If an existing user wants to remain on the old software (like vers 3.08) will they be able to? I just d/loaded Boinc and didn't like it and what it was doing and I've got rid of it. There will be a LOT of existing users who will prefer the simplicity of the existing software too. If that is not possible, and if data units completed numbers are not transferrable either, I'd say you're gonna lose at least 60% of your existing user base if not more.. not a clever move. Many users just want some easy little self-installing file where they type their user deatils in and forget it.. Boinc appears to be much more involved and will certainly not appeal to the novice user, which is a huge percentage of your existing user base.. even if the existing version did a small self-upgrade (if required) next time they fetch a data file then fine, but this? Sorry, count me out, and many others too I'd imagine.

Just seems such a huge lack of foresight in such a big project that's so well established... I understand the need for changes, but the designers have failed to understand the market they are dealing with. *sigh*

Of course add into the issue the current server problems and, well, ..what's the saying? If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

But the Boinc version IS fairly simple, and has some advantages. It will store its own queue of work units, self-updates when required, uploads results and downloads new work units automatically, AND enables concurrent participation in other projects.

---

My firewall asked me to confirm Boinc act as a server after asking for access... why should it need to act as a server? Shouldn't it just be accessing the internet to fetch a data unit, then access again to send when it's done? Why should it need to accept direct connections from the internet? Sounds like a security risk in my novice opinion...

The interface itself is not what I'd call intuitive either, particularly for a novice user, so although it may be 'fairly simple' once you know what you're doing, do you think users are going to stick around to find that out? Some may, most wont. Yes it's has the ability to run multiple projects which is great for those who want that ability, but that should be an optional download, just like (for example) using Trillian to combine ICQ and AIM etc.. not everyone wants all these other options.. keep it simple is all I'm trying to say, and unfortunately this isn't. Sorry to be so critical, but that's my opinion.

I've been BOINCing right along since July last year and I haven't looked back, and never will. There is just so much more that can be done with BOINC. And, the Classic SETI client was NOT self-installing. When I did Classic, I had to manually download and install the upgrade versions. BOINC does this for you without so much as a hiccup. The Manager is the only part of BOINC that you need to manually download and install. When attaching to other BOINC projects, BOINC will automatically download their respective clients as well. No downloading required unless you do not have the Manager. Give BOINC a chance, you may just find it fun!

L8R....

T'Khasi Time: Saturday, 19 March 2005 - 06:16 PM --800 (Pacific Standard Time)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

> Of course add into the issue the current server problems and, well, ..what's
> the saying? If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

But classic is severely broken.

It won't do more than one "kind" of science.

The science "app" and the framework are all in one program. You can't run multiple science applications under one framework.

You can't run more than one project gracefully.

It's fairly easy to 'cheat'

Classic requires a whole bunch of add-on's to make it do things that are part of BOINC by design.

... and yes, the SETI really can afford to lose a whole bunch of Luddites who won't update.

---

"and yes, the SETI really can afford to lose a whole bunch of Luddites who won't update."

heh, yeah good attitude... unfortunately there's a little thing called human nature that might conflict with you there, that and the fact that your opinion is not mirrored by the universe, contrary to what you might believe.

Generally I love new technology, but at this stage I don't want multiple science applications running or nifty little plugins and various other bits of geekware, I just wanted a simple little app I could toggle on and off as desired to crunch SETI data. Keep it simple - it's a basic design rule. Guess you missed that lecture huh?

Whatever, that comment of yours made up my mind. If SETI can afford to lose its user base, then why the hell should its user base go out of their way to accomodate SETI?

Best of luck to you, at this stage I'll opt out of the program altogether.

> "and yes, the SETI really can afford to lose a whole bunch of Luddites who
> won't update."
>
> heh, yeah good attitude... unfortunately there's a little thing called human
> nature that might conflict with you there, that and the fact that your opinion
> is not mirrored by the universe, contrary to what you might believe.
>
> Generally I love new technology, but at this stage I don't want multiple
> science applications running or nifty little plugins and various other bits of
> geekware, I just wanted a simple little app I could toggle on and off as
> desired to crunch SETI data. Keep it simple - it's a basic design rule. Guess
> you missed that lecture huh?
>
> Whatever, that comment of yours made up my mind. If SETI can afford to lose
> its user base, then why the hell should its user base go out of their way to
> accomodate SETI?
>
> Best of luck to you, at this stage I'll opt out of the program altogether.
>

You lose, then! What a quitter!

L8R....

T'Khasi Time: Saturday, 19 March 2005 - 07:38 PM --800 (Pacific Standard Time)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

> Generally I love new technology, but at this stage I don't want multiple
> science applications running or nifty little plugins and various other bits of
> geekware, I just wanted a simple little app I could toggle on and off as
> desired to crunch SETI data. Keep it simple - it's a basic design rule. Guess
> you missed that lecture huh?

