Slashdot Mirror
Distributed.net Has Lost Some Team Association
singularity writes "According to Nugget's plan at Distributed.net, some users have lost their team affiliation. I checked mine, and sure enough I needed to join team Slashdot again. As always, you can join Slashdot.org's team after you have contributed your first blocks and have your password.
"
...some of the team joins performed during the 27-Dec to 29-Dec...
If I need to translate, that means only if you joined a team between December 27th, and December 29th.
Is this really big news for slashdot???
-Saxton
_________
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
Does team affiliation matter in the end, or is the greater goal the cooperative effort of so many people as members of distributed.net?
Does anything I say matter in the end? Probably not. Just wondering, is all. :^)
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
Maybe it seems naive but why are teams necessary for distributed.net or do they increase key rate processing any?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I can't see how the perl code for slashdot intersects this topic in the fact that maybe they both use perl.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
D. Taylor - Whoops, thanks for the correction... much appreciated.
-Saxton
_________
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
Well I guess it is more important news than DCypher.Net bringing out clients for Linux and FreeBSD for the new Gamma Flux distributed computing project. That one was rejected twice.
*sarcasm off*
ProcessTree - Isn't it time your computers started paying for itsel
I think that most people value the reasoning of people asking why and with what means. The question that people should ask is why is this necessary and important.
I believe it was Socrates who said that "tge unexamined life is not worth living" or some such.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
If people are affected, they wont loose blocks, everything is logged, so when they rejoin their team, the unasigned blocks that where processed get assigned to the team. NO BIG DEAL!
This message complies with part 15 FCC rules, (CE) Approved
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
People the world over have usually found the need for vanity wheather it be in gold or silver or in rank. Basically this reduces the team standing and allows for Billy Bo Bob's 31337 team of W2k people to get ahead.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Why is this still needed? Haven't we verified that these encryptions can be broken through brute-force already? To continue doing it would seem to be wasteful exercise of cpu power, kinda like Sisypus pushing that stone up the hill, only to have it fall back down. Don't mean to upset any body, just wondering why?
I understand the original point was to show that 56-bit encryption wasn't enough, but RC5-64 is just not that interesting. (In fact, I could argue that this is proving that RC5-64 is more than adaquate, if they've only searched 17% of the keyspace in 2+ years of massive work).
Why doesn't someone think up a better project for all of this computer power? Even Seti-at-home is pretty dull, since I don't really believe they know what they're looking for.
Anyone have any better project ideas?
---
Because people are so religious about their platform, this offers them a superficial way of proving it. The end result is that more people will probably join in, and more blocks will be completed.
Another ZDNet editor finds slashdot...
Finkployd
One thing you haven't done is demonstrate the technical merits Java might have over Perl.
They are both interpreted languages - Perl compiles scripts into byte code just before execution just as Java does.
From what I've seen, Java just adds more bloat and bugs to anything it touches.
I think the major problem here is you see something *you* don't like. Despite the fact that many other thousands of users are quite happy with it, you feel the need to whine about it in a manner that causes annoyance - and ADDS to the the ``hundreds of thousands of bytes'' you must download.
Further, without a hint of irony, you call your detractors ``juvinile''. A quick lession: Attacking the author instead of the issue only makes your point look foolish. Ad Hominem tactics never get you anywhere.
In my own defense for attacking the author in this case - the authors credibility is now the topic at hand.
If you're so intent on ``utilizing your right to express yourself'', why do you insist on hiding behind a mask of anonymity?
-Jeff
dist.net has exhausted 89% of the keyspace in the CSC project. This means that either 1)we will find the key in less than five days or, more likely, 2) the key was missed due to an error in client code. If 2) is what actually happened, this will be a major detractor from dist.net as the project will have been a failure, and we will need to re-check the keyspace from the beginning. D'oh!
Is d.net still using Sybase ?
I believe the slashdot "engine" can be bettered. Because you are content does not mean that I am wrong. I represent the group of people striving to move forward in the world. You represent the archie bunker's of the world; fat ass lazy people content to let other's dictate how they see the world. I would like to see slashdot better serve us. That's all I'm asking for.
Anonymity has nothing to do with the merits of a particular post. Your post is affiliated with your user name. What inherent value does your user name add to your post? Nothing. You are merely reciting the same banal drivel uttered by others. Try thinking before posting.
