Why even do this?

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Profile betreger Project Donor
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Message 1723365 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 0:30:10 UTC - in response to Message 1723343.  

i stick with him beeing a troll

i stick with siran on that one

Why do you care? He crunches a bit and every bit counts so I say crunch on and bitch if you like.
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Message 1723388 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 1:14:56 UTC

I crunch and will continue to crunch untill I die or the projects ends.
I do hope that when the data is analyized that if a signal is found by a deceased member, That they are giving credit for finding it.

Some of us do hope you stay and crunch.

And to answer some of the critics. To me a troll is someone who had a RAC of ten and posted all over the place. YOU DO remember who that was dont you?
[/quote]

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Message 1723443 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 4:20:42 UTC - in response to Message 1723388.  

I crunch and will continue to crunch untill I die or the projects ends.
I do hope that when the data is analyized that if a signal is found by a deceased member, That they are giving credit for finding it.

Some of us do hope you stay and crunch.

And to answer some of the critics. To me a troll is someone who had a RAC of ten and posted all over the place. YOU DO remember who that was dont you?


Who you pointing at?
I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap
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Message 1723446 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 4:49:28 UTC - in response to Message 1723443.  

I crunch and will continue to crunch untill I die or the projects ends.
I do hope that when the data is analyized that if a signal is found by a deceased member, That they are giving credit for finding it.

Some of us do hope you stay and crunch.

And to answer some of the critics. To me a troll is someone who had a RAC of ten and posted all over the place. YOU DO remember who that was dont you?


Who you pointing at?

Not you. But us old timers know who Im talking about.
[/quote]

Old James
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Message 1723522 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 10:16:41 UTC - in response to Message 1723221.  

I guess what I'm saying is that I choose to be a part of the project because I find the science fascinating, and I think the idea of someone such as myself being able to contribute to the sciences in such a direct and tangible way is still a fun and exciting prospect, even if nothing happens in my lifetime.

I do hope you choose to stay, despite the rest of the responses in this thread. I think it is perfectly natural to question your participation, especially after so many years of contributing and seeing nothing. Still, when setting one's expectations accordingly, the idea of volunteer computing for science is an amazing concept that I'm happy to be a part of, and I hope you can see it that way too.

Well said Ozzfan.

It's sad to see that old chestnut RAC/TC rear it's ugly head again & how comparisons are made. It happened to me recently that made me laugh. My Seti Contribution individually as well as team compared to another, who quite conveniently provided their total combined Boinc Stats but left mine off. As can be seen under my avatar, my Seti TC only stands at 1.9 mill, however my total boinc combined currently stands at 18,334,421.77.

It seems that those with high TC's/RAC's have forgotten one important ingredient, they were newbies once. Have they now reached the point where only their contribution to the project is all that matters?

WHATEVER happened to that Number Crunching fraternity that assisted all comers with their issues?
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Message 1723528 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 10:57:49 UTC - in response to Message 1723071.  

For me the point is "Because we can." We as humans have always sought answers. Our curiosity and wonder has driven us to aim for the second star the right and sail straight on until morning. It's what got us here and will get us there, wherever 'there' is.

What has been gained? Science, data. I believe SETI@Home has discovered a couple of Pulsars/Quasars (correct me if I'm inaccurate here) and corroborated other astronomy data too.

Even with 'nobody checking the results' the cleaned up data is there to be checked, maybe not now but it's there and CAN be checked. That is incredibly important. It's also very expensive. So understand that it's not that no-one wants to check it, it's that checking it will cost a lot in manpower and computing power.

As for why we burn up our CPUs? Again, we're human and because they're there.
~W

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Message 1723546 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 13:30:17 UTC - in response to Message 1723118.  
Last modified: 8 Sep 2015, 13:40:35 UTC

Hi Bernie,

The OP has a valid question please try and think of answers rather than just slagging someone off because they don't have a large credit.

Do you have answers as to why they should continue crunching?


not so sure anymore:-/ I started with Seti Classic, lost that when I changed ISP and forgot the old password.. But hadn't done all that much, so not a problem really, then I restarted with Boinc when I could afford a rig that didn't fall over when I crunched all out.. But over time I've seen some situations I'm far from happy with. I've been as addicted as some of the more rabid posters, got into a big problem with energy billing in 2012 and had to quit until I'd repaid a rather large electricity bill:-/
But now I'm back, I find some of the big wigs pulling stunts I'm not too happy with, like wanting to broadcast our location to whatever may or may not be out there somewhere.. That's NOT a decsision for a couple of guys to make, it has global implications.

