1) Questions and Answers : Getting started : Work unit restarting itself (Message 196830) Posted 27 Nov 2005 by Astronomy Roadshow Post: I can't get the hang of this new software. My first BOINC work unit never gets anywhere. The computer runs for several hours, it logs just minute or two in the stats, only 3 or 4% of the unit gets done, then it resets with another unit. I have operated the orginal SETI screensaver for over 4 years with no trouble at all. During this time I have reccommended it to 40,000 children and adults a year in my Planetarium. But now with 'keys', slow graphics, complex instructions, delayed communications & crashing work units, I cannot advertise this project any longer. I have had a few phone calls from confused kids this week about this site about how to do this and that. I tell them I haven't got a PHD in computer science and can't work it out myself. I will be taking off the link from my website... Peter Bassett, The Astronomy Roadshow

2) Questions and Answers : Getting started : I can't recommend this new software to kids anymore (Message 193800) Posted 24 Nov 2005 by Astronomy Roadshow Post: I had to paste this point here instead of the other messages page as I was told that I didn't have enough credits to qualify a submission - 485 units have been completed after 13,000 hours. I operate a planetarium and entertain around 40,000 people a year - mostly kids. It is a multi media system, I almost always show your classic SETI screensaver and have a link to it from my website. Having just gone over to your new system, taking quite some time to understand what I was doing, the new graphics are very slow, jittery, and gives me a dizzy-sicky feeling as it wobbles around. The spec for computers to run this seems faily high. My 800mhz desktop machine is not coping well. Most students have machines slower than this. My 266mhz laptop I use in my planetarium hardly runs it at all. Windows 2000 crashed last night for the first time in 4 years. The whole system is too complex, and requires too much power. I can't expect kids to have the knowledge, patience or a fairly high spec machine to run it. The old version was simple to understand and could run on anything - even a 486 laptop that I have as a back up. It could also be downloaded in 3 or 4 minutes to get started on a dial-up connection. I have had correspondance from children saying how good it is and they feel that they are doing real scientific research now rather than just making rockets from plastic bottles. Now I feel I can't advertise SETI screensaver at all. The old version looked much more scientific, ran more smoothly, simple to use, and never crashed. The new one already has, I had to download it all again. Even the look of new one is rather tacky - it seems to be designed to be entertaining rather than educational. The whole point of the project is to research, promote, and educate the most valuable question mankind has yet to answer. I just can't teach anything from it now while trying to pick out figures jumping around a sea sick screen projected from a laptop that can't cope with it. It doesn't even have the cute 'Dish' icon at the botton of the screen for a mannual look at what it was doing. People should not need a PHD in computer science or own a Super-Megatron computer to download a screensaver.. Very dissappointed... Sorry... The Astronomy Roadshow.

 
©2024 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.