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People SELL Their SETI@Home Accounts?

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Right now it would put us within 6300 WU's of MSFT 😉
If the WU's were part of a mini team they would blend in for the larger race.
(Just Sayin')
 
Hehe... Notice the high bidder is none other than our very own TA member, networkman. I don't agree with the sale of the WU's but if Berkeley is going to allow it and NWM is willing to spend $200+ on the account for the team then why not?

BTW, I don't think networkman has any plan to try and incorporate these WU's into his own account. I believe he just wants control of the account so he can join TA with it. It will not count in our race against DSLR but it will put us 22K closer to the teams above us and put 22K more between us and those behind us.

Personally, I hope Berkeley puts a stop to it but like I said, if they're going to allow it then we might as well take the WU's. Better than some other team using them against us!
 
<Hehe... Notice the high bidder is none other than our very own TA member, networkman>

I didn't realize Networkman was that desperate in his race to beat IsOS! :Q








j/k 😉😉😉😉
😀
 
I'd be very careful about spending any money on these "for sale" SETI accounts. There is a strong possiblity those accounts will be "deleted" by Seti At Home. You may be buying a pig in a poke. 😉
 
I'm not saying you are wrong Smokeball, if anything you are probably correct, but I have to wonder why the S@H folks would be concerned at all with what the crunchers do with their accounts? They already have extracted any valuable information from the process itself and it should be of no consequence to the project what one does with their spent WUs, IMO.
 
I'm sure this type of behavior was never considered by Seti@Home. I'm also sure that any decision, the officials in the Seti@Home Project make, will be based on whether such conduct is more beneficial or more detrimental to the project as a whole.

Does Seti@Home have any guidelines or rules of conduct that might apply to this?
 
i am not condoning it, but i would have though the seti@home ppl would be happy as it means many more people may crunch work units to earn a bit of money, thus contributing more to the project.


Alex
 
aiex: I mentioned the same thing to Smokeball in a PM earlier this morning. The problem is, you're going to spend a ton more $$$ in hardware and power to get 22K WU's than any E-bay sale is going to bring in return. Even if you did it at work (which would probably violate many companies policies) it does take some time to manage a fleet large enough to produce 22K WU's. I've spent plenty of weekend, lunch, and before/after hours time to manage my work fleet.

Personally, I hope Berkeley steps and and stops the public sale of WU's. It's not fair to the members/teams who "build the old fashioned way, they earn it". 😉
 
This auction does nothing more than say "Look at me I have more (x) than you do. Or mines bigger than yours. It's not about earning anything. Sad thing is someone will buy this and probably feel good about it. When thay haven't done anything to earn it.

I for one don't want any of these WU's anywhere near Team Anandtech. Do we need to stoop so low as to buy our way to the top?
 
There are a lot of assimilations where the member did not earn it the old fasioned way.
I think there are several levels of thought here and it is more of a grey area than many have opined.
I personally crunch all my WU's with my own systems and no one elses. I always have, for 32 months now.
My WU's represent the use of my systems, my time, the money I have spent on electricity and bandwidth etc...

Some may argue that using work, school or Gvt computers might be unethical.
Someone else is paying for the hardware and software and electicity and bandwidth, and you are benefitting your personal seti account at their expense. This is not my personal opinion, but I can see an argument for this view.

There is an argument for and against everything. Obviously $200 is very little to pay for 23K WU's. It would take about ten XP 1900+ systems 300+ days to produce the same. That would cost a lot of money in terms of hardware / software and electricity, not to mention time to admin it all.
At that rate my WU's would only be worth about $50.00 - obviously that is ridiculous. Nearly 3 years of seti crunching valued at $50.00 - laughable.

Assimilations come in all different shapes and sizes. No one can add these WU's to their own personal account. They can't count in our race with DSLR.

So to sum up, I wouldn't fault anyone for buying the rights to a load of WU's. WU's crunched are just that, and no more. If someone jettisons their account and wants to try to recoup a fraction of their expenses that's fine with me. Stupid in my opinion, but certainly should be legal and allowable.
 
I see no problem with it. No more than what I've done to get other people's PCs + my work PCs to crunch for me, anyway. I've done favors and bought lunches to my friends to crunch for me with their PCs, and I can't see a fundamental difference between what I've done and purchasing WUs online. Although I see that the payoff, in this case, is much more immediate than what I've gotten out of my friends and colleagues with BK value meals(I have like 11k WUs after 1.3yrs in SETI). At the same time though, I don't know what S@H will do, and I have no opinion on what S@H should do.
 
Personally, I see no problem with it, but what about the folks at DSLR? TA's reputation is at stake. Some there may find it unethical, which may hurt the friendship of the race. Still, I'm all for it . Better us than another team.
 
Let us please remember that in the race with DSLR it's only the work units crunched in daily production that count, NOT the joinings or partings of members with large accounts!! BIG difference over the previous race. 😉

 
so u mean, those WUs that guys is selling wont count towards the team. WHy exactly are u willing to spend so much money for these WUS NetworkMan??
 
Oh, the workunits would count for the team as they'd help us pass teams ahead of us like Microsoft, Intel, etc. They just wouldn't help us in the TA/DSLR race is all.

Even if I win, which is by no means certain, I'd just transfer the account to Team Anandtech(changing the email/password/id) and let it sit - I would NOT try to get it merged with my own account or anything. 🙂

 
this is probabaly a dumb question. But I dont quite understand how it could count for our team and push us ahead ofIntel etc but not against DSLR?
 
They would be joined to the team as a "New Member". Therefore none of the units would count in the race.
 
I see a whole new chance to make money here, we could call it--"Ever-Seti", or "Seti-Quest"! :disgust:





NOT !!!!! What a way to cheapen something that people are have fun doing, a friendly noble competition for the chance to prove we're not alone, and the chance to be the ones to find it. Just my 2 cents worth...
 
Only 4 hours in the auction to go!

Make sure you don't get sniped if you really want all of those work units. 😀
 
I don't think anyone would ever pay anything close to what it costs to crunch a WU. There is no danger of a blossoming business here.

If you look at it from this angle it might help - the WU's are a part of the SETI program.
All you own are your stats. You don't keep the work units nor the data from them once
the units are crunched. They send you out a unit, you crunch it and send back the results,
the copy of the work unit on your system is deleted.

What you keep and what you own are your stats. This guy is selling his. They represent a lot of WU's crunched, they carry the weight of all the processing time it took to crunch them.
The guy is selling access to his account. Once you have that access you can change the email address and password. You can join the account to a group. If you really wanted you could start producing WU's under that account. NWM isn't doing that, he's just joining that account to the team.
It's a $200 assimilation of a 23K WU account. It would be nice to get the guy who 'owns' it to join the team, but for some reason he does not want to continue doing seti.

Here is the thing I would be concerned about:
Is this a clean account? Did he have permission to crunch these WU's? If he didn't and he sells it is the buyer liable for anything?
 
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