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SETI@home Project Responds To School Firing
SETIGuy writes "SETI@home Project Scientist Eric Korpela has responded to many of the allegations made by Higley Unified School District administrator Denise Birdwell regarding the difficulties caused by the installation of SETI@home, which led to the recent firing of the school's technology supervisor. One of the project's founders, David Gedye, takes issue with Dr. Birdwell's claim that 'an educational institution ... cannot support the search for E.T.' Meanwhile, the fired supervisor denies misusing school computers."
Unfortunately in the world of reality, the difference between Idle and Used CPU is at the very least money. My computer idles at ~180W use. When it's at 100% CPU, it's closer to 450W use.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
That's not completely true. A computer that is idle uses less power than one at 100% cpu utilization. So it is costing the school more money for their electricity. It could also lessen the life of the computer. A computer that is shutdown at night would likely last longer than one crunching numbers every night.
450W?! What do you have? The one here (a older core-2 E6850, with 8GB of memory) idles at ~100W, and maxes out at 180W with both cores at full load.
What the hell are you talking about? How can something use the same amount of power, but emit different amounts of heat under different circumstances? Unless it has a *very* large capacitor or some other form of energy storage, or it emits radiation (light, etc), every watt used comes out as heat.
If it is getting hotter, it means it is using more power.
Except this is a school district. Most school districts have ancient computers that are only replaced after they fall apart smoking.
This is slashdot, news for nerds. Nerds don't buy computers from Best Buy. Real nerds don't ever even shop for anything at Best Buy. Best Buy is where wannabe nerds go so they can pay higher than advertised prices on products that the salespersons know little about, but they still know more than the wannabe nerds. I could go on, but I think you get the picture, and the rest of the people reading this already knew these facts.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
We're talking about school computers. Not the rig you built to play Crysis at 4096x3092 with all settings maxed. And I'm not knocking that, my rigs are self built, but most people (including schools) usually purchase pre-built computers from companies. And those pre-built machines usually have low end processors (thus using less electricity) and use the IGP. And, because of that those machines usually have lower end power supplies.
Not only does the lady who fired the guy demonstrate how ignorant she is, the reporters demonstrate astounding ignorance too: http://www.fox5vegas.com/video/21785181/index.html
How the fsck do people not know about this program or not consider it research? My wife (not a technically adept person) has run this program for years and in schools, too. Ask the guy to uninstall it if it costs to much in a recession (he had approval of the previous administration to run it though!). Don't fire him because you're stupid.
This depends entirely on what "resources" we are talking about.
Memory, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you, as unused memory is wasted memory, but that's mainly because your system RAM will consume the same amount of power regardless of whether or not it's holding anything of value. One or multiple sticks of zeroed pages is still data that has to be stored, after all, so you might as well fill it with something (standby pages, or "disk cache" if you prefer).
CPU? That's entirely based around your willingness to pay for the greater power consumed by a loaded CPU, as well as your tolerance for the heat it would generate, and possibly the CPU's own tolerance for the heat generated if it doesn't have an adequate cooling solution (but whose fault is that?). This is, incidentally, why a processor's C-states are configurable in the BIOS, you can disable everything up to the C1 state if you damn well please, and you can even disable the SpeedStep/PowerNow functionality if you damn well please, and you can run the CPU at full utilization all the time if you damn well please, just be aware that it's going to cost you more than if you leave these things enabled, let the computer run idle when not needed, or gods forbid, shut the damned thing off.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
Unfortunately in the world of reality, the difference between Idle and Used CPU is at the very least money. My computer idles at ~180W use. When it's at 100% CPU, it's closer to 450W use.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
most consumer CPUs idle at ~40 watts and cap out around 95 watts under max theoretical load. That 450 watt PEAK power output is for system max load which never happens.
And the first time any administrator champions his school's or school system's use of distributed computing, his boss (school board, taxpayers) will say:
"Great! Good for us. Now, exactly how much are we spending on this, who is overseeing it, who authorized it, and where are these funds being allocated in the budget?"
And that administrator will not have any answers because no one authorized it and they're dead-ass broke. Then someone would get fired. They can't afford to spend some unknown amount of money on supporting SETI.
