Quite a few of us would like to see him disappear for good and never come back, but even his little contribution does help and has to be seen as welcome. If he annoys you that much, which of course he deliberately does to get attention, the answer is to put him on ignore. As an international project we cannot stop the mentally challenged from signing up and posting, provided they don't break the rules.

I found out that BOINC has a limit of only 26 users on the ignore list. Trying to add more results in an error.

Actually when Zapped Sparky reported this a a problem this was David Anderson's answer

The database field that stores ignored user IDs is 254 chars long, and Zapped has reached this limit.

The code should handle this more gracefully, or remove the limit. For now, you can un-ignore some people.

So it is all to do with how long the users ID's are.

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Bilges of Ships, steam, sail, and motor along with Fresh Paint; Shined Brass, and Gold Thread Above.

I've Sounded many a Bilge, and Reported to the Bridge, metaphorically speaking, All 'Is' 'Ship Shape'.

This Bilge Rat, however, 'Sees', 'Senses' and 'Sounded' this, metaphorically speaking, 'Bilge', and Reports, All 'is' Not
'Ship Shape'.


'Is' S at H in Danger of 'Sinking'. Certainly 'it' has been 'Listing' Dangerously and Taking On enough 'Water' to be Above
the Bilge Deck Plates and Filling Fast.

Doubt if The 'Russian' will be 'Bailing' Out SS S at H.

My 'Duty' 'is' Not to be A Lickspittle for a Floundering Ship. I'll Leave Dat to 'Others' More Capable.

By making comments such as we have all seen these past few years just makes the commenter much worse than those being commented on.

Quite a few of us would like to see him disappear for good and never come back...

Well, have a joyful and happy heart knowing that with a RAC like yours, you aren't wasting very much

Dull, your ignorance is only more amazing than your lack of intellect.
Please, if you can, save us from your nonsense by leaving the project and thus sparing us from your limited wit.

So it is all to do with how long the users ID's are.

My Ignore ID-73943- 'is' Only 5 Characters, so Don't Blame Me for a 'Filled' 'List'.

________________________________________________________________________________

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May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

Quite a few of us would like to see him disappear for good and never come back, but even his little contribution does help and has to be seen as welcome. If he annoys you that much, which of course he deliberately does to get attention, the answer is to put him on ignore. As an international project we cannot stop the mentally challenged from signing up and posting, provided they don't break the rules.

I found out that BOINC has a limit of only 26 users on the ignore list. Trying to add more results in an error.

Actually when Zapped Sparky reported this a a problem this was David Anderson's answer

The database field that stores ignored user IDs is 254 chars long, and Zapped has reached this limit.

The code should handle this more gracefully, or remove the limit. For now, you can un-ignore some people.

So it is all to do with how long the users ID's are.

Well that explanation makes sense. However with the 26 users I have on ignore their total length comes to 161 characters. Likely closers to 186 with a comma separating IDs or 238 if the values are stored in quotes & separated by commas. It seems like I should be able to add at least 1 more, but maybe there is some other overhead in that stored value.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

"User ID" is not the same as "User Name". The User ID is a constant size, but the User Name as some have demonstrated can vary quite dramatically....

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

"User ID" is not the same as "User Name". The User ID is a constant size, but the User Name as some have demonstrated can vary quite dramatically....

Well your "used ID is - 226846
Hal's is - 792
And mine is - 812533

Quite why you have a lower id than me seems odd but there probably is a reason

Seems they vary in length up to 8 digits for people who joined this months

So I assume that if all the users had 3 digit id you could ignore 84.66 users, whereas if they all had 9 digits ids you could only ignore 28.22.

But possibly there are some overheads we are unaware of.

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Well your "used ID is - 226846
Hal's is - 792
And mine is - 812533

Quite why you have a lower id than me seems odd but there probably is a reason.

Off topic, but since the question came up - I got UserID 5509.

About a year before SETI Classic closed down, and when BOINC was getting ready to roll, they did a bulk import of active SETI Classic users to seed the new BOINC database. I don't know how far down the list they went, but those which were imported were done in Classic ranking order - so the lower your UID now, the more Classic work you returned.

The variable ignorelist in the BOINC database is still 254 characters long. Just in case someone wondered if that got changed.

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Numbers are supposed to be of no value.

Science is supposed to be the opposite.

Guess it loses track quite soon when it comes to the discussion.

But that is most likely the reason why I am not asking this question.

I joined on 19 Nov 2000 and user ID is 107579.

SETI@home classic workunits 3,280
SETI@home classic CPU time 28,051 hours

I think my user ID changed a few times when I merged computers in perhaps not the correct order?

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SETI@home classic workunits 4,019
SETI@home classic CPU time 34,348 hours

I joined on 19 Nov 2000 and user ID is 107579.

SETI@home classic workunits 3,280
SETI@home classic CPU time 28,051 hours

I think my user ID changed a few times when I merged computers in perhaps not the correct order?

That would affect the HostIDs, but not the UserID.

OK, I get the difference and did not know that.
Thanks

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SETI@home classic workunits 4,019
SETI@home classic CPU time 34,348 hours

There's much worse than Dull around these forums. A genuinely intelligent person will know that it takes all sorts to make a world & make allowances for that.

By making comments such as we have all seen these past few years just makes the commenter much worse than those being commented on.

Honestly, I've been seeing those posts for many years. My guess is that he chuckled out loud at my response. I'm guessing that that's the sort of sense of humor at work. I thought his post had some sharp wit in it. It's a little mid-sixties, but I'm old enough to remember the mid-sixties.

