Posts by ejthedj
|
1)
Message boards :
SETI Perspectives :
The Drake Equation: Revisiting a Classic Tool to Estimate the Odds of Contact
(Message 1988931)
Posted 5 Apr 2019 by  ejthedj
Post: Dolphins are certainly intelligent, but they are unlikely to build powerful radio transmitters and point them skyward. There are low odds for anything if you want them to be. But the Drake Equation, given very, very conservative numbers, is telling us that there are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of intelligent creatures in the universe. True, they may not all speak English and look just like us and have exactly 2 ears (maybe they are just dolphins or birds or fish), but I would argue that out of the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of civilizations, there have to be say 1% that we can detect if given enough time. 1% of 200million is 2 million civilizations we should be able to detect. But the universe is immensely vast. Even if we should only be able to detect 1000 civilizations, we have to look in just the right place and at the right time. If there is another civilization 50 light years away and pumping signals into space and we detect them, it's going to take us (at best) 50 years to send a message back to them and pray they hear the signal and reply. Just like your local radio station, once the radio wave passes you, that's it. You can't go back 10 minutes and listen to the song again. If that civilization 50 or 1000 light years away spits out a signal and it passes Earth, it's gone and we never would have known. The Drake Equation does not give us a number we CAN DETECT...it gives us a number of intelligent civilizations that should be out there. I often think about the fact that us humans have only been around for 100,000 years and have only been pumping radio waves into the universe for 100+ years, had electricity for 100+ years, and developed equipment to detect (hopefully) other civilizations for 50+ years. For the sake of speed and typing, I am going to refer to any intelligent civilization in the universe that is similar to us at the year 2019 as Others...What if there were Others on Mars (or name your planet in our galaxy) 50,000 years ago but got wiped out by an asteroid? What if there are Others somewhere out there that we could detect with our equipment, but, right now, they are living in the year 1800 or 1902?...we would miss them. What if the Others are currently in the year 2389 and no longer use radio waves or similar technology we can detect? And of course, what if they are purposely being silent and/or blocking our detection techniques? There are countless examples of why we are and/or may be missing the Others. Not to mention we've been searching for less than 50 years, our equipment becomes better and more sensitive every 10 years, and we have searched a minuscule portion of the universe. |
|
2)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979598)
Posted 9 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: The only way forward that I see this project surviving is to get Nebula up and running. If DA can't or won't do it, then someone else will have to. Also we used to have regular hardware funding drives from the GPU Users Group, that seems to have all gone as well. People wouldn't donate $100 to a general fund, but would to buy a disk drive with their notional name on it. I don't know the names of the people who run SAH or even if they check these boards daily. How about someone craft an open letter/email/blog/whatever to them with ideas to revive SAH? I would, but I don't know the problems and proposals as well as failed attempts in the past. I would DEFINITELY donate money towards particular pieces of SAH such as hardware or a fundraiser to go out and buy some dish or whatever. If SAH is a non-profit, then my/our companies would match me. |
|
3)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979414)
Posted 8 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: I wouldn't say neglected. But people say look, Seti has been going for XX years, I have crunched for YY years, and there have been no results. All they do is store our returned work away in a database and back it up each week. Nothing gets done with it. Do I want to spend another YY years of my time and money in the same way and likely be no further forward. The answer is likely no, that effort can more better mankind in other BOINC projects. Correct...I think a LOT of people feel this way. *BUT* if SAH were to better and far more frequent News bulletins/emails in laymen's terms (results, milestones, accomplishments, donations needed, etc.) then I think a good percentage of people would stick around. I've been crunching for Cancer for 10+ years and we have not found a cure yet. However, the News at WCG (even though it isn't that often) far surpasses SAH over the past 15 years. If a project that I am volunteering at is not going to keep me in the loop (often) about how the project is doing or help that is needed, I'm going to leave the project because either they don't care enough to keep me informed or they have nothing useful to say. In the world of volunteering, no news is NOT good news. |
|
4)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979361)
