Now, this is normal BOINC code. The project may not have updated to this code yet, or the project administrator may have edited it to suit his own needs/wants. I know Rytis of Primegrid runs lots of his own code, he also used to keep up the BOINC forum code until he got too busy to be able to keep up with it.

I appreciate you posting the code; I'm not familiar enough with BOINC-specific code to comment, but can see both the protection and the limitations of protection (i.e., a workaround for the saboteur) written within. PrimeGrid was one I tested, and rec'd this exact error message. Collatz was another; we only had 5 members at the time, so with everyone's permission I kicked them off; this kept the team's credit intact. However, I still could not delete the team because it was obviously still a non-empty team, including my own credit. The number of credits did not diminish as I kicked off each team member. I did not try quitting myself and trying to admin, since I assumed I'd lose my admin/founder rights and didn't want to leave that open at this critical time. So it appears that the only way around, which this 'obscured by clouds' seems to have done, is by 1) taking over foundership, 2) kicking off the hundreds of team members and 3) since (s)he was probably prevented by the software from deleting the team, (s)he just renamed it to the gibberish name it is now, and that did the trick. So that is how a determined saboteur can work around the software coding. Let's be careful now that that information's out in the open. Thank you for helping to reverse-engineer how it was done. Is there a way we can use this knowledge not only to keep vigilant against future attacks but somehow to prevent them?

I never implied that, you've read something in my post I didn't say. I asked you to contact the team founder, ask him if he knows of this situation, if he had a hand in it, if he wants this situation and if not, that he contact us through here or through email (David's email address is easily found).

I apologise if I implied that you proposed that as the only solution, but indirectly we/you and I know that OBC *is* the team founder, having somehow assumed team foundership (me, Stuart, and Richard Prins had been the only 3 founders [you can check this by surfing to each BOINC project page if you wish], to my knowledge, though there are so many projects it is possible OBC was the original without my knowledge); still that doesn't change the situation whether it's a longer-term or new founder. As directed, I've registered for the new forum (using the info you posted to help me locate it via OBC's account), found him/her in order to initiate contact, and am awaiting a PM. Now that there seems to be competing forums from a splinter group, and OBC's SETI account is advertising the competing forum, I'm assuming a disgruntled lone-wolf type response awaits me, if I get one. Are you saying now that if (s)he did that on purpose that his/her will overrides the will of hundreds that (s)he kicked off because foundership endowed OBC with the right to backdoor sabotage, or are you saying that if we contact OBC, they confirm that yeah, they damaged the team on purpose (which we now know via forensics that they did), we request it be restored by renaming it to its individual founder or a new one, that we can do that by contacting the appropriate personnel and presenting the evidence of mischief and 'founder' misconduct? I can't even request to take over foundership of the SETI team because now, OBC has fixed it so that no new members can join and I don't even know if (s)he is now even a member, so it's basically 'locked' for anyone but a 'higher power' to fix--that leaves our options as 1) appeal for help from you/SETI/David/BOINC, or 2) negotiate with OBC, the saboteur. There simply are no other options that I see. I don't fault you or any other developer for not foreseeing this type of situation in which a determined vandal could work around the way the code was written; after all, it's supposed to be 'friendly' competition, and as you said, each project is free to update/implement any new code at their discretion (though it appears that OBC had to take the actions the way (s)he did because the protections *were* indeed in place at SETI). At this point, I'm only asking for reasonable redress - the SETI forum redirected me here for help b/c they didn't understand what was going on, so assuming OBC wishes to leave the sabotage intact, what's the next step?

Please don't get me wrong; I'm not directing anything at you or wishing to unwittingly wield my frustration and make a target of a kind person who's doing your best to help us. My only point is that there is still a 'death' switch built in to the software despite the built-in protection, and that trigger is the ability to kick off all members and then rename the team; this is possible even after a substantial amount of credit and members have accumulated and I can tell by the coding that the intent was to prevent this from happening. The renaming function wasn't designed to be used that way.

I can assure you that the vast majority of RDFRS members do not want this situation (as evidenced by the 'kicking off' technique and the several hundred still on our team(s) as you can see via BOINCStats and other stat sites. The new forum can start their own team and we can duke it out in the name of science - very apropos. The renaming our team, leaving it unrecoverable and rendering it moot was a cheap shot and one which shouldn't have happened. Given the fact that it appears SETI adopted the aforementioned newer BOINC code, we now know that this can happen to any team. As an example, for our team, Richard Prins is on an extended leave; he's been the founder since 2005 or so. If he misses an email, anyone can take over as founder and now has a blueprint on how to destroy the 'competition'. It's better that the information is now out there; the question is how to prevent this in the future.

