SETI Cheating scandal--Stats meaningless?

[bot2600]

Very nice post over there by Crazee

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: MoFunk

Originally posted by: Smokeball
Been doing more reading on the Ars DC Forum. Found this comment by:

No forum or resource anywhere has the sort of knowledge that we do in the field of DC. Nobody comes close. Free-DC are still oxymorons, Anandtech don't really give a damn either way and DPC speak foreignese. The rest are small-timers who don't accumulate the know-how like we do. Have the flashest stats and fastest CPUs in the world, but that doesn't tell you how the client works.

Wow. Man that is kind of a low blow. What the hell do we have to do with this? Sounds a little cocky to me. Bet this guy hasn't had a date ever! Unlike us super sexy AT guys and gals!

Man, that's a slap against us and a horrible way to speak about the DPC. I bet that a-hole's Dutch is a lot worse than the English most of those "foreignese" DPC members speak! :| I'm an english only speaking American and resent people who criticize other people because they don't speak "our" language as good as those of us who grew up here. Okay, I'll step off my soapbox now...

I guess we Anandtechers should just be honored to be mentioned in such an important DC'ers statement...

EDIT: Corrected my statement. Apparently it wasn't one of my fellow American's. Doesn't make his comment any better but according to the person who corrected me the guy who made the comment is pretty much a troll and should not be used to judge the rest of the Ars people. Guess I was a bit jumpy. Sorry to any of the Ars members I offended.

 

[thawolfman]

Originally posted by: bot2600
Very nice post over there by Crazee

link? :Q

edit - nm LOL

 

[toft-dk]

I am truly amazed that a team like ARS would mention all the rest of the teams like that ( well even if it is only that guy )

If he believes they have all the knowledge. Why are THEY cheating. If they are ???

I would rather be known as a Unknowledgeble NONcheater ( spelled correct ?? )
than a Knowledgeble Cheater.

I hope that Anandtech lives up to MY hopes and belifs of beeing a place of intregrity and honour

 

[otlg25]

As I posted on ARS forums:

"These cheats _DO_ jepordize results

I'm surprised no one has figured this out yet. Cheat #2 is a HUGE threat to results.

Seti 3-5x checks units to ensure integrity.. but, picture this:

My machine is broken. I process 99% of a unit and ship it off to 20 of my friends. In fact I process 20 such units. Because of problems with my machine, the results are wrong.

Then my 20 friends submit the results. Guess what.. yep that's right.. Seti think's it's checked off and accurate, when infact, it's wrong.

#2 has the potential of meaning every work unit is not trustworthy.. imagine.. EVERYTHING SETI has done is potentially invalid...

I hate to be the one to point this out."

JUST FYI

 

[gogeeta13]

Isnt this kinda stuff possibl ein other projects also. what otlg just posted scares me.

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: toft-dk
I am truly amazed that a team like ARS would mention all the rest of the teams like that ( well even if it is only that guy )

If he believes they have all the knowledge. Why are THEY cheating. If they are ???

I would rather be known as a Unknowledgeble NONcheater ( spelled correct ?? )
than a Knowledgeble Cheater.

I hope that Anandtech lives up to MY hopes and belifs of beeing a place of intregrity and honour

Apparently they have never heard of innocent until proven guilty.

There is a reason most other people refer to that place as ArseTechnica.

 

[otlg25]

Well:

Yes & No. yes it's possible, but in other projects it would be much easier to detect, because in most there is a known, finite answer. For example if RC5 is broken (which honestly, it's looking more and more like every day that goes by), you will know, because at 100% the key either is or isn't found. Same for ECCP, CSC, DES, and any crypto challenges. Same thing for GIMPS.

'Soft' project like UD, Genome@Home and SETI are *much* harder to validate.

Now don't get me wrong, statistically speaking the odds of this impacting SETI's results are probably miniscule.... but then again so are the odds of detecting the signal from an alien lifeform in the frequency bands that SETI is searching to begin with.

From a scientific standpoint all of the SETI results received to date are now suspect.

