Out of the fire and into the pit of sulfuric acid. (Feb 19, 2010)

"Oh, and by the way, Eric, Matt and all the others don't have to come in out of hours, or access the servers remotely, or all the other things they do. They volunteer too. Some things are just beyond their control to fix, and this seems like one of those."

1. We all do stuff 'above and beyond' don't we? SETI staff aren't unique in that. Their efforts are appreciated by many who regularly post encouragement and thanks, but taking 2 minutes out of the day to let others know what you're doing isn't that arduous surely?

2. If it's beyond their control then:

a) Why don't they just say so? Or are you just assuming/guessing? If you are then that could be prevented by the project staff giving a brief update couldn't it!!!

b) If it's not something within their power to fix then why are they too busy to write a brief update!!!


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I predicted that here... Give the users a snippet of info and they demand updates.

Now just imagine that with all the 'effort' you've poured into demanding these updates, you could've done so many other things, away from the computer, with family, friends. You'll never regain those minutes again. :-)
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Jord

- BOINC FAQ Service
- BOINC User Wiki

Real is just a matter of perception.

I'm just as frustrated as everyone else but some of you guys are too much! Eric plainly stated he is working on the problem (well, now it's the weekend so I hope he's not working on it until Monday) And I'm quite sure everyone pinging the server 500 times doesn't help!

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I predicted that here... Give the users a snippet of info and they demand updates.

Now just imagine that with all the 'effort' you've poured into demanding these updates, you could've done so many other things, away from the computer, with family, friends. You'll never regain those minutes again. :-)

I had my dad go through open heart surgery a few years back. they said it would be about 3-4 hours. turns out it was more like 8 hours. We understood that the Surgeon couldn't drop everything to come tell us how things were going and he wasnt going to sent a Nurse to do his job.

The same thing applies here. We know that they are working on the problem. They'll let us know whats going on when they get it fixed. I wouldnt expect any more contact from them until its done. Most of what they are doing would be lost on the average user anyway so what the point of hearing about mount points and /dev files
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Proud member of TSWB.

End terrorism by building a school

i hope your father is doing well and doesn’t have "pump" syndrome, which is a greater risk of a extended procedure. the difference between a good heart surgeon and a great one is speed, and has nothing to do with precision.

but we like the detail, there is usually something in a detailed report for everyone.
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my dads surgery was several years ago and was meant as an allegory for our current condition here. We need to allow the surgeons to do their job and they'll get back to us when they are done. Updates are pointless many backsteps occur when dealing with software/hardware issues. So giving us a thumbs up when they aren't near being done is foolish.

Let them finish
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Proud member of TSWB.

End terrorism by building a school

So we've established that we're ALL volunteers for SETI. Cool.

Some of us would just like to hear from some of the other volunteers with their insider knowledge when there's a major issue occurring, just like we are doing now; doesn't take very long does it? Just once a day at most would be fine, and if one day they say 'look we're trying something out and we won't know if it's worked for a couple of days' then guess what I'd be quite happy to wait a couple of days for the next update. Shock!

I'm not asking for the Moon-on-a-stick; just that the volunteer community out here should be informed of major issues; that way we would all keep a lot calmer and could actually help if there's a request to press/stop pressing buttons, etc..! The Technical News page pretty much says this is what it is intended to be for.


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my dads surgery was several years ago and was meant as an allegory for our current condition here. We need to allow the surgeons to do their job and they'll get back to us when they are done. Updates are pointless many backsteps occur when dealing with software/hardware issues. So giving us a thumbs up when they aren't near being done is foolish.

Let them finish

Maybe it's just time to move on, to do something else with the unused computing power or turn them off altogether to make that carbon footprint a bit smaller. Has anybody ever calculated how much electricity we have wasted erm used so far ? If enough volunteers stop volunteering because they are annoyed with the hickups, then there will be enough capacity for the rest eventually.

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The problem at this point is that we don't even know if they are actively working on this. It's been almost a week and no real info (no "it's this router" or "it's an Internet fault" or "whatever")

Although the outages and hiccups in SETI are very frustrating, and considering the actual full-functionality uptime, I think the SETI staff does an exemplary job of keeping it all running. When, in fact, they operate on a shoestring budget with piecemeal sub-par equipment.

Here's the rub - if everyone participating in SETI donated a paltry $20 per year... SETI could be flying high on top-notch equipment, with truely redundant servers. And they could hire more staff to have 24-7-365 on-site computer whizzes monitoring the equipment. Now isn’t that a novel thought.

So, instead of complaining about the downtime and hiccups…. DONATE some bucks every year to SETI@home.
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I DONATE money to SETI@home.... DO YOU?

I'm just slowly BOINC'ing along.

Hey... ET... you have a sister who likes earthlings?

...
Here's the rub - if everyone participating in SETI donated a paltry $20 per year... SETI could be flying high on top-notch equipment, with truely redundant servers. And they could hire more staff to have 24-7-365 on-site computer whizzes monitoring the equipment. Now isn’t that a novel thought.

people are upset because, by nature, we are competitive. if they want to stop the complaining about down time, then remove the WHOLE CREDIT SYSTEM completely. until then they have to listen to it.
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