SETI@home Becomes Part of BOINC

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

Comments

BOINC blows

[Mursk]

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? I've been a SETI@home user for a while now. I tried the BOINC client, and it's much more complicated than the old one. I'm not sure if I will continue when they shut down the old system...

Re:BOINC blows

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes...I too found the BOINC client unnecessarily complicated.

Re:BOINC blows

[Martin Blank]

What part is complicated? If you only want to run SETI@Home, you sign up for that (or transfer your existing account), and let it go. It becomes the only program that goes, much like before. BOINC handles non-client program updates, runs datasets according to due dates and priorities, and collects stats.

Re:BOINC blows

[Epi-man]

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

Re:BOINC blows

[moro_666]

setting it up on a remote machine out of the blue isn't quite natural for me on that thing. the gui is a certain overshot, nobody asked for it, nobody needs it. i liked to run my seti just from the command line, without hassling with command line parameters to identify myself etc.

and i've been using this boinc thingy for like months now to run my seti ... so where exactly is the news here ?

otherwise the cpu time sharing between different tasks and etc. is a good idea , thumbs up, but for the complexity, thumbs down.

Re:BOINC blows

[Eravnrekaree]

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

Re:BOINC blows

[Darth_brooks]

and i've been using this boinc thingy for like months now to run my seti ... so where exactly is the news here ?

The news is that old Seti is finally dying, and not in the silly "netcraft confirms" way, but finally going away.

The comments about the move over the few threads that have talked about it are freaking hilarious. I've never seen so many (reasonably) tech savvy people turn into 85 year old codgers. "My Opteron processes 14 Seti@home classic units to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"

Seti Classic hasn't been doing anything productive for *years*. The work units you were running were validations and revalidations of already validated workunits. You may as well have created 500 blank word documents and set up a windows task to copy them from one partition to another for all the good it was doing. The "real" work was moved over to BOINC long ago. Classic is dead, remember how cool it was, and move on.

What I can't figure out is how people are having problems figuring out BIONC. Download BIONC. Install. Sign up with whatever @Home project you're interested in using. Go back to BOINC, attach to project using account key that was e-mailed to you (or e-mail address.). Walk away and wait for client to it's thing. Sometimes, especially during /. mentions, the servers at the various projects take a big hit as hordes of users sign up and try to grab the client, resulting in "no work from project" messages, but that's the worst I've seen.

Seti seems to have taken care of their last few bottlenecks, and opening up the old servers to start doing something useful should take care of the rest of any other capacity issues they've had. BOINC has been a huge improvement over classic. You can't fake results to run up your "score", the client is much more responsable when it runs out of work (trying to reconnect at growing random intervals during an outage, instead of constantly hammering away like a screaming toddler), and workunit queueing is handled within BOINC instead of through a third party system. I kinda miss the command line client, but that's about it.

Re:BOINC blows

[Liquidrage]

What part is complicated?

For me, it's the getting it to run part. It doesn't give me enough information to make troubleshooting worth it.
Create projcet account and enter project URL they say? Ah, yes. But apparently there's some proxy issue since after doing so I get the "proxy configuration" screen. Well, isn't that interesting. Username, password, server and port for HHTP and SOCKS. Hmmm!
Gee, I wonder what I should put in there. I don't have anything to put in there. Apparently I'm the only idiot in the world that gets this screen and can't get past this. There's no reason I can think of that would have me get this. But alas, that is what it does.

I'm sure if I want to waste a few more hours with it I'll eventually get it. But this is just crap.

Re:BOINC blows

[FrostedWheat]

I got this today. I was testing a power meter and needed something to bring the CPU load up a bit, and I instantly thought of seti@home. Been years since I used it so all this BOINC stuff is completly new to me.

So I install it, it asks me to enter the Project URL .. odd. I enter the SETI@home URL, and a few seconds later I'm staring at the proxy configuration page - no explination of why. I double check that I'm online, all is working. So I try one of the other projects. It works a little better this time, it's asking me to create an account. So now I've registered it should start working! Nope ... there's nothing happening. After a minute of looking around I notice some red messages in the log telling me I've no disk space to store the work unit! Right ... I've got 2.5Gb free. Somewhere (can't remember exactly now) it tells me to increase the avaliable disk space for the project in the configuration. So I open up the options screen ... nothing even close to disk space anywhere.

So at this point I'm just fed up and uninstall the program, wishing for something like the old SETI@home client that just worked. If they want users they really really gotta improve this program a lot, because yea .. it's just crap!

/END RANT :-)

Re:BOINC blows

[Epi-man]

Create projcet account and enter project URL they say? Ah, yes. But apparently there's some proxy issue since after doing so I get the "proxy configuration" screen.

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

  Just because your stupid software can't talk to your (apparently overloaded) servers doesn't mean we aren't on the net. Why don't you include some very, very simple tools to check if your stupid software can see anything, a simple ping would be nice since I can ping your damn webserver from the command line! Are you trying to cull your userbase?

Re:BOINC blows

[jim_deane]

Another issue is that BOINC requires fairly modern hardware. I kept some older computers around specifically to crunch Seti@Home packets for a long time, including an overdriven 486 DX/2-66 (nee 5x86/133).

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

Jim

Re:BOINC blows

[Almost-Retired]

I have to concur heartily. Not to mention that while boinc has a message board one can take problems to, the answers, when occasionally given are meant to make the user feel about 1/8" tall. So when it gets shut down, I guess I'll just reclaim the drive space. Which frankly, tends to pi$$ me off as I'm currently ranked at 99.363% in the world rankings.

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

--
Cheers, Gene

Re:BOINC blows

[Flaming Foobar]

What I can't figure out is how people are having problems figuring out BIONC

Is there a way to install it to a Linux box without the GUI? I'm running the old client on a number of servers, none of which have X Window System, and at least the last time I checked, I couldn't figure out how to install BOINC on them.

Re:BOINC blows

[Tony Hoyle]

I've tried (and given up on) BOINC before. I got it to connect but every single packet came back as failed. No explanation was given, and the stats steadfastly remained at zero.

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

Re:BOINC blows

[Tony Hoyle]

Download BIONC. Install. Sign up with whatever @Home project you're interested in using. Go back to BOINC, attach to project using account key that was e-mailed to you (or e-mail address.). .. deal with the totally unnecessary configuration screens. Walk away. Come back 24 hours later to find that the software has done *nothing* and now refuses to even attempt to connect to the server, because it failed too many packets (for no reason at all other than it felt like it). Uninstall crap software. Get on with life.

