Dannny: it can be done. I know I can be done. I have seen it done.
By the way, even some of the strongest Boinc suppportes have claimed here that in SETI even the science part ( science , not the credits) was tampered with. So under open source the science can be tampered.

So that is one of the reasons why I am so in favor of close coding. The credit aspects as well as the science aspects of the application has to be closed.

The problem with your statement is, that it was closed-source SETI "classic", that back in the v2-days had the 1st. big cheating-scandal, there a couple of users "helped" Ars Technica to reach #1, for so jumping to another team and AFAIK "helped" them to #1, before they themselves announced they was cheating. The cheat was to download wu, and return a result with no detected signals, since back in the v2-days 10% or something of results was returned with no reported signals, this was an easy "cheat".

Now, in the later validation-step it's very easy to spot these bogus results, but one of the many weaknesses is that SETI "classic" credited all results, that they 6 months or so later failed validation didn't influence the crediting...

v3 and later seti-clients started to include best-spike and so on, meaning even if no signal strong enough to report, there was still 1-4 reported signals in all results. This stopped the v2-cheat from working, but there AFAIK was made another cheating client, there a result with bogus signals was returned-back...

Not sure if this was widely used, since the most "popular" cheat was also detected, due to a weakness in server-backend the same user could return the same result many times and get credit for each time returned. A variation of this cheat was to crunch result to 99%, copy the progress, and just change user-id and finish crunching and return the same result under multiple user-accounts...


SETI/BOINC on the other hand is much harder to cheat, since here only results that passes the validation-step gets any credit. Since validation is a neccessary step for SETI@home, stopping anyone trying to cheat at the same time is a "free" bonus, due to the normal credit-rules.

At the time wu is validated, credit for wu is decided based on how many of the results passed validation:
1; If only 2 passed validation, lowest claimed to all.
2; If 3 or more, remove highest and lowest claimed, and average the rest.
Any later-returned results that also passes validation gets the same credit, no re-evaluation of credit is done.

Now, this doesn't stop anyone from trying to cheat by claiming 1000 or something, but, as long as not 2 users crunching the same wu tries to cheat, the 1000-claim is discarded and has little or no effect on the granted credit.

While the BOINC-benchmark can give atleast 5x variation in claims, and someone trying to cheat possibly could get a small advantage, for Seti_Enhanced it's much harder. This since Seti_Enhanced "counts flops", and I've seen 1% variation in claims between results for same wu, but in majority of instances the variance is below 0.1%... Meaning, even if someone does increase their claims with 2%, it can be detected server-side.

Well, the "flops-counting" only works with BOINC-client v5.2.6 or later, meaning as long as older clients isn't stopped from returning work you'll still ocassionally have 2 benchmark-claims deciding granted credit. This is really the same for someone trying to cheat, you need 2 cheaters crunching the same wu to really influence the granted credit.


This basically means, as long as not over 50% of the users is trying to cheat, the quorum-system will stop the cheaters from getting any big advantage from their cheating-attempts. But, if 50% is cheating, you've got a problem regardless...


Looking on BOINC total production, Einstein@home and CPDN uses server-side crediting, meaning for these projects it doesn't matter if user is trying to cheat on the credit or not. Seti_Enhanced "counts flops", and stops cheating-attempts by the quorum-system. A quick look on BoincStats reveals these projects accounts for 84% of last days production.

Rosetta@home accounts for 9.8% of the production, and is now also switching to fairly cheat-resistant crediting.

This leaves many smaller BOINC-projects that relies on the BOINC-benchmark, these has together less than 6% of production. Of these again, majority relies on the quorum-system for deciding crediting, meaning anyone trying to cheat is at a disadvantage...

[b]"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me[/b]

What it is interesting is that none of the great even field because optimizers are evil club have responded to the challenge. Of course they wont. The challenge will show them for what they are non producers who boudmouth those who can.

IMO any post threatening (promising) to take control of any part of the boards is out of order. Would you not agree if it were another team threatening to do the same?

You shout about non-producers airing their opinions - pot/kettle? It has no relation to how valid someone's opinion is.

As for the backdating debate - I don't believe any subject should be banned from rational discussion. The ONLY reason is because it has been the subject of many flames. If there were no flame wars and a rational debate was possible then it's a valid subject to discuss. As a subject it's as valid as any!

As MM requested, lets keep this thread civil ;)
[edit] that last bit isn't just to Jose!

I have a very slow P4. For many weeks my machine was the poster child for everything that could go wrong with a work unit and it got the rightfull name of sloth.
If I have the credits I have it was because a friend tested his water cooled, ocd opty system using my account.

Se I know my contribution number wise is small. I accept that , I dont accuse peope that can crunch more than I because the have more and better equipmeny than me of cheats. Nor I claim the world is unfair.

I dont produce high numbers because the physical limitations of my system not because I am spread thin in gazzillion projects. I dont claim a conspiracy aginst my sloth as many here claim against their machines.

Right now, I am not producing numbers becasuse I stoped crunching for Rosetta so my numbers are going to drop more in relation to others.

