Darn! My speakers are dead. I have new ones on the way though. They started producing loud static while they were off! I thought one of my pumps was sucking air! :)

Steve

My rigs were sucking air last night........shut them all down to keep down on the windage.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Darn! My speakers are dead. I have new ones on the way though. They started producing loud static while they were off! I thought one of my pumps was sucking air! :)

Steve

I use MLI-691 speakers that I bought back in 1992, They still sound great too.

Still no work, But the message did change, Now It's No tasks and such. :(

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Darn! My speakers are dead. I have new ones on the way though. They started producing loud static while they were off! I thought one of my pumps was sucking air! :)

Steve

I use MLI-691 speakers that I bought back in 1992, They still sound great too.

Still no work, But the message did change, Now It's No tasks and such. :(

Oh, wonderful......

A new message telling me why my rigs are no longer worthy of crunching for the project......

Wonderful. I'll alert the media......

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPoczpIM6yM

Zoot suit riot

---

Janice

Live link.......

Throw back a bottle of beer......

When the pushin' comes to shove, I'll take the gurl with the coal black hair.

She's my baby, yes she is.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

LOTRO zoot suit riot

Attempt to make a link...

Well, I'm one of those who just built a mega-cruncher, and it sits idle at SETI. I did fire up Einstein this morning, and it is crunching away at it. To me this is a fun project, whether it gives me work or not. Sure I liked it when I saw my RAC rise to 38,500, and still gain 1000 points a day, but that can be redone when things get fixed. My computer is just as powerful, and I use it with Starry night software, playing any of the highest graphics games I can find, or writing code and designing databases. I would have built this even if I knew the project would be wobbly for an extended period of time. I'm here for the science, and this is one way I can contribute.

I have donated to S@H, and I will donate much more, because I really want to be a part of this project. Even the crunching is only one part of it. Just a few months ago I would never have imagined that I would be talking to people all over the world every day. I have had some really interesting conversations with some very intelligent people. I have read some of the political discussions, some of the SETI science, and some of the non SETI science. What a wonderful forum! If my monster cruncher goes idle for a while, to me it's no big deal. I'm already turning out a lot of crunching for Einstein. Anyway, I just want to say that I really like and respect all of you. Whether working or not, this project has greatly enhanced my life. I feel like I have found a home.

:)

Steve

Express my sentiment exactly, just better.

---

Well. it's kinda cold in the cattery right now.

All the kitties are shut down.

Don't know when Boinc will get righted so I can start them up again.

And I will not do so until the rats's ass has left the building.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

BAH.... humbug

I'll keep pushing Milkyway WU's until they get this mess straightened out.

---

I DONATE money to SETI@home.... DO YOU?

I'm just slowly BOINC'ing along.

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

To QuietDad and others expressing similar sentiments.

It ain't just about the credits !!!!

In "real life" I am a professional and I am expected to do things in a professional manner. I approach things with a professional attitude and therefore expect the same attitude from others in similar positions. If I stuff up in a way that brings a major project to its knees for an extended period, I expect (and deserve) to get my backside kicked from here to Christmas.

In the engine room at SAH we supposedly have people who are the creme de la creme of the scientific world. Intelligent people with multiple degrees and years of experience, yet every time there's an "upgrade" to the project we go through this same routine. OK, with upgrades like this you always get a few bugs but what we are experiencing currently are not "bugs", they are major flaws that SHOULD have been located and fixed before the new software was rolled out. <comment about 12 year old "script kiddies" deleted>

Having worked in the area I know that "high church" academia has a different attitude to the rest of the world. Time is not that important, results are, and normally if it takes a while to sort out a hardware, software, methodology or other problem so be it. Besides you might discover something interesting while you're sorting the problem and normally, the problems only effect you and a few associates.

SAH and the other distributed computing projects are different. Their success totally depends on the goodwill of others. Destroy that goodwill and you destroy your project. Therefore there is a moral "duty of care" placed on the administrators of these projects to keep the volunteers in the loop. If Eric, David et all had had the common courtesy to post a notice on the forums or the home page saying "We are upgrading the software and might be down for a few days, expect some quirks when we come back up" they would be receiving a lot less flack than they are now and the useful observations and debugging comments would not be hidden among so many "WTF" messages. Some quick and simple updates and explanations from them would have also helped. But as Raistmer said PR has never been one of this project's strong points.