I havn't had a chance to talk to Nugget yet, so I don't know what he saw or what reports he had, but I think that what happened is that all team joins for Dec. 30 were lost. Unfortunatly, we had no way to recover those, so anyone who joined a team or changed their team affiliation on Dec. 30 would be affected. IIRC, we saw about 10 people from Dec. 26-Dec. 29 who changed their teams, so this will probably affect only a very, very small number of people. Since I havn't talked to Nugget yet, there could be something else going on that I'm not aware of though.
/. }:8)
As others have pointed out, no blocks have been lost, and if you weren't on a team before, your blocks will all get assigned when you join the team of your choice (part of the nightly statsrun assigns any blocks for a given participant with a team ID of 0 to that participant's current team, assuming that their current team isn't 0).
Sorry for the confusion. As other's have mentioned this really isn't a big deal. Of course, it never hurts to get mentioned on
dB!
decibel@distributed.net
My posting using my username shows that I believe enough in what I say to put my name behind it. It shows that enough thought has been put into it that I'm willing to stake my reputation behind it.
Your remarks are nothing but inflammatory drivel.
I hadn't stated that your concerns aren't valid - merely that your methods of expression are childish.
You've made a blind suggestion without any technical backing or how your particular solution has merits over others. You've made allusions to ``other sites do it better'' without any references or demonstration. Further - you're unfamiliar with how the ``real'' Slashdot actually works - an experience that is quite limited to the maintainers themselves.
It also seems that you lack the life experience to realize that repeating the same tired drivel doesn't make your point heard more - it just deafens the ears you hope might listen.
You've yet to offer any constructive criticism, and that is where you fail.
-Jeff
d.net has not had RC5-64 stats up by OS for months...heck maybe it's been a year...
As for your CSC stats link. It's a bit misleading because you have to qualify the statement by stating that Linux clients have always been the first clients released for CSC, followed closely by Win32. Linux clients were released for CSC about a month before useful Mac clients. I don't care too much for either OS, but I have to believe that if the Mac clients had been developed in a timely manner, that the Mac crowd would have been all of it and they would be #2, possibly even #1.
Another thing, when you look at CSC stats by OS is that Win32 has done more than all other OSes together...
Looking at the stats page, so far 88.8% of the CSC 56 bit challenge has been completed, and the correct key has not been found. With only five days left before the keyspace is exausted, I'm beginning to worry that somehow we may have missed it. If we get to the end and still haven't found it, what will we do? I'd hate to have to explain to those 15 thousand active participents that their processor time was wasted. What could have gone wrong? Forged blocks, an error in the algorithm, anything else?
Sadly that seems to be what it is. Why else would so many people not join CSC. Because they are stupid. Because they think their ranking in Rc5-64 is more important than anything else. They don't seem to understand that only one block matters, and it does not matter which OS finds it...oh well..
I hate to break it to those people who passed me during CSC, I'll blow right back by in 5 to 6 weeks on RC5-64...
jhartzell
....when doing it "brute force" no longer pays. I do believe the 64bit challenge will be broken that way, but some bright young student of maths is going to take the 72 - 128bit challenges in one go!
It may feel good to be part of a 'group effort' and some can (like floodnet, electrohippies, etc) can be so stubborn that i can do a 'strobe attack' to all the targets and accomplish single handedly what the whole group of 'surfers' (serfs?) attempt to do.
I'd admit whoever gets the whole challenge deserves the Nobel Prize, but rest assured it will happen like this and in this decade! In closing, i'd be a bit suspucious of "seti@home" or other group efforts. As a matter of fact, it is general policy to not allow participation in any of this on my servers, that includes Napster, just another great waste of resources.
people are lemmings, as demonstrated regularly here on slashdot. one guys views himself as the l33t h4x0r and he gets five friends to join his new team (named something witty like "linux 0wnz ur 4zz" or "micr0sucks pisses me off") and viola you have a team and more blocks.
There are actually several people on the team that I am on (slowly but surely becoming a linux team it seems, ick) who would not be doing d.net at all if it were not for the three or four "team leaders" spewing the rah rah team crap. So yes, it does help d.net, but no it is not necessary.
jhartzell
sp0rk heads (once again)
subject says it all
it's all about the distribution baby
jhartzell
Nope. I'm saying "Oh God! Not again!" But that's just me :) I think I'm going to turn off reparenting. The ACs and trolls of late are really starting to get on my nerves and I don't need some higher rated comment stimulating my interest.
