The mysterious bitcoin flower opens once a day and reveals a free bitcoin

[BitVapes]

but lets be honest.. if you can code up a bot quickly to analyze pictures that well.. maybe that person should be submitting a resume to
several companies to make a bit more then 1 btc a day ;-)

I'd love to but I don't know any companies that want an ex-blackhat script kiddie.  They are probably out there though but who's hiring these days...

[Jack of Diamonds]

This is why good will doesn't work, except in the form of small faucets.
Unknown people will instantly come up with ways to monetize your 'charity' or even plain out steal from it, or make it their regular income through proxies and decaptchas.

It's a generous idea but all it does is attract scumbags. People who genuinely visit the site every now and then will never get anything.

[BitVapes]

This is why good will doesn't work, except in the form of small faucets.
Unknown people will instantly come up with ways to monetize your 'charity' or even plain out steal from it, or make it their regular income through proxies and decaptchas.

It's a generous idea but all it does is attract scumbags. People who genuinely visit the site every now and then will never get anything.

this is pretty much true.  by the way I'm not actually doing what I said was possible, I'm just disclosing what is possible.  I don't care to write a bot for this, I'm above this sort of thing.  I wrote bots for people who wanted to auto-play perfect strategy at casino games, not to rip off 1BTC gifts

[indicasteve]

  Sorry to start trouble here with the bot thing...I wouldn't write a bot for this myself either, but I did want to bring it to the OP's attention that sooner rather than later, someone world.

I think the only way to defeat bot scraping here would be to have to type in the captcha before you can see if the flower is open or not.

I do like her idea and admire her for her generosity and hope she has fun with it.

If it was me though, I would have 10 x .1 BTC prizes a day...or even 20 x.05 BTC....probably get more frequent visitors like that...idk.

But anyway, keep up the good work!

[giantdragon]

randomize the winning link name so it cannot be used twice.

My competing project has this protection, also CAPTCHA, IP blacklist and even statistical analyzer. Regardless this bots still trying to cheat me. I give away big number of relative small prizes, so <10% cheat level is tolerable, but you pay only one big bounty per day, which gives big incentive to the bot makers and they can easily destroy your business even with few successful cheat attempts.

Another problem is that you give away only one prize per day and all people except one lucky will get nothing, although they have spent much time on your website catching bounty. This fact can disappoint and many of them could lose hope to win and never return again. I would suggest to pay some "booby prize".

[Michael_S]

If the likelihood for a flower opening is the same every minute, and such that the average time interval between two successive openings is equal to one day, then we get the following statistical distribution for the time interval between two successive openings:



Probability that time interval is < 0.9 days/0.5 days/0.25 days/1 hour =  59.6/39.7/22.4/4.1 %
Probability that time interval is > 1.0 days/1.5 days/2.0 days/3.0 days = 36.6/22.3/ 13.5/5.0 %

This makes more sense than my previous post with the Rayleigh distribution.

Matlab/Octave code:

Code:

    N=100000;% number of days to simulate
    increment = 1/(24*60); % 1 min granularity
    T=zeros(1,N); % init memory
    for k=1:N,
        T_inc = 0;
        while rand(1,1)>increment,% An event occurs if random number in [0;1] is <= increment
            T_inc = T_inc + increment;
        end
        T(k) = T_inc;
    end
    mu = mean(T),
    value_below_090__050__025__004 = [100*length(T(T<0.9))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.5))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.25))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<1/24))/length(T)]
    value_above_100__150__200__300 = [100*length(T(T>1.0))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>1.5))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>2.0))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>3.0))/length(T)]
    figure
    hist(T,50); title(['Histogram: Same probability for an event in each time instant']);
    xlabel(['Time T between two successive events, mean=',num2str(mu)])

[NickW]

If the likelihood for a flower opening is the same every minute, and such that the average time interval between two successive openings is equal to one day, then we get the following statistical distribution for the time interval between two successive openings:

http://i55.tinypic.com/v2uvco.png

Probability that time interval is < 0.9 days/0.5 days/0.25 days/1 hour =  59.6/39.7/22.4/4.1 %
Probability that time interval is > 1.0 days/1.5 days/2.0 days/3.0 days = 36.6/22.3/ 13.5/5.0 %

This makes more sense than my previous post with the Rayleigh distribution.

