Yet another forum update bug

Can we really believe that anyone went into the lab on Christmas Eve Eve, in the middle of the weekly server stress test, to foist yet another unecessary abomination on us?

I refer to the images on the forum index pages. Why? Why slow down the page loading (it's bad enough, anyway) Did anyone ask? ask permission? consult? test?

BUG: they don't respect the 'Hide avatar images' community preference. [or maybe that preference setting is b*******d now. I don't know - I didn't use it before, but it's not accepting the change now]

If they want to do something useful, why not show the name/avatar of the most recent poster, not the thread originator? Other forums do it.

Can we really believe that anyone went into the lab on Christmas Eve Eve, in the middle of the weekly server stress test, to foist yet another unecessary abomination on us?

I refer to the images on the forum index pages. Why? Why slow down the page loading (it's bad enough, anyway) Did anyone ask? ask permission? consult? test?

BUG: they don't respect the 'Hide avatar images' community preference. [or maybe that preference setting is b*******d now. I don't know - I didn't use it before, but it's not accepting the change now]

If they want to do something useful, why not show the name/avatar of the most recent poster, not the thread originator? Other forums do it.

What a strange thing.... It looks terrible...
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I've just been using the Beta site for its proper purpose - testing the new abomination, er 'feature'. At least Beta is running at a reasonable speed.

It isn't a b****y avatar, it's a thumbnail of the user profile image. (At last! A use for all that spare server space and rendering power!). It shows to the left of the posts as well (in addition to the Avatar). And you CAN'T TURN THE BLOODY THING OFF.

Not just on the index pages, either. Also b****ring up the Top Hosts list page.

F.
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Would seem to be an even worse idea for dialup users I'd imagine.... Is there no way to switch this 'feature' off?
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Would seem to be an even worse idea for dialup users I'd imagine.... Is there no way to switch this 'feature' off?

Have a look at Technical News - it's like something by Andy Warhol. Matt will have a fit.

LOL, the craziness! It must be the berkeley campus xmas party ... what next?
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LOL, the craziness! It must be the berkeley campus xmas party ... what next?

I don't think anyone has to actually go into the lab to modify the forum code. I believe it can be done remotely.
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BOINC FAQ Service
BOINC & Optimized SETI download repository

I don't think anyone has to actually go into the lab to modify the forum code. I believe it can be done remotely.

Check your PMs - I've just found a link (New? It's new to me) saying "Community Add as friend". So I clicked it. Now what?

[PS I though of testing it on Eric Korpela's account first - we've all got one - but I chickened out].

...Check your PMs ...

...Check your PMs ...

LOL, It doesn't come by PM, I had a friendship offer appear on my account page ... and clicked "Accept"...
"Your friendship with Richard Haselgrove has been confirmed."

Daww... I feel so special LOL

Notifications jason_gee confirmed as friend

Friends jason_gee

...I haven't clicked either of them .... yet ....

Yes, I clicked the second one, and I could see your account page as normal, with my name shown as a friend.

Question: Could any third parties lurking in this thread, please check and see whether that 'Friends' list is visible to all and sundry in our account pages? I'd just like to know whether we can keep this a secret between us.

Then I clicked the upper link. As you surmised, I just got a confirmation page:

You are now friends with jason_gee.

Now what? Have they written the divorce script yet?...

I don't think anyone has to actually go into the lab to modify the forum code. I believe it can be done remotely.

Who has permission to do that? Is it a security risk? Are there any "Best practice" guidelines, like check that the project is running smoothly first, or "Good Neighbor" guidelines, like asking the permission of the project scientists?

Now what? Have they written the divorce script yet?...

....[Think of the children!]

PS - I received your friend request.

Bug or not, this new "feature" of the avatars is plain old stupid, IMO.

Let's see... BOINC developer / administrator goes "Oh, look, I have a new "high powered" web server. Let's add more features!!!!"

DOH! All these features are tied to database performance metrics, so now when the splitters go crazy, the forums are even slower... Considering the close proximity (UCB), it is insane that this would be attempted knowing the struggles that the project is going through...