What happened to Seti.USA happened on Milkyway. Their team was taken over in the early days of the team-founder change code. At the time, if the team founder had his preferences set not to receive email from the project, he would not get the email when someone challenged him to take over as team founder. So after 2 months the team would be the new guy's, to do with what he wanted. Including kick off all team members and be there with a million credit team, that he owned.

That was corrected only after the original team founder contacted Milkyway admins.

Thank you - I think you're describing exactly what happened in our situation too, though instead it may be that our founder was away. Again, I don't know enough about the SETI team to know whether OBC was an original founder who got disgruntled or a new-guy type challenger as described above who went through the appropriate action to get control of the team if the founder wasn't careful to check and respond to all email. Keeping in mind that the team's several years old and the lifespan of some email addys these days, it's not out of the question that a hostile takeover may have occurred, especially given the vitriol you pointed out later in the post with the forum changes over at the RD.net page.

As a final point of clarification, by saying the BOINC software had failed, I didn't mean that in its current state that its checks/balances had failed, only that it had allowed one person to get in and destroy a team via a method that may not have been thought of when the code was written.

Ageless, thank you once again for your time and forensic investigation both here and obviously surfing other forums to uncover not only the means but a possible motive as well. Your assistance has been and is most appreciated. I just want to know what, if anything, I can do if OBC is recalcitrant, unrepentant, and obstinately refuses to reinstate the team name from gibberish to what it was before, because that's what I'm expecting given what I read (available in the link you provided; unfortunately, I'd read that earlier today as well). Also thank you to those behind the scenes, David, Richard H., and others. As the original team, we just want to know how to undo the damage and get back to square one. We will do our part by trying to convince OBC to do it (if they still can), but are not very optimistic, so would like to know if there are administrative alternatives.

Thanks again,

StandardbredHorse

I stand by my position and to expand, if members quit a team and to, the team holds the credit for the period being member... if the member gets chucked, then the team looses the credit, but it does not transfer to a new team. After all, a member could get nasty too to the point of being disruptive beyond reason, i.e. wanting to get forced off. The excuse of dormant contributors being thrown off because of TRAC considerations I've never understood. Then RAC should be recomputed without that member. More reason to be very careful on the part of the founder.

Bump, and thank you for the support, Sekerob.

Prescient words, and they reinforce that even if you're careful re: the founder, this can still happen. Now we know the blueprint/means by which it can happen. Hopefully the loophole can/will be closed. I also have not understood the RAC considerations. I basically agree with yr post 100%.

Very best regards,

StandardbredHorse
*nicker*

---

I've sent you a PM.

---

Thanks, Ageless - PM responded to, and should now be in your inbox.

In it, I thanked you, but also wanted to thank you publicly for your efforts not only in picking up this issue, but also for taking it seriously, and rapidly bringing it to the attention of the right people. We'll see what happens from here...hopefully some resolution can be reached.

I've said it like 6 times now, but thanks for your efforts, and I'll take the info in the PM as instructed.

Best regards,

StandardbredHorse

It's probably wise to include the cryptic answer you got from OBC in your email. It will make your case a little stronger. Or else, if you feel the need, post it here.

---

Hello again, and sorry for the delay in response. I had some personal issues arise which prevented me from either 1) commenting on the thread, or 2) following through via email contacts.

I'm back this weekend, and although I know this is probably more of a Monday-Friday gig for the dev teams and to an extent the project managers, I'll prepare a short reminder regarding the problem. Upon cursory inspection, it appears our team is still not back, so I've got my work cut out for me in terms of utilising contacts in order to get this done.

However, I have had a chance to connect with both OBC and the rest of the team in the brief time I've been back.

OBC only responded back by providing me with a URL to his new site and offering me a chance to crunch for the new team he's setting up. That's basically the extent of the message I got, and perhaps 'cryptic' was the wrong adjective to use (aside from the fact that his motivation was not stated, thus still leaving it a mystery). He didn't address any of the issues I brought up (i.e., why'd you kick everyone off the team and rename it, and what do you plan to do next?--I kept it brief). He complimented me as a cruncher in terms of stats, and said I'd be welcome to join both a new forum and 'new BOINC teams that are forming'. None of the issues regarding the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science were addressed at all.

