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Technology

SETI Accelerator Hoax Revealed 254

Posted by Hemos from the well-duh dept.
Stone Table writes "The SETI Accelerator by Krasnoconv sounded too good to be true. Well, in response to the overwhelming requests that they've had, they finally let the cat out of the bag. The whole thing was a hoax! They've posted a page to explain the hoax, from birth to death. I think this just goes to show that people will believe just about anything, if it serves their interests." Check out the original article on it as well. (CT:Duh!)
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SETI Accelerator Hoax Revealed More

SETI Accelerator Hoax Revealed

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  • So, you probably think my potato powered electric car is a hoax too. eh?
  • People will believe anything because they want it to be true or are afraid it might be true.

    Something to keep in mind when reading anything on the net (or in a newspaper). Even smart people can be fooled.

  • Some moderations I'd like to see
    to avoid future hoaxes where everyone
    who doesn't want to publish the
    Sewer Times kisses up.

    [+5 moderator looses remaining points]
    [+3 comment creates improved thread]
    [+4 sorry for making you submit AC]
  • damnit!!

    Now they're going to have a higher SETI@Home ranking than my unsuspecting network of NT machines here at the office!
    --

  • To be honest, for a hoax, it was a good idea. People combine computers to create Beowulfs, which they use for high end computations. Why not put a few of these in one PC and do the work of a couple of computers? Yu could build a computer just for SETI @ Home usage, and at the same time working on 3-6 different areas of space at a time.

    The applications for such a device would be endless (considering it could have been a tool to use else where with other applications)
  • That might be the case for some cards, but isn't it possible to render into an off-screen buffer, and then read the contents of that buffer? Doesn't a 3D video card help when rendering images that you intend to save, not just show once? (I don't have one, so I can't check on this.)

    It's a tough hoop to jump through to have to do that to crunch numbers, but it might be theoretically possible. (No idea whether you could do anything that's faster than just using the CPU, though, since there would be overhead to messing with the video card.)

    That would make an interesting (well, pretty crappy actually) screen-saver: The raw data flashes over your video RAM... kind of like those old calculators that used the screen-display register as part of their calculations, making the numbers dance like crazy.)
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • PiHex project has ended and btw PiHex proggie doesnt exist for any other OS than windows so its not the option for the most of the ppl reading slashdot.....

  • ... on slashdot, and has been going on for such a long tyme, that I find it sad that you don't realize that YHBT [yhbt.org].

    Don't feel bad, I've been through this, too.

  • Only the sick mind of a self-proclaimed "geek" of this decade could conceive of such a thing, paralleled only by Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

    I think I read somewhere that Nero wasnt even in Rome when it burned. But I'm no history buff, so I could be wrong.

    A couple of days ago, in this very messaging board, somebody proposed a brilliant idea: instead of something useless like SETI or cracking RC5, one could dedicate those cycles to analysing satellite data that could help farmers plan crops. Truly wonderful. Sad thing, though, is that in a tech world like the one we have, "sexy" useless projects like SETI demand all the attention, while worthwhile causes like the latter languish. Truly sickening.

    Actually, I'd rather try this collective effort on something really harmless, like the SETI project, until all the bugs and hoaxes and whatever are found and fixed, and only _then_ use it for something as important as crop planning. If something goes wrong with SETI, well whoopsie, you tell the geeks all over the world "guess what, we didn't find Little Green Men as we announced last month". If something goes wrong with the crop planning, would you be the one going to the farmer, and telling him/her/it "guess what, due to a small bug in CropCycles@home, your crop's useless for consumption. Too bad".

    I'd say it's a good idea to explore new ways to use the unused CPU cycles, but for the moment, I see no problem in using it for SETI.

    El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.-Benito Juarez
  • That was during the whole O.J. thing. Peter Jennings never even saw it coming. :-)

    It sounds like they are talking about a different hoax than you are talking about ... but yes, the "famous Peter Jennings phone call" in which someone called in to the news program saying they were in the back of a news van, and they could see O.J. I actually have the "re-enactment" done by Howard and Robin recorded on a cassette tape somewhere. "I see O.J. man. I see O.J. and he be scared, cause there's cops all DEEP in this!"
  • >I'd like to see if you are insensitive enough to
    > tell that in the eye to the mother of a malnourished
    > child, who lives every day just to find enough
    > for her child to eat that day

    Yep, I'd ask her why she was so insensitive to the starvation of the children all around her that she just HAD to open her legs and make a starving child of her own.

    Meanwhile, I pay my electric(cpu) bills and I feed, house, dress, and educate my own kids. I also don't make more kids than I can afford. If only every parent did this, we wouldn't have this problem would we?
  • ASCI White uses Copper instead of Sillicon in chips

    Ha - I always suspected I could make my computer run faster by replacing all my fuses with pennies! Now what smells like smoke in here...?

  • That's actually not a bad idea. Remember the purpose of a screen saver is to prevent burn-in and/or prevent casual snooping. You might
    not want to waste any CPU cycles on it.

    Now we just need to hunt down and execute the person reponsible for 0.5 second Green shutoff on monitors. Couldn't it have been at least 30-60 seconds???
  • Trolls have nothing to do with bridges. THe word troll has nothing to do with a mystical creature that makes you answer questions and steals your gold. The word troll has to do with the style of fishing, meaning throwing out your line, dragging it around the pond/lake/river and waiting for bites. Please remember this the next time you call a troll a troll.

