SETI@Home Transitions To BOINC

SeaDour writes "The team at SETI@Home have finally released their highly-anticipated new client software based on the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) software platform. This new platform promises transparent version upgrades, more efficient work unit distribution, and the ability to seamlessly integrate other distributed computing projects that are also using the BOINC standard. For now, SETI@Home is allowing both the Classic and BOINC clients to run, but eventually they will shut down the Classic data server and force everyone to upgrade. You can read more about the transition here."

Comments

I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our BOINC alien-finding overlords. sorry.

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

>> welcome our BOINC alien-finding overlords. sorry.

With our luck, they'll not only use a different part of the EM spectrum, they'll be non-BOINCing asexual aliens.

Re:I for one

[Epistax]

I prefer

Scientific progress goes BOINC?

Re:I for one

[haluness]

perfect! :)

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry.

Liar.

Hmm

[Ag3nt]

Personally I don't know much about BOINC, I will have to read up on it, but it will be interesting to see how the transition goes.

Waste

[mphase]

SETI seems like a bit of a waste of energy compared to Folding at Home. It's not that I don't believe in extraterrestrials or anything, I even think that SETI is a pretty worthwhile project but compared to curing some of the ailments folding works on...well yeah.

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the new BOINC software will allow you to split your computing time between SETI and Folding?

Re:Waste

[Brainix]

While I see your point, I think you are being unfair to SETI. As I understand it, SETI has made leaps not only in the search for extra-terrestrial life, but also in the area of distributed computing.

I once had a friend who was a psychology major. She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"

We must pick our battles, and contribute to the best of our ability.

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I once had a friend who was a psychology major. She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"

People who think we should do anything because we can't do everything are annoying. I am supremely unqualified to produce peace in the Middle East, cure AIDS, or fix overpopulation in China. I can however spare a few computer cycles for something that interests me, and searching for aliens seems to be a better use of my time than watching flying cows.

(BTW, this isn't directed at you, but at your friend who thinks compsci is somehow less important than psych. My guess is that computer science will do more to help the world than every psychiatrist and psychologist put together, though I certainly don't begrudge them pursuing their own interests)

Re:Waste

[CatLord42]

Maybe the new BOINC software will allow you to split your computing time between SETI and Folding?

Whoever modded the parent down should rethink their decision.

Folding at Home seems to be another distributed computing project, just like SETI. I haven't RTFA-ed, but the original post says that BOINC will allow multiple distributed programs to run. At worst, this is redundant, but it is definitely on topic for this particular part of the thread!

Re:Waste

[CatLord42]

Silly /. reader (me)!

How did that AC -1 filter get set?

Sorry, feel free to mod me down.

Re:Waste

[bsartist]

What if we find aliens that are considerably more advanced than us, and teach us of medical advances we wouldn't have found on our own for centuries?

Not that I think that will happen. It's just that we don't know what will result from it - that's the point of doing research, to find out. It doesn't make sense to restrict our areas of inquiry to those with easily imaginable results, when its the results we can't imagine that will really rock our world.

Re:Waste

[StonyUK]

I once had a friend who was a psychology major. She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"

How does she think she's helping? She's not preventing it, she's making money out of the aftermath.

Re:Waste

[JPriest]

For example, look at some of the useful tasks performed by some of the machines on the top500 list. I don't have the SETI client installed, but if there was a distributed computing effort that needed my computers to calculate things like effects of pollution or global warming then I would be willing to jump in and help out.

Re:Waste

[OneDeeTenTee]

I once had a friend who was a psychology major. She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"

Because computer science makes our lives better and thus reduces the likelyhood of child abuse and rape. (This argument only works if she accepts the argument that poverty and/or unhappiness increases the likelyhood of that sort of depravity.)

Re:Waste

[ari_j]

Your friend was pretty short-sighted. How can people honestly expect the whole world to dedicate itself solely to the problems they feel are important? Rape and child abuse are not the only problems in the world, which you'd find out in a hurry if every computer programmer (or practicer of any other profession) ran off to try to prevent rape and child abuse.

If a psych. major "friend" said that to me, she'd be sure to hear that the women and children are asking for it, or at least that I studied CS because I like programming, just like she studies child abuse and rape because she likes abusing children and being raped. But, then again, I'm in the George Carlin "rape can be funny" camp, and don't much care for anyone telling me what I should be doing with my life or how I should be thinking. :)

Re:Waste

[fatmonkeyboy]

Well, there are a number of ways she could (theorhetically) be helping by working as a psychologist, though there is certainly no guarantee.

* If she treats children she might prevent those children from becoming abusive to their own children, ten years down the line. Or she might prevent them from becoming rapists.

* If she works in social services she might identify children who are being abused and put an earlier stop to it.

* Even if she doesn't help prevent it, she might be able to help repair the damage in the aftermath. Just because she's making money from it doesn't mean it isn't still a worthy cause.

That said, I've never been impressed with what I've seen from the field of psychology. I do think that just talking to someone who is genuinely interested in helping you work through your problems is helpful though.

So, regardless of whether or not their science has much merit, I think psychologists are doing good work.

But the whole "how can you study X when Y is occurring argument" is pretty lame. A society like ours which supports deep specializations has to have people specializing in every field. Might as well go with the one you enjoy and/or have talent for...

Re:Waste

[JPriest]

Should we build big satellites and listen to space in case Aliens are broadcasting research advancements in a format that we are able to decipher, or skip the middle process and just put the effort into research?

We could use a similar setup to automate patrolling the skies for meteors that are likely to impact earth.

Such an impact would be difficult to prevent near earth, but further away we could probably divert the course of the object by .01 degrees with a missile that would move it far enough off course to avoid impacting earth.

Re:Waste

[NanoGator]

" I even think that SETI is a pretty worthwhile project but compared to curing some of the ailments folding works on...well yeah."

I help SETI because it's drastically underfunded compared to the types of things folding would cure.

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the George Carlin "rape can be funny" camp, and don't much care for anyone telling me what I should be doing with my life or how I should be thinking.

Ah. So rape is funny, but you don't like being raped?

Fucking hypocrite.

Re:Waste

[kalidasa]

Thing is, it's pretty easy to get money from charities, governments, private philanthropists, and other institutions to fund medical work. How easy is it for Seti to get that money?

Re:Waste

[nwbvt]

SETI is a waste of energy compared to the 3D maze screen saver.

Even if ET exists, the chance of SETI finding them is incalculable. I might as well start digging for buried treasure in my back yard. And even if we do find aliens, what do we gain? We get to hear AM radio traffic reports from an alien race that has probably gone extinct that used to live millions of light years away? What does society gain from that?

Re:Waste

[Knara]

This comment or something of the sort appears every time a seti@home article appears on slashdot.

I'm of the mind that we may eventually need to auto-slap "Redundant" or "Flamebait" on it, just so people realize the debate has been done to death. Some will do seti@home. Others will do folding. Others will download Usenet pr0n. Just shut up about it already.

Re:Waste

[slashjames]

Just remember that you will be paying for any cure that Folding at Home comes up with. The pharma companies will make sure of that...

Re:Waste

[The Lynxpro]

"SETI seems like a bit of a waste of energy compared to Folding at Home. It's not that I don't believe in extraterrestrials or anything, I even think that SETI is a pretty worthwhile project but compared to curing some of the ailments folding works on...well yeah."

A waste of energy? Its an exploration of a scientific question for folks interested in hard science. How is that a waste of energy? That sounds like an argument people use when they claim that money spent on NASA should be spent on fixing the problems of "the real world" such as poverty.

Perhaps if mankind finds 100% proof (through SETI) that intelligent life exists out in space, us humans might actually try to live in peace with one another. Is that exploration a waste of time? Certainly with peace we could free up resources towards tackling diseases that plague our population. Then again, the counter argument is that most medical breakthroughs occur during conflict. Maybe we should be looking for hostile space aliens then...

By the way, you can use BOINC to choose what resources you want to spend on various shared distributed processing programs, such as between SETI and Folding. At least the Beta version did...

Re:Waste

[NanoGator]

"She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"

Ugh I hate logic like this. Diveristy is what keeps this planet alive. If everybody became anti-rape superheroes, who'd teach her psychology?

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

I am fully qualified to bring peace to the Middle East. What I lack are the nuclear weapons.

Re:Waste

[phrenq]

Maybe it's easier to get funding for medical work because it's actually worth spending money on it. Why does the fact that SETI is less worthy of getting money make it more worthy of getting spare CPU cycles?

Re:Waste

[gsaraber]

Human population is already growing at an unsustainable rate, i see no reason to increase it even more with projects like folding..
I'll stick with seti

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that the pharma companies should spend billions on research and then just give the drugs away for free!?

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting a bucket of paint poured on you is undeniably funny, but I don't particularly like it either. Hardly hypocritical - funniness is for other people, not you.

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like we teach medical advances to marmosets and ants. Seriously, if there are advanced aliens, the chances of them being at a comparable level are slim. How often have you asked a bee to "take me to your leader?". People think "why would advanced aliens kidnap dumb americans instead of acting like textbook 50s 'take us to the president' smarmbags".

I'll tell you why, it's because it's the alien kids - same as human 6 year olds burning ants with a magnifying glass...

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull. Compared to the search for extraterrestrial life, everything not directly related to the survival of the human race as a whole and the other species on the planet is secondary.

Re:Waste

[spoonboy42]

Actually, I've had the SETI vs. Folding debate several times with my other computer-savvy friends. Personally, I run SETI. I tell them that we've only had radio for barely a century, which is an exceedingly short time compared to the history and the potential lifespan (taking the optimistic view) of our species. So, if the SETI project suceeds, the species we contact is likely to be far more technologically advanced than our own. If they have a biochemistry roughly similar to that of terrestrial life, they may have worked out the "laws of protein folding", allowing us to bypass our current brute-force approach. In the worst case, we can always send them the folding@home workunits and borrow a few minutes on their computers to cure our woes.

So, essentially, I do SETI because it has the potential to leapfrog folding@home. I donate my blood to medicine every six weeks, so I figure I've got my bases covered.

