how 2 get credit? want 2 post science q.

Questions and Answers : Getting started : how 2 get credit? want 2 post science q.

Author	Message
rriverstone Send message Joined: 29 Sep 10 Posts: 22 Credit: 1,854 RAC: 0	Message 1037155 - Posted: 29 Sep 2010, 23:48:45 UTC
	I want to ask about barred spiral Milky Way. How do I get credit? ____________ For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan
	ID: 1037155 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1037156 - Posted: 29 Sep 2010, 23:50:15 UTC - in response to Message 1037155. Last modified: 29 Sep 2010, 23:52:12 UTC
	I want to ask about barred spiral Milky Way. How do I get credit? You get credit by completing and returning tasks correctly - in agreement with your wingmate anyway. To do this, you will have to wait for the project to come back (it will, I have confidence that it will be running again in a few days). ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1037156 ·

rriverstone Send message Joined: 29 Sep 10 Posts: 22 Credit: 1,854 RAC: 0	Message 1037633 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 1:41:46 UTC - in response to Message 1037156.
	Oh, poop! Delayed gratification?? I suck at that! OK, well my thing seems to be working. There's a 2 dimensional wave in white and pink. Below it is a 3 dimensional, rainbow colored um sine wave?? anyway, it says: Name: rriverstone Team: #gayirc From 15 hr ........ too hard to read; won't type it right. Recorded at: ARECIBO (I'm so STOKED! My pc is talking to ARECIBO?!) on Fri, Apr. 23 ..... Man, that's some old signal! They could be on my front porch by now! CPU time 7 hrs....blah blah Computing Fast Fourier Transform doppler drift rate ....blah blan... Does that sound like it's working??? I'm not going to have to hand type all that without copy/paste, am I??? I have a brain injury, poor vision and mild dyslexia; it could take MONTHS! It's very pretty. I wanted to do this back in 2000, when I was on a WebTV. But you can't. And then, I forgot until just this month. Shoot! I've had a PC now for five years! MY COMPUTER'S TALKIN TO ARECIBO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOT DOG! Dr Sagan AND Jody Foster been there! Does it GET any cooler? Hee Hee Anybody ever go swimmin in that thing? Skate boarding? ____________ For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan
	ID: 1037633 ·

BilBg Send message Joined: 27 May 07 Posts: 2089 Credit: 3,271,289 RAC: 8,201	Message 1037640 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 1:56:20 UTC - in response to Message 1037633. Last modified: 1 Oct 2010, 2:09:59 UTC
	Does that sound like it's working??? I'm not going to have to hand type all that without copy/paste, am I??? Yes - it's working. But you do not need (except for your visual pleasure) to watch if the signal is found nor you need to type/send the results manually. You can leave BOINC running unattended for a month and it will get new work, process it and return the results automatically. The screen saver do not compute anything (except for graphics) - it only shows pretty pictures. Look at it from time to time if you like but don't leave it running all the time - the screen saver actually slows down the speed of computations. Man, that's some old signal! All signals are old - they may come from 50 light years away so be 50 years old. I wanted to do this back in 2000 ... If you want to see how it looked back in 2000 get "my" package and run the .exe: Just for fun: Classic SETI in Action! http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=59278&nowrap=true#1024291 ____________ - ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
	ID: 1037640 ·

rriverstone Send message Joined: 29 Sep 10 Posts: 22 Credit: 1,854 RAC: 0	Message 1037648 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 2:09:01 UTC - in response to Message 1037640.
	So, the rainbow spikey thing slows down the work, and it's ok to close that? It won't shut me down? Figures: prettiest part of this, that looks like the graphics in "Contact," and I can only sneak peaks at it. And I have no idea what it's doing, anyway. Shoot. I hope I'm not actually participating in some nefarious, sneaky activity. Well, these days, talking in complete sentences makes you a suspect... ____________ For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan
	ID: 1037648 ·

