Posts by Mark A. Craig
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1)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
for those that are currently running optimized please remove
(Message 334607)
Posted 12 Jun 2006 by  Mark A. Craig
Post: It is Done, Please remove the optimized application. In a single word... NO. If Crunch3r chooses to violate his end of the GPL bargain, that's his business and he'll have to live with the consequences. His violation of the GPL in no way obligates me to assist him in avoiding said consequences. Having said that, it's a moot point in my case, because I'm leaving SETI, BOINC, and distributed volunteer computing behind for good. One machine is already offline and BOINC/SETI-free, and the rest to soon follow. Just like Crunch3r, I have other alleged reasons for doing this beside just the recent stupidity. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
FOR CRUNCH3R- WE ARE ON STRIKE!!!
(Message 334603)
Posted 12 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: If you are RICH RICH RICH, I have a several hundred pound server I can let you have. It is a quad xenon 550mhz server that the USGovernment used to own. I got it free and it crunches fine. It is here: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=2268008 eBay is a BAD idea: visit http://freecycle.org, find the Freecycle group(s) local to you, join it/them, and then OFFER: it to the group. I'll guarantee you it'll be claimed by someone within an hour, tops. There won't be any humongous shipping cost, because the person getting it from you will be getting it from you directly and taking it home in their own transportation. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Why the strike?
(Message 334599)
Posted 12 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: He was asked about this, and.... My, my... that's painting a blissfully politically correct face on what really transpired.... |
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4)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THE FORUMS??? PLEASE CLEAN IT UP
(Message 330787)
Posted 8 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: This means we will be monitoring in the background, but unless you cross the line we won't do much about it. And when we do, you will get an email sent to your registration email address with an explanation on why it was removed. This isn't happening consistently, even if you think it is. I recently had a post deleted (for the first time ever), and the only way I found out was by noticing its conspicuous absence from its place in the thread and then double-checking my own post history and finding it labelled as "flame bait" (which it wasn't). So I had a post summarily removed for poor justification, and wasn't notified of its removal; that's a bit of a failure of the process on two counts. My experience demonstrates that there is yet room for improvement. I realize that even moderators are still cursed by the same flesh as the rest of us, but indeed they need to try harder to have superhuman lack of emotion and impartiality and superhuman discipline and judgement. They need to be mutants, basically. :-D |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
CLOSED - SETI/BOINC Milestonesâ„¢ VII - CLOSED
(Message 330115)
Posted 7 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Wouldn't ya know it... I passed the BOINC/SETI 100K mark while I was distracted with all the histrionics of late. It's especially sad, because I'll probably wind up being one of the people leaving in protest to all the recent events (not just one but the sum together is too much to stomach). I'll never see the 200K mark. |
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6)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THE FORUMS??? PLEASE CLEAN IT UP
(Message 329550)
Posted 7 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: I say blame Misfit. (psst.. do it while he's distracted by ants!) I've witnessed Argentine ants do some truly unbelievable things; they're so resourceful it nearly puts Homo sapiens to shame. Didja know that they invented social networking and distributed computing aeons before we built our first computers? :-D One bizarre example: they tried to colonize my clothes iron. Another: I know a woman whose Brother all-in-one printer was SUCCESSFULLY colonized, not by hundreds but many thousands of the little buggers... there were so many eggs and larvae inside it that it looked like a scene from a B horror movie in miniature. She was literally scooping them out with a spoon! (She ultimately ditched it... even I pronounced it unrecoverable. My iron I still have, though it's in a different spot and has a cotton ball stuffed in the front of it now.) |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Impact of S@H enhanced on Berkeley server load?
(Message 329546)
Posted 7 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: I've seen a loss of about 36% from a high of about 910. My RAC had still been climbing at that point, so the eventual "stable" RAC (if there is such a thing) might have been a bit higher than that. Currently it's down to about 580. Prior to Enhanced I was using Crunch3r's optimized SSE3 app on my A64 3000+ and the optimized SSE app on my (OC'ed) XP 2500+. There's no question that they made the systems more productive and consequently worked them harder, too. I was using the optimized clients along with those, because that seemed necessary to maintain proportional values to credit, but that never seemed to be the case. The claimed and granted credits I got back then were consistently below the magic value of 32 that I'd heard was the baseline; they'd get somewhere between 15 and 25 most of the time. Of course the systems were getting more work done, so there was some compensation, but none of it ever made sense to me. I felt the system should have been much more transparent. Currently I'm still using the last 5.12/5.5.0 optimized software, but as you can see it's doing little if anything to offset the irrepressible slide. I'm trying really hard not to care, reminding myself that it's only abstract numbers and that indeed nothing tangible has been taken from me, but still.... |
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8)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
Someone is owed an apology, and someone else should be making it.