Re:Waste

[thrillseeker]

Maybe it's easier to get funding for medical work because it's actually worth spending money on it. Why does the fact that SETI is less worthy of getting money make it more worthy of getting spare CPU cycles?

Thank you for deciding how I should spend my computing cycles. Perhaps you missed your calling in politics and could take over the same decisions regarding my money?

Re:Waste

[thrillseeker]

Just remember that you will be paying for any cure that Folding at Home comes up with. The pharma companies will make sure of that...

Having spent a few weeks on my deathbed once in my life, and, well, cheating death once again, I'd be quite happy paying for any cure anybody comes up with the next time I'm in a world of hurt.

Re:Waste

[FrYGuY101]

I already split my time between two distributed computing projects on the same computer... Folding@home (Via the Google toolbar) and United Devices. Haven't run into any problems with it, so far.

Re:Waste

[fyngyrz]

It is not "a fact that SETI is less worthy of getting money." Rather, it is a fact that SETI has more trouble getting money, which is another issue altogether. "Why" is a question that likely has many facets in the answer.

The worth of SETI getting someone's spare CPU cycles is entirely dependent upon the opinion of the donor of those cycles - in other words, my opinion about how you donate your CPU cycles does not in any way affect either the "worthyness" of what you're using them for or the perceived and/or real value received, by you, for your donation. The exact same thing goes for donors of funds, equipment, and publicity.

Re:Waste

[bsartist]

Should we build big satellites and listen to space in case Aliens are broadcasting research advancements in a format that we are able to decipher, or skip the middle process and just put the effort into research?

Yes - to both.

We could use a similar setup to automate patrolling the skies for meteors that are likely to impact earth.

Yep, that too. It's not an either/or question, because the people involved aren't interchangable resources. Aerospace engineers or computer scientists can't take the place of biologists, or vice versa.

Re:Waste

[bsartist]

Yeah, just like we teach medical advances to marmosets and ants.

If the difference is that drastic, then yeah, we have pretty much zero chance of understanding them and they're unlikely to want to teach us.

But where the differences aren't so wide, there's a lot of research going on. We're studying the behavior and communications of dolphins, as well as chimps and other higher-order primates. We're learning to communicate in a rudimentary fashion with chimps. We've taught sign language to a gorilla.

Every day, right here on this planet, an advanced species goes to great efforts to communicate with more primitive ones. It's fairly reasonable to assume that any aliens that find us may want to communicate just as much as we do. After all, if they were xenophobes, they probably wouldn't be out exploring the stars in the first place.

Re:Waste

[NeoSkandranon]

A waste of energy? Its an exploration of a scientific question for folks interested in hard science. How is that a waste of energy?

Because SETI might well find nothing, and if it DOES find something there will not be any immediate benefit from it.
However odds are extremely good you or someone close to you will develop cancer, which is the focus of several folding projects.

Re:Waste

[Demodian]

Maybe the new BOINC software will allow you to split your computing time between SETI and Folding?

...or maybe merge the two looking for little origami ETs that have the cure for those bad tasting protein shakes...

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you're an ignoramus. Actually, no, that's a fact.

Re:Waste

[The Lynxpro]

"Because SETI might well find nothing, and if it DOES find something there will not be any immediate benefit from it.
However odds are extremely good you or someone close to you will develop cancer, which is the focus of several folding projects."

True, but if SETI finds intelligent life out in the cosmos, perhaps they could easily cure cancer for us, as long as they don't have anything foolish like the Prime Directive to follow. So by using SETI@home, you would literally kill two birds with one stone. Theoretically of course...

Re:Waste

[Jonathan Platt]

...just wait till we find some aliens who cure all our ailments.

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if I do find a cure to a cancer, most of the folding projects promise nothing for me. No free medicine for me should I ever get the cancer, no percentages of the income should their lab become filthy rich, no nothing.

I am not giving my resources free for others to become rich and give me nothing.

Re:Waste

[geminidomino]

Ugh I hate logic like this

FSVO "Logic"

Re:Waste

[AGMW]

... waste of energy ...

As I understand it, SETI was the first distributed system. The other ones (folding, etc) got the idea from SETI. So SETI deserves a few cycles for coming up with the idea.

BOINC presumably grew out of the new idea too, so it is right that SETI should move to the new system, and especialy so if we can indeed share our CPU cycles with more than one project.

... space aliens ...

LOL .... you yanks make me laugh! So I guess non-yank humans would be Earth Aliens then right? See the irony? Nope, I guess not!

Re:Waste

[Badanov]

I once had a friend who was a psychology major. She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"

Maybe that was her way of asking you out on a date?

Re:Waste

[NeoSkandranon]

Perhaps they could. But how long would it take to establish contact? Some of those signals have been travelling for quite some time have they not?

Re:Waste

[Suidae]

I help the Distributed Hardware Evolution Project because it produces results (robust error detecting logic circuits) that can be used by anyone.

Re:Waste

[IWantMyNickBack]

Yeah, however you could help disprove aliens and put a stop to all this alien nonsense.

Re:Waste

[IWantMyNickBack]

What were doing in distributed comp is just as important as what she's doing in psycology. And, to give her a hassle, say this: "How can you study psycology when there are misfolded proteins to study?" :P

Re:Waste

[The Lynxpro]

"LOL .... you yanks make me laugh! So I guess non-yank humans would be Earth Aliens then right? See the irony? Nope, I guess not!"

Yes, here in the U.S., it is necessary to distinguish between common terms used for extraterrestrials versus say, illegal immigrants which are also referred to as "aliens." Of course, with the whole politically-correct (pc) movement, the term is supposed to now be "undocumented worker(s)" whether or not they actually work. In response to this PC biz, I wanted to refer to ugly people as the "attractively challenged." I'm surprised it hasn't caught on yet.

And watch who you call a "Yank." Us Californians are not Yanks. That's a term for those New England snobs. :)

Re:Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

you should have raped her

Re:Waste

[metamatic]

I'm not contributing to Folding@Home until they state their position on patenting the results.

They say the data will be released publically and not sold for profit, but they say nothing about patenting discoveries that result from my work and then forcing others to pay fees.

Re:Waste

[rickbrodie]

I like to think that, in addition to any scientific/medical benefits that the aliens might bring, they will be able to act as a mediator in brokering peace throughout the world. I would hope they could do the job that the UN should be doing, and that the US is claiming it's trying to do, namely trying to use it's privileged (sp?) position for good.

Breaking Compatibility

[Ricwot]

The real question is, will this help the project, or will it harm it when the classic is phased out, those users looking for a pretty screensaver who installed the software one day when they were bored are unlikely to upgrade, that said however, the way that it can now be used for any project means that more causes can benefit without having to write the software themselves.

Re:Breaking Compatibility

[igny]

There are ~5mil total registered users, and ~500k active users (at least 1 result in last 4 weeks). I guess there are >100k users who are die hard fans, running it 24/7 on all their machines. Likely those will be first to upgrade, followed by the rest of them. Possibly, many of inactive users might come back with this upgrade.

In conclusion, you might see spikes in the userbase in short term, but it won't affect long term dynamics.

Re:Breaking Compatibility

[jd]

The old version of SETI@Home used the COSM project as a base. (COSM is an offshoot of the distributed.net system, supposedly the "next generation".)

Replacing the transport mechanism - in a well-designed system - would be a nothing thing. It's just the means of ferrying blocks of data around, it isn't actually necessary for SETI@Home to know any of the internal details.

This suggests SETI@Home - and possibly COSM - were not as well-designed as all that. Interesting to speculate. COSM isn't progressing, as far as I can see, which may also be a reason SETI@Home moved away from it. It looks like a dead project - a pity, as it had some great ideas - and so any bugs wouldn't get fixed.

Re:Breaking Compatibility

[another_henry]

True up to a point - but the new BOINC client comes with a different screensaver that is much cooler. Pretty good incentive to upgrade, as well as the fact that it seems to burn through data units about twice as fast on my computer.

Dumb question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb question:

Have they found anything yet. Anything at all that might, just might, be an alien signal?

Or is this whole thing just a giant cluster?

Re:Dumb question:

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing

Re:Dumb question:

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly!

SETI running out of Work-Units?

[SB5]

A very long time ago, I heard that SETI@Home was running low on work-units because their client was so popular that they were just burning through them... Did they restructure it? What happened. I remember when I heard that I started downloading work-units that were taken by the dishes more recently then I had been seening too...

Re:SETI running out of Work-Units?

[ibjhb]

It would be nice if they could distribute some of the processing power to other applications/projects such as Folding at Home to help them out. Better than wasting the cycles or having machines sit idle...

Searching for Aliens might be cool and all, but there are practical applications this could be used for...

Re:SETI running out of Work-Units?

[Thng]

Not sure if this is before or after the news you heard, but for version 3.03, they added additional processing capability in the client so workunits would take longer to process
News posting
Text:

Added additional science coverage. We now do a thorough search out to a chirp rate of +- 20 Hz/second. The cost of the additional coverage is that clients will take longer to process a workunit

However, as 3.03 is rather old, I wouldn't be surprised if the new and faster computers and old clients that weren't upgraded negated some of the effect.

thng

Re:SETI running out of Work-Units?

[Graymalkin]

I suspect the Allen Telescope Array will be providing quite a bit more data for SETI@Home to chew on. Not only will be it scanning a wider range of frequencies but an order of magnitude more stars. The extra data along with the enhanced processing taken from the 3.03 S@H client will likely keep the project plenty busy for a while longer. Optical SETI is also gaining some mindshare and research dollars. I don't think it will be too long before an optical scan tool is added to the new BOINC client.

Re:SETI running out of Work-Units?

[ptbarnett]

A very long time ago, I heard that SETI@Home was running low on work-units because their client was so popular that they were just burning through them.

I'm not sure which event that you remember, but there are two that were related to your point:

1. When the project first went live (or perhaps during the beta immediately preceding it?), they didn't have enough workunits to give a unique one to every client. For a while, they were giving out the same workunits over and over, to the point that some users actually noticed the duplicates (due to the identifying info displayed during processing). However, that issue was resolved.

