I believe its time to fold up the tent and move along, for both this project in general and my own contributions. I'm probably going to take a year off and SETI should too! Shut the project down for 6 - 12 months ( AGAIN! )and get it FIXED! Then come back and start rebuilding a new base of crunchers.

I'm going to wind things up over the holidays, if I can even get enough work to make it last that long!

I've enjoyed contributing to this project for a number of years but its gotten to the point where I have to ask myself "why bother?" Everything ran WAY better a couple of years ago, I hardly ever needed to babysit anything, now with all the "improvements" it's almost impossible to get work half the time, WU's sit as pending download or upload for, in some cases days, or else I get the oh so frequent & helpful message
"12/14/2011 10:18:14 AM | | Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
12/14/2011 10:18:16 AM | | Internet access OK - project servers may be temporarily down."

I want to contribute to science, not babysit a project that seems to be getting more unstable and unreliable with each new "enhancement".

I want to contribute to science, not babysit a project that seems to be getting more unstable and unreliable with each new "enhancement".

So don't babysit it. Just leave it running and ignore it. If you need to justify leaving the computer running 24/7, sign up with another project to keep it busy when it can't get Seti work.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

I am running SETI@home both on my host with Linux and my guest with Solaris. On Linux I have installed the Lunatics apps, on Solaris a BOINC client and a SETI app by Dotsch. Both run without problem, but the guest OS on VirtualBox is slowing the app. But I am running other 6 BOINC projects, including Test4Theory@home, which needs a VirtualBox installation. I have a small cache, 0.25 days and am never out of work.
Tullio

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Babysitting is half the fun for me.

Babysitting is half the fun for me.

It certainly can keep one occupied....LOL.

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

The man is right!!!! Seti isn t like the early days. Soon i will be out too but FOR GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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By your command !!!

Its not SETIs fault that we are 150 000 users with 220 000 computers(even without the GPUs in them more than enough). When a bus is full you dont say "Oh buses what a stupid technolgy lets dump it", you wait for another one or take the taxi.
SETI works fine. Its uploading at full bandwidth 24/7, just not to your hosts at the moment(mine neither). So if there are too many of us feel free to join any other project, i did. If SETI needs me again ill be back(it probably wont since they dont seem to get more bandwidth).

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It would be nice if there was less problems, but really, I'm going nowhere :)

Babysitting is half the fun for me.

Babysitting is fun cuz you can drink someone else's booze.

Oh, wait, wrong kind of babysitting....

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Hope the tent folding did not occur yet, today was a good day.

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

825 active tasks and he's complaining.

What is this "f" word?
Please refrain from "folding"... tents or otherwise!:D

Everything ran WAY better a couple of years ago, I hardly ever needed to babysit anything, now with all the "improvements" it's almost impossible to get work half the time...

Easily fixed, project doesn't even need to shut down for that. Just banish the use of the GPU. Let the GPU be used again for what it's made for: Show things on the monitor and play games at 1256 fps.
Since BOINC sends information about your GPU along with every contact, it should be easy to state on the server that no work at all should go to that system, until they either ignore for this project, or completely remove that GPU.

Of course, if you don't want to stand in the way of progress, well, then there's nothing really that needs fixing. The amount of work going through here shows that Seti works very very well. It ain't broken, it is just overwhelmed by the amount of data wanting to get through the small tunnel up/down the hill. And unless you can convince the university to change that (huge $500,000 donation for instance), there's nothing that will be done about it for now either.

In 12 months time things will only be worse as way way way better and bigger GPUs have been released by then, while contrary to belief there won't be an end of the world on the 21st. ;-)

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... today was a good day.

By which you mean Wednesday. Thursday, otoh, is starting off rather crappy. I hope whatever ails the servers just needs a quick kick in its electronic butt. The Crickets show the uploads continuing merrily along, and of course the message boards are still up, so it can't be a lab-wide problem.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

... today was a good day.

By which you mean Wednesday. Thursday, otoh, is starting off rather crappy. I hope whatever ails the servers just needs a quick kick in its electronic butt. The Crickets show the uploads continuing merrily along, and of course the message boards are still up, so it can't be a lab-wide problem.

Looks like at least some of the kicking has commenced. But the forums are pretty laggy, so sumpthin's still not all up to par.

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

Easily fixed, project doesn't even need to shut down for that. Just banish the use of the GPU. Let the GPU be used again for what it's made for: Show things on the monitor and play games at 1256 fps.

Be careful what you wish for ....

Giggle.

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

Be careful what you wish for ....

Mmmmm - Now I'd really like a....



At least I'd go out with a smile on my face ;-)

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Be careful what you wish for ....

Mmmmm - Now I'd really like a....



At least I'd go out with a smile on my face ;-)

Some would call that a smirk.

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

Wow, really!!??

I have some machines in other cities that I don't get to but once a year or every other year. They run fun with very little interaction. Sure, they are not always fully used or optimized, but they are helping science. And, they are not causing a problem for their primary local users. I'm a big fan of "Set it. And forget it!"

Why not simply take a month or two off from WATCHING or BABYSITTING BOINC? Just let it run & do whatever it does. Then at the end of your vacation check and see how efficient and how much work it really did. Compare that to when you are babysitting.

I've logged my work since day one with annotations as to when I closely monitored, was out of the country, brought on new machines, etc. It is interesting to see the graph, even machines left alone are pretty effective.

It could be a good challenge to see how many days in a row you can go WITHOUT checking BOINC or your status while your machines still run BOINC.

Happy New Year! And enjoy your "vacation"

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SETI@home since 1999
"Set it, and Forget it!"

Did I perhaps write something else?

12 years having passed on for the last two posters here and one with a huge credit of course making a lead on this show just before that again.

Come on, people! Christmas is just around the corner. Time to celebrate, even for the poor. Watch E.T.'s musical show on YouTube.

You may be able to look it up for yourself.