David, this is NOT meant as a flame, so please don't take it that way. Although, I did read what you, ksnash and several others were saying about BOINC over at the house of "Classic" about a year or so ago. And, I don't remember reading where anyone, doing BOINC, said you or any other "Classic" cruncher were "stupid" for not making the switch. But, that's beside the point....
What makes you think that the work being done on SETI II, under BOINC, is any less important, or any less effective than "Classic" was? We're doing the same work here as was done at "Classic". The only 2 changes is the software and the credit system. Obviously, by now, you know that with BOINC you can do work on more than one project at the same time. The advantage is that if one project is down or out of work temporarily, the other[s] can take up the slack. And, credits, well credits are credits. I'm in this for the science, although it's nice to see something that shows I'm contributing to the science.

The point is that most everything evolves. Just look at computers for instance. My calculator has more computing power than computers of decades ago. I would just like to see the acceptance of said evolution. Nothing stays the same, everything changes. Some day, maybe 6 years from now, something better than BOINC will come along and replace it. If and when that happens, I can see it now: people asking why no more BOINC and this new "thing" is a piece of crap. Just as it happened with the "Classic"/BOINC fiasco. Peace.... (-:<

Under no circumstances do I take it as a flame Siran.

1. There were MANY posts on the Classic boards by those from BOINC telling us how we HAD to switch, we had no choice.... I WISH THOSE BOARDS WERE STILL OPEN SO I COULD QUOTE...... Believe me Siran, they were there! I have dedicated 3 machines to Einstein, BUT, that is my only 'extra-curricular' activity on BOINC... I LOST a machine when SETI went down, it filled the cache with einstein units and now I cannot BUY a seti work unit for it! The end result, seti KILLED a p-4 HT machine, doing a WU every 22 mins (2 threads at 44 mins each) running 24/7. Berkeleys comment "OH WELL"........ THAT is what irritates me... their cavalier attitude! Now, Einstein is getting that box, and seti isnt!

2. You DID totally mis-understand me! I DO BELIVE SETI BOINC IS WORTHWHILE (from the science standpoint) or I WOULDNT BE HERE WITH AN RAC OF 7k+! Our griping and complaining (which you read) was ONLY because we wanted to finish classic with DIGNITY... and were not given that option. I started with it, and was GOING to finish it... THEN move to BOINC. It was NOT done on the open board, but I sent several e-mails to the REALLY high powered Classic Crunchers, trying to get them to come to BOINC with me, some did with a SMALL portion of their classic farms, some did not. IF the message boards still existed, I could take you to several threads that I ASKED people to join me HERE! I griped, but still BELIEVED in SETI. (STILL DO BTW)

ML1 --- by your description mine is a "thin air" guess. The day classic closed there were (+/-) 5.4 million "users" of classic...... we all know a large number were inactive, so lets say that 10% still crunched in some form or another. That's roughly 500,000 crunchers....... by your figures 300K +/- came to boinc. I said HORSEPOWER... not # of crunchers..... how many of those 300K brought 1 box and how many brought 120 boxes?

I have 15 and brought them all (except 2 celerons on Einstein). I KNOW one cruncher who has 120 boxes... and what he is running is on Einstien, NONE of the 100K+ crunchers from classic (except Clay) that I knew of came to SETI boinc with their entire farms.

Yes, my numbers are empirical, but I really think they are fairly close based on what I HEARD and SEE!

OF COURSE I WANT AN AWARD... but that AWARD is to see MY total cobbled-up-bobble-head-thingies GOING UP! I can't EVER catch Clay on TPS... does it BOTHER ME... NO!!!! I recently PASSED SEDIAZ... I threatened to shut boxes down so as NOT to pass him, and was RESOUNDINGLY reprimanded for "mercy crunching".... the 3 of us are chasing each other.... but whatever order of credit we end up with, if we succeed, it will be against each other's BEST EFFORT..... my boxes are still all at stage 5 afterburner!

