Another SETI@home orphan...

koldphuzhun
koldphuzhun
Joined: 14 Dec 05
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Prominent story in the news

Prominent story in the news lately is about a kid named Ferris. Ferris went to Baghdad, Iraq for 2 days with nothing but an aramaic dictionary and some background knowledge. He told noone of importance that he was going over there. Some have asked him why he did it. His answer: to better write a high school report. Sounds to me like this kid may be the only civilian in his school (maybe even the county) who now has a deep understanding of what those people really go through. And he also now has the authority to say whether or not a US presence in Iraq is helping or hurting, as well as many other factors that civilians currently are "just opinionated" on.

So what does this all have to do with anything? A lot. This kid was going over there to get info. He thought he could handle it long enough to get his facts, see the sights and come back home like nothing happened. However, after 2 whole days, he was knocking on a press mans door to get help home. He realized that he was way in over his head on the topic at hand.

Many other people participating in BOINC have the same opionions, namely for or against. However, it's only those who have taken the code and disected it, taken the hardware and frankensteined a server out of spare parts, and/or kept a project running on a stub for a knee (not Paul's) that truly have the authority to post their opinions and have validity to back them up. Some have tried this and realized they were way in over their heads. Others have tried it and have been able to stay afloat (and are now volunteer developers/testers). I myself have found myself way in over my head, and have backed out of formulating any kind of opinion as to the good, bad or different of the projects. I doubt, however, that many people have taken these same steps.

So, if someone has an opinion with the "I was there" capability to back it, I'll definitely listen to it. If not, just someone else blowing smoke. And as for being mistreated, I don't know. I wasn't there. I would need to spend some time in the shoes of the mistreated. Then again, maybe we could all use some time in "Berkeley's shoes" too.

(edited for readability)

KWSN-GMC-Peeper of the Castle Anthrax
KWSN-GMC-Peeper...
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RE: RE: We will just have

Message 22464 in response to message 22451

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We will just have to disagree on the level of shabbiness the original SAH people received. I think I made a better argument for it than your 'I don't think' though.

Again, you miss the point of my question. Why do you feel that your were mistreated? I did the Classic project, then BOINC and will likely do the follow-on when that occurs. I don't feel abused, and I am genuinely puzzled by this insistance that you were.

What question? you didn't ask a question. All you did was say ("Not that I vote "-", but, I do feel your contention that you were treated "shabbily" is equally childish. Equally odd, the contention that somehow because I started BOINC before you I got treated better is mind boggling ...")
I'm sorry you're puzzled. Can't help you there. If your disability prevents you from handling this kind of thing well, as you stated in another post, perhaps you should just accept it is a reality for others and not argue with people about it.

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I'm sorry. I in no way contended you got treated better because you were paying attention and converted sooner. You are reading something there that i did NOT write. I should point out that even had i converted sooner, i'd still have lost 3+ years of SAH and my complaints would be the same.

You have not lost anything. You still have your SETI@Home credits in your account and can still wear them proudly.

I grant that you did not explicitly say that. But, in general, the complaint you make; when made seems to divide the world into two groups, SETI@Home Classic users and others, in your case the term you use is "appologists". Well, I guess I really fit into both categories.

You are not addressing the original argument which was to contend original SAH users should have been given conversion credits to BOINC for past work done. You are sidestepping it by ignoring the point. I can see from some of your other posts the 'apologists' thing irritated you. That warms my heart.

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Apparently it's not quite so meaningless to you. It generated enough interest for you to at least reply to my comments.

I am autistic, so I don't do feelings well and this insistance on mistreatment by UCB has me very puzzled. At no time had they promised anything. They did say that they would keep a count of the work you did and had a system for that in Classic. During the design of BOINC, for which they DID listen to us participants when we said we wanted a system we could have more faith in the granting of the awards.

In BOINC we have a system that is in fact harder to "game" than the one in classic. Is it perfect? No, and the flaws are known. The first upgrade to attempt to fix the most obvious and easily corrected problem is in testing and I hope to see it any day now ...

Do I want a guy that gamed the system in Classic to suddenly have his ill-gotten gains turned into gold again? Nope, not me. I am proud of the 61K work units I did. But, you have no way of knowing that I did them fair and square; or found a -9 work unit and sent it back thousands of times. I really don't like liars and cheats. And I really like the idea of hitting them where it hurts. Does it cost me anything? Nope, I been doing my work for awhile now and you have reasonable confidence that I did not send in shoddy work.

