Logic for Fun: FAQ
Administrative questions
-
What should I do if I forget my password?
-
There is no way to find out what your old password was, because (for
obvious security reasons) we only keep the encrypted version from which we
can't work back to the original. So if you forget your password, send
email to
John.Slaney@anu.edu.au
saying that you need a new password. We'll then disable your account until
such time as you re-register and give yourself a new password. The good
news: you don't need to pay again. The bad: you don't get another 1000
runs of the solver!
-
My account is about to expire. How can I renew it?
OR
I'm about to hit my 1000 runs quota. How do I extend it?
-
Sorry: expiry is expiry! You can open another account, of course, but
you'll have to pay again. Life's like that...
-
I teach a course and would like my students to use the site, but it's
not realistic unless you provide some sort of assessment as well as just
puzzles. Can you do that?
-
We don't have the resources to arrange assessment for you. However, if you
want to fit students' use of this site into your assessment schedule, you
can require them to save some of their work (using the SAVE button on the
solver form). They can hand in the saved material, and you can rather
easily assess it since it comes in a format which is standard (the same
for all students) and quite readable.
-
I'm a logic student and I'd like to use this site, but my class is
not registered as a group. How can I get access to the puzzle solver at
the group rate?
-
Anyone can register a group: you don't have to wait for the prof to do it
for you. There is a minimum charge of thirty Australian dollars, so you
need two friends to join you in making up the group in order to get the
reduced rate. If you haven't got two friends (interested in logic) any two
people will do!
-
When another student tries to log in after me, the software still
thinks it's me running the solver. How can we change users on the same
machine?
-
This is a standard problem with browsers such as Internet
Explorer and Firefox. The way password protection works
is that every time you follow a link within the site your browser
is challenged to give a valid name and password. In order that you
are not constantly annoyed by this, the browser remembers the name
and password you typed into the dialog box and keeps re-sending
that. Unfortunately, when another user takes over, the browser
keeps sending your name and password because it dosn't know the
user has changed. Our server is happy with that, because it keeps
getting a valid name and password, so the new user is treated as
still being you. The best solution is to kill your browser session
(i.e. really exit from the browser, don't just close the window)
when you have finished using it. If your browser is too
intelligent, it may remember you even after being killed and
resurrected. In that case you may have to put a stake through its
heart or something - ask your local geek.
-
Can't we get a site licence instead of paying a rate per user?
-
Not exactly. The equivalent of a licence is a group account paid
in advance: the fee is on a sliding scale depending on the number
of users predicted, and the "licence" is good for two years, so
that the users do not all have to be enrolled at one time.
-
Is it possible to operate a copy of the site on my own university's
web server instead of registering large groups on the original site in
Australia?
-
Write to
John.Slaney@anu.edu.au
if you wish to explore the option of operating a copy of the
site. Briefly, you will need to have a web server, preferably Apache,
running under Linux or Solaris and be pretty sure of registering at least
several hundred users. There must also be someone ready to take
responsibility for the installation, maintenance and management of the
site itself and the associated administration, and of course, for running
the solver, you must have a compute server capable of handling the peak
demand. Details of any licence agreement and price have to be discussed on
a case-by-case basis.
|