Re:BOINC blows

[Yehooti]

Boinc doesn't cut it with me. Tried it for several months earlier this year and went back to the classic. With me too, I started from scratch, after getting on board with Seti at Home in its early days, and nothing of those efforts were added to my new Boinc account. That was only a mild disappointment, but the days of going without a new work unit turned me away from them and back to the original.

Change can be good if it's progress, but I don't see any progress with this, just an unwarranted pain in the butt.

Re:BOINC blows

[braindead]

Go back to BOINC, attach to project using account key that was e-mailed to you (or e-mail address.)

Yes, except that cut/paste doesn't work on he Linux client. Oh, and you have to use the numbers on the keys above the letters, because the numeric pad doesn't work.

The grandparent post was being generous when it said that the client has numerous usability problems. I would say that if their other clients are as bad as the linux one, I expect they'll get no user whatsoever. When I'm donating cycles, I'm not going to be willing to spend much effort to install the software at all. Every extra step means they get fewer users.

Re:BOINC blows

[jpop32]

What I can't figure out is how people are having problems figuring out BIONC.

The 'Classic' install went something like this: Double-click the exe. Next, next, next, finish. Enter your email address. Sit back and watch the pretty graphics, you're done.

Until BOINC SETI gets up to that level of user friendliness, I'm sure it can kiss most of its classic users goodbye. Average people just can't be expected to put up with the new install process. Would it really be impossible to make an installer that provides the old next-next-next experience?

Re:BOINC blows

[gmagill]

Tried BOINK, hated it, restored SETI.

Now I guess I'll use that "Raunchy Teens Doing Your Dad" screensaver that porn4putzs.com graciously uploaded to my computer the other day.

Re:BOINC blows

[Kadin2048]

Yes, there is. It took me a while to figure out, mostly because I didn't have any luck with the version that BOINC actually distributes. (I could get it running but there weren't any good instructions on setting up a daemon, which you need to do if you want Boinc to keep running after you disconnect and close your shell session.) Eventually I grabbed the Debian package from http://pkg-boinc.alioth.debian.org/ using apt-get, and it sets up the 'boincd' daemon to run the client and everything automatically. You attach/detach and monitor the status using the boinc_cmd program, which you can run as any user.

I have a few headless boxes sitting around that work as routers and backup servers, and are idle for over 99.9% of the time, and was able to install Boinc via the SSH commandline on all of them, once I discovered that someone had put together the package. There is a fairly decent mailing list for support, too.

If you use something that's not Debian-based, or not x86 architecture, good luck.

Re:BOINC blows

[Darth_brooks]

BOINC is not Seti. Seti is not BOINC.

BOINC provides a framework for projects to work within. Once you separate out the fact that you're doing two installs, BOINC & project, it's much easier to understand.

Seti@home isn't going to lose 99% of their users just because the install and connect process got modestly more difficult. Though I'm sure at some point we'll see an article here at slashdot that says "Seti loses XX% of users" that all the harp seals can point to. BOINC is a better framework, the new client vastly improves over the old one. It's a shame that some folks have chosen to to put their stamp of disapproval on it after one or two shots.

Re:BOINC blows

[Anonymous Coward]

I do. I can not use BOINC On my old linux machine, BOINC is too modern.
On my WINXP machine the boinc.exe is not started when the boincmgr.exe
is starting if I log in to the machine too soon after boot up.

3297 seti@home units 34854 hours (mainly on linux)
961 Boinc-units 72 days (no info about cpu time)

AC

Re:BOINC blows

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seti@home isn't going to lose 99% of their users just because the install and connect process got modestly more difficult"

I'll bet they'll lose over 30%, though.

Re:BOINC blows

[AGMW]

So I install it, it asks me to enter the Project URL .. odd. I enter the SETI@home URL, and a few seconds later I'm staring at the proxy configuration page - no explination of why. I double check that I'm online, all is working. So I try one of the other projects. It works a little better this time, it's asking me to create an account. So now I've registered it should start working! Nope ... there's nothing happening. After a minute of looking around I notice some red messages in the log telling me I've no disk space to store the work unit! Right ... I've got 2.5Gb free. Somewhere (can't remember exactly now) it tells me to increase the avaliable disk space for the project in the configuration. So I open up the options screen ... nothing even close to disk space anywhere.

A lot of the configuration for your installation of BOINC on your PC has to be done on each of the disperate BOINC Project websites, such as configuring how much of your disk space will be used by each Project. Also, what %age of your PC will be used by each Project. The %age thing is the real pain - rather than a simple screen in the BOINC GUI where you can twiddle the %ages for all connected Projects, you have to go to each Project website and login to find a configuration screen where you have to write a number into a box. If all the numbers for all your projects are the same, then the time is split equally among the Projects, raise one number and that project will get more time. This is truely painful!

Not to mention the registering process! If the BOINC website looked after the Users, with Registration to BOINC rather than having to register with each Project, it would be so much easier. Your BOINC client could then have an uptodate list of BOINC Projects and you could simply click on one to join!

All that said, I do have it installed and working on a number of PCs running a number of the Projects. It's painful, but it still works.

I'd still like to see GIMPS (Mersenne Prime) sign up to BOINC too!

Re:BOINC blows

[MichaelSmith]

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

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

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

The Pak?

Re:BOINC blows

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not exactly nuts about it, & I have been @ SETI myself since 1999 (did my 1st 50 units on an older AMD K6-III (the type with the Pentium Pro-like L3 cache on a 'Super-7' motherboard by ASUS) @ 450mhz, & w/ that oldster, units took 24 hours each to complete a single unit).

Most of what I did was between THIS & LAST year though, 1679 units - 50 = 1629 on a Pentium 4 @ 3.2ghz (running the units on a CENATEK "RocketDrive" solid-state 2gb ramdisk PCI board on the 1st partition on it of 1gb).

I got myself down to

http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/fcgi-bin/fcgi? cmd=view_feedback&id=27264

3 hrs. 13 min. 25 sec. per unit avg. time

The fastest guy on my team TRIBAR is @:

3 hrs. 12 min. 39.9 sec. per unit avg. time

With the newer/second mentioned system above, & am the 2nd fastest-per-unit time on my team, TRIBAR. I don't know if I'll pass the fastest per unit member of my team now, there might not be enough time left to do it now.

This is sort of disappointing to me, as I am just about to overtake the fastest person on my team in per-unit processing times & am around 1.5 minutes away from it (around 1 week now, since the gains I see now are around 1.5-2 seconds taken off my avg. time each time I do a unit).

The SETI@Home system STILL works & is sending out units, but I doubt it will after that Dec. 15th 2005 mark.

I haven't tried the new BOINC client myself, & was wondering - how long does it take others to do a unit on it & are the processing times LONGER or SHORTER with this new client & possibly new datafile format?

