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SETI@home Becomes Part of BOINC 184

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hard-to-choose dept.
Sudoku writes "On December 15th the Seti@home project will stop issuing new work to members and integrate with BOINC, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. Once members have moved over to the BOINC client they can divide their computing time between such projects as climate prediction, search for gravitational signals emitted by pulsars and yes, you can still look for the aliens."
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SETI@home Becomes Part of BOINC More

SETI@home Becomes Part of BOINC

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  • BOINC blows (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mursk ( 928595 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:07PM (#14103419)
    Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? I've been a SETI@home user for a while now. I tried the BOINC client, and it's much more complicated than the old one. I'm not sure if I will continue when they shut down the old system...
    • What part is complicated? If you only want to run SETI@Home, you sign up for that (or transfer your existing account), and let it go. It becomes the only program that goes, much like before. BOINC handles non-client program updates, runs datasets according to due dates and priorities, and collects stats.

      • Re:BOINC blows (Score:3, Informative)

        by Liquidrage ( 640463 )
        What part is complicated?

        For me, it's the getting it to run part. It doesn't give me enough information to make troubleshooting worth it.
        Create projcet account and enter project URL they say? Ah, yes. But apparently there's some proxy issue since after doing so I get the "proxy configuration" screen. Well, isn't that interesting. Username, password, server and port for HHTP and SOCKS. Hmmm!
        Gee, I wonder what I should put in there. I don't have anything to put in there. Apparently I'm the only idiot
        • I got this today. I was testing a power meter and needed something to bring the CPU load up a bit, and I instantly thought of seti@home. Been years since I used it so all this BOINC stuff is completly new to me.

          So I install it, it asks me to enter the Project URL .. odd. I enter the SETI@home URL, and a few seconds later I'm staring at the proxy configuration page - no explination of why. I double check that I'm online, all is working. So I try one of the other projects. It works a little better this time
          • So I install it, it asks me to enter the Project URL .. odd. I enter the SETI@home URL, and a few seconds later I'm staring at the proxy configuration page - no explination of why. I double check that I'm online, all is working. So I try one of the other projects. It works a little better this time, it's asking me to create an account. So now I've registered it should start working! Nope ... there's nothing happening. After a minute of looking around I notice some red messages in the log telling me I've no
        • Create projcet account and enter project URL they say? Ah, yes. But apparently there's some proxy issue since after doing so I get the "proxy configuration" screen.

          You aren't alone, welcome to my hell. WTF? We don't have a proxy around here, we are on the net.

          Just because your stupid software can't talk to your (apparently overloaded) servers doesn't mean we aren't on the net. Why don't you include some very, very simple tools to check if your stupid software can see anything, a simple ping would
        • I've tried (and given up on) BOINC before. I got it to connect but every single packet came back as failed. No explanation was given, and the stats steadfastly remained at zero.

          Same behaviour on multiple machines, all with plenty of disk space/memory. I uninstalled the thing as it was clearly broken.

    • Re:BOINC blows (Score:3, Informative)

      by Epi-man ( 59145 )
      I have managed to waste a couple hours fighting with that pile of dreck. I had it working for a while, then had to reboot, no idea why it can't see the internet (again) now. Not a stellar example of open source software...

    • Re:BOINC blows (Score:5, Informative)

      by Eravnrekaree ( 467752 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:56PM (#14103804)
      I thought the BOINC client was a useability disaster when I tried it. It had numerous technical problems and was very unintiutive. While some may say that people should how to work with its unnecessarily involved configuration, I think this is is an arrogant assumption, especially for people who are DONATING their computers resources, if it isnt easy to install and provide some good graphics to show what it is doing, people will not bother and will give up, and the project will use a lot of users. The reason seti@home was such a success, was due to the fact it didnt require much user configuration to run (but was still configurable) and provide a nice graphics display to show that it was doing something. With BOINC the graphics display seemed to be difficult to access, and the whole thing seemed to involve a lot of configuration to use. I think the seti@home project will lose a large number of users from this.

      • Re:BOINC blows (Score:4, Informative)

        by jim_deane ( 63059 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @06:54PM (#14104183) Journal
        Another issue is that BOINC requires fairly modern hardware. I kept some older computers around specifically to crunch Seti@Home packets for a long time, including an overdriven 486 DX/2-66 (nee 5x86/133).

