electric sheep - a collaborative screen saver
by Scott Draves and Spotworks LLC
http://electricsheep.org and http://spotworks.com
see the file COPYING for the license covering this software.


Electric Sheep uses evolution and mathematics to create animated
abstract art.  Everyone running the software participates in creating
what everyone sees via distributed computing and P2P networking.
Primarily, it works as a screensaver to harness idle compute cycles
into a cyborg mind.

This program is recommended only if you have a high bandwidth
connection to the internet such as DSL or cable modem.

As usual, to configure, build, and install:

	./configure
	make
	sudo make install

It should install itself as a module in gnome-screensaver.  It also
works with xscreensaver.

Configure it by running "electricsheep-preferences" from the command
line.  After that you can test it by just running it from the
commandline without arguments, ie "electricsheep".  After several
minutes of downloading a window will appear and the first sheep will
be drawn.

For KDE, move the file electricsheep.desktop.kde to
/usr/share/kde4/services/ScreenSavers/electricsheep.desktop

----

changelog:

v2.7b12 print standard deviation of play counts if debugging.  add
	electricsheep.desktop.kde from javajazz.  add play_evenly
	preference to reduce playing of most played sheep.  fix bug of
	rescanning the local cache too often.  add "-cache 8192"
	options to mplayer because some newer versions require it when
	reading stdin (suggested by Alien Bob aka Eric).  Fix memory
	leaks and remove hacked version of ffmpeg (thanks David
	Leverton).  Use query.php server redirection.  Clean up
	warnings.  Store and transmit md5 hash of password instead of
	cleartext.

v2.7b11 11/2008 Keep track of how many times each sheep is played, and
	delete sheep that are played most often (instead of using
	simulation to estimate).  Each flam3-animate process should
	use only one thread.  Change copyright from Draves to
	Spotworks LLC.  Fix to work with xscreensaver: prevent mplayer
	from disabling xscreensaver. Print bad text if there is a
	parse error.

v2.7b10 09/2008 delay fork of mplayer by 300ms to make startup more
	reliable (why?!).  repeat 2x instead of 3x before breaking a
	simple infinite loop.  download immediately if there are 2 or
	fewer sheep in the cache.  to select sheep for deletion,
	randomly half the time delete the oldest sheep instead of the
	most-played according to simulation.

v2.7b9 08/2008 change default nickname to empty string to protect user
       privacy, instead of broadcasting USER envar.  add a button to
       the preferences dialog that tests the current network settings
       (including if the user/password account is valid). use 20th
       percentile instead of median for deletion limit, ie protect
       fewer sheep.  remove cvs version strings.  follow http
       redirections vi -L option to curl.  enable basic authentication
       (the user/password refers to the drupal on the sheep server).
       put the client version into the URL for the help page.

v2.7b8 07/17/2008 fix big bug picking sheep to delete by switching
       from ctime to mtime.  add new files to extra_dist.

v2.7b7 07/2008 handle multiple monitors better by using xwininfo
       instead of xdpyinfo to read the screen resolution.  stagger
       render thread start times.

v2.7b6 06/2008 add version number and button to open web browser on
       homepage to the preferences dialog.

v2.7b5 06/2008 delete the most played sheep, instead of the oldest
       sheep.  when deleting, don't leave dangling sheep.  removed
       flam3, flame, mpeg2dec dependencies. include patched ffmpeg
       code in source package.  first packaged 2.7 version.

v2.7b3 11/2007 fix hang on sheep deletion.

v2.7b2 11/2007 use marker files to update cache sooner.  global
       generation no longer part of state.  configure
       gnome-screensaver during install using gconftool-2.  start with
       least recently accessed sheep instead of a random one.  add
       ffmpeg.patch to plug memory leak.  ditch the .sheep/id file.
       move to .electricsheep/* and preferences.xml and
       electricsheep-preferences (a glade UI to the xml prefs).  play
       electricshep-wait.avi until first sheep arrives.  settle on
       mplayer.  remove zoom option since mplayer always does
       it. note: password is not secure.  remove history from ui.

v2.7b1 10/2007 new multi monitor patch from John Gibson (1640631 on
       sf.net by John Gibson).  fix video_out_x11.c:146 assumes cache
       dir is .sheep.  get tryagain parms from server.  exit on
       generation change to prevent mixing incompatible mpeg formats.
       on file read error, rescan cache directory.  allow unsetting
       password.  install panel in location where xscreensaver 5.0 can
       find it, support --password and authenticated server, split
       frame into time and job, move up to flam3 v2.7. upgrade to
       mpeg4 wrapped in avi by using ffmpeg and mplayer.  ditch
       mpeg2dec_onroot.  unbundle flam3.  pick next sheep based on
       least recently accessed instead of searching the history.
       install binary where gnome can find it.