Thanks for the info. guys on how long the per-unit processing times are between both client types, for those of you that have used both the commandline model of SETI@Home & also the new BOINC client!

APK

P.S.=> The reason I'm so into the "avg. time per unit processing time" on SETI is becaause it's an excellent benchmark of a system in certain areas, & I use it primarily for that (as well as contributing to this cause, because I have a feeling that one day it will contribute to space travel due to the findings from its data)... apk

Re:BOINC blows

[Darth_brooks]

"I'll bet they'll lose over 30%, though."

They'll "lose" that many in old accounts that don't renew anyway. I've got a few that were linked to e-mail addresses that have long since died off.

about time...

[maxzilla]

Seti had more users thanit needed as I understood, seems about time...

Re:about time...

[drkfce]

Any more information about this? I find it hard to believe that a Distributed Computing project can have too MANY computers...

Re:about time...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Well, they are processing observational data, so yes, it is possible to have too many people processing it.

Re:about time...

[MoonBuggy]

While I'm sure it's possible to have 'too many' (i.e. you can process the data faster than it is collected), I doubt SETI was near that kind of size. It was, however, pretty damn big - I think the grandparent meant that it was bigger than it should have been when compared to projects designed to cure diseases and the like - moving its userbase over to a project that lets them work on a selection of causes is a very nice idea.

Re:about time...

[AuMatar]

SETI is a data processing project. You need enough people to process all your data (with some redundancy, to make sure noone lies). Anything over that is wasted- they don't need it, and in fact are giving them busy work. They reached that point several years ago. With this move, instead of giving them busy work, they can give them work on other scientific projects.

Re:about time...

[SeaFox]

I think the grandparent meant that it was bigger than it should have been when compared to projects designed to cure diseases and the like - moving its userbase over to a project that lets them work on a selection of causes is a very nice idea.

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

What do they expect from a country with the priorities of paying a basketball players millions of dollars but making teachers unionize to get a cost of living increase in salary?

Re:about time...

[Kadin2048]

I can't offer an authoritative answer, but based on what I've heard, the situation is something like this: their bandwidth is fairly limited, since it's donated by UC Berkley; the Classic users really weren't doing any of the heavy lifting anymore, so this is something of a non-story, the transition has mostly already happened; therefore by closing down the Classic client they really don't lose anything and get back a big chunk of their limited bandwidth allowance.

The SETI@Home servers pretty regularly go down, whether for "scheduled" maintenance or just overload I'm not sure, but if this makes the system more reliable and up more often, I'm all for it.

Car key edition

[wardk]

I want it to find my keys. and that sock that I know went into the dryer.

Re:Car key edition

[BushCheney08]

That's the beauty of this system. All you need to do is write (or hire someone to write) a SWCKS client.

Re:Car key edition

[halleluja]

Don't know about your keys, but your sock has been abducted by aliens.

Lose members

[op12]

I wonder how many members they'll lose as a result of the switch. Is there an easy transition from one to the other (i.e. in the form of an upgrade/update), or are they making previous SETI users go and download a new program/screensaver?

Re:Lose members

[southpolesammy]

You do have to get a new client and the learning curve towards spinning up with BOINC isn't trivial, but it's not hard either. Best yet, you pretty much only have to keep your BOINC client up-to-date and not the individual engines that SETI, Einstein, and climateprediction.net use, as they are updated automatically as necessary through the BOINC client.

I like the built-in stats in the GUI and the easier interface to attach to a new project and to reset projects that seem to have gone stale. Much more intuitive. And with the ability to divide your work into shares, you'll never have any slack time for your CPU as had happened regularly with the SETI client when their server(s) went offline.

Re:Lose members

[Eddy Da KillaBee]

Scientific Progress Goes BOINC?

Re:Lose members

[valisk]

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

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

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

Have a go, I think you will like it!

Re:Lose members

[Xzzy]

> BOINC isn't trivial, but it's not hard either.

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Lose members

[MasterDirk]

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

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

or they can

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

I know I'm not going to bother. It's not important enough to me, although I thought it was kind of cool when I started my Seti@home account. I have since lost interest (having about a 30-minute attention-span), and been happily churning data since.

Re:Lose members

[minvaren]

Viewing messages on one of the top 10 BOINC Seti teams worldwide, there is a small consensus that "no way will I BOINC." For some reason, people seem opposed to the new BOINC system, despite the massive leaps in stability and usability which have happened in the last year. This may not amount to more than 10% of the crunching capacity of any team (or overall), but I think it could be some time before raw throughput returns to "normal" for Seti after the conversion.

Of course, Seti@Home's weakness has never really been the client software - it's been project backbone, power, and server issues, for several years now.

Re:Lose members

[shoemaker251]

I disagree. I switched to BOINC in June and the transition was difficult. It's not a simple matter of installing a new client. There's a registration process and management of a new unique key that identifies you to BOINC. The worst part was that my credit from all the work under SETI@Home did NOT transfer over to the BOINC system. I've been using the SETI@Home client since 1999 and was disappointed to loose credit for all that work.

If it's not a seamless transition from SETI@Home to BOINC, they will inevitably lose users.

Re:Lose members

[Anonymous Coward]

They will lose members for sure. I, for one, have crunched over 25000 SETI@home Classic workunits but I just can't see myself as a BOINC user. I gave BOINC a shot a while back, but it was just too much of a nuisance to set up, get going and keep going. What's next for me? Folding@Home? I don't know, but I'm certainly on a lookout for a distributed computing project that truly needs a hand. SETI seems to have too much computing power in their hands, when they can afford to shake users off by this forced upgrade.

Re:Lose members

[kpearson]

LHC@home has not finished: it has only finished its current group of work units. From its October 28 news announcement: "The current group of studies is coming to an end. ... There will probably be a pause while the results are studied." This is similar to its August 24 news announcement: "The studies are almost done. ... We will then do post analysis to determine where there is more work needed." LHC@home uses the results of one set of work units to help it create the next set of work units. As the project's 4th status report shows, the project will have more work for a long time.

This feature of the project shows one of the strengths of BOINC: instead of LHC@home participants having to shut down an LHC@home-only computing client, start up a different project-specific client, and check the project's website regularly to see when new work units are available, they don't have to do anything: their BOINC client will automatically work on other BOINC projects until LHC@home has work units available, and will then automatically start working on LHC@home again.

Re:Lose members

[PurPaBOO]

Yup, i'm with you on this one. The sign-up/install/transfer process is absolute TITS. Tricky enough with a GUI but on my RaQ4(s)? No woo, no yay.

Re:Lose members

[MacGod]

Hell, it's probably the only BOINCing most of us will ever get to do!