        Now, crap, even my daily desktop (built in early 2002) is hardly up to the task. Considering that I started crunching packets in 1999, I'd really [i]like[/i] to continue, but I'm not going to buy hardware just to keep up with Seti@Bloat.

        Jim

    • Re:BOINC blows (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Almost-Retired ( 637760 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @07:35PM (#14104463) Homepage
      I have to concur heartily. Not to mention that while boinc has a message board one can take problems to, the answers, when occasionally given are meant to make the user feel about 1/8" tall. So when it gets shut down, I guess I'll just reclaim the drive space. Which frankly, tends to pi$$ me off as I'm currently ranked at 99.363% in the world rankings.

      When I first started this, about a month after the project went public, I thought maybe it might be worthwhile. But now that I see the data is from a rather narrow band around the ecliptic and not from the whole sky, I'm not so sure we'll find anything in the more sterile environs of the milky way. To much sterilizing radiation down in the inner core for anything to have time to grow into something we might want to meet in between supernovas. Something we might not want to meet, maybe...

      --
      Cheers, Gene
      • I'm not so sure we'll find anything in the more sterile environs of the milky way. To much sterilizing radiation down in the inner core for anything to have time to grow into something we might want to meet in between supernovas.

        Even on a line between us and the core, there is plenty of space for life, up to the point when radiation starts to be a problem. Excluding the possibility of core explosions, of course.

        Something we might not want to meet, maybe...

        The Pak?

  • Seti had more users thanit needed as I understood, seems about time...
    • Any more information about this? I find it hard to believe that a Distributed Computing project can have too MANY computers...
      • Well, they are processing observational data, so yes, it is possible to have too many people processing it.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • I think the grandparent meant that it was bigger than it should have been when compared to projects designed to cure diseases and the like - moving its userbase over to a project that lets them work on a selection of causes is a very nice idea.

          While I agree disease cures are a little higher priority than finding extra-terrestrials, who's to dictate what these people do with their spare cycles? If there are more people interested in finding aliens than finding cures it just means the other project isn't as p

      • Re:about time... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )
        SETI is a data processing project. You need enough people to process all your data (with some redundancy, to make sure noone lies). Anything over that is wasted- they don't need it, and in fact are giving them busy work. They reached that point several years ago. With this move, instead of giving them busy work, they can give them work on other scientific projects.
      • I can't offer an authoritative answer, but based on what I've heard, the situation is something like this: their bandwidth is fairly limited, since it's donated by UC Berkley; the Classic users really weren't doing any of the heavy lifting anymore, so this is something of a non-story, the transition has mostly already happened; therefore by closing down the Classic client they really don't lose anything and get back a big chunk of their limited bandwidth allowance.

        The SETI@Home servers pretty regularly go d

  • Car key edition (Score:3, Funny)

    by wardk ( 3037 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:07PM (#14103422) Journal
    I want it to find my keys. and that sock that I know went into the dryer.

  • Lose members (Score:4, Interesting)

    by op12 ( 830015 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:09PM (#14103432) Homepage
    I wonder how many members they'll lose as a result of the switch. Is there an easy transition from one to the other (i.e. in the form of an upgrade/update), or are they making previous SETI users go and download a new program/screensaver?
    • You do have to get a new client and the learning curve towards spinning up with BOINC isn't trivial, but it's not hard either. Best yet, you pretty much only have to keep your BOINC client up-to-date and not the individual engines that SETI, Einstein, and climateprediction.net use, as they are updated automatically as necessary through the BOINC client.

      I like the built-in stats in the GUI and the easier interface to attach to a new project and to reset projects that seem to have gone stale. Much more intu

      • Re:Lose members (Score:5, Informative)

        by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@@@tru7h...org> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:43PM (#14103701) Homepage
        > BOINC isn't trivial, but it's not hard either.

        I honestly don't see how they're going to attact anyone except nerds to run their software.

        It's crap, the documentation is crap, and you can really only figure it out through trial and error. The main BOINC page has a "software" section, but no link to actually download the clients. Instead, they elected to stash the client download link below the list of available projects. So you sort that out, get the client, and run it.

