I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

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I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

That's a shame. I heard on the grapevine that ET was just about to say 'Hi' but having heard that you no longer care, apparently neither do they.

Oh well......

Does anyone know of any decent use for all these SETI crunchers?

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I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

Never give up !

Think about all these explorations and discoveries in the past! They took time and succeed after realyl hard work !

Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence signals its not gonna be that easy !
We need time !

''Pushing'' the project Administration to work with the Seti client or new clients its one thing , giving up its another! Personally i prefer the first one.

We need programmers and if none want to help us then we should make an order to a software company to write for us a better client or a new client for cell cpus for example. And if the Seti Administration doesn't have the money to order a new client then they can start a donation Campaign for this purpose.

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SETI

with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

What the ridiculos way of thinking?!
Optimized app SPEED UP RESEARCH ! Why you mix this with some virtual credits??
If someone spent his time to make app faster and better for one of projects how it relates to other? If they dont' want or cant to devise better algoroithms, it's their troubles, and only theirs.

It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits.

I was excited about joining the work force, but now it seems it's just about certs and quotas... ;)

(I feel your pain!)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

realracer2..............

Sorry to see that you have lost the faith.

A person can spend a lot of time and energy maintaining any hobby and Boinc / Seti is no exception. As a person grows and changes, his interests and therefore his hobby's will change with him. It is no surprise that this can and does happen with many people who start out with Seti. The rewards here are few and the challenges many, especially in the last few months.

If you have truly lost the faith here then by all means you should move along. No sense sticking with something you do not enjoy any more. I would hope you stay only because we need all the crunchers we can get. There is an immense pile of work to be done here but again.....it is your choice.

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth.

Me, too... When I started running SETI 'Classic' back in 1999, I knew there would not be results in my lifetime, that this was a 'long term' commitment.

I am happy that the client is faster now and we are nearly able to keep pace with the gathering of data, but more optimizations will be required in order to crunch increasing data streams.

I do not have interest in computing for other projects or in what credit they might claim. It they choose to keep their source code to themselves, how can they have the fastest clients? Maybe they do not have the amount of data to crunch as SETI... Maybe they do not require optimized clients.

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I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

Life is what you make of it. There will always be others, for the rest of your life, trying to make you lose sight of your original goal. All I can say is that if you have lost sight of your goal, perhaps taking some time off to re-establish yourself is a good thing.

Optimized apps aren't about more credits for all people. Optimized apps are also about getting more work done, which means more science is being completed faster, which means a better chance of finding ET.

With AstroPulse, it indeed takes longer to crunch, but anyone who has been here as long as you have probably remembers crunching SETI Classic workunits with an old Pentium or Pentium II taking just as long if not longer. The more technology advances, the more the scientists can take advantage of that power to do more with it.

It really shouldn't be about the length of the workunit, or the credit one receives, but about getting the work done, and as much of it as possible. If the "casual" cruncher is upset about workunits taking longer, then perhaps they need to understand what is best for the project before they think about what is best for their credit or RAC. And if any of them run CPDN, then I think they really haven't much to complain about (even if CPDN does trickle credit).

Bottom line is you need to do what is best for you. If you feel SETI isn't that project anymore but a different BOINC one is, then at least you're still helping science and that's the important thing. No one really wants to lose more SETI participants, especially Eric and the gang, but being part of the community is still a personal decision that each of us have to make on our own.

I hope you might change your mind and stay, or in the least might come back after you've straightened your feelings out.

Well said, Ozz.

geez...
if i gave up everytime someone passed me...lol

btw...you don't have to run Astropulse.
if you have the optimized client...you won't get any AP wu's...


sigh.

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I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

Ultimately, you have to follow your heart.

I can't get excited about most of the other projects. Sure, I know that medical research will make us all healthier, but it just doesn't reach into my soul.

The never ending quest for credits doesn't do much for me either.

I'm here because someday, we just might find something.

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I am with you on that Ned.

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Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Seti Ambassador
Not to late to order an Anni Shirt

For me, there are a number of reasons for the reduced priority SETI has among my current list of seven active projects. But first and foremost is that the current batch of work units is problematic for my configurations (primarily multi-core AMD's) Between the not yet trouble free AstroPulse (which I figure to process once it is made more solid -- the risk reward of a 100 hour work unit getting 0 credit and not helping the effort is rather steep), and the 'black hole' syndrome for the regular work units (where 3 hour work units end up running 20 or more hours before giving up the ghost, thus requiring manual intervention to abort these bad boys), which over the past week or so has gotten way too frequent -- several months ago I'd encounter one or two a month, now each workstation sees 1 or 2 a DAY, well that all makes it quite easy to back off of SETI in the BOINC galaxy. I have some non AMD multicore systems -- they will continue to process SETI, but the others for now have gone either to suspend mode, or no new work mode.

The lower credit per CPU cycle issue is something a few projects are getting into. I find it a tad curious -- sort of like a BOINC effort to offset Moore's Law (something Microsoft has done a superb job of doing over the years).

In any event, with all the SETI failed work units and manual interventions on what should be background processing, I've reallocated shares to favor other projects currently not having these problems. Suggestions that I have lost heart with the *stated* goals of SETI don't play for me, rather it isn't clear that wasting CPU cycles here when some other project (say Malaria, World Grid, Climate, Rosetta or others) can use them for their stated research goals has any merit.