   Note that normal SETI@home procedure is to hand out the same workunit to at least two (and sometimes more) clients, so that the results can be compared for verification. Some overclockers have been inadvertantly sending back bad results because their floating point unit acts up. But, in the beginning, many clients analyzed each workunit.

2. As the client got more popular, the SETI@home client was burning up all the bandwidth on their shared connection to the 'Net. They were exceeding their quota consistently, and needed to do something to slow the rate of requests for workunits. By adding more processing by the clients for each workunit, the sustained bandwidth usage was reduced.

Beta Means What?

[stecoop]

The team at SETI@Home have finally released Bonic

On Bonic web page: Status BOINC is under development. We are conducting a beta test of BOINC using the SETI@home and Astropulse applications. The public release will be announced on the SETI@home web site. Several other distributed computing projects are evaluating BOINC.

Bonic has been "released" for use for a long time; I thought when a release annoucment arrives then the product is no longer beta. So which is it - Released means ready for use or does it mean Please beta test now?

Bill Watterson was right...

[CaseyB]

"Scientific progress goes BOINC?"

Re:Bill Watterson was right...

[Anonymous Coward]

BWAHAHAHAHA! Mod this up!

Imagine...

[cerebralsugar]

A bajillion distributed clients, decoding radio waves from the stars, that contains an alien transmission of Beowulf picked up by sentient extratrestrial beings and transmitted back to say "hello humankind"!

a great joke

[ch-chuck]

You know, I'd love to setup a transmitter and inject a signal into the seti data collection dish - you know, a low level non-random mathematically transformed character stream that roughtly translates to "The earthlings will never find us here" or something.

If done right it could be a bigger practical joke than the War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938!

Re:a great joke

[Anonymous Coward]

i would laugh.

that would be a bigger joke then the millenium bug!

Re:a great joke

[Kiryat Malachi]

Best you'd conceivably get is a detection from one dish; without actually putting a transmitter way out in space, the confirmations that would be required (things like confirming parallax of the signal, motion of the signal consistent with it being X light years away, etc.) would require access to every radiotelescope in the world.

Best you might get is "oh, neat, a candidate signal" until one or the other of the rejection mechanisms coughs and says "Bullshit."

Re:a great joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, we could get either spaceship1 to send a signal, or attempt to bounce of the moon.

would be worth it just for the press coverage.

Re:a great joke

[Kiryat Malachi]

SS1 wouldn't have sidereal motion, it isn't high enough. Also, there's the fact that its only up there for a couple minutes. But basically, it wouldn't "look" like a signal from extraplanetary sources.

The Moon, well, they would say "It's coming from the moon". I suspect there are ways to tell if someone is bouncing it off the moon... like the fact that it would be an on again, off again signal in synch with the rotation of the planet.

To successfully hoax the SETI program would require a *lot* of effort and smarts.

Re:a great joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm - Could we write a distributed application that would simultaneously send the same encoded message over the Internet at the same time, thereby causing a global electromagnetic reflection that would be picked up by SETI listeners?

Re:a great joke

[Kiryat Malachi]

Hah. I like the way you think.

The Internet isn't deterministic in time, which would make it very, very hard to properly time it out; IIRC they're focusing on the hydrogen line? Which is a fairly high frequency, which requires a high degree of time coherency.

Also, if a signal was simultaneously picked up by all receivers across the globe, where would it be coming from? (Hint: it wouldn't be an extrasolar source... it wouldn't even be an extraplanetary source. It would come from somewhere hot and molten.)

Me predicts...

[Maljin Jolt]

This BOINC thingy seems to be an adequate infrastructure for the next generation of... worms.

Re:Me predicts...

[sploxx]

No, why?
Because it (the application) uses networking and is 'distributed'? It is not p2p. It is 1-N, i.e. the workunit server to all the clients. That's a bigg difference. Although you can argue that there is a single point of failure because the workload server could be hacked and transfer malicous data to the clients, it is a scenario IMHO not very likely because: a) the workload server has to be hacked, b) it has to stay so for a longer time to have any effect and c) the client software must have a buffer-overflow-like flaw.

Set it in relation:
If you do apt-get in debian without *really* checking the author's reputation and getting his *certified* PGP/GPG keys, you're essentially doing much worse things in terms of security. Probably 95% of all debian users do this (me included).

And it is similar to websites which install worms by exploiting flaws in IE. This is a way of infection which has to be blocked, of course, but the main way of infection is still either by unpatched services running on well-known ports or eMail...

This is, of course, one of the reasons why I won't use SETI@Home until it is GPL or similar [Would it be GPL with BOINC?]

Re:Me predicts...

[Maljin Jolt]

I didn't wrote the seti client will be vulnerable to worms or server hacking. It surely would be but that is another story.

I did wrote about the next generation of worms will use the architecture very similar to BOINC technology to propagate themselves, securely and stealthy, with better immunity to mutants attack we see today.

It is not about p2p, nor binary hygiene.

Re:Me predicts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... This new version is GPL'ed

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/seti_source/

Interesting...

[ndavidg]

Well this is interesting... probably the first time a service provider was required to upgrade software: "You better upgrade if you want us to continue using your cpu cycle service."

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse -- and the reason I won't be transitioning to BOINC -- is that it apparently downloads and installs new versions of the applications without user knowledge or approval. It's my system and I insist on maintaining my delusion of being the one in control of what gets downloaded and installed when.

Re:Interesting...

[nicolas.e]

If you don't trust BOINC, you can create a new user account just to run it (with proper priviledges of course).

Therefore, even if it starts acting like a trojan, it will have nothing interesting to show/modify.

Ah, Seti@Home

[jb.hl.com]

The practical implementation of a million monkeys at a million typewriters... ...finding nothing.

Seriously, what has Seti@Home found as of yet?

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

It's found a lack of signs of life - at least a lack of certain types of sign. That in itself is a find.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Johnny Mnemonic]

It found that you can ask home users with more computing power than they personally use to donate their compute cycles, if they find the project interesting enough and your work is Very Embarrassingly Parallel.
Furthermore, as broadband becomes more popular, the work will not need to be quite so parallel. And as more devices have actual CPUs and go online, you could ask more of even more appliances--for example, one could reasonably run BOINC on their Tivo or Xbox.

That, as it's been said, is an important discovery in and of itself. The world is more lacking of VEP compute problems than CPU time, apparently, but maybe that can be changed; and maybe that can be changed on a problem that is important. Part of designing a VEP task is thinking about the issue differently and configuring your compute interactions differently; now that SETI has demonstrated the possibility, and has been expanded by BOINC, perhaps it will attract more interest and spur adoption of VEP worksets.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bible (Score:5, Troll)

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll see your pithy "There is no God" sig and raise you a "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.' -- Psalms 14:1". Show your cards.

Read 'em and weep:

Matthew 5:22
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Why don't you use the space to declare something positive about what you believe? It would ring better than tearing down those who disagree with you.

There are people loudy proclaiming that there is a god all the time. A lot of us think "There is no god" is not negative, it's just a dissent from the mainstream. Such a statement is only "tearing down" someone who's being a bit sensitive. In my mind, tearing down those who disagree would be something like "Anyone who disagrees is a worthless pile of crap." If some such thing appeared in the sig and I missed it, well then I would agree with you. :)

Unless, of course, you define yourself by your disagreement with others.

This is a common shot to take at an atheist. I can see where it comes from, but please consider this: When you live in a society where 80 or 90% hold the "I believe" viewpoint, if you don't go along, you are by default "defined" simply as contrary. You might say that atheists should just shut up and keep it to themselves, but why should they leave the stage only to believers? If the belief of the theist is sound, it should be able to withstand a little disagreement without any emotional trauma.

The sensitivity of believers to anyone proclaiming disbelief is strange. It almost seems as if their beliefs are fragile, and can't withstand any suggestion that they might be wrong, and instead require that they be constantly reminded that they should believe. I'm sure that's not true, though.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, respond to a flamebait posting with ... a flamebait posting. Look, ask yourself this question: when did you first begin to believe in God? Who told you? Who told them? At what point in that chain of transmission do you reach an "authority" you can't trust?

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Hmmm...I wonder if my sig is being mistaken for my content. Interesting, it kinda fits the context.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[NanoGator]

"Seriously, what has Seti@Home found as of yet?"

A bunch of skepticism.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[deglr6328]

I've recently decided to uninstall SETI and leave the search after staying with it from the begining in '99 because one small graph in an article of Scientific American has kept sticking in my mind. Around 2000-2001 SciAm published an article that included this graph of SETI's search results (negative, natch) for the galaxy.

Even back then you can see that a large portion of the interesting parameter space has been excluded; it's been 3 years and not a peep. SETI's negative result is very, very important but it feels like it's time to move on.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator has successfully written 17 letters!

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Mesaeus]

Oh come on, I'm an atheist myself but you KNOW that christians and are sensitive to statements like that. So putting that in your sig is one big troll. There is no God. You know it, I know it. Let's leave it at that, 'mkay ?

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you've out-clevered yourself. The Hebrew word for 'fool' (in Psalms) fits with our sense of the word 'fool'. 'Raca' means foolish in a moral sense. Besides, there is no way to prove either of our two quotes -- they're both matters of faith. You believe, without physical evidence, there is no God. While I believe, without physical evidence, there is a God.

I don't know that I'm showing sensitivity. I'm just saddened by people who define themselves by not believing what others believe -- in bold type no less.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[danielobvt]

BOINC on Tivo? The words "like hell" come to mind (not that it can't be done). I want my Tivo's doing nothing but their very critical task of recording and deliverinf Daniels' digital prozak. I have enough problems with the damn cable box crashing periodically (thanks Cox Communications!), the last thing I need is for the Tivo to have some reason to crash too.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you just gotta decide who has the most faith - he who believes in a provable theory (the (biblical) theist) or he who believes in an unprovable theory (the atheist); it would only take a single globally recognised miracle to shut up all but the most stubborn atheists, whilst the continued absense of same only encourages the 'faithful'

Of course, you're both wrong; there is a god and it's us.
As soon as everyone figures that out, the better.

