WASTING MY TIME?

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Claggy
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Message 1306589 - Posted: 15 Nov 2012, 21:45:21 UTC - in response to Message 1306586.  

As I recall they work on several different things in the lab. SETI@Home is only a fraction of what they do.


SETI at Berkeley

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Message 1306593 - Posted: 15 Nov 2012, 21:51:18 UTC - in response to Message 1306588.  

There are several SETI projects housed at UC Berkeley. Designate SETI@Home and it goes to this project only.

If you say-so.

Who would you believe? The Regents of the University of California? IRS?


I think you have missed my point, entirely.

I AM ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT EVERY DOLLAR YOU GIVE TO SETI@HOME GOES TO THE PROJECT: SETI@HOME. GARY IS RIGHT. I'M WRONG. DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT.

I've explained what I meant a little better in a PM to you. Not everything needs to be aired in detail in public.

All that we need to agree on here, in order to agree here, is that we cannot stipulate that our $10 donation goes to pay Matt.

Understood and correct, unless Eric says otherwise.

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Message 1306595 - Posted: 15 Nov 2012, 22:04:12 UTC - in response to Message 1306593.  

I hope my many years of effort, not to mention money, have not gone to waste.


It's not like we've been using a hand crank on the computers to analyze the work :)




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Message 1306647 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 2:53:36 UTC - in response to Message 1306596.  

Seti@Home regularly gets these threads questioning the validity of the project. This is usually after an extended period of problems with uploads/downloads. This is nothing new, and will no doubt continue in the future.

I and my team have been around in a few days time, for 12 years, and clocked up over 20 million credits for Seti and 28,051 hours for Seti Classic. I believe in this project and what it is trying to do. I am happy that any money that I donate to this project, $675 so far if you want to know, is being properly spent.

I also know that the lads at the lab have the ability to login remotely and re-boot servers during evenings and weekends. That is in their personal time off when they are not being paid, yet they still monitor the kit and act when they can. They don't have to do that, but they choose to. I don't have to support Seti@home but I choose to.

The Seti@home team also carries out other research e.g. Erics Hydrogen survey. This is their budget for the last year. 2011 budget It costs a lot to run this project, and as Eric says,

Anyone know any multi-million dollar superPAC contributors?

Of course we would all like more communication from the project but we have to be realistic. Matt did it mainly because the others didn't have time to. And to be fair the others probably wouldn't be as good at it as he was.

OK, bottom line is I'm not going anywhere, I'm in this for the long term. It honestly doesn't bother me that we don't get regular updates every 5 minutes on each and every blip. Look at some of the other Boinc projects where the Admins don't say anything for months on end! It would just be so nice to see some more positive thoughts around here. If Seti is not for you, then bon voyage, we wish you well.


I, like many people, prefer them to spend their time working on things instead of writing messages to try and make me feel better.

Personally I hate when I am working on something out & I get interrupted. Which normally ends up in a "Well there goes the past 5 hours I spent. Time to start over." line or something like it. It could also be compared to getting woken up in the middle of the night & not being able to get back to sleep.
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Message 1306658 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 3:37:04 UTC - in response to Message 1306647.  

I, like many people, prefer them to spend their time working on things instead of writing messages to try and make me feel better.

Personally I hate when I am working on something out & I get interrupted. Which normally ends up in a "Well there goes the past 5 hours I spent. Time to start over." line or something like it. It could also be compared to getting woken up in the middle of the night & not being able to get back to sleep.

I agree, but there are ways to improve comunications without wasting the time and efforts of the staff.
For example, as there are mods in the forum, there can be also a kind of "comunity managers" working as a part time volunteers which can read whats happening in the forums and any other source of feedback and then they can write a weekly or daily brief report to the staff... and if the staff give to those CMs some insight of what is happening in the lab then they can keep us more or less informed...
If the person in this position is really clever about the way he/she tell us what's happening, he/she will be able to make us very happy... ;D
In fact, just knowing that there is somebody collecting feedback and reporting it regularly sounds much better than having the (wrong?) feeling that nobody cares about the volunteers that give power to the project...
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Message 1306662 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 4:35:18 UTC

I'd hate to be the guy interviewed on the news after a positive signal is verified saying "yeah, I used to be a part of that, but I got mad and quit".
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Message 1306663 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 4:45:53 UTC

It seems a lot of people are mad because their computer isn't getting work. Is that a thing to get mad over?

Was anyone promised work 24/7/365? No.
Was anyone promised as much work as you can crunch? No.
Was anyone promised 24/7 uptime? No.
Was anyone asked to build a crunch box? No.
Was everyone told to join other projects? Yes.
Was everyone told only spare CPU time. Yes.
Way anyone promised a high RAC. No.
Was everyone told the point is to find ET. Yes.
Was everyone told the project is fault tolerant. Yes.
Was everyone told the software might hiccup. Yes.

What are you mad at again?