Real brilliant...

Oh, and the "friends" thing, this is not a social networking site. This is not Myspace, Facebook, LiveJournal, Friendster, etc, etc, etc...

Bah humbug!

Edit: Clarifying that I know that this is a BOINC thing, not SETI-specific

Check your PMs - I've just found a link (New? It's new to me) saying "Community Add as friend". So I clicked it. Now what?

It's pretty cool from my standpoint. I'll be running for SETI President come next election. Vote Misfit for Prez!

I bet Hillary wishes she had a button like that

I notice after posting in this thread, as it reloads, the threads lags after the first letter of the subject, "Y". And that's all that shows. Such an excellent question!

I think it's very appropriate. Y? No doubt many people are reading this thread asking themselves the very same thing.
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Forum moderators should be standing behind the developers' decisions rather than quibbling with them.

Forum moderators should be standing behind the developers' decisions rather than quibbling with them.

Oh, criminy.......
Those dang profile pics are even showing up in the 'top computers' list.
For the love of.......
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4 kitties on a Seti mission...Meeeeeeooowwwrrrrr!!!


The Genuine Kittyman..........accept no substitutes.

Why do BOINC Web developers use the Seti pages for their tests. Shoudn't they try them on the BOINC pages?

And, yes, this is another vote for these changes are utter cr*p.

P.S. Hope they have been changed back before I return from last minute crimble shopping, C U.

It's also causing a side effect of a double thumbnail in the profile search menu.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/profile_menu.php

I had to repost this. Somehow it showed up as a thread title change. 'Tis the season for errors!
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And the kitties say....'Arrggghhhhhhhhhhhhh'.
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4 kitties on a Seti mission...Meeeeeeooowwwrrrrr!!!


The Genuine Kittyman..........accept no substitutes.

The Jokers are on the other side of the Seit fence. They did not consult us first. Noone needed nor want this crap.
My humble opinion.
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4 kitties on a Seti mission...Meeeeeeooowwwrrrrr!!!


The Genuine Kittyman..........accept no substitutes.

Man... That's just... Beyond UGLY!!! I wonder when will people remember that more is NOT always beter.

Sheesh...
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Found another BUG.

Look at thread Validate errors, towards the bottom of the first index page at the moment. The originator, Dennis, had a - well, shall we say 'eyecatching'? - profile image last night. It's been censored.

The thread itself, properly designed and debugged, shows Dennis with a . The forum index - as you can see for yourselves - has a broken image link.

It's also causing a side effect of a double thumbnail in the profile search menu.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/profile_menu.php

I had to repost this. Somehow it showed up as a thread title change. 'Tis the season for errors!

Plus there's a double thumbnail on the UOTD function in the standard BOINC package

http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/beta/

Nope, I have a fresh cache. It's a part of the BOINC standard package.

The current comicbook format of the forum says a lot about the professionalism of a scientific project!!!!
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Found another BUG.

Look at thread Validate errors, towards the bottom of the first index page at the moment. The originator, Dennis, had a - well, shall we say 'eyecatching'? - profile image last night. It's been censored.

The thread itself, properly designed and debugged, shows Dennis with a . The forum index - as you can see for yourselves - has a broken image link.

Richard - THAT is not a 'bug' - the Profile Pic has been removed / Blocked - for an obvious reason . . . (see 'Kid-Friendly' Rules)

Respectfully,
richard w lubrich jr

Yes, I have no quibble with the decision to remove the image - it was, as you say, not 'kid-friendly'.

Yes, I have no quibble with the decision to remove the image - it was, as you say, not 'kid-friendly'.

That's debatable, I saw no nudity, though some might consider umbilicus as such I never heard anyone under the age of 65 even mention exposed belly buttons.... Unless of course I need glasses which is quite possible....

More importantly I can't seem to change my avatar... I have enjoyed being an ol' skool cylon and all, but now I'm feeling rather agro: [img] Agro Vation

PS - I received your friend request.

And very wisely didn't accept it, LOL.

That's a confirmed BUG, then - I was very careful to click 'cancel' the second time.

