Let's see here..............

Seti was scheduled to go down Tuesday morning, presumably when everyone arrived for work. Instead it went down at 2330 Monday night for the 3 day science fair. Came back up about 0700 on Friday and has been up and down ever since. Web site has been up and down also. Right now I'm in notepad so that next time it comes up maybe I can get this posted before it goes down again.

Then a limit 0f 20 work units is instituted to go along with 4 days of project up time.

If your trying to drive people away from SETI this is a good way to do it.

You know what..............color me gone.

Maybe I'll come back when this project is run by someone who is NOT insane!

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

Let's see here..............

Seti was scheduled to go down Tuesday morning, presumably when everyone arrived for work. Instead it went down at 2330 Monday night for the 3 day science fair. Came back up about 0700 on Friday and has been up and down ever since. Web site has been up and down also. Right now I'm in notepad so that next time it comes up maybe I can get this posted before it goes down again.

Then a limit 0f 20 work units is instituted to go along with 4 days of project up time.

If your trying to drive people away from SETI this is a good way to do it.

You know what..............color me gone.

Maybe I'll come back when this project is run by someone who is NOT insane!

Come on Geeky dude.....
In a few days I'll have been at it 10 years, and in a few weeks you'll have been at it for 9.

We can get through this.....after all....we ARE insane...LOL.

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

Guess what...........

My home air conditioner is actually cycling on and off now! In several room it is quiet again! Now if the Astros can win against the Padres it would make for a great evening.

It's not just the scheduled science fair. Or the limit of 20 wu on each computer, allthough I don't see why it couldn't be at 50 wu.

All of us here are giving a lot of time, effort and money to serve SETI. In return we get no respect. NONE The little information that Matt posts here is greatly appreciated but it is a fraction of the information we should be getting from SETI.

Why weren't we told in advance of the massive server software upgrade (downgrade) that was thrust upon us with no warning. We should have been told in advance and what to expect and what not to expect. Instead the project came up with massive problems and we were left to wonder if the problems were on the client computers or elsewhere. Nice planning.

Then were told that the servers need 3 days per week offline. No explanation why, except for science. Were just told and expected to blindly follow along with no reason given.

Then a limit of 20 wu per computer. It's lovely that the client does hold at 20 wu, send one in, get one in return. But a cache of 20 wu will last less than 1 hour on my machines. What about the cache I am signed up for in my account? What about that? And again, no explanation before the event or after.

Like I said, no respect, NONE.

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

20wu per PC, Gee whiz, Why not make that 4? As My 295's would plow through 20 in less than 1 hour, If I could get any. I think people like Me aren't wanted or appreciated here anymore.

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

Let's see here..............

<much snarkiness deleted>

Maybe I'll come back when this project is run by someone who is NOT insane!

I'm gone too, but not in the way Geek@Play threatens. I've crunching along just fine for the past 2 1/2 months, just not reading the drivel here in the forums.

SETI@Home is working. It's not working well, and in fact it's showing how important fault-resilience can be. I've not run out of work. I'd express my ideas on how to make it run better, but clearly this isn't the place for it.

There should be a line between complaints and observations, and personal insults hurled toward those running the project, and even between fellow forum members, and in a polite society, that line should never be crossed.

There should be a place in these forums for civil discourse.

But no. It's all childish complaints and personal attacks.

I think it's time to revive and revise Godwin's Law because in my opinion, when you stop talking about the problems, and start talking about the people, you might as well compare them to Hitler.

It's rude. It's indecent. It's obscene. It's incredibly bad Karma. Were you raised by wolves?

Where are your manners? Do you always kick people when they're down?

Information coming down from Seti@Home has always been lacking, since the inception date of Seti it's been lacking. Matt makes frequent posts but they are a description of how his day went. It's information but not what we need here.

Anybody know what is planned next week? Next month? How about next year? Does anyone have a plan for Seti@Home?

I have been a cheerleader for Seti since the beginning of Seti Classic. I was a cheerleader here when Boinc first started up and believe me, being a cheerleader then was hard. Bugs plagued Boinc like you would not believe. So don't tell me I don't support Seti. I have been here through thick and thin.

