, with 48 days, there's not a moment to lose! Someone else might get the same idea, might as well have a head-start.

3/13/2009 2:13:15 PM

if you're gonna let it own your computer, you may as well open like 50 threads

3/13/2009 2:16:38 PM

Explain?

3/13/2009 2:20:00 PM

#MaxThreadsPerHotkey 3
^p:: ; ctrl+p hotkey (change this hotkey to suit your preferences).
#MaxThreadsPerHotkey 1

if possible, set those values to 50, though I'm not sure if they would all use the same socket. in which case you'd get owned by the rate limiting.

3/13/2009 2:21:58 PM

Is there an easy way for me to check and see if that's happening once I've upped the thread count? Or is there some sort of network response I should expect if it doesn't work versus it working?

3/13/2009 3:16:43 PM

open up your process explorer

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 4:05 PM. Reason : just see if the vote count is increasing at the pace you expect]

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 4:05 PM. Reason : lololol at 65k ]

3/13/2009 4:04:44 PM

you're going to want to stop the padding eventually. at this rate you'll have well over 10mil in the next 48 days

3/13/2009 4:07:24 PM

Quote :

"you IT guys think that your world of SQL and IP addresses is the end-all be-all of technology, but I bet I could list some shit you wouldn't have heard of and act shocked as all hell that you didn't know what I was talking about."

ahahaha

but, see... IP and SQL are two things that anybody who works with computers should at least know exist.


also, gg gs7 and LimpyNuts - i didn't even think about the fact they were using javascript to submit the form

3/13/2009 4:10:48 PM

uhoh... lol. I left my work computer running the click script. I hope three days of continuous submissions isn't too much

3/13/2009 4:48:50 PM

^^ Why in the world would someone who works in technology be expected to have heard of SQL? The only reason I've ever heard of it is because I read slashdot. I can't tell you what it stands for and I have no idea what it does... The only thing I know is that it seems to have something to do with the internet and databases.

For example, what relevance does SQL have to an analog guy who designs power supplies for blade server backplanes? Why would you expect him to have heard of it? Or how about someone who writes the firmware for a new server or processor? Again, you guys have tunnel vision, plain and simple. The tech industry is a lot bigger than your IT world

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 4:57 PM. Reason : s]

3/13/2009 4:52:34 PM

Structured Query Language (and no I didn't look it up, I just have a memory for acronyms, it's strange), and it is the language with which one communicates to a database. Databases are of course used to store lots of information in a manner that makes it very fast and easy to retrieve the information.



[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 5:29 PM. Reason : .]

3/13/2009 5:28:20 PM

that sounds like it has nothing at all to do with analog circuit design, firmware, or a lot of things....

What is so special about fast database access that creates the condition that everybody in the tech world should have heard of SQL?

Or is it just an egocentric view of the world that leads someone to the belief that what one works on is so important that everyone else in the tech field should have at least heard of it... Do I smell insecurity?

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 5:37 PM. Reason : s]

3/13/2009 5:31:43 PM

sql and databases is admittedly not something i would expect a hardware person to know. but for somebody who follows tech, whether they are software, hardware or just general interest, i would think most people whould at least have a basic understanding of what a database is and why it's important. and seeing how SQL is part of the name of several of the major players in the database field, I would think they would at least be familiar with the term SQL as well. Not necessarily sql query syntax or anything, but at least have heard the term. To me it's kinda like a transistor for hardware. I'm by no means a hardware guy at all, but I at least know what a transistor is and why it's important

3/13/2009 5:47:20 PM

I disagree. I think a server is more analogous to a transistor in your example. And I think that some industry standard analog EDA tool would be analogous to SQL in your example. Have you heard of Titan? .... .... ...

OMG ROFLCHOPPER U HAVEN'T?! LOL LOL LOL

3/13/2009 5:52:46 PM

i'm gonna disagree back

http://google.com/trends?q=SQL,+EDA

Results 1 - 10 of about 167,000,000 for sql
Results 1 - 10 of about 18,600,000 for eda

3/13/2009 5:58:12 PM

I'm not disagreeing that working with SQL may be more mundane and common than EDA, but that doesn't mean that because more people work with SQL that everyone should have heard about it....

Its an egocentric view of your own world. And the immediate impulse to laugh at someone who's not familiar with your specific tools is quite revealing.