Now, I'm not quite sure how to put this delicately in my new-found (bigamous?) state - but it's 2 a.m. here, and I'm off to bed. G'night all, see you in the morning - maybe it will all turn out to have been a dream....

Woohoo it's fixed ... Just goes to show, If you whinge enough anything is possible :D


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PS - I received your friend request.

And very wisely didn't accept it, LOL.

That's a confirmed BUG, then - I was very careful to click 'cancel' the second time.

Now, I'm not quite sure how to put this delicately in my new-found (bigamous?) state - but it's 2 a.m. here, and I'm off to bed. G'night all, see you in the morning - maybe it will all turn out to have been a dream....

Hey, Richard......
I just woke up........
Maybe it was a dream (or nightmare).....'cuz the profile pics have gone bye bye.......

They have their very own board to play "Break my forum" with here: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/index.php

To tidy up a final loose end, did anybody notice that I have a new friend?

Friends OzzFanjason_gee

...
You say that the Boinc Dev board was running on the oldest versions until recently? They don't even upgrade to the newest version themselves? That explains a lot! :-O

[boinc_alpha] friend-list mechanism
David Anderson davea at ssl.berkeley.edu
Tue Dec 18 12:15:24 PST 2007

I've added mechanism to the BOINC web code
that lets you make a list of friends,
like on the social network sites.

This is deployed on the BOINC Alpha site.
Please try it out and let me know if anything doesn't work.
The interface is not fancy - this will be improved later.

-- David

...
You say that the Boinc Dev board was running on the oldest versions until recently? They don't even upgrade to the newest version themselves? That explains a lot! :-O

To clarify the record, the "Friends" feature at least had some pretesting:

[boinc_alpha] friend-list mechanism
David Anderson davea at ssl.berkeley.edu
Tue Dec 18 12:15:24 PST 2007

I've added mechanism to the BOINC web code
that lets you make a list of friends,
like on the social network sites.

This is deployed on the BOINC Alpha site.
Please try it out and let me know if anything doesn't work.
The interface is not fancy - this will be improved later.

-- David

Joe

Thanks Joe.

But the question is still, what is the need for that? Do they plan to make the BOINC projects to some kinds of networking boards, like MySpace.com and FaceBook.com?

I really don't see the need for this, and I think there are other, more urgent, functions they could have taken care of before this.

Vote Misfit for Prez!
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Sorry, but I have to disagree with some of the comments in this thread.

We basically have to accept the reality that Seti would have disappeared into oblivion a long time ago, if it were not that Boinc needed and still needs it as it's lab rat. Thing are first deployed here, after initial testing on a virtual board, because of the fact that Boinc developers have direct access to it, and it has an extremely large user base. Few forums are as active as Seti, it only takes us a couple of hours to discover problems with the software updates that are done here. At most other projects it would take months to explore all the nooks and crannies making it difficult to figure out which change broke something.

As for the proxies problems, I can understand the frustration, but Boinc is dependent on other open source projects for their communications routines. Unfortunately, they are trying to reverse engineer a Microsoft black box. No open source project can afford to grease the palms at Microsoft for a peak inside that box.
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Boinc V6.10.17 Recommended
WinXP C2D 2.1G 3GB

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Then it would be nice if the BOINC project would share some of their fundings with the Seti@Home project as a thank you for lending their system to test on. The BOINC project is well funded, and still they are piggybagging on the Seti@Home project, which is not funded at all, only by our donations, for their testings and even hardware.

Joe

Thank You for pointing to some of the things that are not said and only obvious if someone takes time to look. I will say part of the current budget is working to get another person into the Lab so that things can start happening. The current Staff is fighting damage control and working for developement. That was somewhat stated when Eric wished a friend farewell... Kurt

So they are a person down for Seti. Donations can help that, but it will be donations that help get another person on Seti Staff.

Then it would be nice if the BOINC project would share some of their fundings with the Seti@Home project as a thank you for lending their system to test on. The BOINC project is well funded, and still they are piggybagging on the Seti@Home project, which is not funded at all, only by our donations, for their testings and even hardware.

