Martin 53N 1W wrote:

~misfit~ wrote (lots!):

An important idea behind Boinc is that Science beyond just s@h can
benefit from DC. True scientists will push all of science aswel as
just their own specialist subject. I think Berkeley are being very
good in
the true (altruistic) scientific sense (for the good of ALL Mankind).

That really sounds good Martin. However, this utopian world you describe
doesn't exist. Scientists are as mercenary as the next profession these
days. If they aren't making money out of it via grants or getting kudos for
it they just ain't gonna do it. Sorry to burst your bubble. :-)

[...]

Hmmm, it all makes sense. Berkeley want a strangle-hold on
distributed computing and, to get other projects on board told them
that they would serve up a whole bunch of (irate) ex-SETI cruchers.
They would 'leak' the [...]

There is a world of difference between 'happen stance' and cold mean
premeditated 'intent'.

See, what confuses me is the claim is the client was leaked. Ok, I can
accept that. However, without a server and a validated account the leaking
of the client doesn't mean squat! The source-code is being made available
anyway. Why would the premature availability of the client 'force' Berkeley
into generating WUs and validating accounts? I already had several versions
of the beta client as I was beta-testing it. That's what I find confusing.
Eother thet're using it as an excuse after-the-fact or there is something
more going on.

There has been a theory around for quite a while that Berkeley is
using our computers for God-knows-what while pretending to be
searching for aliens. [...]

... Conspiracy, religion, pretence, all in one sentence... I'll let
Lloyd answer that one, Alleluia! (;-))

;-)

Hopefully, we'll all be willing to let our spare CPU cycles get used
by
all manner of science projects beyond just s@h signal sniffing.

And hopefully the Open Source paradigm will ensure full openness in
what the code is really doing.

Hopefully.

Ya know what? I'm gonna go back to classic until it's closed down
and then have a serious re-thing about this whole DC thing. After
more than five [...]

Your electricity is more precious than most for more than just spare
heating. (You're moving towards summer are you not? (:-))

We are indeed. We've had a couple of beautiful, fine and clear days. Today
was great. However there is still very little heat in the sun. And yes,
electricity is a precious commodity in our house.

Perhaps direct your CPU cycles to one or more of the other science
projects until seti-boinc robustly returns, or go offline for a while
and construct another crunch monster or few! (;-))

I'm not sure what I'm going to do DC-wise in the longer-term. For now I'm
back to crunching SETI classic on some machines as they are out of BOINC WUs
(Plus I've had an inordinate amount of 'short' WUs this time). When BOINC
goes back on-line I think I'll let my machines upload their data then close
BOINC down and stick with classic to the bitter end. Then I'll look at how
the land lies.

Regards,
--
~misfit~