@ Moderator
This is obviously a troll postings. Time to take action.

At first i thought so too, but now i just feel sorry for Caroline.
They are obviously just one very sad person who is seriously in need of help.

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Grant
Darwin NT

With all due respect:

I have listened to your arguments, reviewed your post history, and examined your production track record on the BOINC project overall. Using the account you're posting from as the guide, I have come to the following conclusions:

1.) You don't have enough run time experience with BOINC to draw any conclusions, or issue any proclaimations about the software, period.

2.) You may be a fine lawyer, but based on the "quality" of some your technical observations and commentary, you don't know squat as an engineer. Your statement (in a previous post) that opening a listening port on the localhost interface, implying it's connecting to a "remote" server, and from that concluding this is a security risk demonstrates not only that you don't know what your talking about, but also you didn't even bother to try and verify your hypothesis with common and freely available networking tools.

3.) In looking over your posting history (and being generous here) the vast majority of it is either wrong, misleading, or takes the conversations theme out of context and leads to a faulty conclusion. The rest is simply argumentative, just for the sake of being argumentative.

4.) You seem to be unable to differentiate the difference between BOINC itself and the Projects which run using the BOINC framework. For the Projects, the primary goal is the science, but for BOINC itself "rewarding" the participants for their participation is a major design element. One only needs to read the published literature from the Project principals to come to this conclusion.

In conclusion, it is apparent you have some kind of ax to grind with BOINC. Why that is I couldn't care less, and am fairly certain the other folks who come here for help and the ones who volunteer their time to give that help care even less than I do.

Since no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to run BOINC or any other DC project, may I suggest you don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Alinator

@ Moderator
This is obviously a troll postings. Time to take action.

It is still a great idea. But, it has been 'reimplemented' (don't even know why) very poorly. Hope you guys get off of Boinc and find something that works. I'll check back in another year. Good luck!

Agree. My Toshiba Laptop overheated in a small amount of time and switched off every time I tried it. I had to uninstall it. Pity, I really had no problems with the old version. John

I had Boinc running on my Toshiba laptop for quite a while until I took it off. I still have Boinc running on my new Dell laptop. I think the problem could be dust. Get yourself a can of compressed and CAREFULLY blow some air into the air ports. You are not trying to blow the dust in the next County, so be careful with the force. Gentle short shots should generate lots of results.

I have an older Toshiba Laptop that has been running BOINC for 3 years straight with no problems.

A couple of more suggestions: Put the laptop on a bakers cooling rack to allow better airflow. Buy a laptop cooling pad (these have fans that blow air along the bottom of the laptop).

The problem is that laptops are a compromise. The current laptops seem to have insufficient cooling to run the CPU and FPU at full power continuously. But extra cooling would come at the expense of extra weight and reduced battery life.

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BOINC WIKI

It is still a great idea. But, it has been 'reimplemented' (don't even know why) very poorly. Hope you guys get off of Boinc and find something that works. I'll check back in another year. Good luck!

Agree. My Toshiba Laptop overheated in a small amount of time and switched off every time I tried it. I had to uninstall it. Pity, I really had no problems with the old version. John

I had Boinc running on my Toshiba laptop for quite a while until I took it off. I still have Boinc running on my new Dell laptop. I think the problem could be dust. Get yourself a can of compressed and CAREFULLY blow some air into the air ports. You are not trying to blow the dust in the next County, so be careful with the force. Gentle short shots should generate lots of results.

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It is still a great idea. But, it has been 'reimplemented' (don't even know why) very poorly. Hope you guys get off of Boinc and find something that works. I'll check back in another year. Good luck!

Agree. My Toshiba Laptop overheated in a small amount of time and switched off every time I tried it. I had to uninstall it. Pity, I really had no problems with the old version.

John

There are two solutions to this:

1) Threadmaster allows you to specify how much CPU fraction max any given application can take.

