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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."
welcome our BOINC alien-finding overlords. sorry.
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.
vampirical
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.
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...
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
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?
"Scientific progress goes BOINC?"
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!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This BOINC thingy seems to be an adequate infrastructure for the next generation of... worms.
There you are, staring at me again.
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."
The practical implementation of a million monkeys at a million typewriters... ...finding nothing.
Seriously, what has Seti@Home found as of yet?
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
Am I to take that this project will also be dying?
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.
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
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...
Does the new client include methods to block the methods used to spoof the current SETI@Home client?
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.
"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.
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.
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.
The FAQ didn't answer that question--does anyone know?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's like deja vu all over again.
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.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
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.
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....
i live on an alternate planet
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.
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.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
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.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
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.
What's wrong with this picture?
Definitely do not run on any machine with important data.
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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.
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