    Thank You.

  • i know a great way to solve the problem! it's called "reading".

    there's a link at the bottom of the page that says PLEASE READ FIRST: THE TRUTH OF KRASNOCONV, where they say the whole thing is a hoax. maybe if the person posting a story actually went to the url we wouldn't have this problem.

  • Don't discredit this so quickly... just think for a moment. They said the only thing they did was to make one post to a single newsgroup. Now think about how it spread from there.

    It must have started with a few people reading that newsgroup who went and checked the site (the few negligible hits they reported), and then they told their friends about it, etc., and the word slowly spread. Then after a brief time, somebody spread the word to slashdot. Bingo! starting from slashdot, the word spread at an exponential rate. And don't think that it's merely the slashdot effect. After the posting on Slashdot, you better believe the news continued to spread like wildfire through the human network -- from slashdotters to their friends to their friends' friends, etc..

    My point is -- this surely proves the effectiveness of the Net as a distribution medium (in this case, of news, but it could be of anything). All it takes is to have enough initial momentum, and eventually, it will reach places like Slashdot, and will start to take off from there.

  • I am sorry, but the concept of this is awesome. Sure its not original, but if someone did take the time to make generic (or not so) processing boards for the masses, they will come. Tie these in to things like ProcessTree, and we can really take advantage of this power.

  • I disagree--this was an important lesson for many of the self-described "experts" who frequent /.

    This was such an obvious hoax that I was laughing from the start. Come on, the board was obviously a paste-up fake! Based on Russian surplus technology?? The Russians are still using vacuum tubes; they're not going to trash some super vector processors. And in gull-wing SMT packages yet!

    Anyone who fell for this hoax deserved it!

  • That nobody seemed to mention is this:

    If this was really surplus hardware, non-x86 vector processors... someone would have to write the code to work on seti stuff on them. These poeple claimed that it worked with standard seti@home software; you just plug it in.

    This simply can't be. That's not how things work.

  • It's time for /. to create a SETI category- specifically so I can block these pointless irrelevant stories.

  • I was somewhat taken in by the hoax, but after it was revealed, I thought it was hilarious. My time spent looking at their website was well worth the laugh I got later. :-)

  • I didn't read that at all. This product was mentioned in many places, but the guys behind it let it all happen naturally from word of mouth across the net. That's the point they were trying to make. That a single posting in a newsgroup, can turn into a tidal wave of page hits in a very short period of time, as people tell other people on different forums.
  • was a hoax.

    we're admitting it.

    send us an email.

    *we promise that this is not a hoax and we won't take your email address, SPAM the shit out if it, sell it, or do something ELSE dis-ingenuous.*

    right.

  • I'd agree if the authors had limited themselves to a post in a newsgroup. However, I think the fact that they created pictures of the product, established a fairly complete website, and even took orders lifted the effort well beyond that of a mere troll and into the realm of hackdom.
  • What was so unbelievable about the offer? There are plenty of generally-unknown co-processor cards available (DSP, multi-processor, etc.), and it wouldn't be hard for someone to find a source of unused ones, reprogram them to aid SETI@home, and sell them cheap. Heck, just down the hall from me is a junk hardware bin with a dozen i960 cards in it...perfectly good hardware, but no longer useful to the project and the owners had no idea what to do with them; given specs and some time I could turn them into SETI@home co-processors and sell them for a tidy profit.

    There's obviously a lot of interest in such hardware, and people are willing to buy them. A smart capitalist would recognize this, and actually turn this "hoax" into a marketable reality!

  • When they found out they couldn't
    supply the market rather than hand the board over to pirates they called a hoax & are now
    renegotiating the loan with the bank
    to retool.... I hope I hope, I hope.
    .=]
    the truth is out there
    but sometimes a good plausibility counts more

    [X]

    A MICROWAVE LASER can put
    a lump in a politically
    active chest. The heating effect
    can cause a localized turgor
    remarkably similar to a carcinoma.
    Reinforced aluminum foil
    can stop these rays.

  • Yeah, but it's now before April 1st 2001...

  • Although the name might suggest it, SAMOWAR has nothing to do with war, but is Russian for ... tea pot.

    Ahh, the joy of foreign puns.

  • These guys seem to think the 100,000 hits they got the day the article was posted to /. was the result of a message they posted to a list?

    Is this conceit or ignorance?

    They should make a stephen king-type offer, "If 75 percent of the people who want one send us a dollar for research, we will create a real processor."

  • This is the second hoax that /. has ran in the last couple of months alone (remember the potato computer). Do you think they will post about the "human brain on a PCI card" that I developed and ship with a card detailing the life of the cadaver the raw materials were taken from?

    Seriously, guys, it is incidents like these that prevent /. from being a respectable news outlet.

  • Already exposed on Technocrat days ago (Score:3)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:23AM (#904072)
    This was exposed and discussed [technocrat.net] on Technocrat two days ago.

    Don't feel bad -- I saw one of the big network News organizations (I think it was ABC) get taken by a hoaxster during one of their live "crisis" broadcasts, where the person confirmed that somebody had indeed killed themself since "they couldn't be on the Howard Stern show."