So, basically you say it's better to wipe out everybodys work than to let a small handful of 'cheaters' benefit further. This attitude would not stand in any system of ethics I am aware of and would not count as 'justice' in any view. Ethics and Justice however are based at least in part on empathy and compassion, so....lets just say I thank God I don't work for YOU and leave it at that.

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Your contention that no promises of accounting is relevant, isn't. The fact that a score IS being kept and that we're doing the same wu for the same project with basically the same app, IS.
It's not a matter of 'identity', it's a matter of justice. You'll note I'm still crunching peoples work despite my complaints.

Justice? You still have your count. Why is it more just to convert one score into another? Does the superbowl winner one year get an automatic 6 wins the next? Nope, new game, new scores, new playing field.

And, it is not the same application. Actually it has been changed at least once since Beta if I recall my history correctly, and the one that was done in beta was slightly modified from the Classic version. And the whole back end is vastly different. And the real science is done on the back end. Not on the client applications. So, the SYSTEM, of which the client side is just a part is not even close to being the same.

I'm sorry. I have to call simple 'bullcrap' on this one. We're doing pretty much the same thing on OUR end with the data that we were before. If the end result is now different, our time,effort and power bill are still the same.

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I'm agnostic. I don't go to church. When I do charitable donations you can be sure they are as specific as possible to what I want to support, though how your last comment is even remotely relevant to the discussion at hand eludes me.

A donation is a donation. You donate your computer time. You volunteered. Same thing. You have no control over a donation or gift when it is given. You gift your computer time with no promise of anything in return.

Again, in specific, at no time were you promised, or even had a suggestion that the Classic accounting would be carried forward to BOINC in any form other than what you have.

(that was in response to his earlier comment about putting a dollar in the church collection plate) It's not about promises. It's about treating people well, especially when you're asking favors from them.

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The REAL point of the post, however, was the fact that undoubtedly many of the people who have walked away and not gone to BOINC were angered over this and it's the proximate cause of losing a lot of crunching power we could be making real use of.
Perhaps they at UCB have yet to learn a simple lesson of life, 'You don't treat badly the people you want a favor from.'

If this is all it takes to make them stop contributing to science and exploration then, well, childish doesn't even begin to describe that behavior. "Give me what I want or I will take my marbles and go home!" is about as self centered and childish as I can imagine. And, I hate to say this, but, maybe they left for other reasons? Like, they could not continue to cheat to inflate thier egos?

At no time has anyDC project made the claim that their goal was to harness every scrap of space CPU time in the universe. Would they like to? Sure. A goal, please ...

So, you were promised nothing ...

Your Classic score is intact ...

But you feel cheated because you did not get what you wanted.

Ok..so..the project isn't really important enough to you to enable you to get over your feelings of anger at the people who took their marbles home, or compromise on some kind of prorated credit for past work. Quite human. I can understand your irritation and it's so very important to have it your way When You're Right.
Personally though, I don't think there were all that many cheaters. I think a lot of the people who left did so for the reason I hypothesise. I think a more fair and ethical treatment of them and their past work could have saved a lot of MIPS the project needs now. _I_ thought the goal was to do work for worthy projects that need to stretch their resources.
No answer to the point..just a 'bah..we don't need the whiners and they were probably cheaters anyway' or perhaps the classical allusion..'the extra grapes we could have gotten were probably sour anyway'

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I still don't get it.


Obviously.

AGELESS..is this satisfactory? Oh and by the way..take your own advice. several of your comments showed YOU didn't bother to read the posts.
I know i'm gonna 'get it'. Paul here is a valued participant. He has a nice helpful website and gives of his time, skill and effort helping people out all over the place. That's lovely but it does NOT mean he's automatically right about everything. Do try and consider that as you compose your flames and make this post invisible.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Voltaire

Jord
Joined: 26 Jan 05
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RE: AGELESS..is this

Message 22465 in response to message 22464

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AGELESS..is this satisfactory? Oh and by the way..take your own advice. several of your comments showed YOU didn't bother to read the posts.
I know i'm gonna 'get it'. Paul here is a valued participant. He has a nice helpful website and gives of his time, skill and effort helping people out all over the place.


Since the last part was pointed at me, here's my reply.

Not sure what you mean by "gonna get it". If you mean more flames, then maybe you want to re-read the tone of all your posts in this thread. If that is a normal 'discussion' tone to you, then maybe you want to read around a bit more.

