On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 09:28:09AM -0700, WA7BNM wrote:
> At 11:06 PM 5/15/2003 -0700, Rick Tavan wrote:
> >Is anyone out there willing and able to implement some form of real-time
> >or periodic reporting of team scores during the contest for viewing on a
> >Web page?
I'm not necessarily convinced that this is a good idea. In WRTC 2002,
the teams were effectively anonymous. Members of a contest club or a small
country with a team in WRTC might have known that "their" team was in
13th place, but they still would not know what their team's callsign
was. This made it relatively harder for "good buddies" of certain teams
to skew the results.
If such on-line, real-time scoreboards do not anonymize the competitors,
what happens when the SMC team falls behind and suddenly they get
spotted a lot more frequently on the DX clusters? Or what happens if
the scoreboard leaders start being jammed? Or if certain teams start
receiving help on the air that is provoked by the scoreboard?
> It would be simple for me to make a web form available (and companion
> summary real-time web page) that would allow periodic reporting of team
> scores during the contest. The advantage of this method is that anyone can
> provide a periodic report regardless of what contest logging software
> they're using. The disadvantage is that one of the team members has to take
> the time to complete the form (probably 15 seconds or so). I envision a
> form that is a simplified version of the 3830 score reporting form - just
> the basic fields needed to provide an updated score.
What security would/should there be in such a system? How would we
know that a submitted score from a contest team is really being sent by
them? What happens when some yahoo decides to start yanking everyone's
chains and sends in bogus numbers for the leaders? Would we go to
something like the certificate-based Logbook of the World system?
Or is a DX cluster level of security really acceptable?
> In the longer term I'm interested in hearing from/working with others about
> an open-source method of making real-time log status info available to a
> centralized server(s) during a contest. As I recall, the efforts in this
> area to date have been dependent on use of specific logging software or use
> of a specific API. I'd prefer a standardized format (XML based?) and method
> of communication (SOAP, e-mail, etc.) that would be straightforward for the
> authors of contest logging software to implement within their programs.
XML has many, many deficiencies. It is my understanding that the Cabrillo
format was developed in its current form after considering and rejecting
XML. SOAP is a Microsoft Windows-proprietary closed format. Those using
Linux, DOS, MacOS, etc. would be locked out. If standards are developed,
they should be open, available, and well-suited for the task, not just
the latest buzzword acronym,
--
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Kenneth E. Harker "Vox Clamantis in Deserto" kharker@cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences Central Texas DX & Contest Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124 Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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