You missed my point Jose- whether I agree with your opinions or not, I accept that you put a lot of effort into this project. You're not the biggest producer, but your production is beneficial to the project all the same. The way your previous posts read to me is that you're belitteling others based on their production rates, and yet from my point of view you're doing exactly what you accuse them of, from the same position.

[b]"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me[/b]

The credit aspects as well as the science aspects of the application has to be closed.

I agree with that, but it's just a case of moving any benchmark/credit system out of the open BOINC app and into the closed science one. (Maybe we're getting confused over what we refer to as 'BOINC'?) There is no reason why a system using BOINC can't be made secure - as you say, it just requires any credit calculation to be removed from the open source bit (ok- there's a bit more to it than that as the current thread at Ralph is discussing, but in principal it's as stated).

cheers
Danny

But Danny: The Boinc Purits dont want that. When I proposed that very simple solution all I got was ..."BOINC is open source, end of discussion"

And even the science can be compromised. It was claimed here by some of the Boinc Purists that in SETI the science was tampered with. I have to take their word as valid or were they lying?

BTW I am going to be away from the computer for a while . Jury Duty Summons . So If I dont answer you it is not becase im not interested in engaging in a dialogu with you. It is becasue there is a good chance Toay I will be sequestered. Okes I dont want any clebrations on that :) ( Yes the rablerouser has a sense of humor)

I was here back in the beginning, where it actually was a challenge to crunch Rosetta WU's. There was the 1% bug, the stay-in-memory-while-preempted bug, the freeze bug, other kind of bugs, and we had to tweak our settings just to be able to return valid results. Numerous was the times I had to exit my BOINC manager and start it again, sometimes even reboot my computer, in my attempts to "jumpstart" a frozen WU. It became a little easier when the graphics were developed (I still remember my first graphic WU. I had the graphics open all the time and I actually sat and looked at it from start to upload), as we then could see if a WU was alive or not, so we didn't have to abort a WU which seemed stuck. I remember the "Christmass bug", the flawed WU's that was sent out just before the devs left for their seasons holiday, so they were sent out all 11 times, as there was no devs there to kill them.

If anybody here dares to question my dedication to this project based on my RAC, I have only two words to say to that person, and that is not "Merry Christmas"!

If anybody here dares to question my dedication to this project based on my RAC, I have only two words to say to that person, and that is not "Merry Christmas"!

If anybody here dares to question my dedication to this project based on my RAC, I have only two words to say to that person, and that is not "Merry Christmas"!

I tried, but looks like the moderator is a bit allergic to postings made by us... and there I was trying to be friendly... btw: "Merry Christmas" to you too.

The claim was that SETI CLASSIC science was compromised, not SETI BOINC science. Anyone that attempts to compromise SETI BOINC science gets 0 credits for his work.

[b]"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me[/b]

Luckily, it looks like the cross project parity is a non-issue. The new system grants what appears to be in the range of parity with others out there. Since no work needs to be done by the project to modify the new system, I don't see what is left to discuss on this topic.

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=2164#23996

Luckily, it looks like the cross project parity is a non-issue. The new system grants what appears to be in the range of parity with others out there. Since no work needs to be done by the project to modify the new system, I don't see what is left to discuss on this topic.

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=2164#23996

Good to hear.

Agreed. And if we could get a fair accounting of the past it would be even better.

Agreed. And if we could get a fair accounting of the past it would be even better.

The project won't be involved with modifying the current data set. If individuals are interested in manipulating the scores, they are free to download the export file and host their results on another site.

Agreed. And if we could get a fair accounting of the past it would be even better.

The project won't be involved with modifying the current data set. If individuals are interested in manipulating the scores, they are free to download the export file and host their results on another site.

what happened to the challenge here? There's a new credit system that awards the computers that produce more structures so what computers produce the most?

what happened to the challenge here? There's a new credit system that awards the computers that produce more structures so what computers produce the most?

Two things happenned. First of all none of the "vocal group" took up the challenge and second, with the release of the new credit system and the realisation that it doesn't really show the differences in a machines capability due to the differences in work units, the challenge is meaningless.
Here's where you went wrong with your current system:
If your P4-3000 has X capabilities, it should get an amount of credit equal to those capabilities and it should get that amount for every hour/day,ect that it is working as a dedicated cruncher.
If my DX3600 has X capabilities +y it should be getting that amount of credit every hour it is working as a dedicated cruncher and that is the crux of this particular problem..That just isn't happenning due to the flaws in the current system, ergo, there is no way to compare the actual capabilities of the different systems.There should be no variation.
It's the variation in time that it takes to create the decoys between the differnet WU that creates the problem.
If you get X points for creating a decoy that takes 10 minutes to do on one WU and on the next work unit on the same machine with all factors on that machine being equal it takes 12 minutes or 15 and you get the same x points for that decoy, how can you compare different machines capabilities?
It's impossible and by that error in the credit system and accepting it as something that is just their you drive away anyone with any competitive spirit.
That's not even addressing all the other issues that need to be settled.
Movieman