Re:Lose members

[AGMW]

I moved over, and I like being able to do more worthwhile things with my spare cycles (climate/LHC/Einstein) but I also like keeping the Seti bunch ticking over too.

What I don't like is the way BOINC is so decentralised. Having to go through the registration process for each new BOINC Project is a right royal drag. BOINC itself should be looking after registration, and once registered there should be a dropdown menu on the Client with all the BOINC Projects - maybe later split into Medical/Science/Voodoo and whatever later on. There could even be an Alpha and Beta section for up and coming Projects who are looking for testers.

This would make the transition far easier, and the framework far more useful!

Re:Lose members

[corrie]

I concur. I'm sorry to be doing a "me too" post, but I feel very strongly that SETI is making abad move with BOINc, and more to the point, that BOINC needs serious work if it wants to become the platform it's pretending to already be.

What about emergency situations?

[UR30]

Can BOINC give cpu resources in emergency situations to, e.g., computing the effects of a nuclear disaster, or an earthquake? This would greatly help in recovering from catastrophes.

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope not--I certainly haven't authorized it to do anything of the kind.

Re:What about emergency situations?

[AuMatar]

Umm, if the disaster has already happened, you don't need to model the results- just step outside. There's nothing a computer can do to help here.

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anpheus]

But how can you quickly develop applications that would actually apply to these scenarios? I would think that should an earthquake hit the best way to find the effects of the disaster would be to go there and look, rather than hope a simulated model--and to what accuracy? How available is this data in most parts of the world?--provides answers such as "There's an old lady under that piece of rubble."

Re:What about emergency situations?

[blair1q]

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

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually a project thats looking at the effects of pre-tremors etc; however i've forgotton the name.

If anyones interested in running boinc etc then http://www.boincsynergy.com/ is the place to go [posted as AC so i can't karma whore!]

Re:What about emergency situations?

[AuMatar]

Send everywhere along the coast into one. Just in case.

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

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is the silliest comment i've seen in a while.

Re:What about emergency situations?

[gfilion]

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

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

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

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

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, OK, what about URGENT situations - like a Tropical Storm or a Hurricane?
Right now, the NHC is using *5* different computer modelling programs to try to
tell us where the next TS is going (to hit). Seems to me we could be donating
cycles to help refine those models and perhaps narrow the probability cone.

In fact, a good BOINC project might be to take the data from, say, the last two
seasons, and run it through the various existing models, and then try to refine
those models, perhaps distill them down to one or two better-defined ones and
then run data through them and so on. (Yes, I realize that there is a long-term
climatic study being done on BOINC now, which is probably good science, but since
I've had two TS's and two hurricanes come down my street in the last two years,
I'd REALLY like to see if better TS prediction models could be developed/enhanced).

Re:What about emergency situations?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhhh... huh, huh -- heh, heh.

You're not funny, you fucking mook. Add something insightful, or eat a fucking rotten dick, you disease infested fuckbag.

Oh, wait.

Yeah, fuck you.

Re:What about emergency situations?

[AGMW]

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

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

EG they know the person they are looking for is carrying a backpack - eliminate all chunks of video where there are no backpacks.

I reckon this could be quite a powerful tool! The public could decide whether it was worth them helping the effort and it could massively speed up the catching of the people.

More Practical Matters

[Prospero's Grue]

As much as I admire the SETI project, and it's use of idle computing; using the time and power for climate issues and the search for other planets do seem more "useful" tasks.

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

sigh

Re:More Practical Matters

[ChrisCampbell47]

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

Please, see my sig!

Re:More Practical Matters

[Prospero's Grue]

It was a typo, dude. They happen.

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

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

Re:dupe!!

[Anonymous Coward]

from the bottom of the page a grand prediction about slashdot dupes
"You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself."

Foldit

[gcnaddict]

I still think we're better off folding@home than hunting afar

Re:Foldit

[pstils]

yeh, the chances that we'll find any intelligant life based upon: a)whether they have developed radio communications b)whether they have it switched on within the cosmically-minute time frame that seti is searching. not to mention the ramifications if seti does find something: hey there they are. great. thanks everyone. folding at home is useful for us humans not trying to phone-home.

Re:Foldit

[RingDev]

I'm with you there. My team is in the top 2k. And the nice thing about Folding is that they actually write research papers based on the findings. Its nice to see my PC working for something that is improving the scientific community's knowledge.

-Rick

Re:Foldit

[minvaren]

That must be why they're working on a BOINC Folding client.

Re:Foldit

[evenmoreconfused]

Looking for aliens is only one of the 20 or so projects that are currently running under the management of BOINC. You can proportion your cycles in any mix you choose, and, as BOINC is open source, create your own public or private research projects to the mix.

Re:Foldit

[jmt9581]

While I agree that folding@home is more useful than seti@home, I think that Rosetta@home. It's also focused on protein folding, but the difference is that Rosetta has consistently outperformed folding@home at the CASP (Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction) competitions. Check out the CASP website to see the raw results. Or, check out a summary from the Baker Lab website. Also, Dr. David Baker (head of the lab where Rosetta has been developed) is very involved in the community of users that run Rosetta@home, check the messageboards on the Rosetta@home site.

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

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

Re:Foldit

[smoker2]

I've been running folding@home for nearly a year now, and considering its on a Sempron (socket A) 2500 running FC3 as a home media server, and is also my main desktop and internet access machine, with web serving duties etc. the results aren't too shabby.

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

Re:Foldit

[DJCater]

Join Mozillazine (39340), currently 73rd (including aggregate) but set to be in the top 50 within a year.

Re:Foldit

[shadowbearer]

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

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

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

SB

Re:Foldit

[Ilgaz]

The problem with "Rosetta" is: There is no Altivec support as folding@home has.

Right, "Tinker" has no Altivec too but GROMACS has amazing speed increase on Altivec enabled macs.

Re:Foldit

[Grayskies]

while you're at it, join team Hackaday while you're folding. We're going to jump into the top 100 in about 4 days, but we need more users to jump into the top 10. check it out at http://www.teamhackaday.com/

BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[k2enemy]

They should take advantage of the basic economic idea of comparative advantage. In economics, it dictates why trade between two countries is beneficial, even if country A happens to be more efficient at producing everything than country B. What matters is not the absolute level of efficiency, but the ratio of efficiencies. It could also help out distributed computing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This shouldn't be too difficult to implement. With BOINC, instead of choosing which project their computer will actually work on, a user submits their project preferences. Then the client runs a series of benchmarks that determine the computer's ratios of efficiencies. These data are sent to the distributed server which determines the optimal allocation of work between all clients, while guaranteeing each client that as much or more work will be done on the project of their choice as would occur if that client worked solely on its preferred project.