I'm a bit nervous myself, but I have to believe that if we check 100% and don't have the key that it's because of a "forged" client.
Like that Russian Team and Dr.Pepper guy were doing in Rc5-64...again, people more concerned with individual and team rankings than actually solving the problem. Some people just don't get it.
jhartzell
Our true purpose is to promote wide-area distributed computing... encryption contests just happen to be the vehicle we've used to do that so far. OGR will be the first contest that breaks that mold.
For those who are interested, I would suggest taking a peek at our mission statement.
because it was supposed to add stability and scalability that was not available in the NT/SQL config they had before.
Well, it's no faster. Crashes and corrupts just as often, and they have failed misserably at putting the functionality back into the stats pages.
Since I do d.net more 'cause stats are cool than any other reason, it kinda pisses me off...
jhartzell
My bet goes to forged blocks...
Ok your comments about NNTP really have little revelency with actual experience. Have you ever seen the actual nntp distribution system? It relies on servers that need to transfer several hundred gigs a day at the very least. Not only that but when you get right down to it you then could effectively block anonymity that you are so lavishly enjoying (most likely you are a person with already high karma) so that you can say whatever you want.
The http/perl interface is the best for all around compatability issues when things like this are involved. Personally if your little plan does go into production taco better provide an interface that everyone can use and not just the elities. If not a little lawsuit under the ADA will be in order to correct the matter for the betterment of the community. I really find this intreesting that you can't even just post to items and then you can see if anyone has actually read your remarks and then posted back by using the user page.
Even if you submit several thousand submissions a day only the last 50 will be counted and then you can see the responses to them. Another interesting fact I have used slow and low bandwitch connections at various locations and slashdiot works find and dandy in even the most low key setup. For starters you could change the HTML created to "lite" mode and that would most likely reduce the useless details of the posts to a minimum (in informal test that I have run preformance increased by at least 20-50%). So quite frankly quite your bitching and let us enjoy things the way we want ok?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Gee when I took a class in communications for the work place they said the first and foremost people need contact information in order to actually get your point across. Taking the "clinton sucks" message reference it does not good for two reasons the second of which besides the fact that you are not addressing the person directly is that you are not making any credible measure of your point because you are implying that you need to hide because what you say is dangerous or stupid.
Quite frankly I don't think Malda gives a pile of horse shit about what you say and neither do I. He owns creative liscence to that site and that is his affair. What anonymous cowards say in his forum is of little concern to him or almost anyone else. In fact I would think that because I have not seen evidence that slashdot can expire old and or unused accounts that one of the main reasons that anonymous coward posting (versus posting anonymously) was implimenting was because he didn't want his ewntire database filled with expired logins for microsoft stoolies.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Please take your spamming, flamebaiting little war against Tom Christiansen somewhere private. You are crazy and dangerous. What's next? Not paying taxes because you disagree with Clinton's spluging on Monica?
I've a better idea -- blow it out your ass, spamtroller.
If he's downloading "hundreds of thousands of bytes" each time to find new postings, than he's such a flaming idiot that he deserves to suffer. This is a pilot error. The rest of us aren't that stupid. Ignore him. He's a fucking troll that's destroying this place by polluting every article with his completely baseless rants.
This asshole is the biggest poster child we have for getting rid of cowards. I don't like the idea, but this dickwad has a bee in his bum. He's spamming every single article with trollbait. He's the problem.
Just like communism how is it moving anything forward?
If you mean finite fine grained control for every possible function to be something that is advanced. You know I guess that their are two considerations here.
1. Bandwidth that you have is limited
2. NNTP solves the bandwidth problem by allowing you to access things at least as fast or at least competitively due to the lack of moving more data.
Now in all the implimentations that I have seen of any newsgroup program you have an option to download headers and then you can look at the subject and determine what it says. If this is your argument then it is dead wrong. Try this experiment for me. Find a browser preferably some version of netscape because IE messes up the formatting. Find a story that is either scrolled off the page of stories in either standad but preferably on maxium stories for today and then save it as text.
Go back and look at the actual difference between the text of the subject and the text of the article (in NNTP language the news body) you will see a striking difference between the actual content of the body and what is being discused.
