Unfortunately this Boinc program, so far, is the worst pieces of software it has ever been my displeasure to try to use. The classic version, contrary to this writers opinion, worked flawlessly since I joined on May 19, 1999. I suspect that at some future time this program will work better.Dr. Anderson and his people appear to have bitten off a big chunk here. I wish them success however. In conclusion, Boinc is currently a piece of scrap.

This is truly unfortunate. However, according to BOINCStats.com, BOINC is successfully running on over 600,000 computers (and climbing). I have been running it for about a year (give or take some months) and I have never ran into problems with the software itself. There have been server issues in the past, but I have a great deal of patience and I just let it do it's thing.

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for answers to all your "classic" problems, see the facts of life

classic is far from perfect, boinc is the improvement

Unfortunately this Boinc program, so far, is the worst pieces of software it has ever been my displeasure to try to use. The classic version, contrary to this writers opinion, worked flawlessly since I joined on May 19, 1999. I suspect that at some future time this program will work better.Dr. Anderson and his people appear to have bitten off a big chunk here. I wish them success however. In conclusion, Boinc is currently a piece of scrap.

ok, moving away from opinion, classic is dead, end of
fact of life, basically deal with it

for answers to all your "classic" problems, see the facts of life

classic is far from perfect, boinc is the improvement

Unfortunately this Boinc program, so far, is the worst pieces of software it has ever been my displeasure to try to use. The classic version, contrary to this writers opinion, worked flawlessly since I joined on May 19, 1999. I suspect that at some future time this program will work better.Dr. Anderson and his people appear to have bitten off a big chunk here. I wish them success however. In conclusion, Boinc is currently a piece of scrap.

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So, we destroy the village to save it, huh?

ah, but we're not, we're building a better village, or are you against any improvement? i'm guessing you live in a mud and straw house, and use candles for light at night? no? why ever not?

With me, "classic" worked.

no, it appeared to work, it didn't actually do it's job too well, that's why boinc was invented, so that seti may be run in the way it was intended, efficiently, and properly, as matt has said himself, the boinc back end in MUCH easier to deal with

BOINC, in addition to being significantly more complicated, just does not work with any consistency.

but windows is more complicated than dos, but i know which i'd rather use (not trying to get into a "windows vs linux" debate here, just making the point, i don't know enough about linux to comment)
and besides, boinc does a whole lot more than classic, and it does it well, a car is more complicated than a peddle bike, but i know how i'd rather get to work ;)
this is the way with everything, you can't have greater functionality without greater complexity, but most people have learnt to speak rather then grunt, drive rather than run/cycle and use a computer instead of reading books
everyone knows the advantages of each, and everyone knows it took time, patience and learning to get there

What happens is that the "insiders" are shooting the messengers, and the messengers are trying to tell the powers that be that: we're not getting data to process (BOINC is idle), the settings are not obvious, setup is difficult, etc.

as OzzFan1 said, there's no shooting, but some of us have lost patience with those that have none to start with, you're basically saying "i can't do it" or "i don't want to spend time learning" well, that's obviously your issue, nobody magically learnt everything to do with boinc overnight, it's still being improved (which has only come from experience after implementing it) and after 1.5 years since switching to boinc i'm still learning new things about it
seti classic was the same when it started out thou, things need time to mature, look at windows 95 & 98, now compare them to XP - vast improvement
boinc being idle obviously isn't a good thing, but at least it tells you what's what "i've got no work" and gives you hints as to why "the download server is unavailable" but as with any troubleshooting, you need to look deeper into why to find the answer
I agree setup/installation is more difficult, but it's on par with M$ Office
it's an area that's known to need improvement, but then many thousands of classic users downloaded & installed boinc, then scessfully attached to seti, downloaded the app and work, and were on their way, so it can't be that bad. i think that those who cry "boinc is crap" are just doing so out of pettiness & impatience, or not liking change or whatever, which is an issue in itself

So, if you want to tell SETI's loyal client base that we are a bunch of morons, OK, but that's not the way to gain and keep your customer base.

no, that's not what anyone is saying, we're saying don't argue for the sake of it, classic is going to die, like it or not, it's going to happen, so either deal with it, or leave
big picture: if the science can't be done properly/correctly then what's the point? that's why boinc is here, as a step in the right direction to achieving that, for example LHC would not have been a viable project without the multi-project ability of boinc, it just wouldn't have worked, yet LHC has suceeded very well, and cern is working on using boinc for a whole lot of other stuff too

Maybe, just maybe, BOINC is buggy and difficult to use, and not yet ready for prime time. Spare us ordinary users beta products, please.

you could say that about the entire range of M$ products, yet the vast majority of people use them, but that's a completely different business model
how would you change boinc to make it "ready" and how would you do this on virtually no budget, and with virtually no staff? (see "facts of life" posted previously)
as stated previously, do you really expect boinc to be "tweaked" untill it resembles perfection? (although this didn't happen with classic either)
where would the funding/time come from?
and how do you simulate the load 100,000 computers puts on a server? answer: by getting 100,000 computers to bombard it with requests to see how it copes, and where it struggesl & thus where to improve it which is exactly what's happened this past week
keeping in mind the fact that boinc development and seti are run on a shoestring, i think they're doing rather well, it's just silly to try to apply a commercial business model to a reseach project
if this were a commercial venture it would have a lot more funding, but it isn't, do it doesn't, fact of life
also, we're here to crunch for them, they're not here to "provide" us with work
LHC for example, will end, fact.
cern will use boinc for other things, but the fact still remains that LHC in it's current form will die, because it's not needed anymore

the only reason classic was kept on, doing nothing useful was to keep people like youself from screaming all this nonsense, and cluttering up the boinc boards

now either stop moaning & making a pest of yourself,
and do something useful, or go away

So, we destroy the village to save it, huh?

