A portable usb drive version of the software would be nice.

Questions and Answers : Wish list : A portable usb drive version of the software would be nice.
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NoyB

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Message 660740 - Posted: 16 Oct 2007, 23:01:16 UTC

Having a portable version of the software would be nice for places where it wouldn't be practical to install. ie a classroom environment where you might not have the same computer each day.
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Message 660813 - Posted: 17 Oct 2007, 0:31:50 UTC

This would make it real difficult to enforce the main policy which states that you must have permission to run SETI@Home on any particular system. Providing a USB version would make it easy for people to run it on many different systems without permission, which would encourage educational and workplace facilities to attempt to recover any perceived financial losses from theft of resources.

Also, a complete rewrite of the system would be required. To prevent cheating, the system expects to have the system that downloaded work to return that same workunit. If you download a workunit with computer X and return it with computer Y, there would be no way to verify if cheating were happening.


All that being said, there are ways to run BOINC-SETI on a USB drive simply by launching the installer and pointing to the USB disk as the destination directory. This process would simply require a manual launch of the program upon inserting the USB disk (which could also be automated via a script).
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Message 660934 - Posted: 17 Oct 2007, 2:12:09 UTC - in response to Message 660813.  

This would make it real difficult to enforce the main policy which states that you must have permission to run SETI@Home on any particular system. Providing a USB version would make it easy for people to run it on many different systems without permission, which would encourage educational and workplace facilities to attempt to recover any perceived financial losses from theft of resources.

Also, a complete rewrite of the system would be required. To prevent cheating, the system expects to have the system that downloaded work to return that same workunit. If you download a workunit with computer X and return it with computer Y, there would be no way to verify if cheating were happening.


All that being said, there are ways to run BOINC-SETI on a USB drive simply by launching the installer and pointing to the USB disk as the destination directory. This process would simply require a manual launch of the program upon inserting the USB disk (which could also be automated via a script).

There is a warning that some projects use homogenous redundancy and the computers had better be the same or the results won't match.

When running from a USB drive on a classroom computer, I would expect that the user has been given the rights to use that computer at that time.

BTW, the installation has to have internet access for uploads and downloads.


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Message 660964 - Posted: 17 Oct 2007, 2:51:55 UTC - in response to Message 660934.  

When running from a USB drive on a classroom computer, I would expect that the user has been given the rights to use that computer at that time.


They may have permission to use the computer at that time, but they may only have permission to run authorized software such as what the school or workplace has already installed on the system. Anything else that is unauthorized and takes up CPU time can be considered a theft of resources. Lawsuits have been issued and won in that regard.
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Questions and Answers : Wish list : A portable usb drive version of the software would be nice.


 
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