I'm not.....

Ian,

It's nice to see you back.

-- Ned

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I'm not looking to start a + / - session. I just think this creates two classes of citizen. In a world where we have worked hard to dismantle that crap I have to say it wrankles with me quite badly. Sorry but that's my view; I don't mean to start or fuel a war on this.

Ian have you looked at Janus' site? How it's set up? We are all in the same class, alpha testers. Regardless of the fact that someone may have a 'project donor" tag.

I could care less about tags & labels.

The point is this, look at how the donations page is set up. It shows what that project requires, the status, and how to make your donation.

I'm not looking to start a + / - session. I just think this creates two classes of citizen. In a world where we have worked hard to dismantle that crap I have to say it wrankles with me quite badly. Sorry but that's my view; I don't mean to start or fuel a war on this.

Perhaps, the star is simply a badge of pride. If that's all it is, then it doesn't bother me--I sometimes wear symbols to express my feelings too.

If the star turns into a licence that justifies treating someone badly (like number of posts or work completed have been used in the past), then I see your point. But it is not valid to use the star that way, as I pointed out in a prior post, since it doesn't fully relate to the way participants contribute, in time, money, help, etc.

Sadly, it appears that you can't recognize anyone for anything without creating some division between the "recognized" and "unrecognized."

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I'm not.....

Ian,

It's nice to see you back.

-- Ned

Thx Ned. Ineed this place!

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Well whatever. Is still say send your money to Katrina victims not UCB!

I gave US$50 to SSL and US$250 to the Salvation Army,and
offered my unpaid services to the same.
It amazes me that anyone can bitch about either, whether
it is to much or too little, one over the other.

Get real Ebenezer!

As Karl said, "to each according to his need, from each
according to his ability," or something like that.

Both entities appreciate any donations no matter how large or
small.

I await with rapt anticipation for further bitchiness from
the peanut gallery.

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Account frozen...

Whatever I aint gonna argue. I said my bit; I don't like the star. End of!

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You start the star argument, then back off like we're the ones who instigated it. You're the one who accused us of something that we "may" do in the future.

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You start the star argument, then back off like we're the ones who instigated it. You're the one who accused us of something that we "may" do in the future.

Who accused? Not so.
I made statements. Thats all and I'm entitled.
EDIT If I don't like something I am entitled to say. Same as you all.

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you: It's not fair that someone people get stars and others don't! There will be a stigma against people without stars!

me: You're accusing us of something that "may" happen in the future. That's not very fair.

you: Psh, I'm not going to argue this.

me: But... you're the one that attacked me and elicited a response...

you: It's my right to accuse and pass verdict on something someone has not done yet and may never do!!!

me: I'm going to go get some chinese food.

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Regarding the star: We figured we didn't want a monetary symbol, but some kind of acknowledgement that was positive when people donated to our project. We also didn't want to rank people based on amount - some people can afford $100, some people can only afford $10 - they both deserve a star for helping out. Maybe the ranking will happen on a separate donor page that lists usernames in groups separated by orders of magnitude (0-9 dollars, 10-99 dollars, 100-999 dollars, etc.). That's still up for debate.

I personally quite like the idea of other acknowledgement, because (a) long time users, (b) big-time crunchers, (c) those with classic SETI@home credit, etc. all deserve a positive nod. It should be easy to implement. Discussions will happen about that when I'm back in the lab (working at home today).

As for the argument about "why donate money to SETI when we are already donating computer cycles?" Here's an analogy: There's a new Indian restaurant near my house I really like. I'm a regular customer, so they are already getting a small but consistent profit from my business. However, I am concerned their business isn't so great as they are in a tough location. So once in a while I order a beverage which I may not exactly want, but I know has a high profit margin. Not only do I get the beverage, but I increased their chance of sticking around so I could enjoy their food in the future. Granted, it's a very very small increase in chance, but it's the best that I, one customer, could do. But if I didn't buy the beverage, I'm still a loyal customer.

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

Having the ability to donate a monitary contribution to help fund the operation of the project is a great idea. Matt's observation on not ranking the donations is spot on.