    If it can happen to them it can happen to slashdot.
  • I just posted in another story here [slashdot.org] something about the moderation system. I think we really need some more customising on what you want to see, i like trolls, but i don't want to see the automated spam, so in fact for me it should be +1 Troll.
  • Nyaaaa!

    Conspiracy.

    Maybe the boards really do exist, maybe the chips do exist.....

    Maybe, just maybe the Russian missiles could run seti@home whilst flying to the target :)

    Hey.. that's cool, I can see it now.

    The US detects hostile aliens in space and can't find a powerbook with which to defeat them so it sends up an "anti-alien" nuke. This nuke works through some units as it flys to the meet the ALIENS OF DOOM (tm), who are soo rendered dead and splatted about and generally harmless.

    Luckily the missile sent its data back before it exploded ...... only to have discovered a new alien civilisation.

    Talks with the new civilisation break down, the aliens attack! we send another missile.

    ad infinitum

    troc ;)

    PS Well it could happen, at least it might happen. Well, National Enquirer would print it.

  • Computer Science Germans apparently are no different. What do they feed these guys?

    Turkey [cmu.edu]. And lots of it.
  • >Why are these people proud of this "accomplishment"? I'm guessing that it's because they duped 100,000 surfers, including many tech savvy people, into visiting their site. >is there something wrong with German/European Society that makes this allright? There is nothing 'wrong' with the "German/European Society". They are different people and have different norms than we do. That does not make it wrong (except to those who are so ethnocentric that they consider any culture other than their own to be inferior etc). >Why do they think that deluding thousands of people is an accomplishment? Hands up every one who, with ~US$100 (domain name + a month of basic web hosting) can get a few thousand interested viewers to their site. I thought so. >The last time I checked, Our (american) president pulled the same thing on us... are all societies the same this way? What are you asking? If it's "are all societies the same?" then no, definately not. >or is this just some sick fantasy world that certain sects of our world play a role in? Whoa. Now these people are in a sick fantasy world? Suddenly, they are a 'sect' too? What of all the aborigines who think that this 'Western' concept of material hording is strange? Are we then not a 'sect' which is living in some sick fantasy world? It's all a matter of perspective. Their world view is different from ours, let's respect that and not be so quick to impose judgement on things unfamiliar to us.
  • The posts were in fact;
    • SETI@home is a crock,
    • There are no aliens,
    • S@h is supposed to be about spare CPU time,
    • It's just a geek pissing contest anyway,
    • SETI is a worthy endevour,
    • I want to help SETI any way I can,
    • The pictures are fakes &
    • Can anyone confirm if this is real?
    For the record SETI@home is about shifting the processing time and associated costs from a central underfunded scientific core - if the participants wish to invest in faster processing then they're welcome to.

    BTW: a S@h co-processor was first discussed within weeks of the first client release, it's not a new thought and these time wasting idiots did not think of it first...

  • I always thought any monitor made in the last epoch (~10yr?) doesn't suffer from burn.

    Is this true?


  • And grammar of course. I was fooled and I can admit it. We should all just give up and be fooled with /. news.
  • Is it just me, or is anyone else sick and tired or the constant bitching and whining about moderation here on /.? To Kaufmann: I thought your statements were valid enough (if somewhat offtopic), but you completely blew your credibility with your childish whining about moderators.

    Look, the moderation here isn't perfect, and there are sure to be childish twits who moderate down legitimate articles, just as there are childish twits who submit them. Quit yer bitching and DEAL WITH IT!

    --

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by crovax ( 98121 )
    The only thing I want to know is why they did it?
    It seems that SETI has not found Life in space or intelligence on Earth.

    -----
    If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
  • /. only posts a few stories a day. After receiving notice of a story that seems interesting, they should *verify it* by contacting the company/organization/etc. that is being discussed. Would the [major metropolitan daily newspaper] publish a story based on an unverified anonymous tip, without verifying it? This is the standard that /. should be held to; if the story is unverifiable, then they should either choose another to post, or post it with a disclaimer.
  • Sickening? I think you judge too harshly.

    Your idealism has noble intentions, but there is no reason to fault people for indulging themselves. Of course there is an obvious point where self-indulgence is harmful to the population at large, but this is hardly a case of that. Would you fault somebody for buying new sports equipment so they feel they can play better instead of giving it directly to a charity? People work for their money, and they should be allowed to spend it as they see fit.
  • What if you did detect a signal, and it said "gets your message out to 25 million email addresses! Unlimited Income opportunity!!!"? Then what?

    -----
  • > You disgust me

    Quite right. How dare this person have an opinion that differs to yours. I bet he is the sort who hangs out in libraries looking for other free-thinkers to debate freedom of choice and expression with.

    > You are the kind of bastard that burned
    > Alexandria's library, fearful and ignorant
    > of the knowledge contained within.

    Hang on, I'm confused. Your are anti-freedom of expression and free-will, but you are pro-libraries? If you are going to troll people, try to be consistant.

    > What is Mankind if he only looks to the ground?

    The sort of person who looks foolish when he bumps into Womankind?