Matlab/Octave code:

Code:

    N=100000;% number of days to simulate
    increment = 1/(24*60); % 1 min granularity
    T=zeros(1,N); % init memory
    for k=1:N,
        T_inc = 0;
        while rand(1,1)>increment,% An event occurs if random number in [0;1] is <= increment
            T_inc = T_inc + increment;
        end
        T(k) = T_inc;
    end
    mu = mean(T),
    value_below_090__050__025__004 = [100*length(T(T<0.9))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.5))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<0.25))/length(T), 100*length(T(T<1/24))/length(T)]
    value_above_100__150__200__300 = [100*length(T(T>1.0))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>1.5))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>2.0))/length(T), 100*length(T(T>3.0))/length(T)]
    figure
    hist(T,50); title(['Histogram: Same probability for an event in each time instant']);
    xlabel(['Time T between two successive events, mean=',num2str(mu)])

Great analysis . This is definitely the way to do it and is what I suggested back in post 24. It's similar to how these things are handled in nature (radioactive decay).

[Otoh]

I'd like if you could also show a small animated clock with the current CDT date & time or just have time left to end of day & if the flower had opened as yet in that 24 hr period

Also a different favicon than the forum's, say of your flower opened (or not):
http://www.favicon.cc/

Nice concept, I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves

[Otoh]

If I understood correctly then one doesn't need to refresh the page (multiple times) to see the blooming flower, it will show up when it changes if the page is just left open?

If so good to say this on the page perhaps...

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

If I understood correctly then one doesn't need to refresh the page (multiple times) to see the blooming flower, it will show up when it changes if the page is just left open?

If so good to say this on the page perhaps...

I failed to see any JS that would make it bloom without refresh, sorry.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I'd like if you could also show a small animated clock with the current CDT date & time or just have time left to end of day & if the flower had opened as yet in that 24 hr period

Also a different favicon than the forum's, say of your flower opened (or not):
http://www.favicon.cc/

Nice concept, I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves

I, too, see it evolving, Otoh. The idea will diffidently evolve, now that evolve has commented on this thread.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

[Karmicads]

Wonderful idea. I like the fun aspect of it.

I thought of something similar a while back. Might take a fair bit of coding though. It might be called The Mandelpot. It's like a treasure hunt for pots of gold (acctualy bitcoin prizes), randomly distibuted through an online rendering of the mandelbrot set. You would have to zoom in a bit to find the smaller bitcoin 'pots of gold' and explore the set even more carefully to find biger prizes. The colective prize money would replaced regularly as it is won, but randomly split so that the smaller chunks appear closer to 1:1 scale (say at a minimum of 100:1 for 100 satoshis), while a larger chunk would be calculated to be hiden deeper (say 1,000,000:1 for a 0.1 bitcoin prize). You can explore the set for as long as you please, but when you login you agree to have your GPU/CPU harvested for some machine cycles to generate bitcoin. So it's actualy a casual bitcoin mining farm also. While you are exploring you might notice various sponsorship ads swimming into view amidst the sweeping tendrills of the mandelbrot set. Also some of the pots might have a generous vouchers of genuine discount/gifts/introductory offers from the sponsors, rather than straight out bitcoin prizes.

I think this could be made so that bots have no better chance of finding the pots than the humans, but as long as they are there, they too have to contribute machine cycles to play, so they would contribute to the prize pool as much as (or more than) they are harvesting from it. The more hashing power you have the more quickly you can zoom, scroll, render and such, so it should possible to ballance the odds if done properly.

If somebody wants to code this up, I'd likely to be quite willing to put a reasonable sum of bitcoin in to help launch it. What would the coding for something like that be worth?

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Someone got the today's coin, but the tx on blockexplorer says that no such transactions exists.

EDIT:Ok, showed up.

[Matoking]

I got the open flower.

Too bad I was using Opera Mobile, which meant the site didn't respond to my presses.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Wonderful idea. I like the fun aspect of it.

I thought of something similar a while back. Might take a fair bit of coding though. It might be called The Mandelpot. It's like a treasure hunt for pots of gold (acctualy bitcoin prizes), randomly distibuted through an online rendering of the mandelbot set. You would have to zoom in a bit to find the smaller bitcoin 'pots of gold' and explore the set even more carefully to find biger prizes. The colective prize money would replaced regularly as it is won, but randomly split so that the smaller chunks appear closer to 1:1 scale (say at a minimum of 100:1 for 100 satoshis), while a larger chunk would be calculated to be hiden deeper (say 1,000,000:1 for a 0.1 bitcoin prize). You can explore the set for as long as you please, but when you login you agree to have your GPU/CPU harvested for some machine cycles to generate bitcoin. So it's actualy a casual bitcoin mining farm also. While you are exploring you might notice various sponsorship ads swimming into view amidst the sweeping tendrills of the mandelbrot set. Also some of the pots might have a generous vouchers of genuine discount/gifts/introductory offers from the sponsors, rather than straight out bitcoin prizes.