Posted 8 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: I really don't care much about "credit" for my contributions. I care about the number of work units I return and overall status of a project's goal. Currently SAH does not show me, in summary, how many results I have returned and/or return each day...just RAC. As someone mentioned, I also have been pouring all of my computing resources into non-SAH BOINC projects (I do the World Community Grid Cancer ones)....basically the past 10 years. I had felt that after 10 years of my contributions to SAH with 0 results (which is ok) and little enthusiasm from SAH (not the forum members) that in general I/we were being neglected. Coincidentally, the Cancer projects appeared in BOINC and I felt it was far more valuable to try to cure a disease. Ironically, WCG has become pretty unenthusiastic the past 5 years. There is an iOS app called DreamLab which is about 1.5 years old...fantastic GUI appeal and News, but the app has many flaws (won't auto start/restart, requires a/c to run, any hiccup in WIFI shuts the app down, etc.) I hope they fix these issues so people can set it and forget it just like BOINC. Now that I have stumbled upon SAH utilizing GPU while WCG Cancer projects do not utilize GPU, I'm offering all my GPU resources back to SAH. I'd love to see SAH gain in popularity as well as gain attention and money from donors (there seems to be a lot more SETI talk the past year but maybe it's the Google advertising :) ). But if SAH isn't gaining attention/donations, there's obviously a reason(s) for it. Maybe it's lack of advertising...maybe lack of user base...maybe past wasteful spending...maybe poor leadership. But there is a reason. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that SAH is reborn. :) |
|
5)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979204)
Posted 8 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: From this page you get your account info. Ok...I see it...other WUs I click on do not have the "blc" in the beginning so I must be getting some non-blc too (which is fine). But I guess the remaining question is still for Chris: Chris stated "All the tasks that you get that start with "blc" (and you have done a lot of them)..." Is Chris stating I did a lot of blc work or a lot of work in general? If he is stating I did a lot of blc work, how does he know? I can't imagine he clicked through my thousands of work units looking for "blc". :) |
|
6)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979194)
Posted 7 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: ... (and you have done a lot of them) are from the Breakthrough Listen Project. ;-) 1)How do you know I've been doing a lot of blc work? 2)How do you know I've been doing a lot of work in general? I see my RAC but I don't see any page that says "this particular computer did 719 work units, 525 of which are blc" for example. I don't mind sharing my stats but I would love to know the URLs or clicks you are doing to see the stats you are seeing. My profile page ( https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=3530 ) just shows: Total credit 201,802 Recent average credit 3,940.41 SETI@home classic workunits 49,920 SETI@home classic CPU time 338,985 hours If I look at my list of computers, I see, for example, the below stats for my iMac: Avg. credit Total credit BOINC version 1,798.44 19,672 7.2.42 The Tasks and Details hyperlinks don't seem to tell me how many blc work units I am doing for a particular computer. Thanks! |
|
7)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979189)
Posted 7 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: All the tasks that you get that start with "blc" (and you have done a lot of them) are from the Breakthrough Listen Project. ;-) Thanks for the tip!!! |
|
8)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979187)
Posted 7 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: Thanks, Chris. I heard about Breakthrough Listen Project last Fall...but it does not seem to be a Distributed Computing project. In addition to SAH, are there other (newer/better?) SETI projects that I can join? I'd still love to participate with SAH but if it's ending, I'd like to pour my resources into the next wave of Distributed Computing for SETI work. |
|
9)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979141)
Posted 7 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: I suggest him to read the NASA Technosignatures article in the News section. Thanks! However, the article you seem to be directing to me (which is at https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.08681 ) is 70 pages long. I doubt I am going to read a 70 page PDF to try to find, what seemingly should be, a 2 paragraph answer to my question. I've scanned the PDF quickly and again, not a single mention of SETI At Home. :( |
|
10)
Message boards :
SETI@home Science :
SAH compared to SETI in general
(Message 1979113)
Posted 7 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: I've been with SAH since 1999 (wow, I am dating myself!) and I think I am now a bit confused about how SAH compares/works with SETI in general since 20 years have passed, new SETI projects have been formed, new telescopes have been added, and other hardware and science has been created. Over the past 20 years I have seen a few videos on the topic of SETI and most recently one by Seth Shostak who is EXTREMELY inspirational, educational, and passionate. My question is, what part of the overall SETI pie does SAH contribute to? When I think of "SETI" I think of an overall, small community of scientists trying to find out if we are alone. Back in 1999 when SAH began, I thought that SAH was the big, single project that SETI scientists were investing in. Yet, I rarely (extremely rarely actually) hear the phrase SETI At Home and any mention of how SAH works. For 20 years I haven't heard a peep of SAH. Some side questions are: How does SAH utilize the Allen Array? How do other SETI projects leverage SAH? Is SAH 5% of the SETI research? If so, what projects are part of the other 95% of SETI