No doubt there will be the usual "flames" and massively heaped critcism as a result of this message, mainly based on the arguments that "the SETI team do it for nothing" and "we should all have patience" etc.etc.

This is just the view of an average Joe, I am NOT involved with any University or higher education but have a passing interest in Cosmology and was first attracted to the SETI project about 4-5 years ago. Started by reading the web site, downloaded SETI@HOME and let it soak up any spare cpu cycles on my work machine.

Easy to load, easy to use and nice to see the old credits clocking up. No significant cost to me and maybe I am helping in some small way - and you never know it might be MY processor that finds THE ONE.

A few months back had a quick look at the SETI site and see that a new version is available - based on something called BOINC (sounds like a kids ball game but not to worry). I like to be on the lateset version - hey those guys wouldn't spend all that time developing something new if it wasn't better would they?

It is now a few months on - my system has processed some units (but not many) - MOST of the time I get a message "No schedulers responded" - whatever a scheduler is OR "No work available". Net effect is that it all seems to have stopped working. So I get on the web site and after a bit of digging find this message board.


Whatever the reasons, whoever has fouled up is just irrelevant to a guy like me - it isn't working properly, hasn't been for months and looks like it won't be "seamless" for several months more.

But hey there is another project - this one is on climate prediction - let's try that - it took seconds to join, I got several WEEKS work immediately and my spare cycles are again contributing minutely to the greater good. I am a happy bunny, why would I turn SETI back on again? Give me a good reason and I will otherwise i'll let the old Pentium IV crunch some temperatures and pressures for a change.

One small loss for SETI - I am sure it will not make the slightest difference in the end but this whole new BOINC version is PERCEIVED to be a real non-starter. Several months in and still not working?

Paid, unpaid, part-time, full-time, student or professor makes no difference this has been badly planned and poorly executed.

My 2 cents worth.

Barry the Aviator

I'm the Aviator because I can fly.

hear hear!

The short answer: because you can.

If SETI is up, you can work on SETI and CPDN. If SETI goes down (or if CPDN goes down) then you can process for whichever project is up.

If one project runs out of work, you can crunch for the other one.

When Predictor moves to 4.05, you can crunch for three projects. Other projects are coming, building on top of the standard BOINC client.

... or focus on just one.

The BOINC scheduler will let you give 90% of your time to CPDN and 10% to SETI, or 50/50, or however you specify. If a project doesn't have work, then their time goes to the other projects.

> But hey there is another project - this one is on climate prediction - let's
> try that - it took seconds to join, I got several WEEKS work immediately and
> my spare cycles are again contributing minutely to the greater good. I am a
> happy bunny, why would I turn SETI back on again? Give me a good reason and I
> will otherwise i'll let the old Pentium IV crunch some temperatures and
> pressures for a change.

well IMHO I think you should turn back SETI again, with 4.05 you can run both CPDN & SETI, and soon Predictor will be at 4.05. The magic of BOINC (in my biased opinion) is that when a project is down or out of work, you can still crunch away on anothe project, and with the "task-splitting" in the 4.x clients you don't have to feel like one project is "hogging" everything (unless you want just one project of course!)

OK I lash myself with stinging nettles - I have BOINC v 4.05 and have been fed a nice steady trickle of SAH WUs and time-slicing with Predictor for the past few days - I admit I was wrong mea culpa, mea culpa.

All seems to be going smoothly, let's hope it lasts, still doesn't change my view about how badly this whole thing has been handled tho' - well at least the perception is that it has been handled badly - maybe just a complete inability to communicate effectively that creates that perception. Whatever.


I'm the Aviator because I can fly.

Barry,

I wish I could fly ... but every time I try I eat pavement ...

Is that because I don't own one of those "air" thingies?

By the way, there is more documentation, though it is now a little dated ... and I am in the process of putting time into solving that some with the new projects and such ...

Just think of BOINC as being a new OS (ok, I won't name names), where you want to wait to install it until SP1 comes out. :)

BOINC is in early days and we have Milestone 3 and 4 to get too still ... did we pass M2? I forget ...

anyway, early days yet ... actually most of the projects are still saying Beta (Predictor says Alpha) ... even V4 of the BOINC Software still says beta ...