84silver.com's GraphiTI Phase II

inportb · Post by **inportb** » Tue 04 Oct, 2005 6:27 pm

lloydkirk1989 wrote:I originaly planned on contacting TI-Cares today, but I can't because my votes keep on going way up. My credibility is ruined. I think I know who's doing it. People like CalcKing are probably facing a similar situation. By the way, the latest registered user, importb is actually Jiang Yio, the New York cheater. For fun I sent him an e-mail using a fake indentity as follows:

Hello Jiang Yio,

My name is Christiana Amaci. Sorry if my english is bad, I am from Italy. I found out about the design competition yesterday, so it was too late to make my own design. Being italian, im not sure I could have done the contest anyway. I thought that I help some other person win. I liked your design the best, so I searched your name and got this email address. I would like to help you win. Please let me know if there is anything I can do. A friend told me that a script can be made to vote quicker, but I dont know, whatever I can do to help.
And I got this reply:

Dear Christiana Amaci,

Thank you for supporting my cause! Much as I wish to win, I do not
wish to win through dishonorable methods. But it would greatly help if
you vote for me and ask your friends to vote for me. Again, thanks!

~jyio
LOL, 1 day and 5,000 votes later he has the ball to boast about his "honorable methods". I would certainly like to know what they are.

Oh? I'd hardly call _your_ methods honorable. Are you so afraid of confronting me directly that you must hide behind a contrived identity?

My "honorable methods" involve elisting the help of my school, which has over 3000 students. What the voters do is beyond my control (similarly for all of you), but I myself did not cheat in any way.

That said, I wonder why you're bashing me, since I'm not the highest scorer. California increased from 450+ to 10000+ overnight (no, I don't vote for people in my sleep) and is still going up. He's at 13663 at the moment. Second place is South Carolina, with 9961 votes. I wouldn't be so quick to point fingers if I were you. "Biggest cheater," eh? Why did I not make myself first place then? Or at least second, since California has such a ridiculous count?

I'm sorry guys, but I have no part in cheating for others, so this whole business is out of my control. Flame me if you want, but this'll get you nowhere. I suggest we find out who this Bhavik Gandecha character is, since his score's been increasing slowly but steadily since last night.

CalcKing · Post by **CalcKing** » Tue 04 Oct, 2005 7:21 pm

Wow, I'm impressed. This makes what, 4 finalists on this forum?

I think I'll call TI again today... they haven't replied to me. It's painfully obvious that people are cheat voting on my entry; I have had XX14 votes on it for quite a while (first 3014, then 3514, now 5014...).

Spengo · Post by **Spengo** » Tue 04 Oct, 2005 11:20 pm

Well, most likely you are a perfectly fine person who has not done anything wrong, but the point is, some people ARE doing some cheating. Your entry just happened to be one of the examples of a design that was cheated on. Notice, that there are a few members of this forum in a similar predicament. Hopefully, no one is bashing anyone.

inportb · Post by **inportb** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 1:48 am

How do you think TI'll actually "review" the votes? If they're logging everyone's IP addresses, they might as well have used IP's to restrict voting in the first place... And, um, I think SouthCarolina's joined the cheating party, California style. It'd really suck if one of them wins, because they both look like eh. :/

CalcKing · Post by **CalcKing** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 2:00 am

Still no response from TI...

Here's something to ponder: One computer !necessarily= One visitor... So, for example: School computers. Say some school computer is used by one student to vote, then the next student votes on the same computer, then the next, etc.?

How can TI tell the difference between that, and a program? Obviously, if the votes are coming in very quickly, the odds of it being only human votes are slim... but still, there might be nothing they can do -- because of the STUPID voting system!

When I called TI today, they basically said that they couldn't help me at this point. It's somewhere in the pipeline, I guess, but I hope it didn't get stuck in the trap.

CalcKing · Post by **CalcKing** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 3:02 am

Double post, I realize that, but I had a double purpose in posting here and now:

1) I have calculated that the South Carolina entry has had approximately 12.061224 votes per minute over the past 49 minutes.

2) This is the 5000th post in the General TI Discussion forum!!

inportb · Post by **inportb** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 2:42 pm

Oh snap, California's got 32K.

No response to me either.

CalcKing · Post by **CalcKing** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 6:38 pm

The contest browsing page seems to be down -- the main site loads, but nothing related to GraphiTI seems to work. I hope THIS means they're fixing it!