In the Hardware Donations thread it is noted that our download server is currently a BOINC machine. Also, I think some of the work being performed in maintaining this project's software is being funded by BOINC as related to testing, and that the project would have died long ago if it weren't serving as BOINC's testbed.

Note that the project requested ~ $538000 in November 2006 and received ~ $200000 cash donations in the next year. Some of the difference can be attributed to hardware donations, some to finding less expensive ways to fulfill plans, and some to dedicated project staff not charging for all their actual time expended. I doubt those add up to the ~ $338000 difference.

Joe

Joe

Thank You for pointing to some of the things that are not said and only obvious if someone takes time to look.

It still isn't "obvious" to me. I mean, sure, yes, the word BOINC is obviously there, but what exactly is the processing being referred to as "much needed BOINC backend processing"? The machine that seems to match is "vader", which is listed as having the Transitioner processes. That is indeed a "BOINC backend processesing" component, but it is required across any and all BOINC-powered projects due to the core design of the server-side areas of BOINC itself. As such, without a bit more information about what else is running on "vader", if it is indeed the system in question, I personally would find it impossible to go for a logical leap and conclude that it is a system "on loan" from the BOINC development team.

Also, 16GHz? Is that really 1.6GHz, or did someone multiply the values of each core (4x2=8) and then take the GHz (8x2=16), and thus come up with 16GHz by virtue of the real quantity of cpus being a total of 4 cpus, each a 2GHz dual-core cpu?

Yeah, I know I may seem like a nitpicking jerk, but there are no 16GHz Xeons in existence (caveat: maybe Francois has one). If you want to be serious about things, then you should try to keep typos down to a minimum or at least explain the math...

LOL...I don't think even Francois has a 16ghz processor to play with. As far as I have seen, I am lucky enough to have the fastest processor on Seti 24/7 at 4.59ghz. If only it were 8 cores then.....LOL.

If You had 8 cores, That wouldn't be a PC, It would be a MAC swallowing Black Hole disguised as a PC. ;)

LOL...I don't think even Francois has a 16ghz processor to play with. As far as I have seen, I am lucky enough to have the fastest processor on Seti 24/7 at 4.59ghz. If only it were 8 cores then.....LOL.

If You had 8 cores, That wouldn't be a PC, It would be a MAC swallowing Black Hole disguised as a PC. ;)

I have 8 cores: host 2901600. It's got 8 cores, and it's had 8 cores since the day I attached it to SETI (28 Nov 2006). Not up to Mark's standards, of course, but it's a PC.

Joe

Thank You for pointing to some of the things that are not said and only obvious if someone takes time to look.

It still isn't "obvious" to me. I mean, sure, yes, the word BOINC is obviously there, but what exactly is the processing being referred to as "much needed BOINC backend processing"? The machine that seems to match is "vader", which is listed as having the Transitioner processes. That is indeed a "BOINC backend processesing" component, but it is required across any and all BOINC-powered projects due to the core design of the server-side areas of BOINC itself. As such, without a bit more information about what else is running on "vader", if it is indeed the system in question, I personally would find it impossible to go for a logical leap and conclude that it is a system "on loan" from the BOINC development team.

Also, 16GHz? Is that really 1.6GHz, or did someone multiply the values of each core (4x2=8) and then take the GHz (8x2=16), and thus come up with 16GHz by virtue of the real quantity of cpus being a total of 4 cpus, each a 2GHz dual-core cpu?

Yeah, I know I may seem like a nitpicking jerk, but there are no 16GHz Xeons in existence (caveat: maybe Francois has one). If you want to be serious about things, then you should try to keep typos down to a minimum or at least explain the math...

The claimed World Record for CPU overclocking is something like 8.2 GHz. as far as I can find, a Netburst Intel CPU of course. But who knows what may be possible with 32 nm. technology?

Joe

LOL...I don't think even Francois has a 16ghz processor to play with. As far as I have seen, I am lucky enough to have the fastest processor on Seti 24/7 at 4.59ghz. If only it were 8 cores then.....LOL.