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[Loren_Burlingame]

I have been a user since '99 and I will be a user until the day I die or the SETI program goes bust.

I believe!

Re:Ah, Seti@Home

[kinzillah]

not to mention the processor in the tivo is like, fantastically slow. It uses dedicated hardware for all the video processing, so you'd complete a workunit every week or so. So the words "like hell" do indeed come to mind.

BONIC?

[The Analog Kid]

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing

Am I to take that this project will also be dying?

Re:BONIC?

[Knara]

With an increasing number of fresh installs dying more and more each year?

Or does it simply mean that SETI@Home needs an infernally themed mascot?

Re:BONIC?

[The Analog Kid]

It's a joke, BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, and as we know "it's dying" (not really though).

Re:BONIC?

[mandalayx]

Yeah, except for that part where Berkeley has more people than Stanford...

Re:BONIC?

[Knara]

yeah, I know. I guess my reply didn't work quite right, as I was trying to build on your lead. Ah well, I'll try harder next time.

so close, and yet so far

[jbellis]

man, when you think that with just a little more effort they could have come up with an acronym for BIONIC... :(

Re:so close, and yet so far

[Lurk3r]

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Interface Computing

BIONIC

Power Usage? While running Dist comp projects

[atarione]

While certainly I'm all for finding aliens (especially if they are female and hot?).

but when these distributed computing apps run they tend to max out your processor thus using pretty much as much power as possible at all times ... and generating as much heat as possible as well (prescott owners might want to note this in particular as the prescott is a nuclear reactor of a chip to start with)

next will need a distributed computing project to find more power to run the distributed computing projects!!

Tax break?

[SkyWalk423]

If I sign up for SETI@home, are my spare CPU cycles tax deductibe as a charitable contribution?

Re:Tax break?

[ndavidg]

Good question. But here's an even bigger question: If you could put it on your taxes, how would you calculate the amount? SETI/Idle Time || SETI/Used Time || SETI/Time Spent looking at Pr0n ?

Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because psychologists have prevented sooooo many crimes.

Most often, they are responsible for rapists etc. getting out of prison early or even defend them by blaming society/the victim for their crimes or some other morally relativistic nonsense.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I'll bite. Psychologists, like ANY professional, can be hired by lawyers to act as an expert witness. There are even people who are full-time "expert witnesses" and never actually practice their profession (this applies to all professions, not just psychologists). These "career" expert witnesses are often a lot less qualified than others claiming the same profession.

No REASONABLY COMPETENT psychologist would ever blame rape on a victim. I'm not saying "blame the victim" doesn't happen--I'm just saying that it usually happens with the aid of non-psychologists and stark raving idiots who somehow managed to get a PhD.

There's also a big difference between identifying society/parents/past trauma as a root cause for a crime and saying that the existence of a root cause means the person who committed the crime is innocent. I think what you have here is a situation where a psychologist would (correctly) identify, let's say, severe childhood abuse as the root cause of a criminal act. Does that mean the criminal is innocent? Nope. But that doesn't mean that after the psychologist leaves the room, the attorney cannot attempt to make that argument. It's up to judges and jurors to call bullshit when an attorney stretches professional opinion further than they were intended.

Oh, and by the way, not guilty by reason of insanity is usually a worse sentence than guilty. When you are guilty, you get a sentence of X years and after X years you go free (unless you're a level 3 sex offender, then your sentence is usually irrelevant and they hold you forever) Civil commitment has no defined duration. The duration is "until you're cured", which in the case of people who committed horrible crimes, means never (regardless of their actual progress in treatment).

And then there are psychological inventions to explain common sense to a warped society (i.e. "battered wife syndrome" -- a fake disorder to create sympathy for abuse victims who behave perfectly rationally and kill their abusers, because society for whatever reaon does not equate domestic violence with torture--"i.e. if some guy broke into your house and started beating the living crap out of you, I would not suggest that the appropriate action is to "just leave and let him have your house", but rather to locate the closest convenient firearm and dispatch with the crazy mf)

Calvin was right

[bsartist]

Scientific progress *does* go boinc!

Criminal Intent

[EssTiDee]

From article: "Will the format of input and output files change? Yes. The new format is XML-like (though not legal XML). " Sorry SETI, the RIAA has long since scared me away from having anything illegal on my PC. :-P

Personal choice

[Pi_0's don't shower]

It depends on what you decide is more important to your life/society -- and many people are more interested in finding/looking for extraterrestrial life.

I think personally, the sooner the better. We all have short lifetimes here on this earth, and light-travel time limits how long it will take us to contact anyone. If there are ET's within about 20-30 light years, it's reasonable to expect that we can contact them (and hear back from them) within some of our lifetimes -- which is a very exciting (though perhaps too optimistic) possibility. Imagine the benefits to society contact with an alien race could bring!

Even if it's too far to contact and hear back from in our lifetime -- there's something to be said for looking for them. Even if we just get and decode their message, there could be some wonderful information that could advance any given field by thousands of years of research...

Re:Personal choice

[Bob Uhl]

Imagine the benefits to society contact with an alien race could bring!

You're the sort of person who would welcome the ETs in Independence Day, aren't you? I am far less optimistic; indeed I wonder if the rational reaction to the existence of another starfaring race is genocide--and thus if we let anyone know we exist, we set ourselves up for extinction.

Will new client screen out 'cheaters'?

[Siergen]

I recall reading that some SETI contributors had found ways to artificially raise their rankings for number of packets processed (forget how they did it). This angered some contributors whose high rankings were based on real results, and who were now being knocked from the top spots by the 'cheaters'.

Does the new client include methods to block the methods used to spoof the current SETI@Home client?

Re:Will new client screen out 'cheaters'?

[SkyWalk423]

You'll be happy to know that the new SETI@Home client is PunkBuster-enabled. The days of SETI@Home aimbots are finally over!

Score one for the good guys!

Re:Will new client screen out 'cheaters'?

[va3atc]

I recall reading that some SETI contributors had found ways to artificially raise their rankings for number of packets processed (forget how they did it). This angered some contributors whose high rankings were based on real results, and who were now being knocked from the top spots by the 'cheaters'.

Does the new client include methods to block the methods used to spoof the current SETI@Home client?

From their Getting started covers credits which states the lowest time to completion is what everybody gets for that workunit. Atleast two or more people must crunch the same workunit for this to be a success.

Re:Will new client screen out 'cheaters'?

[thedevryguy]

Yes. From my understanding, credit is only granted for a work unit when the same results are returned from 3 people. Between the time you finish a work unit and 2 other people confirm your results (if you're not #3), your credits are placed in a "pending credit" section.

This has been a popular topic on the message boards, because right now, if you look at the leaderboards, it looks like no one has any credit, but it seems that the case is that now work unit has been complete by 3 people since it's early in the transition. As time goes by, it should take less and less time for credits to be granted.

Re:Will new client screen out 'cheaters'?

[totoanihilation]

IIRC, the cheaters would backup and distribute workunit files that were at 99% completed, so people only had to download them and compute the last 1% of the file, and submit. And even compute the same file twice or thrice...
Problem with that was that since every workunit has to be double-checked or even triple-checked for accuracy, sending the same unit back multiple times negated those checks. I recall reading that this problem was solved some time ago...

Source Available

[eeg3]

Interestingly enough, the new client has the option to compile it yourself. The old client didn't have this option, or atleast it was very difficult to find, _if_ it was available. Now maybe it can be ported to archs that were previously unsupported.

Re:Source Available

[nicolas.e]

nope it can't. The open source stuff is BOINC. It is a wrapper over seti@home which manages networking et all.

The clients which do the actual processing are still binary only. Opensourcing them would be a problem, since it'll allow people to find weaknesses more easily and forge results, so they get a better rating (pretty lame ain't it ?).

Actually, the binary setiathome is even OS dependant (not only processor) :

projects/setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu_ap/setiathome_ 3.08_i686-pc-linux-gnu: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

Re:Source Available

[sploxx]

Opensourcing them would be a problem, since it'll allow people to find weaknesses more easily and forge results, so they get a better rating

Interesting. As we all know, in the context of security, OSS is considered better because it is viewed by many eyes and holes are noticed easily.

In this context, it could be the same if the number of people who care about correct scores look at the source. Maybe it is possible to design it in a way where it can be tested if a user just sends "I'm ready" back.

IMHO, they're already doing it by comparing the results of different users who get equal workunits.

Re:Source Available

[nicolas.e]

Interesting. As we all know, in the context of security, OSS is considered better because it is viewed by many eyes and holes are noticed easily.

Here, it is not security but trust. Even if the client is well designed, IMHO, it won't prevent someone to give false results.

Actually, to counter this , seti uses two methods. The first is, as you said, to give the same WUs to several people and compare the results.
The second way they use is to check if the result is coherent with the WUs, on their servers (they use a checksum-like method).

So, you're probably right and opensourcing the client won't be such a big deal.

I don't do pushed software upgrades

[Anonymous Coward]

"BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions. This lets us upgrade and extend SETI@home without requiring you to download and install new software. "

Well, if I can't turn this feature off, they've lost my cycles. I don't even allow my OS vendor to perform automatic downloads of "new versions" of programs.

For those with the tinfoil hats, the Patriot Act could be used to force Berzerkeley to download random "interesting" ware for the Feds, and keep quiet about it under penalty of law, under the umbrella of looking for terrorist activity. This ain't Java playing in a secure sandbox either.

Re:I don't do pushed software upgrades

[Anonymous Coward]

um, call me crazy, but if you can compile it yourself, wouldn't the paranoid crazies be able to skim the code and look for this tin-foil-conspiracy software? its open-source... i'd love to get my hands on some of the code they supposedly can force at me...

Re:I don't do pushed software upgrades

[alehmann]

Force BERKELEY to do that?! You're out of your mind.

Re:I don't do pushed software upgrades

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't have had it installed anyway then. There was a vulnerability a while ago in classic that, if someone gained control of the data servers, could have allowed them to execute arbitrary code.

Re:I don't do pushed software upgrades

[wwahammy]

I think that's ridiculous. This has the potential to fix security holes quickly, expand scientific work and in general make the entire project more manageable. If you can't get over a non-profit educational system having a small bit of control over your computer, you're just paranoid.