BilBg Send message Joined: 27 May 07 Posts: 2089 Credit: 3,271,289 RAC: 8,201	Message 1037654 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 2:22:54 UTC - in response to Message 1037648.
	So, the rainbow spikey thing slows down the work, and it's ok to close that? It won't shut me down? Yes, you can choose for screen saver <None> and just set your monitor to sleep after e.g. 20 minutes. Check in Windows Task Manager - the process which shows >90% CPU usage and have Priority "Low" is the one which makes the computations. P.S. I also very much like the film "Contact" ____________ - ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
	ID: 1037654 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1037666 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 2:42:03 UTC
	You now have a RAC of 6. Since the minimum is a RAC of 1, you can go ask your question. ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1037666 ·

rriverstone Send message Joined: 29 Sep 10 Posts: 22 Credit: 1,854 RAC: 0	Message 1037670 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 2:51:02 UTC - in response to Message 1037666.
	new question: what's a RAC and how did I get it? ____________ For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan
	ID: 1037670 ·

BilBg Send message Joined: 27 May 07 Posts: 2089 Credit: 3,271,289 RAC: 8,201	Message 1037672 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 2:54:04 UTC - in response to Message 1037670.
	You can find many answers in BOINC FAQ Service http://boincfaq.mundayweb.com/ ____________ - ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
	ID: 1037672 ·

rriverstone Send message Joined: 29 Sep 10 Posts: 22 Credit: 1,854 RAC: 0	Message 1037679 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 3:21:16 UTC - in response to Message 1037672.
	THAT was hard to see, let alone read. brain injury here. I found it, but it's written in geek RAC stands for Recent Average Credit. It is the current running average of credit earned by each Computer, Participant, or Team over time. RAC tracks the rate at which you are earning credit with credit earned today having more weight in the average than the credit granted in the past; each day farther back the less impact on the "running" average. If you stop crunching, your RAC will go down, as it is halved every week. For those that are mathematically inclined, the calculation is an exponentially reducing average with a half life of 2 weeks. um, so, we like, get raises in credit, as long as we're crunching, but, if we stop, we get deducted by half, right? As for the half life stuff: BRAIN INJURY HERE! As long as I'm not glowing in the dark from radiation, I'm good.... Look, i'm REALLY poor, ok? I live on $700/mo disability and a hundred in food stamps. AND i'm rural, which means I NEVER know when the electricity will go belly up. Anyway, here's my point: I bought this old beater pc on eBay for a hundred fifty bucks, including shipping, and am STILL paying off the payday loan I got last year to buy it. And it wheezes like a lawn sprinkler in rag weed season. i can hear it chugging your stuff all night. I keep a fan on it, to blow away the heat. but if this thing fries, well, the library's five miles away, and i don't know if I can buy a new one on eBay from there. and there's always a waiting list. So, I have been very careful to keep this thing on hibernate or standby or whatever or just turn it off. Also, I have to keep my electric bill as low as possible. As you know, both summer and winter here are literally LETHAL in a run down house trailer. if I get behind on my electric bill and they cut me off, my animals and I may die. I will operate this SETI program because this is very important to me, because Dr. Sagan's Cosmos LITERALLY saved my sanity (read my review on NetFlix), because my dad worked in the space program, because I grew up on Ray Bradbury and Star Trek, because this is really visionary work and I get to be a part of something awesome that is NOT bringing on a new Dark Ages, and because, even though my broken brain can't DO science, that doesn't mean I can't PARTICIPATE in science as something other than a lab rat for Big PhRMA. I am risking my ONLY access to the internet and, therefore, my social, economic, political, research world by doing this, you know? I can't just hop in a car, drive to a store, slap a plastic card on a counter and buy a new one. But I need to be useful, some how, to some body. I always felt guilty, cuz I couldn't afford to be a member of the Planetary Society. I just wanted you to know. This is a risk for me. And I know your programs are broke, too. but if you find anything not too geeky that needs telecommuted and pays a few bucks, keep me in mind. I can write, for one thing, passionately, about the need to popularize and demystify science. I also do windows. get it? ____________ For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan
	ID: 1037679 ·