There are people out here that take the project just as seriously as the project staff and who in some areas are just as knowledgeable. The Lunatics, the Alpha and Beta testers, major crunchers etc. Do you honestly think that they are contributing their time, effort and money "just for the credits" ?? It might also be a good idea to stop rubbishing the major crunchers. The facts are that the top 10% of crunchers contribute more than 50% of the work, if it wasn't for them the project would be years behind where it is now.

Finally, Do not use the old chestnuts about how underfunded and how overworked the staff are as an excuse for this shemozzle. If you are underfunded and overworked that is more reason to make sure that things work properly first time around, because, in the long run you use more resources straightening out a screw up than you do putting a bit more time and care into the preparation.

Brodo

Well said.

Well said.

Quite.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Me Im not going to pull the plug. Ill ride out the storm to the other side. Yes this is the worst ive seen S@H ever. But Milkyway has seen its share of down time also. For only the second time since Ive had the mac im out of work, The old P4 has been getting work steady, But the i7 has been getting bits and pieces, allthough I do have an AP right now.

Do I like the stuff going on? No but as long as the project dosent go down for good I wont complain. Id miss the boards for sure.

---

[/quote]

Old James

Me Im not going to pull the plug. Ill ride out the storm to the other side. Yes this is the worst ive seen S@H ever. But Milkyway has seen its share of down time also. For only the second time since Ive had the mac im out of work, The old P4 has been getting work steady, But the i7 has been getting bits and pieces, allthough I do have an AP right now.

Do I like the stuff going on? No but as long as the project dosent go down for good I wont complain. Id miss the boards for sure.

Maybe You won't, but I'm not so sure as I now have almost 2 days worth of WU's now and It's going up still I think.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I've said it before & I'll say it again, this time around, it is more valid.

As we know that the validated data returned is not actually getting looked at en masse at this time, why is the projects, both S@H & Boinc, constantly in a state of "panic"?

IMV, it would make more sense for the S@H to shut down completely, resolve the current issues & at the same time, the Boinc dev's can be testing out upgrades/updates.

"Oh we can't do that".."We have got too many volunteers to cater for"

Really?, so where is the research on the returned data for the past decade?

Also, by shutting down & resolving issues, the tapes from Arecibo will be accumalating so when the project is back up, there would be no shortage of wu's for a considerable time.

ALSO, with the project shutdown for a month, it would surely take the pressure off the staff, which IMV, will benefit both the staff & the volunteers as everyone will be returning to the project refreshed & will have no time for any gripes for xxxx time, giving more breathing space to the staff.

After all, wasn't that what Boinc was developed for in the 1st place? For volunteers to crunch projects... i.e., resource shares spring to mind.

---

it would make more sense for the S@H to shut down completely, resolve the current issues & at the same time, the Boinc dev's can be testing out upgrades/updates.

Good thinking 99. I totally agree. A month off to fix the current software and hardware problems while not under pressure to stay "up" would do the project and everyone concerned the world of good. The hardware, software and wetware would all come back refreshed.

It would also give them time to analyse the results and save me $300 worth of electrons. :-)

Brodo

PS: What's IMV stand for ?

I must admit I get rather tired of all the complaints about Seti@home not working properly, but for me it seems to be working fine. I've crunching SETI since 1999 on Seti classic and since 2005 on BOINC. Since 2005 I think it has been less than a half a dozen times that I have run out of work. OK I am a small time crucncher but I but I believe what I am the type of guy the system what was for. It would that most of the complaints come from the high end crunchers who causing problems for themselves by over taxing the system.

Seti@home has always been a two part project :- 1, the search for intelligent live and 2 Distributed Computing. IMO the the second part has been a complete success and the odd hiccups that we experience along the way are just part parcel of being part of an experiment at the cutting edge of science.

Bruno - IMV stands for In My View. www.acronymfinder.com is a very handy site to find the meaning of these pesky acronyms.

Luigi

---

.


A person who makes no mistakes, creates nothing.

DC computing is my LIFE..........

Get a grip on THAT........

