Martin 53N 1W wrote:

Dave Gower wrote:
[...]

SETI is about science. SETI @ home is about people. 99.9% of those
people are @home, not on the Berkeley campus. Why is that so hard to
understand?

Wesley Johnston wrote:
[...]

http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ). I am willing to wait until the
problems are fixed, but this poor communication is what bothers me
the most.

Very apt comments, and something that overworked academics can quickly lose sight of in their rush to push science against whatever (inadequate) funding...

Regards,
Martin

Maybe it is time to tell the acedemics that you cannot push this kind of science without the help from us (the home user).

You keep talking about the resources put at our disposal by SETI (Berkeley) and lack of funding. First of all: they do have a steady stream of sponsors and if they want to keep them happy they should keep the public happy. Second of all: did you ever make a nice calculation about what it would cost to rent the computing power produced by the S@H users? Trust me, no university can afford that.

Ofcourse there is a lack of funding, all projects and universities have the same problem. If you want to get more funding PR is the way to go. The way Berkeley is acting would make someone believe they have funds to spare and really do not want to make any more friends.

I am convinced the users are providing the main service here, not Berkeley. If the users of S@H where not as devoted as they are the project would have died (as was first assumed by Berkeley) a long time ago.

Just ask yourself: there are lots of distributed computing projects out there, even ones solely devoted to curing illnesses, a very noble cause. Why are none of them as big as S@H? Surely not for the "numbers", they would probably get a higher ranking with one of the other projects due to less participants.

Well, at least we are getting some more feedback now then what we got in the old days. (Hey, S@H is not working anymore, I wonder how come? Oh, I should have updated 2 months ago...)

Don't forget, if you are working on S@H for Berkeley: I think you are the greatest! (Just get someone to handle your PR :o)

Greets,

Mark
The Netherlands