BilBg Send message Joined: 27 May 07 Posts: 2089 Credit: 3,271,289 RAC: 8,201	Message 1037691 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 3:58:24 UTC - in response to Message 1037679. Last modified: 1 Oct 2010, 4:07:46 UTC
	To be informed of the heat in your computer you can try some of the Temperature Monitoring Programs http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=59292 Not all of them (if any) will be able to show the Temperatures in this Pentium 4 system (the CPU itself have no internal Temperature sensor but the Mainboard may have) but try at least SIV and EVEREST Check the inside of the computer and clean it from dust (I use brush and vacuum cleaner at low speed) If the Temperature is still high (with no dust + the fan you added) you can use the preference "Use at most XX% of CPU time (Can be used to reduce CPU heat)" http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/prefs.php?subset=global ____________ - ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
	ID: 1037691 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1038010 - Posted: 1 Oct 2010, 22:49:53 UTC - in response to Message 1037679.
	THAT was hard to see, let alone read. brain injury here. I found it, but it's written in geek RAC stands for Recent Average Credit. It is the current running average of credit earned by each Computer, Participant, or Team over time. RAC tracks the rate at which you are earning credit with credit earned today having more weight in the average than the credit granted in the past; each day farther back the less impact on the "running" average. If you stop crunching, your RAC will go down, as it is halved every week. For those that are mathematically inclined, the calculation is an exponentially reducing average with a half life of 2 weeks. um, so, we like, get raises in credit, as long as we're crunching, but, if we stop, we get deducted by half, right? As for the half life stuff: BRAIN INJURY HERE! As long as I'm not glowing in the dark from radiation, I'm good.... Look, i'm REALLY poor, ok? I live on $700/mo disability and a hundred in food stamps. AND i'm rural, which means I NEVER know when the electricity will go belly up. Anyway, here's my point: I bought this old beater pc on eBay for a hundred fifty bucks, including shipping, and am STILL paying off the payday loan I got last year to buy it. And it wheezes like a lawn sprinkler in rag weed season. i can hear it chugging your stuff all night. I keep a fan on it, to blow away the heat. but if this thing fries, well, the library's five miles away, and i don't know if I can buy a new one on eBay from there. and there's always a waiting list. So, I have been very careful to keep this thing on hibernate or standby or whatever or just turn it off. Also, I have to keep my electric bill as low as possible. As you know, both summer and winter here are literally LETHAL in a run down house trailer. if I get behind on my electric bill and they cut me off, my animals and I may die. I will operate this SETI program because this is very important to me, because Dr. Sagan's Cosmos LITERALLY saved my sanity (read my review on NetFlix), because my dad worked in the space program, because I grew up on Ray Bradbury and Star Trek, because this is really visionary work and I get to be a part of something awesome that is NOT bringing on a new Dark Ages, and because, even though my broken brain can't DO science, that doesn't mean I can't PARTICIPATE in science as something other than a lab rat for Big PhRMA. I am risking my ONLY access to the internet and, therefore, my social, economic, political, research world by doing this, you know? I can't just hop in a car, drive to a store, slap a plastic card on a counter and buy a new one. But I need to be useful, some how, to some body. I always felt guilty, cuz I couldn't afford to be a member of the Planetary Society. I just wanted you to know. This is a risk for me. And I know your programs are broke, too. but if you find anything not too geeky that needs telecommuted and pays a few bucks, keep me in mind. I can write, for one thing, passionately, about the need to popularize and demystify science. I also do windows. get it? Credit should never go away (in some projects it does, at least temporarily (sigh)). Simplified analogy that most people understand. Credit is like the odometer. This rises every time you get credit granted. RAC is like the speedometer. It rises and falls with recent past credit grants. The restriction on posting most places is to keep it to current crunchers. A RAC of 1 is about 1 task every 3 weeks or so for SETI (depends on the task). Even a P90 (anyone remember those anymore) was able to have a RAC higher than that. ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1038010 ·

