<B><P>Oh, for Heaven's sake, stop whining, people!</B> If you can't stand the problems SETI has been having recently, fine, but they're doing the best they can. A few of you have had legitimate questions, but most of you, especially the more recent Classic users, are just whining. <B>Cut them some slack</B>. Points to remember before you rant:</P>
<P>1) <B>This distributed processing stuff is VERY new territory</B>, and with BOINC the people at Berkeley are trying to make it better to participate on ALL levels, including those who create these projects like Oxford and UWM. We are blazing new territory here. It's like were accompanying Lewis and Clark, and you are whining about not having roads and restaurants along the way.</P>
<P>2) <B>BOINC is going through an evolutionary process same as any other software</B>. Even as much as people complain about it, most people wouldn't be able to even RUN a computer if it weren't for Microsoft Windows. Most of you just pulled your PC out of the box, turned it on, and answered a few questions. Windows automates a tremendous amount of things that us old-timers had to hammer our way through with a great deal of difficulty. Most of you don't remember the tremendous difficulties we had with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. You never had to constantly tweak the config.sys, autoexec.bat, and system.ini files to get anything to run. <B>Right now, BOINC is the same way as Windows 3.1 used to be, so if you're looking for a quick fix to make BOINC run as smoothly as your operating system did right out of the box, you're in for a lot of heartbreak. Software is INVARIABLY far from ideal in the beginning</B>.</P>
<P>3) <B>Try to remember these people have FAR fewer resources than commercial software developers</B>. I'd bet World of Warcraft spent more in a WEEK in development costs than has been spent on all of SETI classic and BOINC combined, yet even Blizzard stumbled on their launch due to technical bugs and higher than anticipated demands. Berkeley is doing as well as they can with what they have.</P>
<P>4) <B>Berkeley doesn't owe us ANYTHING</B> but maybe an occasional posted "thanks" for participating. We are not paying them and they aren't paying us. They don't demand anything of us. Stop acting like SETI@HOME is a service they owe us. Personally, I feel lucky to participate in things like this, and if the current problems have caused me a little inconvenience fiddling with the software to cut down on the network access, so be it.</P>

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Aloha, Uli

I absolutely could not have said it better myself!

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A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!

Couldn't have said it better, Murasaki :)

Happy BOINCing

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