My time here and my accomplishments here DO allow me to vent my fustrations a bit. If you don't like it, put me on ignore.

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

I know how you feel Geek.
In past in the time my GPU machine ran, I had also (many) idle times (~ 65,000 RAC machine).
Also the small brother (~ 18,000 RAC) idle sometimes.

It a pity to build a big performance machine and see it can't support the science because it get no WUs.

But what we could do?
Nothing.
Sure, the infos about the project could be better sometimes.
Maybe some day it will change.
Maybe write a friendly letter/EMail/PM to Dr. David P. Anderson (AFAIK, the chief of this project) and tell him about us. Our concerns and problems.

We are here for to support the science, because we believe in the science of SETI@home.

Since I'm a member of SETI@home I have learned the character property patience.
It needed some time, but now I'm. (O.K., sometimes not.. ;-)

I guess I'll leave the project only if I have no longer money for to pay the SETI@home PC electricity bill.


Jeff have mentioned in his news thread, that the WU limit in progress will be switched off at Monday.

News : 'jobs limit thread'

Like always, patience is the key.


Geek, stay here! :-)

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How about "Volunteer tester" tags for all current crunchers. :D

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Geek,

The irony I see is that this project has never really been about the science, as far as seti science goes. It is about building a 'better' computing system. I suspect that the boss man felt free to screw with the servers and the scheduled downtime because getting the system right is more important than getting the science right. The historic record is that they don't communicate well, Matt's now deceased daily posts notwithstanding. So that is not new. Some might say that we need a better system to do the science, but that is a pale argument when the planning and such is apparently so poor. They have and will drive participants away; nobody likes being yanked around. We could propose a better user structure but I'm convinced it will be ignored. We could propose a better scientific project structure, but ditto.

Pretty much I agree with the cold beer remedy mentioned below; have one, don't read the forums, and trust that someday these folks will get their act together. Personally, I don't care about the communication as much as the total lack of analysis of our returned results. A trillion results, or some such number, sitting in some database; getting backed up and causing database chaos daily; and what do we have to show for it.

(Please don't quote papers that are basically PR statements and wish lists, or similar stuff; fine efforts I'm sure; instead, give me a concrete, albeit necessarily statistical, conclusion about the existence of extraterrestial intelligence backed up by all these results I've been returning for years.. For the life of me, I think Berkeley doesn't really care about this ET stuff at all.)

Ok, </rant>, back to my beer. I'm finding that 64 cal Miller stuff in a large plastic bottle with a cap very pleasing and a great substitute for water on a hot day.

How about "Volunteer tester" tags for all current crunchers. :D

LOL! I agree. SETI@home/AstroPulse Beta should be renamed SETI@home/AstroPulse Alpha and everybody else should have a Beta tester tag.

Personally, I'd hate to see it happen.

Be careful what you ask for...

The silly part is that "you" all have demanded the "better mousetrap" that can track hardware resource by type and adjust DCF accordingly.

So we have the new credit system and attempting to get the cache by hardware resource working. The population in Seti Beta was not large enoungh to show all the problems.

Richard has kept you abreast of many of the events (realistically he should be wearing a volunteer developer tag). Joe has answered many things.

So when you add that to the Staff is attempting to correct things that have not had time to correct in the daily outages to be FIXED. They are attempting to do just that. Not to mention they are attempting to finalize the code to pull science out of the database.

Patience?

Regards

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Please consider a Donation to the Seti Project.

That is cool Scarecrow................thanks!

[edit] Dam Astros lost again, 0-1. Time for a couple of margarita's.

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

Be careful what you ask for...

The silly part is that "you" all have demanded the "better mousetrap" that can track hardware resource by type and adjust DCF accordingly.

So we have the new credit system and attempting to get the cache by hardware resource working. The population in Seti Beta was not large enoungh to show all the problems.

Richard has kept you abreast of many of the events (realistically he should be wearing a volunteer developer tag). Joe has answered many things.

So when you add that to the Staff is attempting to correct things that have not had time to correct in the daily outages to be FIXED. They are attempting to do just that. Not to mention they are attempting to finalize the code to pull science out of the database.