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 6:02 PM. Reason : s]

3/13/2009 6:00:54 PM

sure you might be right. i guess the only way to really know is to take a survey of graduating CPE majors and see how many of them have heard of SQL

3/13/2009 6:04:56 PM

Again, I'm not disagreeing that it may be an easier field for people to get into. My point has always been that there is no automatic reason for a CPE to know about SQL. That being said, I'm sure that more graduating CPE majors do know about SQL... And it probably has a lot to do with where they are on the bell curve.

You mentioned that she had a high GPA... This sounds right to me. Why would she need to learn about SQL? She's got a brighter future and better things to learn about than that crap



[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 6:10 PM. Reason : s]

3/13/2009 6:08:19 PM

sql =/= crap. i think the vibe i get from your statements is that software development is IT like windows troubleshooting is IT and that cpe is on some higher plane or something

3/13/2009 6:32:31 PM

No, it sounds like that, but I am just reacting to the hive-mind mentality here that all things IT are obvious and anyone that doesn't know about them is LOL stupid. You see a lot of that in the "tales of the technically inept" thread also

[Edited on March 13, 2009 at 6:36 PM. Reason : s]

3/13/2009 6:34:01 PM

sure you might be right. i guess the only way to really know is to take a survey of graduating CPE majors and see how many of them have heard of SQL

3/13/2009 6:40:01 PM

troll

3/13/2009 6:41:34 PM

^^ I would actually guess that maybe 50% would not have heard of it.

3/13/2009 6:53:46 PM

Quote :

"No, it sounds like that, but I am just reacting to the hive-mind mentality here that all things IT are obvious and anyone that doesn't know about them is LOL stupid. You see a lot of that in the "tales of the technically inept" thread also"

You do realize IT encompasses ALL information technology right? It's not just software.

You would be better to say: "the hive mind mentality here that all things software/software development/software engineering/tech support are obvious..."

I put in all those options, because it's not at all clear what your intent is. And I think I agree with you anyway I have a great deal of respect for the hardware guys.

3/13/2009 11:37:29 PM

that's what i meant by IT - I opted for brevity over clarity

3/14/2009 12:25:18 AM

back to topic. leader is at 700K+, Archdale is at 133K+

of course Archdale's adjusted total after abiding by these rules, is probably only only a couple thousand

Quote :

"4. VOTING PERIOD AND WINNER SELECTION: Beginning 5/1/09 at 12:00:00 PM (ET) to 5/31/09 at 11:59:59 AM (ET) (“Voting Period”), the Finalists’ nominations will be posted at http://www.FrostedFlakes.com for public voting. The voting public will be allowed one (1) vote for their favorite finalist nomination per Day, per person/email address during the Voting Period. For purposes of this promotion, a “Day” is defined as a consecutive twenty-four hour time period during the Promotion Period starting at 12:00:00 PM (ET) and ending at 11:59:59 AM (ET). The general public will be invited to vote online for their favorite finalist nomination. The public voting will be combined with the Sponsor’s judging panel results (see rule # 3) to determine the winners. The public voting will count for ½ of the final score; and the Sponsor’s judging panel results will count for ½ of the final score. The thirty (30) Finalists with the highest overall score will be declared the Grand Prize winners. In the event of a tie, the winner(s) will be determined by the Sponsor, in their sole discretion, using the Judging Criteria set forth above for selecting the Finalist."

i imagine once the votes are reviewed a lot of Archdale's are going to be disqualified

3/14/2009 5:00:26 PM

That is, IF they are keeping track of what constitutes a valid vote.

3/14/2009 5:11:46 PM

This is fraud.

3/14/2009 6:40:51 PM

solinari, go back to the hole you crawled out of.

you are not better than anybody here, however often you might tell yourself that.

we aren't saying that EVERYONE should know EVERYTHING, but that they should certainly at least have a basic understanding of something as ubiquitous as SQL.

also, lol at CPU firmware.

3/14/2009 6:49:13 PM

^^This isn't fraud. It's neither for personal gain, or to deceptive. The contest organization can easily reject as many votes as they choose, we are doing nothing to hide the fact that we are voting multiple times.

It may be against the spirit of the contest, but there's no legal (or IMHO ethical) dilemma about it.

3/14/2009 8:34:52 PM

typical. I bet you also have illegal music files on your computer too.