v2.6.8 7/2006 use new libpng api, handle libpng errors properly (from
	nix at esperi.org.uk).  name the window.  update
	documentation. update use of AC_OUTPUT.  handle readonly
	parts of the cache.  avoid playing files partially downloaded
	by bittorrent.  add --show-errors option.

v2.6.7 4/2006 save sheep in the proper directory instead of ~ (from
	tais.hansen at osd.dk).  remove max_anims (more storage cleanup).

v2.6.6 4/2006 remove nplays_by_id and its associated stats.  make
 	anim_t arrays dynamically allocated (some kernels had
	trouble with the 800M of static storage.  ooops).  when
	changing generations only delete sheep from the generation we
	are leaving.  this allows users to keep archives of sheep in
	their caches without fear of deletion.  version to 2.6.6

v2.6.5 3/2006 support recursively searching cache directory to be
	compatible with subscribers to the feed of torrents.

v2.6.4 12/2005 protect again buffer overflows.  remove use of tif and xsetbg.

v2.6.3 7/2005 autogenerate electricsheep.spec and electricsheep.xml with
	current version number.  zoom down to fit in the xscreensaver
	preview window.  better logging.  fix bug where special env
	args to flam3-animate were not necessarily null-terminated!
	update to latest flam3 library.  make gcc4 happy & update
	autotools.  update man page.  man page generated by configure.
	fix bug where all sheep could be deleted because of network
	errors!

v2.6.2 6/2005 generate uniqueid in client and save in in .sheep/rc
       instead of at install time in /usr/share/local...  add
       init_delay_list to be even nicer to servers.  fix the RPM.

v2.6.1 5/2005 update flam3.  add init_delay and list_freshness to
	avoid too many server accesses.

v2.6 5/2005 replace voting icons.  2.6 final.

v2.6b7 5/2005 pickup flam3 fixes, by default 1 render thread, default
	is now 1000 megabyte cache.

v2.6b4 4/2005 do not complain about partial downloads.  use more
       modern nice syntax.  configuration improvements from nix at
       esperi dot org dot uk.  update flam3 module.

v2.6b3 3/2005 voting now works much better: include a modified version
           xscreensaver that passes keypresses onto the graphics hack.
           and spawn a separate process to watch for up/down arrow on
           the root window.  and the mpeg decoder composites votes
           over the video. use new flam3 tools.  add bracket begin/end
           options to limit display to sheep within a range of dates
           or ID numbers.  history is now 300.  max_anims now 100000.
	   add logfile option.  a default value for --max-megabytes is
	   stored in the .sheep directory.  sheep are now stored with
	   the generation number in the filename.  instead of
	   hardwired bits=32 and jpeg=90, specially parse these out of
	   the genome.

v2.4 7/31/03    make history length a parameter and set the default to
		30 (it was 3).  change splash screen to include a "wait
		for download" message.  -window-id disables --zoom 1,
		this avoids a warning from xscreensaver-demo.

v2.4b7 7/16/03  minor bug in flame interpolation.

v2.4b6 7/10/03  major bug fixes in flame algorithm.  change
		--maxrepeats option to --max-repeats.

v2.4b5 6/21/03  C1 continuous interpolation and symmetries in the flame
		module, fullscreen zooming from Dan Nelson.

v2.4b3 5/27/03  change server to sheepserver.net

v2.4b2 5/7/03	fix the shared memory leak in mpeg2dec from Dan Nelson
		(according to the comment it breaks solaris
		compatibility).  install xml configuration for redhat
		9 and redhat 8.  make the default sheep cache be 100
		megabytes in the executable and in the xscreensaver
		xml configuration file.  add maxrepeats.

v2.4b1 4/12/03  support mplayer directly.  patches that fix bugs and
		FreeBSD compatibility issues from Dan Nelson:  memory
		allocation bug where filenames were stored on the
		stack after they left scope.  more error information
		from curl.  off_t may not be an integer. use
		setproctitle if supported.  use statvfs as needed, and 
		call setpgrp with 0 or 2 arguments as appropriate.
		include ctype.h.

v2.3 2/23/03	done with beta!  change the server back to 2.3 from
		2.3b.

v2.3b12 2/10/03 remove the splash-prefix argument.  increase the
		default timeout.  add the min-megabytes option.
		remove the trailing slash splash_prefix (now it comes
		from where it is used).  if you give 0 to the
		max-megabytes option then there is no maximum (except
		as imposed by min-megabytes).  there were also changes
		to the flame module.

v2.3b11 1/16/03	fix bug reported by Olin Shivers where even with
		"--root 0" it was drawing the splash/logo on the root.
		anim-flame now supports jpg directly so don't call
		cjpeg.  don't report the cache contents unless the
		debug level is 2 or higher.

