Posts by Keith Jillings

1) Message boards : Number crunching : Points count? (Message 1548878)
Posted 28 Jul 2014 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Not that I particularly care, but I can't help noticing that SETI seems to credit far fewer points that some other projects I run:

MilkyWay@home 3,677,384 2,739 22 Jan 2011
Einstein@Home 2,798,382 1,973 3 Sep 2005
SETI@home 1,186,701 652 3 Apr 1999

All three have always had the same priority on my PCs, and all seem to have no shortage of work units.
MilkyWay gets close to a million points a year, Einstain around 330,000 a year, and SETI about 80,000 a year.

Or am I missing something?
2) Message boards : News : Bug in server affecting older BOINC clients with NVIDIA GPUs. (Message 1276009)
Posted 26 Aug 2012 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
I've left it to do its own thing, and there was one attempt to get tasks this morning, with the response "Project has no tasks available". If SETI is out of tasks, that would explain the lack of work being done - but I'm surprised. Has it really run out of work?
3) Message boards : News : Bug in server affecting older BOINC clients with NVIDIA GPUs. (Message 1275643)
Posted 26 Aug 2012 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Yes, Milkyway I have and it's working like a good 'un. It has 21 tasks in the list at the moment - half complete, half at zero.
4) Message boards : News : Bug in server affecting older BOINC clients with NVIDIA GPUs. (Message 1275574)
Posted 26 Aug 2012 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
My PC hasn't downloaded any work units from SETI in the past week. The GPU is Nvidia GTS450 and the drivers are 301.42. BOINC is version 7.0.28 (x64). Is there something I should do?

BOINC is happily beavering away at 4 projects so CPU isn't going to waste. I notice that 3 others - Rosetta, Malariacontrol and Spinhenge also have no WUs. Spinhenge is defunct, but the other two may be suffering from the same problem as SETI.
5) Message boards : Number crunching : Computation errors on Seti Enhanced -2- ? (Message 447383)
Posted 1 Nov 2006 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Well, it's still zero errors on Einstein over the past several weeks. That's holding up well, and not wasting processor time on abortive crunching. I plan to leave SETI "turned off" on the XP machine unless I hear new news, and try again in a few months.

The Linux machine seems not to be having the problem, if that proves anything.
6) Message boards : Number crunching : Computation errors on Seti Enhanced -2- ? (Message 446742)
Posted 31 Oct 2006 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
I just checked my SETI statistics for the first time in a while, and wasn't amused to see that half my recent tasks are shown as "Client Error"/"Compute Error". It only shows the last seven: one still in computation, three success, three failed.

I checked Einstein - NO errors in the past 8 tasks on one machine, or the past 40 on the other (as far back as it goes).
Spinhenge - ONE error in 40+ tasks.

I assume there's something wrong somewhere with the SETI software, so I'm turning off SETI computation until I hear it's fixed. I'd rather the time went to projects that are using it effetively.
7) Message boards : Politics : Religious Thread [8] - CLOSED (Message 375712)
Posted 23 Jul 2006 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Troy, this one site is the largest and best at showing how blind and abysmally stupid religious people actually are.


Is that a scientific observation, or a generalisation?

I ask, because I'm a minister of religion in the UK ("Church of England"); I have reasonable eyesight, and as far as I know I'm not abysmally stupid (although my granddaughters sometimes ask).

But there are others. Look at the church of the spaghetti monster. It also shows how stupid and ridiculous any religion is, be it christianity, muslim, shinto or bhudda.


I like spaghetti (in moderation) but have never really taken to the cult of the monster. I know a fair bit about Christianity, and don't reckon it stupid or ridiculous (but there are those who enjoy a good argument). I know little about Islam (and worry about it), very little about Shinto (and worry not), and a little about Buddhism which appeals to me.

Am I stupid? How would you tell?
8) Questions and Answers : Windows : Duplicate identities (Message 282929)
Posted 16 Apr 2006 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
I have several machines on my network, all running SETI. One of them has for some reason acquired two identities - they both quote the same details and name for it, and SETI seems to allocate results alternately to the two identities.

When I try to merge them, it doesn't show the "other" one. I don't really mind, but it does seem odd!
9) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : SETI won't upload results. (Message 207312)
Posted 8 Dec 2005 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Thanks - that sounds plausible, but my other machines aren't having the same problem. the laptop uploaded one today, and the main desktop uploaded three (all still waiting for credit).

I'll wait and see for a while - but the Linux box has been trying to upload stuff for several days,

I don't know if it's significant, but if I click on the "Web Site" links on the Linux box's "Projects" screen, I don't get a browser window taking me there. Something flashes on the screen too fast for me to see what it is, and disappears again.

Both those problems are new since the "crash and fix".
10) Questions and Answers : Unix/Linux : SETI won't upload results. (Message 207232)
Posted 8 Dec 2005 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Since the last Knoppix crash and reinstall :( BOINC seems quite happy to download new SETI work units as it finishes the previous one - but it can't upload the results.

