Just started SETI a week or two ago and had one question. I read a few of the message boards and everyone is really caught up in the "credits".

My question is:

What exactly does credits do for you?

Its just a record of the work you do.

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Scorpions - Wind Of Change

What exactly does credits do for you?

That has just got to be a FAQ...

For me, nothing more than just an indication that my contributing machines are still alive.

Hopefully it is a vague indication of 'usefulness' to the project, but that has to be deliberately very vague due to fraught philosophical 'problems'.

For some, simply an ego-boost?


I wonder when someone will try trading them on ebay! There was one enterprising student trying to sell CPU time for crunching for others. I don't know if that was successful or not...

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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

Just started SETI a week or two ago and had one question. I read a few of the message boards and everyone is really caught up in the "credits".

My question is:

What exactly does credits do for you?

Make you feel like you accomplished something.

Welcome to Seti by the way.

Credit is a measure of how much work your computer has completed(and has been verified as correct). It has no value outside of the Bonic. It can be used for a number of things such as checking if you computer is working (some of us have remote computers), team competitions, bragging rights, etc. A number of people here have multiple computers that run Seti or other projects. I happen to have 10 running right now. For us it's a hobby. Some try to be number 1. It can be number 1 out of the people who signed up on the same day, or number 1 for total work, or for most work done with the same type of computer, etc. It's a diversion and friendly competition. After all it may be a long time before we ever find ET. So in the mean time we play while we work. Thats my personal view anyway. Ohters take it a little more seriously. Hope this helps.

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There was one enterprising student trying to sell CPU time for crunching for others. I don't know if that was successful or not...

Not.

I had that on my watch list. I never saw any bids. Good idea, but nothing like having a chuck of metal under the desk crunching away.

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There was one enterprising student trying to sell CPU time for crunching for others. I don't know if that was successful or not...

Not.

I had that on my watch list. I never saw any bids. Good idea, but nothing like having a chuck of metal under the desk crunching away.

He had earlier successfully auctioned a week of crunch time for Folding@home, but I saw no evidence of a continuing effort. He also had a recent Summa Cum Laude degree in Business Management, I suspect the real motive was gathering information for a paper or such. His location was in an area where electricity comes from the Tennessee Valley Authority so is at a lower price than many U.S. residents pay. I judged the offer as about a break-even proposition after considering depreciation of the hardware, but if he was in student housing perhaps there was no electricity cost to consider.

                                                                 Joe

Just started SETI a week or two ago and had one question. I read a few of the message boards and everyone is really caught up in the "credits".

My question is:

What exactly does credits do for you?

RAC: How much I'm doing

Credits: How much I've done so far

I pretty much treat it the same as the work unit count from the S@H Classic days.

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I never really understood SETI@home Classic, how did it work? was it different?

Luke.

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- Luke.

You completed a WU and you had 1 completed WU in your stats,simple + the hours it took to crunch.

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Scorpions - Wind Of Change

<snip>
...bragging rights...
</snip>

You mean this isn't the sole purpose?!

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~W

What exactly does credits do for you?

That has just got to be a FAQ...

Yup: BOINC FAQ Service, about two-thirds of the way down in section 1.

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I never really understood SETI@home Classic, how did it work? was it different?

Very briefly, from the user’s side it was a combination client and science application that could be installed as a screensaver or run from a command line. The WUs were about the same as the ones we crunch now, but the amount of analysis done on each one was much less than today’s S@h app does. Unless one used a third-party caching program, only one WU could be downloaded at a time. There was no assignment of tasks to specific hosts, and no validation process at the back end. More on topic, as Al said, each successfully returned result was counted (regardless of its content), as was the cumulative CPU-time contributed (or claimed), but there was no notion of variable credit per task—or of cross-project comparisons.