Anybody know what happened to Seti today? I was reading the forums at 0630 PDT today and it just disappeared, and the Crickets took a nosedive. I see they now have the "down for maintenance" message up on anything other than the home page, which doesn't have anything at all in its news section.
Campus IT does not have anything on it; the SSL web site is still up, as is BOINC.
And I was all set to post that I'd passed 6 million credits there. ;-(
[edited twice]
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
My first experience crunching was with SETI@Home. Out of all of the BOINC projects that one seemed to excite me more than the others. I had dedicated all of my cycles and spent a lot of time encouraging and helping others do the same.
But, they rather fell out of favor with me. Not for any one reason, but a list of complaints that seemed to raise my apprehension about the project each time a new issue came up. Something that would seem small or insignificant to most would tick me off even more, because the frequency of issues had been contributing to an ever growing lack of trust with regard to the handling of the project.
I didn't just walk away either. I posted about various concerns courteously, I wrote several certified letters to people administrating the project (of which I was never given the time of day), and discussed the matters with my team that seemed to agree with me but were willing to overlook things that I had become upset about.
I don't want to make a laundry list of my complaints, but as an example, the project continually running out of work (at the time I was active a few years back) was not something that endeared me to the cause. I surmised that A. either they had more than enough computing power and didn't need my help or, B. the handling of delivering the data to the community was inefficient, sub-par, or otherwise low on the priority list.
I also drew issue with the fact that the findings (even if there aren't findings, that's a finding), the status of the project, and the current work of the project in general was something rarely if ever shared with the community, despite the fact that I could find details about the project on independent websites at times administered by people running the project willing to indirectly share with the public in general but not the community supplying the horsepower to make it work.
My list goes on but I digress.
For these reasons and many others, I finally left the program. I wrote a long post to my team and left on good terms. The vast majority overwhelmingly agreed with my points and shared in my experiences to the point that some walked away themselves, which I encouraged people not to do. I had told others that were willing to live with the things I could not that they should still contribute because the project is a good one, even if the people behind it aren't handling it well.
So when I read posts like these, I feel justified in my leaving years ago. I believe E@H is far more worthy of my cycles even if I'm not as excited about the nature of the project. The fact that findings are shared, individuals and teams gets recognition and even the occasional, "thank you" goes a long way with me. People involved with the project here post, answer questions, and are involved with the community. I think a lot of people behind these projects need to remember that it isn't just a user ID and numbers in a database, but rather people that are passionate like they are and fitting the bill to make their project and their work possible. E@H seems to do that, so I'm happy here.
I can see no reason for you to post this in a SETI offline thread. You have your problems with SETI fine. Having just re-started Einstein I am surprised to see a thread knocking another project, it is not necessary. Now means I have to find another project that doesn't indulge in this sort of behaviour, pity.
Well, my point is that these types of problems always happen with SETI@Home. If you feel offended by my post, oh well. To say that I shouldn't post here regarding my reflections on the status of the project is your opinion, but I'm perfectly within the terms of use, which allow for things that may not coincide with what you think should be posted and where.
When you get down to it, all of us involved in distributed computing are part of the same crowd. People post here about other projects all the time, and E@H issues are discussed on other forums.
That you have over 10,000,000 credits dedicated to SETI@Home is a clear enough indication of your support for the project and you may feel offended that someone may not speak favorably of them. I can understand that. But asserting that my post has no place here because you're upset lacks objectivity. And to state that you're now leaving a project that you've hardly (if at all) contributed to lacks honesty.
I do not represent E@H. I shared my personal experiences. I have my own experiences and you have yours. Try not to resolve that my words represent any one else but myself.
dmike: I know I'm going to sound like a Seti apologist spouting the party line, but please consider the vastly higher numbers of users Seti has and therefore the huge amount of network traffic it gets. Also consider that Seti is using at least ten different boxes to run all of its server processes (and probably more that we aren't aware of), whereas Einstein and most other projects have so few users and so little traffic they run everything on a single box (oh, I just checked the server status page and see there's now something called einstein-wug; is this a 2nd server?).
Seti has upgraded a lot of its hardware recently, with powerful new servers, network equipment, hard drives, and various other items donated by generous users. Part of that is a more efficient way of transporting raw data from Arecibo to Berkeley, and now (or soon) also from Green Bank to Berkeley [edit], so there's plenty of work to go around. They have also recently changed something in the download server so your computer will get "no work available" messages much less often[/edit].
Seti also has to go through a much longer and more difficult process to verify any findings it may initially produce. Send the work out to more users, examine it by the staff in the lab, inquire with other Seti projects to see if they've found anything that corresponds, reobserve the same part of the sky to see if anything else turns up, send their results to other Seti projects to see if they concur that it's something... All this can take years, if they ever actually find something worth doing it to in the first place. They have gotten to the point of reobserving a few times. Einstein has to jump through a lot of hoops too, but it seems to go a lot faster.