I've now got three results sitting waiting: the message in BOINC manager (WHY can't we copy-and-paste from there?) says:
SETI@home Thu Dec 8 21:47:44 2005 Started upload of 30oc03ab.23657.4097.379824.207_2_0
Thu Dec 8 21:49:44 2005 Attempting to communicate with [setiboincdata.ssl.berkeley.edu] timed out
SETI@home Thu Dec 8 21:47:44 2005 Temporarily failed upload of 30oc03ab.23657.4097.379824.207_2_0: timeout
SETI@home Thu Dec 8 21:47:44 2005 Backing off 2 hours, 34 minutes, and 1 seconds on upload of file 30oc03ab.23657.4097.379824.207_2_0 ...

There are lots more like that - it produces another one every time I tell it to update.


HOWEVER ... the Einstein work units down- and upload with no problem.

It could be a file permissions problem (that's what drove me to the reinstall) - but aren't SETI and Einstein in the same file?

It's an oldish Pentium Coppermine, running Knoppix-on-HD (so close to being Debian) 2.6.12.

I suppose I don't mind: if it can't talk to SETI, I can put it on 100% Einstein, but it niggles that it can download yet not upload work.
11) Message boards : Politics : Religious Thread [4] - CLOSED (Message 98922)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
Wow! I just found this, and I'm fascinated by the diversity of opinions and interpretations of "religion". Is this an "American" thing? In England, where I am, folks are either religious, or they are not.

Surely, religion is about one's relationship with God. It's not about social rules, or power struggles, or oppression of the masses: those may be the outcome of (maybe distorted or abused) religion, but that's not the point of it.

I go to Church (and preach, and teach) because the faith I have received means something to me, works for me, and is real for me. I don't force it on anyone, but I will offer it to anyone who is interested. Many are. A relationship with God makes sense to me - and is the purpose in my life.

There's some good stuff back along this thread about the validity of scientific method versus religious method. No scientist ever proved or disproved the existence of God by scientific method, and I've not succeeded in deriving Einstein's theories from theology, either.

I don't think I ever heard of a court case here about the use of religious symbols in secular life. Maybe it's a cultural thing.
12) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 98895)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
"Junk" DNA isn't junk. Don't you chaps read the latest reports?

The reason why only 30% of human DNA performs any useful function is
that the rest of it is comments.
Once we decode a typical human genome, we see that the contents begin as
follows:

/* HUMAN_DNA.H
*
* Human Genome
* Version 2.1
*
* © God
*/
/* Revision history:
*
* 0000-00-01 00:00 1.0 Adam.
* 0000-00-02 10:00 1.1 Eve.
* 0000-00-03 02:11 1.2 Added penis code to male version. A bit messy --
* will require a rewrite later on to make it neater.
* 0017-03-12 03:14 1.3 Added extra sex drive to male.h; took code from
* elephant-dna.c
* 0145-10-03 16:33 1.4 Removed tail.
* 1115-00-31 17:20 1.5 Shortened forearms, expanded brain case.
* 2091-08-20 13:56 1.6 Opposable thumbs added to hand() routine.
* 2501-04-09 14:04 1.7 Minor cosmetic improvements-skin colour made
* darker to match my own image.
* 2909-07-12 02:21 1.8 Dentition inadequate; added extra 'wisdom' teeth.
* Must remember to make mouth bigger to compensate.
* 4501-12-31 14:18 1.9 Increase average height.
* 5533-02-12 17:09 2.0 Added gay option, triggered by high population
* density, to try and slow the overpopulation problem.
* 6004-11-04 16:11 2.1 Made forefinger narrower to fit hole in centre of
* CD.
*/
>
/* Standard definitions
*/
>
#define SEX male
#define HEIGHT 1.84
#define MASS 68
#define RACE caucasian
>
/* Include inherited traits from parent DNA files.
*
* Files must be pre-processed with MENDEL program to provide proper
* inheritance features.
*/
>
#include "mother.h"
#include "father.h"
>
#infndef FATHER
#warn("Father unknown-guessingn")
#include "bastard.h"
#endif
>
/* Set up sex-specific functions and variables
*/
#include [sex.h]
/* Kludged code-I'll re-design this lot and re-write it as a proper
* library sometime soon.
*/
struct genitals
{
#ifdef MALE
Penis *jt;
#endif
/* G_spot *g; Removed for debugging purposes */
#ifdef FEMALE
Vagina *p;
#endif
}
>
/* Initialization bootstrap routine-called before DNA duplication.
* Allocates buffers and sets up protein file pointers
*/
DNA *zygote_initialize(Sperm *, Ovum *);
/* MAIN INITIALIZATION CODE
*
* Returns structures containing pre-processed phenotypes for the organism
* to display at birth.
*
* Will be improved later to make output less ugly.
*/
Characteristic *lookup_phenotype(Identifier *i);
>
...and so on.

[ Note that God uses three-space tabs ]
13) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Seti Institute News Part 2 (Message 98888)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Keith Jillings
Post:
I find this baffling.

I'm a minister of religion (OK, in England, where maybe we think differently).

I have no problem whatever with teaching the theory of evolution - it makes an awful lot more sense to me than the "6000 years" stuff I see put around by a few extremist groups. Why would a minority group try to suppress teaching a theory in the USA, and why would the majority go along with that?

The Genesis story is aetiological myth (I think Americans spell that differently) - it's not accurate history, and can't be. That doesn't devalue it in any way.

What am I missing?





 
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