research? How can citizens become involved? For example, the ATA website: https://www.seti.org/ata states: During the period from September 1998 through March 2004, Project Phoenix observed for a total of 100 days at Arecibo. That’s only 5% of the available time. The Allen Telescope Array offers SETI scientists access to an instrument seven days a week, and permits the search of several different targets (primarily exoplanet systems) simultaneously. As a result, the Allen Telescope Array is speeding up SETI targeted searching by a factor of at least 100.Ok...who is utilizing the ATA and who just sped up their search by a factor of 100? I am hoping SAH is not some pet project that faded into obscurity after 2-3 years and is just still ticking along only to provide a tiny sliver of information to the overall SETI research. The https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php page that is in the Science tab of this website (I think it really should be in the Project tab because it's not too scientific as currently described) doesn't answer my questions above. I'm not trying to sound pessimistic...just curious about SAH vs. SETI. Maybe my questions above are outlined somewhere on a webpage that I haven't seen yet...and maybe such a description should be duplicated on the SAH website somewhere. |
|
11)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
GPU hardware advice on Win10
(Message 1978946)
Posted 6 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: You can make that machine a little better with very little work. First you need to update the version of BOINC you are running.... Thanks for the tips! Most of my machines are idle for very long periods of time...months or years. I have set up a little farm in my basement to help with SAH and other projects. Also, other than updating BOINC on the Mac, I'm not going to muck with the Macs...I know very little about how they work compared to my knowledge of Windows/DOS. The Mac I have is my wife's which is mainly used for pictures and I could never convince her to just buy a Wintel. :) I would love to find a small/mid tower for around $1000 that would be 100% dedicated to SAH and give the best bang for the buck. If you or anyone has a make/model suggestion, I would appreciate it. I was looking at the Lenovo Thinkstation P330 which includes:
8GB RAM 400Watt PSU NVIDIA Quadro P1000 4GB 4xMini DP High Profile Win10
|
|
12)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
GPU hardware advice on Win10
(Message 1978918)
Posted 6 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: You need to know if there is and how much spare power there is on that Lenovo M910 Tower. If you have no way of measuring it then a Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor is helpful. Can be used to check out all sorts of home appliances... Yes, I forgot to mention that the M910 draws about 100w when BOINC is running 24x7. I was aiming to find a card at 75w or less so I have a buffer. Would you or anyone here have any feedback on how the GEFORCE GTX 1050 performs crunching SAH? Meaning, how long does it take to crunch 1 WU? Thanks again! |
|
13)
Message boards :
Number crunching :
GPU hardware advice on Win10
(Message 1978909)
Posted 6 Feb 2019 by ejthedj
Post: Hi all. After a long time, I am resuming my SAH crunching. I have a few questions regarding GPUs and Win10 machine advice in general: 1)I have a Lenovo M910 Tower but it only has a 250w power supply and currently only an integrated Intel video. Would you be able to suggest a great GPU card for this machine that won't draw too much power and damage the machine yet give good crunch times? 15+ years ago I was a hardcore hardware guy but life has moved on and I have gotten out of touch with hardware in highly technical fashion. I don't know how to measure CUDA performance of 2019 cards vs. 2016 cards, for example...and maybe there is no easy way to compare. I would love to spend less than $150 (for brand new...not sure if I trust buying a used GPU) that will work in this Lenovo. My goal would be that the GPU crunch each SAH work unit in 15 mins or less. 2)I have a 2017 iMac with an i7 chip and the AMD Radeon Pro 575 GPU and that crunches 1 SAH work unit every 5-6 minutes! To me, that is incredibly fast. My Lenovo M910 (which I never bought for diehard video performance) takes 2 hours per SAH WU. I don't expect to find my answer in #1 to match this iMac, but it is a performance reference for you. 3)In general, do you recommend a particular make/model Win10 machine that I do not have to build myself that would match or exceed my iMac? I refuse to buy HP but if you suggest a Dell or Lenovo or whatever brand I am all ears. The iMac 2 years ago was $2300. I would hope that given the passed time and buying Wintel over Apple I could find such a competitor for $1200 or less. But again, I don't want to build the box. I have bought Lenovos in the past few years because I get an employee discount. Thank you all very much and I am excited to be back! |
|
14)
Questions and Answers :
Web site :
CPU Type column needs to be changed
(Message 520669)
Posted 21 Feb 2007 by ejthedj
Post: Seti is the test bed for Boinc. Any new feature that the other projects needs gets tested on the Seti Website first. This is one of the reasons Seti even survives. Seti can't afford to have a programmer for the Board. As a matter of fact the basic Boinc board design and modification are being done on a volunteer basis by the developer from one of the other smaller projects. Most everything at Seti, Boinc and most projects is done by volunteers. Well, now we're going into the same discussion that has been published on this board a gazillion times...the fact that SAH is on its last penny, the project's database fails every day, the volunteers are surviving on Coke and cigarettes, etc. If SAH would clearly MANAGE the PROJECT as a true project, then this boat would not be 99.9% underwater. I'm not trying to pick on SAH...I'm giving you the facts of SAH's life. -Eric |