Re:I don't do pushed software upgrades

[gad_zuki!]

Wait a second. Youre letting a group use your computer with no oversight (for all you know you are helping to crack codes for some government) and the update feature has you all up in arms?

Granted, I see the point of being able to disable this, but in the context of this project, well you're already their bitch.

File format is not XML: why not?

[LightStruk]

Will the format of input and output files change?

Yes. The new format is XML-like (though not legal XML).

Anybody familiar with the rationale behind this decision? The sample file is indeed very close to legal XML. If it is so close, why not go the last mile and make it legal?
Well-formed XML facilitates communication and interoperability, because standard XML parsers can grok it, making it easier to write new implementations that understand the same XML format.

Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[jd]

If it's not legal XML, only criminals will use it, right?

Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[CaseyB]

The sample file is indeed very close to legal XML. If it is so close, why not go the last mile and make it legal?

My guess based on looking at the file is that they really really wanted that data block to line up nice, without having to worry about XML whitespace issues or character escaping. Seems pretty stupid to me.

Arg! All my bragging rights, gone!

[stefanlasiewski]

but eventually they will shut down the Classic data server and force everyone to upgrade.

Arg! All my bragging rights, gone!

Unfortunately, you can only transition your account if you have access to the email account you use for seti@home.

Seti@home never let me change my email address with them, so I can't transition my current account to the new services.

I signed up for seti@home 5 years ago, lost access to the account only recently. Yarg! It's all gone!

The worry

[superpulpsicle]

I always worried WHAT IF seti isn't calculating what we think it is. What if it's some conspiracy project to calculate some other type of numbers not relating to extraterestrial but for big brother or microsoft etc.

Who Knew?

[jbrandon]

Scientific progress goes BOINC?

Not quite ready for the unwashed masses?

[stefanb]

I had heard about the eventual switch-over some months ago, but never found the time to play around with the beta, so I took the opportunity now to install the client and check it out.

On Mac OS X, all went well, and my PowerBook is munching on it's first unit, fans spinning. However, when I tried to start the client on a Sun box at work, it failed with "ld.so.1: ./boinc_3.18_sparc-sun-solaris2.7: fatal: libstdc++.so.3: open failed: No such file or directory." A quick Google confirmed my suspicions: the client is linked against the GCC stdlib, which is not a standard part of Solaris. Now, that's easy enough to fix if you've worked with Solaris before: just go to sunfreeware.com, and find a suitable binary package to put on.

However, someone not knowing about Solaris, GCC, and sunfreeware.com might be a bit stumped. And the boinc/setiboinc boards reveal that quite a number of beta testers are confused about this, not only on Solaris but also on Linux. It's not completely obvious which GCC/libgcc packages contains libstc++.so.3 (as opposed to .2.x or .4.x).

The real kicker is that I couldn't find any hint of this problem or a solution on the site. I probably looked in all the wrong places in the last half hour... And I couldn't find a feedback form or email address either. This definitly needs to be improved if they want people to move over to boinc.

Re:Not quite ready for the unwashed masses?

[srwalter]

However, someone not knowing about Solaris, GCC, and sunfreeware.com might be a bit stumped. And the boinc/setiboinc boards reveal that quite a number of beta testers are confused about this, not only on Solaris but also on Linux. It's not completely obvious which GCC/libgcc packages contains libstc++.so.3 (as opposed to .2.x or .4.x).

How many people use Solaris that aren't familiar with it? It's not like Grandma is gonna come with a shiny new Solaris CD and install it.

Re:Not quite ready for the unwashed masses?

[EinarH]

My Grandma is still stuck on SunOS 4.0.3 PSR_A with no upgrade path you insensitive clod!

Can you disable automatic updates?

[Hibernator]

In the transition FAQ it says

BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions. This lets us upgrade and extend SETI@home without requiring you to download and install new software.

which makes me wonder if users can disable that. I don't want anybody installing software on my computer without my approval, thank you.

The FAQ didn't answer that question--does anyone know?

Re:Can you disable automatic updates?

[cephyn]

well its not installing any NEW software, its simply upgrading the OLD software you've already installed - seti@home. Since they need all the clients to be at a certain level of upgrade to be compatible with servers etc etc etc in order to be an efficient distributed computing machine, its a rather important feature.

since they're leasing, in a sense, your cpu cycles to run their program, its really their job to keep their program up to date. the new feature does that -- automatically.

Re:Can you disable automatic updates?

[Hibernator]

well its not installing any NEW software, its simply upgrading the OLD software you've already installed

I realize that, but I would rather not be among the bleeding edge early adopters and discover the hard way that the upgrade has a security hole or causes some systems to stop booting up, etc...

Re:Can you disable automatic updates?

[cephyn]

then dont install the program. there is no bleeding edge or early adopters if everyone is pushed the same client at the same time. it will also allow seti@home to push patches and rollbacks.

Napster?

[Guysdrinkingbeer]

Is it just me or does this remind anyone of the good ol days of Napster? Sure looks like it to me.

comparative advantage in distributed computing

[k2enemy]

this is the first i've seen BOINC. it looks like a good platform to implement concepts of comparative advantage in distributed computing projects . the idea is to apply some of the concepts that drive international trade to distributed computing.

So long, SETI@Home..

[Hibernator]

This may very likely be the beginning of the end for SETI@Home. One of the attractions of SETI@Home for many people is the excitement of tracknig the counter of the number of work units completed. In contrast, the new BOINC-based system has a ridiculously complex and unintuitive "credit" system that users are very unlikely to find compelling.

I guess this just shows that every project, even a non-commercial one, eventually needs to have someone with some marketing sense if it wants to continue to thrive.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[rritterson]

While you might be right, I hardly believe that a large number of users are running their computers 24/7 just to appear on a semi-obscure top 100-list.

Also, I followed your link and I like the new system much better- it awards credits based on CPU time/clock rate instead of just number of work units completed. Thus one credit will be more uniform across all platforms. What's wrong with that?

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[Hibernator]

Thus one credit will be more uniform across all platforms. What's wrong with that?

It makes perfect sense from a techincal perspective. However, it's harder to understand, and therefore less compelling, and therefore less likely to attract new users.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[Araxen]

Add to the fact the pretty screensaver is gone and I don't know if I'll continue to use Seti@home anymore. Alot of people used and love the screensaver besides me.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[Sunspire]

The screensaver is still there, and this time it's done in OpenGL. If you have a GPU the impact of running the screensaver is a lot less than with the old Seti@Home client.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks easier to understand. With work units, some complete faster than others on the same computer. The credit system is uniform.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[Anonymous Coward]

The screensaver is still there

Not on the machine I can spare the cycles on (an elderly WinNT box at work which sits there doing nothing most of the time), it's not. All I get is my wallpaper. I've done tens of thousands of units, but I need a "reward"; just knowing it's there is too abstract to justify its continued presence. I'm also solidly in the "you're not downloading things onto MY machine without permission" camp. So, sadly and with much regrets, after several continuous years of data churning, it's going.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[Sunspire]

On my W2K box the Boinc 3.19 installer asked if it should make the Boinc screensaver the system default. Even if you choose no, you should see "Boinc" in the list of available screensavers. The screensaver runs fullscreen and looks exactly like the old Seti@Home screensaver except that it's in 3D. You can also get a per workunit visualization in a window by right-clicking on a workunit in the Boinc client and selecting "Show graphics". There's also a Boinc add-on that will draw a skymap for you and pinpoint the location of where your workunit is recorded from.

All in all I'm very happy with the new Boinc system. The new webstats system is a lot better, you can see exactly which machine submitted which unit, how long it took etc. The clients now also understand SMP without having to run multiple instances.

Re:So long, SETI@Home..

[kalidasa]

Now if only someone would get an OS X version of the GUI done; one of the things I found interesting was looking at the signal characteristics for all the candidate signals.

Be careful what you search for

[xyote]

I have a suspicion that any advanced galatic civilization, realizing the nature of expansionistic species, broadcasts instructions on how to blow yourself up, knowing full well that any sufficiently aggressive species will not be able to resist following the instructions. The tiny note at the end "Do not attempt this on your home planet" just indicates a puckish sense of humor.

Re:Be careful what you search for

[PsibrII]

Ahh, so thats why I keep getting e-mails from nowhere on how to make a dark matter seive, and use that dark matter to make an anti-proton stream generator.

I thought it was some odd 419 scam or something. Make anti protons 20 grams at a time for fun and family amusement!

Re:Be careful what you search for

[Tzarius]

I have a suspicion that any advanced galatic civilization, realizing the nature of expansionistic species, broadcasts instructions on how to blow yourself up

That would've made an interesting ending for Jodie Foster in "Contact".
Imagine the world holding it's breath to see what the big alien machine will do, then they drop her in, and then .... BANG!
One planet-devouring black hole comin' right up.

OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[sploxx]

What I don't understand are the advantages here.

Sure, XML is nice to represent hierarchical structures ("filesystem in a file" - like the old IFF for Amiga). A good idea for the web, for office documents etc.

But XML does not provide information about how to interpret a document (only how to parse/validate it formally or render it in certain, rather special circumstances). The logic to work with and interpret the data still has to be implemented somewhere... interoperability goes only so far as to the representation of the document's structure.

XML is text (Which is IMHO very sad - I'm longing for a binary XML, that would be cool :) and therefore:
1. binary data has to be encoded/decoded, at least extracted, what really is missing is fast mmap()ed access to the data.
2. text is inefficiently transmitted/stored, unless you compress it, then you have CPU inefficiency.

So what really is the advantage that let the researchers choose this over a binary format like HDF? I'm curious, not trolling.

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go with a binary format, you've tied yourself into that format and only that format; a text format, on the other hand, allows you to look at the text and figure out how to convert it via script to another format with no other information. And that's a second point: well-designed XML CAN BE understood without any external interpretive metadata. If you pick sufficiently descriptive header elements and element names, an XML file can be self-describing.