You simply have no idea.
Or would wish to.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

SAH and the other distributed computing projects are different. Their success totally depends on the goodwill of others. Destroy that goodwill and you destroy your project. Therefore there is a moral "duty of care" placed on the administrators of these projects to keep the volunteers in the loop. If Eric, David et all had had the common courtesy to post a notice on the forums or the home page saying "We are upgrading the software and might be down for a few days, expect some quirks when we come back up" they would be receiving a lot less flack than they are now and the useful observations and debugging comments would not be hidden among so many "WTF" messages. Some quick and simple updates and explanations from them would have also helped. But as Raistmer said PR has never been one of this project's strong points.

Brodo

Excellent post, Brodo. I've "been there, done that", and agree with all of it.

I've just pulled out that one paragraph, because I think there's another side to it.

The "success" of BOINC should really be measured by the degree to which the scientific community take it up, and use it to process their research findings. That's its Unique Selling Point, and where it will receive its lasting reputation - if any. Of course, David will never receive a Nobel Prize - there isn't one for computing - but he might expect to receive a "best supporting software" acknowledgement in somebody else's acceptance speech. So one of the things I ponder sometimes is "How many new scientific research projects have installed a BOINC server recently, and what is my (subjective) opinion of their scientific value?". I think we can say that CPDN and Einstein, for example, are world-class science, and CPDN in particular has value (Einstein is possibly a bit abstruse for many tastes). I had very high hopes for Orbit, but I think it failed to live up to the early premise. You'll all have your own lists - I don't tend to monitor chemistry/biology/medicine.

I don't see a lot of what I would judge to be high-grade science projects coming on stream. And that worries me. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a research team meeting when the question comes up: "Right, that's the experimental design wrapped up, then. Now what are we going to do with the data?". What do the scientists really think about BOINC?

Unless scientists are willing to entrust their life's (potentially Nobel prize-winning) work to BOINC, David will have failed, and BOINC will subside back into the quirky pub-quiz corner of history.

And I fear that what is happening now will accelerate that decline. Can BOINC manage a software rollout professionally? Evidently not - would you want to lose your publication deadline because your data was held up in a software glitch? Can BOINC guarantee accurate computation? Evidently not - if even its own credit mechanism is going to start making up random numbers, what's it going to do to my data?

And so on. A couple of years ago, much of the BOINC development centred on the 'social' aspects - message boards, teams, friends, facebook - geared towards recuiting and retaining volunteers. This last year, it has at least concentrated on number crunching - harnessing the power of first NVidia and then ATI GPUs. But may I remind you that it is now eighteen months - almost to the day - since that first surprise rollout of CUDA at SETI. Can we say that BOINC has ever really completed that work, to a proper scientific standard? I fear not.

Seti has now been around for 11 years. Not bad for a project whose initial grants was for 2 years. Much of the funding dried up a long time ago. We may not have found ET, but that was only the hook for the real purpose, which was to prove the concept that you could get ordinary people to volunteer their wasted computing power and create a grid equivalent to the processing capability of a super computer. This was incredibly successful.

As Seti's money dried up, the developers searched for a way to expand and apply what they had learned in a form that was simple enough to be used by the wider scientific community that had the need but not money for super computers. This idea was BOINC and the effort was judged worthy enough to receive grants.

Luckily for the Seti, Boinc needed a test bed with an already existing infrastructure and user base, so we served its purpose. It's not as if we had much of a choice. Without the shared facilities and incestuous relationship with Boinc, Seti would have gone the way of the dodo bird a long time ago. Like it or not people, the Seti project is the lab and we are the lab rats. We get to keep searching for ET and Boinc get to try out and implement it's new ideas on a live project with a user base large enough to find the problems within days if not hours or minutes. Finding and implementing solutions does take more time.

I do think that the introduction of GPU processing was precipitous, but I can see why Dr. A jumped at the chance to add this additional computing power. When a corporation like Nvidia comes knocking at your door with the offer to provide assistance, it is hard to say no. It unfortunately wasn't thought out or planned well enough and it wasn't nearly as simple as it originally seemed.

The recent sever software modification is somewhat chaotic, but we have been through it before and survived. Such is life, nothing new is ever simple.

Whether or not we find ET, a cure for cancer, learn how to feed the masses more effectively, figure out how weather pattern effect the planet or what ever other scientific pursuits Boinc can help with, it is a journey that I am enjoying and will continue to participate in for as long as possible.

---

Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470