I've seen somewhere on these boards that the "team" consists of 5 people. Two mainly admins and three to do the real work. Matt
I beleive is one of the "PAID"employees there week days. If his music is also a "full time job" He's not doing justice to either job. One
is not a priority anymore. It's also apparent from this weeks events that things did not survive very well without him.

When the paid staff is absent durring a crisis this is NOT a good sign. Maybe it's time for a staff shake up or at least a wake up call.

He is paid for his work, but I think you're overstating the importance of any project that is part time. The project can (and has/is) surviving without him, but again, that's from my perspective of this being a non-issue. It's my perspective that if the servers go down, it means nothing to me. It would be no different than me driving to a homeless facility to offer my assistance, only to learn that they don't need my assistance at that time. It was the thought that counts. I'm not going to get irate because they can't use my help. It simply means that I can avert my attention to other things.

Regardless if someone is paid, it does not mean they must step up to anyone else's expectations other than who employs them. Since this is none of the volunteers, I believe any comments or attempts to exert one's forced opinion of getting rid of him are ill-mannered and illogical (since one does not know the details of Matt's expectations other than his employers).

So I guess it's all a matter of perspective. If you're angry just because you can't get work (which was never guaranteed in the first place), then you're going to think this is a crisis. If you understand that things go wrong, and this is all one big experiment, and learn to take things in stride while still preserving one's own personal goals, then this is indeed not a crisis.

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Bad old error message back (and I am not using optimization)

21-05-2007 18:21:19|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user
21-05-2007 18:21:19|SETI@home|(not requesting new work or reporting completed tasks)
21-05-2007 18:24:05|SETI@home|Scheduler request failed: HTTP internal server error
21-05-2007 18:24:05|SETI@home|Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec
21-05-2007 18:24:05|SETI@home|Reason: scheduler request failed


Actually, I *was* asking for new work and meant to report completed tasks.

Phew...

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Kind regards
Kirsten

When a crisis hits, you work *now* (whenever now is), and make up off-time later. That's just life. However, one can ague if this is a crisis or not.

I would most definitely argue that this is not a crisis. A crisis is a major event that happens in one's life that is difficult to cope or deal with, such as Virginia Tech's shootings, or Hurricane Katrina, etc. This is just a little experiment that no one should take too seriously as one would life or death.

I should point out that, if all WU deadlines were 14 days or greater, people could have significantly larger work queues. And that would allow people to more easily weather downtime over a weekend.

Perhaps there is something to be learned from all this....

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Bad old error message back (and I am not using optimization)

21-05-2007 18:21:19|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request: Requested by user
21-05-2007 18:21:19|SETI@home|(not requesting new work or reporting completed tasks)
21-05-2007 18:24:05|SETI@home|Scheduler request failed: HTTP internal server error
21-05-2007 18:24:05|SETI@home|Deferring communication for 1 min 0 sec
21-05-2007 18:24:05|SETI@home|Reason: scheduler request failed


Actually, I *was* asking for new work and meant to report completed tasks.

Phew...

I've got the same messages

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The frustration some feel is only a human feeling, falsified and intensified (for some) by a certain level of expectation that the project never promised. Indeed, holding one man "to the cross" because he has a life or is in need of a previously planned vacation is a little (lot?) ridiculous and unfair. The expectation that Matt should somehow give up his music (full time job) or not go on vacation just because the project is having problems (and somehow can't survive without him?) is quite the expectation. An expectation that I would not want to be on the receiving end of, and I feel for the SAH team.

I've seen somewhere on these boards that the "team" consists of 5 people. Two mainly admins and three to do the real work. Matt
I beleive is one of the "PAID"employees there week days. If his music is also a "full time job" He's not doing justice to either job. One
is not a priority anymore. It's also apparent from this weeks events that things did not survive very well without him.

When the paid staff is absent durring a crisis this is NOT a good sign. Maybe it's time for a staff shake up or at least a wake up call.

Just my observations & 2 cents

The project's importance is directly measured by the importance of those who make it function. Thus if one may be gone for an extended period and no legitimate back-up exists, this indicates a lack of importance of this project.

In other words UC Berkeley needs to back this program properly or give it up to a worthy recipient.

There is no problem with giving people their well deserved time off. There is a problem with not having a sufficient plan B for their absence.

No single person should be indispensable to any endeavor, no matter how unique or small. To allow such a situation to occur indicates to me that top management is either inept or amateurish.
I am sure that all involved are working their hearts out, but working hard is sometimes the result of not using all of the tools available. Better to work smart.

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When we finally figure it all out, all the rules will change and we can start all over again.

