arstechnica.com— The winners of the closely-followed My Dream App competition were announced last night, complete with voter fraud.
Oct 27, 2006View in Crawl 4
This isn't to say that you didn't try because its clear that a fair system was attempted to be implemented but, as stated in the article, other gaming methods like spoofing IP addresses would probably slip through the cracks undetected as there is no way to have a cheat-proof system under the circumstances. In light of this fact and looking at your population of voters it would seem that the "gaming attempt" variable would be held fairly constant across all choices, making it somewhat difficult too weed out entirely.Not proposing a sollution, just seems this thing was doomed to controversy from the start
I think a lot of non-Mac users and many Mac users that weren't really interested, but wanted the free apps voted for random apps.The best of the lot according to me was Hijack. I don't use forums and never have for a very long period of time (other than this one stint on the Bioware BG2 forum), but Hijack made the whole idea appealing again to me. It was the best of the lot and all the voters I know personally voted for it.It's a real shame that it lost by 5 votes. I mean 5 votes! That's plain unfair. I think if it was such a close call, there should have been a tie. I mean, as many people have said on this and other threads, you can't completely eliminate cheating. Might as well take the possibility into consideration,
if the other apps are still worth a s**t, they will still be able to sell them and make some money off of them.the fact they were in the final round is amazing press.
Woz said it best:"I think Cookbook is the big loser of this space. We all knew in 1981 that recipes were the #1 use for computers. But nowadays email, web browsing, blogging, music and movies are the collective killer apps for real people. When was the last time I pulled up a recipe program? Ummm? 1982?"
okay, heres my point. Points for Portal were that it was needed (even though solutions already do exists), and Sarner said it was thought out fully. Points against it: its a boring concept, Harris explicitly said he didnt want to code it, Casasanta said it was an overcomplicated concept, and Sarner said it didn't really feel like a dream app. Thats not a warm reaction, and certainly, as a voter, when i saw that, there was no way i wanted any of them to make that application. And no one really should have, its a boring concept, and the idea of the dream app competition was to bring out really exciting ideas brought to life by expert coders. Whistler would have been amazing, im not sure i would have actually bought it, but it embodied the spirit of the competition, it was truly unique and if it was pulled off (Harris seemed to think he could), it would have been an amazing feat. And I even liked atmosphere because although the concept isn't incredibly complex, with good artists it will put a beautiful, moving representation of the weather on my desktop, which i can see buying. I guess the biggest bummer is that I wanted to see some interesting ideas come out of the competion, stuff i hadn't seen before, and looking at the results, they're all very pedestrian. (This was a response to an above comment, but i apparently didnt hit the reply button, so now its at the bottom).
crackshotOct 27, 2006
This isn't to say that you didn't try because its clear that a fair system was attempted to be implemented but, as stated in the article, other gaming methods like spoofing IP addresses would probably slip through the cracks undetected as there is no way to have a cheat-proof system under the circumstances. In light of this fact and looking at your population of voters it would seem that the "gaming attempt" variable would be held fairly constant across all choices, making it somewhat difficult too weed out entirely.Not proposing a sollution, just seems this thing was doomed to controversy from the start
Closed AccountOct 27, 2006
My Dream App is....an automatic voting system which casts fraudulent votes for me in the thousands. I'll call it AVSWCFVFMITT for short.
bushyOct 27, 2006
aaah jesus.this isnt a f**king apple story. did you ever consider the 'programming' category?
koregaonparkOct 27, 2006Submitter
I think a lot of non-Mac users and many Mac users that weren't really interested, but wanted the free apps voted for random apps.The best of the lot according to me was Hijack. I don't use forums and never have for a very long period of time (other than this one stint on the Bioware BG2 forum), but Hijack made the whole idea appealing again to me. It was the best of the lot and all the voters I know personally voted for it.It's a real shame that it lost by 5 votes. I mean 5 votes! That's plain unfair. I think if it was such a close call, there should have been a tie. I mean, as many people have said on this and other threads, you can't completely eliminate cheating. Might as well take the possibility into consideration,
h3smithOct 27, 2006
if the other apps are still worth a s**t, they will still be able to sell them and make some money off of them.the fact they were in the final round is amazing press.
nandabanaotakunOct 27, 2006
Woz said it best:"I think Cookbook is the big loser of this space. We all knew in 1981 that recipes were the #1 use for computers. But nowadays email, web browsing, blogging, music and movies are the collective killer apps for real people. When was the last time I pulled up a recipe program? Ummm? 1982?"
angelpOct 28, 2006
I love how the majority of these comments have absolutely nothing to do with the voter fraud and are all about what should and shouldn't have won.
time2goOct 28, 2006
iGTD shoulda won, its the only app I ever voted for. That guy was a lousy representative for that idea....I bet they chose him on purpose.
ajwinderOct 28, 2006
okay, heres my point. Points for Portal were that it was needed (even though solutions already do exists), and Sarner said it was thought out fully. Points against it: its a boring concept, Harris explicitly said he didnt want to code it, Casasanta said it was an overcomplicated concept, and Sarner said it didn't really feel like a dream app. Thats not a warm reaction, and certainly, as a voter, when i saw that, there was no way i wanted any of them to make that application. And no one really should have, its a boring concept, and the idea of the dream app competition was to bring out really exciting ideas brought to life by expert coders. Whistler would have been amazing, im not sure i would have actually bought it, but it embodied the spirit of the competition, it was truly unique and if it was pulled off (Harris seemed to think he could), it would have been an amazing feat. And I even liked atmosphere because although the concept isn't incredibly complex, with good artists it will put a beautiful, moving representation of the weather on my desktop, which i can see buying. I guess the biggest bummer is that I wanted to see some interesting ideas come out of the competion, stuff i hadn't seen before, and looking at the results, they're all very pedestrian. (This was a response to an above comment, but i apparently didnt hit the reply button, so now its at the bottom).