Jeepcowboy Send message Joined: 21 Feb 02 Posts: 1 Credit: 192,848 RAC: 0	Message 1039308 - Posted: 8 Oct 2010, 0:46:39 UTC - in response to Message 1037691.
	And Don't take the covers off. The covers on the computer are part of the Active cooling system that most computers are built on. Plain English.. the fan in the front or the back, is supposed to remove the heat of the computer. Make sure that the computer has at least 4" clearance on all sides and that it is not in direct sunlight. ____________
	ID: 1039308 ·

AnimeDD Send message Joined: 11 Dec 10 Posts: 7 Credit: 3,176 RAC: 0	Message 1055428 - Posted: 12 Dec 2010, 17:23:49 UTC
	Ok, I just started about 36 hours ago. The first job took maybe about 13 hours I am guessing, but when I then checked my settings, I changed it so it is running at all times. Now I seem to be cranking them out fairly good (and it's not even bogging my system as I do voicechat with my girlfriend and do the Facebook flash games such as Green Farm, which takes up a fair amount of processor) What I would like to know is, how long from the time my completed tasks are uploaded does it take for the job to be checked and my credits granted? I am interested in this, because I am really excited about this and would love to be able to fully participate in this endevour. Thank you for this gift of allowing me to participate in something this important BTW. Justin P. Animedevildog Emery, SETI fan and biker
	ID: 1055428 ·

skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 8970 Credit: 37,778,326 RAC: 42,961	Message 1055436 - Posted: 12 Dec 2010, 17:48:14 UTC - in response to Message 1055428.
	your results are going to be double checked by people we call wingmen. if you have a small cache(don't keep much work onboard) then you are likely to have to wait a few days for your wingman to return the work. Some work may take months to return for a multitude of reasons. IF you are running BOINC and have seti running on BOINC then you are pretty much involved. However, after 11 years we still haven't found "the signal" so don't get your hopes up just yet on being the one. ____________ Proud member of TSWB. End terrorism by building a school
	ID: 1055436 ·

AnimeDD Send message Joined: 11 Dec 10 Posts: 7 Credit: 3,176 RAC: 0	Message 1055442 - Posted: 12 Dec 2010, 18:04:23 UTC
	Thank you for that info... though I am thinking I still have a LOT to learn. as to being the one who makes the discovery... yeah.... I HIGHLY doubt it will be me, but I am a part of the experience, and I am contributing, so that is a good thing. Gonna have to find out a lot more about how it all works. Maybe then, I shall appreciate and enjoy this even more. (already enjoying it now)
	ID: 1055442 ·

Mr. Congeniality Send message Joined: 20 Sep 09 Posts: 1 Credit: 33,891 RAC: 0	Message 1073753 - Posted: 3 Feb 2011, 10:23:56 UTC - in response to Message 1037155.
	This is really strange because I have 29,540 points of credit under my belt, yet I can't post at all. Granted I haven't done any computing recently, but still. It's kind of hard when you lose 2 desktops.
	ID: 1073753 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1073771 - Posted: 3 Feb 2011, 12:09:15 UTC - in response to Message 1073753.
	This is really strange because I have 29,540 points of credit under my belt, yet I can't post at all. Granted I haven't done any computing recently, but still. It's kind of hard when you lose 2 desktops. You must have not crunched for a while. It is not credit that drives the ability to post but RAC. If your RAC slips below 1, you will be unable to post. Crunch some for a while and your RAC will again rise above 1 and you will be able to post again. For a description of RAC, see earlier in this thread. ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1073771 ·

Questions and Answers : Getting started : how 2 get credit? want 2 post science q.