No single person should be indispensable to any endeavor, no matter how unique or small. To allow such a situation to occur indicates to me that top management is either inept or amateurish.
I am sure that all involved are working their hearts out, but working hard is sometimes the result of not using all of the tools available. Better to work smart.

While your opinion is true to a degree (and fits in a typical business environment), I don't think it applies here. I believe that the folks at Berkeley are doing the best they can and I believe others should learn to get more involved in other things.

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Generally speaking, and fron scanning the update page, there is a Techinal Update ever day or two.

There hasn't been one in 5 days, I suspect that is not good news.

The patient must not be doing well in the intensive care unit.

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When the paid staff is absent durring a crisis this is NOT a good sign.

It's not?
Oh, so people don't get weekends or holidays off any more?
Please, it's a volunteer project- if it's that important to you i suggest you take a break & come to terms with reality & re-evaluate your priorities.
The expression "Get a life" comes to mind.

You only quoted part of my post and take it out of context. Nice try at twisting reality.

As I posted... in absence of someone they must have a sufficient plan B. You say it is a volunteer project... for who? There are wages being paid to some in the project. I have no issue with them getting their vacations (as I had stated in my post but you failed to comprehend), but while they are away, a project of this magnitude cannot be left in the hands of less capable people. There has to be someone left in charge that has equal abilities to the project leader as well as project knowledge.

Please, we are volenteers for this project- if it's NOT important to you I suggest you leave the project with your reality and re-evaluate YOUR priorities. The expression "juvenile" comes to mind.

Actually the project has a sponsor and that sponsor, whoever it may be, probably DOES HAVE EXPECTATIONS and will have to be answered to at some point.

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Matt:

I've had enough..

Your Round-Robin DNS doesn't work (.16 isn't responding to pings... is there a machine there? .17 does, but the client won't connect to it.)

Your "ghost WU scripts"... making it look like some machines have more work than they really do.. Nice touch.

"No new work".. so you have to take off the optimized apps in order to get new work, which causes a version change so all the WUs get dumped when you switch back to optimized after getting work..

If you REALLY want to alienate your volunteers, that's fine. You've succeeded. Take my 1.7Million "credits"... and watch my RAC fall to Zero.. I'm switching to Einstein and ABC until someone solves the cranial-rectal inversion over there, and puts someone in place who will do the job (instead of worrying about "gigs"...)

Detaching everything from SETI after I hit post...

I think someone needs a "timeout". <grin> Me I've been crunching Einstein and ABC and I've only turned Seti back on, on two of my machines and I've started crunching on ClimatePrediction again on one of those. I figure around Thursday of Friday I'll let Seti run on all three of my machines and go from there. All in all given the budget and time constraints, Matt and the crew have done a great job dealing with this outage.

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Doing my small part for scientific research

New error?

05/21/2007 1:23:53 PM|SETI@home|Message from server: Project encountered internal error: shared memory

Just a message of support for SETI and it's staff.

I've been with this project for 8 years this month and, like many of the core supporters, I'm here for the long haul.

Downtime/equipment failures are par for the course and simply bumps in the road.

When things are back up and running smoothly I'll still be here and will still be crunching.

Keep up the good work. I know you are doing your best.

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Join The Assimilators

Free Internet Radio! "The Assimilators" Browser Toolbar!

Just a message of support for SETI and it's staff.

I've been with this project for 8 years this month and, like many of the core supporters, I'm here for the long haul.

Downtime/equipment failures are par for the course and simply bumps in the road.

When things are back up and running smoothly I'll still be here and will still be crunching.

Keep up the good work. I know you are doing your best.

Thank you Bax, and all others expressing similar sentiments. This is not your average outage/downtime, and patience is the right course for the time being. You are a credit to your country. Go Senators!

Actually the project has a sponsor and that sponsor, whoever it may be, probably DOES HAVE EXPECTATIONS and will have to be answered to at some point.

'Probably' is your key word. We aren't them, so we can't presume to speak for them.

Even so, one could argue that those who donate are a "sponsor" of some type (and rightly so). But then one needs to remember that nothing of this scope has ever been done before. This is all a pioneering effort, which means mistakes are going to be made.

I can understand getting upset if there was some promise of work always being made available, but it's been said plenty of times that there will be downtime. It has never been said that the downtime will be minimal.

Of course, if one were to look at the larger scope of things and refer to Carl Sagan's galactic year where the beginning of everything is January 1st and human existence has all occurred in the last second of December 31st, this downtime is but a spec of a split second that is really meaningless to the overall scope of anything substantial.