So when Seti has a problem, it's more visible, affects more people, and takes longer to recover from, just because of the sheer numbers. And hey, it's not like Einstein NEVER has a problem, either.
Bernie: don't let one Negative Nellie scare you away. He has one valid point, sort of. The reason I give Einstein a chunk of resource share instead of relegating it to strictly a backup project for when Seti is down is because I perceive there to be a greater chance of me being the one to discover something noteworthy, even if it won't exactly make me famous as the discoverer of ET.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
David,
You don't sound at all like a SETI apologist to me. I thought your response was well thought out and written, even if I have heard your line of reasoning before. Bear in mind as I stated in a previous post there were numerous grievances I have with, not the program, but the way it was being administered during my tenure. The lack of work and general disregard by the staff for the community were only small pieces of the pie.
I certainly won't say that Einstein never has a problem, or any DC project for that matter. As a matter of fact, I expect there to be problems. But how those issues which come up are dealt with is the real difference.
Quote:
Bernie: don't let one Negative Nellie scare you away. He has one valid point, sort of.
If he gets scared that easily then it's obvious that the project isn't that important to him. It's just childish to come on in the only thread they're involved with here, about a different project, and then pull the "oh no I got to take all of my cycles away because this one person said something that represents the attitude of the entire project here!" routine.
If he wants to leave, I'll add another 550Ti to a box I have to replace him. To me, I'd rather have another individual than another video card, but maybe not one so emotional that they aren't able to contribute to the project. I like to think that what has encouraged most of us to be here is that we are scientifically minded, and in the spirit of that, we should be able to have civil and respectful disagreement.
That you have over 10,000,000 credits dedicated to SETI@Home is a clear enough indication of your support for the project and you may feel offended that someone may not speak favorably of them. I can understand that. But asserting that my post has no place here because you're upset lacks objectivity. And to state that you're now leaving a project that you've hardly (if at all) contributed to lacks honesty.
Have a closer look, my RAC is falling and I currently have ONE slow computer crunching to keep an RAC so I can look at the boards now and again. I actually agree with you 100% about SET@Home, but I would NEVER have said so on another board. You started it! So please don't judge before you know the facts.
SETI@Home Offline Due to Power Failure
)
BOINC is down again. I
)
BOINC is down again. I suspect SETI@home too, the outage is still active.
Tullio
Anybody know what happened to
)
Anybody know what happened to Seti today? I was reading the forums at 0630 PDT today and it just disappeared, and the Crickets took a nosedive. I see they now have the "down for maintenance" message up on anything other than the home page, which doesn't have anything at all in its news section.
Campus IT does not have anything on it; the SSL web site is still up, as is BOINC.
And I was all set to post that I'd passed 6 million credits there. ;-(
[edited twice]
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
RE: We are recovering from
)
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=69792
My first experience crunching
)
My first experience crunching was with SETI@Home. Out of all of the BOINC projects that one seemed to excite me more than the others. I had dedicated all of my cycles and spent a lot of time encouraging and helping others do the same.
But, they rather fell out of favor with me. Not for any one reason, but a list of complaints that seemed to raise my apprehension about the project each time a new issue came up. Something that would seem small or insignificant to most would tick me off even more, because the frequency of issues had been contributing to an ever growing lack of trust with regard to the handling of the project.
I didn't just walk away either. I posted about various concerns courteously, I wrote several certified letters to people administrating the project (of which I was never given the time of day), and discussed the matters with my team that seemed to agree with me but were willing to overlook things that I had become upset about.
I don't want to make a laundry list of my complaints, but as an example, the project continually running out of work (at the time I was active a few years back) was not something that endeared me to the cause. I surmised that A. either they had more than enough computing power and didn't need my help or, B. the handling of delivering the data to the community was inefficient, sub-par, or otherwise low on the priority list.
I also drew issue with the fact that the findings (even if there aren't findings, that's a finding), the status of the project, and the current work of the project in general was something rarely if ever shared with the community, despite the fact that I could find details about the project on independent websites at times administered by people running the project willing to indirectly share with the public in general but not the community supplying the horsepower to make it work.
My list goes on but I digress.
For these reasons and many others, I finally left the program. I wrote a long post to my team and left on good terms. The vast majority overwhelmingly agreed with my points and shared in my experiences to the point that some walked away themselves, which I encouraged people not to do. I had told others that were willing to live with the things I could not that they should still contribute because the project is a good one, even if the people behind it aren't handling it well.