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Message 1306739 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 12:20:59 UTC - in response to Message 1306663.  
Last modified: 16 Nov 2012, 12:25:35 UTC

Was everyone told the point is to find ET. Yes.


Using exactly your words...

If the focus is FIND ET, then why try to keep AP-Splitting working and making all this wierd situation worst if is crystal clear the actual configuration can´t handle both project running all full capacity?

Nobody ask for 24/7 or zero fault project, just maybe a word or two form the lab, something like "hey we are alive, we know and working on the fix", thats don´t take a minute of time to anyone. Why for ask for "donation" all the time of the world apears?

If we need to wait for Matt returns to fix the problem, thats ok, but why don´t make this days less painfuls? Try to keep the focus project working that we could ask for.
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Message 1306765 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 14:22:35 UTC - in response to Message 1306762.  
Last modified: 16 Nov 2012, 14:23:51 UTC

Well... I started this thread out of frustration, and most of the comments have re-enforced my main frustration.

We are just talking to ourselves. Where is the response and communication from Berkeley?

It would only take a few seconds to post what the problems are, and possible time frame for a fix. Would it really matter if it would take days, or weeks to fix, if we - The Volunteers - were given this information?

There is no understandable reason to keep us in the dark.


You are of course making two assumptions;

1 - They are aware there is a problem.

2 - There is actually someone in the lab.

Remember the outage this week started at 5.23 pacific time. Probably so whoever was there could get it done and then do their other job.
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Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
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Message 1306768 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 14:26:05 UTC - in response to Message 1306765.  

You are of course making two assumptions;

1 - They are aware there is a problem.

2 - There is actually someone in the lab.

3 - They understand the root cause of the problem, and have an idea how to fix it.

(other than by throwing several tens of K$ at it, which they don't have)
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Message 1306771 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 14:31:53 UTC - in response to Message 1306768.  

You are of course making two assumptions;

1 - They are aware there is a problem.

2 - There is actually someone in the lab.

3 - They understand the root cause of the problem, and have an idea how to fix it.

(other than by throwing several tens of K$ at it, which they don't have)


Richard

Did you see

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=69995&postid=1306767

Another interesting clue for your ACK theory...
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Richard Haselgrove Project Donor
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Message 1306772 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 14:41:15 UTC - in response to Message 1306771.  

Saw it, replying.
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Message 1306857 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 18:29:59 UTC - in response to Message 1306662.  

I'd hate to be the guy interviewed on the news after a positive signal is verified saying "yeah, I used to be a part of that, but I got mad and quit".

Brother Cruncher.

If we actually did find ET do you think for one second that the Government will allow us to know about it.
We can't even get them to admit that we already have been visited MANY, MANY times

Their have been too many civilizations here that don't fit the bill of being NATIVE to this planet. EVERY SINGLE ONE.
I for one don't believe any of us are really from this planet. We are all ALIEN

http://0.tqn.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/f/1/Aad4_sm.jpg

These are just my conclusions.
If we want to find ET then turn the telescopes around and point them at us

Michael Miles
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Josef W. Segur
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Message 1306861 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 18:41:10 UTC - in response to Message 1306739.  

Was everyone told the point is to find ET. Yes.


Using exactly your words...

If the focus is FIND ET, then why try to keep AP-Splitting working and making all this wierd situation worst if is crystal clear the actual configuration can´t handle both project running all full capacity?

Astropulse development was funded in part by an NSF grant. Trying for future NSF grants without continuing AP processing would be silly. Stopping AP temporarily is possible, but the general idea of analyzing all fresh data with both SaH and AP algorithms is necessarily the goal.

In terms of future funding, it might actually be better to skip the SaH processing and do only AP on some of the data.
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Message 1306867 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 19:04:31 UTC - in response to Message 1306861.  

Was everyone told the point is to find ET. Yes.


Using exactly your words...

If the focus is FIND ET, then why try to keep AP-Splitting working and making all this wierd situation worst if is crystal clear the actual configuration can´t handle both project running all full capacity?

Astropulse development was funded in part by an NSF grant. Trying for future NSF grants without continuing AP processing would be silly. Stopping AP temporarily is possible, but the general idea of analyzing all fresh data with both SaH and AP algorithms is necessarily the goal.

In terms of future funding, it might actually be better to skip the SaH processing and do only AP on some of the data.
                                                                    Joe


I agree to this.
AstroPulse has a better chance of finding 'ET' or something alike.

At least in the same data Einstein has found several Pulsars.

NOT what the majority of the crunchers want to hear, probably, but we do
have to be realistic and funding is dead on necessary for this project!



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Message 1306888 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 20:14:48 UTC - in response to Message 1306861.  

Was everyone told the point is to find ET. Yes.


Using exactly your words...

If the focus is FIND ET, then why try to keep AP-Splitting working and making all this wierd situation worst if is crystal clear the actual configuration can´t handle both project running all full capacity?