Ultimately, you have to follow your heart.

I can't get excited about most of the other projects. Sure, I know that medical research will make us all healthier, but it just doesn't reach into my soul.

The never ending quest for credits doesn't do much for me either.

I'm here because someday, we just might find something.

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I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

Ultimately, you have to follow your heart.

I can't get excited about most of the other projects. Sure, I know that medical research will make us all healthier, but it just doesn't reach into my soul.

The never ending quest for credits doesn't do much for me either.

I'm here because someday, we just might find something.

I'd go with that.

Second year in a row my veg/herb garden has been wiped by pests, due to the unusually warm wet conditions in my corner of the uk. Felt like giving up.

Then I realised I can't control ALL the conditions, but I can look for solutions in the changing conditions and apply them - which has been just as much fun as the planting. Feel the same about Seti :)

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Realracer-I'm sorry you feel this way.

There have been a couple times I've wanted to shut down my rigs as well. Ten I find new ways to get involved--first it was being a mod--then I took over some responsibility for monitoring hardware donations. Now I've become one of the fundraisers. It's all in how you want to be involved.

Hope you come back!

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The lower credit per CPU cycle issue is something a few projects are getting into. I find it a tad curious -- sort of like a BOINC effort to offset Moore's Law (something Microsoft has done a superb job of doing over the years).

If credit is based on a specific, well-defined standard, then credit should be granted at that rate -- not higher or lower.

Since the release of Multibeam, the project says credit is about 15% above the "gold standard."

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I understand -- just it seems that for a long time SETI (by its dominance of the total BOINC world) set the gold standard. Further it seems other projects tended to match pretty well to *that* standard. Where there may well have been 'over-credit' issues might be with the 3rd party optimized clients that were available . But I never ran those --- since I've been in multi-project mode for nearly 3 and half years.

At this point though, for me, SETI share of the CPU cycles is down not because of a lack of enthusiasm for the project, but rather because, consistent with the objectives behind the BOINC design, I've reallocated those resources to projects that (for now) are running with fewer issues and which require far less manual intervention. I suspect eventually that will change, that Astropulse will pass 'fit and finish' requirements, and that perhaps shorter cycle Astropulse work units (say in the 10 to 15 hour range) may be made available.

Running in hybrid mode, with short cycle work units (anywhere from 10 seconds to 4 hours, along with the Astropulse work units (running anywhere it seems from 60 to 150 hours) places a fair amount of stress (and confusion) on users (and the project itself). For me, the sweet spot would be consistent and non-broken 4 hour work units for the short cycle work, and then a choice between 10 hour work units (with the same reporting approach), along with long work units (60 to 200 hours) which supported trickle reporting (like Climate).

But that may well be asking way too much. At a minimum though, the mini work units (under 5 minutes), the black hole work units (those that are nominally 3 to 4 hours which simply suck CPU cycles and go nowhere until they error out at 50 hours plus), and the no credit Astropulse work units which fail for some reason or another -- all of these, need to be cleaned up so that folks don't feel PUSHED away from SETI in the BOINC universe.

If credit is based on a specific, well-defined standard, then credit should be granted at that rate -- not higher or lower.

Since the release of Multibeam, the project says credit is about 15% above the "gold standard."

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I understand -- just it seems that for a long time SETI (by its dominance of the total BOINC world) set the gold standard.
<snip>

If credit is based on a specific, well-defined standard, then credit should be granted at that rate -- not higher or lower.

Since the release of Multibeam, the project says credit is about 15% above the "gold standard."

Wrong kind of gold standard.

Once upon a time (from 1900 to 1930), the U.S. Dollar was exactly equal to 1.67 grams of Gold. You could take a dollar bill, and exchange it for exactly that much gold -- and there was 1.67 grams of Gold in the U.S. Federal Depository for each dollar in circulation.

A Dollar Bill was gold.

The "Gold Standard" for BOINC is "the amount of work done in 864 seconds by a computer whose benchmarks are 1000 whetstones and 1000 dhrystones."

This is how a "cobblestone" is defined.

That "standard" machine should get 100 cobblestones per day. According to Eric, for the past year or so, it would have been getting 115 per day.

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A Dollar Bill was gold.

Today it's 'monopoly money', and tomorrow it'll be 'toilet paper'... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

I was really thrilled when Seti started, imagine looking for life outside of Earth. It was exciting when Seti at home started, but now with the optimized clients it seems if Seti is just about credits. I feel that all projects should have optimized clients, or none should.

I think also that joining Astropluse into Seti will drive away the casual Seti user that will not know they can chose not to run Astropluse, and cannot understand why Seti is taking so long to complete.

All the above, and other things have caused me to go to other projects that I feel will have results a lot sooner than Seti, and perhaps benifit mankind better. I may still keep one computer on Seti, but I am not sure about that.

I can understand how you feel. While not at the plug pulling stage yet, a lot of the fun has definitely gone out of it for me.

As someone who remembers crunching SETI classic work units for 24 hours plus on on my old 1.2Gig Celeron, I don't understand what all the fuss is about with AP. In those days, the only "credit" you got was the number of work units completed. The only reason I'm not running AP at the minute is because I'm to lazy to stuff around with my app_info.xml file and I want things to stabilize again with MB before I start fiddling.

Brodo