Actually i don't mind him doing some cherry picking.
This whole mess regarding the 54 credit wus granting to low credit is a well known fact for several months now.

Since noone seems to care to adress this "issue" it had to happen...

Agreed. I am somewhat surprised nothing has happened on this front for this long, since there were hints of it during the beta testing. The fact the rate curve needs some linearizing is indisputable at this point.

Alinator

erm correct me if i'm wrong but on these top machines (mine included) there is little point in dropping WU's as the throughput is so high anyway

also its totally FAIR that different ARs may give slightly different credit UNLESS some people sidestep this by cherry picking

everyone is getting the same WU's are they not ?

i would never consider doing such a thing myself, as i see it as bad seti karma :-)

cherry picking makes the whole top twenty page pretty much pointless

while its not cheating as there are no rules against it i feel its pretty selfish... as those aborted units not only delay wingmen/quorums it also shifts the burden of these "lower credit" WU's to people not inclined to manipulate the stats...

ho hum there was me trying to be polite earlier and assuming that all where innocent machine failures and now i see the whole cynical human foibles boiling to the surface again..... what has happened to honour and respect lol :-)

i used to me a member of team MacNN and they are all a pretty good bunch, and i'm sure they wont be too pleased at their leading cruncher giving the stats a good massage...

regards

adrian (ever optimistic!)


[/quote]

Actually i don't mind him doing some cherry picking.
This whole mess regarding the 54 credit wus granting to low credit is a well known fact for several months now.

Since noone seems to care to adress this "issue" it had to happen...

[/quote]

---

63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats

erm correct me if i'm wrong but on these top machines (mine included) there is little point in dropping WU's as the throughput is so high anyway

also its totally FAIR that different ARs may give slightly different credit UNLESS some people sidestep this by cherry picking

everyone is getting the same WU's are they not ?

i would never consider doing such a thing myself, as i see it as bad seti karma :-)

cherry picking makes the whole top twenty page pretty much pointless

<snip>

regards

adrian (ever optimistic!)

Agreed. However on the matter of rate linearity, I think we can all accept that it's never going to absolutely flat, but the results to date has shown that it really isn't even as close as the old LF data was. This should be addressed just for the simple reason that it isn't right and the preliminary work has been done by Joe to make it a lot better.

As far as your discourse on the honor of crunching goes, no argument there! ;-)

Alinator

So are people into SETI for the points or for the science? I can see both sides of the story here. It's nice to earn points, but I don't think i'm bothered that some might be fudging the stats - they are still doing work towards the project whichever way they earn the points.

---

If I cherry picked through the results, with some of those coming through the other day I could have a RAC of over 17000, would that be fair?

NO!

I know this may be a simple view, but if you choose to crunch for seti then you accept what ever work you are given.

---

So are people into SETI for the points or for the science? I can see both sides of the story here. It's nice to earn points, but I don't think i'm bothered that some might be fudging the stats - they are still doing work towards the project whichever way they earn the points.

On a perverse note, If the top 10 Macs are called to question, then that would make the Top machine a 16 core Barcelona running Linux ;D
[ Of course I said that then #11 just changed to a Windows machine! ]

---

"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

LOL...

You noticed that too. :-)

Alinator

If I cherry picked through the results, with some of those coming through the other day I could have a RAC of over 17000, would that be fair?

NO!

I know this may be a simple view, but if you choose to crunch for seti then you accept what ever work you are given.

OK, I totally agree with this. I set a machine up last week that was dealt a really bum hand and d/l a load of huge WUs. I didn't ditch them, I just let it carry on - as you say, that's only fair.

I guess I am far enough away from the top spots that I am not worried, but if I was nearer the action, I'll admit I'd be more concerned.

---

my machine has never been involved in any sort of dubious behaviour apart from running alex kans excellent code

SATAN and ULI's machines are clean as far as i can tell looking through the results

just bad to the bone doing the massaging, dunno about anonymous....

