~misfit~ wrote:
[...]

arrogance from the Berkeley team. (In the little I saw in the way of
official statements from them). Almost as if *they* were providing a service
instead of us providing the service.

That is a common theme for various emotive threads...

In a way, they do provide a 'service' in creating and supporting an infrastructure for distributed computing to search for seti. They also host forums and a 'community' and the ever present fun credits/statistics.

They are also doing real development and real science.

Quite a lot really.


The users make that whole lot work and be worthwhile by giving away idle CPU cycles that would otherwise be lost. The users' cost is just in the time to download and install the client prepared for them, and in the marginally increased electricity costs for running always at 100% CPU.

Far too easy really for something so significant.

Then also, there are those who unilaterally make all this a 'competition' and dedicate machines solely to running the s@h client. To push science further faster, or just to chase 'numbers'?... Good for high emotions...


I guess the whinging and whining level depends on where you think the 'service' is provided.


All good fun,
Martin