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SETI@Home Transitions To BOINC

Posted by timothy on from the get-your-mind-out-of-the-stellar dept.

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."

1 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. 5 Reasons NOT TO USE SETI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    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?