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[southpolesammy]

Your theory is excellent, but I don't know if the project participants (SETI, Einstein, etc) would appreciate being artificially squelched because one platform can function better than another. Their assumptions are that the user assigns the shares based on their preferences, not what their CPU's can do.

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

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[Red Flayer]

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

**BOINC releases new project information**

Wednesday, November 23

The new Project to Optimize Distribution of Workload by Efficiency for Preferred Projects (PODWEPP) has been announced by Berkeley. The project is expected to consume 50% of BOINC computing resources, as work allocation is optimized to account for ever-changing efficiencies and availability of thousands of client contributors. The theory behind the project is sound, but testing showed that the countless cycles needed to perform the constant calculation would need more computing power than available by other means. BOINC administrators recommend dedicating 50% of your allocation to PODWEPP to ensure that the remaining 50% of your allocation is used in as efficient a manner as possible, while ensuring that your personal project preference is accounted for. In addition, BOINC contributors acknowledge that BOINC is now able to determine, without your input, what functions are performed by its distributed computing network on your CPU.

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[goofy183]

I think the parent addressed this in their post.

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

The idea is if I want to dedicate my computer to SETI. And my computer can do 10 units/hr, my involvement in the BOINC network ensures that at least 10 more units/hr of SETI are being done. The actual work may be done by someone else's CPU which is better suited to SETI and my PC may be doing RC5 but the effect of me joining and saying I want to be 100% on SETI is at least the same, if not better.

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[Anonymous Coward]

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


this is stupid. An opteron could do it so much faster, why dont you use those? im tired of people thinking intel is the only real decision that you can go with.\

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[LordSnooty]

wow, it's a brilliant theory, if a little complex - "but what if there were a million doors, and the gameshow host opened all but 2..."

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[braindead]

This would be a good idea for some people, but in most cases the resource we're optimizing against is not CPU, it's the user's attention. The more attention a person needs to give to BOINC (for example to understand the configuration options related to this new work exchange feature), the fewer users BOINC will get.

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[Hao Wu]

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

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

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[Money for Nothin']

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

I wish more people saw the parallels between economics and computing -- they're linked by the mutual goal of increasing efficiency after all... :-)

Re:BOINC could be a lot more efficient

[mrchaotica]

Well, that's great then, since it wouldn't need any configuration except for a set of option boxes labeled "Which project do you want to do?"

Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get real people. That isn't flamebait. You WANT dupes on here? You support that? What a joke!

Re:Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't the post that is being moderated as flamebait. The moderation is self descriptive. It has indeed succeeded in bating your flame.

Re:Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is idiotic, as apparently this site has become as well.

Someone should invent

[nxaccount]

a grid to process SPAM and virus hosts and DOS the hell of them (and their ISP) until somone convinces them to run Windows update.

Re:Someone should invent

[Anonymous Coward]

...until somone convinces them to run Windows update.

Heh, Windows. I guess your new here.

Re:Someone should invent

[Anonymous Coward]

...or until someone convinces them to run Linux, BSD, Unix...

Re:Someone should invent

[joelito_pr]

That's already invented...

Just look for $sysSony_at_Home

Time to move your rig to Folding At Home!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you liked Seti At Home, try Folding At Home. Help cure alzheimer's among other diseases with your spare cpu cycles. Check it out: http://folding.stanford.edu/ http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000673058540/ http://teamhackaday.com/

Article inaccurately titled.

[justinarthur]

SETI@Home joined the BOINC project long ago, at least a year ago. There has also been an account migration service since the beginning of the BOINC integration. The only news here is that they are discontinuing support for the old SETI@Home client.

Re:Article inaccurately titled.

[beneluxboy]

Yeah, I was surprised to find that SETI@Home on BOINC was news— I made the transition almost a year ago and added Climate Prediction. It seems like setting up BOINC was more trouble than the old SETI@Home client, but I got over it. Now adding Folding@Home...

Re:Article inaccurately titled.

[beneluxboy]

Ah. I guess I'm not yet adding Folding@Home. They had a beta test of their BOINC client, but they don't seem to have anything BOINC-related available right now.

Re:Article inaccurately titled.

[Duncan3]

We'd still prefer you run the official Fodling@home client, it's leaner and has more features.

I already work with people from other planets

[$RANDOMLUSER]

So I've been running Prime95 since before Seti came out. I don't even know it's there any more, but sometimes I think running Folding@home might be more socially responsible.

BOINC software for malicious use?

[Linker3000]

Has anyone ever seen BOINC components used for spyware/zombies - one of our servers was running a command (cmd.exe) process within SQL server that was running a component identified as part of BOINC and the users on site swear they had not downloaded or installed anything. I killed the process and removed some suspect files and the 'problem' has gone away for the moment. Anyone?

Re:BOINC software for malicious use?

[B3ryllium]

Long ago, I was hit by a worm that installed the RC5 Bovine client in the background (it managed to sneak the 300kb payload in over dialup, impressive :)). Perhaps it's a similar situation? When I researched it, I found that the user id it was being submitted under had been banned from the service.

They should have some sort of loophole in the client that forces it to notify the user in the event of a banned account, even in silent mode :)

Re:BOINC software for malicious use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having seen this talk I can happily say that BOINK is emminently open to attack. Presented were at least two very serious vulnerabilities - one of which was an SQL injection attack, the other a logical error on the part of the program's verification of digital signatures...

Re:BOINC software for malicious use?

[SETIGuy]

Has anyone ever seen BOINC components used for spyware/zombies

We're not aware of any such reports.

Re:BOINC software for malicious use?

[Linker3000]

If it flares up again I will get in touch.

Moving?

[blackraven14250]

Didn't they already move over to BOINC? I've been running SETI on BOINC for a while now.

Old News

[whodunnit]

I've been using Seti through Boinc for almost a year now, all this happens to be is them offically forcing everyone to move over.

David Anderson Interview

[fungol]

ACM Queue did a nice interview with the Director of SETI@home and BOINC

http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=sh owpage&pid=313

In other news...

[GillBates0]

...the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence (STI@home) project shall continue as before, though researchers say the chances of obtaining a positive sighting during our lifetimes is weak.

Re:In other news...

[thaig]

Perhaps, but if we don't listen then we will certainly never hear . .

More efficient maybe

[wrenhunter]

But the BOINC screensaver could not be more hideous. I installed the new client the other month, but could not figure out how to get the old SETI screensaver back. Searched the boards too. Anyone know a way?