I reconnected with my team at the redesigned forum, met with one of the other major project founders (Richard Prins), and there was a large thread with people confused and angry over being kicked off, assuming that it had been an official group decision. Noone had found out that sabotage was involved, since without knowing the team's ID, it is now impossible to find the original team prior to its re-creation from scratch--from a user's perspective, it just seemed to disappear. Many also assumed it was part of re-starting the forum, and many conspiracy theories abounded. Now that I've cleared up the mystery, the general consensus of 99% of those responding thus far is that they would like to be reinstated to the team and would like the credits back, so basically the consensus has not changed now that it's been a few days and more people are aware that suddenly they're not on a team. Therefore, I stated that I'd developed contacts at BOINC and at SETI and promised to work to reinstate the team and its credits ASAP. Many are waiting to rejoin until it's cleared up, fearing that newly acquired credits may be lost when the team IDs are merged, so most have decided to set SETI, Einstein, and LHC to NNT until it's cleared up (most are involved in other projects which were unaffected). I also contacted Rosetta@home's admin, and we managed to avert any vandalism there, since within about 10 minutes of me contacting him, he researched the issue a bit and replaced OBC as team founder, with myself as current temporary founder until one with a higher RAC decides to take the reins.

Other than that, it's basically the same. I know it's contingent on me to send the necessary emails conveying the will of the team, but I do so even more confidently than before now that more team members have contributed their opinions. Many are concerned that Richard Dawkins as a political/social figure may attract these sort of attacks, so there is a small group that wants to simultaneously rename the entire team to something like 'rationalreasoning' or something, but that is a debate for another time, once the primary isssue is cleared up.

Thanks for the continued attention, and I'll do my best to get cracking on the email and messaging front.

Thanks again to Ageless, to anyone who's following this thread, and to fellow RDFRS teammates that are now monitoring this thread. Take care, all.

Best regards,

StandardbredHorse

---

Just wanted to jump in here to wish you the best of luck getting this resolved. Hope everything turns out for the best for you and your teammates.

Just wanted to jump in here to wish you the best of luck getting this resolved. Hope everything turns out for the best for you and your teammates.

Perryjay, browsing to this topic to check for updates and running across your message really made my morning - no hyperbole; I was kind of groggy and took a deep sigh and wondered exactly what I'd see, and there was your post. I wish there were more like yours. Thank you very much.

I don't want to swing the mood negative, but in the meantime, if you are on a team, make sure to spread the word to your founders/admins, because as it stands now, anyone can get their team jacked via this backdoor method. I hope not only to get our team fixed, but hope it's a loophole that BOINC admin can get closed--even when/if we get our team back, we believe in the spirit of *fair* competition, and to see another team taken out in a similar way would be just as unacceptable to me--and it looks like it is to you as well. Again, thank you so much, and be careful!

Take care for now,

*friendly nickers and a gentle whuffle*
StandardbredHorse

I too sincerely hope you can get this issue sorted out. Losing a team in that way must be heartbreaking for you and your team mates, especially as it appears it was a very active team that was destroyed by a malicious individual with ulterior motives.

Hi Standard,

I'm following the conversation on your forums.

Something for OBC to give to Seti admins, if he hasn't done so yet. His IP address. If he hasn't returned any work lately, the actions of the "other person" - so to say - may have left behind an IP address. Do know that around this time Seti was also hacked, it may be coincidence, it may not.

OBC can log in to his account by using this link. (Not at this time, as Seti has their weekly maintenance, so their database is down. Try tomorrow)

And then there is this little thing that user names aren't unique. Only the email address used to register with is unique, but other than that we could all call ourselves obscured by clouds. Just pointing out that while his name is on the team/account, it may not be this OBC.

As for his login, on BOINC projects he can make certain people team Administrators. They have some function, can kick off some members, but never intrude in the way as has happened here.

---

Seti's done database restoration to the 16th of January. Welcome back, team Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

---

I've never had a dog in this fight, but have been following along.
Kudos to the SETI staff for their expertise and leg work. A lot of other sites wouldn't have put forth this much effort, much less go through the hassle of a restore to rectify things. As usual, three cheers and/or beers to the men and women behind the curtain.

Will LHC@home be restored? , RDFRS vanished from there as well,
there is a new team called "The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official)"

but that is no good, because the name must remain consistent among all projects.
and all other projects are using "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science"

Seti's done database restoration to the 16th of January. Welcome back, team Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

That's the same Team ID 140509 that David found right at the beginning of this thread - it's the recreation, not the original.

With a total credit of under ~11K cobbles and six active members, there wasn't much recovered from the backup either.

