NEWS

Hardware freaks trying to make some sense out of a bunch of numbers

Finally....
Cable is back on.  WOOHOO!  I have a lot of things to catch up on so this may be short.

800,000!
Damn that is a bunch 'o work units!  CONGRATS Team and keep up the good work :)

Movin' On Up
At one point in time I thought some of the top members on the team were just untouchable.  They had so many work units, that it would have been impossible.  Not so anymore.  Xanrel is one of those people who has taken the bull by the horns and has streaked up to the top.  Today he moves up one spot to #8.  Memnoch moved up one to #14 and Daryle A Tilroe moves up one spot to #28.

Latest Developments
Still don't have cable yet, still cant send email.  But I can still read email and newsgroups :-).  I received an interesting email today.  Turns out it  relates to CCI Europe and "their" work unit production.  I cant take any credit for the research or anything, I have to give it to The Knights Who Say Ni! and their devoted members.  Lizard the founder of TKWSN sent me an email today that is as follows:

In regards to your editorial comments, dated 9 May, at:
http://www.teamlambchop.com/stats/

We at The Knights Who Say Ni! have been watching the CCI team for some time.

As for additonal data, please visit our one of our statistical web sites (the one run by Dave) and you can see a great deal more about CCI, historically.

http://users.ev1.net/~davemcconnachie/seti.htm

Furthermore, someone purporting to be from the CCI team posted this to our message board:

Since we've had a number of bogus posts in the past, we don't particularly believe this one either. The claims are totally unsupported by fact.

We previously unmasked another "team" who was cheating, and making up cover stories to disguise their trail. My assumption is that this is the same person or group.

regards,

= Lizard =
Founder & Chief Bottle-Washer for
The Knights Who Say Ni!
<SirAnole@KWSN.Net>
http://www.kwsn.net/seti/


PS: here are some facts forwarded to me by one of our members:

Subject: Data on CCI Europe
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 16:18:53 -0500
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600

The company CCI Europe is in newspaper publishing solutions (their URL is http://www.ccieurope.com/ ). They specialize in developing editorial and advertising solutions for newspapers. I checked the last three years of corporate press releases on their site, and found no mention of network installation contracts at any university anywhere. I also checked their customer list. All I found on it (again, worldwide) is newspapers. I even found my local newspaper (The Dallas Morning News/A.H.Belo) on their list. Next, I checked their job listings. Again, everything is consistant with a company that develops software for newspaper publishing (sales reps, customer support, database programmers, etc.) I found no evidence to support 'jnn@cci's claim that they were installing networks at universities (which, by the way, if true - do they have the university's permission to install the Seti@Home client?).

KWSN - kb5vnw

This is a copy of the post that was made to the TKWSN message board:

thanks for all the attention by: jnn@cci

5/10/00 3:56 pm

At CCI europe we are responsible for installing the networks for several universities, and this affords us the opportunity to install a DOS version of seti that we actually found by conversations in your message boards. At the present time we have 6200 computers give or take. We run the CLI version with it completely in background so the students nor staff never see it. Team Lamb Chop's numbers are misleading only because we do not have uninterupted access to all of the computers at all times, this is why we had to install seti catch on all the machines and this is also why the times stayed the same and the number of produced work units fluctuates. Have you looked into grabbing up any disgruntled Art Bell followers since the demise of his programming, there could be upwards of 12000 new knights who say ni. Good luck with all your shrubberys and such.

Make of it as you will.  I can't say that the numbers were misleading, I only used the numbers to point out something that just didn't fit "the norm".  I cannot vouch for this jnn@cci person or not.  Lizard has some very nice points in his email also that I have to agree with.  I had mulled on whether or not I should have posted something, or waiting a couple of days to see if their production waned or not.  WIth the strangeness in the almost doubling of their work units in subsequent days, plus the fact that CCI Europe specializes in "developing editorial and advertising solutions for newspapers", I really doubted that this type of company would have thousands of computers at their dispoasl, so things didn't seem right.  If this company was a networking company then I wouldn't have been so suspicious.  I also find it quite interesting that an editorial and advertising company has suddenly decided to branch out into networking solutions for universities?  ...and fail to mention that on the companies website?

There are still several other things to note.  Granted there was a link to the Team Lamb Chop page (from my post a couple of days ago here) on the TKWSN message boards, but jnn@cci decided to defend himself on TKWSN boards, and didn't bother to email me (scared I would find out who he really is from his email address?), or post anything on the Team Lamb Chop Thread.  At least he did a good job of "open mouth, insert foot", basically admitting that they set up networks for the universities and installing the SETI clients without the university or their staff knowing.  

I shall leave this with a couple of quotes from the SETI home pages about running SETI.  (I hope that all Team Lamb Chop members try to abide by their wishes):

Please do not run SETI@home on computers for which it is not authorized.