I can't see getting upset over it. Life is too short.

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I guess I would say that SAH has a huge resource in terms of willing and eager volunteers, but it's resources hamper its ability to utilize them effectively, in the medium term. In my experience, BOINC is also flawed in this regard, as it doesn't handle server downtime well.

I read this, and it's the same complaint that I see repeatedly:

SETI (and BOINC) have failed to deliver more than they promised.

SETI has repeatedly promised that, at times, there won't be work. They've consistently said that availability will be less than 100%, sometimes significantly.

BOINC says "the way to keep from running out of work is to crunch a diverse group of projects" -- because BOINC projects are designed to be able to run on a trivial amount of money, and the BOINC client is supposed to handle outages equitably.

If you want SETI@home to be able to over-deliver, then they need a bigger budget, and it looks like the only way to do that is to donate.

Sorry, I know, it isn't much fun.

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(I hope I got the bracket quote bracket thingies right)

So what that would entail is a sched (chron) job to send the SUSPEND and RESTORE messages to SAH for the Tuesday shutdown. Unfortunately, most of MY programming experience has been in ALGOL on Burroughs mainframes. This would require more knowledge of Windows (or Linux / UNIX) and the BOINC protocol than I have.

I haven't heard ALGOL in ages. Went to UNCC here in NC and that's what they had. Loved it!! Then did jobs at PCA (photo firm) that had a dual processor system. Started using the upper compile of ALGOL (operating system) at the Heatlth Dept of the State of Florida. Great mainframe language! Last time I used ALGOL was in 83.

David

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I'm still getting:

5/21/2007 14:05:44|SETI@home|[file_xfer] Temporarily failed upload of 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.121_1_0: http error
5/21/2007 14:05:44|SETI@home|Backing off 1 hr 11 min 20 sec on upload of file 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.121_1_0
5/21/2007 14:05:44|SETI@home|[file_xfer] Started upload of file 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.76_0_0
5/21/2007 14:05:51||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.
5/21/2007 14:06:11|SETI@home|[file_xfer] Finished upload of file 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.109_1_0
5/21/2007 14:06:11|SETI@home|[file_xfer] Throughput 538 bytes/sec
5/21/2007 14:06:12|SETI@home|[file_xfer] Started upload of file 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.116_1_0
5/21/2007 14:06:14||Project communication failed: attempting access to reference site
5/21/2007 14:06:14|SETI@home|[file_xfer] Temporarily failed upload of 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.76_0_0: http error
5/21/2007 14:06:14|SETI@home|Backing off 2 hr 19 min 45 sec on upload of file 16ja05ab.25838.6192.478398.3.76_0_0
5/21/2007 14:06:19||Access to reference site succeeded - project servers may be temporarily down.

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So what that would entail is a sched (chron) job to send the SUSPEND and RESTORE messages to SAH for the Tuesday shutdown. Unfortunately, most of MY programming experience has been in ALGOL on Burroughs mainframes. This would require more knowledge of Windows (or Linux / UNIX) and the BOINC protocol than I have.

I haven't heard ALGOL in ages. Went to UNCC here in NC and that's what they had. Loved it!! Then did jobs at PCA (photo firm) that had a dual processor system. Started using the upper compile of ALGOL (operating system) at the Heatlth Dept of the State of Florida. Great mainframe language! Last time I used ALGOL was in 83.

My first introduction to programming was a course at Reading University in the late sixties, which used Algol. Since then I have worked with some "Algol-like" languages including the Modulas, but I've never actually worked with Algol. I still think it was a good choice for an first language, though - enabling a clear presentation of general principles.

You say DONATE ... I say give a good product and the donations will come.

And to state the bl**dy obvious- without the funds it can't be done.

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Grant
Darwin NT

[quote]
Severly broken is a far cry from not delivering work.

If expecting something that works is over-delivering I guess your right
but it reminds me of microsoft products.

I've been here quite a while and the attitude is always "Your only volunteers"
We at seti@home will do as we please .. You do not count. go away and stop complaining.

You say DONATE ... I say give a good product and the donations will come.

There is a HUGE difference between SETI/BOINC and Microsoft:

Microsoft says "our products work perfectly, 100% of the time."

SETI says "there are times that things won't work."

As for your remark "We at seti@home will do as we please" is clearly designed only to offend. The people you are trying to offend are the ones who have very easy jobs when everything is going smoothly.

Just in case I wasn't completely clear: you are demanding far more than the project ever said they'd deliver. If you hold them to their commitment, they've consistently delivered more.

Microsoft consistently delivers slightly less than their hype suggests, and at higher cost.

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