Then there is the matter of credit new.. and the seeming belief by somebody that the people who spend large wads of cash on their rigs and power bills are just some sort of rabble that can be shoved around if they feel like it.
I see comments that the original poster only has 10k credits.. for 11 years crunching.. Well given credit new that's not really a surprise is it?

I crunched a S@H cpu task or 2 as a trial, took about 1hr 40 mins per WU on my rig for a validated credit of 48, for another projects cpu task that ran for 1hr 55 mins I got 480C more by a factor of 10!
My S@H total credits are around 3 million, for a cash outlay of several thousand quid in kit, plus about half that in electricity billing, and I run off peak between 0100 and 0800 BST or 0000 and 0700 GMT.. To minimise the power bills.
I've being doing another project since 2012, with a layoff and back again when I restarted with S@H, I credit total with that project, running exactly the same amount of time as S@H is 12 mill plus.

Now given that finding ET is 'interesting' and also rather unsuccessful to date dispite over a decade of searching, and during the same time other things have cropped up in the distributed computing arena, like science projects that have practical applications, have made serveral discoveries and aided science in general, and for me astronomy in particular.
There are more urgent tasks [in my view] that need attention of the population at large, large scale impacts by solar debris on the place we live for starters, but searching for NEO's isn't a DC task, but working out details of some of the boddies in the asteroid belt is, and there's a DC project for that:-)
Then there's the collision of our galaxy with Andromeda sometime in the distant furure amd there is a project looking at how such collisions cause the galaxies to interact..

Nearly every other project actually 'pays' more in credits to the people that crunch their data than s@h and don't just take the attitude that if you aint innit for the science take a hike, we'll give whatever crunbs we feel like.

I'm getting on in age and have seen better days health wise, so I'm left pondering what it is I'm getting out of all the expenditure, night time crunching etc, wheres the 'bang' for 'my' buck?

I would like to have some national and global ranking for WU crunched [credits accrued] when I pop my clogs:-) And so far with low credits, database crashes, outaages etc, well frankly S@H doesn't seem that great a deal by comparison with other projects.
If it were not for one or two members of the S@H team we wouldn't even be kept appraised of whatever is going on, or given a reason for outages etc.

Frankly I do NOT find it all that surprising that major sponsors decided until very recently to withdraw funding.. Those sponsors are generally accountable to the public / shareholders for where the cash goes.. And get hammered if its not optimally spent.

Now the program is seemingly changing its management structure and methodology.
So maybe sometime in the furure users will actually get a say in what gives, I say maybe! because I've seen this sort of event occur before and the same old situation prevailed after all the changing of 'things' was done, but the same people ended up persuing the same policies in the end..

So I wont slag off anyone who asks is all this worth it, its up to then to decide if they want to carry on with S@H or not, of try some other project or not..

After all its THEIR computer, THEIR cash being spent, so its THEIR solution that applies for them.

My tuppence worth:-)And if one or two want to start slagging me off, so what? its just a load of free electrons in a vacuum in the end:-)

And I don't value their opinion any more than any other I don't agree with:-)

Regards,
Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T shirt!
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Message 1723594 - Posted: 8 Sep 2015, 23:21:38 UTC - in response to Message 1723580.  

We crunch because we believe in the idea.

Big or small, doesn't matter.

No way of knowing who might find a signal.
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Message 1723720 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 4:53:15 UTC

Well Petra this giant CHEERS you on, just do what the heat allows you and who knows you might be the one ;-)
Bob Smith
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Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?
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Message 1723748 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 6:13:47 UTC - in response to Message 1723594.  

We crunch because we believe in the idea.

Big or small, doesn't matter.

No way of knowing who might find a signal.


+1
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Message 1723777 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 8:42:18 UTC - in response to Message 1723580.  

I enjoy the feeling that comes with contributing to such a world wide endeavour as this, but it is not a good feeling to see those perceived to be small, jeered at by giants. :(

This is really simply solved, if the project were to make a little change towards the credit: simply reset all credits/RACs at the end of the year, store their max per person as a memento, then everyone start from zero at January 1st. And do so each year. That way new comers and oldies can compete for real, something they cannot do now, unless each new comer comes in with a farm of 64 x 16GPU servers running only Astropulse.

All sports do this reset at the end of the season, so why can't BOINC?
But don't fret, this'll never happen. Those with mega-credits just won't let it be done.
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Message 1723818 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 12:25:14 UTC

why not add another credit line that gets reset every year so you can have yearly and all time credit
I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap
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Message 1723840 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 13:36:41 UTC - in response to Message 1723818.  

why not add another credit line that gets reset every year so you can have yearly and all time credit

Extra work, and more chances to mess it up, for the folks who write the BOINC server software (see CreditNew)).
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Message 1723841 - Posted: 9 Sep 2015, 13:41:14 UTC - in response to Message 1723818.  

why not add another credit line that gets reset every year so you can have yearly and all time credit

Maybe the long desired task count could be added as well. Which could also have yearly total added.
SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
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Message 1724754 - Posted: 11 Sep 2015, 18:22:20 UTC - in response to Message 1723071.  