Restrictions:
You may use this software on a computer system only if you own the system or have the permission of the owner. You may not alter the software or associated data files. You may only use unmodified versions of SETI@home obtained through authorized distributers to connect the SETI@home server. Use of modified versions of SETI@home or other software to connect to the SETI@home server is prohibited. Distribution of this software is prohibited.

Short Blurb
I have to make this quick.  Hopefully the update will go through easily.  Last night we got rocked by some nasty t-storms.  We didn't lose power here (but ppl close still are without power)...Lots 'o trees down a block and half over.  I have power, but I don't have cable, hence I don't have cablemodem.  I am doing this on a 28.8K connect (I'm dying over here! ;-)

Two things to note tonight.  C. Eric Smith and Xanrel looks like they are having a battle to see who can one up each other on daily work units.  CES past the 1K mark today in work units posting 1012 WUs....Xanrel wasn't too far behind with 912 WUs.  GO GO GO...

The other thing to note CCI Europe is still "posting" results like crazy.  They posted over 17,000 WUs yesterday...but they may be slowing.  Will find out sometime tonight I guess.

Hrmmmmmmmmmm.......
Strange things are afoot in SETI land.  This is the main reason why I have started keeping track of the extra teams.  If some of these numbers keep up, it may point to some funny things going on.  Here are the numbers for the past two days for CCI SETI Crunshers:

One note on the numbers...they aren't cumulative, they are for each day.  Why do the numbers seem strange?  Well for one 99% of the teams work units come from one account CCI Europe.  The team has only 30 members....unfortunately I haven't filtered out the results from the other 29 members...but what do the numbers mean?

Well for one, you can get the LEAST amount of computers that can produce those numbers.  Assuming every computer for them are crunching work units 24 hours a day then that means there were at least 12,672 computers crunching work units for basically one account.  For comparison, for the amount of work units Team Lamb Chop produced in the past 24 hours, that would mean the team had at least 2,106 computers crunching for the day.

Most likely CCI Europe has many different people posting to one account, but I find it difficult to believe that they have been posting those kind of numbers in that short period of time.  The other thing strange about those numbers is that today's total is almost EXACTLY twice yesterday's total.  Are you telling me that they had twice as many computers crunching today as yesterday?  And with twice the computers they averaged the same time per work unit?   I don't quite buy it.  i will be keeping track of things and let y'all know what is going on with them.

Weekly Stuff
My update tonight was delayed a bit because of a hockey game.  It ended up in a 4-4 tie...but that was the last game for the spring (we finished 7--4-1).  But here we go with the meat.  Xanrel found it a bit tougher this week cracking into the top 50.  Even though the going were a bit tougher for him, he did finish second in the moves category, moving up 20 spots.  Team Delios also moved up 20 spots, but that only got them a tie for second!  The big mover was newcomer Steve Rosco, he moved up 29 spots to take the top mover this week.  Moving on to the work unit wrapup.....Xanrel took tops this week, C. Eric Smith came in second, and lagging behind a bit happened to be guru in third.  Check out the rest of the weekly stuff here.

Daily Stuff
Not to forget the daily movers in the top 40, Xanrel also moved up 3 spots in the last couple of days....he now sits pretty at #12.  He may move up a couple more spots into the top 10 tomorrow.  Beryllium moved up two spots and into the top 20, now sitting at #19.  R. Marvin moved up one to #24.  Finally Daryle A. Tilroe moved up one spot to #29

Countdown Time
I guess you can't miss it...But I have put up a graph on the right showing how far behind Microsoft, Intel and Art Bell.  It is going to be updated each day.  When each line reaches the positive numbers we will have passed that team.  Right now it looks as if we shall pass Microsoft sometime within the next 12 or so days, and Intel sometime efore the end of the month (maybe sooner).  Art Bell may have to wait until the end of June though, but THEY WILL FALL!

Also...
I changed and updated the Archived Stats.  I went back through my worksheets and compiled a bunch of old data so you can see how much the team has advanced since I started keeping stats.  (The graphs are here and here.)  Several of the more interesting things from the graphs....

• Work Unit production per day has increased nearly 5 fold.  From 1000 WU/day to currently around   5000 WU/day
• The number of team members has increased 2.5x from around 860 to nearly 2200
• The average WU per member has risen from 50 to over 350 WU per member
• The production of each member (on average) has risen from about 1 WU/Member/Day to over 2.5 WU/Member/Day
• The Overall average time per WU has gone from over 20 hours down to about 13 hours/WU.  The current daily time has been steadily decreasing overall also, now hovering about a thrifty 10 hours per work unit.

I have also added two teams to the Team graph.  (CCI SETI Crunshers and The Knights Who Say Ni).  These teams have been moving up quite steadily and wanted to keep tabs on them to see if they will soon become a threat.

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