    Bob.
  • Where, exactly, are you supposed to draw this line? If play a prank that results in someone's death, you can be convicted for manslaughter, and if you run a hoax that results in someone losing money, you should be prosecuted for fraud.

    I'm sorry. Did someone die because of this hoax? Did anyone lose money because of this hoax?

  • That link wasn't there when the original story was posted.
  • Of course the above poster has a point - there may be physics/tech that we just don't know about yet. Like 200 yrs ago, if you told someone you could talk into a little box and people hundreds of miles away could hear you on another little box using some mysterious "electromagnetic spectrum" they'd think you were crazy. And now we have all kinds of radios. Who's to say there isn't some other medium like that waiting to be discovered?
  • A good hoax is a form of art that should be applauded. If it fools even the most educated and cynical in the field that it is directed to, it is a fanatistic joke.

    Simple fact is that there are very few good hoaxes. I had to read this one a couple of times before I was cynical enough to think it was a hoax. This one falls under no harm no foul. Very well crafted. A good bit of preliminary work put into it and designed to make you feel foolish if you fell for it; but gave you a chance to laugh at yourself for doing it. One of the biggest problems is the fact that a lot of /.ers, who have no sense of humor or egos the size of Nebraska, got suckered in too and had their egos harmed. I suspect that Mr. Steve Richards is one of these folks.

    If you are upset with this hoax, GET A FREAKIN LIFE! The common every day scammer is too busy going after the weak and feeble minded around us, of which there are plenty, than to worry about doing such an elaborate hoax. Its not worth the effort in many cases. There are always exceptions, so buyer beware and take some personal responsibilty instead of whining about how dangerous this is.

    Please note that I refer to good hoaxs. A good hoax does not include a chain email about some good times virus or some urban legend. Orginality is the key to a good hoax. My kudos to the gentleman who unleashed this one.
  • You are the kind of bastard that burned Alexandria's library

    Actually, it was Julius Ceasar who burned Alexandria's library and it was a fire that spread from the docks after he set fire to his own ships in order to prevent the Ptolomey's forces from using them against him. He was buying time until his own forces arrived.

    You really must read Plutarch.

    --- Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time ---

  • is it really that easy to take advantage of a community like this?

    Yes. Especially when you're talking about increasing someone's coolness factor, which is why the SETI stats are there in the first place to be honest. Lets admit it, we're all shallow. Granted, I wouldn't ever dream of buying something like this, because I have plenty of high-spec hardware to run SETI on anyway. But before I realised it was a hoax I thought, cool, I wouldn't mind one of them...
  • how meaningless technical specifications really are. Think about it this way: If we, an enlightened (one would hope) group of tech-heads, fell for this almost completely, imagine an ordinary user's experience when he/she walks into a computer store. "K6-2? Is that better or worse than a Pentium? Is 64 megabytes fast enough, or do I want 600 megahertz instead? This one says 'multimedia ready'. That's good, right? I think I'll choose that one. Does it have the Internet?" Computer companies prey on this with mindless technobabble like "internet ready" or "fully RFC compliant", and customers are the ones that end up being swindled.

    --

  • I have also inventing SETI accelerators (Score:5)

    by dmccarty ( 152630 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:27AM (#904104)
    Greetings all,

    I also able to invent a SETI accelerator by using manies electronics in my home. By passing parts of SETI Work Unit to my:

    • blender
    • garage door opener
    • TV (big processing power there!)
    • VCR (takes performance hit if watching movie)
    • blow dryer
    • air conditioner (I run it all day long and my wife and kids they are cold but I telling them it's for science!)
    • ceiling fan (all day, too)
    • electric mixer (only good when making cakes, so we make lots of cakes)

    I have able to increase my processing from 1 unit every 22 hours on very fast Compaq Presario to 17 units every half hour. It is very fast.

    Last week my street lose power (I don't know why) so I am forced to stop processing. And yesterday in the mails there is a letter with electric bill for $700 (US!) for one month! I think there is some mistake, but I keeps processing! I know one day we will find ET for science but I also very happy to make #7 in high scores list. Maybe if search continuing I will #1!

    --

  • Well, honestly, out of all the people who were contemplating buying one of these, I doubt that many were actually hoping to find extraterrestrial life quicker with it. It was mainly a bunch of tech-obsessed "geeks" with too much dotcom money in their hands, worrying about getting higher and higher stats. They couldn't care less about whether the data they were processing was real or false: they might as well be "crunching" possible combinations of formulas for Coca-Cola's secret recipe.
  • > Now if only someone would create a card that boosted my /. karma...

    I'm still expecting to see /. karma up for bids on eBay.

    --
  • Thanks for the advertisment ;)

    As someone else has already pointed out, however, we are almost done -- 99.89% done last time I checked -- and we don't need any more computers right now (in fact, many computers are idling because the server can't find any work to assign them).

    Hopefully when we finish the news will get onto /.
  • .
    [There so much trolling]... on slashdot, and has been going on for such a long tyme, that I find it sad that you don't realize that YHBT.

    Nah... this is just the trigger for a well worn rant of mine - not the post is invalidated by that fact. I used usenet from the 80's through the mid 90's, and watched the rise of the trolls; sometimes they spark the best conversations (when everybody keeps the flame throwers away).

