Competitions Discussion Thread Part 2

mark_t_4

Evening all,

I've been lurking on the board here for a while and entering the competitions that people have posted for a few weeks (thanks to those people that post - you are Gentlepeople, scholars and acrobats).

One comment I would make having worked my way through every thread on the board is that despite a lot of effort on the part of the people posting quite a few competitions get listed multiple times, and this isn't helped when multiple competitions with the same prizes (and sometimes questions) are run by different web sites, which seems to happen from time to time. All in all a lot of effort seems to get expended trying to determine whether a competition has already been posted or not.

Well, I prefer to light a candle rather than curse the darkness (although after their second album that would be understandable), so I have a suggestion, which is why not run the competition URL though a hashing function and include the result with the post? That would make searching to see if a competition had already been posted dead easy.

For anyone who just went "Wuh?" I shall give a bit more detail. A hashing function is a mathematical process which takes any input you care to give it and returns a result which is fixed in length. If you give it identical input it will return identical output, but if you give it two very similar but non identical inputs it will return very different outputs. The chances of 2 completely different inputs having the same output are very very small.

One common example of a hashing function is the MD5 hash. This is used quite a lot on t'internet to make sure that no one has monkeyed about with a file while you're downloading it - e.g. the person who posted the file will write something like "MD5 hash of file is 5463552436477gdhfhjf64". When you've downloaded the file you run it through an MD5 program and if you get the same result you know you've got an unaltered file.

Here's a web site with a free java implementation of MD5 (and a couple of other hashing functions) so that people can have a play and see what I mean.

http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/md5/

And here's an example - take the recently posted MTV competition for the slouchpod which is on the URL "http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel/mtvuk/competitions/win_a_slouchpod_interactive_xt_everyday_on_fyi"

Bung that (without the quotes) into the MD5 function and you get the result "40acabda2a6ccd5c8913e165c32b6d17"

Now if I change the URL very slightly to "http://www.mtv.co.uk/channel4/mtvuk/competitions/win_a_slouchpod_interactive_xt_everyday_on_fyi" the output becomes "ae285036af0990ddb2cce053ace4851a" which is pretty easy to tell apart from the first output.

So I propose that before someone posts a competition onto the board they should run the URL of the host webpage through the MD5 function and then do a search for that result in the competition forum. This should be a pretty quick and easy search as you're only looking for one thing and you're unlikely to get any false positives.

If nothing shows up you can then go ahead and post the competition safe in the knowledge that it's (almost certainly) not a duplicate, and of course you would include the MD5 hash of the URL as part of your post.

One final thing - if I am, as I suspect, the 857th newbie to suggest this then I apologise for wasting your time, and feel free to have a good old moan at my expense.

Thrupneybit

Hey mark_t, I think some thanks, a few well dones or post a few comps yourself might be more appropriate than criticizing people.

I'm just thankful to people who post the comps, I can sort out myself whether it's been posted before or whether I even want to enter at all,

kimmywal

Sorry if I sound a bit dim, I only found out how to enter this comp today, but do I need to have a new code everyday then as I thought that the code they sent me today was the code that I use everyday

furndire

furndire wrote: »

Not another one.

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Oh dear I've just duplicated my own post:o Not a chance of me doing what you suggest Mark.

Strepsy

Did you just laugh at your own joke furndire? lol.


mark_t you completely lost me there tbh. Good luck with the comps. If you do find a duplicate though please do post to let people know as then they won't disqualify themselves, it is appreciated.

Little_Miss_Winner

Hiya kimmy, no you have to have a new code everyday. So you have to click the NPN everyday and they email you one.
x

furndire

Sort of, posted twice, by mistake, then thought it was quite appropriate, but then realised I could delete the first one. Thats about as technical as I get.

missgiddypants

i_wanna_save_money! wrote: »

I know it is one NPN a day, but can i enter codes by text also as I have a couple of codes on the bottles of fanta i have?

No it's one code per day either NPN or from a bottle/can. I tried to enter a code off a bottle last weekend after doing NPN in the morning but it said I'd already entered for that day.

snitterling

You can only enter once a day and have to request a new code every day. And NPN codes can and DO win. I can prove it.

dollop

all right own up whos pinched my sig lol my signatures dissapeared anyone any idea where?lol i diddnt wanna have to type it all in again