What's happening... (Nov 8, 2014)

Message boards : Technical News : What's happening... (Nov 8, 2014)
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David S
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Message 1600459 - Posted: 13 Nov 2014, 1:57:17 UTC

Holy cow, Byron!

Royce, two questions:

1. What's more important, that they tell you what the problem is, or that they FIX the problem? I vote for fixing it. (By the way, the guys in the lab are human beings, and they don't like it when they get yelled at. It makes them even more reluctant to post anything.)

2. Is your big hangup that your stats aren't exporting to other sites? So what??? Your work is not lost. Your stats continues to accumulate here on the site, and when the export script finally comes on line again, everything you've done will suddenly appear at the other sites.
David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

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Thomas
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Message 1600517 - Posted: 13 Nov 2014, 6:41:57 UTC

Stats fixed :)


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Message 1600518 - Posted: 13 Nov 2014, 6:42:57 UTC - in response to Message 1600432.  

Thank you Byron!!!!!!!!!

+1 :)
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Kerry Summerfield
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Message 1600525 - Posted: 13 Nov 2014, 7:06:39 UTC - in response to Message 1598792.  

UTC Time: 7:01am Thursday 13 November 2014
NZDST Time: 8:01pm Thursday 13 November 2014

GOOD NEWS

The BOINC Server also the AllPprojects.com Databases are registering SETI@home Data.

There is massive reshuffling in positions at BOINC, as the Database there for SETI "catches up".

Kind regards to all.

Cheers from New Zealand :)
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Message 1600888 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 2:30:53 UTC - in response to Message 1600346.  

Dear Byron Leigh Hatch

Thank you for your gift of $1300.00 via Visa on 11/12/2014

Your gift will benefit the following area:

SETI@home - $1300.00

Your confirmation number is: 139230


Thank You Very Much My Friend...Let the Science continue.

I Desire Peace and Justice, Jim Scott (Mod-Ret.)
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Message 1601148 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 18:47:02 UTC

Thanks for the update, Eric.
And Thank you Byron. :)
.:morpheus:.
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Message 1601152 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 18:56:59 UTC

Thanks for the update...was starting to think it was a problem on my end.
Al
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Message 1601165 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 19:15:17 UTC

Seeing this late, but I always love to hear what's going on. Excited to start seeing those GBT work units.

I wish people would relax and just be glad they're helping to do research that couldn't be done any other way.

Let's just grant them some patience and confidence. They wouldn't do this work unless they really loved and believed in it, so at a minimum can we assume they're trying their best?
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Message 1601219 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 23:08:15 UTC

Так, насколько я понял, какое-то время данных для обработки не будет, правильно?
Есть ли примерные сроки возобновления работ?
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Message 1601221 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 23:13:28 UTC - in response to Message 1601219.  

Так, насколько я понял, какое-то время данных для обработки не будет, правильно?
Есть ли примерные сроки возобновления работ?

Пока есть что считать. АстроПульса только нет. МультиБим скоро может закончиться.
Как починят, так и продолжим. Сервак накрылся и погубил базу данных в процессе...
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Message 1601229 - Posted: 14 Nov 2014, 23:20:25 UTC

Эх, а я только второй сервак к обработке подключил... ну ничего, есть чем его загрузить ))
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Message 1601335 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 5:48:01 UTC

Very sad to hear this but thanks for update Eric
http://boincstats.com/signature/0/user/2449327/project/sig.png
http://boincstats.com/signature/0/team/88019747/project/sig.png
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Message 1601337 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 6:16:53 UTC - in response to Message 1599544.  

I suppose increasing the minimum quorum could be used if they wanted to have more results with the same data. Depending on how closely the apps look at the data chunks. I could see requiring 3 or 4 results as still be scientifically legitimate, & not considered "busy work".

Especially to combat those situations where two GPUs get paired up together and spew out -9 overflows when it shouldn't have been a -9 overflow WU. I know that situation isn't frequent, but it also isn't uncommon/rare.

I think to fix that extra code would have to be added to keep all of the results going to the same kind of hardware. I don't think having 3 or 4 GPUs spit out a false -9 overflow would be very helpful.
Perhaps a mechanism that sends out overflow results for 2nd round of crunching or something along those lines.


What about sending the first two copies preferably to GPUs, and if both return a -9 overflow, send the rest to CPUs?
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Message 1601351 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 8:35:21 UTC - in response to Message 1599765.  

Since everyone is so crazy about money, maybe we should look at money.

http://www.naic.edu/~astro/NSFSR/statement.html wrote:
The observatory operates with a staff of about 125 and a yearly budget of about $12M

Assumption, or wild guess, Seti is on 50% of the time.
There are 7 feed horns, and each produces 2 polarizations.
Each work unit is about 110 seconds of data.
To make sure that a Gaussian that would cross a time slice is detected, there has to an overlapping unit that splits the time slice created.