    SETI is a damn fine organization doing the best they can to answer one heck of a question. The reason people want to see high stats is the purely competitive nature of people, particularly geeks (note the predominance of tech companies or hacker groups in the top brackets).

    But... my reponse wasn't about that, because that wasn't what the Troll had posted. He did a "squishy" arguement that offended me. So, I addressed his "squishy", damn near off-topic point because it's an offense to see it sitting there, moderated up, with no counter-arguement.

    Hell, had he been logical about it, I would have pointed out that pure science always leads to humanitarian benefits in the future. He would have countered with some soppy comment about some starving mother trying to feed her kids, and how does SETI benefit her directly. And then I would have had to point out that Senator Proxmire(?) was lobbying against the space program as he owed his life to a pacemaker (developed with spin-off technologies from the space program).

    And then everyone would have been disgusted with Slashdot, stopped reading weblogs, and evilbill would have finished his borg implants without being detected, and enslaved the planet. :)

    So instead, I just wrote a passionate, "touchy-feely" response rather than a logical one, just to set a counterpoint to his arguement.

    IHBT, true, but IHW... Or at least set an even keel for the moment.

    --
    Evan "Signal to Noise... must raise the signal to noise" E.

  • I have no sympathy for anyone who bought into the scam.

    The board was such an obvious fake. First of all the "cpu" looks a lot like an Adaptec SCSI controller chip with an Adaptec part number sticker on it. In fact it looks exactly like one. I have boards dating back to 1993 that have stickers just like that...although only the newer ones have the bar codes.

    Next, note the fact that the Adaptec logo appears on the PC board! I can't quite read the model number, but it is there. And a word that looks a lot like it says "adaptec" appears on the chips. And the board was angled in the photos so that you can't get a good look at it! Come on...

    It was most amusing to watch so many people spout off about a product that was clearly a pasteup. The whole concept was laughable.

    Russian millitary surplus?!? This is the same country that imported pinball machines into East Germany in the 1980s just to get their hands on the CPUs. The Russian millitary is still using vacuum tubes, folks. They don't have any high-performance vector processors. If they did, they would not be selling such a high-tech item on the surplus market.

    Okay, say you really are an experienced user, but you (1) hate Adaptec, and have never even looked at their cards or logo (2) don't know about the state of Russian low-tech, (3) forgot to examine the photo to see if it was a fraud. Did it not strike any of the "victims" as a little strange that this Russian millitary component would be packaged in a gull-wing SMT plastic package? Don't you think it would be at least a rad-hardened component in a ceramic package? Did you never wonder about how Linux would be so easily ported to a radically different CPU yet still run standard binaries compiled for existing CPUs? Did you not think that since PPC Linux had different SETI binaries than Intel, that some ex-Soviet chip might just need SETI to be recompiled?

    A lot has been said about these kids being "bad guys", but with a fake this obvious, I think the only people who should feel guilty are the self-described experts who were so quick to spout off about the "board" with no knowledge about the subject.

  • Have I mentioned that you can put down your guns?

    Your weapons don't work against me.

  • Great way to scam credit card numbers (Score:3)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:32AM (#904133)
    Notice that the hoax article say that they were indundated with 'orders'. While I can infer from the wording of the article that they weren't taking credit card numbers, it occurs to me that it would be simplicity itself to replicate this hoax (or just put up a phony online 'business') and get people to submit their card numbers. I guess one moral of the story is to watch out who you do business with. That, and don't believe everything you read online.
  • I wonder if it would be possible to use any of processing power of accelerated video cards to help crunch SETI, gamma flux, or some other floating point (or integer, like OGR and RC5) number crunching thing? I've never looked at programming specs for any video cards, so I don't know which, if any, would be flexible enough to do computing tasks other than 3d rendering.

    The vector nature of video card processors makes them sound nice for crunching SETI's arrays, unfortunately, this sounds like wishful thinking, but maybe worth looking into. Maybe a lighting engine could help with dcypher.net's gamma ray projections?

    Anyone out there intimately familiar with any particular video hardware? How could it be used for any of these projects?
    #define X(x,y) x##y
  • ummmm.... I'd be willing to bet that if not the majority, at least a large percentage of the people reading slashdot are doing it from Windows.

    I personally run 12 linux boxes, but I've never viewed slashdot from any of them.

    I did also link mersenne.org, which has LOADS of other distributed projects linked.
  • Nope... Some cheap monitors today -still- have the problem. We have one at work with the login screen burned into it (17" Optiquest I think?). Piece of crap.
  • But of course! SETI is and always was a geek dick-measuring contest. There are people that really would have paid for one of these.

    --
  • I caught that as well. But they said June 23rd, which I think was suppose to be July 23rd. Because they are claiming the hoax was only alive for 8 days, and that is the date it was posted here. I don't think they realize their hits came from slashdot and not JUST newsgroups. Then again, a point they might have been making is that they only posted it on a newsgroup and look how many hits they got. (Which caused someone to submit it to slashdot). Oh well, it would have been nice if they would have mentioned being posted here.

    ---
  • Now if only someone would create a card that boosted my /. karma...

    I've built just such a card; you can have one for just $99.95! Send an e-mail to the above address (take out the NOSPAM part, obviously) with your name, shipping address, and credit card information, and your Slashdot KardMa(tm) PCI card will arrive in a few days.