SETI@Home has been using BOINC for a while

[DrXym]

I've been running via BOINC for about six months now. The biggest pain for SETI score whores is that the scoring system between the old and new models is different. Now you get "credits" based on your CPU usage rather than how many results you produced. Therefore your BOINC scores are held separately from the "classic" values.

In operation BOINC works fairly well but on Windows XP it kills performance in some apps. What I mean by this is that BOINC runs at low priority. Any other app on your system which also runs at low priority, (e.g. cygwin, or a backup app like Nero Backitup) just CRAWLS when BOINC is running. The solution is to stop BOINC while they're running but it can still take a moment to click why some app is set in stone.

Re:SETI@Home has been using BOINC for a while

[jafiwam]

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

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

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

Maybe there is a new version, but for the one I tried I was less than impressed.

Re:SETI@Home has been using BOINC for a while

[Fortran IV]

If it doesn't go away and release resources in less than a second, I consider it bad software.

Of course, in my experience XP takes at least 30 seconds to release resources and go away. :-)

Re:SETI@Home has been using BOINC for a while

[SpaceAdmiral]

I've also been using BOINC for at least 6 months for SETI (probably closer to a year). I've had no problems.

I run it nonstop on my work computer (my work computer is fairly high-end and I can't notice any slowdown because of BOINC running), whereas at home I have to have it set to only run when I'm not using my computer. I even upgraded by old laptop to meet the minimum requirements just so I could run SETI on it (I don't use it for anything else).

Re:SETI@Home has been using BOINC for a while

[SETIGuy]

In operation BOINC works fairly well but on Windows XP it kills performance in some apps.

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

Oh, the disappointment.

[loonicks]

I thought maybe this had something to do with Boink (NSFW), the local Boston magazine with nekked Boston University people. Ah well.

They are buffoons

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I have looked into this a couple of months ago -- and ran away screaming at all I had to do to migrate to BIONIC.

I've got the Seti current client. I should just have a button to push. I shouldn't have to re-create accounts and step through all kinds of crap that only a programmer would love, or think up and would embarass the hell out any programmer with GUI/HMI training in the 21st century.

Yes, I know they're largely a volunteer organization. And that affects my observation just how? If they wanna have lots of people, they've gotta move some ass to make it more user friendly to switch. I care not that the underlying mechanism of distributed computing is changing.

Re:They are buffoons

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Google compute (now officially unsupported but still available here http://toolbar.google.com/dc/enable_enthusiasts.ht ml) was a single button click to install. Login was optional. I tried BOINC for a few weeks but the amount of BS was too much - all I want is to GIVE to the world :)

Re:Odds of finding aliens

[hcob$]

But, maybe my math is off on this, but 1 is infinately larger than 0.... no matter what exponent you use ;)

This is news?

[GreyDuck]

I moved over to the BOINC client ages ago on all of my SETI-processing machines, and helped my friends do the same. Okay, so I suppose the "no more work for the old client" part may be news, but the main reason I did the migration at the time was that the old client wasn't pulling down work units...

bloody awful BOINC

[RalphSleigh]

I just tried to install BOINC, and after being prompted for a proxy server I dont use, and finding all of 4 lines of documentation I gave up and uninstalled it. (Unless it thinks it needs a proxy server because slashdot just brought down all their servers)...

Re:Odds of finding aliens

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's infinitely larger.

Scientific progress goes boinc?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientific progress goes boinc?

Re:Odds of finding aliens

[blork101]

The chances of anything coming from Mars were a million to one, he said.
But still, they come.

necessary calvin and hobbes reference...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientific progess goes "BOINC"?

When we find the aliens

[rupp17]

Why do we need to find cures to diseases? Don't you know that when we find the aliens the will have all the answers???? I saw it in a show once. they got this book called " To Serve Man " :-)

Re:When we find the aliens

[neomunk]

Oh, you should have watched that one all the way through... The ending was just delicious!

No AIX Client

[Kraegar]

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

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

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

Re:No AIX Client

[SETIGuy]

Try http://www.lb.shuttle.de/apastron/boincDown.shtml. You'll need to download both boinc and the SETI@home executable and use the anonymous platform mechanism.

Lose all your credits if you forgot your orig p/w

[LividBlivet]

I'm in the top 0.5 % and #39 in my Class with over 11k units mostly on a single machine. If I can't transfer that because I forgot my original password and changed email addresses since then, well screw it. I'll fold proteins to keep my apt warm.

I think they will

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried setting up the boinc client on a number of windows of linux boxes. It didn't go smoothly, and the process is over complicated. In addition, the boinc client, while...efficient...takes what was fun about the seti@home project away.

I joined seti@home several years ago, just after it started. While I primarily quit running it due to the power consumption (and heat output) of my computers, BOINC left a really, really bad taste in my mouth. Especially when I saw my work units wouldn't carry over.

yup your math is indeed wrong.

[zippthorne]

1-0 = 1 not infinity.

while it's true that lim(x->infinity) 1/x = 0 the converse, lim(x->infinity) 0*x = 1 cannot also be said to be true.

lim(a->infinity) (1-0)/a = 0

Re:Odds of finding aliens

[Hannah E. Davis]

But what if you're that 1?

Re:Lose all your credits if you forgot your orig p

[Anonymous Coward]

that can be a problem, but what happened to myself and many other people if you read the seti forums, when trying to transfer your account boinc screws up and deletes it. i lost 4 years of seti work units becuase of this. screw boinc.

pretzel logic that crumbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Using this twisted logic means that I have the same chance of winning the lotto by not buying a ticket compared to a person who buys just one.

Re:pretzel logic that crumbles

[zippthorne]

Ha ha, you're right though. That's why they call the lottery a tax on the mathematically ignorant.

BOINC is the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Boinc is definetly the way to go.
Currently I have it running 20is projects, but I know of about 30.
It's not really that hard of a change over. It took me all of 5 minutes to get everything going (excluding the download) and this was about a year ago. When you actually had to do it the long way. Now there are wizards that guide you through all the processed to speed things up.
The teams can now be compared easily across projects as all projects use the same credit system, stats are nicer.
For example the team that I'm in (Boinc Synergy which was seti synergy in classic), is ranked 5th in the world for all projects combined
http://www.boincsynergy.com/stats/boinc-teams.php

BOINC also can put itself into emergency deadline mode, if a project looks like it won't finish a work unit in time it will stop running the other proects until that unit(s) has/have been finished.

It has a built in WU caheing system (no more seti-cache apps needed) so all the projects download multiple work units (depending on how many your computer can crunch before your computer contacts that project again).

Plus much much more.
If you need to ask any questions pop over to http://www.boincsynergy.com/forums and post in the boinc and boinc projects section as anyone can post there without registering. We are all happy to answer them for you.