This is what was lost with Classic. The FRIENDLY competition within a team, or a few guys/gals in battling each other! I do NOT see the 'comraderie' on these boards that I did on the classic boards, and that, more than anything about this project makes me very very sad. I hope, that SOMEDAY it will become like that....

People Like Paul.... that was their vision... how many more will throw in the towel???? I dont know, but one is entirely too many!

I intend this to be my last post on this topic...... but, "ya never know, ya know" (quote from Curt Sowulo, master cruncher)

1. There were MANY posts on the Classic boards by those from BOINC telling us how we HAD to switch, we had no choice.... ... Berkeleys comment "OH WELL"........ THAT is what irritates me... their cavalier attitude! ...

I can see that must be felt by some. But also, I can't see what else Berkeley can possibly do or could have done for Classic. They kept Classic alive by various creative means for a very long time past its funding, and on hardware that was desperately needed elsewhere. I thought that their one year period of grace to let people drift over to Boinc was a very good move. It was a shame that they had a series of hardware and overload problems in the critical last two weeks. However, they kept things patched up and accepted results for some time after the cut-off day where they stopped issuing WUs.

There's literally Millions of participants and a team of just 3 or 4 people at Berkeley and only Matt L is full time for s@h! A million-to-one is long odds! I'm glad that Matt L or the others are not distracted more than what they are already with these forums and emails.

2. ... I DO BELIVE SETI BOINC IS WORTHWHILE (from the science standpoint) or I WOULDNT BE HERE WITH AN RAC OF 7k+! Our griping and complaining (which you read) was ONLY because we wanted to finish classic with DIGNITY... and were not given that option. ...

By "finish classic", do you mean clearing all the WU data? Or what exactly?

There was no 'finish' point as such. There is a steady supply of data and some vague time that Science would move on to new ideas and methods. If there was a 'finish point' for classic, that was at the time the reobservation units had been crunched. Since then, the continued processing results have been added to the science database for future analysis.

The next big jumps in gathering science are: the s@h-enhanced client that searches the existing WUs with greater sensitivity and so searches a much larger volume of space; and the 'near-real-time' graphical display summary of the science database so that 'interesting signals' can be visually noticed as the results come in.

Meanwhile, the big crunch continues and looks set to continue indefinitely until our technology can outstrip the processing requirements.

ML1 --- by your description mine is a "thin air" guess. The day classic closed there were ... I said HORSEPOWER... not # of crunchers.....

There's a post by Matt L somewhere that mentions that the Boinc s@h participants had outstripped the s@h-Classic compute rate. I would guess that the last few classic die-hards would be disproportionately the "power" crunchers to chase the last of the big stats.

... OF COURSE I WANT AN AWARD... but that AWARD is to see MY total cobbled-up-bobble-head-thingies GOING UP! I can't EVER catch Clay on TPS... does it BOTHER ME... NO!!!! ... if we succeed, it will be against each other's BEST EFFORT..... my boxes are still all at stage 5 afterburner!

This is what was lost with Classic. The FRIENDLY competition within a team, or a few guys/gals in battling each other! I do NOT see the 'comraderie' on these boards that I did on the classic boards, ...

These forums form a 'new group' of people. From what I've seen and partake in, there's a lot of comradrie between naturally formed cliques of people. Others are equally welcome to join or become involved. I've little interest in the stats but there's plenty of others happy to enthuse in various threads as no doubt you've seen.

Be welcome onboard. These forums and this project are what you make it.

The devs have got to be aloof so that they can get their work done. Just like the friendly digestive bugs in your stomach, we're just a bunch of happy symbiotic parasites on the scheme of things just having fun and helping the science along!

Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

My apologies to Paul for taking this a bit OT, but a response is required here...