(Message 327179)
Posted 5 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: As Tony did, you have voiced your opinion! Right or wrong Tony is entitled to it! Whether we agree or disagree EVERYONE has the right to be heard on the subject. BUT for you to decide Tony did somehting wrong is again your opinion! Only your last sentence adds any value. What preceded it was politically correct touchy-feely non-committal relativist double-speak that doesn't mean a thing. At least you sucked it up at the end and said something objective. To hell with what I or Tony has a *right* to say, that's not the issue. The issue is that in this instance there is no gray area for correctness or accuracy: either Tony's accusations of cheating are correct or they're not; either my and others' assessments of Tony's behavior and motives are accurate or they're not. The whole point of exercising those rights you blabbered about is to get at the truth: who's correct and accurate and who's not. THE POINT IS TO LEARN. Sometimes that learning has to come at the expense of recognizing a mistake. If this indeed proves to be a lesson to learn for Tony he'll have to recognize it publicly, but that's the bed he chose to lie in when he so publicly accused Crunch3r. |
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9)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
Someone is owed an apology, and someone else should be making it.
(Message 325931)
Posted 4 Jun 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Said the insigthful Professor Ray: Tony had no business making a public and conspiratorial-sounding issue out of it, unless and until he had more fully investigated the situation. One part of that more complete investigation should have been a polite question directed to Crunch3r; it wouldn't have even mattered whether it were private or public (though privately it would have gotten a more prompt response), so long as it was expressed as simple curiosity. That isn't what Tony did: he leapt to a conclusion and began painting a sinister conspiratorial picture of the subject before he even had a clear view of it. He was looking at it through fog on a dark moonless evening and claiming he could clearly make out sinister features, but the sinister features were a creation of his own over-eagerness to find problems he could take credit for having discovered and/or solved. From Tony's degree and nature of involvement with this project and the general nature of his posts in forums, it's rather obvious that he at least unconsciously fancies himself a bit of an investigative reporter. This is one instance where he let that fantasy get the better of him. I'm casting this stone at Tony as a fellow sinner, with full disclosure: I'm an arrogant, judgemental S.O.B. who also often leaps to judgements sooner than I should. I'm also a Mensan with some right to be proud of my ability to judge well, but that's beside the real point. The one small chasm that divides the two of us is that when I'm clearly shown that I've made a mistake in judgement, I apologize for my ignorance and take consolation in knowing that it will be one more thing that I can now be right about in the future. :-) I would strongly suggest to Tony that he eat a bit of crow now and *henceforth* be right, rather than continuing to be wrong just to avoid the bad taste in his mouth. |
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10)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
SETI@Home is now dead to me
(Message 257142)
Posted 4 Mar 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: The transcript of managerial, operational, and technological brinksmanship of this project reads like a soap opera. I hate soap operas. I don't care why the project's principals can't motivate and inspire sufficiently to get sufficient funding to manage this project properly. I care that they have failed to do so, and expect me to tolerate the consequences. I'm not that tolerant. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Registering BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253213)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Miras' suggestion has worked well for me, so a reinstall wasn't necessary. A reboot was required before the service was recognized and started, which I verified with Services.msc and Task Manager. Since I had created a special user account for BOINC to use as a service, I thought there might be something else I'd have to do, but it worked straight away. |
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12)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Register BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253211)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Miras' suggestion in that other thread worked well for me, so a reinstall wasn't necessary. A reboot was required before the service was recognized and started, which I verified with Services.msc and Task Manager. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Registering BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253200)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Thanks, Miras! I assume you just ripped that from yer own Registry? I'd have done that, if I had it in a Registry I could rip it from. Chad, I tried that first, but it didn't work. I discovered that was because I has substituted an optimized client EXE. My fallback solution if Miras' surgiical one doesn't work will be to delete the EXEs and then try the reinstall. |
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14)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Register BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253198)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Sounds plausible, but the BOINC installer won't allow it. It demands either a repair - which doesn't correct this - or an uninstallation first. This reply in the dup thread in Number Crunching looks like it might be a surgical solution: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=28454#253171 If that doesn't work, I'll delete the optimized EXEs and try the reinstall. |
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15)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Register BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253161)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: No need to uninstall. Just stop BOINC and reinstall over, all should work. Sounds plausible, but the BOINC installer won't allow it. It demands either a repair - which doesn't correct this - or an uninstallation first. |
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16)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
Registering BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253074)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: This is weird: while installing BOINC in a fresh install of Windows 2000, I chose exactly the same installation option I've chosen before, to install BOINC as a service. The only problem is... it didn't actually do it. It left it to be spawned by BOINCMGR. Could someone please refresh my memory how to manually register boinc.exe as a service? I don't want to have to uninstall and reinstall and risk losing already in-progress work. |
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17)
Questions and Answers :
Windows :
Register BOINC as a service after installation?