2) The next version out will have the ability to throttle the CPU usage.

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BOINC WIKI

It is still a great idea. But, it has been 'reimplemented' (don't even know why) very poorly. Hope you guys get off of Boinc and find something that works. I'll check back in another year. Good luck!

Agree. My Toshiba Laptop overheated in a small amount of time and switched off every time I tried it. I had to uninstall it. Pity, I really had no problems with the old version.

John

A) I am not the one who is spamming the internet begging for people to either cough up money or free computer time for this project. This project spammed ME.

B) The software is not even CLOSE.. not even BARELY close to ready for general release. But all we see is excuses and crybaby hissy fits when this is pointed out.

C) Unless the Wikipedia article... clearly authored by proponents... is a load of bunk.. this thing is financed by National Science Foundation Grants and supported by UC Berkeley.. which means it is taxpayer funded.

D) BOINC has degenerated into a scorekeeping contest for hackers to play with. We can see that in this very board. We need only read the articles at Wikipedia to see how much futile effrot has been put into keeping score.

E)Unless this board is just making it up.. no small part of the problem with Classic Seti@Home was jerks faking work to rack up points. The problem is keeping score at all.. except maybe on the users machine.. and then only for curiosity's sake. So we see software aimed at the very same class of individuals who were a problem to start with.

F) We see a gigantic wasteful boondogle that has gone down the chute long ago because. it has been hijacked by a subculture of hacker-gamers who are so excited over racking up BOINC Credits that they have lost sight of what is going on here.

G) I get REAL tired of the apologists for this software expecting ME, who was solicited to run this junk software for free, to also rewrite it for them when it turns out to be dangerous garbage for the average user.

H) Carl Sagan must be spinning in his grave if he is somehow aware how SETI has been reduced to a kiddy-game instead of serious science.

I) I wonder how many "volunteers" who "just happen" to post links here to businesses in which they are involved.. use their participation here as a selling point when they are looking for customers. There is nothing ethically wrong with that.. but it also means their "volunteering" is not entirely altruistic.. they are racking up brownie points they hope will result in compensation elsewhere if not here.

Still nothing constructive. Rants do not help fix problems. They just make everyone tune you out.

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BOINC WIKI

A) I am not the one who is spamming the internet begging for people to either cough up money or free computer time for this project. This project spammed ME.

B) The software is not even CLOSE.. not even BARELY close to ready for general release. But all we see is excuses and crybaby hissy fits when this is pointed out.

C) Unless the Wikipedia article... clearly authored by proponents... is a load of bunk.. this thing is financed by National Science Foundation Grants and supported by UC Berkeley.. which means it is taxpayer funded.

D) BOINC has degenerated into a scorekeeping contest for hackers to play with. We can see that in this very board. We need only read the articles at Wikipedia to see how much futile effrot has been put into keeping score.

E)Unless this board is just making it up.. no small part of the problem with Classic Seti@Home was jerks faking work to rack up points. The problem is keeping score at all.. except maybe on the users machine.. and then only for curiosity's sake. So we see software aimed at the very same class of individuals who were a problem to start with.

F) We see a gigantic wasteful boondogle that has gone down the chute long ago because. it has been hijacked by a subculture of hacker-gamers who are so excited over racking up BOINC Credits that they have lost sight of what is going on here.

G) I get REAL tired of the apologists for this software expecting ME, who was solicited to run this junk software for free, to also rewrite it for them when it turns out to be dangerous garbage for the average user.

H) Carl Sagan must be spinning in his grave if he is somehow aware how SETI has been reduced to a kiddy-game instead of serious science.

I) I wonder how many "volunteers" who "just happen" to post links here to businesses in which they are involved.. use their participation here as a selling point when they are looking for customers. There is nothing ethically wrong with that.. but it also means their "volunteering" is not entirely altruistic.. they are racking up brownie points they hope will result in compensation elsewhere if not here.