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[Rescate]

XML is text (Which is IMHO very sad - I'm longing for a binary XML, that would be cool :)

You might want to look at Fast Infoset. From the linked article on java.sun.com:

The Fast Infoset standard draft (currently being developed as joint work by ISO/IEC JTC 1 and ITU-T) specifies a binary format for XML infosets that is an efficient alternative to XML. An instance of this binary format is called a fast infoset document. Fast infoset documents are analogous to XML documents. Each has a physical form and an XML infoset. Fast infoset documents are, given the results presented, faster to serialize and parse, and smaller in size, than the equivalent XML documents. Thus, fast infoset documents may be used whenever the size and processing time of XML documents is an issue.

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[sploxx]

Yes. Thank you! That's indeed interesting. Nice.

Once there was a proposal for binary XML in the context of cellphone WAP, but it disappeared quickly...

I only hope that that implement/define it in a way which supports mmap()ing, then there are really no obstacles in using it, maybe even on for a systemwide filesystem :)

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[nicolas.e]

In this case, I'm not sure that these advantages of XML are necessary : the data files (in projects/setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu_ap) are full of uuencoded stuff, except for small headers. It would have definitely been more efficient to have binary files (both bandwith-wise and cpu-wise).

No-one would want to convert these files. They're only temporary : download them, analyse them, dump them.

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[holloway]

1. Binary data can be referenced in external files. Consider the OpenOffice xml format, where it's a single zip file with multiple xml files and the binaries that are referenced.
2. It's inefficient compared to binary, but then it's more readable to programmers (and even some non-programmers feel comfortable opening a file, searching for a term, and replacing it - as my non-programmer boss did once).

If you're after a binary format try EBML at sourceforge. It's a binary equivalent of XML syntax.

Generally I think you're being too harsh on text formats. Plaintext configuration files (non-xml, I'm thinking of unix config files) have shown their worth, and binary configuration files mean you need custom editors. The processing time of XML vs binary is meaningless and is not a bottleneck for most applications -- especially this one where it'd only be XML for the data transfer. So far as bandwidth goes it could be gzipped.

XML isn't a particular language, it's a metalanguage, and depending on the format it can provide information on how to interpret a document as much as a binary source file could. Whether the logic should be with the file is again a question of implementation, so there's no reason to complain about binary or XML unless you'd like to get more specific about which format is lacking (and then it would probably be a mistake in that format, not XML).

XML is so much easier for programmers than binary. Many people who think they know XML think it's just the XML spec rather than the surrounding standards such as XSLT, XSLFO, XQuery, Schema, RelaxNG - maybe even Tamino. People can't really say they know XML well unless they understand those specs and the implementations.

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not nice: it is based on ASN.1.

ASN.1 is extremely braindead (especially
if the more obscure methods are used).

Proof: there are no free or OSS ASN.1 parsers and there are tons of free or OSS XML parsers.

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. How do you think net-snmp and openldap does it?

Re:OT: Re:File format is not XML: why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof: there are no free or OSS ASN.1 parsers and there are tons of free or OSS XML parsers

Exactly right, there are no OSS ASN.1 parsers, well there's that one in OpenSSL for parsing ASN.1 certificates. But I'm sure there is some reason that doesn't count.

Well then

[ActiveSX]

It seems as if the source is finally available, but I haven't given the license a good enough look for DFSG compliance. Maybe there will finally be a S@H client that's in Debian's main?

BOINC

[Sunspire]

Boinc is more than just an updated Seti@Home, it's a generic delivery platform for distributed projects. That means you, yes you, can develope a BOINC app. Just gather some people to run it for you and compute away without needing any approval from the guys at Berkeley. Basically the participants enter a project URL into the BOINC application, the program then downloads your code and the crunching begins. BOINC handles all the network, workunit, results, distribution, security, versioning etc. issues for you.

Participants can even choose to split their resources among several projects, say, Seti@Home and Folding@Home. Another thing that will also be used in the new Seti@Home is that you can have clients participating in the same project working on completely different computation sets. For example, clients that have proven themselves to have a fast workunit turnaround time and a long history of participating and that have a gigabyte or more of RAM can be given special tasks that would normally be impossible because of the high number of griefers on the net.

Pains with BOINC

[vertaxis]

BOINC may be the new client, but it's already a thorn in my side.

The Seti guys used old data to create the new BOINC accounts. That includes my old e-mail address that doesn't work any more. So, now I can't activate my accounnt that's waiting for me in BOINC.

Of course, I could always post for help on their message board. But, I need an activated and working account in order to be authorized to post a message for help. Someone needs to take some lessons in being "user friendly". I've dontate time and hardware for 4 years to the project, and can't find any easy way to get some help.

Re:Pains with BOINC

[ArtisteTerroriste]

Gee, I'm not the only person stuck in this loophole! You would have to assume that any system changeover is gonna have lots of problems. JUST HATE when it happens to me, personally! Perhaps my measly 3000+ units are enough...

Porno distributed computing

[coinreturn]

Boink!

One step closer

[theRG]

Ah! One step closer to finding those green-blooded Vulcans!

Gorge Carlin Sez:

[DrunkenTerror]

"People say rape can't be funny...

I say rape can be funny...

Picture Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig!
That's funny!"

-- George Carlin

the be all end all of posts

[Darth_brooks]

Lets see what we can cover:

BOINC isn't nearly as usful to society as Folding@home, AIDS research@home, help feed starving disabled puppies in war torn african nations@home, etc.

BOINC != Seti@Home. BOINC is a step up the ladder from Seti, it provides the infrastructure for multiple projects. *you* choose the project to attach yourself to and contribute time to. In an ultra-perfect hippie world, Folding@home would use the BOINC infrastructure. Instead you get to help out who you want.

I ain't trustin no Berkeley hippies to silently install no black helicopter, tinfoil hat disablin' technology on my system.

Then don't use it. If you ran seti, you really had no way of knowing what was coming down the pipe now did you? You opened up a nice big gaping connection into your system while trusting that the work units weren't poison pills and that Berkeley's infrastructure hadn't been comprimised. Run the client on a non-critical machine, put it outside your firewall if it makes you happy.

Scientific progress goes BOINC!

You're very clever. You're the only person that ever thought of that.

Aliens will enslave the earth when we make contact!!!!!

You really shouldn't have rented Battlefield Earth.

Re:the be all end all of posts

[Knara]

Oh if only I had mod points for you.

Re:the be all end all of posts

[Anonymous Coward]

-Scientific progress goes BOINC!

You're very clever. You're the only person that ever thought of that.

You need to report to the hospital immediately. The fact that you believe that orginality is at all necessary on Slashdot indicates that you've recently suffered some recent and massive head trauma.

1. Look up worn out Slashdot cliche
2. Trot out blindlingly obvious restatement of article topic
3. Trot out shockingly obvious knee-jerk reaction (or better yet, "?")
4. type that funny, funny kicker - "PROFIT!"

In Soviet Russia, obvious thought has you!

I for one welcome our obvious overlords!

--

Ah, the Slashdot chestnut. Best gobbled by the handful, even by those screening at +4 or +5.

BOINC SMP aware?

[rritterson]

I looked at the site, but wasn't able to find anything related to SMP-enabled computers. One of the major downsides of SETI classic was, in my opinion, the fact that it wasn't multi-threaded or SMP aware. Thus, on my dual processor machine, I had to run 2 copies at the same time in order to use both CPUs. That also meant I had to fix each process to a CPU, which doesn't lend itself to the most efficient thread management by the OS.

So, is BOINC multi-threaded? Can it use more than one CPU effectively?

Re:BOINC SMP aware?

[notAyank]

I think that's answered in the transition document:

Can I run multiple instances on a multiprocessor?

Yes, but it's not necessary; BOINC automatically uses all the host's processors (unless you ask it not to).

Re:BOINC SMP aware?

[CXI]

BOINC is a client wrapper for a multi-project system. When you attach to a project it will download an executable for the project which does the actual work. In the preferences for your account, you can specify how many processors on your system you want it to use. This is open-ended, as in you put in a number, so I assume if you somehow have 24 processors it will use all of them if you tell it to. It does this by simply starting a second, third, etc instance of the project executable. You can also assign a percentage to each project to split your time in any fashion you want. It alway runs low priority and you can specify if it should run always, after a certain idle time, or only during certain hours of the day. You can also set up different preferences for home, work and other.

obCalvin and Hobbes quote

[barzok]

Scientific progress goes "BOINC"

BOINC SETI@home - Ready for Prime Time?

[wintermute1974]

In the hopes that someone working on the SETI@home client reads Slashdot, I am posting my bug report about the new BOINC SETI@home client here. I tried to post a bug report on their Windows Client Forum, but the authentication routine failed to recognize my account ID when I copied and pasted it from the e-mail message I had just received. (If you don't yet have a BOINC account, it looks something like 213ed9ba2da1696f77b0d0fa3165a3ab, but no, this is NOT my real user account.)

Anyway, enough preamble. Here's the problem:
In the Work tab, when I right-click on the currently-running work unit, the context-sensitive menu displays one option, Show Graphics.

When I select Show Graphics, a window pops up, the entire contents of which is black. At this point, my Windows 2000 SP4 computer freezes. CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't bring up the Windows Security window. CTRL-SHIFT-ESC doesn't bring up the Task Manager. I can't move the mouse. The keyboard is completely unresponsive.

Being a sucker for punishment, I sent a non-maskable interrupt to my CPU, and rebooted the machine. Then I tried the exact same steps, and got the same results. Yup, this bug is repeatable.

So is the new client ready for prime time? Um, not really. Add the insult of the website not recognizing the account ID that it gave me to begin with and I'd say this program should stay in beta a while longer.

A final note: If you happen to be one of the programmers for the client, and know why this problem is happening, reply here. I'd appreciate a reply.

Re:BOINC SETI@home - Ready for Prime Time?

[farbles]

I ran into something similar with an old Windows 98SE box. If you set BOINC as a screensaver with a password, when you try to enter the password to get out of the screensaver you can't. You can't select the password box to input the password, you can't escape with any key combinations. All you can do is power cycle the computer.

I find the BOINC client to be far from user friendly. I could figure it out and get it working but I have my doubts that the average Joe could.