    --

  • "duh" ?? (Score:4)

    by happystink ( 204158 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:38AM (#904170)
    What does duh mean? Is Rob saying duh as in "duh, didn't you realize that all the stories we post that are just totally totally half-baked and wrong and stupid, we KNOW are false"?

    sig:

  • You should get a sense of humor... (Score:3)

    by marcus ( 1916 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:40AM (#904173) Journal
    ...and perhaps a life.
    ...and take a class in critical thinking...

    >They amuse nobody but the hoaxer.

    Dead wrong. I'm not the hoaxer and I am greatly amused. It's hard to type while holding your belly with both hands.

    >They waste our time.

    Waste your time perhaps, but this sort of entertainment is much more enjoyable than spending hours if front of a tv. Go download a good Steven King book!

    >cause us to make plans based on false information

    No, they cause you to make plans with out verifying data. That's your mistake, not mine, not theirs.

    >those harmed by the hoax should have the
    >power to sue the hoaxer for damages

    Hahaha, this is a good one. I can see it now. You stand up in front of the court and say "I solemnly swear that yes I am stupid enough to be taken in by this scam, this scam that has done nothing but deflect me from my other stupid ideas and has prevented me from doing other stupid things." It's going to be interesting proving damage.

    >Trust and credibility are very rare and valuable
    > things these days, and those who abuse them
    > should not be treated lightly.

    Truth! Here we have some insight, but still lack depth. Trust and credibility really are rare and valuable. THAT IS WHY THEY MUST BE EARNED. You do not have my trust, nor do I give you any credibility. YOU HAVE TO EARN IT. I will doubt you from day one until you show me that I should change my mind.

    You are the one that abuses trust and credibility by giving these valuable and powerful items away without regard for the consequences of your actions.
  • Computer companies prey on this with mindless technobabble like "internet ready" or "fully RFC compliant", and customers are the ones that end up being swindled.

    Some people make this out to be exclusive to the computer industry. It's not. Ever seen Joe Average in a department store, shopping around for a refrigerator? Or a stereo? Or a TV? The salesman will play on his ambitions, desires and sexual neurosis; he'll spit out a few product stats, maybe show some brochures, and before poor Joe knows it, he'll be walking out with a huge refrigerator for his one-bedroom home, or a pathetic "home entertainment center".

    And don't get me started on cars. Jesus. Sometimes I go with my drivin' friends to the mechanic and just watch as they are completely played, even the more technically savvy of them.

    The point being that not everyone is an engineer - in fact, outside of his area of expertise, everyone is a layman and thus subject to some eventual suckering. The difference with computer hardware is the incredible rate of adoption; everybody's buying it, and most people don't really understand it, so this phenomenon becomes somewhat more evident.

    By the way, regarding the part about "we, an enlightened (one would hope) group of tech-heads"... well, there are certainly many exceptions, but I wouldn't say the average Slashdotter is "enlightened", not in the least. The average Slashdotter is no hardware expert, who probably doesn't even understand digital logic. He's a "webmaster", a "Perl scripter" who picked up programming in junior high and to this day writes code which somewhat resembles Matt Wright's [worldwidemart.com]. He only comes into contact with hardware in the context of graphics cards, sound cards, overclocking or whatever else that may "enhance the gaming experience".

    The Average Slashdotter, in conclusion, is Rob Malda. (Minus the piles of IPO cash.) Sad but true.

    P.S.: I'm one of the few people I know who bought an iMac because of the innards. :)
  • Well, that last comment makes it flamebait. My sig has gotten me moderated down more times than I can count.
  • may be the power of /.

    A newsgroup posting, a few glances... Then, in the wake of 7/23 slashdot article: 100,000 hits, orders, television coverage. It makes me wonder whether slashdot is becoming an "authoritative source" to less-net-savvy media, which makes me wonder whether the ethics of story posting should change.

    We all know that we have to double check whatever we see here, but would Jane Pauley?

  • that you don't like me? ... sob

    Oh well. I don't care. My karma is steadily going up, and it's all that counts.

  • Oh wow, I hadn't noticed Kuro5hin was gone, haven't been surfing much lately. How did that not make slashdot? I mean I'm sorry, but that's REAL news in the geek world, unlike the numerous stories about X-men, hellmouth blah blah blah blah blah

    sig:

  • .
    what kind of sick mind cares more about SETI stats than about the very real problems of the very real world that surrounds them?

    You disgust me. You are the kind of person who looks that the Sistine Chapel ceiling and sees wasted effort that could have been put into building homes for the poor. You are the kind of bastard that burned Alexandria's library, fearful and ignorant of the knowledge contained within. You are the jerk who makes fun of anybody who has spent serious effort and often serious money into any useless but personally rewarding hobby, like collecting Rocky Horror items.

    What is Mankind if he only looks to the ground? We might as well be automated baby machines in your view - only caring about the basic necessities. We live set in a cosmos that is full of wonder, and if you can't feel that wonder, then I pity you.

    Food, shelter - these are important for life. But they are not what life is for. I can't tell you the purpose of your individual life, but if you can't look up to the stars, don't scream that those who have loftier visions are foolish.