A little more on-topic: I sure wish we'd get more AP work, but it is nice to see the project back to "more normal." It would be very interesting to be a fly on Matt's wall.

I guess we could request a webcam with audio. :-)

Well your "used ID is - 226846
Hal's is - 792
And mine is - 812533

Quite why you have a lower id than me seems odd but there probably is a reason.

Off topic, but since the question came up - I got UserID 5509.

About a year before SETI Classic closed down, and when BOINC was getting ready to roll, they did a bulk import of active SETI Classic users to seed the new BOINC database. I don't know how far down the list they went, but those which were imported were done in Classic ranking order - so the lower your UID now, the more Classic work you returned.

I had always wondered why my UID was so low. I figured it had something to do with signing up with BOINC during the original alpha testing, but your explanation seems rather logical. When they did the import I might have been #792, but by the time Classic ended I dropped down to #1001.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

Well your "used ID is - 226846
Hal's is - 792
And mine is - 812533

Quite why you have a lower id than me seems odd but there probably is a reason.

Off topic, but since the question came up - I got UserID 5509.

About a year before SETI Classic closed down, and when BOINC was getting ready to roll, they did a bulk import of active SETI Classic users to seed the new BOINC database. I don't know how far down the list they went, but those which were imported were done in Classic ranking order - so the lower your UID now, the more Classic work you returned.

I had always wondered why my UID was so low. I figured it had something to do with signing up with BOINC during the original alpha testing, but your explanation seems rather logical. When they did the import I might have been #792, but by the time Classic ended I dropped down to #1001.

So that'd be why my user ID is 3450.

Cheers.

To find such an ET on the other side of the galaxy we would need an antenna 1000 times bigger than the one we are using, and in a true radio quiet area such as the far side of the moon. We have the tech, but not the $$$$.

Wait, you're saying if we put a 300km Radio Telescope on the moon we can determine if there's ET or not?

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To find such an ET on the other side of the galaxy we would need an antenna 1000 times bigger than the one we are using, and in a true radio quiet area such as the far side of the moon. We have the tech, but not the $$$$.

Wait, you're saying if we put a 300km Radio Telescope on the moon we can determine if there's ET or not?

Might need more than one.

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To find such an ET on the other side of the galaxy we would need an antenna 1000 times bigger than the one we are using, and in a true radio quiet area such as the far side of the moon. We have the tech, but not the $$$$.

Wait, you're saying if we put a 300km Radio Telescope on the moon we can determine if there's ET or not?

Well lets put up a Kickstarter for that telescope on the moon :) I always wanted to have a dish that can recieve PPV from Proxima Centauri

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I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap

Thanks for the couple of responses to my original post. I haven't been able to read this board much since I posted my comment.

Let me say first that I am not saying there isn't any theory behind the project, either the DC project or the seti@home project. I am asking a question about the methods being used.

Perhaps, it would help if I asked the fundamental question in my mind. Do we have the ability to say that within a given solid angle that the likelihood of the existence of an ET signal is some number?

To answer this, we would have to include considerations of our effective sensitivity ( what is our overall S/N threshold from Arecibo to our science database in Berkeley ), the number of observational points that have been processed (WU's) in that solid angle, how strong or 'clean' the WU's are, we might have to include some specification of not just solid angle but distance, and so on.

I'm ok with a tiny number, but the project doesn't seem to be well thought out if we aren't working toward a number.

Oh, yeah, if a theory existed, we could objectively state whether S@H is useful or not, or better, whether it could ever be useful (within the theory's limitation)

Thanks for the couple of responses to my original post. I haven't been able to read this board much since I posted my comment.

Let me say first that I am not saying there isn't any theory behind the project, either the DC project or the seti@home project. I am asking a question about the methods being used.

Perhaps, it would help if I asked the fundamental question in my mind. Do we have the ability to say that within a given solid angle that the likelihood of the existence of an ET signal is some number?

To answer this, we would have to include considerations of our effective sensitivity ( what is our overall S/N threshold from Arecibo to our science database in Berkeley ), the number of observational points that have been processed (WU's) in that solid angle, how strong or 'clean' the WU's are, we might have to include some specification of not just solid angle but distance, and so on.

I'm ok with a tiny number, but the project doesn't seem to be well thought out if we aren't working toward a number.

Oh, yeah, if a theory existed, we could objectively state whether S@H is useful or not, or better, whether it could ever be useful (within the theory's limitation)

We can start with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation to get a wild guess on how many others there may be out there. Unfortunately the error bars are larger than the significance of the result and we only know for sure that we exist so zero isn't included in the error bars.

That leaves us with looking at the receive capability. Then we need to make a wild guess if they are purposefully sending a beacon or if we have to detect leakage. Each possibility gives a volume of space. Unfortunately the one for leakage isn't very large as our antenna isn't massive, despite it being the biggest. The one for a beacon is much larger, but it doesn't cover out to the nearest galaxy.

http://www.setileague.org/articles/oseti.htm May be of some interest.

Then there is the fraction of the sky that can be observed by the antenna. It can't look at all of it at once either, so we can miss ET if he only transmits on occasion. The last is the antenna isn't always listening, they use it for other things.

IIRC Dr. K has said he estimates we have about a 1% chance per year of detecting ET. I believe he didn't mean just Seti@home, but across all Seti efforts. OBW that estimate would mean that after looking for 100 years we would have about a 64% chance of finding him. I think Dr. K may be an optimist.

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