        I don't know what it's like for the other projects, but their dumb little wizard for signing onto a project doesn't work at all with seti@home. It says to enter an URL, without clearly explaining that the URL is merely the homepage of the project. So I just guessed by cutting and pasting off the BOINC home page and happened to get it right. Well, so one would think. It never gave positive confirmation. Then it takes you to this little login screen, and I immediatley tried to log in with my old seti@home account. The software thinks about that for a minute, then presents you with a generic communication error and no clue on what to do next. So I tried to make a new account.. same generic error. I only discovered you have to go to the seti@home page and "migrate" your account to the new system by going to the seti@home webpage, looking for some hint on how to proceed. Few minutes later, after filling out a number of forms and getting a "key" in my email, I pasted it into the BOINC wizard and was finally able to attach to the project.

        Again, not one single bit of this is documented in a clear format. Only random trial and error figured it out. Even their "help" page is little more than a high brow explanation of the software and the mechanics of how the system functions. Like I said, only nerds are going to take the time to figure this thing out.

        At least the old seti@home was as simple as double clicking a file and entering an email address, something easily graspable by your average schmoe.

    • Re:Lose members (Score:5, Funny)

      by Eddy Da KillaBee ( 727499 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:22PM (#14103552)
      Scientific Progress Goes BOINC?

    • Re:Lose members (Score:5, Insightful)

      by valisk ( 622262 ) * on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:34PM (#14103634) Homepage Journal
      Truthfully I doubt that they will lose members.
      And I dont think the transition is a problem, you simply create an account on the new Seti@home site [berkeley.edu] and link it to your old one so that your credit is transferred over, Then download Boinc and insert your project and ID code and it does the rest.
      I switched over to Boinc in March or April and since then have had no problems at all. old Seti credit is transported across when you sign into the Boinc account version of Seti, and you can compile and run optimized clients for your architecture, something the old seti never really had.
      I got a 35% performance increase by switching to an optimized client.

      Boinc itself isn't really a replacement for seti though, it is simply a manager
      You choose which projects you wish to subscribe to, and how long you want any particular project to hog resources for and away you go.
      At first i ran seti alone, but recently I have been running the Einstein@home [uwm.edu] and LHC@Home [lhcathome.cern.ch] client on a 33% resource share basis with Seti.
      Einstein, looks for spinning Pulsars and the LHC is a client from CERN running simulations of particles spinning around the new Six Track large hadron colider.
      The LHC project has just finished sadly, but I think I'll move onto the Rosetta project [bakerlab.org], which is looking to work out various protein structures and interactions and how they can be used.

      If, like me, you always fancied running a few other projects other than Seti but didnt want the hassle of manually deciding which client ot run then Boinc is a real boon and well worth the few minutes needed to set it up.

      Have a go, I think you will like it!

      • Re:Lose members (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MasterDirk ( 659057 )

        Truthfully I do think that they will lose members. They can either:

        1. Create a new account on the new site (active involvement)
        2. Link new account to old account (involves remembering things)
        3. Download Boinc (go out and get something new)
        4. Insert project ID code (new stuff, not previously needed)

        or they can

        1. Do nothing, everything is configured already and working by itself giving warm fozzy feeling

        I know I'm not going to bother. It's not important enough to me, although I thought it was kind of cool when I s

  • What about emergency situations? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by UR30 ( 603039 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:09PM (#14103437) Homepage
    Can BOINC give cpu resources in emergency situations to, e.g., computing the effects of a nuclear disaster, or an earthquake? This would greatly help in recovering from catastrophes.

    • Re:What about emergency situations? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:50PM (#14103754)
      Umm, if the disaster has already happened, you don't need to model the results- just step outside. There's nothing a computer can do to help here.
      • What if it's a Tsunami and you need to figure out which cities to send into a panic and which not?
        • Send everywhere along the coast into one. Just in case.

          Tsunami's are quick. By the time the computer modeled it, it would have arrived.

        • What if it's a Tsunami and you need to figure out which cities to send into a panic and which not?

          What if the thought Police catches CmdrTaco and need to crack is PGP key fast! Can I donate my spare cpu cycles?

          If they can't crack his key, they'll use barabaric means, like pouring hot grits down his pants, while he naked and petrified! I heared that it was used on Natalie Portman with great sucess.

          (I was missing those Natalie Portman posts from the old days. I'm such a dork...)