    --
    Evan

  • One Newsgroup Posting (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:47AM (#904203)
    Then, on Sunday, June 23rd, the run began! More and more visitors came to our site to have a look at our ingenious board. The peak was on Monday, June 24th. Over 100.000 visitors in 24 hours! Please have in mind: by this day the page had been online for only 6 days! And we've made only one single posting in a newsgroup.

    Hmmm, a post on Slashdot helps, too. The article was posted [slashdot.org] on Sunday....the day they started getting their visitors.

    Seems these people were Slashdotted, and didn't even KNOW what hit them. They attributed the whole burst of traffic to ONE post on a newsgroup.

    I don't think so. heh

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • When I saw the story, I immediately thought of this [dnaco.net]. It was probably featured on Slashdot a few months back. Still, I thought the 6 processor board I read about had been real, not just proposed. Was there another 6 StrongARM PCI card project?
    --

  • This hoax wasn't exactly destructive... (Score:3)

    by slothbait ( 2922 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:51AM (#904210)
    And _I_ knew it was a hoax after I first read the article. I was really surprised how many people in the comments section took it seriously. Even if people believed it, though, there was no harm done.

    How many people really based business decisions off of this? Precisely no one. There was no commercial use for the supposed product, and even if there had been, it was evident that the idea was hacked together by a few fly-by-nighters. It's not like this was tarnishing some trusted brand name.

    How much time did you waste on this? A few seconds to read the headline, and if you were more interested, maybe a minute or so to read the full article.

    It may surprise you, but many of us consider humor a "legitimate" use of the internet. I like pranks every now and then, as long as there's no damage done. And I don't see any damage here, except possibly for some embarassment for the people who believed it.

    And your boy-who-cried-wolf analogy is silly. This is far different than email chain letters about the Good Time Virus. As real news, this might have been interesting, but certainly not alarming. It does nothing to lower our guard. If anything, this puts people *more* on their guard for other, more dangerous hoaxes.

    Wait! It just dawned on me! Your *post* is a hoax! I can't believe I fell for it. You naughty, naughty boy, making me type all of these counterpoints to an argument that wasn't even real.

    Oh, my face is red...

    --Lenny

  • Re:The dirty truth about SETI geeks exposed. (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @06:03AM (#904212)
    A couple of days ago, in this very messaging board, somebody proposed a brilliant idea: instead of something useless like SETI or cracking RC5, one could dedicate those cycles to analysing satellite data that could help farmers plan crops. Truly wonderful. Sad thing, though, is that in a tech world like the one we have, "sexy" useless projects like SETI demand all the attention, while worthwhile causes like the latter languish. Truly sickening.

    Hey, if its such a great idea, go ahead, start it up and waste your idle CPU cycles on it.

    Me, I'm going to use my idle CPU cycles on them there flying toasters...
  • Or, since there might be, oh, say, one or two math geeks out there...

    Check out PiHex at http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/projects/pi hex/pihex.html [cecm.sfu.ca]

    Calculate pi further and further and further and further...

    And yes, they even have a "top producers" thing for you crunchers.

    There's also http://www.mersenne.org/ [mersenne.org] with a list of distributed projects...

  • The funniest part... (Score:5)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:07AM (#904214)
    ...is that there were people willing to spend actual money on buying a device that would run a process that was intended to use just your spare CPU cycles. For their next hoax, I propose the create a Screensaver On A PCI Card. "Get 18 Million Triangle/sec!"
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!

  • Technocrat [technocrat.net] ran the hoax story yesterday.

    What made it a good hoax is that it sounded like something people might want to do, even though it was ridiculous.

    What's the point of processing blocks faster anyway, doesn't SETI@Home have more processing power than they can practically use anyway?

  • > They amuse nobody but the hoaxer.

    I was amused!!

    In fact, I find it funnier as a total hoax than I did when I came to the realization that thousands of bored, lonely geeks are going to buy one. Shit, if ARS, Tom or Sharky had gotten their hands on one and declared it met or exceeded the claimed spec, I would have been a bit bummed..

    Come on. Twain played along along with one death rumor, and Conan Doyle started a few. Hoaxes are nothing new. Now we have a few million people sharing a single medium, and they propogate a little farther than the days when print media were the rumormongers.

    > have the power to sue the hoaxer for damages

    You do. You can sue anyone, anythime, for anything. Real damages, compensatory, and punitive. Only problem is, not only are these hoax'ers German, and not really subject to US judicial decisions, but you'll be laughed out of court by a judge.

    Why don't we sue Microsoft for vaporware? It is a hoax, meant to decieve it's customers and hurt its rivals. Big pockets, bad reputation..

  • Revealed? (Score:3)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:53AM (#904242) Homepage
    Huh, and here I was thinking that the hoax had been broken [slashdot.org] the very day it was released on /. Must be that pesky precognition again...

    - Michael Cohn
  • Its true they have too many people processing for them - or at least that they don't particularly want more, or want to speed up the client. You can check the FAQ on their website There's only a limited amount of data coming from the radio observatories, and they have enough clients to process it.

    I don't know of them sending out false data, but they've certainly sent out duplicate data. This, however, is partly a security precaution to catch people who modify the client (either for silly reasons (to get more points), or to speed it up) and break the core algorithms.
  • Exactly my thought. It's not hard to set up mod_ssl and make it look REALLY authentic (I still haven't bothered to RTFM and figure out how to use it, but I do have mod_ssl installed and probably working).