I have been using computers for 12 years. I have never turned off my computer unless I had to upgrade a component (duh!) or I had to go away for more than 48 hours. None of the machines I used had any failures whatsoever just because being on all the time. Sure, I had a couple hard-drives which broke, because power went off unexpectedly, and also a few optical drives, but that's because I play lots and lots of DVDs and such. But motherboards, CPUs, graphics cards and memories? Zero failures. I still have a PII@400 MHz in my closet, used as a secondary backup server for my work (on a 40 GB HDD) and it is on all the time. And works.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
No they are not.
I do work for others at about $55 / hour. Just spend the time I did on researching the unlockable Sempron/ ACC vs Athlon II 240/245/'e" version vs an Celeron E3200/core2 duo HT/VT/x64 and the boards that support the various options [ firewire, esata/sata raid, 4x240 pins slots ddr2 [ i have a lot of it , thank you ] took hours. Frys sale on this, Amazon sale on that, NewEgg sale on .. wait there is a combo deal but it only uses ddr3 . - how much more will I spend vs my own ddr2 ...
No, you won't save money.
proc & board , $100
memory, $80
case $50
power supply $30
hd $100
$360
you could buy a dual AMD/Intel for around that money and have a guarantee and have someone with tiny fingers put it together and ship it in a nice box.
I really have better things to do to try to save under $50.
you have no idea what you are talking about. It is true that power output is independent of frequency but this is only in an ideal situation where the charge required to switch a transistor is zero. As the CPU frequency is increased, the time between stable outputs of each transistor in a chain must be decreased. The only way to decrease the time is to increase the rate at which the charge builds on the transistor base, this can only be increased by increasing the supply voltage. As the voltage is increased the power output increases EXPONENTIALLY for a fixed resistance (current = voltage squared divided by resistance without factoring in integrals). As for your electricity/heat thing you're just plain wrong, the supply voltage (amongst many others) are fixed. Voltage does not equal current. Voltage applied across a closed circuit results in current flowing across that same circuit. However, since the CPU is a discrete device and thus must be doing something when it is on it performs an OS specific "no-op" loop. In windows this is known as the "system idle process". This process just wastes time, it doesn't do any heavy lifting and as a result much of the CPU's hardware is left open (no current flowing across it) and thus, the total current flow is fairly low. Low current at a fixed voltage implies a very high resistance over the whole circuit which is analogous of parallel circuitry in which a number of the circuits are open. If current is not flowing through your CPU it certainly isn't flowing through your power supply either, and your utility provider certainly isn't counting it as used.
I've worked in cluster computing for quite some time (though I don't admin them anymore, still work in an HPC shopt). Know when you get lots of nodes on a cluster failing? When you power it down. Some percentage won't come back up. Same with disk arrays.
We dread electrical work in the building.
Seriously, power cycling computers is bad for them.
Q. Do I need permission from my employer to run SETI@home on computers at work?
A. Yes! Of course! We've been saying that for 10 years, and despite what some bloggers have said, Niesluchowski wasn't the first person to lose his job over this. The first time was many years ago.
This should have been the beginning and end of the Q&A. Regardless of the relative merits of SETI@Home or what it does or doesn't do to a computer or network, the bottom line is pretty simple: Install unauthorized software on computers that aren't yours and you get spanked.
Unless the school is (a) being heated with electricity and (b) not having to *cool* its computer labs, this is untrue.
Electrical resistance heating is a terrible waste of high-grade energy.
If you *were* to want to heat with electricity, a heat-pump would give you two or three times the heat for the same electrical input. (And thus $$$, CO2 emissions, etc.)
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Unfortunately in the world of reality, the difference between Idle and Used CPU is at the very least money. My computer idles at ~180W use. When it's at 100% CPU, it's closer to 450W use.
If that CPU time is being used, it has to be paid for.
Well unless its summer time (when schools are closed) and the school is far enough north you could just think of these PCs running SETI@home as electric heaters. 100% of the energy they use is being turned to heat, so some/all (depending on the schools regular heating system) of the cost of running SETI@home can be subtracted from the heating costs.
Unfortunately, waste heat comes at 1:1 efficiency, while most buildings are heated with 4:1 or better heat-pumps, so, while the waste heat is offsetting some of the heating costs, that only forgives about 25% of the cost.
If you're paying to cool the building, then the waste heat makes things much worse...