I am not one to use the rating on any of the boards. As far as I am concerned they may go, hence why I gave you the small advice to set your forum preferences. I've done so, I can read all posts in this thread (and done so, thank you very much. Would like of Matt to use paragraphs, but that's only my wish. ;))

Anyway, your first bone was:

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what I think is the REAL bone of contention is not converting all those classic WU's and giving the switchover people some credit for all those years of work.
Here we are, crunching the same wu's for the same project with basically the same app running under BOINC but we lose everything.


Which I think, several people have answered you on that it is not true. You claim that the Seti client under BOINC is doing the same work as 3.08 did. It's not true. The 4.18 client was looking for at least 50% more data than the 3.08 client did. Faster maybe, but it still did.

The new upcoming Seti_Enhanced client (5.xx) will delve even further into the work units. Giving out an extra 75% of data to the scientists.

Yes, maybe we were running the same work units, but saying that the old 3.08 client got as much data out of the units as the 4.18 client does, is an analogy that goes as far as "I am running a T model Ford, my mileage to the gallon is as much as your new Ford Thunderbird does". Plain not true, and you know it.

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A Bad Call imho. Some kind of prorated partial credit could and should have been granted to switchover classic crunchers.


Why would you (plural) have to be singled out? Only because you chose to stay with Classic until the end? What about my 5,594 units on Classic? (Nothing said about my credits I got on BOINC Beta, which were swiped when Seti went 'live'.)

Yet since the developers have decided it not to be something to think about, why chase after it? As said, you still have your Classic credits, you just start from zero at the new version.

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(more about Paul) That's lovely but it does NOT mean he's automatically right about everything. Do try and consider that as you compose your flames and make this post invisible.


I know Paul isn't always right. He knows he's not always right. I am not always right.
Yet you can't have the sole right to be right on everything you said in this thread either.

Plenty of people have told you where you are wrong. It's up to you to see if it is a wrong or not. Maybe you want to lurk around the Seti forums for a while? No, no need to post. Just go read some posts of the developers Rom Walton and Matt Lebofsky there. Make a search on their previous posts.

They can't all be wrong now, can they? ;)

Paul D. Buck
Paul D. Buck
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RE: RE: RE: We will

Message 22466 in response to message 22464

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We will just have to disagree on the level of shabbiness the original SAH people received. I think I made a better argument for it than your 'I don't think' though.

Again, you miss the point of my question. Why do you feel that your were mistreated? I did the Classic project, then BOINC and will likely do the follow-on when that occurs. I don't feel abused, and I am genuinely puzzled by this insistance that you were.

What question? you didn't ask a question. ........


The thing in bold above is called a question.

My disability makes me tediously logical. So, odd behavior and beliefs like yours is a genuine puzzle and I would like to understand. Does not mean that you have to help. And, I don't believe I was arguing. You made assertions, I asked you for the basis of those assertions, answered to the best of my ability the places where I felt your logic was lacking.

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I'm sorry. I in no way contended you got treated better ......

You have not lost anything. You still have your SETI@Home credits in your account and can still wear them proudly.

I grant that you did not explicitly say that......

You are not addressing the original argument which was to contend original SAH users should have been given conversion credits to BOINC for past work done. You are sidestepping it by ignoring the point. I can see from some of your other posts the 'apologists' thing irritated you. That warms my heart.


And this is the sticking point. You were granted credit. That credit still exists. Why should you be credited twice? I am not sidestepping anything. You are asking for something that was never promised, is not practical, and to be honest, is a little silly.

Um, well, what I use for a sense of humor found your accusation funny. You are not likely to annoy me. But, I do have to admit that, as little as I understand dialog and interchange your glee at your hope that you annoyed some one is, um, twisted; to say the least.

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Apparently it's not quite so meaningless to you. It generated enough interest for you to at least reply to my comments.

I am autistic, so I don't do feelings well and this insistance on mistreatment by UCB has me very puzzled. At no time had they promised anything. They did say that they would keep a count of the work you did and had a system for that in Classic. ........

Do I want a guy that gamed the system in Classic to suddenly have his ill-gotten gains turned into gold again? ....

So, basically you say it's better to wipe out everybodys work than to let a small handful of 'cheaters' benefit further. This attitude would not stand in any system of ethics I am aware of and would not count as 'justice' in any view. Ethics and Justice however are based at least in part on empathy and compassion, so....lets just say I thank God I don't work for YOU and leave it at that.


