Hi,
I would like to try and decrypt the previous year’s manual for the fun of it before this year’s manual comes out. That way I will be prepared when it is released. I gave it a search online and all the links to last year’s manual are dead and redirect you to the FRC page. I was hoping someone had it saved somewhere.
Good luck finding it, but adding changing www.usfirst.org to archive.usfirst.org lets you access the old pages.
I believe the encrypted manuals are taken down once Kickoff happens. At that point they’re no longer needed.
Also, please bear in mind that HQ personnel DO read CD. You’re talking about trying to crack the manual from previous years to be ready for this year–I really don’t think that’s going to go over too well. That kind of implies that you’re thinking about making an attempt to break into this year’s manual, which most people would regard as cheating.
Usually, there will be a decryption test released around the time the encrypted manual is released. Use that. The password won’t be the same, though–that’s been tried in the past.
Oh…my bad. I thought the reason they put out the manual early is so people could try, albeit probably won’t succeed, to crack it. That was the feeling I got from seeing it, but I guess I was too ignorant or something. I have absolutely no intention to cheat, I guess I was misguided as for the use of the encrypted manual…my bad…
It’s out early so that their servers don’t totally crash. On Kickoff, EVERY website related to FIRST slows down–CD got better when they were able to get more of a dynamic server setup so they could get an extra server or three for build, but FIRST itself hasn’t gotten much better. The basic idea is that a lot of people download the manual early, and then the password is given out at the end of the broadcast. Then people can download the non-encrypted manual whenever the traffic permits.
And part of the reason for the encryption being as secure as it is is to slow down attempts to get in–it’s rated as secure for a couple of weeks, and it’s released less than a week before Kickoff. If anybody does crack it successfully, their best bet is to tell FIRST and then go have a chat with the CIA about employment.
The encrypted manual is put out so that people can have it downloaded and have a copy of the manual the day of kickoff to make an effort to ease the load on the FIRST servers, and so people aren’t scrambling to find a copy IF the website goes down.
I see. I was just reading this: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=140712 and though that is what people were doing. Anyways, thanks for the clarification.
I had downloaded the encrypted manual and I just uploaded it to Google Drive. I hope this works for you
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2o5lbmLnqftcW16V3VvVWRYZ3c/view?usp=sharing
I appreciate you taking the effort to find it, but I now realize the real purpose of the encrypted manual. Thanks.
There is a decryption test also posted when they post the encrypted manual…to make sure your .pdf viewer is capable of opening the encrypted file, once you have the key on kickoff morning.
I’m going to assume the best, that you just wanted to make sure you could open the encrypted file once you get the official key for it, on kickoff morning.