So are people into SETI for the points or for the science? I can see both sides of the story here. It's nice to earn points, but I don't think i'm bothered that some might be fudging the stats - they are still doing work towards the project whichever way they earn the points.

On a perverse note, If the top 10 Macs are called to question, then that would make the Top machine a 16 core Barcelona running Linux ;D

---

63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats

my machine has never been involved in any sort of dubious behaviour apart from running alex kans excellent code

SATAN and ULI's machines are clean as far as i can tell looking through the results

just bad to the bone doing the massaging, dunno about anonymous....

So are people into SETI for the points or for the science? I can see both sides of the story here. It's nice to earn points, but I don't think i'm bothered that some might be fudging the stats - they are still doing work towards the project whichever way they earn the points.

On a perverse note, If the top 10 Macs are called to question, then that would make the Top machine a 16 core Barcelona running Linux ;D

Have no fear, just a facetious remark. Of course after I made that point a Windows machine swapped places with the Linux Box making it moot anyway ;D [ ...Typical... ]

---

"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Wasn't there a discussion that the long WUs take excessively long to crunch? Thanks to Alex's optimization, the Macs are processing them pretty fast. Isn't that reason enough to concentrate the crunching power on this chunk of the project?

I don't really care where my boxes rank since I have to use them for my work and can't dedicate them solely to crunching. Otherwise, I would've turned off the vintage machines and saved a lot of energy...

Actually i don't mind him doing some cherry picking.
This whole mess regarding the 54 credit wus granting to low credit is a well known fact for several months now.

Since noone seems to care to adress this "issue" it had to happen...

Agreed. I am somewhat surprised nothing has happened on this front for this long, since there were hints of it during the beta testing. The fact the rate curve needs some linearizing is indisputable at this point.

Alinator

Hmm, isn't the code to handle variable credit-multiplier already included in v6.00, but due to some other bugs there'll need to be another beta-application that maybe gets released...

---

"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might."

Actually i don't mind him doing some cherry picking.
This whole mess regarding the 54 credit wus granting to low credit is a well known fact for several months now.

Since noone seems to care to adress this "issue" it had to happen...

Agreed. I am somewhat surprised nothing has happened on this front for this long, since there were hints of it during the beta testing. The fact the rate curve needs some linearizing is indisputable at this point.

Alinator

Hmm, isn't the code to handle variable credit-multiplier already included in v6.00, but due to some other bugs there'll need to be another beta-application that maybe gets released...

I was under the impression that feature was so projects could set their Cross Project Parity Multiplier without having to release new app builds. I suppose there's nothing to prevent setting it on a task by task basis.

However, I was referring to linearizing it at the splitter so the FLOP v AR curve is flatter.

Alinator

Actually i don't mind him doing some cherry picking.
This whole mess regarding the 54 credit wus granting to low credit is a well known fact for several months now.

Since noone seems to care to adress this "issue" it had to happen...

Agreed. I am somewhat surprised nothing has happened on this front for this long, since there were hints of it during the beta testing. The fact the rate curve needs some linearizing is indisputable at this point.

Alinator

Hmm, isn't the code to handle variable credit-multiplier already included in v6.00, but due to some other bugs there'll need to be another beta-application that maybe gets released...

The code was almost included in the 5.27 stock application, but fell out at the last minute. I believe some platforms (not including Windows) now have a stock 5.28 application with the code [I can't check at the moment, because http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/apps.php is giving me an HTTP 500 Internal Server Error], and the main optimisers' apps have it too.

The trouble is, the multiplier curve would have to be calibrated, and the resulting values fed into the WU header field while the WUs were being split. Matt told us about an earlier change to the splitter code - more realistic deadlines - on Feb 07, but that change hasn't made it into production after three weeks - Joe thought it was in the same build as the radar blanking, which is getting thorough testing. I doubt they'll even think about flattening the credit curve until those two changes have bedded down for a while.