|
15)
Questions and Answers :
Web site :
CPU Type column needs to be changed
(Message 520416)
Posted 20 Feb 2007 by ejthedj
Post: You should see on how long the new info string is for a Mac. Anyway it looks alright on my 15 inch monitor 1024x768. I check with Firefox and Slimbrowser/IE6. The page width is correct and the columns wrap around appears correctly on my system as follows: I am using IE 6.x on WinXP Home. The line wraps...that's not the problem...I can expand/shrink IE all I want and the column will wrap just dandy. The problem is that I want it all on 2 lines like it used to be...not 3 lines and not 4 lines. If I upgrade all my clients to the latest BOINC and then go to My Computers, I don't want to have to scroll all over the place and try to read 3 lines of data. I know that web code is not perfect but it's very simple in this case...the text string is too long. The variable in this "experiment" is the fact that the latest BOINC client reports a much longer string...therefore, that is the problem. Therefore either change the variable back to what it used to be or change the website to accommodate for it. It should take a good web developer 30 minutes to add code to allow an end user to either collapse the column or hide the column...and maybe 5 minutes to write a javascript if...then segment to rid all that excess garbage in the CPU Type string that SAH is gathering. Take your pick...I'm not asking SAH to do anything major or time consuming. This is what drives me so crazy about using the SAH website...SAH changes so many !*^%!( variables every 3 months that it's REALLY REALLY annoying. Nothing stays constant on the SAH website. -Eric |
|
16)
Questions and Answers :
Web site :
CPU Type column needs to be changed
(Message 519952)
Posted 19 Feb 2007 by ejthedj
Post: Ever since I got the new BOINC client a few days ago, the darn thing reports a GIGANTIC long text string to SAH for my "CPU Type". It now reports:"GenuineIntel Why would I need to do something with MY screen?! My monitor is set at a high resolution as well as it being 24" large! Everything looked great until I upgraded to the latest version of BOINC. Please don't make this out to be my problem. I'm not a computer novice or idiot. There is nothing to set in IE. Read my suggestions again about what BOINC/SAH can do to fix this issue. This is not my monitor, video card, screen resolution, version of Windows, version of IE, etc. This website is driven by YOUR HTML code and YOUR string data...not mine. -Eric |
|
17)
Questions and Answers :
Web site :
CPU Type column needs to be changed
(Message 519813)
Posted 19 Feb 2007 by ejthedj
Post: Ever since I got the new BOINC client a few days ago, the darn thing reports a GIGANTIC long text string to SAH for my "CPU Type". It now reports:"GenuineIntel Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2600 @ 2.16GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8] [fpu tsc sse sse2 mmx]" Now...that may be all and nice to know, but I have a 24" monitor running at 1600x1200 and I can't even get the My Computers page to display nicely anymore at full screen!!! So...either make the "CPU type" column expandable/collapsable/shrinkable/hidden or whatever OR change the BOINC client so that it does not report back such a long string. Visit my link below to see the problem. It's really annoying that I can't see a nice layout of my computers' work. Thanks. -Eric http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/hosts_user.php?userid=3530 |
|
18)
Questions and Answers :
Wish list :
Remotely disable SAH client
(Message 504150)
Posted 16 Jan 2007 by ejthedj
Post: Go into your account and change the settings for that computer. Great! That makes sense and I wish I had seen that earlier. This way I don't really have to walk him through the install...and...maybe I can convince him to just let it run only when the machine is idle (remotely set by me). Thanks again! -Eric |
|
19)
Questions and Answers :
Wish list :
Remotely disable SAH client
(Message 503818)
Posted 16 Jan 2007 by ejthedj
Post: Go into your account and change the settings for that computer. Hi Mikey...how do I do that? The main reason why I would like this is because it was installed on his machine to automatically start when Windows starts. Again, this wish is because this user is a complete novice...completely computer illiterate and are lucky to figure out how to find google.com. :) -Eric |
|
20)
Questions and Answers :
Wish list :
Remotely disable SAH client
(Message 502526)
Posted 14 Jan 2007 by ejthedj
Post: Here's what I'd like to see: I would have the ability to go to the My Computers webpage...and I could click on 1 of the computers...and I would then have the option to remotely disable/enable that computer's BOINC installation from crunching SAH. Like how there is a Location pull-down menu at the very bottom of the page, there could be a "Disable SAH on this computer?" pull down with choices "Yes" and "No". Here's why: I have installed SAH on a friend's pc...he moved far away...he would like me to turn it off but he is completely computer illiterate so it's impossible for me to walk him through it over the telephone. This may not be high on the priority list of features, but it would be very nice. -Eric |
Next 20
©2025 University of California
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.