      • I wondered about all the CCTV that the UK Police had to trawl through after the London Tube Bombings. If there was a method of sending out chunks of CCTV (maybe in 5 min chunks) and people could voluntier to watch and note down all salient points (eg, text in any road signs, descriptions of people and their clothing, etc) and submit.

        The system would then colate the information for all the CCTV, with multiple viewers for each chunk allowing a reasonably accurate method of then searching for content.

        EG th

  • More Practical Matters (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Prospero's Grue ( 876407 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:09PM (#14103439)
    As much as I admire the SETI project, and it's use of idle computing; using the time and power for climate issues and the search for other planets do seem more "useful" tasks.

    Still...won't be quite the same as when some guys in my last job rigged another fellow's screen saver to flash that his computer had found an alien signal.

    sigh

    • As much as I admire the SETI project, and it's use of idle computing

      Please, see my sig!

      • It was a typo, dude. They happen.

        As for your sig...it occurs to me that someone who has a webpage on frequent spelling mistakes linked to with the phrase "Keep the reader focused on your ideas", well, wasn't particularly focused on my ideas in the first place.

        Best of luck in your efforts to make the web a more gramatically pleasing place to be. You're going to need it.

  • Foldit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gcnaddict ( 841664 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:10PM (#14103448)
    I still think we're better off folding@home [stanford.edu] than hunting afar

    • Re:Foldit (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:33PM (#14103629) Homepage Journal
      I'm with you there. My team is in the top 2k. And the nice thing about Folding is that they actually write research papers based on the findings. Its nice to see my PC working for something that is improving the scientific community's knowledge.

      -Rick

      •   Refining some guesstimates about some of the variables in the Drake equation isn't "improving the scientific community's knowledge"?

          If you don't think so, how about the R&D into signal detection equipment and software, and distributed computing that the seti@home project has done?

          I'm not dissing on Folding, I run it here myself, but I fail to see how the seti@home project has failed to help scientific knowledge.

        SB

    • Re:Foldit (Score:5, Informative)

      by jmt9581 ( 554192 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @06:04PM (#14103861) Homepage
      While I agree that folding@home is more useful than seti@home, I think that Rosetta@home [bakerlab.org]. It's also focused on protein folding, but the difference is that Rosetta has consistently outperformed folding@home at the CASP (Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction) competitions. Check out the CASP website [predictioncenter.org] to see the raw results. Or, check out a summary from the Baker Lab website [washington.edu]. Also, Dr. David Baker (head of the lab where Rosetta has been developed) is very involved in the community of users that run Rosetta@home, check the messageboards on the Rosetta@home [bakerlab.org] site.

      Disclaimer: I'm a student in David's lab. But that doesn't mean that I'm wrong, or mindlessly plugging my own Kool-Aid. :) I really believe that Dr. Baker and his lab have a strong chance to solve the protein folding prediction problem.

      Whatever project you choose to donate your cycles to in the end, protein science is a cool field with far-reaching implications for humans in general, and the scientists in the field really appreciate your cycles. Thanks to all those who are donating and will donate in the future.

      • Patent policy? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by metamatic ( 202216 )
        I see no statement on the Rosetta@Home web site about who owns any results of the research, whether it will be patented, and so on.

        Folding@Home at least say that they are a nonprofit and will not profit from selling or licensing their research.
    • I've been running folding@home for nearly a year now, and considering its on a Sempron (socket A) 2500 running FC3 as a home media server, and is also my main desktop and internet access machine, with web serving duties etc. the results [stanford.edu] aren't too shabby.

      It does help to renice the main process to lowest priority though.

  • BOINC could be a lot more efficient (Score:5, Interesting)

    by k2enemy ( 555744 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:10PM (#14103452)
    They should take advantage of the basic economic idea of comparative advantage. In economics, it dictates why trade between two countries is beneficial, even if country A happens to be more efficient at producing everything than country B. What matters is not the absolute level of efficiency, but the ratio of efficiencies. It could also help out distributed computing.

    The following numbers are synthetic: I chose them to make the math easy. Let's say there are two distributed computing projects to choose from: OGR and RC5. There are also two different computers you can use to work on the projects, a G5 or a P4.

    The G5 can complete 3000 units of OGR in one hour and 1500 units of RC5
    The P4 can complete 1500 units of OGR in one hour and 1000 units of RC5.