Patience?

Regards

Al,
This is Andy talking.
This experiment should not be on the biggest project within the BOINC world, Period.

In probably not have been on the Beta site either, it is not a BOINC test site, but I do realise it needed to be tested somewhere. BUT there was no effort by anybody to advertise that this BOINC test was taking place except a few lines on the front page of the Beta site.

Experience on this site alone, has probably educated the 5,000 or so people who visit here regularly, that putting things on the front page is about the last place you would post an important msg.
In fact the BOINC Manager encourages bypassing the front page with all the site buttons in the left hand window.

And this last tweak, that limits a host to 20 tasks, is probably the straw that breaks many backs, to leave a host operating at 50% capacity, because it cannot get tasks for the CPU or the GPU again strikes me as yet another example of un-thought through thinking.

one of the biggest problems on the previous "fix" is it added cpu and gpu work to calculate the total time given to the computer. So.. Rather than split that up and help correct that one, they added a secondary block using the EXACT SAME FLAWED mathematical "fix"?

*bangs her head into her desk*

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

You really can not solve a problem using the same reasoning used to create it.

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Janice

so someone has a 20 CPU machine? when the servers are up and running a 20 WU cache is fine. Dont like it check out Milkyway. MW crunchers survive on 24 WUs at a time. IF the project fails you'd better be on your toes and get over to another GPU project or your BOINC RAC starts dropping off rapidly. Heck, MW just did that this weekend. They didnt announce anything but the WU's stopped flowing. Guess what nobody and I mean nobody is abandoning MW. This Boohoo crap is really just selfish indulgence. Boys and Girls let this be a lesson to you. You can NOT always get what you want in life. IF anyone told you differently they are liars. I've said it before and I've seen numerous others say to you. BE FREAKING PATIENT.

They said they'd have down times for the immediate future. Sorry it inconvenienced you. Time to grow up and maybe start a few WU's on a side project.

To quote Forrest Gump, "that's all I have to say on that subject".

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

And this last tweak, that limits a host to 20 tasks, is probably the straw that breaks many backs, to leave a host operating at 50% capacity, because it cannot get tasks for the CPU or the GPU again strikes me as yet another example of un-thought through thinking.

Actually, I think this limit to 20 tasks in combo with the 3 day outage right before a holiday weekend is quite thought through. At least theoretically it should provide an easy weekend. If you don't hand much work out, the project wont run out of work, no tapes have to be brought up and loaded, and the rest is also less likely to break down. Well, at least in theory.

The problem is, that it pisses a lot of people off but apparently no one seems to care about that.

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I mean come on, A 20 WU cache? By My own calculations based on about how fast I process data on My cpu(near 1.5 hours per WU), For Me that's about 30 hours of work or about 7.5 Hours per core as I have a QX6700 B1 cpu and right now It's running @ 2.98GHz(1.35v core voltage, which is stock), Stock speed is 2.67GHz of course, A 3 day cache would be about 192 WU's and this is only for the cpu, For the 4 gpus(I have two GTX295 cards) they run between about 2.0 minutes and maybe 12 minutes, So I have no idea what size cache would be needed there and 20 WU's would not last even 1 hour on these 2 cards that I used to use when I had gpu work the 6.09 Seti app(setiathome_6.09_windows_intelx86__cuda23.exe) from the project and the two 2.3 dll files of course and both cards are not overclocked, One is a BFG v1 dual pcb card and the 2nd is an EVGA v2 single pcb card(printed circuit board) which differs on the memory somewhat(1008MHz(EVGA) vs 999MHz(BFG)), In specs like gpu speed(576MHz) and shader speeds(1242MHz), they are identical to each other.

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

I don't know what everybody is griping about, the 20 work units I currently have will take me 3-4 days to burn through. Not a hardship at all.

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I don't know what everybody is griping about, the 20 work units I currently have will take me 3-4 days to burn through. Not a hardship at all.

You have what? An old system? Mine isn't even a new PC, even at stock speed It would take longer to do, But not by much and I use an optimized Seti SSSE3x app for My cpu.

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