v2.3b10 1/5/03	apply patch from Tal Kelrich that makes the voting
		interface optional at runtime instead of compile time,
		and adds an option to preserve the background
		(--anim-only), and fixes a bug resulting in spinning
		when trying to delete files from the local cache.

v2.3b9 12/27/02 download older animations first (instead of newer).
		fix problem of cache churn when client cache was
		smaller than server cache.  the symptom was the client
		would delete and redownload sheep endlessly.  the cure
		is to remember the sheep that have been deleted from
		the client until they are also deleted from the
		server.  the method is to use a zero-length file
		blah.xxx to remember that blah.mpg has been deleted.
		some of the code was 2-space indented.  reformat back
		to 4 spaces.

v2.3b8 12/22/02 change domain name back to electricsheep.org!
		in the flame module: handle numbers of samples that
		overflow 32 bits.  better error detection and
		reporting.  removed hard limits.  renamed hqi.c to
		hqi-flame.c and added it to the makefile so it is
		built & installed (though not used by electric sheep).

v2.3b7 12/18/02 change domain name to just electric-sheep.org.
		update my email address everywhere.

v2.3b6 12/16/02 patch from Dan Nelson fixing lack of null-termination
		of string from server in anim-flame.c

v2.3b5 12/16/02 p.k. dick's birthday is today!  fix formatting of
		source to fit in 80 columns.  improve error reporting
		when disconnected from the server.

v2.3b4 12/15/02 report text messages from the server specified by the
		<message> element.  and deal with <error>.  and an
		empty <get> tag means there are no sheep to render.

v2.3b3 12/13/02 applied patch from Dan Nelson to improve how the
                number of CPUs is calculated. put into CVS (added $Id
                strings).  smarter encoding of nick and url (don't
                escape everything).  add URL option to graphical
                config.  put flame subdirectory under autoconf and
                automake.  added flam3.com as alternate server.  check
		for presence of expat in configure.

v2.3b2 12/9/02 redid how frame rate was maintained in mpeg2dec, and
               added a lock so that multiple executables do not
               conflict (thanks to Jonathan Morton for pointing out
               these problems).  removed unused directories from
               mpeg2dec tree.

v2.3b1 12/5/02 substantial release after too many moons.  replaced
               mpegplay with mpeg2dec, ie play mpeg2 instead of mpeg1.
               protocol is now compressed xml instead of ad hoc
               crud. updated to work with redhat 8, that is, with
               xscreensaver-demo and its xml config file.  many small
               changes.

v2.1 7/3/01 vibrant colors, hue rotation, background color added. bug
            fixed by Matt Reda <mreda@mac.com>: the wrong file was
            getting deleted when it tried to reduce cache size!
            added reset fuse, statistics reporting, proxy
            argument. patch from rockear@hive-mind.net for powerpc.
            handle network disconnection and bad anim files gracefully.

v2.0 5/16/01 the big change from the 0.x to 2.x series is the
             introduction of connectivity and transitions, so the
             animation is always smoothly changing, there are no cuts
             (unless it gets stuck and it has to).  also: multiple
             rendering threads, a separate download thread, voting
             (via xscreensaver or just a named pipe), support for
             rendering single hirez frames of many tiles instead of
             animations of many frames, theoretical support for
             rendering modules other than anim.

v1.10 not released.

v1.9 reconstituted, private pre2.0 release.

v0.5 (not released) removed empty AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS from configure.in
             and added return 0 to anim.c (bugfixes from Martin Pool).
             added net-present and parasite options, various
             bulletproofing.

v0.4 7/31/00 create ~/.sheep directory if needed (bug report by jai
             young kim).  i'm not bumping the version number since 0.4
             hasn't been distributed yet.

v0.4 6/29/00 by default now save the mpeg files in ~/.sheep/ (it keeps
             the last 50 megabytes), and switch between them instead
             of cycling the same one.  mpeg-play now exits more
             gracefully when it is unable to read the input file,
             preventing evil xscreensaver crashes i hope.  minor
             cleanup.

v0.3 12/24/99 removed curl from distribution (since no longer
              distributing libc5).  bugfix to anim.c from Steinar
              H. Gunderson and Evan Martin.  made more robust in face
              of network failures (thanks to Will Luo for pointing out
              this problem).  automatically installs gnome screensaver
              control panel files.

v0.2.1 10/17/99 splash page error no longer fatal.  added dependencies
              for xloadimage and xscreensaver to rpm spec.  should
              take curl out & use a dependency, but it's too painful
              with libc5/6.

v0.2 10/16/99 adopt curl, separate client & server, adopt automake &
              autoconf, gamma is now 1 on the client side, misc
              features & bugs.

v0.1 10/2/99 first version.  private beta release.