But if they have got Jan 16 back, I did offer to pull a membership list out of the xml dump - still stands.

Seti's done database restoration to the 16th of January. Welcome back, team Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

That's the same Team ID 140509 that David found right at the beginning of this thread - it's the recreation, not the original.

You're right. Sorry for the confusion. :-)

The team's resurrection has been put on hold until it's clear who done what.

---

As usual, three cheers and/or beers to the men and women behind the curtain.

You're right. Sorry for the confusion. :-)

The team's resurrection has been put on hold until it's clear who done what.

That does it... gimme my beer back. :) :) :)

Gimme that damn beer (j/k). Men, and women, stallions and mares (and geldings)I am so sorry for the prolonged absence, but a family member of mine with cancer suddenly collapsed and required my presence at shifts in the hospital, and I have been one beleaguered equine lately. This had fallen by the wayside.

I think it's pretty clear in my chats to OBC that (s)he is willing to help in any way possible, but states that (s)he cannot even get in to re-rename the team, since (s)he is no longer a member even though listed as founder (i.e., see the "Aset" team with 0 members). I am inclined to believe OBC at this point, and believe it has been ascertained that this was clear sabotage and either it is unadmitted or definitely hacked. I've put forth my best investigational effort and found no evidence of foul play amongst any of our team founders even after rigorous questioning that threatened to tear our team apart at the seams due to mistrust. I don't know how much close we could've taken it to the brink without out-and-out accusations. I believe OBC.

Thus, after my extended emergency absence (please note that I may have other days here and there when unavailable due to follow-up emergency care), I have fired off the below email to David and CC'd you, Ageless. I hope this is enough, not too much, but it's the best and briefest summary I know how to give as a social sciences major with a perfect verbal ACT and SAT score:




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thom Yorke/RABN Horse <xxxxbigstallionsruleandsodoesradiohead@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 1:18 AM
Subject: BOINC software/database problem regarding sabotage, teams, inappropriate behaviour
To: davexxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
Cc: xxxAgelessxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx



Hello David,

I have heard many good things about you as the progenitor, or one of the progenitors of the BOINC project as a whole, a contributor to SETI and perhaps other projects, and as a 'guru' of sorts when it comes to BOINC. I hope you can help me with my problem. Brevity is not my strong point, so I will give it a go, as I understand you like things to be brief--it's a complex problem, and hopefully a simple solution.

I believe you have been briefed by Ageless, a forum moderator at the BOINC forums, so you may already have a basic understanding of the situation. A family member of mine was in the hospital for weeks, so as my team's appointed leader, I have failed in getting the task accomplished quickly, but I'd like to finish now if I can. I need some good news.

Recently, there has been some inappropriate behaviour and unintended use of the team functionality regarding stats compilation and database manipulation by who we believe to be a hacker. This was in regards to the statistics compilation for RDFRS, or the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science--a team which we have built from the ground up since 2005, one cobblestone at a time, exponentially building to be a populist powerhouse, 750 members strong and among the top teams overall and on each individual BOINC project. Ageless has taken the time to research original Team IDs in the SETI project as well as to follow our team's message board, and this issue unfortunately affects the SETI. Einstein and LHC projects. Through quick action by both myself and project admins, Rosetta and other projects were able to avert the vandalism before it occurred and/or before the databases updated and uploaded to the stats sites. We had a diverse group of founders, so it is just these several projects that have been affected.

In the software, you have tried to prevent vandalism and sabotage by writing in code which prevents a team founder from kicking active members off of a team which has accumulated credit. Unfortunately, someone has found a way to circumvent the protection you built in via a backdoor method which has now been published on the BOINC forums and is ready to be used again by the next saboteur. I fear not only for the statistical compilation, which provides motivation for many a cruncher, but also for the possible integrity of the databases for each individual project. A wave of vandalism, sabotage and subterfuge awaits inaction by BOINC.

