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

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: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.

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: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: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

[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

[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...

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: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.