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When a paid individual asks for freebees from the general public.. they ought to write stuff the general public can easily use.

I would really like to be receiving a paycheck from Berkeley. However, that is not likely to happen. Please not one of the tag lines under my name -- Volunteer Developer.

Yes, it has problems, but you have yet to offer one constructive idea on how it should be improved.

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BOINC WIKI

Ya know.... no amount of excusemaking and "too bad BOINC is here to stay" chitchat actually changes the fact that BOINC simply is not ready for the general public and is barely ready for well-trained techno-geeks.

What WILL eventually happen is no BOINC AND no SETI@home.

Crying because people won't waste their time endlessly tweaking trashy software will not magically render trashy software wonderful.

All the crying in the world matters nought when it is the software and its hyped up proponents who are at fault.

So.. either get the software squared away.. or prepare for its demise and the end of any career too closely associated with it.

Trying to claim that the problems with BOINC are typical of software is just plain bunk. It is a mess... and much moreso than loads and loads and loads of other software.

Remember.. the people asking us to run this stuff are begging us to give them free computer time.. it does ZERO for the end user, except use their machine for the benefit of the academics who are receiving a paycheck for their efforts.

When a paid individual asks for freebees from the general public.. they ought to write stuff the general public can easily use.

AGAIN.. remember.. we are being asked to GIVE AWAY free computer services.. but we, the prospective users, are treated like BOINC is doing us a favor allowing us to run it on our machines.

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Well lets see ,first of all i loved the old Seti@home ,it was easy to handle and a one click thing ,also nic grafics.
I also see that it cant be continued for certain reasons and yes like some or most i forgot about it ,because of moving ,new hardware added ...bla bla ,so one day i found it on my Pc and was running it again ( the old Seti@home ) and it couldnr connect to send the data ,that when i found out about BOINC.
Which is actualy not to bad ,concidered that you have at least 3 units you can run one after the other ,but also is a lill difficulty to set up ( for some ),the thing that bothers me most is that you have to have a URL to add to it ,which of course is a good idea when you like to parcitipate in several projects ,but for me its more a hassel ,because Seti is the important thing for me and prolly some others too.
SO in this case i thing there should be some sort of choice feature in the download that you can choose from in which project you like to be active in ,which would include the needed addy for the project.
Just a thought of mine that might make it into the next version of BOINC.
Other than that i dont think we are alone ,so ...... keep on searching People ....

I believe the BAM(Boinc Account Manager) does the things you are looking for.
go here http://www.boincstats.com/bam/

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Well lets see ,first of all i loved the old Seti@home ,it was easy to handle and a one click thing ,also nic grafics.
I also see that it cant be continued for certain reasons and yes like some or most i forgot about it ,because of moving ,new hardware added ...bla bla ,so one day i found it on my Pc and was running it again ( the old Seti@home ) and it couldnr connect to send the data ,that when i found out about BOINC.
Which is actualy not to bad ,concidered that you have at least 3 units you can run one after the other ,but also is a lill difficulty to set up ( for some ),the thing that bothers me most is that you have to have a URL to add to it ,which of course is a good idea when you like to parcitipate in several projects ,but for me its more a hassel ,because Seti is the important thing for me and prolly some others too.
SO in this case i thing there should be some sort of choice feature in the download that you can choose from in which project you like to be active in ,which would include the needed addy for the project.
Just a thought of mine that might make it into the next version of BOINC.
Other than that i dont think we are alone ,so ...... keep on searching People ....

I, on the other hand, am a casual user (one Intel processor P4 2.0) BIONC software created some problems but, I read the info regarding BIONC and suddenly, success!!!!

Congrats on your success! The software is not perfect, and some people have a more difficult time setting it up than others, but so goes for many softwares. BOINC has a little more issues, as you need to tell it what to do, it just doesn't do it on it's own.

I am sure there are a lot more success stories than we hear, but yes there are others that never get it working.