Post by **DarkAuron** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 8:34 pm

My email was replied:

Michael,

Sorry for just getting back to you, but I am just returning back to
work. I will forward your email to the appropriate persons.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Angel [mailto:Nacromancer@ev1.net]
Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 1:08 AM
To: Woodberry, Dwayne
Subject: Yet another problem with GraphiTI

The finals are in, and theres a very, very easy way to hack the voting
system. I really don't think whoever made the system is even trying to
make it secure. The flaw is that by simply deleting the cookies or
preventing them from being used, you can vote as much as you want. The
knowledgeable people can create scripts or programs to automate such an
action, and quite frankly I'm outraged. On the first day theres a few
people that had hundreds and hundreds of votes already, and at the
moment someone's votes are going up like crazy. Its gone from about 400
to 1200 votes in the last/ /few/ minutes/. I really don't understand why

people do this. Honestly I don't know what to say overall, but this is
just really messed up. The system shouldn't be based on votes, it should

be based on what TI, you guys, believe are the best design(s). That way
no cheating can occur in any instance.

-Michael

Since it was a personal email and not some automated techie person, I didn't get a silly commercial

inportb · Post by **inportb** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 8:59 pm

CalcKing wrote:The contest browsing page seems to be down -- the main site loads, but nothing related to GraphiTI seems to work. I hope THIS means they're fixing it!

They hid the vote count. And I'm almost sure they didn't clear the votes, since that's exactly what happened in the first phase.

lloydkirk1989 · Post by **lloydkirk1989** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 9:40 pm

Thats even worse! Now we can't even see who's cheating. In the first phase, they hid the ranking, not the vote count.

Jim e · Post by **Jim e** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 9:45 pm

lloydkirk1989 wrote:Thats even worse! Now we can't even see who's cheating. In the first phase, they hid the ranking, not the vote count.

I think that's the point...have you consider the possibility they got tired of the "they are cheaters" letters? I believe they pointed out that all votes would be checked to ensure that there isn't any cheating.

And besides, ALL OF YOU IN THE FINALS CHEATED!!!!! MY RABBIT ONLY GOT ONE VOTE AND IT WAS HAND DRAWN GOODNESS!!!!! I BLAME MICHAEL!!!!

j/k.....sorta

lloydkirk1989 · Post by **lloydkirk1989** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 9:54 pm

Please note: All votes will be reviewed closely and verified for validity before grand prize winner is named.
Please see official rules for more information.

Is this realy suppose to scare anyone? If you have a dynamic IP address, there's no way to tell whether the votes are comming from one computer or not. Secondly, there could be like 50 computers in a school library on the same network and therefore the same IP address. 1,000 votes in 20 minutes could simply be the result of a well done campaign. Seriously, there is no way for them to monitor this.

CalcKing · Post by **CalcKing** » Wed 05 Oct, 2005 9:58 pm

lloydkirk1989 wrote:
Please note: All votes will be reviewed closely and verified for validity before grand prize winner is named.
Please see official rules for more information.
Is this realy suppose to scare anyone? If you have a dynamic IP address, there's no way to tell whether the votes are comming from one computer or not. Secondly, there could be like 50 computers in a school library on the same network and therefore the same IP address. 1,000 votes in 20 minutes could simply be the result of a well done campaign. Seriously, there is no way for them to monitor this.

That's exactly what I was talking about:

CalcKing wrote:One computer !necessarily= One visitor... So, for example: School computers. Say some school computer is used by one student to vote, then the next student votes on the same computer, then the next, etc.?

How can TI tell the difference between that, and a program? Obviously, if the votes are coming in very quickly, the odds of it being only human votes are slim... but still, there might be nothing they can do -- because of the STUPID voting system!

It's beginning to seem like we should all just forget this whole thing and say that whatever happens happens.

inportb · Post by **inportb** » Thu 06 Oct, 2005 12:51 am

I'm just going to ignore it mostly and check it once in a while... And I just got this bs reply:

Dear Jiang,

Thank you for contacting Texas Instruments.

Please be assured that both Texas Instruments and the auditors who are monitoring the votes in the GraphitTi contest are aware of the underhanded methods being used to up the vote count for certain individual entries. Those votes will not be included in the final tally. All votes will be reviewed closely and verified for validity before the grand prize winner is named.

Sincerely,

Sarah Scott

Texas Instruments
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Technical Support: (972) 917-8324
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Let me know how I'm doing. Fill out our customer survey at:

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You can always visit the Texas Instruments Knowledgebase for around the clock solutions to your questions.

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And is it just me, or can you not vote anymore? I just checked this; if you try visiting the vote page, e.g. http://www.84silver.com/contest_vote_finals.php?id=1808, you end up at Yahoo! instead. Possibly, they'll collect the votes being cast now, and compare them with the votes cast before to guess which are invalid. Or mebbe they're working on the site (yay!). Idk, but I can't find a better explanation.