In article <4391809D.E7AE8F96@telia.com>,
Johan Plane  <johan.plane@telia.com> wrote:
[...]
= Same here. I find it annoying that no information is
= given as to what's happening over at Berkeley with the
= server for Seti Classic. Being neglected doesn't exactly
= make me more inclined to take the step over to Boinc.
= Even if they are few people in the staff, posting some
= official information as to what's going on couldn't be
= that much of a disturbance to their routines? Or perhaps
= the routine is to keep us unaware, which I have seen
= tendencies to in the past.  We contribute to their science,
= but what do we get in return? Except for the warm fuzzy
= feeling of perhaps doing something good - not much. I'm
= getting pi..ed off by such attitudes. Just think of the
= electricity cost for all of us crunchers that they don't
= have to pay. For me alone it's about $1500 on a yearly
= basis from my own wallet. Non-deductable of course. At
= least one could expect some respect from Berkely for that
= sum.
= 
= / Johan

Amen!  Well said, Johan.

In fairness, there is some information at their web site.
But...  That does not negate Johan's comments above.

I got the impression from a post in the other seti news group
that, post 15 December, those of us who don't use boinc will
no longer be welcome -- i.e. our seti efforts simply won't work.
Well, so be it.

I don't use microsoft.  I don't use mac os.  I don't use linux.
I don't even use the current version of freeBSD which I do use.

Nor have I any intention of allowing the seti folks or any one
else to decide for me what OS or even what version of an OS I
shall run on the machine that I bought and paid for with *MY*
money.

I don't have the problem with work units piling up as Johan describes;
with freeBSD (or any Unix-like operating system) it is possible to
set things up so that the system keeps trying to send the work unit
back.  I have, however, found that sometimes it is necessary for
my system to try many times before it is possible.  I'm glad that
I don't have to do that manually as often as their system seems to
be broken or maybe just too busy to accept my work.

Years ago, when I first began running setiathome, I wrote several
shell scripts to do various things including check the status of
the current run.  That script gets the work-unit number from a file
called user_info.sah in the seti run directory.  For quite a long
time, seti didn't bother to update that file when a work unit was
finished and sent back so that my logs showed that I was repeating
the same work unit over and over again.  Only if one looked carefully
at the logs (at the sky coordinates given at the start of each run)
could one tell that one was really actually doing new work.

That went on for nearly two weeks.

It was not until I posted to the other seti group that that was
happening that they seem to have fixed the problem.

Whether posting to the news group triggered the effort to fix the
problem or it was simple coincidence, I have no way of knowing.

What I don't understand is why seti can't provide a working e-mail
address to which one may report such problems.  If they can
(assumption on my part) find the time to read the news groups, they
could surely find the time to read e-mail.

Whining about spam problems with real e-mail is a red herring.  In
this situation, they have the e-mail addresses of everyone who is
doing their work for them.  One must assume that they can configure
their server (as my ISP is able to do) to default to *not* accepting
e-mail from anyone and then whitelist every setiathome user.  Then
only registered participants in the project could e-mail to that
address.  Then we could report problems directly.  They would
certainly not have to wade through any more cruft than they do *IF*
they're reading one or both news groups.

I admit that I'm not as big a producer of work units as some.  I
only run setiathome on one system.  That system was down for quite
a while some time ago -- nearly a year as I recall, certainly
several months -- when lightning had its way with it and it took
me a while to rebuild it.  Even so, as of 13 December, 2005, I've
managed to process 4258 work units since mid-March, 2001 when first
I began to run setiathome.  To provide them with, according to
their web page with my statistics, 3.153 years of CPU time.

At *NO* cost to them.  For FREE!

I guess that they have so many who are willing to do their work for
them without questioning their policies that they can afford to
alienate those of us who expect a little respect and courtesy.

I have no problem with boinc, per se.  It may be a fine piece of
software.  Certainly the concept of being able to use the same
software to break up other cpu-intensive computations as well as
seti -- as I understand the advantage of boinc to be -- is a
worthwhile objective.  And maybe it simply is not feasible to
continue to accept the work produced by those of us who, out of
necessity or even preference, run the old software.  Whether that
is the case or they simply can't be bothered, once seti becomes
boinc-only, they will have lost me.

If there are any projects out there that don't use boinc, maybe
I'll run them.  If not, my spare CPU cycles will just have to go
to waste.

Me?  Annoyed?

Yes, but not by the possibility that boinc will supplant rather
than supplement the direct running of setiathome.  It is by the
attitude that seti have displayed for a few years now -- the
attitude that Johan alludes to above.  The attitude that, for every
one of us who may stop doing seti, there are dozens, hundreds,
possibly thousands, who will do so, no questions asked -- so it's
their way or the highway for the rest of us.
-- 
Charlie Sorsby
        crs@swcp.com
        Edgewood, NM 87015
        USA