I was disappointed to read elsewhere that early on some people were so obsessed at having the highest processing totals that they were faking results. And that forced the people running the project to install software to review and compare submitted results. What a world.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

That was back in the old SETI classic days before BOINC Bob. ;-)

Cheers.

That is correct. The main reason we transitioned from Classic to Boinc was to open up an umbrella to enable other scientific projects to do what Seti had done. The added bonus was stronger protection from credit fraud. There will always be some that will want to cheat for a perceived benefit, whether it is taxes, athletics, or leader boards. How can you stop some human beings being those type of human beings?

Frontal lobotomy?

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~Sue~

That is correct. The main reason we transitioned from Classic to Boinc was to open up an umbrella to enable other scientific projects to do what Seti had done. The added bonus was stronger protection from credit fraud. There will always be some that will want to cheat for a perceived benefit, whether it is taxes, athletics, or leader boards. How can you stop some human beings being those type of human beings?

Frontal lobotomy?

Cash donations buy cobblestones so they can get that huge number by their name?

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Didn't seti classic also have the wingman verification? I thought is 2 result were not substantially similar a third was sent out and only the two that agree got credit. Cheater would never match their wingman.

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Didn't seti classic also have the wingman verification? I thought is 2 result were not substantially similar a third was sent out and only the two that agree got credit. Cheater would never match their wingman.

IIRC the cheat was to return the same valid result time and time again, but it has been a long time.

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SETI@Home Cheaters
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20010215/1718239.shtml

from the get-a-life dept

Apparently, a lot of people who use SETI@Home cheat to bring their rankings up on the leader board. Who are these people and why are they doing this? What a waste of time for absolutely nothing. A lot of SETI@Home's resources are now focused on preventing cheating and on security. If people are really interested in helping the SETI project, then they should help. If they want to be a fake "leader" somewhere, why don't they go try to be "first posters" over at Slashdot. That'll show people how cool you really are.

Looks like exploit only worked on UNIX.

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...

It worked on any PC, and was incredibly simple to do, once you'd got a handful of valid results....
Due to the way Classic managed its data it was possible to "validate yourself" repeatedly. It caused no end of mayhem at the time, and a lot of work by the project staff to kick out all the duplicate results.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I'll state again my oft view that there is still "cheating" of a sort going on. There are some people that are administrators for a large company or enterprise that do have the managements permission to use the computers for Seti. Unlike a famous person in the past (N*z). But the point is that they are allowed to compete as an individual. How can it be a level playing field when they have 150+ rigs at their disposal and the average home cruncher only has say 5 or 6 max, or less.

These people bring a lot of crunching oomph to the project, but they should be crunching as a company team not as an individual, otherwise it is simply not fair to the rest of us. Seti refuses to deal with this problem.

There are 2 people who could fit that. One in France with over 100 computer and the other in Bosnia and Herzegovina with 35. Does not seem to be widespread.

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I'll state again my oft view that there is still "cheating" of a sort going on. There are some people that are administrators for a large company or enterprise that do have the managements permission to use the computers for Seti. Unlike a famous person in the past (N*z). But the point is that they are allowed to compete as an individual. How can it be a level playing field when they have 150+ rigs at their disposal and the average home cruncher only has say 5 or 6 max, or less.

These people bring a lot of crunching oomph to the project, but they should be crunching as a company team not as an individual, otherwise it is simply not fair to the rest of us. Seti refuses to deal with this problem.

There are 2 people who could fit that. One in France with over 100 computer and the other in Bosnia and Herzegovina with 35. Does not seem to be widespread.

Unless the project itself says differently, they are not cheating.

Run SETI@home only on computers that you own, or for which you have obtained the owner's permission. Some companies and schools have policies that prohibit using their computers for projects such as SETI@home

I'm not mixing anything up. This issue has been discussed many times before. It all comes down to how one comprehends the written word.

average home cruncher only has say 5 or 6 max, or less.

For example, the average home cruncher above: -
Husband
Wife
Children

Desktops & laptops. All interested in science & the "pretty" screensaver of Boinc (not being sarcastic, it actually got external rigs on my account with FULL permission). So 2 options with that scenario - all interested in science making A) 6 individual accounts crunching or B) 1 A/c holder with 6 rigs.

If B is acceptable then so is those who have full permission to run Boinc on company machines. After all it is for science - Isn't it?

So why should any project object as they're getting a lot of science done in the shortest possible time.

it actually got external rigs on my account with FULL permission).

So at one time you had other peoples computers (with permission) added to your own account? Did you ever declare that, or were you happy to let people think it was all your own work?

Now I know you either have a memory issue or you're deliberately baiting!

However, just to refresh your memory, at one time I was running a single account with 32 rigs max 9 which were mine & displayed on my computers page which was not hidden. All my rigs were named Dacom X - XX, all external rigs had either the name of the owner or Net X - XX.

Oh, & if you use the advanced search of this board, you should find some threads in Number Crunching where that information is plain to see. Without having to check myself, I believe that I often stated that I found Boinc quite useful as a burn in test for all new rigs built from scratch :-)

Then they ought to have a recommendation for fairness. Even if they couldn't practically enforce it.

WHY? It's the science the projects are interested in. Cobblestones are valueless & just a fun way to show participation. From what has been observed over the past few years are credit hounds throwing their rattles out of their prams.

Edit - Further proof of the above facts: - Sorry Folks

Sadly, as I mentioned elsewhere, Chris just seems to be arguing these days just for the sake of an argument and nothing else. :-(

Bob heard something from the distant past and that's already been answered.

Cheers.

Let stop getting personal.

This thread was started about people cheating.

However one wants to put it, working in the computer industry and having access to many computers is NOT cheating.

If someone would like to start a thread at NC about this then please do.

Whilst you are at it cast your eye over the Top Participants list at number 11

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=185350

A single computer, should this be allowed!! :-) (note this is humour)

If you have nothing constructive to say about the original topic please don't say it.

Thank you for understanding.

What's personal? Just stating facts or is that not quite PC these days?

I might be having separate issues with Sirius as present, but sorry Bernie I have to agree with Sirius on this one.

However one wants to put it, working in the computer industry and having access to many computers is NOT cheating.

It IS if you crunch as a single person NOT as a team!!! All you are doing is muddying the waters.

There are no rules to say that it is cheating.

You may feel that morally it is cheating, that is a completely different thing

This thread has gone to a different subject, one that if you feel need discussing open a thread at NC.

I will lock this.

If the OP wishes to reopen it then I will unlock it after a cool down.

Personally I have zero problem with people running as many machines as they like, good luck to them.