That plan would only usually use just having more user intervention and most likely almost the same download time. Having a high user threshold usually helps for downloads takig less time plus the other tips I have given in posts.
As far as being a fool for replying well I guess I am but that is only because I have seen too many examples where people wanted to "improve" something and it just made things much, much worse that as Shakespeare said "it moves me to stand"
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
This is, of course, what this numbskull is doing. What can we do to fix him? Preferably as one's pets are fixed.
distributed.net announcements don't kill other projects. It's too bad that the existing OGR project decided to pack their bags... but laying blame on someone else?
I'd think slashdotters are used to holding strong to an underdog. Like someone's just going to quit working on some app for Linux just because some other company announces they are going to make it for Windows?
You get the anology.
Secondly, distributed.net supports distributed computing efforts as a whole, not just their own. See their Mission Statement where they say "...we will advocate distributed computing..." implying as a whole, not just themselves. Their mission is to do things "...in the advancement of distributed computing..." not just distributed.net.
Thirdly, distributed.net even credits the Origional Effort on their OGR Page... and in no way told the origional effort to stop what they were doing.
-Saxton
_________
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
You have a lot of anger pent up. I suggest you deal with that before it manifests itself in a destructive manner.
If you would be so kind as to compose yourself and inform me how slashdot's horrible design is my fault, i would appreciate your insight so that I might correct the problem. I had no idea that I was this powerful.
What's your fault is that you're too stooopid to understand how not to download hundreds of k each time. It's also your fault for being a fucking spammer.
slashdot forces me to waste bandwidth. That is a fact.
Slashdot forces you to waste bandwidth? You're a fucking liar. DON'T USE IT! End of problems.
You don't type very fast, do you? Bandwidth must concern you a lot.
JESUS'S TEAM HAS ALSO LOST MANY MEMBERS RECENTLY. I SUGGEST YOU RE-JOIN HIS HOLY TEAM. YOU CANNOT LOSE THE CONTEST OF LIFE IF YOU ARE ON JESUS'S TEAM, AND GETTING INTO HEAVEN IS YOUR HOLY REWARD. PLEASE USE MY ID "gusbutternuts140-6a" WHEN YOU SIGN UP.
TROLLIN FOR JESUS
Wouldn't it make more sense to use distributed computing to encrypt messages with obscenely large keyes?
His points might be valid, but after seeing the results (nested, highest scores first, -1), I have come to the conclusion that making /. more like a newsreader or one-on-one discussion forum would be a WrongThing(TM). A better way of doing the WrongThing(TM) is NOT an improvement. Slashdot is doing very well, thank you.
No, they just roll out competing projects after others have launched what d.net has procrastinated for months or announce them to stiffle competition. That is a practice we know from Microsoft. If that is what you consider the promotion of distributed computing, then Gates is a true innovator as well.
Anyone who's been following their
Wait--did I say this was the latest in their string of fuckups? Well guess what--as several hours had passed without a new bug report coming out of distributed.net, wouldn't you know it, now it turns out that they haven't actually completed 91% of the CSC project after all.
Yep, you read that correctly. Oh, but don't worry--it's not a bug, it's a feature. For those of you who won't take the time to click on the last link, here's how dbaker's latest
As we near the 100% mark of CSC keyspace completion, I think it's
time to explain what that CSC statistics mean, and how they are
determined.
It is perhaps a common misconception that each CSC work unit
completed is unique...
He goes on to describe the fact that they've implemented redundancy checking to weed out hacked clients with the CSC project--a very good if a bit overdue move (although perhaps they could have disclosed this earlier?)--and that they've decided to give everyone full credit for all their blocks, even redundant ones--also a good idea--and so therefore there's obviously absolutely no way that they could avoid the actual keyspace being more than 100% of the reported "keyspace". Obviously. And this was the plan all along. Which is why they even wrote up not one but two new scripts which (falsely) calculate that the "keyspace" will be exhausted in only 2 days now. Obviously.
And of course it's perfectly fine that they just hoped that the project would get solved before it his 100%, so that they wouldn't have to inform their users that they've implemented redundancy checking. And no, they're not going to tell us how many percents are actually in the keyspace (105%? 110%?), or how many days it will actually take before we check all the keys and get to find out if they've somehow managed to fuck up yet again. Why should we be entitled to know silly information like that??