To resummarise briefly, someone, on 2 separate occasions, used their power (whether legitimately or illegitimately obtained) as team "founder" to deactivate/kick off members of our team who had accumulated credit--a supposedly impossible feat. The saboteur removed team members one by one, then renamed the team to a gibberish name, leaving a multimillion (approx. 15,000,000 credits/cobblestones) team in shambles creditwise. On or around 27-Apr-2010 (though probably done on 25-Apr, as SETI's db was down for maintenance), here is the result from SETI, with our original Team ID: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=129421.This happened with the same saboteur at Einstein@home on or around 25-Apr 2010. Over 10,000,000 credits were lost on that occasion. The same happened at project LHC@home at about the same time. In all three cases, the same saboteur was at fault and used the same method: removing all team members, both active and past, leaving the founder as the only team member and then renaming the team (with millions of credits, since they could not delete the team) to a nonsensical name, thus circumventing the protective coding you and others built into the BOINC software. This backdoor method has now been published for all to see at the BOINC forum at a thread which I believe you briefly visited:http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=5493

Temporarily, we (Ageless, other forum mods, my team and myself) believe this can be fixed by merging the old team ID with new ones that were created by RDFRS team members who were anxious to restart the team in some form, even if it was from 'scratch', i.e., 0 credits. I would like to exercise this option if possible. However, on a permanent basis, I'd also like to prevent it from occurring to my or any other team. In the spirit of fair play and friendly competition representing and quantifying scientific advancement in the form of token representation of our individual and collective contribution, which I believe to be the foundation of the cobblestone system, we'd like to see the system be preserved as intended and such a situation be prevented in the future by preventing a team from being renamed without the consensus of a group in question, i.e., not unilaterally and with deleterious motives, and particularly for such a large and productive group. In all cases, the saboteur took the pseudonym "Obscured By Clouds". If you are interested, I can include chat transcripts where the actual member named OBC (a legitimate and respected member of our forum who is willing to cooperate in any way possible) denies purposeful subterfuge and claims innocence, stating it must have been a hacker. I can provide links to our team's forum, as can Ageless, who is very familiar with our plight. Nobody on our team is aware of any reason why this may have occurred despite rigorous and thorough questioning of all team founders. We believe it to be the work of a malicious hacker who somehow gained access to the database to undermine a team based on a political or religious reason. The integrity of a database is almost holy in the world of science, and if a hacker has gained access to the stats database, who is to say that (s)he has not gained access to other areas?

We would like our credits reinstated. We are one of the top 100 teams, and in some projects one of the top 10 teams, and we consistently rank under #100 in many projects. Please note the dates in question in graph form at: http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_team_graph.php?pr=bo&id=133060where we plummeted from over 73 million total credits to just over 50 million in less than 2 days.

We understand a similar situation happened to SETI.USA and was resolved, and we would like to get our situation resolved similarly. Please reinstate our credits and merge our teams using the team IDs which have already been determined through detective work on the respective forum(s).

If you need any further supporting evidence that this was not an 'inside job', a purposeful renaming, or any other information that may assist you in investigating and rectifying the problem, please feel free to email me and/or work with the forum mods who are familiar with our case. We have full stats, chat transcripts with OBC including PMs to OBC as founder, and all other supporting evidence. You have our entire team of over 750 members (currently 550 due to ~200 members still unaware they are not crunching for RDFRS as well as retirees) at your disposal, with me as spokesperson and BOINC mods and developers from SETI and other projects also at your service. While we do not want to take an inordinate amount of time away from your important scientific work, we believe this issue to be relevant enough *to* the furtherment of said scientific work that you'll perhaps be willing to invest the relatively small time by giving your go-ahead and any expertise you have in 1) reinstating our team and 2) preventing the situation from happening again via small changes to the software (having already been made by certain project admins), action(s) without which could unfortunately perhaps unleash a flood of complaints and pandemonium from other teams affected; it takes only several weeks once published for saboteurs to gain an advantage on developers now that the backdoor stats undermining method is published. Please help to preempt by showing that BOINC and its projects will not tolerate such behaviour from anyone and is being proactive in preventing such vandalous acts, and please help to maintain the fun competitive spirit of the stats comps.

I thank you for any help you can give. Again, my apologies, but a personal emergency kept me from following up more immediately. However, Ageless and a small group of BOINC/SETI devs has already done much of the work in determining what it may take to reinstate us. They just need the go-ahead from you to initiate action. I beg of you to please rectify this situation not only for RDFRS, but for the health of the BOINC system overall.

Again, any information you could possibly need is only an email or forum post away. I and my team anxiously await your response.

Thanks and best regards,

Mic Morose, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

*****************************************************************


I hope this is OK. A bit longer than I'd liked, but maybe some edits by the forum could help (if you can preserve the unique ideas and nuance).

Thanks all for the attention after a couple weeks of inactivity. Lemme know what y'all think.