    --

  • it's one of those things that SOUNDS good prima facie [tec.wi.us], like "gets your message out to 25 million email addresses! Unlimited Income opportunity!!!" just a little thought (again see a recent SciAm [scientificamerican.com]) reveals that it's like trying to listen for fleas next to Niagra Falls - In a Universe of powerful quasars and other radio sources any intelligent signal (unless the ET's are modulating a pulsar or something and somehow beaming it our way) would be way too puny to detect. You stand about as much chance as winning the powerball, hitting 18 holes in one, getting hit by lightning AND a meteorite all on the same day.
  • Starting next month, I will be selling a PCI card that runs 6 user accounts in parallel to whore for karma. Any takers?
  • I actually think this speaks well for the /. community. Yes, /. posted the link to the site, but it was the community that (overall) came to the conclusion that this was a hoax. When I read the article and the comments, I came to pretty much the same conclusion.
  • This thing was useless from the start; SETI has had too *many* people processing data for them, to the point that they've complained and sent out false data in the past...

    Therefore, a SETI accelerator would be their worst nightmare (unless they could just get one for themselves, and give us all a screensaver that doesn't munch CPU instead... :)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • Karma... (Score:5)

    by don_carnage ( 145494 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @05:17AM (#904264) Homepage
    Now if only someone would create a card that boosted my /. karma...

    --
  • To use SSL, you must buy a certificate. You can run a site with a self-built test certificate (the openssl documentation explains how to do it), but you'd only want to use that for internal work or for testing, as a non-official certificate will ring all the alarm bells of your browser...

    ------------------
  • Ahmen Brother!

    I'm a culprit too, but for every time a geek says that computer users are dumb because they don't know this and that, the SETI PCI board can be brought back to our faces.

    I'm a network engineer, and actually thought it was true at first. When I first started seeing posts about a possible hoax, then I had serious doubts that the actual card existed.

    Needless to say, we can't know everything and be 100% sure of everything. So next time a user mentions that his 10 GB RAM is almost full, just nod and say "ok, I'll give you more RAM tomorrow".
  • This hoax really annoys me, because the board they describe *is* possible, and likely could be manufactured for even less than the price they made up. They giggle at "all the orders" they received, but this indicates a *real* business opportunity. It's not a joke. They offered a product people wanted and then laugh at people for wanting it -- fine. But to blather on about their made up technical specifications as if the whole project was ludicrously impossible to begin with -- well, that gets on my nerves.

    There are laws against false advertising.

  • D'oh! I bought one at CompUSA (Score:4)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <ellem52.gmail@com> on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @06:15AM (#904274) Homepage Journal
    They said it was on backorder!

  • Re:No Surprise Here (Score:3)

    by bfree ( 113420 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:48AM (#904277)
    1. Slashdot can NOT verify the validity of stories AND be up and to date
    2. Slashdot CAN destroy karma on both the submitter and poster of subsequently discovered hoaxes/errors and ultimatly remove their privileges
    3. I for one would like to see Slashdot take itself a bit more seriously, making an attempt to keep the posted stories real and relevent and NOT REPEATS.
    4. Why can't we all "meta-moderate" the story posters, if we all think one of them is a dumbass can we note vote him out?
    5. I do not want to see the whole site crippled in beuracracy or the removal of some of the more lively debates (lets face it any story that mentions M$oft is Flamebait).
    6. I would like to see a more useful moderation system including
      1. +1 Flamebait
      2. -1 Flamebait
      and also remove the Under and Over rated options.
    7. Why can't we view stories by Moderation class, there are so many stories on slashdot where all I would like to see are the "Funny" stories, and many others where I would just want the "Insightful&&Informative" posts.
    just my E0.02
  • For anyone interested, check out the "SETI accelerator a HOAX" thread on the sci.astro.seti [astro.seti] newsgroup. Some of them--probably the ones that mindlessly plunked their credit cards down--are apparently not very happy about being hoodwinked.
    --
  • Sounds like what we need CT & Co to do, is hire a crack team of investigators. And from now on, every submission should have someone dispatched in person to visit the company and verify all claims.

    Short of that, occasionally stuff like this is going to slip through the system.
  • I don't really believe in spamming for charity, but since this IS the THIRD SETI posting in a just a couple days, I thought it would be appropriate to post this. (so please don't moderate this down)

    There is a banner supported charity site that includes SETI@Home as one of its charities. They make a small donation for viewing ads, and a larger donation for clicking on them.

    Click HERE [4goodnesssake.org] to donate. SETI has already made at least $200 through this program.

    Also, anyone interested in joining a SETI team, please see my user profile.

  • Ok, I admit it. I was caught up in the mad rush to see one of these cards. Heck, I even wanted to purchase the "workhorse".
    But, it was too good to be true.
    Now, how does the collection of interested people's personal information play out with the privacy advocates? The hoaxters state on their page that they have deleted all pertinent information. But, how are we to be sure of that?
    I beleive that they did delete the information. However, if I needed to obtain a large number of email address and snail mail addresses for my marketing mailing list, this is how it would be done.

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