I'm still trying to figure out if you don't like the screen saver provided with the new SETI@Home Enhanced, or if you don't like the BOINC platform and want SETI to become stand-alone again. You never did answer my question above asking you to clarify exactly what you don't like.

What about those of us who liked to read the display? I never used it as a screen-saver. Rather, I watched it's progress, and the data displayed. It was mostly greek to me, but that never stopped me from being fascinated.

I tried to watch the current one a few minutes ago, and the font is blurry enough to hurt my eyes and make watching it impossible for any length of time.

I don't care if it spins...I can stop that. I just want it cleaned up.

I agree with everybody that boinc graphic is a eyesore

Careful when you say 'everybody'. 'Everybody' is all inclusive and implies that every single person out there cannot stand the new screen saver, which is hardly true.

All that you are agreeing with are those whom have voiced their discontent with the new graphic, but it certainly isn't 'everybody'.

Ah, but it is the same.

The fonts may have been changed

as well as making it spin in 3D

but it's still the same exact screen saver, essentially.

I don't know about the font being "ugly" or "unreadable", as I can read it just fine on any monitor I have it running on, so I guess

it's still a user opinion kind of thing.

No one ever said anybody had to "shut up and agree".

Until you get over half the active SETI users to actually complain about this (which, last I checked was over 190,000 accounts), this isn't a major concern.

But please, no one here is telling anyone to "shut up and agree". Far from it. This has been primarily a discussion of opinions about the screen saver - not about forcing any opinion down anyone's throat. If you feel that way, perhaps you shouldn't engage in opinionated discussions anymore.

Considering the 3D screen saver is the same exact one from classic, only in 3D, logically speaking, if you think it's "ugly", then so would the one from Classic.

Any questions pertaining BOINC can be asked at the BOINC developers email listing. Mind, this is for questions about BOINC only, not Seti!

The list can be found at this address. It needs registration.

Any questions you have about Seti and its source code can be sent to David Anderson at davea at ssl dot berkeley dot edu

Hallelujah! It looks like someone is getting closer to the idea. Now it's up to BOINC to finish the job.

I like your idea some what, but I don't totally understand what you say above. Static: Do you mean the BOINC Logo being unable to fade, and or move around the screen?

If that's what you mean. Then you are closer to one problem than BOINC.

I myself would like to see a change made.

The text in the screen saver, and the graphics screens still needs to be made a bit larger

should be made to be user scalable. You might also give an option for the user to be able to set the font by their own choice

and in true type to make it clearer.

People don't go out of this game because they aren't interested in science, but because of the uncomfortability of the new software. When will you understand that? They are interested as much as they can. If they can help you scientists when their machines are running screen-savers, they do it with pleasure!

When will you understand that you do not speak for the masses?

I will agree that the new software makes it uncomfortable for some people, but change is good.

You are running mostly idle when you are running most apps, not just when the screensaver kicks in.

I'm not so sure it's a matter of people not knowing what's going on, I think it's more of a misunderstanding of how computers work.

You are complaining that people going apart from the project, but the fault is also on your side. Just remember WHY all these starts from a screen-saver and nothing else, and WHY the screen-saver was such a good idea, which attracted so many people to this project.

I have no idea what you stated (or where trying to project) from your paragraph above the one I quoted, so I'll just comment on this paragraph.

I am not complaining about people leaving at all.

If people leave because of misunderstandings or misconceptions, there's not much we can do other than educate those that complain here.

You have absolutely no proof that it's simply because of the change in program

Oh, and I'm just a user like yourself. Please quit referring directly to me in your posts saying that the "fault is also on your side" or "you scientists".

I am a satisfied user trying to help others get BOINC running, or help educate those that don't understand the new concepts.

I haven't presupposed my POV at all, merely said what it is a bad idea. My guess is that you seem to only want to argue here, and that for some reason you've targeted mostly myself, and that is the only reason for you "agreeing" with these people.

You have assumed many things in your paragraph here about my POV, which you obviously know nothing about.