    I have a P4 and like to work on OGR, while my friend Eliza has a G5 and prefers to work on RC5. We each fire up our distributed clients and let them run for two hours, then check our stats:

    OGR on P4: 2 hours * 1500 units/hour = 3000 OGR units
    RC5 on G5: 2 hours * 1500 units/hour = 3000 RC5 units

    Now let's see what comparative advantage has to offer. The P4's ratio of efficiencies is 1500 OGR units/hour to 1000 RC5 units/hour, or 3 OGR/2 RC5. The G5's ratio is 2 OGR/1 RC5. In other words, even though the G5 is better at both OGR and RC5, it is relatively better at OGR.

    I already know I can crunch 3000 OGR units in two hours. Instead of actually doing this, I ask Eliza to work on OGR for me while I do RC5 for her. Now what happens?

    OGR on G5: 2 hours * 3000 units/hour = 6000 OGR units
    RC5 on P4: 2 hours * 1000 units/hour = 2000 RC5 units

    This is great for me, 6000 OGR units were completed. But Eliza's not happy because the RC5 work is falling behind. What happens if she works on each project for an hour while I work on OGR for .2 hours and RC5 in the remaining time? 3300 OGR units and 3300 RC5 units get completed. That's 300 more units for each project than if we each worked on our favorites by ourselves.

    This shouldn't be too difficult to implement. With BOINC, instead of choosing which project their computer will actually work on, a user submits their project preferences. Then the client runs a series of benchmarks that determine the computer's ratios of efficiencies. These data are sent to the distributed server which determines the optimal allocation of work between all clients, while guaranteeing each client that as much or more work will be done on the project of their choice as would occur if that client worked solely on its preferred project.
    • Your theory is excellent, but I don't know if the project participants (SETI, Einstein, etc) would appreciate being artificially squelched because one platform can function better than another. Their assumptions are that the user assigns the shares based on their preferences, not what their CPU's can do.

      Of course this can be addressed by overcompensation, but IMHO this should be something left as an alternative scheduler to the user's preference, not built into the BOINC client code.

      • Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient (Score:4, Informative)

        by goofy183 ( 451746 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:31PM (#14103619)
        I think the parent addressed this in their post.

        These data are sent to the distributed server which determines the optimal allocation of work between all clients, while guaranteeing each client that as much or more work will be done on the project of their choice as would occur if that client worked solely on its preferred project.

        The idea is if I want to dedicate my computer to SETI. And my computer can do 10 units/hr, my involvement in the BOINC network ensures that at least 10 more units/hr of SETI are being done. The actual work may be done by someone else's CPU which is better suited to SETI and my PC may be doing RC5 but the effect of me joining and saying I want to be 100% on SETI is at least the same, if not better.
    • "These data are sent to the distributed server which determines the optimal allocation of work between all clients, while guaranteeing each client that as much or more work will be done on the project of their choice as would occur if that client worked solely on its preferred project."

      **BOINC releases new project information**

      Wednesday, November 23

      The new Project to Optimize Distribution of Workload by Efficiency for Preferred Projects (PODWEPP) has been announced by Berkeley. The project is expe
    • wow, it's a brilliant theory, if a little complex - "but what if there were a million doors, and the gameshow host opened all but 2..."
    • This would be a good idea for some people, but in most cases the resource we're optimizing against is not CPU, it's the user's attention. The more attention a person needs to give to BOINC (for example to understand the configuration options related to this new work exchange feature), the fewer users BOINC will get.

    • This is great for me, 6000 OGR units were completed. But Eliza's not happy because the RC5 work is falling behind. What happens if she works on each project for an hour while I work on OGR for .2 hours and RC5 in the remaining time? 3300 OGR units and 3300 RC5 units get completed. That's 300 more units for each project than if we each worked on our favorites by ourselves.

      As a dumbass, I demand that your income be docked by the government and transferred to me... someone who can't keep up with what the he

    • You are my new hero! In one easy-to-understand post, you simultaneously combine sound economics (and a nice example of the basic arithmetic behind free-trade) with a CPU optimization.

      I wish more people saw the parallels between economics and computing -- they're linked by the mutual goal of increasing efficiency after all... :-)
  • a grid to process SPAM and virus hosts and DOS the hell of them (and their ISP) until somone convinces them to run Windows update.

