Editing SETI@home (section)

==Competitive aspect==
SETI@home users quickly started to compete with one another to process the maximum number of work units. Teams were formed to combine the efforts of individual users. The competition continued and grew larger with the introduction of BOINC.

As with any competition, attempts have been made to "cheat" the system and claim credit for work that has not been performed. To combat cheats, the SETI@home system sends every work unit to multiple computers, a value known as "initial replication" (currently '''2'''). Credit is only granted for each returned work unit once a minimum number of results have been returned and the results agree, a value known as "minimum quorum" (currently '''2'''). If, due to computation errors or cheating by submitting false data, not enough results agree, more identical work units are sent out until the minimum quorum can be reached. The final credit granted to all machines which returned the correct result is the same and is the lowest of the values claimed by each machine.

Some users have installed and run SETI@home on computers at their workplaces; an act known as "Borging", after the assimilation-driven [[Borg (Star Trek)|Borg]] of ''[[Star Trek]]''. In some cases, SETI@home users have misused company resources to gain work-unit results with at least two individuals getting fired for running SETI@home on an enterprise production system.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1782050.stm |title=BBC 2002 |work=BBC News |date=January 28, 2002 |access-date=17 May 2009 |archive-date=January 7, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090107085414/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1782050.stm |url-status=live }}</ref> <!-- The first firing was much earlier, but needs citation finding before one can use that information-->There is a thread in the newsgroup alt.sci.seti which bears the title "Anyone fired for SETI screensaver"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://groups.google.com/g/alt.sci.seti/c/0ksE8kN4wJI|title=Anyone fired for SETI screensaver|website=groups.google.com|access-date=June 6, 2022|archive-date=June 6, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220606023940/https://groups.google.com/g/alt.sci.seti/c/0ksE8kN4wJI|url-status=live}}</ref> and ran starting as early as September 14, 1999.

Other users collect large quantities of equipment together at home to create "SETI farms", which typically consist of a number of computers consisting of only a [[motherboard]], [[Central processing unit|CPU]], [[RAM]] and [[power supply]] that are arranged on shelves as diskless [[Workstation (computer hardware)|workstations]] running either [[Linux]] or old versions of [[Microsoft Windows]] "headless" (without a monitor).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/staff/seti/farms.htm |title=SETI Stack and farm systems |publisher=Bhs.broo.k12.wv.us |access-date=14 July 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090131122519/http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/staff/seti/farms.htm |archive-date=January 31, 2009 }}</ref>