And I certainly did not state that receiving noise from space was a bad idea.

Please, keep from putting words in my mouth, as you seem to have a bad habbit of doing this as you reply to each one of my posts.

We're all looking for a pattern ;) and for some people the pattern could be easier to hear than to see.

I seriously doubt that. You're assuming that aliens even communicate within our hearing range

and you're assuming that people want to sit in front of their computers, manually "listening" for aliens.

Whatever range we can hear in, a computer can detect much better than we can. Our hearing can be broken down into mathmatical equations that a computer could process a lot more accurately than our ears can.

There really is no need for the sound option.

I just know there's going to be problems with it

and people are going to hold Berkeley responsible for their problems (many did with the third party apps that went with SETI Classic).

If you didn't rotate that "wacky OpenGL" screen saver, then you would have burn-in where the info is on some monitors, SaSQ. People have already complained because the graphic at the bottom (the SETI@Home logo) has caused burn-in on some brand new monitors. Not a good idea. People had burn-in because SETI Classic didn't move the graphics too.

SasQ - you certainly are all over the board, aren't you?

You are entitled to your own opinions, but this is the place for Q&A, Questions and Answers.

Otherwise, you are abusing rule number 4:
No messages whose only intention is to hijack a thread (which is interpreted by me as someone who only wants to debate THEIR views)

You can choose to donate to SETI or you can choose not to.

Of course, we'd like you to continue, but it's ultimately your choice.

I have almost no idea what you said here, but all I know is you're trying to say that you don't get anything in return for running BOINC/SETI.

This is not true, you get exactly what you got before

you do get a screensaver to use

and you're donating to science.

Even SETI@Home Classic could be set to take all spare cycles even when the screensaver wasn't running.

I'm perfectly happy with BOINC and donating my spare cycles to the project regardless of the screensaver function.

And this new SETI@Home is focused on home users as well.

They simply tried to incorporate more features that everyone was using as a third party app, such as the ability to cache WUs locally to maximize crunch time. They also invented a distributed computing infrastructure and released it as Open Source so that other scientists could use the same infrastructure without having to re-invent the wheel.

Is that greedy to you?

It seems to me the only problem is a misunderstanding by various people of the BOINC concepts.

No, no one wants to lose people when they need them for their help. However, can you prove that it's all because of what you state?

Can you prove they only wanted the screensaver?

I think you're wrong here. I think that people weren't only in it for a screensaver

especially since screensavers really aren't needed anymore

I can only speculate why some have left, but I cannot accept that one complaint can speak for the masses. Only the individuals can speak for themselves, not some frustrated user.

Contrary even... First person liking the moving. :)

A couple reasons why it's a bad idea:

The noise is similiar to tuning your radio between stations.

Since most would not use the sound option, it would add unneeded complexity to the program (supporting the right sound APIs for multiple platforms, compatibililty issues) [...] it would be wasted resources that would hardly get used.

One thing I think everyone is forgetting is that the classic SETI was a "screensaver that happened to do science in the background".

Not all projects that use BOINC even offer a screensaver

As has been mentioned already, many users of BOINC turn the screensaver feature off entirely in order to maximize the amount of cpu cycles available for the various projects.

If you want to use BOINC as a screensaver, that's fine, but the above may explain why you won't see as detailed a screensaver as you had with the original seti classic.

And yes, the new screensaver has been highly optimized to use less resources than the original screensaver so it's impact on the science is less than the original.

One would think the science is more important that the look of the BOINC program

You do realize that the screensaver uses a large number of CPU cycles that could be best used to do the science, don't you?

the original SETI program was a "screensaver that also did work for science projects". The NEW SETI / BOINC is a program that crunches for science that also is a screensaver.

In other words, the focus has changed. The major emphasis with the new boinc is it's ability to process work for different science projects. The "screensaver" is secondary to the science.

The graphics in your SETI displays are of a low resolution making smaller text difficult to read. Can you please make a clearer text in the displays. Make the text a bit larger (you could make the text size user scalable ((Preferable)) on it's own)