Again, how was your work "wiped out"? In my account I still have a number that says I did 61K work units. You have a similar number, whatever it is. That number has not been wiped out, altered, changed, spindled, or mutilated.

So, in your ethical system, if I get something through less than honerable means (shall we say), then I should benefit from them in perpetuity? Justice would be that people that obtain things that they do not earn should not reap the benefit of those gains.

I can also say, with all honesty, that I too am glad you don't work for me. Not that anyone does at the moment, the drawback from full disability is the lack of a spot in the work place; but, your elastic ethics seems to be more of the style of Enron and the US Congress than someone I would want to assciate with.

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Your contention that no promises of accounting is relevant, isn't. .....

Justice? You still have your count. Why is it more just to convert one score into another? Does the superbowl winner one year get an automatic 6 wins the next? Nope, new game, new scores, new playing field.

And, it is not the same application. ....


I'm sorry. I have to call simple 'bullcrap' on this one. We're doing pretty much the same thing on OUR end with the data that we were before. If the end result is now different, our time,effort and power bill are still the same.


Pretty much the same is not equivelent to the same. Close only counts in horseshoes, handgrenades, and thermonuclear warfare.

As far as the rest of the argument. Which part of "donation" and "volunteer" are you not understanding? The fact that you pay more, less, or the same for your electricity is of no relevance to the argument. You are basically saying that because you spent money you are owed something in return. The same goes for the time and effort. These are irrelevant to the question. You decided to donate. A donation is a gift, no strings, no payback, no nothing.

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I'm agnostic. I don't go to church. ....

A donation is a donation. You donate your computer time. You volunteered. Same thing. You have no control over a donation or gift when it is given. You gift your computer time with no promise of anything in return.

Again, in specific, at no time were you promised, or even had a suggestion that the Classic accounting would be carried forward to BOINC in any form other than what you have.

(that was in response to his earlier comment about putting a dollar in the church collection plate) It's not about promises. It's about treating people well, especially when you're asking favors from them.


Actually, they aren't asking for a favor. They are asking for a donation. You agreed. By the way, you should really look at the end user agreement. You are promised just about the same as what you get from most other software providers. Nothing, no liability, no responsibility. Its true, you really should read it ...

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The REAL point of the post, however, was ....'

If this is all it takes to make them stop contributing to science and exploration then, well, childish doesn't even begin to describe that behavior. ....... ...

So, you were promised nothing ...

Your Classic score is intact ...

But you feel cheated because you did not get what you wanted.


Ok..so..the project isn't really important enough to you to enable you to get over your feelings of anger at the people who took their marbles home, or compromise on some kind of prorated credit for past work. Quite human. I can understand your irritation and it's so very important to have it your way When You're Right.
Personally though, I don't think there were all that many cheaters. I think a lot of the people who left did so for the reason I hypothesise. I think a more fair and ethical treatment of them and their past work could have saved a lot of MIPS the project needs now. _I_ thought the goal was to do work for worthy projects that need to stretch their resources.
No answer to the point..just a 'bah..we don't need the whiners and they were probably cheaters anyway' or perhaps the classical allusion..'the extra grapes we could have gotten were probably sour anyway'


I am not angry at anyone. If they want to leave, it is Ok by me. I don't understand it, but, to be honest I really don't miss them at all.

Matt says there were. THere were enough that he could not keep up with them. Regardless if it was 6, 60, or 6,000,000 is not relevant. The mindset that its Ok because they only took a little again makes me marvel at your ethical system once again. And how can ethical treatment of a thief that has the point to make him feel better about himself benefit the world? All it shows is that bad behavior is not penalized. And ethical treatment of a wrong-doer seems to me to be best served with punishment of one kind or another.

Not sour grapes on my part. Perhaps on theirs I suppose. I would like every one to participate, have the opportunity to contribote if they would like. But, I have better things to do with my time than to try to beg them to stay. But you again miss the point. The point is the projects want to capture CPU time donations at zero cost if possible. If they, or you, are not willing, well, Ok ...

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I still don't get it.

Obviously.

AGELESS..is this satisfactory? Oh and by the way..take your own advice. several of your comments showed YOU didn't bother to read the posts.
I know i'm gonna 'get it'. Paul here is a valued participant. He has a nice helpful website and gives of his time, skill and effort helping people out all over the place. That's lovely but it does NOT mean he's automatically right about everything. Do try and consider that as you compose your flames and make this post invisible.


