The Mother Board

Is cheating as rampant in F@H as it is in Seti@Home? I used to crunch for Seti, but I stopped when I saw how many people were blatantly cheating. People were turning in over 1,000 WU per week with only 1 machine!

It would be very easy to do. All someone would have to do is crunch a WU to 99%, pause it, kill the console, then copy the data folder to another part of the hard drive. Then, resume the work on the WU and complete it and send it in. Then, instead of sending for a new WU, place the data folder with the 99% completed WU back into the F@H directory and start the client back up. Then, 10 minutes later, you have yet another WU finished, then repeat the process.

Does F@H have safeguards in place to prevent that sort of thing. They tried to stop the cheating with Seti and it didn't work.

As far as I know each work unit is unique, here is an example of one I just did: Project: 357 (Run 6, Clone 24, Gen 13) each unit is different, and if you tried that they would notice that every unit you put in was the same and could catch you easily.

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i think that the second wu turned in (identical) will be worth 0 points. nothing to be gained by cheating. a person that cheats lives a lie.

tweaking the os, bios, overclocking, and setting flags to get assembly code optimizations, ect... are legit ways to enhance production, though there will be a point of diminishing returns when the system becomes unstable, and wu's aren't completed due to data corruption. best to get a clean, fast, and stable system running, and let it crunch away.

That's good to hear that cheating is not a viable option. That's what made me quit Seti. Trying to get ahead in the rankings was futile.

or you just let the machine crunch away, and not get too caught up in the stats. think of the contribution to the science involved, and contributing to that as opposed to the stats. i mean, i try to get my machines cranking away as fast, and efficiently as possible, and i'm always checking the stats, so i'd be lying if i told you that i wasn't preoccupied w/ production, and the stats. but for myself, i see no reason to cheat. if i could somehow enhance production, i'd welcome it. a tweaked kernel, and minimalist os that supercharges folding would be great. the gromacs wu's using sse optimizations adds up to a 20% sped boost, so there is likely to be further enhancements in that area. there is a place where real work must be done, and real results must be achieved, and this won't come by cheating. there usually is a certain degree of cheating that parallels real efforts. some follow in the motions of others, and capitalize on it- and it's bs. stock market is a good analogy for this behavior.