If You had 8 cores, That wouldn't be a PC, It would be a MAC swallowing Black Hole disguised as a PC. ;)

I have 8 cores: host 2901600. It's got 8 cores, and it's had 8 cores since the day I attached it to SETI (28 Nov 2006). Not up to Mark's standards, of course, but it's a PC.

Oh, I am certainly not dissing any 8 core runners....
Just pondering what 8 cores could do running at 4.59ghz.....LOL.

P5K Asus mobo.......$204.99
Quad core Penny processor....$1099.99
2GB OCZ RAM.....$129.99
Custom built phase cooler for cpu....$550.00
750w PC Power and Cooling power supply....$168.99
Imagining what an 8 core version of this could do.......priceless.

Now You need a Big RED/Yellow S on the that 4.59GHz PC Or We need a little Kryptonite around here and I don't mean luggage. ;)

LOL....
What we REALLY need is a few datasets with a more 'normal' slew rate so the servers can cool down and the bandwidth can relax a bit....
That and 8 cores....

LOL....
What we REALLY need is a few datasets with a more 'normal' slew rate so the servers can cool down and the bandwidth can relax a bit....
That and 8 cores....

Agreed, unfortunately since they piggyback on other projects for data collection on the telescope, they really don't have a lot of choice on how the scope operated during the recording run.

I suppose they could correlate the timestamps on the datasets with the observing schedule to get a better idea of how the scope was operating at the time. Then they could pick and choose which ones get sent through the splitter to make work for us.

<edit> I see Joe alluded to doing something like this in the other thread where the atypical split of AR's we're seeing lately is being discussed.



Alinator

But the datasets being split in the last week have covered a fair range of time slots, spanning several months, haven't they? Is this just bad luck or coincidence that there have been almost nothing but 'shorties' being split?

msattler

LOL...I don't think even Francois has a 16ghz processor to play with. As far as I have seen, I am lucky enough to have the fastest processor on Seti 24/7 at 4.59ghz. If only it were 8 cores then.....LOL.

I was running my phase cooled netbust at 5.8Ghz on SETI 24X7 for a few months :) Had it as high as 6.1Ghz but at that speed it was not stable enough for SETI.

I got a Killo Watt meter recently. Neat machine. Measures everything one might need to determine where the electric energy goes.

How much power does your machine take? My laptop with full bright screen is about 32 watts and power factor near 1. Screen off save 5-6 watts. And saves the lamp. A new PowerMac reads about 180 watts unloaded and low 200's single tasking. Have not tried multiple CPU tasks yet, but that is in the future. PF is .99. And it totals energy as a wattmeter.

My next task is to measure the UPS that I use for efficiency. I can measure the input power, PF and voltage and compare with output to connected load. I would expect something over 90% if the backup battery is fully charged.

duke

@Mark,
I know you are an OC'ing nutter, but looking at your power consumption figs. Wouldn't it be cheaper and gain higher RAC etc, in the long term, if you ran two moderately OC'd quaddies rather than one pushing the edges of the envelope with phase cooling.

Andy

Son's quad running Seti, Einstein, Malaria and CPND power reading is 216VA, with screen blank.

@Mark,
I know you are an OC'ing nutter, but looking at your power consumption figs. Wouldn't it be cheaper and gain higher RAC etc, in the long term, if you ran two moderately OC'd quaddies rather than one pushing the edges of the envelope with phase cooling.

Andy

Ah. Now I know why the forum pages have been loading so slowly this morning - they've been updating the server-side code again.

I see that OzzFan and Jason Gee have broken up: and have a look at Misfit's account page (warning: don't try this on dialup). Anyone found a way to turn these things off yet?

Edit - I see one of Misfit's friends is User 432107. Might be worth bookmarking in case you want to send him a PM.

Now I've got an RSS feed on my account page. Why?????

and have a look at Misfit's account page (warning: don't try this on dialup). Anyone found a way to turn these things off yet?

Edit - I see one of Misfit's friends is User 432107. Might be worth bookmarking in case you want to send him a PM.