Edit: From Eric's blog #12, 30 days ago:

Of course this isn't perfect either. Every time we release a new version of SETI@home, we need to adjust the credit multiplier. That takes quite a bit of work, and even then it isn't perfect. Right now SETI@home is granting 10 to 15% more credit than it should. The credit granted per CPU time also varies depending upon the details of the work unit. Neither of these problems will be solved before SETI@home version 6 is released. Maybe not even then. It would be nice if there were some sort of automation for determining the credit multiplier on the fly.

Edit 2: I was actually looking for this quote, or something like it:

The multiplier code is in version 5.28 for MacOS and Linux x86_64 which should be released to the main project this week.

- Eric, October 8.

Richard, although as you claim the code was included in 5.28, it seems that the version we are able to get has returned to 5.27.

Is there a specific reason for this or is it just a matter of more general testing?

---

Richard, although as you claim the code was included in 5.28, it seems that the version we are able to get has returned to 5.27.

Is there a specific reason for this or is it just a matter of more general testing?

It depends what, exactly, you're talking about.

As I said, http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/apps.php is currently giving me an Internal Server Error, so I can't tell what stock applications are being distributed just now (and I don't have an OS X Mac to hand, so I can't test it that way, either). And Beta is testing 6.00, which doesn't help us either way.

You, on the other hand, run optimised applications - specifically:

OS X optimized S@H Enhanced application by Alex Kan
Version info: OS X SSSE3 (Intel, Xeon-optimized v8-nographics) V5.13 by Alex Kan

Work Unit Info:
...............
Credit multiplier is :  2.85
WU true angle range is :  1.411590

Flopcounter: 5865167860223.521484

Spike count:    10
Pulse count:    0
Triplet count:  3
Gaussian count: 0
</stderr_txt>
]]>
 
Validate state Valid 
Claimed credit 19.3633423786114 
Granted credit 19.3633423786114 
application version 5.27

Let's deconstruct that.

Version info: OS X SSSE3 (Intel, Xeon-optimized v8-nographics) V5.13 by Alex Kan

You're running V8 v5.13 by Alex. That's your version. Alex wrote it, he has the right to name it.

Credit multiplier is : 2.85

Your application can cope with a variable multiplier - what we're discussing here - but for the moment is stuck in the 2.85 static rut with the rest of us.

application version 5.27

The anonymous platform mechanism - app_info.xml - is telling Berkeley that for the purposes of issuing work, your 'anonymous' (optimised) application can be treated as equivalent to the stock Berkeley 5.27 release.

Does that answer your question?

Yep, thanks a lot Richard.

---

[…] I can't tell what stock applications are being distributed just now (and I don't have an OS X Mac to hand, so I can't test it that way, either).

I’m pretty sure the current stock version for Darwin is 5.28. (I was going to check that against the apps page myself, but it’s coming up completely blank for me at the moment—no error messages, no nothing.)

---

so thats it, is it ?

while thousands and thousands of seti users and machines are quite happy to ride the slightly uneven ocean of credit claimed, Bad to the bone appears as a lone knight fighting for the equal credit units ?

"i dont really care abut rank" ? so why is he doing this?

I am pretty miffed because his actions make the top 20 an unrepresentative place

Bad to the bone why can't you run the app like everyone else ?

please explain why ?

Wasn't there a discussion that the long WUs take excessively long to crunch? Thanks to Alex's optimization, the Macs are processing them pretty fast. Isn't that reason enough to concentrate the crunching power on this chunk of the project?

I don't really care where my boxes rank since I have to use them for my work and can't dedicate them solely to crunching. Otherwise, I would've turned off the vintage machines and saved a lot of energy...

---

63. (1) (b) "music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats

Well, if he's aborting anything that doesn't have a deadline of at least 54 days, he's going to be mighty confused by the new splitter code.