I'm just another user/volunteer, just like you. My comments are mine and do not represent the project.

The big difference is, I've been running BOINC for a while, and rather than say "oh, this is totally different, it must be horribly bad!" I said "oh, this is interesting, I wonder how it works."

... and I've invested a bit of time -- not learning what I need to do to make it work, but studying how it works so I can maybe use some of the ideas in my own projects.

I took the time to track down some of the white papers describing the original BOINC design, and the lessons learned at SSL over the past six years with Classic.

It's brilliant.

As a user you can load it and ignore it.

If you want to tinker, you can.

If you want to know what you've done, you can see it in detail.

... but it is different. For some who have much time invested in getting Classic going with all the plug-ins, it is apparently shockingly different. Credit is slow, but it means something when you get credit.

It's pretty cool.

But, if you don't run it for a while, you won't know.

---

> My firewall asked me to confirm Boinc act as a server after asking for
> access... why should it need to act as a server? Shouldn't it just be
> accessing the internet to fetch a data unit, then access again to send when
> it's done? Why should it need to accept direct connections from the internet?
> Sounds like a security risk in my novice opinion...

This feature is for those who want to run a whole ruddy stack of crunchers and manage them centrally.

If you are running a physical firewall (software firewalls have their own issues) then by default everything from the internet is blocked, and you're safe.

... and you should be able to limit access to just inside your software firewall and not have any issues running BOINC.

---

> If SETI can afford to lose its user base, then why the hell should its user base go out of their way to accomodate SETI?
>
> Best of luck to you, at this stage I'll opt out of the program altogether.

Hey, I'm not a geek but did not find anything so complicated in BOINC, and I'm very happy with the opportunity to choose among and run multiple projects. It's all about helping science a little, isn't it? As to security risks... not so sure. My wife is a telecom security expert, and we have fairly good "defense" on our home PC (on which I work for my bread and butter as well). Nothing is 100% guaranteed in this world but she does not find anything especially dangerous in running BOINC. (BTW it's not an invitation to crash my PC :) just to prove me wrong.)
And I really don't think the team at SETI should jump out of their skins to accomodate every capricious "helper". It's better with BOINC, and that's all there is to say.
Best of luck to you too.

---

But what's this nonsense about my joining in 1999?!? I wish I had... Sorry, not my mistake!

---

Vladimir, right now everyone's join date is 3 April, 1999... it has been since the server issues began... I figure they'll fix it when the ul/dl works again... maybe that information is on the part of the server that is currenlty inaccessable?

---

Thank you as always Ned Ludd, for trying to keep things simple.
this guy sounds very familiar to a recent long winded complainer, many of the same sayings. the '60%', the keep it simple, wanting to configure and leave it alone, and claiming things are not broken.

and to all the complainers: this is the way things are going to be. the project admins have thought long about these things, and these changed were needed to be able to keep SETI going. we are still growing, so there will be changes, but BOINC is here, classic will soon be gone.
and the project admins have also stated that BOINC is already doing more usable science than Classic. if seti boinc gains only 125,000 new crunchers instead of 400,000, we might run out of work anyway.

so, welcome to boinc! if you don't like it, well, leave. we will be glad to help you with legitimate concerns, if you just want to whine, i promise we will be much happier without you.

---

S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club

wow.. so defensive and "we don't care if you go because we don't need you".. I've never posted here before and hell, with the attitude I'm getting in return for what I feel are valid issues, you can bet I won't recommend people in helping with this research in the future. If you're asking people for assistance, you don't put them down them for questioning your methods.. sheesh!

You could've replied in an understanding manner and explained things, but instead chose to show contempt for anyone who tries to point out flaws. I do not like to whine, these were my concerns, and to me they were valid. They may not matter to you, but I am not you. Damn that type of blind arrogance pisses me off. I hope you learn your lesson. What a bunch of prats. All I'm left with is a sour taste in my mouth and a wish that I'd never got enthused about helping with this research in the first place.

> You could've replied in an understanding manner and explained things, but
> instead chose to show contempt for anyone who tries to point out flaws.

I'm sure you'll take this as being condescending, but here goes.

Almost everyone here went through the same experience you're going through now.

We all ran Classic, we all saw this "BOINC" thing, and we decided to take a look.

Many said "oh, SetiSpy won't work, that's a real loss."

A bunch said "We can't use SetiQueue to let one machine distribute work to a whole farm?? We're going to miss that alot."

... and then we went on and ran the stupid thing and we made an interesting discovery: it isn't so stupid after all.

So here you are and you've got all this energy and you've got your Classic-colored-glasses on and everything is so awful when you look through them.

... and we've all heard it before.

Some of us have even __said__ it before.

... and it just... isn't... true....

If you don't believe me, then spend a little time going through the forums and read the posts from others who said all of the same things you just said.

