Rookie mistake

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Josef W. Segur
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Message 1119877 - Posted: 22 Jun 2011, 2:37:19 UTC - in response to Message 1119643.  

tbret wrote:
...
If I want to complain it will be about the project's capacity and that has nothing to do with anyone here or anything anyone at SETI@home can do anything about. But who else am I going to tell to get it off my chest?

The only reason I think to complain is doing the math and realizing that with 250,000 computers running at an average cost to operate of $200/year (ultra conservatively), that's an annual donation of about $50 million we're collectively making to the project. I don't care if you're Bill Gates, that's serious money.

You'd think someone that matters might think a $50 million subsidy justifies a little more bandwidth and some quicker storage. If we had it I suspect a lot of all this whining and frustration would go away.

I wonder if they (the powers that be) feel we should all be happy to have our power bills?
...

If the $50 million estimate is close, then all we need to do is get every participant to stop crunching for 4 days each year and send the saved cost to the project as a cash donation. That would for the first time provide enough cash so they could do some of the things we all want. Obviously that won't happen, but perhaps it is an understandable approximation of what distributed computing can do for SETI; the server side needs about 1% of the cost.

Those outside the project in the "someone that matters" or "powers that be" category probably wouldn't be greatly impressed by that $50 million, they're dealing with budgets far greater. But it might be a good point to make in negotiations to get the project more access to the 1 Gbps fiber link down the hill or such.
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Message 1119879 - Posted: 22 Jun 2011, 3:04:10 UTC - in response to Message 1119877.  


...

If the $50 million estimate is close,
then all we need to do is get every participant
to stop crunching for 4 days each year
and send the saved cost to the project as a cash donation.

...
                                                                 Joe

thank you Joe
I wish there was some way
to start a campaign to make that happen
but as you say Obviously that won't happen.
oh well we can dream
Byron
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Message 1120060 - Posted: 22 Jun 2011, 16:54:48 UTC - in response to Message 1119879.  


...

If the $50 million estimate is close,
then all we need to do is get every participant
to stop crunching for 4 days each year
and send the saved cost to the project as a cash donation.

...
                                                                 Joe

thank you Joe
I wish there was some way
to start a campaign to make that happen
but as you say Obviously that won't happen.
oh well we can dream
Byron


We can start it one user at a time. Many of us already have.

A general philosophical comment: some posters seem to think they are entitled to WUs, because they built a better computer or contributed money or whatever. Really,this project is about Science, not RAC. Can anybody prove how doing a few extra WUs a day is helping the Science? When I read the Berkely SETI blogs I see people searching for time and money to do science, in order to keep up with us crunchers. I don't see anybody there concerned about too few crunchers.

If you want RAC, head over to something like PrimeGrid. Not knocking them, just pointing out the hard realities. If S@H uses my donation to actually do science (since they seem to be getting free data processing faster than they can use it) that's fine with me.

And Perryjay, thank you for completing your extra WUs, instead of aborting them because they didn't fit your idea of how BOINC should be working.

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Message 1120075 - Posted: 22 Jun 2011, 17:31:17 UTC - in response to Message 1120060.  

And Perryjay, thank you for completing your extra WUs, instead of aborting them because they didn't fit your idea of how BOINC should be working.


No problem Bill, I never abort work unless there is no other alternative like if there is something bad wrong with my computer (or I screw up royally and lose them )though I try my best to run down what I have even then. The closest deadline is eight days away and it's ready to upload. I'm sure they will have us up and running long before then. I'm almost all caught up on the extra work I got so things are running smoothly on this end. Everything is working exactly how I expect it to, I just messed up and got a bunch more than I expected when I figured out my mistake.


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Message 1120564 - Posted: 23 Jun 2011, 19:46:51 UTC
Last modified: 23 Jun 2011, 19:47:13 UTC

When I read through threads like this is really makes me appreciate this project lol. Perryjay it's ok like many before me have said, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to finish the extra work as long as you finish it. You've said you haven't aborted, so while those others that are waiting may have to wait longer it won't matter in the long term.

In other news, I've been dropping my cache lower and lower as time has went by so I'm now down to 5 day cache on each machine of mine. I've gotten to rethinking my project status and why I'm here, and came to the realization that is was getting more about the numbers than the science behind it. Not good, so I decided to visit the forums a bit less(it breeds number watching) and away from the various stats sites for awhile, and I couldn't be happier. I just set it and forget it, well not forget it I still check to make sure I'm handing in good units etc.

Which brings me to my next point, for some reason Boinc decided to let a few of my units go over their deadlines which was weird?? Never happened before...guess I should start leaving my main machine one a bit more often lol.

Any who crunch as fast as you dare everyone, I hear Berkeley may throw us a BBQ if we find the aliens!!
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Message 1120583 - Posted: 23 Jun 2011, 20:24:14 UTC - in response to Message 1120580.  

Any who crunch as fast as you dare everyone, I hear Berkeley may throw us a BBQ if we find the aliens!!

They actually did for the 10th Anniversary, dunno when the next one will be ....


The next anniversary is generally one year later.

Oh. Wait. I get it now.

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Message 1120636 - Posted: 23 Jun 2011, 22:50:24 UTC - in response to Message 1120580.  

Any who crunch as fast as you dare everyone, I hear Berkeley may throw us a BBQ if we find the aliens!!

They actually did for the 10th Anniversary, dunno when the next one will be ....


Interesting, where was MY invite. They now owe me either a plate, or an alien signal. Their choice.

lol
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Message 1120647 - Posted: 23 Jun 2011, 23:20:24 UTC - in response to Message 1120060.  

Hi Bill,

I agree with you 100 percent.
thank you for your excellent post.

Best Wishes
Byron
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Message boards : Number crunching : Rookie mistake


 
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