Re:BOINC SETI@home - Ready for Prime Time?

[Crash Gordon]

I tried to post a bug report on their Windows Client Forum, but the authentication routine failed to recognize my account ID when I copied and pasted it from the e-mail message I had just received.

Yup -- same here.

I'm running W98SE, with a screensaver password set. When coming out of the screensaver, the password box comes up but it does not have focus. The mouse cursor moves, but clicking inside the password box does not shift the focus. Clicking outside the password box produces an error beep. If I leave the system alone the screensaver reactivates so the system's not frozen, I just can't get the focus where it belongs!

The good news is that boinc does run alongside S@H Classic, despite what the boinc transition page says. Because of the screensaver issue, I've kept Classic as my screensaver. Boinc runs in the background; maybe it doesn't get any slices when the screensaver is active (I dunno) but it definitely gets CPU when I'm working on something else.

Finally, the "Account ID" thing is really awful; am I supposed to write that novel on a stack of notecards and carry it around to install boinc/SETI on my various machines?! I think I shan't.

Also, not really a bug as such but the boinc/SETI graphics really suck.

Re:BOINC SETI@home - Ready for Prime Time?

[Kalgash]

The client graphics for the seti 3.08 client are D3D based. Is your DX install current? What about your vid drivers? Something to check while you wait for a proper response from the devs anyways.

Crashed Fedora Core 2

[hey]

I have run SETI on may RedHat version but it apparently crashed my entire system on Fedora Core 2. I haven't run it since and my system has been stable. I thought the 2.6 Kernel was uncrashable. Of course, I didn't really dig into it.

Re:Crashed Fedora Core 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is extremely stable, its quite possible you exposed a kernel bug. Forward your crashdump to the developers.

Credits vs. Total CPU time

[alchemistkevin]

what am i gonna do if they don't convert my CPU Time into credits!!! Surely, wouldn't like to see the Total Credits: 0.00 (or near numbers) screen for more than a few days... either they come up with a scheme to let me run my old client, update my CPU time and keep my bragging rights or i free up my cpu from whatever number crunching it is doing at the moment and give some rest to the enclosure fans... and may be boinc is a project concieved and promoted by aliens, transported to us as telepathy in a bid for us to drop our search against them!!!?!!? who knows....

That's unfair.

[pseudochaotic]

Who modded this flamebait up? Give me one example of a psychologist letting a rapist go free. Just one. I dare you.

Re:That's unfair.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go.

Different Projects?

[Gonoff]

I know that BOINC is able to run several different projects at once. Is there anything apart from SETI yet?

Re:Different Projects?

[kpearson]

BOINC doesn't run multiple projects at the same time. It runs one project at a time, but it divides its time between projects according to percentages that you choose.

There are no active, public projects besides SETI@home yet. Predictor@home is running a public alpha test of its client that anyone can participate in. climateprediction.net began a private alpha test of its client today, and plans to begin a public beta test next month. Folding@home is developing a client, but has not announced any alpha or beta testing for it yet. BOINC Beta Test is still beta testing the BOINC client and may create an Astropulse project based on the client. Einstein@Home may be developing a client based on BOINC for its project which begins in 2005.

auto updates

[cybergrunt69]

BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions. This lets us upgrade and extend SETI@home without requiring you to download and install new software.

Looks like I'm gonna just fold.
Just like any OS or application that I run, I don't let any item update itself. Period. If there is an update that needs to be done, I want the ability to decide for myself if it should be done, and when to do it. If I can't stop the app from putting new code on my machine, it won't be running.

That being said, I do like the idea behind seti@home, just the same as folding@home - distributed processing is awesome. Although I've been running seti 24/7 for quite some time on anywhere between 2 and 10 machines at once, I think it's time for a change. Maybe I'll fold, maybe I'll find a new distributed app, or??? I almost feel like I'm wasting something when my processors are only hitting 10%.

Does not work on Mac OS X 10.2

[benad]

See this thread.

- Benad

BOINC SETI@home - Second System Syndrome?

[wintermute1974]

I find the BOINC client to be far from user friendly. I could figure it out and get it working but I have my doubts that the average Joe could.

I have to agree. It was with some sadness that I uninstalled the old SETI@home client before installing BOINC. The old client was compact, quick, and friendly. In contrast, the BOINC interface seems cheerless and industrial.

If tonight had been my first experience with the SETI@home project, I would have uninstalled it completely and told all my friends to avoid it. I refuse to keep any program that crashes my system when I try to use its basic functions.

That said, I really like SETI@home, and I'm willing to stick it out with the new BOINC client. I only hope the most egregious bugs are removed. Ever since I was a kid, I have wanted to contribute to the search for extraterrestrial life. Since I didn't grow up to be a professional astronomer, I would continue to gladly contribute my spare clock cycles even if the SETI client was much worse than it is now.

I think that SETI@home does important work, but I worry that BOINC might become a classic second system, with plenty of new functionality and configurability, yet big, cumbersome, and bloated in comparison to the original version.

Re:BOINC SETI@home - Second System Syndrome?

[cjjjer]

I also agree with you.

I installed BOINC and fired it up to my surprise I found it more bothersome to actually setup. I have my old client setup to screen saver after 2min and go blank after 0 mins. The new client had the same settings but I still saw the "floating Seti box" from hell. I spent more than a few minutes with the Account Prefs/Update feature on the BOINC client/web site to realize that it often will cause the BOINC client to freeze.

Sadly if the Seti/BOINC client does not get any better I will be stopping my involvement. The old Seti client was easy to setup and I could forget about it. Now I feel I will have to "maintain" it.

Got Boink?

[crimsonsentinel]

You're all forgetting the most important point here: Folding@home is created by the @ssholes at Stanfurd, While SETI and BOINK is created here in good Ole' Berkeley. I think we know who to support ;). Besides, you can run folding on bionk if you really wanted (which you don't-giving Stanfurd more research money is bad).

Re:Got Boink?

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

For those of us not privy to this grudge match - what on earth is the difference between one huge University/commercial empire and the other?

Let's see...

[susano_otter]

... How is this post not unlike a tiny party hat for my ass? Let me count the ways:

First, you explain the basic premise of SETI as if nobody here knows what it is. Here's a memo you might not have gotten yet: Slashdot understands SETI. Try transmitting your breaking newsflash to 1999, where it might add something new to the discussion.

Second, and speaking of years now long past, everybody who was going to care about the redundant data blocks "lie" has already moved on. Nobody besides you really cares anymore.

Third, you're painfully unaware of the ugly irony in taking umbrage in SETI's lies, while simultaneously pimping out a lie of a whole other caliber.

Way to go, dude. On my ass's next birthday, we'll be sure to look to you to provide the festive headgear.

BOINC Alright!!!

[Billnvd65]

BOINC is a damn good name, it freaking boinc'ed my smp system into a hardlock. Kinda ugly when that system is pretty much the heart of our 5 puter network. Squid, LTSP server, etc. 52 days with all sorts of varied load and a stupid SETI program kills it dead. I had a few unhappy voices about 60 seconds after starting it when damn near everything else went away except the firewall. No alien research for me thanks!

Connectivity Problems

[SmurfBoy04]

Perhaps this is why I have been having lots of connectivity problems with the (classic) server for the last week or two; after several years of almost no problems and several thousand completed work units. Often times it would take at least several tries to just get a new work unit.
Guess I should get the new BOINC client and see if that alleviates my problems, anyone know if this new client is more capable of maintaining a connection to the server to get/send data units?

Re:Connectivity Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

This should help explain your connectivity problems...from the setiathome homepage:
June 20, 2004
We expect the faulty router to be repaired tomorrow. Normal data service will follow.

June 18, 2004
The campus network folks did some great troubleshooting and narrowed down the problem to a faulty link on the path to our ISP. Repairs have been called in.

June 17, 2004
We are working on fixing the network problems that are resulting in dropped connections to the data server.

Re:I don't do --- Some way to chroot it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be easy to run it as very unprivilaged user in a chroot. This should probably be part of the standard installation, for organizational liability protection, as well as protection of owner of the computer. Someone post how best to do this, I don't have time to think about it.

passwords

[kcornwell]

This may be a bit off topic. I lost my seti password. The seti "forgot password" funtion will not work for me because my ISP changed it's domain and I forget to change it at seti (cox cable picked up their own cox.net after ditching home.com several years back) Is there any hope for me getting the password or will I have lose my 43000+ computer hours when they completely switch?

Re:

[Alan]

If its any concellation (and I know it won't be) it doesn't seem to recognize the email address that it used to use before... in fact, any email I might have used with it it just comes back 'unknown email address'.

Of course, it's also not sending registration emails to the newly registered account I created, so I'm guessing they're slashdotted in the backend if ya knowwhatimean.

Duh, where have you been?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

Don't you remember a few years ago, when the aliens came and destroyed Earth.

And we escaped to this planet on a giant Space Ark.

Then the Government decided not to tell the stupid people because they thought it might affect their memory.....

Um. Nevermind.

Uh oh. New virus vector

[Animats]

BOINC transparently and securely downloads new application versions.

What's wrong with this picture?

Definitely do not run on any machine with important data.

Re:Uh oh. New virus vector

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely nothing. http://boinc.berkeley.edu/security.php

This looks far more secure than having the user try to verify themselves.

Re:Uh oh. New virus vector

[cjjjer]

So I am a clever virus writer that creates a virus that adds a new project to the targets BOINC client and points it to a URL where my actual destructive payload sits in waiting to be downloaded and run. While I have not looked into how feasible this is it does seem possible. It looks like the BOINC client is just a dumb client that will download and run anything that it's pointed at.

Unless I am mistaken on how the BOINC client works.

Re:

[general_re]

Yah, me too. Kinda sucks, but at least you can take comfort in the fact that you're not alone in this ;)

Full source *is* available on BOINC site!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just not easy to find:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/seti_source/

Unless I'm missing something, this has all the source for the client, including the signal analysis code and the communications protocol.

You're right, to my knowledge this is the first time the source has been available. I previously would never touch SETI because of their security-through-obscurity mentality. Apparently they finally got with the program.