SETI Classic is so 1999. It's time to join the 21st century.

---

demonsurfer, you're not the first Classic cruncher to come here and immediately complain about the changes, far from it. If you want to see the previous discussions on the whys and wherefores, just scroll through the past threads.

SETI@Home Classic was born and designed more than six years ago. A long time in computer science terms. With what they've learned of distributed computing, they have now created BOINC, which will allow them to do more, different science that couldn't be done with the firmly set protocols of Classic. If they're going to do the better, more effective science, why should they bother to keep running an obsolete program, using resources that could be giving them better data analysis?

I'm reminded of what must've gone on back in the late 1800's, among the oil and gas lighting companies, when streets started being wired for electric lights. Yeah, gas lights still worked. They weren't broken. But electric was better, cleaner, safer. No, it wasn't perfect, especially at the start. But you can't figure out what needs to be done to fix and improve it until after it goes into production, and is really used as it's intended.

SETI@Home Classic has had its run, it's allowed some good work to get done. It's time for Classic to be retired in favor of the new, better, still work-in-progress BOINC.

---

> wow.. so defensive and "we don't care if you go because we don't need you"..
> I've never posted here before and hell, with the attitude I'm getting in
> return for what I feel are valid issues, you can bet I won't recommend people
> in helping with this research in the future. If you're asking people for
> assistance, you don't put them down them for questioning your methods..
> sheesh!
>
> You could've replied in an understanding manner and explained things, but
> instead chose to show contempt for anyone who tries to point out flaws. I do
> not like to whine, these were my concerns, and to me they were valid. They may
> not matter to you, but I am not you. Damn that type of blind arrogance pisses
> me off. I hope you learn your lesson. What a bunch of prats. All I'm left with
> is a sour taste in my mouth and a wish that I'd never got enthused about
> helping with this research in the first place.
>

You brought on this rant fest yourself. I just went through and re-read this thread from the start. Everyone that replied to you did so with respect and attempted to explain the virtues of running BOINC rather than classic. All you did was to keep ranting about this and that, about the servers having problems again, which they don't, but that's another tale altogether, yadda, yadda, yadda....

Can you honestly tell me that when you first started using the Classic client for SETI, that you had 0 [zero] problems, that you didn't get frustrated trying to figure out how to use it or how to do this or that? Can you? No, you probably can't. I had my share of problems simply because it was new to me. Oh, and then, because it was new technology and such, there were the growing pains for SETI. They had server problems, client problems etc. just as BOINC has had.

If you need help trying to figure out how to use BOINC, go to Paul D. Buck's site, a massive one at that, that will help you out with most any problem you may face, using BOINC. It is the de facto "User Manual" for BOINC.

L8R....

T'Khasi Time: Saturday, 19 March 2005 - 10:02 PM --800 (Pacific Standard Time)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

<A><B>thank you Ned ,
Matt Lebofsky .... Project developer .. wrote the following:
.... if it ain't broke don't fix it .. (SAH classic) .... Dude - it's super broke. .... </B>[/url]
<A><B>when Matt says .<A><B>. Dude - it's super broke....</B>[/url] .. Matt is referring to SETI@home Classic is super broke</B>[/url] ____ here:
[url=http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/forum_thread.php?id=12054#84761 ]http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/forum_thread.php?id=12054#84761 [/url]
<A><B> _ and _ </B>[/url] very Best wishes to everyone ......... and keep on crunching :)
friendly and respectful
byron ... ... Greetings _ from _ the Pacific West Coast _ of__ Canada
[url=http://www.flagofearth.com/ ] [/url] _ Earth Flag
S@h _ Berkeley's Staff Friends Club member M ©

No worries Siran, I wasn't all that stressed about it at the start, it was a couple of the responses that wound me up.. guess I'm overtired and hence a little sensitive atm, and presumably I'm not alone there. I'll have a look at Paul's site later (thanks for the link) but unfortunately, as I said, there's a bit of a sour taste in my mouth now which really isn't really helping me to keep an open mind. No biggie, somehow I don't think my assistance or lack thereof would make much difference either way :)

cheers.

p.s. Thanks Byron for that link - so much more effective than a "stop whining, we don't need you anyway" response :)

Hi demonsurfer ,
no problems you're very welcome ....
<A><B>when Matt says .<A><B>. Dude - it's super broke....</B>[/url] ___ Matt is referring to SETI@home Classic __ is Supper broke</B>[/url]
here's that link again .... I think I made a mistake the first time ....
[url=http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/forum_thread.php?id=12054#84761 ]http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/forum_thread.php?id=12054#84761 [/url]
My very best wishes to ... demonsurfer
<A><B> _ and _ </B>[/url]
My very Best wishes to everyone ......... and keep on crunching :)
friendly and respectful
byron ... [/url] _ Earth Flag
S@h _ Berkeley's Staff Friends Club member m2 ©