What is the point? What has been gained? My cpu's are red hot, and still nobody checks the results?
So, why should we burn up our cpu's for this?


Because we Can, and do so voluntary...
Noli tangere circulos meos...
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Message 1725017 - Posted: 12 Sep 2015, 12:42:53 UTC - in response to Message 1724754.  

Hi Folks,

What is the point? What has been gained? My cpu's are red hot, and still nobody checks the results?
So, why should we burn up our cpu's for this?


Because we Can, and do so voluntary...

Yup, its voluntary, unfortunately there are some people who have a complete disregard for anything other than their own ego's:-(
It seems that SetiUK had a vote recently as to if they should broadcast a message from this planet to whomever/wherever.
The vote was tied, and so no send prevailed, but it tied because someone who claims to be a philosopher decided to vote both ways, both for and against the proposal..

The Arrogance of the ego polishing prats is almost beyond belief. They want to broadcast a message that could potentially affect every single person on the planet without any effort to consult said populous..

I'd thought that idea had been decided against earlier this year when it was 1st proposed, but it seems to be re-occurring:-(

Frankly I'm increasing unsure if I want to be associated with a project that generates such proposals. So I'm thinking it over as to if I should continue to support S@H.

When a few guys lounging around can decide to compromise the entire planet's welfare, well that's a real cause for reflection.

It doesn't matter one little bit of any potential ET is friendly or not, nobody knows either way, and inviting trouble is not IMO the way to go.

Regards,
Cliff,
Been there, Done that, Still no damm T shirt!
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Message 1725028 - Posted: 12 Sep 2015, 13:11:53 UTC

I use my hardware for Seti@home simply to see what my RAC may be based on how hard I push that hardware. Whether or not I personally discover anything is mute. I am really only here to compare my hardware configurations and associated RAC with that of other Seti@home supporters.

I personally believe ET has already been here. The historical record, while not irrefutable, is quite intriguing and compelling.

Anyhow, my new PSU is working well, my machine is running almost flat out and my RAC is coming back up nicely.

AMD FX-8350 at 4100mhz
16gigs of G-Skill Ripjaws RAM at 1600mhz
2-Powercolor R9 280Xs 1030/1500mhz
Gigabyte GA970-UD3 MOBO
Samsung EVO 850 SSD
EVGA Supernova P2 1200W PSU

Good luck crunching peeps!
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Message 1725103 - Posted: 12 Sep 2015, 16:22:06 UTC - in response to Message 1723546.  



not so sure anymore:-/



I'm with you, but then... maybe not.

It has been several years since I crunched numbers here "for the science."

Truth be known, I hang-around mostly for the camaraderie and the occasional credit "challenge" and that sort of thing; those things being related to the communal experience.

I'm going to try to say this in a positive way and hope I can get away with it.

We have been told that Green Bank is being worked-on and will come online soon enough. That will be interesting even if GBT is less sensitive than Arecibo. Remember, we are looking in a pretty narrow bandwidth with instruments that aren't really up-to finding what it is we are looking for even if it is pretty close-by. It still has to be *extremely* "loud" for us to catch it.

LOFAR is going to be great when it comes online. Not only will we have a new frequency-band to search in, but we'll be able to search in many directions at once at a much increased sensitivity. The problem with LOFAR is that the amount of data is so overwhelming that recording it and distributing it is not merely problematic, it is impossible. It isn't even sort-of possible. The search methodology will have to change; the data has to be examined in real-time because there is no way to record it. IF I understand correctly, which I almost assuredly do not, LOFAR will give us enough sensitivity to "see" thousands of light years away if we can figure-out how to process the flood of data. You and I will probably not be part of LOFAR signal analysis unless it is sporadic or a specific few minutes of a re-observation. [that's purely a guess, but if the data rate is 1TB/s or more... it's not practical]

The SKA is much the same story, but bigger. It's going to be awesome and give us much better sensitivity. And again, the problem is that this huge array is going to produce an unimaginable amount of data every second. I think I saw .5PB/s (PetaBytes ... per second) mentioned.

Of course that can be narrowed-down IF you have the necessary computing power to narrow it. I'm not sure you can move half a PetaByte / second through even a massive cluster, but even if you could...