Astropulse development was funded in part by an NSF grant. Trying for future NSF grants without continuing AP processing would be silly. Stopping AP temporarily is possible, but the general idea of analyzing all fresh data with both SaH and AP algorithms is necessarily the goal.

In terms of future funding, it might actually be better to skip the SaH processing and do only AP on some of the data.
                                                                    Joe

As I recall there was some talk about changing the software to download AP tasks & then process them for both AP & MB data. As the raw data is the same, but just broken up differently. It might have just been an idea someone mentioned here instead of something form the guys in the lab. I don't recall.
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Message 1306918 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 21:43:35 UTC - in response to Message 1306888.  

Was everyone told the point is to find ET. Yes.


Using exactly your words...

If the focus is FIND ET, then why try to keep AP-Splitting working and making all this wierd situation worst if is crystal clear the actual configuration can´t handle both project running all full capacity?

Astropulse development was funded in part by an NSF grant. Trying for future NSF grants without continuing AP processing would be silly. Stopping AP temporarily is possible, but the general idea of analyzing all fresh data with both SaH and AP algorithms is necessarily the goal.

In terms of future funding, it might actually be better to skip the SaH processing and do only AP on some of the data.
                                                                    Joe

As I recall there was some talk about changing the software to download AP tasks & then process them for both AP & MB data. As the raw data is the same, but just broken up differently. It might have just been an idea someone mentioned here instead of something form the guys in the lab. I don't recall.

That is the splitters job. When they load a "tape" it is sent to both AP and MB splitters and both kinds of work units are generated.

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Message 1306931 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 22:21:42 UTC - in response to Message 1306918.  

As I recall there was some talk about changing the software to download AP tasks & then process them for both AP & MB data. As the raw data is the same, but just broken up differently. It might have just been an idea someone mentioned here instead of something form the guys in the lab. I don't recall.

That is the splitters job. When they load a "tape" it is sent to both AP and MB splitters and both kinds of work units are generated.

Which raises the question that (IIRC, I wish this forum would include attributions like modern software such as Usenet :-) HAL9000D alluded to -- could AP data be sent to hosts which could then re-process (locally split) them into simultaneous MB WUs? Note I said "could" -- logistics of making sure work was sent to hosts capable of processing both data types would probably be prohibitive.
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Message 1306950 - Posted: 16 Nov 2012, 23:15:53 UTC - in response to Message 1306931.  

As I recall there was some talk about changing the software to download AP tasks & then process them for both AP & MB data. As the raw data is the same, but just broken up differently. It might have just been an idea someone mentioned here instead of something form the guys in the lab. I don't recall.

That is the splitters job. When they load a "tape" it is sent to both AP and MB splitters and both kinds of work units are generated.

Which raises the question that (IIRC, I wish this forum would include attributions like modern software such as Usenet :-) HAL9000D alluded to -- could AP data be sent to hosts which could then re-process (locally split) them into simultaneous MB WUs? Note I said "could" -- logistics of making sure work was sent to hosts capable of processing both data types would probably be prohibitive.

Could yes. Issue is the raw data is many times larger than the split data, so it would seriously clog the pipe and the pipe is already clogged.


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Message 1306987 - Posted: 17 Nov 2012, 0:40:45 UTC - in response to Message 1306918.  


As I recall there was some talk about changing the software to download AP tasks & then process them for both AP & MB data. As the raw data is the same, but just broken up differently. It might have just been an idea someone mentioned here instead of something form the guys in the lab. I don't recall.

That is the splitters job. When they load a "tape" it is sent to both AP and MB splitters and both kinds of work units are generated.

There has been some speculation about unburdening the servers by delivering suitably sized chunks of the raw data and have the science application do the splitting. AFAIK that's user speculation only, if the project considered it at all in 2003 when work on Astropulse started they probably decided almost instantly it was neither needed nor practical.

Now it is at least close to practical for many fairly new hosts. The general idea would be to send 107.374 seconds of raw data from a channel to the host (a 64MiB + overhead super WU) and have the app split it into 256 frequency subbands (MB WUs) plus split into 8 sequential time sections at full bandwidth (AP WUs). The advantage is that single ~64MiB download replaces ~162MiB of downloads for work split server side. Both the raw data and split data use the same 2 bits to represent a complex data point, the savings come from only sending the data once plus far less overhead in the WU header information.

That simple scheme only matches current splitting for the first 107.374 seconds of data from a channel, because the MB splitting has an overlap of ~20%. The second group of 256 MB Wus should start at ~85.77 seconds, but the ninth AP WU starts at 107.374 seconds. Compromise parameters could be chosen and applied to both client-side and server-side splitting, IMO that would be better than needing a separate science database for the dissimilar results.

Result reporting plus other BOINC aspects would need a lot of thought, and there would be a lot of new code to implement the change. If we had funded the project well enough that they had a programmer with no high priority work under way, perhaps...
                                                                  Joe
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