http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2006/11/straining_earth.html

Straining Earthlings' Terrestrial Intelligence
Filed under: None


If you'd like to participate in the great quest for extraterrestrial life, you just have to have some spare capacity on your computer. Well, and maybe the smarts to deal with some software that doesn't work very well and the patience to tolerate some flaming from those you ask for help. That is what one long-time supporter of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) says she has discovered in recent months.



"I recently received an e-mail from the SETI@home people at UC Berkeley asking me to re-up in lending my computer resources to their search for extraterrestrial intelligence," the reader wrote. "In the past this involved installing a little screensaver replacement application that crunched numbers instead of just showing a pretty picture when it was screensaving. Then a year or so ago SETI switched to some new and incompletely engineered software called BOINC. I dumped the program, as did many others at the time."



But as an IT professional for almost 30 years, the reader has seen a few applications that got rolled out too soon but were ultimately made workable. "When I was solicited to return to the program, I figured they must have solved the many problems expected of a pre-beta bit of software, since that is what BOINC certainly seemed to be when I tried to it the first time. Unfortunately, I see no meaningful difference in the current version of the software. I've now had some problems with the software using massive bandwidth even when I had totally disabled it. Apparently you have to check and/or change a number of settings to prevent this behavior."

.... read more at the link

Since we have little control over BOINC and they like to hide away in their 'lists' especialy the alpha list. That is somthing we really need to try and alter. I post to ROMS blog and I've tried posting to both lists but my posts never turn up (maybe it because it's constructive critisism and D. Anderson doesn't like it, well that what it feels like when I try to post there and they never get though)

So I hope we can make these message board a better home. Unfortunatly I think the Q&A are pittiful since virtually nobody gets a reply there if it is not from the 3 usuals and we rememebr to pop in.
The Message boards are confusing, stickies of information everywhere BUT that is getting looked at a one up to the moderators. Ok so they are restricted by the primative board interface.

One thin I think seasoned BOINC users forget it new users want it simple, want something that looks modern and nice. They don't want something to be BOINC because that what BOINC use, they couldn't care less about that.

Anyways, I hope we can make Rosetta@home more friendly.

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Team mauisun.org

i think it might be a good idea if all the boinc projects shared a boinc section on the message boards. It'd be good for inter-project comms, as well as troubleshooting, and it seems crazy to have the same software discussed on different forums with no or little discussion between them.

cheers
Danny

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i think it might be a good idea if all the boinc projects shared a boinc section on the message boards. It'd be good for inter-project comms, as well as troubleshooting, and it seems crazy to have the same software discussed on different forums with no or little discussion between them.

cheers
Danny

I mentioned that before to Rom (had no comment back yet). (see Rom's Q&A http://www.romwnet.org/dasblogce/CommentView,guid,326053a5-89a6-42c4-ab15-f42b8b98f3f1.aspx#commentstart )

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Team mauisun.org

I was directed to the Boinc forums when making comments and suggestions specifically about Boinc. And I got the impression that whomever is in charge of the message board software is a little overworked/too busy - and perhaps that hasn't changed.

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i think it might be a good idea if all the boinc projects shared a boinc section on the message boards. It'd be good for inter-project comms, as well as troubleshooting, and it seems crazy to have the same software discussed on different forums with no or little discussion between them.

cheers
Danny

It's a great idea.

Only there are technical issues to be decided before it is done.

Does everyone get joined to the boinc-wide board as soon as we join a project? (this would be the easiest for the user) Maybe I'd be Rostta:River~~ if I went there from here, and LHC:River if I went there from there. Even this takes some fiddling as the cookies set up when you log in to Rosetta will not usually be sent to another site when you go there.

Do we have to register separately for boinc-wide? (this would be the easiest for implementation). This would reduce the user-friendliness to newcomers, but is probably the way to go.

Then what do we do about the troll problem. One reason I don't like SETI is too many trolls on their forums - not that they have a hegher proportion than other boinc sites, but with more users a bigger proportion of them will be trolls. SETI had to implement a 'no-credit no-post' policy to keep out trolls (and have upped the entry point recently). The unified access to the boinc boards would just shift those displaced trolls there, if they could post without credit on the boinc boards and needed credit on the main boards of their favoured project.

These issues are issues, not problems. They can and should be resolved as the idea of a boinc-wide forum is a good one. Even so it will take more than just bunging in an off-site link to get the boinc wide forum working well.

River~~

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i think it might be a good idea if all the boinc projects shared a boinc section on the message boards. It'd be good for inter-project comms, as well as troubleshooting, and it seems crazy to have the same software discussed on different forums with no or little discussion between them.

cheers
Danny

It's a great idea.

Only there are technical issues to be decided before it is done.

Does everyone get joined to the boinc-wide board as soon as we join a project? (this would be the easiest for the user) Maybe I'd be Rostta:River~~ if I went there from here, and LHC:River if I went there from there. Even this takes some fiddling as the cookies set up when you log in to Rosetta will not usually be sent to another site when you go there.

Do we have to register separately for boinc-wide? (this would be the easiest for implementation). This would reduce the user-friendliness to newcomers, but is probably the way to go.

Then what do we do about the troll problem. One reason I don't like SETI is too many trolls on their forums - not that they have a hegher proportion than other boinc sites, but with more users a bigger proportion of them will be trolls. SETI had to implement a 'no-credit no-post' policy to keep out trolls (and have upped the entry point recently). The unified access to the boinc boards would just shift those displaced trolls there, if they could post without credit on the boinc boards and needed credit on the main boards of their favoured project.

These issues are issues, not problems. They can and should be resolved as the idea of a boinc-wide forum is a good one. Even so it will take more than just bunging in an off-site link to get the boinc wide forum working well.

River~~

Trolls will always be a problem and at least they are in one place rather than all of them at the moment ;-) To be fair to solve that you just need mods & admins with the message board functions that allows them to deal with it easily without to much disurbance to others.

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Team mauisun.org

This is what has come out of the fall from that article so far, at least they are getting some ideas (many of us have been saying for ages ;-)http://boinc.berkeley.edu/suggestions.php

I know they are hard pushed by the amount of programming time they can give.

If some one can post in there, could you ask them if they have asked the BBC-CCE about their experiences since that is probably the largest publisised project in one go. What feedback and advice and improvements can they give ?

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Team mauisun.org