With me, "classic" worked. BOINC, in addition to being significantly more complicated, just does not work with any consistency. What happens is that the "insiders" are shooting the messengers, and the messengers are trying to tell the powers that be that: we're not getting data to process (BOINC is idle), the settings are not obvious, setup is difficult, etc.

So, if you want to tell SETI's loyal client base that we are a bunch of morons, OK, but that's not the way to gain and keep your customer base.

Maybe, just maybe, BOINC is buggy and difficult to use, and not yet ready for prime time. Spare us ordinary users beta products, please.

1) Funny thing about perceptions. When people don't know what they're looking at, their perceptions are often way off. What you perceive about BOINC to be horrid to use, the "insiders" are merely trying to educate the "messengers" as to how BOINC is, why it is, what it is. Education, as in all things, is key. Once people have been educated, then their perceptions may change and their suggestions might too.

2) There is no "customer base". This is volunteer. To use my favorite analogy, go work at a homeless shelter (a humbling experience). Do you think everyone is going to try to "woo" you to get you to come back? No, they won't. You're volunteering out of the kindness of your heart. If you decide you don't like it, you simply stop going. I'm sure you see the corelation in BOINC. If you want to help, then do so. If it's too hard, ask for help. If you're too proud, then you're only going to be frustrated and leave, but that's your own fault. Too many people see things from the Capitalistic and/or Free Market approach to things, threatening to go to other screen savers or distributed computing projects as if BOINC is going to die with only a few users. No matter how many volunteers are helping the homeless food line, the work will get done. Granted, the more helpers, the faster it gets done, but it can still be done with even one person.

That's not to say we want to see anyone go away. But we can only bring the horse to water, we cannot make them drink. We're not "shooting" any "messengers", merely trying to offer them a drink of knowledge (or at least some of us are).

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Maybe, just maybe, BOINC is buggy and difficult to use, and not yet ready for prime time. Spare us ordinary users beta products, please.

Since you are skipping over everyone else their links to Matt's post, let me link you to something said elsewhere: Giambi who?

Oh and if you think BOINC is so bad, why not add to the Alpha team then to make it better? Or is that too difficult for you, since you are just a regular moron?

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for answers to all your "classic" problems, see the facts of life

classic is far from perfect, boinc is the improvement

So, we destroy the village to save it, huh?

With me, "classic" worked. BOINC, in addition to being significantly more complicated, just does not work with any consistency. What happens is that the "insiders" are shooting the messengers, and the messengers are trying to tell the powers that be that: we're not getting data to process (BOINC is idle), the settings are not obvious, setup is difficult, etc.

So, if you want to tell SETI's loyal client base that we are a bunch of morons, OK, but that's not the way to gain and keep your customer base.

Maybe, just maybe, BOINC is buggy and difficult to use, and not yet ready for prime time. Spare us ordinary users beta products, please.

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SETI actually worked -- BOINC doesn't

but classic didn't work

just because the engine in your car is making noise doesn't mean you're actually going newhere

the only reason is because classic didn't tell you, but boinc does, i'd rather know if my computer is in danger of running out of work than to be ignorant of that fact, but if you want it to work like classic, then just close the manager

i've heard many times from classic users that boinc needs to be better before they'll join, even thou classic isn't doing anything useful anymore, well, to do that they need the servers that classic is using, but no, you complain that you want to keep classic till boinc is perfect...

reality check: you can't have both without the funding/time/people, and UCB doesn't have enough of any of them

classic is closing, no quibbles about it, boinc has a future, you can either make boinc work, or have no seti@home

It was not caused by all the people moving over. Some code was not allowing enough sockets to open up. Go read the Tech News.

As for BOINC, it works just fine. My machines never ran out of work. I do multiple projects, and I could care less if SETI is up or down at the moment. When they fix it, they fix it. The machines keep busy. That is why BOINC got funding, so you could help in more than one place. Classic had no money left for a long time, it was hung onto by a shoestring budget. Now we are on to new and better things.

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for answers to all your "classic" problems, see the facts of life

classic is far from perfect, boinc is the improvement

Oh yes -- great improvement. SETI actually worked -- BOINC doesn't, and the answers given, when they don't insult one's intelligence, don't tell us what to do about the problem.

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for answers to all your "classic" problems, see the facts of life

classic is far from perfect, boinc is the improvement

Yes there is a problem with SETI at the moment, & guess what, it was caused by all of you rushing over here. So dont abuse it until you have seen it actually working, give it a chance, because when it works, it works well!

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