And sorting out which ones might be wrong could be damned near impossible.. because if I give the unit to 200 of my friends, it's pretty easy to find, but what if this was only myself and 5 of my friends.. then it would look totally legit without scanning the logs to look for correlations. That scan, on that many results would need a SETI of it's own just to run in a reasonable time frame.

Regards,

Steve

 

[BadThad]

Whoa....that is just plain sick now. Do that for stats? Jez, some people need a life. :Q:|

 

[Smoke]

I'm not sure if this is related but it may be. I have been contacted by a member of BBR informing me that their team's Qs have had over 1500+ WUs uploaded by a mysterious IP Address: 177.get11.rb1.bel.nwlink.com

I have looked at their Qs and a lot of these "mysterious" WUs appear to be duplicates and have other errors.

I have had Confused help me check out our TeAm Qs and it does not appear we have gotten any similar uploads. I could not get to our primary Q, OrangeKids, so that one has not been checked yet. Anyone have any knowledge about this or can tell anything from the IP ADDRESS?

 

[brinstar117]

Ugh, just when I thought I found the last bastion of good honest fun

I've enjoyed distributed computing with the TeAm immensely for the past few months. I've continually been upgrading and adding on to my mini fleet of computers and excitedly watched my stats progress.

Though I'm mostly a lurker by nature in the DC forum, I've found it to be a very warm and receptive place full of insight with dedicated and well mannered individuals.

Based on my observations, I would highly doubt that any visible member of the TeAm would be capable of such acts. Cheating defies every intent a distributed computing project hopes to achieve.

However, it would be nieve of myself to not realize that wherever there's competition, there will always be cheaters. Unfortunately distributed computing is not exempt from the sleazy aspect of competition. Winning by cheating is such a hollow victory. I can never understand how people can be satisfied with a victory that they didn't earn.

Though we are all disheartened over the fact that such an event has been realized. I hope we can all feel confident that our TeAm can easily stand to the test of honesty and be a shining example of what a TeAm should be! Be strong, be proud, be one of the TeAm!

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: Smokeball
I'm not sure if this is related but it may be. I have been contacted by a member of BBR informing me that their team's Qs have had over 1500+ WUs uploaded by a mysterious IP Address: 177.get11.rb1.bel.nwlink.com

That appears to be from a dial-up account that uses http://www.nwlink.com/ as its ISP.

 

[JWMiddleton]

/edited and removed as I've decided that it does no good to rehash the past!

 

[Poof]

JWMiddleton - Gazoooo - a former member of TA, was referencing this, where you had a bunch of jerks who had hacked the client to get their results. However, that group of miscreants moved all of their tainted load to KWSN before the "confession" and KWSN was the Team that had to have the results deleted.

Actually, the specific suggestions or references in the thread that you linked to, I think have to also do with comments from people about deleting VLAR WUs.

 

[JWMiddleton]

Thanks for the clarification and link Poof! Yes, the link was mainly about deleting VLAR WUs, but it was where I first found that there was a problem at ARS.

 

[Poof]

Originally posted by: JWMiddleton
Thanks for the clarification and link Poof! Yes, the link was mainly about deleting VLAR WUs, but it was where I first found that there was a problem at ARS.

Yeah - there was alot of threads about VLARs and alot of folks (well - a number of folks, most don't have time to micromanage their clients) talking about passing up and/or otherwise deleting VLARs. I think that the VLAR routing feature that is part of Setiqueue is still the best thing since sliced bread. My linux clients have a queue that is now nothing but VLARs!

But since I'm here posting right now, let me ask my team mates a favor - PLEASE PLEASE all... do try to maintain some civility. This is not "us" against "them" with "them" being some other team. It is us against CHEATERS AND CHEATING.

The comment that Hat Monster made about this team is NOT a reflection of the sentiment of Ars. It is one person's comment and a person who is known to shoot off at the mouth. Believe me, I have had my run-ins with him. His behavior continually borders on troll. Day after day after day.