Meanwhile, dcypher.net has sprung up, and, in only a couple months, and with what certainly seems to be fewer people working for them than distributed.net has debugging their database they've:
come out with a CSC client which is 250% faster than distributed (on x86, at least).
Yes, that's 2.5 times as fast.
had stats which (gasp!) don't break or have new bugs in them every couple days and (gasp!) don't have a 2 hour scheduled downtime to update every night and even (gasp!) update in real time, almost like real databases do!
started the Gamma Flux project which, while not personally my cup of tea, is certainly the first distributed computing project which is actually useful (it helps calculate ideal containment solutions for nuclear waste).
promised to pass on the entire share of the CSC winnings to the person who wins, as opposed to distributed.net's 20% (10% if you join a team).
/. Guess what, Decibel--there's a word for preannouncing programs months before you plan to release them so as to scare off any potential competitors. It's called "FUD", and it's a particularly disgusting kind; in fact, even Microsoft's backed off a bit from that sort of thing lately.
But what finally pissed me off the most was reading this post earlier in this thread from Decibel at distributed.net, in response to an admittedly pretty hostile post from Armin Lenz at dcypher.net, in which he has the gall to imply that dcypher shouldn't have done CSC at all because distributed had "announced" that they intended to work on it soon after the contest was announced, way back in May. Of course, Decibel doesn't mention the fact that they didn't launch the project until November 17, 2 weeks *after* dcypher.net, and only then with a broken client (yes, a brute force program that's 2.5 times slower than it should be is certainly broken), and that they haven't even *released* a finished client for the Mac!
And furthermore, he doesn't even understand that making the argument that "we announced first" isn't likely to garner too much respect at
And despite all that, he still says "we did CSC because it was relatively easy to add". Well I'd hate to see how badly they can screw up a project that's a little "hard".
I'm hoping I won't get the chance with OGR. Despite everything, I think OGR is a pretty cool project, and I just might be persuaded to stick with distributed.net if they (finally) come out with their OGR client, and it works, and isn't orders of magnitude slower than competing clients, and they fix their stats and get their act together. I suppose in the end I was always a sucker for the moo.
But distributed has a lot of lost trust to earn back.
Damn cubicle neighbors....
kill 'em all, that's my theory...
jhartzell
I didn't say that Linux/Sybase did NOT add the stability/scalability...I just left it very open ended...oh well. I do have to believe that most performance increases are due to hardware though, just a guess.
Well, most of the performance increase I would have to attribute to the new hardware, which is cool. I have be reading the plans for as long as I can remember, but my only real measure for when stats are completed, is when I can check my stats. At the end of StatsboxI's life that was around 7:30PM Pacific, not it is around 5:30PM Pacific. So you did shave two hours off, but for moving from a P166 to a dual PII300, I am a bit underwhelmed...maybe I'll make a hardware donation...
I don't record or measure downtime on other people's systems, but what I can say is that StatsboxI got pretty annoying right there at the end. Since CSC started, getting RC5 stats from StatsboxII has been a bit frustrating at times....
CPU numbers are missing. OS numbers are missing. Team History is missing (that used to be real big for me, not so much anymore). I'm sure there is something I'm missing, but it's been soooo long...that's meant in good humor, so don't get to pissed.
That's cool. And honestly things do seem to be looking up since the SQL guy came on board, bwilson I think it is...
jhartzell
I have been using distributed net clients on many platforms since they have been around. I have to say that when I first joined they had vision, and their client on every platform known to man working on one big project was a great idea. Then something happened. Adam Beberg left. I don't know the man, but I do know that is the point distributed.net died. Adam left to pursue the v3 (version 3) client scheme he had come up with. Basically you can write your own core for whatever project you are working on. The whole thing is GPLd. You can contribute to the CVS archive if you want. The url is http://cosm.mithral.com/ When this is finished people will be able to use distribued clients for things like rendering graphics, nuclear research, etc, etc. Why buy a beowulf cluster when there are millions of PIIIs chugging away at 0.00001% of CPU time used while people type? Save the money and make a NOW (network of workstations).
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
Mainly 'cause 95% of my CSC blocks are Win32...
RC5 is another story, but hey....who the heck cares since you can't check OS/CPU type by team or individual..
jhartzell
By your standard you're just as bad as he is then. You attack a person without attaching you name to it. May your name be written in shit.