I hope you have a happy and long crunching on projects.

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I, on the other hand, am a casual user (one Intel processor P4 2.0) BIONC software created some problems but, I read the info regarding BIONC and suddenly, success!!!!

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Well I tried BOINC but was not very happy.

Finally deleted it. Constant activity on ZoneAlarm was the final straw.

To me, unknown activity on ZA means I run SpyBot and AdAware.

Galen

In addendum to what Pooh Bear said, you could always keep an eye on your light indicators on your router/switch/hub. Those will always show true traffic. Zone Alarm and other software similar to it actually use a poor method of simply checking the TCP/IP stack to see if it's in use - but that doesn't mean that communication is going out to the internet.

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Well I tried BOINC but was not very happy.

Finally deleted it. Constant activity on ZoneAlarm was the final straw.

To me, unknown activity on ZA means I run SpyBot and AdAware.

Galen

BOINC Client talks to BOINC Manager over TCP/IP. This can be shut off in ZA. If you read the Zone Alarm helping thread, you would have learned there are ways to shut this down from happening.

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Well I tried BOINC but was not very happy.

Finally deleted it. Constant activity on ZoneAlarm was the final straw.

To me, unknown activity on ZA means I run SpyBot and AdAware.

Galen

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Well, BOINC is here to stay. It isn't going anywhere. The only option is to keep working with it until it's good enough for the casual user. You can read all about why Classic closed down and will not be coming back here.

As for running at full load even while using your PC, that is the whole point of using spare cycles. SETI Classic did that as well.

The fact that preferences have to be "pushed" yourself isn't entirely correct. You can wait for BOINC Manager to download the new preferences the next time it checks the servers. The only time you have to "push" the preferences yourself is if you insist on having the changes take affect immediately. However, this is going to be changed in the next release of BOINC. The new release will allow users to set preferences locally on their machine and not online.

Lastly, laptops are not known for their great cooling options. Combine this with today's fast processors, and it become quite apparent that it's not a good idea to run BOINC on these machines. I have a Pentium M 1.8GHz and a Core Duo 1.6GHz, and I won't run BOINC on either because they are made for portability and not high loads.

The next release is also going to support a user-determined load amount on the CPU. Such as if you wish SETI to only use 75% of your CPU, simply set it in your preferences and it will only use that much.

I can only hope you try again with this new release and not in another year.


As a side note, I have plenty of "casual user" friends that I encouraged to sign up, and I didn't help them along the way. Many of them found it rather easy to install and attach to a project, and now BOINC is running silently in the background on their PC. They don't even notice it running, even at 100% load. The only thing I helped with was to explain the 100% load and that it's OK, it won't "steal" CPU time from their other applications. Other than that, the software works great.

I agree it could be a little prettier, and a little easier, but it's fully functional software that works well.

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I loved the old Seti@Home. Ran it for quite awhile until I moved. And I pretty much forgot about it. Then I got your invite email the other day. Great! Loved that project. I sign back in, download Boinc and spend almost a day trying to figure it out and get it to work. That was the first problem. The Boinc software is no longer functional for a casual user. Then I noticed that my processors were maxxed out even while I was working on the PC. I've read the technical explanation. But again, for a casual user that is a bad default value. When I went to change my preferences I also had to research how to push my preferences to myself. That's just bad design. Once I had it all setup and running I noticed my brand new 2 Duo laptop was hot enough to cook an egg on even with the fans running 100%. Not a chance I want that on my new laptop. So again I went in and changed preferences, pushed them and that preference doesn't seem to work. So I uninstalled the mess and fixed the holes in my firewall.

I went far beyond what a casual user would stand for. Give a simple one click install, reasonable default values that don't endanger our PCs and well, working software.

It is still a great idea. But, it has been 'reimplemented' (don't even know why) very poorly. Hope you guys get off of Boinc and find something that works. I'll check back in another year. Good luck!