Slashdot Mirror
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."
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...
"This thing does science so hard, you say, 'I've never seen that much science.'" -Sam
I want it to find my keys. and that sock that I know went into the dryer.
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?
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.
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
The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.
I still think we're better off folding@home than hunting afar
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
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.
.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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
But, maybe my math is off on this, but 1 is infinately larger than 0.... no matter what exponent you use ;)
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
The chances of anything coming from Mars were a million to one, he said.
But still, they come.
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
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
Support SETI@home
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.
Support SETI@home
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.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
We'd still prefer you run the official Fodling@home client
I hope you meant Folding@home and not Fondling@home ;-)
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.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park