David Anderson realized though that he could fund SETI on the back of BOINC. To get funding for BOINC it had to appeal to a much wider audience than SETI alone. With many DC projects involved there had to be compromises, BOINC couldn't be slanted towards SETI only. With compromise, it's inevitable that it won't be ideal.
But it simpy boils down to no SETI or a compromized SETI. Nothing new really, SETI@Home was a compromize after the US Senate killed NASAs' SETI budget.

Not sure what planet you have been on, but it is fairly certain that David Anderson is much more interested in BOINC than in SETI specifically. Besides the fact that he is a computer scientist rather than an astronomer, he has more-or-less stated this publicly (e.g., in the CPDN video just before their BOINC startup).

Secondly, the dissent and dissatisfaction that I see (and once felt too) seems to originate when participants believe that we are something more than just that; when we believe that we are more than just volunteers; when we believe they we are stake-holders in BOINC and/or SETI - We're not (with a few exceptions), we can donate our CPU cycles, we can donate hardware and even money, but we don't own BOINC, or even a share of it. If just participating in the Science and the fun of credits and rankings isn't enough for us, we are not going to be satisfied.

Some seem to think that they are 'owed' something by the projects they join; that there is some onus on the project to guarantee some service level; that they will get work from a project; that their ideas must be listened to. None of this is true, we are volunteers, no more. We can chose the projects we join, when we run run work. There just isn't any more to it.

Okay...time to say this yet again...it is the basic nature of volunteering that feelings of "stake-holdership" or being "owed something" arise. This is not unique to SETI, BOINC, or DC projects in general. Nothing you or anyone else can say will change this fact about voulnteerism! (There is plenty of literature on this topic).

More importantly, as your own language indicates, we are RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS (note that this is not the same as research subjects, which itself has unique implications). As such, we are guaranteed numerous rights under granting agency guidlines (here that is under NSF), many of which, somewhat ironically, are very similar to those "ideals" that Paul Buck proposed.

ML1 --- by your description mine is a "thin air" guess. The day classic closed there were (+/-) 5.4 million "users" of classic...... we all know a large number were inactive, so lets say that 10% still crunched in some form or another. That's roughly 500,000 crunchers....... by your figures 300K +/- came to boinc. I said HORSEPOWER... not # of crunchers..... how many of those 300K brought 1 box and how many brought 120 boxes?

As far as horsepower the BOINC version of SETI surpassed classic about a month after going public (sometime in july 2004). Granted it would have been nice to have all the crunch power from classic move over but that also means the classic version was kept alive for about a year after it had been replaced. I know you may be tempted to look back and say 'but classic was still returning more workunits' this may be true since that data is based the rate of workunits inserted into the science database, not the raw returns.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

... However, they kept things patched up and accepted [Classic] results for some time after the cut-off day where they stopped issuing WUs.

Not from my Macs they didn't. First of all, the "upgrade to BOINC" error dialogs that started appearing in mid-November (IIRC) stalled processing on each system until it was manually dismissed—and was completely pointless for the systems running an earlier Mac OS than v10.3 because there was no BOINC client for them anyway. (I understand some of the reasons for dropping support for these nominally obsolete systems, but IMO they should have been allowed to crunch out their last days in peace.) Secondly, for the last couple of weeks before the official deadline pretty well every WU the Macs produced was rejected as a duplicate, again stalling work until the error message could be cleared.

Now I don't agree with everything David1339 said, but his phrase "we wanted to finish classic with DIGNITY" certainly struck a chord with me. Back in mid-December, were it not for my years of mostly fun and educational experiences with the project—and, some might say, my lack of a life ;) —I wouldn't have bothered installing BOINC at all.

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... I KNOW we lost 50% plus of the classic horsepower.... maybe closer to 75%.

Where does that figure come from? Or is it just a "finger in the air" number for dramatic effect?

87.4% of all statistics are made up.

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... I KNOW we lost 50% plus of the classic horsepower.... maybe closer to 75%.

Where does that figure come from? Or is it just a "finger in the air" number for dramatic effect?

