I was at a loss when I went the Seti@home url and saw the changes, but no great. I activated my account, got a new 7 million digit account number, then logged on to check my stats. I did not understand why nothing newer than 15 mar 05 showed up on my individual stats, so I wandered into the message boards and read and read and read and finally figured out they are shutting down Seti@home and moving it over to BOINC application, and the "classic" stats will be updated then. I also noticed alot of comments about "credits vs. WU" So I wanted to post a reply in the forum, only to be told that I didnt have sufficent "credit" to post a message or reply!!!!!!!!WTFO????

So with 1750 hours of MY computer time DONATED to complete 857 Seti "Classic" work units I did not yet rate the ability to post a message to the forum.

I am not, nor do I have the time to be a super geek about this project, I participated because I belive in the cause, and what was nice about it is participation on my part, constitued nothing more than leave my computers up and running, feed the electricity and change the odd fan or power supply that died to constant use and every once in awhile check the web site out to see how I was moving up in the stats to get a little feel of actually having contributed.

Nothing more than a newsletter would have helped explain what was going on with the changeover; this would not have been hard to do as users have thier e-mail on file with the enrollment. But the real kicker is not being able to post - that is just rude and insulting.

Now with a service that depends on "donated" computer time, a little more thought might have gone into this switch to make it an easier/less confusing transition for the "classic" SETI users. As it is I feel you are going to lose alot of the smaller individual users for some of the same reasons I feel put out about it.

Dan Wilson
FTFFTW@Cox.net

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The classic page is http://seticlassic.ssl.berkeley.edu/ and for many months now the second paragraph at the top of the page has read:

NOTICE: SETI@home is switching to new software called BOINC, which lets you run other projects (like Climateprediction.net and Einstein@home) on your computer as well as SETI@home. Please visit our new SETI@home/BOINC web site.

And the news section of this site for June 1, 2005 reads:

We are switching the http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ URL to point here. The SETI@home Classic web site has been moved to http://seticlassic.ssl.berkeley.edu.

You seem to have posted here OK, what's the big deal?

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Help and BOINC documentation is available here.

We have had a problem with trolls and spammers in the main fourms, and the way that stopped them was to require a small amount of earned credit before posting there. One of them used an automated script and cause thousands of new threade to be created and the administrators had to take about 2 days to clean up after the bastard. Now, all new users are paying the penalty for those few who abused the BBS. And since classic credit does not generate BOINC credit (it only appears on your home page) each person is starting from 0 when they get here.

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BOINC WIKI

A) if you say you can't post a message how exactly did you post this message?

B) The need for credit before posting in the forums is to prevent spammers and other such annoyances who would otherwise abuse this forum. Before this, one person using some malicious code caused several thousand new threads to be posted and it took the moderators days to clean up the forums.

C) Paragraph 2 on the Classic site said for months that they were moving to BOINC and suggested going there.

D) Whats confusing about moving to BOINC? You download a new program, stick in two bits of information having activated your account and away you go.

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.