1) Message boards : Number crunching : Lurching from one farce to another... (Message 8017) Posted 14 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: > I do agree that they're doing hard job and that SETI is not like a paid > service. > > I do not agree on the fact that it is impossible to predict the load or the > demand, call it the way you want on a system when you run it for the first > time. Being in engineering my self I have participate in a lot of commercial > project mostly in telecoms. I have seen many commercial lauch of satellite > communications projects like THURAYA or IRIDIUM not to include INMARSAT > improvement and satellite lauch. These kind of project simply can't affort > having bugs when lauching to public. This is why satelite projects cost billions to build and launch, its what is known as mission critical systems, as it's cheaper to test and retest satelites on the ground than to fix them in space. This doesn't mean that satelite systems are immune to bugs, including the launch system, Arianne for instance, or Hubble, or perhaps even the space shuttle. It should also be noted that telecoms sat projects still have bugs, because the ground systems are not subjected to the same level of design effort, as they are easier to fix. Due to this overengineering of satelite systems, technologically speaking, orbital systems are many years behind the technology of ground systems, for the simple reason that new tech is often fragile for a while until they iron out the bugs. > > What about airplanes ! Imagine the first commercial flight of an Airbus with > nothing onboard working. The company could not come and say well there was not > enaugh oxygen on board but we could not predict that our passengers would > breath so much. No it doesn't make sence. It is all a matter of will, > technical ressources and money. I don't think Airbus is a good example to use! I seem to remember something quite spectacular happening at a commercial airshow, thank god there were no passengers. As a former aircraft crash salvage team member, I have first hand experience of bugs in aircraft systems. Concorde's only serious incident was due to a design flaw that didn't appear for 20 years because it didn't do the flying hours of a regular commercial design. > Imagine AT&T had just changed the new york area branch exchage (just > example) and the lines are on and off for a month ! Did it ever happened, I > don't think so. From someone in the telecoms industry now, this kind of stuff happens all the time, in this exact example. Most don't realise it because they just switch back to the old exchange until the bugs are fixed. Any new technology is run in parrallel until it's reliable >To make it simple, if we were all paying to run SETI and if > there was other project of the same kind in competition against SETI, the > whole new BOINC joined project would have worked 100% the first day. Period. > There are a lot of simple mathematical tools to predict the demand on a > system, just like grocery store can predict that between 9 and 10 they will > have a certain amount of customers, staying in for a certain amout of time, > line up to pay with a certain amount of items, and then decide how many > cashier to open. So why do the grocery stores always seem to have too many cashiers or too few, and how come they run out of stuff on the shelves if its so easy to predict sales patterns. Incidentally, in all my travels, the USA is the only place where they even come close to getting the right number of cashiers on the tills, they also allways seem to be fully stocked. To further these examples, the launch of digital TV had many bugs, and still does. The restricted trials went smoothly, but public demand meant they were only short trials. As a result, when the product went public, the sudden increase in the number of people using the system started to show up previously unnoticed flaws. This continues to happen with every feature upgrade that is released. This IS a service people are paying for. Some cable companies are still using old tech and appearing to be more reliable, leaving a handful to iron out the bugs with the more advanced stuff. Seti is no different to this, any further delay on releasing boinc would have been complained about too, so they released it and are working to resolve the bugs, just like Microsoft and everyone else. If this wan't the case, technology would stagnate.

2) Message boards : Number crunching : No credit? (Message 7540) Posted 14 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: The validator seems to be pretty efficient, if I update the project and report WUs, then wait 30 seconds and do it again, I often get more credit show up, this is most likely from the units I've just reported that are the 3rd to be received. I have also worked out that the credit I'm currently showing on the average is about equivalent to one of my 5 machines daily throughput, so only 1 in 5 of the units I process has had 3 results returned so far.

3) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Signature Tutorial? (Message 6069) Posted 10 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: This should work now YAYYYYYY!!!!

4) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Signature Tutorial? (Message 6068) Posted 10 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: If at first you don't succeed get it wrong again

5) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Signature Tutorial? (Message 6066) Posted 10 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: Does this work? Nope

6) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Signature Tutorial? (Message 6034) Posted 10 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: oops, wrong person, trying again

7) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Signature Tutorial? (Message 6032) Posted 10 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: just testing mine

8) Message boards : Number crunching : No credit? (Message 5267) Posted 8 Jul 2004 by KWSN - Sir Volvo Man Post: I've been running 24/7 with 4 fast machines for a week, and I don't have any credit at all, It doesn't help that all the other stats are down, such as results etc. It would be nice if the software was able to tell you how many units you have done.

 
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