Great, no OpenVMS or Alpha NT versions

[TAZ6416]

What I loved about SETI@Home compared to other distributed computing networks like http://www.ud.com/ was that there was loads of clients out there for Operating Systems and hardware dating back to the 80's. Hell you could even get a client for Satan itself, http://www.sco.com/ OpenServer

Now, you basically have to run Windows, MAC or Linux, if not you can feck off

I've got 2 old AlphaServers in work that have been running SETI@HOME since 2000, one running NT4 and one OpenVMS 7.1, never any downtime with either of them, time to call it a day on 15th December, it's a shame

Jonathan
~~~~~~~~
Oscar The Grouch Does California, Nevada, Arizona - http://www.mccormackj.fsnet.co.uk/oscarthegrouch/

Re:Great, no OpenVMS or Alpha NT versions

[SETIGuy]

Someone may yet port to these platforms, but unfortunately, we can't afford the time and effort required.

For SETI@home, OpenVMS was responsible for less that 0.2% of the results returned. Non-intel Windows generated about 0.06%. That means if I worked non-stop on porting, 8 hours a day, 47 weeks a year, I should probably allocate about 3 hours and 45 minutes anually towards a VMS port, and 1 hour and 8 minutes toward a Alpha/Windows port. I don't think I could accomplish either in that amount of time. Think of it as economics in action.

Unfortunately, I only work about 25% time on SETI@home coding, if that, so divide those numbers by at least four.

It's likely that someone will eventually do these ports. A lot of ports are available here. Just not VMS or AlphaNT yet. Of course, an unsupported binary is more difficult to install.

Sorry, but that's just the way reality works.

Re:Great, no OpenVMS or Alpha NT versions

[TAZ6416]

For SETI@home, OpenVMS was responsible for less that 0.2% of the results returned. Non-intel Windows generated about 0.06%.

That's a fair point, I can see now why no official port has been done. I'm pretty sure a OpenVMS port will appear sometime so when it does I'll dust off the old AlphaServers again :)

I'd do it myself but I havn't programmed in about 9 years.... and I wasn't that good at it anyway :D

Jonathan

When will we start getting paid for our cycles?

[JonathanBrickman0000]

What I want to know is, when is someone going to set up a network of this sort where we get paid for the work our machines deliver. I want to put a dozen old PC motherboards on a LAN, hook the LAN to my home broadband, and get paid for keeping everything running!

Re:When will we start getting paid for our cycles?

[blackraven14250]

You'll be paid in the form of alien contact, better knowledge of proteins, and better climate prediction. You want to get paid CASH too??

I don't see the problem.

[emmaussmith]

I've been running BOINC for a while (6 projects and over 20,000 credits on my main desktop), but even in those days, it wasn't hard to set up. The e-mail sent out is fairly straightforward and tells you the URL and project key to use. I didn't have to manage the 6 seperate projects differently. Just set the URL and key and it downloaded all the rest on it's on, and is great at switching between projects, queueing up workunits, and even recovering from random process crashes and communications problems.

Re:Odds of finding aliens

[Frumious Wombat]

There's also the psychology of feeling like you're doing something. Would you rather take that 1 in a gazillion (SI Units) chance, and give up some CPU time for the search, or just wait until the ramscoop swings into orbit, and go, "Oh heck! where did *that* come from?", with everyone else?

BOINC

[Frostalicious]

I've always wanted to BOINC a green skinned alien.

Re:BOINC

[a24061]

You know you're not allowed to visit Talos IV.

Abandoning BOINC-based projects

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 7 boxes running SETI@Home. I have tried installing BOINC several times, without success. I think that this is the end of my contribution to SETI@Home; I refuse to waste more time on a piece of software that is so poorly documented and abstruse. If they come up with something as straightforward as the old client, I'll get back. Until then, SETI@Home will lose quite a few units per day. Incidentally, in the meantime I also won't touch any other BOINC-based project.

Climate Prediction on BOINC

[Hamstaus]

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

But BOINC fucked it all up. I don't think the climateprediction model fit well into the BOINC work unit structure, which may not be BOINC's fault of course. However, without going over the small potatoes, the biggest problem was that the BOINC client would randomly screw up a work unit. Days or even weeks into a work unit, it would go bad. Nothing to be done. It was disheartening. Even a casual user likes to see how much they are contributing, and the client made it more like playing Russian roulette with the work units. It was a premature move in my opinion, and I'm sure it cost them more users than just me.

the real weakness

[Quadraginta]

Nah, come on, the real weakness of seti@home was that it didn't work. No aliens were discovered.

I mean, the answer the SETI community has always given to the Fermi paradox ("If they do exist, where are they?") is that all SETI searches have been exceedingly cursory, the equivalent of searching for a needle in a haystack by kicking the stack once with your bare foot. Nope, nothing there...

seti@home advertised its ability to do a much more thorough job, to give the haystack a thorough comb-through. Results: nada, zip, zilch.

Now, of course, the community can argue -- and they're probably right for all I know -- that seti@home is better than what went before, but is still not a really thorough search -- that would need x dedicated radiotelescopes observing for y years, followed by z CPU-years of data processing -- so sign up today! What are you waiting for?

I suspect a few people just burn out after a while. They start thinking ET, like practical fusion and moon colonies, is going to be arriving "any day now" for the next century or two, if not until the Sun explodes. And before flaming, please bear in mind that I personally support SETI and was one of the first seti@home users on my 100 MHz Pentium...

Re:the real weakness

[Martin Blank]

There's work being done on a distributed system to look for laser flashes that might be sent from an intelligent species, in the thought that a much more advanced species may have moved beyond radio waves for much of its communication, and that lasers would be more visible over longer distances, less likely to be lost in background noise.

Re:the real weakness

[Quadraginta]

Sure, maybe. Why not?

Or maybe they use gravity waves or blasts of neutrinos or Vulcan thought beams. Who knows?

Fermi understood the problem: we've been "civilized" enough to understand that there may exist other worlds for only 500 years, give or take, which is a gnat's eyeblink in cosmological time-scales. One is inexorably led to one of two conclusions:

(Option A) We are typical of sentient species, meaning any species that now exist have been sentient for a very short time, which implies that all of the millions of sentient species that did evolve in the past 13 billion years snuffed themselves out via thermonuclear folly, failure to breed, flinging one too many monkey wrenches into the planetary ecosystem...whatever. We are led to the distressing conclusion that sentient species are highly ephemeral phenomena, and it would be a miracle if any exist anywhere in the Galaxy within the same tiny sliver of time during which we can expect to exist. Most distressing! Which leads to...