It's GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

It's under the GPL:

"The seti_boinc source code is being released under the GNU General Public License."

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/seti_source/

I'm glad...

[gd2shoe]

Yeah I did a double take too.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers transmogrifiers and little red space ships.

The good old days. *sigh*

1 billion + and growing

[gd2shoe]

Over population of China huh. Yeah, they may think their over populated. But if you think that's a problem, just look at a globe. Find India, just to the left a bit. China and India have nearly the same population.

Not to detract from your point. Just keeping the details in perspective.

Re:1 billion + and growing

[Anonymous Coward]

china's problem is more terrain. because of the mountainous areas that are not really suited for people living there, over 90% of china's population lives on about 10% of its landmass. India doesn't have that problem

Success chances for SETI ?

[RedLaggedTeut]

I wonder, if there was(years ago) another planet out there with exactly the same transmission behavior as Earth what are the chances that SETI would be able to detect it ?

Or can SETI detect only communication if we happen to be practically the target of the transmission ?

I agree.

[gd2shoe]

I'm truly disappointed that this didn't come up higher in the discussion.

On the other hand (to counter point another poster), I wouldn't worry so much about what Seti puts in there. I'd be worried about a "man in the middle" - silent "upgrade". I hope these upgrades occur ONLY over encrypted connections. Not to mention authentication.

Home users have enough vulnerabilities to worry about without some blended attack virus (or worse) that can use the Seti backdoor.

Scary stuff.

Altivec?

[Udo Schmitz]

Does that mean Mac users now finally will get altivec support on seti@home?

5 Reasons NOT TO USE SETI

[Anonymous Coward]

Reason 1

It doesn't use your CPU's free power cycles. I am not talking about the thread switching overheads, I am talking about that fan spinning up. When your CPU is at 100%, it uses more power, gets hotter, the fan uses more power. Etc. You spend more money. You also tend to leave you damn computer on all night.

Reason 2

What the hell is SETI actually useful for? I would like to hear some signal processing guru to say why so much processing/analysis must go into all this data. It seems fairly damn pointless, taking a lighter view of the software.

Reason 3

You have no idea what it is actually doing. It may be trying to create a key pair for every 1024 key code, or a lookup for every 128 bit sll code, or some giant bruteforce platform, it may be just pushing dummy data in until the platform is really required *adjusts tin-foil hat*

Reason 4

There are other more pertinent uses for all that electricity you are burning up, like cancer research, again we have little idea if they are trying to cure cancer, or find a new neurotoxin. *adjust straps on gas mask*

Reason 5

Everyone seems to use it unquestioningly. It is very sad to give all your electricity and bandwidth for free to such a rediculous non-open project. I can imagine the guys in black suites thinking, mmm, what can we pretend this is for, that will seem innocuous, will pander to geeky/teen/too-much-timers and eevn be slightly ironic? Aliens! yep!

Maybe they are even using this platform to sift through all the black box internet data they collect, or maybe SETI==google!

*puts on two more tinfoil hats, a tinfoil cup [ahem] and holds up tinfoil rod*

Be afraid. Comments?

Seamless Integration?

[Shambhu]

"... the ability to seamlessly integrate other distributed computing projects ..."

So they say, but what do they know about this?

just installed

[Killshot]

I like it so far, it *appears* I will be able to manage several projects at once the screensaver is in 3d.. and kinda moves around i think that is a bit annoying... I look forward to seeing what other projects are launched using BOINC

Proof of ETI to cause world peace.

[greenius]

Perhaps if mankind finds 100% proof (through SETI) that intelligent life exists out in space, us humans might actually try to live in peace with one another

Just like when the European's discovered life in America and all stopped fighting each other?

Re:Proof of ETI to cause world peace.

[The Lynxpro]

"Just like when the European's discovered life in America and all stopped fighting each other?"

Don't you think that's a little bit different? Finding humans on a different continent is a little different than finding intelligent non-human life in the cosmos. Sure, some Europeans and religious authorities tried claiming that the Native Americans weren't descended from Adam and Eve (unlike, say, Europeans) but from demons and the like, but successful interbreeding sorta put a damper on that theory. Unlike on Star Trek, interbreeding with a non-human extraterrestrial species is probably not easily possible. But on the opposite end of the spectrum, I will acknowledge that the Book of Genesis does indicate humans successfully interbred with angels so who knows.

The Change

[Badanov]

I guess BSD users are cut out of seti@home? There was no link for a BSD version.

Stat Transfer fUx0r3d

[syntap]

Man, I had just crossed 12000 work units the other day. I look at the new stats and it's showing around 11,400.

SETI@Home Braggin' Rights Icons:

http://www.syntap.com/seti

Re:Stat Transfer fUx0r3d

[CXI]

If you RTFS, they did a snapshot of the old database back in May.

Re:Stat Transfer fUx0r3d

[syntap]

Right, I meant to say the process was fUx0r3d... I wish I'd known about this in mid-May, I feel cheated out of a whole month of unused CPU cycles!

Virus worry? It's open source, folks

[mactari]

I'm surprised to see so many people talking about black helicopters, viruses, trojans, etc. The source is available and seems relatively open for non-commercial hacking purposes.

Now can an open source app download a virus? Be exploited by security holes? Absolutely.

The difference is that, if it concerns enough "tech savvy" users here, we likely have the proverbial skillz to do something about it. I haven't checked the code, but you could have it download to a sandbox enforced by your permissions scheme in your OS or you could hack it to checksum against a list you ["manually"] maintain. Or you could turn off the automatic download "feature" (which I'm betting is a Granny Smith-accessible preference as well). With the new client, your opportunity to watch what's happening goes up, not down, even if only a little (I assume the "modules" that run @home are still potentially closed).

So don't whine about security too much. Your old SETI@home client likely was running around with "rwx" permissions. If you didn't bother with checksums before, not sure why you're bothering now. And if you did check before, heck, now you've got source to the downloader and can put in as strict a check as you're able to code on whatever it's downloading and firing up. Let the hax0rin' begin.

-verbose?

[pr0fess]

will the BOINC have a -verbose output? i need something to impress my friends with.

Re:so close, and yet so far x2

[thebosz]

Actually, you came up with

BOINIC

which is close but not quite.

Modifying SETI's graphics

[sloth68]

The graphics have taken a step backwards with the new BOINC version but one can approximate the old display by visiting the new SETI main page, clicking on the "Your Account" link, then Preferences: SETI@home "View/Edit", "Edit SETI@home preferences". Set the Graphics Preferences to "Custom" and press the Update Preferences button. Then click "Edit SETI@home preferences" again and set all numeric values to 0 with the exception of Transparency of Surfaces.

Next, go back to the BOINC client, select the Projects tab, right-click on SETI@home and select "Update". To view the graphics, in the BOINC client click on the Work tab, then right-click the application currently running and select "Show Graphics".

Much more complicated than the old client but this seems to be the new reality.

Re:Me predicts... a major security fiasco!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the BOINC security FAQ:

"Intentional abuse of participant hosts by projects

BOINC does nothing to prevent this (e.g. there is no 'sandboxing' of applications). Participants must understand that when they join a BOINC project, they are entrusting the security of their systems to that project.

Accidental abuse of participant hosts by projects

BOINC does nothing to prevent this. The chances of it happening can be minimized by pre-released application testing. Projects should test their applications thoroughly on all platforms and with all input data scenarios before promoting them to production status."

So to run SETI@Home you must open a back door into every machine that you "donate" to the cause. Given the fragility of (especially) MS Windows, and the number of folks running clients on PC's at work, I can see machines dropping like flies all across corporate America when a well intentioned but flawed update is automatically loaded. The resultant backlash against SETI@Home might be serious.

SETI Revamped

[Barnszasz]

I've always wanted to evangelize aliens. But now we get to actually BOINC them!

Re:Power Usage? While running Dist comp projects

[Eccles]

I wonder, has anyone ever computed SETI cycles/KWh for various machines? It would be interesting to see how they compare.

people who define themselves by not believing

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Christ! It's just a sig, not a definition of anything. I've used countless different sigs over the years. This particular sig is merely a response to the countless bumper stickers I've read over the years pronouncing that God exists, we must obey Jesus, Darwin is wrong and countless other articles of religious faith.

Trips Keystroke Logging Alarms

[Anonymous Coward]

My network admin here at work just notified me that the BOINC client is tripping his alarms for keystroke logging.

Now, this is probably because it's trying to figure out when you're idle, so it can do work, but this is very un-cool, because he got completely spammed with alarms ...

SETI@home is GPL

[SETIGuy]

This is, of course, one of the reasons why I won't use SETI@Home until it is GPL or similar [Would it be GPL with BOINC?]

Um, the SETI@home version that runs under BOINC is GPL, and has been so for some time. The BOINC client is BOINC Public License, which, because of a legal settlement, restricts commercial use until late this year. After the agreement expires, BOINC will transition to Mozilla license or GPL. I don't think we've decided which.

You are also free to download both BOINC and SETI@home and compile them on your home machine under the "anonymous platform" mechanism. That way you don't need to download binaries.

BTW, we sign our BOINC/SETI@home binary code on a non-networked machine kept under lock and key.

From the FAQ

[Animats]

From the BOINC FAQ:

• Intentional abuse of participant hosts by projects

  BOINC does nothing to prevent this (e.g. there is no 'sandboxing' of applications). Participants must understand that when they join a BOINC project, they are entrusting the security of their systems to that project.

  Accidental abuse of participant hosts by projects

  BOINC does nothing to prevent this.

That's a recipe for an exploit.

If they had some scheme where downloaded programs ran in a jail, and could do nothing but talk back to the appropriate server, that would be better. FreeBSD or NSA Secure Linux could support that. Actually, this would be a good application for the NSA Secure Linux code, now that it's in the mainstream kernel.

Story posters should consider the consequences

[Mopatop]

Well that was good. I'm all for Slashdot's reporting of news to the geek community, but this article appears to have slashdotted the new BOINC server completely. Well done. Maybe posters should start considering the consequences of their actions before they post a story. Directing hundreds of thousands of geeks towards one already loaded *beta* server wasn't a clever thing to do.