3/14/2009 9:39:12 PM

SUPPORTERS 133123

3/14/2009 9:43:59 PM

Currently in 6th place

Leader - Coral Springs High School
Coral Springs, FL
SUPPORTERS 704554

Looks like you guys have a long way to go

3/14/2009 11:54:13 PM

any EE or CPE that doesnt know at least the basic concept of what IP and SQL are, and what they are used for... well, that's pretty sad.

even i can (de)construct an IP header and hack through some basic SQL syntax. i'll need to google up some cheatsheets and it'll probably take me 3X as long as an average IT guy .... but still.

....

all that aside, if your little town from Bumfuck, NC wins this kellog's contest, i'll betcha $20 you get disqualified. you know they're going to look at your town population, then look at the numbers and someone's going to say "pull up the IP records on the submissions" and then disqualify you when they see 600,000 submissions from four different IPs.



[Edited on March 15, 2009 at 4:42 AM. Reason : ]

3/15/2009 4:40:08 AM

theres no way in hell some city in florida has 700k. something tells me everyone above archdale is automated voting as well.

3/15/2009 9:22:32 AM

They're a suburb of Fort Lauderdale (metro pop 1.7 Million) ... it's believable they're getting all (or most) of their votes manually, even if people are sitting around clicking 10 or 20 extra votes.

Archdale NC? population 9,000. if you want to call it a suburb of High Point, i guess you have connection to that metropolis population of 90,000.

also, think about how many people in places like Ft. Lauderdale are from somewhere else. everyone there is part of a huge network of extended family, friends, and synagogues from all over the nation. OTOH, nobody moves *to* Archdale. they move *from* it.


there's no way some podunk little town can generate 700K+ votes without rasing questions about IP logs

nice effort though. it's almost heartwarming.





[Edited on March 15, 2009 at 12:14 PM. Reason : ]

3/15/2009 12:02:45 PM

Thanks, I do try.

The top 30 entrants win money. Victory is based 50% on votes accumulated and 50% on need. I don't need to be in first place to win, I think sixth is a decent place to be.

I'll keep adding to it in an attempt to help, we'll see if it works out for me.

3/17/2009 10:54:19 PM

did someone over at Duke have the same idea?

Quote :

"Freedom Field Durham, NC SUPPORTERS 119718"

3/17/2009 11:22:30 PM

i think i'm gonna call up Kelloggs and tell them to check their IP logs for their top 30 entries.

3/18/2009 1:09:35 PM

They might not care. After all, what sounds better to investors/money givers, that 50 ACTUAL people from a town voted to support, or 500,000 people voted? Exactly

3/18/2009 2:24:21 PM

"I hate you, Milkman Dan"

3/18/2009 10:09:51 PM

Hey guys. My hometown is a finalist for the frosted flakes money for the new YMCA!

That being said, the captcha and method for keeping up with votes is MUCH better this time. I think they are keeping up with the "vote once a day" rule by keeping track of the email addresses, which they require now. So I am gonna do a little manual labor here and post them by hand. What I need is a list of willing email addresses to use for the votes.

I was wondering if it is possible to build a script that interfaces with the website to send this information automatically. Basically the script would:

click the vote button
put in some date of birth
input an email address in the email address box (supplied to the script by file, or manually input into the script)
click the vote button
repeat with the next random birthdate and email address

I have no idea how to get started with something like this, though. Any help/pointers are appreciated

5/4/2009 12:10:14 PM

You just need to write an autogenerator for emails.

Again, pretty easy to do. Create random gmail/hotmail/insert service here accounts, have them all forward to one account, auto-signup for the kellogs deal, and vote.

5/4/2009 3:44:47 PM

Yeah, I signed up for that spamgourmet.com thing that let's me make anyemailintheworld.dechadwe@spamgourmet.com, so I have an infinite number of email addresses.

I really have no idea how to get past the captcha

5/4/2009 4:10:14 PM

Quote :

"Get a proxy/scraper like Snoopy (php browser proxy) CURL Write a few dozen lines of PHP + regular expression matching to handle automating the voting and getting the captcha image. Pass the image resource to a graphic library and sanitize it Pass the clean image to an OCR utility send the OCR output back to the browser proxy, and submit the form. "

5/4/2009 5:15:47 PM

Oh, when you spell it out like that it sounds so simple...

5/4/2009 11:02:04 PM

took me about 4 hours between classes to do it a couple of years ago. it's not hard at all, and requires very little actual coding.

5/5/2009 12:10:19 AM

I am also from Archdale.

5/5/2009 1:03:36 AM

ask 4chan

5/5/2009 2:25:20 AM