StandardbredHorse
*huge relieved nickers*

---

Whoa...my edit button disappeared in just a few hours. I'd meant to clarify that in my chats to OBC, (s)he said that (s)he could no longer log in to the team or team founder's account at SETI because (s)he was no longer a team member either. I'm inclined to believe that, since it does show OBC as founder, but the number of team members says '0' and OBC is not getting credit for crunching SETI according to BoincStats (or at least wasn't that day I checked). So...we have a team that exists, 'ASET' is not reporting to BoincStats with 15,000,000 credits because it has 0 members, so the credits are effectively buried and OBC, even as team founder, is locked out of the account. In some respects, it looks like the 'perfect crime' has been committed. Once again, I looked for the ASET team to take the defunct/modded/hacked RDFRS team's place in the stats, and it didn't because of the 0 members thing. Therefore, the 15m credits are in limbo, statistically speaking. Deviously brilliant in a disgustingly unsportscreaturelike way.

So it seems that, if there's a way (and a will?) the way forward would be to merge the existing members back in to the original team once an admin or someone with the appropriate privilege levels goes in and renames the team from 'ASET' back to RDFRS. Am I naive to think it's that simple? If they cannot be manually merged, I have already asked most (not all, that's kind of impossible) of the team members if they'd mind being kicked off the new team in order to rejoin the old team, and so if that same person w/admin privileges were to kick off the members of the new RDRFS team and each member had to rejoin, we'd retain the 15m credits and only lose the several thousand that have accumulated since the incident happened (though ideally we wouldn't have to lose any contributions). Also, the team name with "official" in it could be done away with, since the 'official' team is the only team with the original name. I've already spoken with those who started the 'official' team and their intent was to recreate the original, since at the time they had gotten some message like "there is already a team with this name, please choose again'...there must've been a lag time in between when the team members were kicked out (it must have taken a while to kick several hundred members off a team manually) and when the team was renamed, and those 2-3 members happened to be online and returning results at that time (which is not unusual given the international/global nature of our team). So...there's the deal: 3 teams: 1 original (15m), 1 recreated identically named team with different ID, and 1 almost-identical team with 'official' in the name, all needing a merge and hopefully with an eye towards preserving all old and new credits and members as much as possible.

I know it's work for someone, I don't know what the currency of such a menial task would be other than its own reward in the name of science and volunteerism, or if we could somehow between us come up with a trade or reward for the person who does it, but there's the issue laid out as plainly as I can, with reasoning, choices, and basically everything but procedural protocol of which I know nothing. I've pretty much got a team consensus, which is amazing given the team's relative size (and by consensus, I mean virtually unanimous, with the only exemptions being 1) people wanting a new, less conspicuous cross-project name so that we're not a target, and 2) people who are unsure that they want to join the new team again given the fiasco due to losing credits in the meantime, which I think is a shame...actually I think both 1 and 2 are a shame). We are talking about doing a coordinated, purposeful name change after all of this so that the Dawkins name isn't such a target for hackers. For example, as stated earlier, the first drop in stats put the team exactly one spot below "Christians", and the second put it right by "Stormfront Nationalist White Community". Coincidence? Hmm...I can do more than just count with my hooves.

The only thing missing is motive, and the only thing we can come up with is hacking. There was some acrimony when the message boards were being retooled, but the compromise was soon ironed out to everyone's satisfaction when 'rationalskepticism.org' was used as a temporary board site for all to remain in contact until the RDFRS boards were finished restructuring. An internal attack would have had to come from a team founder, who not only vigorously denies it, but is offering to be cc'd on the letter to David (which I forgot to do) and cooperate to the fullest extent possible with us. So...I'd say this is clear-cut. Obscured By Clouds name is cleared IMO, and (s)he is willing to cooperate in any way possible.

Thanks to anyone who summarises my posts. I can be bad with the stream-of-consciousness. I just forgot to add a few things to David's letter that are probably of importance, namely OBL's willingness to be brought in to the process as former team founder. Perhaps (s)he had an easy-to-guess password.

Thanks also to any dev/volunteer/anyone willing to help. BTW, once it's all sorted out, all atheist/agnostics/rational skeptics are willing to join our BOINC endeavours, we maintain a presence on every BOINC project, and if we do a name-change, it will be seamlessly integrated, timed in a coordinated fashion, and transparent to the individual team member.

*friendly departing whinny*
StandardbredHorse

Whoa...my edit button disappeared in just a few hours.

You have 60 minutes between posting your post and editing it. After 60 minutes the edit button will be hidden.

---

Thanks for the tip, Ageless...I'll be careful to get those edits in as needed. I'm a big self-editor, so often a stream-of-consciousness can be diverted by rocks of brevity. Appreciate it.

Standardbred Horse