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I'm new here. I've got all of 67 credits or whatever they're called. Over the past three weeks, I've spent literally hours trying to get work units to up/down load.

And now you want me to donate?

Lets see some results....Let's see BOINC dial up (doesn't do it) and connect (doesn't do it) to report a result or get a new work unit (doesn't do either right now). Let's see BOINC get a new work unit (doesn't do it). Let's see BOINC report a result (doesn't do it).

Geez....it just goes on and on and on.

I was a SETIATHOME supporter in the old version.

This new BOINC thing is just too much trouble and effort. I don't know how others have gotten big numbers, but I'm not inclined to spend my life trying to eke out a work unit credit. Life's too short -- on this or any other planet.

I (and likely others) won't donate until I see something that says the system is working. I know it's a catch 22, but that's life. I'm not going to give my money away blindly....not like I've given my time away these past few weeks--which I'm about finished doing.....

regards,

dale

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I donated, yet I'm not currently crunching Seti due to the server issues. However, I am looking at the long haul. I might suggest that you pick another Boinc project to while the time until Berkeley gets things together.

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Account frozen...

I personally quite like the idea of other acknowledgement, because (a) long time users, (b) big-time crunchers, (c) those with classic SETI@home credit, etc. all deserve a positive nod. It should be easy to implement.

Matt, this sounds interesting. Can you say some more about how you'd want to implement this?

The discussion about donating money to the project, which is working on a budget of a child's pocket money (which we all know!), has come up many times, when there has been a long duration outage caused by the lack of proper hardware. Many people have each time asked "How can we help out?", and Matt has several times posted a link to the donation site.

So I decided to find one of his posts regarding this and created a thread with the links, and asked the dev's to make it sticky, so it's easy access for every time this question pop up again. It actually took me some time to find one of Matt's posts, so I thought I would save myself and/or others for the efford in the future.

I live in a country, where we pay a huge tax, both as income tax and as VAT on all our buyings, plus all the other special taxes on cars, fuel, property, capital, etc, because we through our taxes pay to our universities, and we don't pay any tuition here. Even foreign students don't pay tuition here (yet)!

So my original thought was that I contribute to this project through my cobblestones and my powerbills, so I didn't have any intentions to support a university in an another country! And I do participate in other projects, where I can say that LHC is closer to my heart as for the science as particle research interests me more than finding extra terrestrial lifeforms let alone intelligence! But these guys at Seti have done a huge task in developing distributed computer systems and by developing the BOINC system, it has meant a landslide in DC systems, which has made it possible for us to participate in projects, we're interested in! So we owe a lot to them!

So yesterday, when Siran in the donation thread said that a link to the donation site had been added to our account pages, I clicked it and saw this thing with the little green star. And when I saw that green star I thought that I wanted that one, also because I so strongly in my thread have supported donations to the project and not donating money myself would look hypocritically in my own eyes! So I decided that, even I'm far from wealthy here, to throw 25 $ their way, which is about the same as 4 BigMac's here!

Maybe instead there should have been a site with a list of each donations, where people can chose if they want to be mentioned with their name/username or stated as anonymous, I don't know, but based on the reactions here, this may be considered instead, as the star in my view is not a boasting factor, but more a sign of recognition from the project here! Or the words Project donator under my avatar?

But I don't care! But it's a little funny to see that many of the people, who were so concerned back then and really wanted to support the project with money, now have turned 180 degrees and now are miffed because of the visibility of the money support! And this current outage has not been characterized by the usual outrage and wish to support, but of the fact that some here actually have supported the project! Oh my!

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

Lets see some results....Let's see BOINC dial up (doesn't do it) and connect (doesn't do it) to report a result or get a new work unit (doesn't do either right now). Let's see BOINC get a new work unit (doesn't do it). Let's see BOINC report a result (doesn't do it).