(Message 253070)
Posted 24 Feb 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: This is weird: while installing BOINC in a fresh install of Windows 2000, I chose exactly the same installation option I've chosen before, to install BOINC as a service. The only problem is... it didn't actually do it. It left it to be spawned by BOINCMGR. Could someone please refresh my memory how to manually register boinc.exe as a service? I don't want to have to uninstall and reinstall and risk losing already in-progress work. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Off the subject (Monitor Question)
(Message 238715)
Posted 28 Jan 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: I just recieved a late christmas present of a 17 inch LCD monitor (KDS717). Personally, I'm sticking with CRTs until OLED technology matures into commercial product. LCD technology has never quite matured in 15 years, as demonstrated by persistent problems with dead/stuck pixels; you know it's still bad when even store display models wind up with them and Sony has a PSP public relations nightmare because of it. LCDs are comparatively expensive, comparatively sluggish, and their color rendition is horribly inaccurate; no graphics professional would touch one with a ten-foot pole. Viewsonic as a brand isn't bad, but its reputation with me was ruined after they screwed me over last year. Viewsonic bought rights to the Nokia CRT line some years ago right after I bought my cherished Nokia 21" CRT, and when it died last year I discovered I couldn't get it fixed, for ANY amount of money. Viewsonic had dropped the ball, wasn't even making the required parts. Further, their stance on the matter was arrogant and dismissive. Since the CRT was less than 7 years old and well over $100 in wholesale cost, I considered suing Viewsonic under the "California Lemon Law", and even consulted with a firm about a class-action suit, but in the end I just wanted a new CRT. The Nokia, sadly, wound up being e-cycled in spite of having been the best display I'd ever owned. A $1000 device so disposable that it couldn't even be repaired. Suffice it to say you couldn't PAY me to use a Viewsonic product now. I'm no longer a big fan of Nokia either, since they made a careless choice in selling out to Viewsonic in the first place, and screwing over their formerly loyal customers in the process. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Plea for 'admin' help: merging computers
(Message 236853)
Posted 24 Jan 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Pooh pooher said: And they do this one small thing for you, then over 300,000 small things would want to be done for everyone here. I did, and that's why I didn't ask until today. I was motivated by someone else's description how the SETI admins took pity on him and honored (what to me was) a similar request. Both you and Shane could, and should, have continued to remain silent, however. "Inelegant" is the best word I can muster to decsribe the suggested alternative actions. I can't predict the effect that trying to remove it from the database would have, since even though I noticed that it links no specific results the 2000 credits are still attached to it, and might just disappear right along with it. If it's not to be, then silence from both you and the SETI team is a more efficient use of bandwidth than simply preaching at me not to bother asking. Mark |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Plea for 'admin' help: merging computers
(Message 236693)
Posted 24 Jan 2006 by Mark A. Craig
Post: Shane said: You won't be able to merge these two computers just deleat the SP2 version. No, indeed I can't; I knew that already. However, I don't administer the database, and someone who does could indeed do this, if they deemed it worth their time. I tried to make a case for it being worthwhile. I'm a perfectionist and obsessive-compulsive, though I doubt I'm the only participant who entertains himself with those shortcomings. I had hoped to get a little help coping with them. Mark |
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