(Option B) Sentient species can and do prosper for at least as long as, say, crocodiles and rodents -- millions of years, at least. In which case, it follows that we must be the absolute newest kids on the block, and that 99.9% of the species that exist in the Galaxy are tens of thousands of years more advanced than we, and some are millions of years ahead of us. In which case -- Fermi asked -- where the heck are they? Why won't their incredible 200,000 AD technology let them easily locate us and talk to us? We can detect planets around the nearest stars and certainly within 100 years will be able to image them. What's stopping the aliens? Is Galaxy-wide interstellar communication so truly hard and unrewarding that no civilization ever succeeds at it? Are we in some kind of Prime Directive quarantine? Do we just smell bad?

Or is nobody out there?

Re:Odds of finding aliens

[Celsius 233]

I think it was a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference, albeit not a very good one.

Re:What's "SETI@home" mean?

[cffrost]

Mods, I didn't mean to hit so hard with the clue stick. Looking at this slew of logical counter-points, it seems I hit a nerve.

Excuse me while I report to the Ministry of Groupthink, lest I post any further opposing facts or opionions.

Thank you for setting me straight.

Patent policy?

[metamatic]

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

Folding@Home at least say that they are a nonprofit and will not profit from selling or licensing their research.

Re:Patent policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rosetta@Home has a policy on this matter just as good as Folding@home.

What they are trying to develop here is a version of the Rosetta software that can be effectively used to predict the outcome of protein folding. This software is, and will remain, FREE for use by any non-profit institution. You can read the PDF with the academic licensing agreement any institution has to sign right here.
http://depts.washington.edu/ventures/UW_Technology /Express_Licenses/Rosetta/Rosetta++EX.pdf

The key stipulation of the agreement is anyone using the software with that license has to make the data they obtain freely available for nonprofit purposes to other organizations. Basically its extremely similar to an open source license.

There is also a commercial license option. Basically what this allows a commercial research entity to pay a license fee to the University of Washington and not be forced to make the data they obtain available for use by anyone else. You can read the PDF for the commercial license at this link.
http://depts.washington.edu/ventures/UW_Technology /Express_Licenses/Rosetta/Rosetta++EX.pdf

This allows commercial entities to use this software to develop medical cures to diseases. Without such a stipulation far fewer groups would have the option of using the software. Making the software available for use by commercial entities should also make drug development costs lower than they would be otherwise, either making the end cost of the druge cheaper, or making it possible for companies to develop drugs for which they otherwise couldn't justify the research costs. The license fees go back to the University of Washington, hopefully with part of the money going back to The Baker Laboratory, which is the part of the University of Washington involved with this area of research, so they can reform additional research in this area. Just to be clear, both the The Baker Laboratory and The University of Washington are both non-profit institutions.

Essentially all the data from this project is going to get published and released publicly as far as teh results are concerned, and any academic or nonprofit institution can have full access to the software developed as long as they agree to share the results publicly to be used by any nonprofit institution that wants to use it.

But the important question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Can BOINC run the Sony Rootkit DRM?

Same problem here--anybody have a fix?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Keeps prompting me for HTTP/SOCKS proxies, when none are in use.

Re:Same problem here--anybody have a fix?

[Sunlighter]

The servers are congested right now. Apparently BOINC has a really short timeout. Just wait a few hours and try again.

I tried it at around 7 PM CST, and it prompted me for a proxy server. I tried it again at 11:30 PM CST and it worked.

Re:Same problem here--anybody have a fix?

[Chuck Chunder]

I just installed it this morning and when that happened to me it seemed to be that the manager hadn't connected to the client properly.

I quit the manager and then restarted it from the start menu and then I could add projects without much fuss.

Find your own home, ET

[spyrochaete]

Due to the change in clients I am stopping my SETI@Home processing for selfish reasons. I will lose credit for all my 5 years of membership and have to start over at 1 workunit! I used to deal with the risk of 100% CPU usage 100% of the time, but since all record of my contributions will be lost and I can no longer work toward the next snazzy printable certificate I am officially jumping ship. A very lamentable decision on SETI's part.

Say WHAT@home?

[tepples]

We'd still prefer you run the official Fodling@home client

I hope you meant Folding@home and not Fondling@home ;-)

Somebody wake me when....

[boron boy]

Somebody wake me when: -boinc automatically downloads the optimized client for the machine it is running on -they fix the current issues in version 5.2.8 regarding http proxies and stuffed up W32 registry entries -They start analyzing data from a radio telescope in the southern hemisphere

Quite easy

[Chuck Chunder]

Just download the client package, eg:

wget http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_5.2.8_i686-pc-l inux-gnu.sh

Extract it, eg:

sh boinc_5.2.8_i686-pc-linux-gnu.sh

Start it, eg:

cd BOINC
./run_client &

Then sign up for whatever projects you want and you will get an email with a project url and an account key in it. Once you have that just execute:

./boinc_cmd --project_attach [project_url] [project_key]

for each project and that's it. You might want to pipe the output from the run_client to a file so you can tail it if you want to see what it's been doing.

Scientific Progress Goes 'BOINC'?

[Money for Nothin']

Just in case the Calvin and Hobbes title didn't make sense... :-)

Pollution and SETI

[tod_miller]

I ran some napkin calculations on how much pollution seti has generated. Take their own 'computer hours' from their stats page, and work out how many machines are left on overnight TO RUN SETI, and during the day and night, computers who would be on anyway, are now running hot (at close-to-100%), which runs more fans, which uses more juice etc etc. Also how much a night it costs the average utility bill. Someone with more knowledge can pop their calculations and whatnot here.

Re:Pollution and SETI

[faedle]

And, that's not considering the screwup SETI did by handing out the same packet for everybody to work on for.. what was it, like a month or two? What a waste.

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

SETI is a solution looking for a problem. FightAIDS@Home on WorldCommunityGrid.org is doing research that matters to every human being alive on this planet right now.

Can't see BOINC in Synaptic ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I might be being lazy but I can't see BOINC in Synaptic on my Ubuntu box (unlike the setiathome client which is there)

So it looks like I'll be another contributor who can't play any more.

I've had no problems with the BOINC client

[T0mWil5on]

I'm not familiar with the Windows client as all of my systems run Linux.

I've used it for numerous projects since March 03, 2005 with little incident.

I presently have it running on 50+ boxes.

Sign up at the project's website, start the BOINC client(s) with the attach_project option, enter the URL and the account number then forget all about it.

It just plain works.

Who knows? I may be an anomoly. YMMV, etc.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Folding@Home for Firefox

[soccerUSA]

I'm already deeply invested in F@H for Firefox http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype= teampage&teamnum=39299