You are right, i am not automatically right. Rarely assume that I am. And, lots of people correct me. Just as you could have perhaps. But firstly, you are also assuming that you are right and that I must therefore be wrong in this case.

But, this is pointless. I was, and actually still am, trying to understand this sense of entitlement that seems to haunt some people. That was, and remains the question. You have avoided answering it to this point, and likely forever into the future. You have made an interesting point, but then fail to support it with anything other than other unsupported statements. A lot of people left because of Credit migration? Sorry my mind boggles ...

One survey run quite awhile ago indicated that there were a significant number of people that had no intention of moving to BOINC. When Classic ended, so did their support. Some simply because they were tired of it all. Some we know have left because they could not get the system working.

Oh, and one of the reasons perhaps that I may be valued is that I do listen to all viewpoints and to the best of my ability try to not glory in another's discomfort. In this case I have a feeling that you are feeling persecuted, by UCB, and by some of the other participants, and yes, even me. I guess I was somehow wanting to ease your suffering. If I have added to your burdens I am truly sorry.

So, I guess we are done ...

Sorry folks, I was really trying to understand. Let us let this thread die the death it deserves. I suppose I should have not tried again. My appologies to you all.

m.mitch
m.mitch
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 187
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I find it highly suspicious

Message 22467 in response to message 22408

I find it highly suspicious that in message 24206, Steve Cressman gets a rating of +45 and message 24237, Warhawk gets a rating of -45.

If I were Judge Judy (and fortunately for me I'm not) I would say there are no such things as coincidences.

And it looks suspiciously like someone has created 45 dummy users to screw around with other peoples ratings.

As I understand it, that's been done in Seti, the culprit was discovered and publicly apologised, regaining some dignity. And that the likelihood of a similar thing happening here and being an honest coincidence is "baloney"!

Oh, and if I were Judge Judy, I'd be in serious need of getting laid!!!

I too, am a Seti Orphan. Just loved my time there. Still don't understand why some people have trouble understanding that I like to finish what I start. And why they ignore my early start in BOINC projects. "A man hears what he want's to hear, and disregards the rest..." I forget who Paul Simon was quoting, wonder why he left women out.

Mike

KWSN Sir Clark
KWSN Sir Clark
Joined: 26 Jun 05
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All I'm going to say is

All I'm going to say is this......

Microsoft announces Win XP, they then announce that they will stop supporting Win98 after a certain period of time.

Someone then complains that they can't get any support for Win98 because MS decided to concentrate on their current operating system. They can't support 98 for ever.

It's the same with Classic/BOINC........you can't expect them to support Classic users when they have a new version that they want to switch too.

If they'd provided the same support for Classic and BOINC at the same time, they'd never have been able to switch Classic off because they wouldn't have had the resources to get BOINC etc. right. And it wasn't just SETI that BOINC was for.

gravywavy
gravywavy
Joined: 22 Jan 05
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RE: "A man hears what he

Message 22469 in response to message 22467

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"A man hears what he want's to hear, and disregards the rest..." I forget who Paul Simon was quoting, wonder why he left women out.

I don't think he was quoting, I think they were his words.

And he left women out because the words applied to himself (or at least to the 'self' who is represented in the song)

I am just a poor boy
...
I have squandered my existence
for a pocket full of mumbles
Such are promises:
all lies and jest
till a man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest

(wish I could type as well as he could sing...)
R~~

~~gravywavy

m.mitch
m.mitch
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 187
Credit: 11025628
RAC: 0

RE: RE: "A man hears

Message 22470 in response to message 22469

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"A man hears what he want's to hear, and disregards the rest..." I forget who Paul Simon was quoting, wonder why he left women out.

I don't think he was quoting, I think they were his words.

And he left women out because the words applied to himself (or at least to the 'self' who is represented in the song)

I am just a poor boy
though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistence
for a pocket full of mumbled
Such are promises:
all lies and jest
still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest
Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm

(wish I could type as well as he could sing...)
R~~

I thought it was Dylan Thomas he quoted, who ever he was ;-)
It has some great guitar rifts (the electric & acoustic) in it 8-)
Ah yes, Paul wrote heaps about his own life, I'd almost worked out the sequence when someone did a doco in (circa) 1980.
On that same album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, he did a song about his girlfriend in England. Kathy's Song I think, or was that Sounds Of Silence?
I spent years in conditions not fit to describe on these boards, playing PS & AG over & over again 8-))) (aka Simon & Garfarkle ;-)

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