About Mercenary Mind
 The goal of Mercenary Mind is to be fun, to be a place where people with broad horizons can communicate and show what they can do with their knowledge and skill. And possibly walk away with something more than bragging rights.
 
Registration is free, but not needed, unless you wish to post to the forums, or take part in a contest.

The best way to tell about MercenaryMind is to answer some of the common questions we get. Click on the links below if there is something you want to know. 

Why the name Mercenary Mind?

Why hold contests?

Will you sell my email address to spammers?

How does this site work?

How are the contest rules laid out?

How do you submit an entry?

Why the name Mercenary Mind?

One of the big parts on this site is trying to reward those who show the most know how and skill.  Mercenary is defined as "Someone who serves for wages."  The use of the word Mind in this case is defined as "The organized conscious and unconscious mental activity of a person".  Mercenary Mind = Someone who uses their mental capacity to win prizes.

Why hold contests? 

Why not? We can't all afford to enter the "The Grand Challenge" held by DARPA.  Or compete in the X-Prize contest.  This is especially true because those who have won those contests ended up spending more money than they won.

So why such a simple lay out to the site?  We believe that the more bells and whistles you add to a site, the more it detracts from the content of the site. To really be accessible we intend to keep it as easy and simple as possible.

Will you sell my email address to spammers?

I hate opening my email and getting loads of spam. I know that somewhere I got careless and typed my email address into a web site somewhere. And whoever owns that site sold it to make a little extra cash. So now someone is sending a hundred emails to me about all sorts of things that I don’t want to even know about. And it's nothing cool either. No motorized scooters, robots, anime movies, samurai or kung fu flicks. Not even computer hardware ads.

But now here I am, the owner of my own web site, and looking at how to keep the books out of the red. So the question is asked. Do we sell the email addresses we get from registered users? Rest assured there was no hesitation to say no. Why should we add to a problem we hate to deal with? There are better ways to raise money. So it is our policy that any address we get will not be sold to any marketing company. Because those snail mail ads are just as annoying.

 

How does this site work?

One of the first things we want to make clear is this is not a sweepstakes. There is no random chance of winning. There is also no way to randomly guess a correct answer to win.  The only way to win is by Skill. You must submit the best entry to win.

In each contest that is held there will be a minimum of two requirements that must be met. All requirements will be listed in the contest rules, and will be available for at least a week before we will start accepting entries. In addition to the requirements, bonus goals may be listed.  These are not required to be met to win but they can be used to break any potential tie.

In the event of a tie a 3rd party will be consulted.

We do offer prize money, paid by the means of a certified check. At no time will anyone from this site request any personal information like a social security number, bank account number, or for a credit card. That is simply  information we do not need for any reason. Any email that is received claiming to be from mercenary mind that requests any such information, please send us a copy of the message before deleting.

 

Example contest rules.

Here is an example of a contest & the rules for it.

Tilt and swing

Rule one. The photo must be in black and white.

Rule two. The face of a human subject must be in the foreground.

Rule three. There must be an object or another “living” subject in focus plain in the background.

Rule four. Submissions must be digital or scanned to gif or jpeg file formats.

Rule five. Photo must be safe for general audiences. Photos with adult content will be disqualified.

Rule six. A release form must be included with the photograph.

Bonus goal. The human face has the appearance of looking back over their shoulder at the item in the tilted focus.

Now with these rules, if someone submitted a color photograph, they would be disqualified. Even if they met all the other requirements, they will still be disqualified.  No refund of their entrance fee. If they scanned or edited the photo again and saved it as a black and white they could re-enter the contest. But they would have to pay the entrance fee again.

If the photo does not have a human face in the photo it will be disqualified. An animal’s face does not count, nor does a person wearing a mask. A picture of a human face does not count. The photo must have a face of a willing model.

If the focal plane ( the section of the photo in focus ) does not have a subject in it, it will be disqualified. If the only thing that can be seen in the background is the ground or floor then a subject is not present.   If there is a subject in the background but not perfectly in focus, it will be considered.

If the photo is not submitted by upload to our site, it will not be considered.  We don’t have the option to receive snail mail.

Nudes and violent content will be disqualified. This site is an all ages site and we can not display that kind of entry.

Bonus Goal.  If this is not met it will not disqualify the entry.  However, if two entries come to a tie, the one that best meets the bonus goal will win.  If no entries meet the bonus goal, a tie will be broken by a 3rd party.

If there is no release form included with the photograph the entry will not qualify. We will be displaying the winning entry, as well as other entries worth showing. It is also proof that all parties are willing participants.

 

How to submit an entry. General guide.

There are a few things you must do when you submit your entry. There must be a plain text file that has your full address in it. This is so we know where to send the check. We also want the submitted entries to be uploaded as a compressed file or a zip file. Windows XP can do this by using the send file option. By using a compressed file, we can keep the entries organized better. To really be sure that the rightful winner gets the prize, we must disqualify anyone who does not follow this.

 

For movies and photographs, a signed release for every person seen must be included in the compressed folder. Any submitted photo or movie that does not have the release form(s) included will be disqualified and there will not be a refund. If there is time remaining, the missing files can be added and resubmitted, however, the entry fee must be paid again.

 

When submitting a program, along with the submitters address file, the source code will be required along with the compiled program. Again, all files must be in a compressed folder. If needed files are not found in the compressed folder, the entry will be disqualified and there will not be a refund. If there is time remaining, the missing files can be added and resubmitted, however, the entry fee must be paid again.

 

Once you have the needed information gathered together and are ready to upload your submission, you will need to login to Mercenary Mind, then click on the Entry Upload button on the left of the page. It will only be active if you are logged in and your subscription is active. You will be directed to our upload page.  This will let you select the compressed folder or zip file on your computer. Once it is selected, simply click on upload. We will begin viewing the entries after the last day for submissions has passed.

Points we want to stress.

For contests we hold we would like to make it clear that no purchase from our store is required to enter our contests. There is an entry fee to make sure that we can fund our next contest. We try to keep this as low as possible.

We also want to make it as clear as possible that these are games of skill. We go through many lengths to remove chance.

No Phishing allowed

 We do offer prize money, paid by the means of a certified check. At no time will anyone from this site request any personal information like a social security number, bank account number, or for a credit card. That is simply  information we do not need for any reason. This includes our online store.  Any email you receive claiming to be from mercenary mind that requests any such information, please send us a copy of the message before deleting. If there is legal action we can take, we would like to have the chance to do that.