87.4% of all statistics are made up.

LOL, is that the empirical tabulation from the theorum:

"Figures don't lie, but liars do figure..."? :-)

Alinator

hmm,,
As I scroll down the list I notice some stars, but I notice a lot more without stars. Then I remember what I was taught many years ago by my grandfather. He told me that only the cream rises to the top, that this is true in all things in life. That most of the people will go along and expect things for free all their life. It is not their fault, but the fault of their teachers in life. But the cream, the cream will always rise to the top, it will always give more than the rest. You see, you can drink the milk, but the cream, well it is made into many things, it gives much more than just the milk.

So here is my 2 cents, for all you beer drinkers, take the money from a simple case of beer you would have bought this month, and send it to SETI.

For all you smokers out there, take what you would have spent on 2 packs of cigs. Send that to SETI instead, double benefit there, helps the needed, and your health.

And for all the Soda drinkers out there, take the money from 2 12 packs and send it to SETI, be less sugar in your diet, and less calories.


See we all can make excuses for why we so called cant give, but when it comes down to it, its all about the cream.

And yes, I know this post is off base for this thread, but if not posted here, then many would never see it. For we can always choose to never go into the donation thread, and those never feel guilty for not supporting what we like to do.

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Beach Bums Current Stats:


Come Join us at Hawaiian Beach Bums

]
87.4% of all statistics are made up.

And 90% of those are wrong. Including this one.

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]
87.4% of all statistics are made up.

And 90% of those are wrong. Including this one.

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hmm,,
As I scroll down the list I notice some stars, but I notice a lot more without stars. Then I remember what I was taught many years ago by my grandfather. He told me that only the cream rises to the top, that this is true in all things in life.

Gramps was wrong.

Look down the toilet the next many times you make doo-doo. Depending on what you eat an your state of health, you will make floaters and sinkers.
This is true in all things in life - you may be a floater, you may be a sinker, but all crap is equal, and in the end, you will go down the drain.

Now go donate. It will not make you a better person, but it will help this project.

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"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?"

This is true in all things in life - you may be a floater, you may be a sinker, but all crap is equal, and in the end, you will go down the drain.

::looks around:: This is the NC crap thread?

Geez, I get busy for a couple weeks and one of the more talented, tireless and selfless contributors plans and executes his exit.

Paul: You've contributed more light to extinguish the dark ignorance that is pervasive in this voluntary endeavor than 99% of the populace; I'm sorry that the administrativa were too busy with their own pursuits to at least lend an ear and a nod when it was needed. Based on the volume of praise in this thread alone, there should be no doubt in your mind that you and your contributions will be sorely missed.

Good luck in your pursuits and enjoy your well-earned rest. Most of us will be here when you feel up to stopping in again.

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Stewie: So, is there any tread left on the tires? Or at this point would it be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway?

Fox Sunday (US) at 9PM ET/PT

I've been for a while absent to this pages and to my astonishment one of the most prominent people 'Paul' seems to have vanished from this boards and from the project...for reasons that I don't fully understand even not after reading this whole thread. Could someone explain in a few words?

Greetings and respect to Paul

Depending on the answers I even might consider a dead-stop on all my computers for SETI...

Greetz ;-)

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;o)

;o)

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Semper Eadem
So long Paul, it has been a hell of a ride.

Park your ego's, fire up the computers, Science YES, Credits No.

Semper Eadem
So long Paul, it has been a hell of a ride.

Park your ego's, fire up the computers, Science YES, Credits No.

That's as good and succinct a summary as you can get!

Happy crunchin'!
It's all for the Science and Mankind!!

Regards,
Martin

[edit] Musical link missquote added :-) [/edit]

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

My apologies to Paul for taking this a bit OT, but a response is required here...