There are 31536000 seconds in a year. That would be 286690 work unit slices. However due to the overlap we generate twice that many or 573380 slices. There are 14 channels or 8027320 possible work units a year. We have assumed 1/2 of them are not recorded due to maintenance projects at the dish. That gives us 4013660 possible work units. With the $12M budget that results in a cost per work unit of $2.99 per work unit for telescope time.

We (Seti & Crunchers) are glad someone else is paying that REAL cost. I can just imagine say Nez having to buy work units to process at $2.99/each!

Conclusion: Our donations of computer processing and electricity are very important, but by far they are not the largest cost associated with the project. I haven't run the numbers but I doubt if the cost to crunch a work unit is much above $0.01/each. So if we ran each work unit a dozen ways from Sunday trying to extract a signal, compared to the cost of getting that work unit, it is money well spent.


Looking at the page info, that page was last modified in 2006! The budget will probably have been slashed since Eric wrote


3. New Data. Finally, in the last few weeks, we've gotten some data from 2014 split and out the door. Not a lot, though. There are a few reasons why it took so long. First, the Arecibo itself and the ALFA receiver that we use for SETI@home was offline for much of 2014 (mostly January to June), so we don't have that much data. Second, because of funding, Astronomy isn't top dog at Arecibo anymore, so Astronomers get a smaller fraction of the observing time. And compounding it is that disks are bigger and we don't send a box until it's full (to save on shipping costs), so it takes longer to fill a box of disks. Which brings us to...

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Message 1601411 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 12:53:54 UTC - in response to Message 1598792.  

Thank you Eric.
I've been running Seti for 15 years and all you gentlemen have done an excellent job all the time. Man! it doesn't seem 15 years. BTW I'm 75.
Thanks again
Charles
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Message 1601416 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 13:35:13 UTC

Eric said:
Second, because of funding, Astronomy isn't top dog at Arecibo anymore, so Astronomers get a smaller fraction of the observing time.

I thought research in astronomy was the reason Arecibo was built.
I have a question. When the people running Arecibo aren't using it for astronomy, what are they using it for?
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Profile Gary Charpentier Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $75 donorSpecial Project $250 donor
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Message 1601430 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 15:52:07 UTC - in response to Message 1601416.  

Eric said:
Second, because of funding, Astronomy isn't top dog at Arecibo anymore, so Astronomers get a smaller fraction of the observing time.

I thought research in astronomy was the reason Arecibo was built.
I have a question. When the people running Arecibo aren't using it for astronomy, what are they using it for?

It is owned by the US Government, what classified uses their are for the most sensitive antenna on the planet ......
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Message 1601432 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 15:57:26 UTC - in response to Message 1601416.  

When the people running Arecibo aren't using it for astronomy, what are they using it for?

You can check the schedule and see for yourself:

Arecibo Observatory Telescope Schedule

Claggy
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Message 1601433 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 15:57:40 UTC

I, too would like to thank Eric for the update. I have been crunching SETI W.U.s, along with various other projects on occasion, since 1999. The volunteers, and especially the Project admins. and scientists like Eric, do nearly all of this work on their own time! Hence, the reason I felt compelled to comment on this issue. I've read a few posts here & there where people (usually newbies) were griping & complaining about the scarcity of work units and it just really P$&&#S me off! 99% of the time we happily go about crunching the data without a hiccup. And, people like Eric, work very hard to make sure that everything does run smoothly. But, when an issue does arise, a, albeit relatively small number of people, start complaining that the problems aren't being addressed quickly enough for them and that it will affect their "Stats". I just want to say to these individuals that it isn't about "You" or "Your Stats". Most of us, thankfully, see the bigger picture here. And, the majority of us realize that there are a group of dedicated folks behind the scenes. I think that certain people need to be reminded of these facts from time to time. I can somewhat understand those of whom are fairly new to BOINC not fully realizing just how much effort it does take. But, some of the complaints that I have seen were from individuals who have been doing this for a fairly long time. It's to those people that I just want to say step back for a moment & take a look a the larger picture. And, while you're doing so, get over yourselves!!
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Message 1601434 - Posted: 15 Nov 2014, 15:57:58 UTC - in response to Message 1599038.  

I don't know what it costs to ship a box of disks, but I do know I burn hundreds (literally) of dollars per month of *extra* electricity crunching numbers.


Nobody forces you to do so. It is your choice, it is a volunteer project and therefore you're absolutely not in a position to demand anything. Have a tissue.
Om mani padme hum.
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Message boards : Technical News : What's happening... (Nov 8, 2014)


 
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