So when I read posts like these, I feel justified in my leaving years ago. I believe E@H is far more worthy of my cycles even if I'm not as excited about the nature of the project. The fact that findings are shared, individuals and teams gets recognition and even the occasional, "thank you" goes a long way with me. People involved with the project here post, answer questions, and are involved with the community. I think a lot of people behind these projects need to remember that it isn't just a user ID and numbers in a database, but rather people that are passionate like they are and fitting the bill to make their project and their work possible. E@H seems to do that, so I'm happy here.
I can see no reason for you
)
I can see no reason for you to post this in a SETI offline thread. You have your problems with SETI fine. Having just re-started Einstein I am surprised to see a thread knocking another project, it is not necessary. Now means I have to find another project that doesn't indulge in this sort of behaviour, pity.
Well, my point is that these
)
Well, my point is that these types of problems always happen with SETI@Home. If you feel offended by my post, oh well. To say that I shouldn't post here regarding my reflections on the status of the project is your opinion, but I'm perfectly within the terms of use, which allow for things that may not coincide with what you think should be posted and where.
When you get down to it, all of us involved in distributed computing are part of the same crowd. People post here about other projects all the time, and E@H issues are discussed on other forums.
That you have over 10,000,000 credits dedicated to SETI@Home is a clear enough indication of your support for the project and you may feel offended that someone may not speak favorably of them. I can understand that. But asserting that my post has no place here because you're upset lacks objectivity. And to state that you're now leaving a project that you've hardly (if at all) contributed to lacks honesty.
I do not represent E@H. I shared my personal experiences. I have my own experiences and you have yours. Try not to resolve that my words represent any one else but myself.
dmike: I know I'm going to
)
dmike: I know I'm going to sound like a Seti apologist spouting the party line, but please consider the vastly higher numbers of users Seti has and therefore the huge amount of network traffic it gets. Also consider that Seti is using at least ten different boxes to run all of its server processes (and probably more that we aren't aware of), whereas Einstein and most other projects have so few users and so little traffic they run everything on a single box (oh, I just checked the server status page and see there's now something called einstein-wug; is this a 2nd server?).
Seti has upgraded a lot of its hardware recently, with powerful new servers, network equipment, hard drives, and various other items donated by generous users. Part of that is a more efficient way of transporting raw data from Arecibo to Berkeley, and now (or soon) also from Green Bank to Berkeley [edit], so there's plenty of work to go around. They have also recently changed something in the download server so your computer will get "no work available" messages much less often[/edit].
Seti also has to go through a much longer and more difficult process to verify any findings it may initially produce. Send the work out to more users, examine it by the staff in the lab, inquire with other Seti projects to see if they've found anything that corresponds, reobserve the same part of the sky to see if anything else turns up, send their results to other Seti projects to see if they concur that it's something... All this can take years, if they ever actually find something worth doing it to in the first place. They have gotten to the point of reobserving a few times. Einstein has to jump through a lot of hoops too, but it seems to go a lot faster.
So when Seti has a problem, it's more visible, affects more people, and takes longer to recover from, just because of the sheer numbers. And hey, it's not like Einstein NEVER has a problem, either.
Bernie: don't let one Negative Nellie scare you away. He has one valid point, sort of. The reason I give Einstein a chunk of resource share instead of relegating it to strictly a backup project for when Seti is down is because I perceive there to be a greater chance of me being the one to discover something noteworthy, even if it won't exactly make me famous as the discoverer of ET.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
David, You don't sound at all
)
David,
You don't sound at all like a SETI apologist to me. I thought your response was well thought out and written, even if I have heard your line of reasoning before. Bear in mind as I stated in a previous post there were numerous grievances I have with, not the program, but the way it was being administered during my tenure. The lack of work and general disregard by the staff for the community were only small pieces of the pie.
I certainly won't say that Einstein never has a problem, or any DC project for that matter. As a matter of fact, I expect there to be problems. But how those issues which come up are dealt with is the real difference.
If he gets scared that easily then it's obvious that the project isn't that important to him. It's just childish to come on in the only thread they're involved with here, about a different project, and then pull the "oh no I got to take all of my cycles away because this one person said something that represents the attitude of the entire project here!" routine.
If he wants to leave, I'll add another 550Ti to a box I have to replace him. To me, I'd rather have another individual than another video card, but maybe not one so emotional that they aren't able to contribute to the project. I like to think that what has encouraged most of us to be here is that we are scientifically minded, and in the spirit of that, we should be able to have civil and respectful disagreement.
RE: That you have over
)
Have a closer look, my RAC is falling and I currently have ONE slow computer crunching to keep an RAC so I can look at the boards now and again. I actually agree with you 100% about SET@Home, but I would NEVER have said so on another board. You started it! So please don't judge before you know the facts.