David Anderson realized though that he could fund SETI on the back of BOINC. To get funding for BOINC it had to appeal to a much wider audience than SETI alone. With many DC projects involved there had to be compromises, BOINC couldn't be slanted towards SETI only. With compromise, it's inevitable that it won't be ideal.
But it simpy boils down to no SETI or a compromized SETI. Nothing new really, SETI@Home was a compromize after the US Senate killed NASAs' SETI budget.

Not sure what planet you have been on, but it is fairly certain that David Anderson is much more interested in BOINC than in SETI specifically. Besides the fact that he is a computer scientist rather than an astronomer, he has more-or-less stated this publicly (e.g., in the CPDN video just before their BOINC startup).

Let's see now, to quote from Dr Andersons' web entry:
I work as a Research Scientist at the U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, where I run the BOINC and SETI@home projects.

Note, works in the SSL, not the Computer Science Department.

SETI@Home began years before BOINC was conceived, and Dr Anderson ran that project. SETI funding ended several years ago, and I think it certain that his interest in SETI did not simply simply end then.

Unlike you, I cannot say that he is more or less interested in which aspects of BOINC and SETI. I can say is that he was well known to original SETI crunchers as the SETI@Home project director, and is now the directs both SETI and BOINC.
It doesn't take a mental giant ti fill in the gaps.

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David Anderson realized though that he could fund SETI on the back of BOINC. To get funding for BOINC it had to appeal to a much wider audience than SETI alone. With many DC projects involved there had to be compromises, BOINC couldn't be slanted towards SETI only. With compromise, it's inevitable that it won't be ideal.
But it simpy boils down to no SETI or a compromized SETI. Nothing new really, SETI@Home was a compromize after the US Senate killed NASAs' SETI budget.

Not sure what planet you have been on, but it is fairly certain that David Anderson is much more interested in BOINC than in SETI specifically. Besides the fact that he is a computer scientist rather than an astronomer, he has more-or-less stated this publicly (e.g., in the CPDN video just before their BOINC startup).

[/quote]

Let's see now, to quote from Dr Andersons' web entry:
I work as a Research Scientist at the U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, where I run the BOINC and SETI@home projects.

Note, works in the SSL, not the Computer Science Department.

SETI@Home began years before BOINC was conceived, and Dr Anderson ran that project. SETI funding ended several years ago, and I think it certain that his interest in SETI did not simply simply end then.

Unlike you, I cannot say that he is more or less interested in which aspects of BOINC and SETI. I can say is that he was well known to original SETI crunchers as the SETI@Home project director, and is now the directs both SETI and BOINC.
It doesn't take a mental giant ti fill in the gaps.
[/quote]

Okay...let's try this once more...I said he IS a computer scientist, not that he works in the computer science department. I am well aware of his role with the original SETI@home. And it takes even less of a mental giant to understand that (and I am paraphraisng him here from the CPDN video) when he says that the SETI project is less likely to succeed than other projects, less useful than other potential BOINC projects, and that he is most interested in distributed computing (and BOINC specifically) for the scientific community that he probably was not really concerned about how "he could fund SETI on the back of BOINC."

Let's see now, to quote from Dr Andersons' web entry:
I work as a Research Scientist at the U.C. Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, where I run the BOINC and SETI@home projects.

Note, works in the SSL, not the Computer Science Department.

SETI@Home began years before BOINC was conceived, and Dr Anderson ran that project. SETI funding ended several years ago, and I think it certain that his interest in SETI did not simply simply end then.

Having an office at SSL tells us much about where he works, but not alot about what he does or where his interests lie.

If you want to develop massively distributed processing projects, you need an application that would benefit from a whole lot of clock cycles.

... and if you are interested in "volunteer computing" you need a project that is sufficiently interesting to the potential volunteers.

Personally, I think the BOINC "experiment" is at least as interesting as the SETI experiment.

... and if I was a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology Department, I think there are ample research opportunities presented by BOINC and SETI -- like why do people spend thousands of dollars just to get a higher RAC?

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