  • Article inaccurately titled. (Score:5, Informative)

    by justinarthur ( 564449 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @05:17PM (#14103509) Homepage
    SETI@Home joined the BOINC project long ago, at least a year ago. There has also been an account migration service since the beginning of the BOINC integration. The only news here is that they are discontinuing support for the old SETI@Home client.
  • So I've been running Prime95 since before Seti came out. I don't even know it's there any more, but sometimes I think running Folding@home might be more socially responsible.
  • Has anyone ever seen BOINC components used for spyware/zombies - one of our servers was running a command (cmd.exe) process within SQL server that was running a component identified as part of BOINC and the users on site swear they had not downloaded or installed anything. I killed the process and removed some suspect files and the 'problem' has gone away for the moment. Anyone?
  • ACM Queue did a nice interview with the Director of SETI@home and BOINC

    http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=sh owpage&pid=313 [acmqueue.com]
  • ...the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence (STI@home) project shall continue as before, though researchers say the chances of obtaining a positive sighting during our lifetimes is weak.
  • But the BOINC screensaver could not be more hideous. I installed the new client the other month, but could not figure out how to get the old SETI screensaver back. Searched the boards too. Anyone know a way?
  • I've been running via BOINC for about six months now. The biggest pain for SETI score whores is that the scoring system between the old and new models is different. Now you get "credits" based on your CPU usage rather than how many results you produced. Therefore your BOINC scores are held separately from the "classic" values.

    In operation BOINC works fairly well but on Windows XP it kills performance in some apps. What I mean by this is that BOINC runs at low priority. Any other app on your system which a

    • BOINC has some promise I think. Though it doesn't really let you do "any" project, you have to find them and hook them up... which is a PIA and beyond most computer users I know.

      I tried it out a few months back with the gravity waves detection project (I forgot the name). It had a cool graphic, but had problems.

      BOINC wouldn't come out of standby after running overnight and crashed or locked up my XP. (Which is rare for this particular machine.) If it doesn't go away and release resources in less than a s

    • Re:SETI@Home has been using BOINC for a while (Score:4, Informative)

      by SETIGuy ( 33768 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @09:32PM (#14105174) Homepage
      In operation BOINC works fairly well but on Windows XP it kills performance in some apps.

      I get that too. It's really the Windows scheduler that's the problem. There's insufficient dynamic range between normal and idle priority. For that reason, on windows machines I usually have them set up to run only when the user is inactive.

  • Without an AIX client for Boinc, my contributions to Seti will end on the 15th.

    Sure you can roll your own Boinc client, but I haven't been able to get a stable version of it.

    It's too bad, really. It was a fun project to contribute to.

  • I've always wanted to BOINC a green skinned alien.
  • I gave up on climateprediction.net when they switched to BOINC. I tried, I really did. I thought it was cool that they were moving to a standardized distributed platform, and I'd been into that sort of thing back when cracking RC5 was a useful goal.

    But BOINC fucked it all up. I don't think the climateprediction model fit well into the BOINC work unit structure, which may not be BOINC's fault of course. However, without going over the small potatoes, the biggest problem was that the BOINC client would

  • Due to the change in clients I am stopping my SETI@Home processing for selfish reasons. I will lose credit for all my 5 years of membership and have to start over at 1 workunit! I used to deal with the risk of 100% CPU usage 100% of the time, but since all record of my contributions will be lost and I can no longer work toward the next snazzy printable certificate I am officially jumping ship. A very lamentable decision on SETI's part.
  • Just in case the Calvin and Hobbes title [amazon.com] didn't make sense... :-)
  • I ran some napkin calculations on how much pollution seti has generated. Take their own 'computer hours' from their stats page, and work out how many machines are left on overnight TO RUN SETI, and during the day and night, computers who would be on anyway, are now running hot (at close-to-100%), which runs more fans, which uses more juice etc etc. Also how much a night it costs the average utility bill. Someone with more knowledge can pop their calculations and whatnot here.
    • And, that's not considering the screwup SETI did by handing out the same packet for everybody to work on for.. what was it, like a month or two? What a waste.

      We've got real problems down here on Earth that need computing resources, like many of the other BOINC projects. Even distributed.net's cryptographic research and OGR calculations have more real-world problem solving elements than SETI.

      SETI is a solution looking for a problem. FightAIDS@Home on WorldCommunityGrid.org is doing research that matters t

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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

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