Let us use calm heads and reason to approach this subject and be mindful of the fact that 99% of people who run SETI are legit. It's that other 1% who make DC bad for all of us. Believe me, past history has shown that cheaters tend to bop around from team to team, causing alot of disruption (which is really their goal). The disruption of the Phantom Flusher on TA is still with us. The disruption of the admitted cheaters from the "confession" thread linked above, touched several teams - including Ars, KWSN, AND IsraAliens (and who knows who else). Much of the reasoning behind the creation of the team "FreeDC" was because of the past scandals.

We need to put our heads together to come up with ways to minimize (we will never stop it, but can at least attempt to minimize) the prospects for cheating. By discussing civilly, we can at least prompt cheaters to go somewhere else and not taint us.

I hope I am making myself clear.

 

[Rickman2]

Originally posted by: Baldy18
Cheaters at S@NL is another thing though, I've suspected that for a long time. I'm sorry to those at S@NL that are decent people and visit this forum I hope that for your sakes there aren't any cheaters on your team but I fear that there are.

I certainly hope not Our team is a very enthusiastic bunch of crunching cloggies who do not want to be associated with this kind of filth. I do unserstand however, that some of our heavy-hitters do some amazing work. Since the whole CobraICE incident I've sent 'suspicious' account to Eric Korpela, just to be sure. However, I've never received any response, and no actions were taken. This could mean good news, but it also could mean Berkeley has to much time on their hand to check account, or at least respond. Understandable, but dissappointing none the less...

Personally I believe Cobra and would love to see the faces of those at Ars that think he was removed for cheating when his account gets restored.

Now this strikes me as funny. You suspect we've got cheaters on our team. A few of our heavyhitters can do 1k-2k a day which is amazing. Yet you have no doubt about Cobra's integrity who was doing 15k a day back in the good ol'days. Why is that? I'm not saying anything bad about the C. man, cuz he's a good guy. I just think you're measuring with double standards here...

 

[Crazee]

Rickman,

I don't think anyone else here has suspected S@NL of cheating. That talk has been happening over at ARS not here. It is up to you and your teammates to decide if cheating is happening on your team just like it is up to us to determine if it is happening on ours. My only beef with ARS was that they were naming Cobra without giving any proof. The way I feel is that everyone (including members of S@NL, ARS, and any other team) are innocent until proven guilty.

We have always enjoyed a strong positive relationship with S@NL and I am sure we will continue to Please don't take anything in this thread as an accusation of anything

 

[Smoke]

I don't think Seti@Netherlands cheats ... never have and never will. Seti@Netherlands Rocks!

Please don't take one member's personal feelings as indicative of Team AnandTech. We are all free spirits here, just like our brothers in the Netherlands, and each is entitled to their own opinion.

Rickman2, would you mind turning on your PM (Private Message) function. It is located in your "Profile" link at the top right.

 

[lane42]

Rick, I don't think it's a double standard, Cobra's a member of this Team and as such his wu's are as good as anyone else's wu untill proven other wise. It's not a double standard sticking up for a Teammate

 

[Assimilator1]

Rickman2
You have a PM

 

[CyGoR]

Well this is a suprise.. I'm off for a few days and there has grown a huge discussion about cheating!
There are a few posts which made me think, there are a few who obviously want Cobra to ask for a
re-activation of his disabled account.. I don't think that will or can happen.
To bad I don't have time to read everything, but what was the "thing" that triggered this discussion?
And don't mind Fragile, he always was a person who thought everyone was sucpicious..
I'm going to read it all again untill it makes any sence to me.. If there is anyone willing to give me a
little help at that, I would really appreciate it..
And for the TLC people who finds it disturbing, mijn excuses voor mijn slechte engels.
Ofcourse they would be able to read that because there all very well know with foreign languages..

 

[Freewolf]

It started with the thread on Ars that is linked in the first post where cobra's name was involved with cheating and the members of our team wasn't very happy about that and we let the people on Ars know we didn't like them doing it if they couldn't prove it because we don't believe it for a minute. English seems to be the only language they speak by the way

 

[Michael]

As a matter of fair play, discussing Cobra here is not fair. He cannot post here and I do not think it is appropriate to discuss someone possibly being a cheater in a forum they cannot respond in.

Michael

 

[ravana]

Originally posted by: networkman
I would rather loose honorably than win by cheating.

Roger that!

add a Roger from me to that!