I think this could be made so that bots have no better chance of finding the pots than the humans, but as long as they are there, they too have to contribute machine cycles to play, so they would contribute to the prize pool as much as (or more than) they are harvesting from it. The more hashing power you have the more quickly you can zoom, scroll, render and such, so it should possible to ballance the odds if done properly.

If somebody wants to code this up, I'd likely to be quite willing to put a reasonable sum of bitcoin in to help launch it. What would the coding for something like that be worth?

So far I've only read the first two sentences of this post and already figured out you're trying to fracture this idea with your fractals.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Wonderful idea. I like the fun aspect of it.

I thought of something similar a while back. Might take a fair bit of coding though. It might be called The Mandelpot. It's like a treasure hunt for pots of gold (acctualy bitcoin prizes), randomly distibuted through an online rendering of the mandelbrot set. You would have to zoom in a bit to find the smaller bitcoin 'pots of gold' and explore the set even more carefully to find biger prizes. The colective prize money would replaced regularly as it is won, but randomly split so that the smaller chunks appear closer to 1:1 scale (say at a minimum of 100:1 for 100 satoshis), while a larger chunk would be calculated to be hiden deeper (say 1,000,000:1 for a 0.1 bitcoin prize). You can explore the set for as long as you please, but when you login you agree to have your GPU/CPU harvested for some machine cycles to generate bitcoin. So it's actualy a casual bitcoin mining farm also. While you are exploring you might notice various sponsorship ads swimming into view amidst the sweeping tendrills of the mandelbrot set. Also some of the pots might have a generous vouchers of genuine discount/gifts/introductory offers from the sponsors, rather than straight out bitcoin prizes.

I think this could be made so that bots have no better chance of finding the pots than the humans, but as long as they are there, they too have to contribute machine cycles to play, so they would contribute to the prize pool as much as (or more than) they are harvesting from it. The more hashing power you have the more quickly you can zoom, scroll, render and such, so it should possible to ballance the odds if done properly.

If somebody wants to code this up, I'd likely to be quite willing to put a reasonable sum of bitcoin in to help launch it. What would the coding for something like that be worth?

What would the coding for something like that be worth?

I'm not sure what it would of costed, because I think I just increased it: Make it all 3D ~ Picture swimming in a Mandelbrot Set where you're able to go left, right, up, down, back and forth.

Here's an idea that just came to mind: A fractal Bitcoin (tree-as in money) image.

[Karmicads]

I'm not sure what it would of costed, because I think I just increased it: Make it all 3D ~ Picture swimming in a Mandelbrot Set where you're able to go left, right, up, down, back and forth.

Yeah! That's what I had in mind Phinnaeus. It would be just like using a mandlebrot rendering engine (I used to play with fractint), only online, and yeah, 3D rendering, that's why I say you would have to be able zoom scroll and move through the set just as you can with the desktop applications.

So far I've only read the first two sentences of this post and already figured out you're trying to fracture this idea with your fractals.

Er... Not sure what you are getting at here.

[Karmicads]

At least SomethingAwful goons haven't seen this and made a bitcoinvagina.com yet

You have a wicked mind Mat.

At least you didn't sugest a bitcoinpenis.com with a... wait for it... 'here cums the money shot', daily prize.  Oops did I say that?

[giantdragon]

or perhaps even give 10 different 0.1BTC rewards instead of a single 1BTC reward to insure that everyone gets a chance.

My competing service Dailybitcoins.org works exactly as you suggested.

P.S. When your lottery would become popular, you must implement serious anti-bot measures. Currently my free lottery has about 700 unique visitors per day and I spend a lot of time to defend my site from cheaters and block bots. Today I have experienced massive attack from China, CAPTCHA probably had solved manually by poor kids and about 300 fake bounty requests was made. If I would't manually review all payments, my site would go out of business. So think more seriously about security. If you will not do this, your flower will wither very soon!