Odysseus wrote:

Martin 53N 1W wrote:

Odysseus wrote:
[...]

I also find it insulting that the Mac OS 9 clients put up a message

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In my case XPostFacto is still incompatible with about half of the
machines in question. Of the remaining systems, most would need at

[...]

it's certainly not worth that much to me. If it were, for the same
money I could buy a new bare-bones Intel or AMD box that would
probably outproduce all the old Macs put together, not to mention the

[...]

The original premise of public distributed-computing projects was to
make use of *processing power that would otherwise be wasted*; only a

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And there is the critical point for all this: effort, cost, and returns.

For the proportions of systems with idle CPU cycles otherwise going to waste, old Macs with OS 9 are off the bottom of the curve of interest. Too few systems and far too few spare cycles compared to others.

The source code is there for someone to pick up and port across if interested. Unfortunately, noone has been interested.

At any rate, I think you're missing the point that at least some of
those you call "whingers" are not just venting their own frustration,

My grievance is with the often emotive and very personal attacking terms used, for example "insulting". Berkeley have very definitely NOT set out to insult anyone.

but are motivated by concern that these DC projects will fail to meet
their potential if they alienate (no pun intended) the millions of
accountants, artists, secretaries, students, &c., &c., for whom
computers are only a means to an end, not a hobby, and who may have
only a casual or passing interest in the science.

There is no requirement to support /all/ the many weird or obscure or obsolete platforms out there. That is near impossible and very quickly hits diminishing returns for ever greater development effort. Berkeley have perhaps just one programmer working on Boinc-s@h code and that person supports other work also.

An important and very successful part of Boinc (and s@h-classic) is that scientific computing has been taken to the home and masses and hopefully sparked better understanding all around of what science /is/.


Sorry, looks like OS 9 is too small a percentage and too great a problem to be supported. Unless you can persuade some programmers to help you out!

Happy crunchin',
Martin