LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2001 8:55 am Post subject:

Count me in!! I don't want to give up that easy. LWD MUST PREVAIL![ Very Happy

]

"This is my world, Your just visting."

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2001 9:04 am Post subject:

Personally, I think the entire situation blows ass chunks. I truly believe that the S@H folks will not tolerate such bullshit. Although I don't know for sure what will happen, I suspect that they will punish TLC in some shape or form for their actions. Obviously the worst case scenario being that TLC is no more. I highly doubt they would do such a thing....but you never know.

Either way, I just read that whole thread and TLC's reputation is going to be demolished over this whole incident. People are leaving the team and looking for others to join. It's just too bad that they happened to be the ones that are doing this. They are one of the few teams in the top 10 that are not some major corporation like Microsoft and Sun, etc.

I will continue to crunch away because our team is honest and I believe in it's cause. That and this is one of the only projects that can unite computer power from all over the world to achieve one goal, and to me that is a wonderful thing.

- Spot
Spot@LittleWhiteDog.com

"AssPunching is not allowed!"

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2001 12:40 pm Post subject:

I was both dismayed and outraged to hear about this cheating issue. Without resorting to profanity, all I can say is that the perpetrators suck butt-juice and should be made to eat the chunks.

I see no need, however, to dissolve the LWD SETI Team as I am sure none of us are involved.

I sincerely enjoy being a LWD SETI team member and the friendly competition and comradery we have here.

- Ed.

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2001 4:35 pm Post subject:

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TLC's reputation is going to be demolished over this whole incident. People are leaving the team and looking for others to join.

We have at least one with us amybe two...

Edited by - random1 on 01/27/2001 20:27:16

Big Dog Joined: 20 Oct 2000 Posts: 3689 Location: USA

I think the cheaters can consider themselves on the same level as Steve Jobs in my book

and for anyone who doesn't know know what I think of "Steve-O"

http://www.littlewhitedog.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=437&FORUM_ID=7&CAT_ID=4&Topic_Title=pc+emulation+on+a+mac%2E%2E%2E&Forum_Title=General+Software

Other than that, all I have to say is that I'm still planning on crunching plenty of WU's for team LWD

Blame is for people who need a reason to be pissed off !
-Brain

Cat Chaser Joined: 21 Jan 2001 Posts: 658 Location: USA

I agree that the LWD SETI Team must go on !!!

Even though I just joined the team, I have put a lot of time into checking my machines and making sure they always are running. Enough to even make my wife swear she is going to turn my machines off if I don't spend some time with her!!!! It is disappointing to see the cheating going on. But being part of a team makes it more fun to watch the stats and keeps the excitement rolling. Anyway, there is my two cents worth.

Kingkash

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2001 9:38 pm Post subject:

If it wasn't for LWD i wouldn't even know what seti is.
I ain't goin anywhere. Plus i just found this cool martian doggie.[^]

Stray Dog Joined: 06 Dec 2000 Posts: 22 Location: USA

In case anyone's interested, I found this off the alt.sci.seti newsgroup yesterday. It's an unoffical response from one of their members about the cheating:

Sorry about letting the lack of response from most of the SETI@home
team posters. I'm sure you can understand that we've been a bit
busy. Thank you, Lawrence Kirby, for helping everyone keep a little
perspective.

Yes, the patch does exist, and yes, it does what is claimed. It
requests a workunit and uploads a blank result a few seconds later.
Unfortunately we had become complacent against this type of attack
following the release of the version 2 clients. We are no longer
complacent, and are watching carefully for users using this patch.
Most make themselves pretty obvious.

The damage to the completeness of the science database appears to be
minimal. Lawrence is correct that it is unlikely that the same workunit
would be sent to two different cheaters. There is also an additional
effect that Lawrence didn't mention. Workunits are not deleted
immediately after a second result is returned. The deletion occurs only
when the splitters have filled up the available disk space, and then the
deletions are in fairly small chunks. Since we're constrained by the
data rate at the telescope (and we don't run the splitters any faster
than that), the net effect of a million bogus results returned quickly
is that the average number of times a workunit is sent goes up to
compensate. It's not enough to fully prevent any loss, but it helps.

We're investigating ways to prevent type of hack from working in the future on
both the server and client side. Some of the options people here have
mentioned are being invertigated. We'll try solving the problem in the
server first. Because of the architecture it's a whole lot easier to prevent
the phony results from ending up in the database than it is to prevent cheaters
from getting credit for the phonies.

Another option would be to no longer give credit for null results. We expect
that many users would rebel against that, and stop processing any workunits
that don't find a signal in the first 5 minutes.

Some of the options presented here would greatly exceed our database processing
capacity to implement. They would certainly work, they're just not feasable in
our current setup. Others would require that we increase our workunit storage
by a factor of 8 or so. If we had that much disk space around it would
get used in the science database....

If we're not able to solve the problem in the server, expect a Windows
commandline 3.04. I've come up with a method of prevent the null result
problem that would make the patch job more difficult. Of course there's
no way of making the patch job impossible.

At any rate, the damage isn't too bad, and we're working on a solution...

Eric
--
Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be stopped
korpela@ssl.berkeley.edu

Moderator Joined: 05 Dec 2000 Posts: 5941 Location: USA

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In case anyone's interested ...

Great work stanely ! It was a very interesting read indeed !

squito@wi.rr.com

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2001 2:49 am Post subject:

Good work Stanely. I wish they would have emailed me personally with that instead of just posting it in some news group but a response of any kind is worthwhile. Again good work Stanely, that's the kind of diggin' I like to see from a dog...WOOF WOOF!

Rover

Toilet bowls...the chalice of dogs everywhere.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2001 7:09 am Post subject:

Thanks, stanely.

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