For the last bunch of years we've been taking radio noise that almost certainly does not have enough signal in it for us to find anything, and we've been looking in a narrow band we guessed might be a place some E.T. might broadcast in, and we've only been able to see out to a few of the closest stars with enough sensitivity to find something if it were there, and the something we're looking for is some E.T. with an Arecibo-sized microwave transmitter beaming directly at us at extremely high power right where we are looking in the radio band, and we've been crunching deep, deep, deep into the noise trying to pull-out a signal that almost certainly isn't there and almost certainly couldn't be "heard" if it were.

No, that's not negative. What we have been doing is what the Wright Brothers did. They weren't trying to build a Boeing 767 or a Concorde and couldn't even foresee such things would ever exist. They weren't the first to try, either. But they had a small success that lead to other things that lead to other things that lead to the Concorde and spaceflight and everything that came with all of that (baggage claim, TSA, cell phone waiting lots...).

From our participation in SETI Classic came BOINC which launched 1,000 ships, many of which have done "good science" and lead to all sorts of discoveries.

And look how much better our searches are today than they were! De-dispersion and auto-correlation and god only knows what else has been applied here.

If you and I (and a few million of our closest friends) had not crunched numbers for SETI, several of those other projects would probably have never existed because SETI@Home invented this wheel. The lessons learned in making SETI code more sensitive and improving the front-end (SERENDIP hardware and methods) will live-on and be built-upon and be improved-upon just like happened with the Wright Flyer.

So, the reason to crunch-on is not so much hoping that you, or I, will find a signal from E.T., but because we don't *know* what all of this might lead-to, or help-with, or might find (when the database is eventually re-mined for something we don't even know we are looking-for).

The reason to be thankful for the opportunity to contribute is that our search, much like analog television signals and coal gas lamps, has a limited lifespan. This is not the way we'll search for E.T. in 20 more years.

We've been trying to find Pluto optically with Galileo's telescope! There is no shame in trying and all of this DOES advance the cause of SETI science.

I think we should adopt the attitude that "it has been a privilege" and accept that this opportunity is drawing to a close. I'm not predicting that SETI@Home will or will not go on another 20 years, but it was not long after the Wright Flyer that we got the Sopwith Camel. Nobody flew a Wright Flyer anymore.

When will SETI@Home stop completely? I can't begin to imagine. After the telescope was built at Mt. Wilson it's a fair bet nobody discovered much using Galileo's. On the other hand, Fermilab is still doing good science even after CERN came online, and they are talking about our getting some sort of data from LOFAR, so something must be possible.

I've crunched the snot out of some work units, myself. I think it's almost funny that someone with a 100 RAC feels it is necessary to assert the value of their contribution compared to mine. Does anyone really think 10,000 "credits" compares to hundreds of millions of credits? (hang-on, hang-on; I'm taking this somewhere different) I've spent more money, more time, more effort, and done thousands of times their contribution.

AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION NO MATTER HOW LARGE OR SMALL HAS BEEN INVALUABLE AND NECESSARY: If it weren't for THOUSANDS and MILLIONS of us doing this however much or little, there would have been no BOINC, no SETI@Home program running for years and years, no advances (the ones we helped test) in the search methods, etc.

I don't personally expect any gain. I don't expect a monument. I don't expect a "mention." I doubt distributed computing is the "wave of the future" on cell phones or GPUs or anything else and I sincerely doubt this project or any of us will achieve even the notoriety of any of the team who worked on the Avro 504.

(I had to go look that up. I didn't know an Avro 504 existed until just a minute ago.)

But no, the costly contribution I've made over the years is really not of any more value than the least contribution that helped keep the program alive.

So, troll, don't troll, crunch like a fiend or crunch a little here and there... it really doesn't matter. The participation is useful to the guys who are responsible for taking the next step forward. They aren't asking my opinion and don't want it.

Can you imagine the mess if we were trying to democratically run a program like this?

As happened to the gas lamps when AC electricity and the light bulb became practical, something new will come along to replace the old. That didn't make the gas lamp a waste of time in its time.

If we really want to find E.T., then we need to throw huge wads of cash at this and other programs. (I know, I know you are "giving" with your computer-time and electricity and don't want to hear it. I know you make your weekly, monthly, or annual contribution. I understand completely. I'm thinking in bigger terms which is why I said "huge wads".)

That's just my opinion, of course, and I don't expect a monument to that, either.
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Message 1725120 - Posted: 12 Sep 2015, 17:05:06 UTC - in response to Message 1725103.  

[quote]

not so sure anymore:-/



I'm with you, but then... maybe not.


Truth be known, I hang-around mostly for the camaraderie and the occasional credit "challenge" and that sort of thing; those things being related to the communal experience.

quote]

I wish I had said it that way.
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