Dale, I realize that you are new here, so please don't take this wrong, I'm trying to be helpful - your points are all very valid, but nobody is going to listen to them as long as you misuse the terminology. Please read the Wiki, or the boards, etc., and differentiate "BOINC" and "SETI". BOINC has minor program bugs in things like the "no work fetch" algorithm, when there are results that can't be uploaded, which have been fixed and the fixed version is in beta now - but in general BOINC works VERY well for it's intended purpose. SETI has server-side issues that are causing outages, queue backups, etc., and if it is the only project you are running, what you describe is exactly what is expected, and this won't be "fixed" until the server issues are resolved.

Personally, I would recommend that NO new users sign up for SETI right now, because they are just going to be frustrated. I would recommend that new users be pointed at Einstein first, and once they've been there a couple of weeks, come over and join SETI too, or whatever other projects interest them. This is the opposite of the "normal" method of joining SETI first when coming from Classic - but would prevent the hours of frustration you are going through, and would give you a much better experience with BOINC, and a better understanding of how to deal with the current SETI problems.

So... if you're willing to put in a little more effort... hit "Suspend" on the Projects tab for SETI. Attach to Einstein (or another if you prefer). Run that for a while, get any install/configure/preferences issues worked out. Then, if these boards show that SETI is up and reasonably stable, hit "Resume" on SETI. You'll be less frustrated, I guarantee!

I've had some spare time and read through some of the discussion here, and it's... well... really full of odd arguments and alike.

SETI Classic has a full Page of people who donated , its MessageBoards had Donation Threads as well, but 'never' had any of the really weird discussions found here (?)

I mean, every Cent gives the Staff more options to solve their tremendous tasks they're up against every day.

Sure, a financial contribution is a bit 'different' than 'just crunching', but both belong together as "fundamental support of the Project", none being the better by default.
It's just help on a different level/channel.

SETI needs sponsors just like it needs crunchers. Without any single of those two it would simply drop dead, but the priority between them varies from time to time.
With their current Problems (BOINC), plain cash seems what they need the most right now, I'd even say it's currently much more urgent than aquiring crunching power (which the current system couldn't handle too well anyway, even worse in the future judging the way things are looking), hence the Donation Topics were raised again recently.
--------------------
Overall :
IMHO this BOINC SETI Forum has gotten a very bad reputation by simply not having Moderators/Admins dealing with inappropriate User behaviour/language for too long.
Personal off-topic conflicts and private flames pop up in many Threads, which by now reflects very poor on the whole Forum.

This actually has gotten so far that people either avoid this Forum or even wander off completely to other DC Projects because of this sole reason.

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February 2002: 85 donations totaling $ 4,590.00
September 2005: 63 donations totaling $ 2,610.50

^^

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SETI@Home Informational message -9 result_overflow
with a general handicap of 80% and it makes much d' efforts for the community and s' expimer, thank you d' to be understanding.

.....

I mean, every Cent gives the Staff more options to solve their tremendous tasks they're up against every day.

Sure, a financial contribution is a bit 'different' than 'just crunching', but both belong together as "fundamental support of the Project", none being the better by default.
It's just help on a different level/channel.

SETI needs sponsors just like it needs crunchers. Without any single of those two it would simply drop dead, but the priority between them varies from time to time.
With their current Problems (BOINC), plain cash seems what they need the most right now, I'd even say it's currently much more urgent than aquiring crunching power (which the current system couldn't handle too well anyway, even worse in the future judging the way things are looking), hence the Donation Topics were raised again recently.

FalconFly, thank you! This is so true!

Overall :
IMHO this BOINC SETI Forum has gotten a very bad reputation by simply not having Moderators/Admins dealing with inappropriate User behaviour/language for too long.
Personal off-topic conflicts and private flames pop up in many Threads, which by now reflects very poor on the whole Forum.

This actually has gotten so far that people either avoid this Forum or even wander off completely to other DC Projects because of this sole reason.

Again, this is so true! This issue has been debated here in an another thread, where the dev/mods seems to just shake their heads and tend to leave it to the society here to sort this out ourselves! And with that "Karma" system, that Rob suggested, I can foresee some huge problems!

So, I'm not sure I'll stay around here for much longer! Not for the bitching and moaning and the personal enmities here, but for the lack of a proper dealing with this by the dev/mods!

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me