Help SETI@HOME

[wirelessenabled]

I sent my $50 off. Every little bit helps!

 

[Assimilator1]

Yea I got the 'thank you' email too

 

[petrusbroder]

Bump To The Top!

 

[imported_rod]

Hey all,
I was just thinking about the electricity company sponsorship idea, and I was just wondering how electricity generations works in the US.
Is there one national/state company that does it all?
Do you have seperate companies for generation/distribution?
I'm guessing it's privately operated, not government run?

RoD

 

[petrusbroder]

ttt - Bump!

 

[Assimilator1]

I'm not from the US but AFAIK it is not state run & there are multiple private companies (correct me if I'm wrong).

Though its a good idea to try to get electric co's to sponsor SETI I don't think they'd go for it.
They'd ask what's in it for us? the electricity used by SETI users will still be used if they don't sponsor them & if SETI were to fold() then people would switch to other DC projects ,so no loss to the elec co's,& it's more than likely a tiny percentage of the total useage anyway.
I think the only way they might be interested is if they can get some free advertising ,either on SETIs site &/or SETI itself.
But who would want adverts in SETI!?
(on the site would be ok to a point ,but not like those stupid irritating flashing ones that Anandtech has on its site though:disgust: )

 

[petrusbroder]

The donations are up to USD 245 522.12. Still far from the goal ...


Bump and ttt

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Honestly, I don't think that they'll reach their goal. I guess most folks involved with SETI in one way or the other and willing to donate have already done that.

 

[petrusbroder]

Originally posted by: BlackMountainCow
Honestly, I don't think that they'll reach their goal. I guess most folks involved with SETI in one way or the other and willing to donate have already done that.

Yeah, very probable. And many feel that they donate a lot of electricity, bandwidth, computer power etc. And that is very, very important!

 

[Assimilator1]

Well if that turns out to be true in the short run ,then maybe as we approach the deadline & SETIs closing down is immanent hopefully more of the active SETI users will wake up & realise they will have to donate or lose the project.

All DC projects are paid for from somewhere right?

 

[imported_rod]

I'm sure S@H would scale back it's operations rather than closing down entirely.

Surely there must be some corporate sponsorship out there. I mean, it's only $3/4 million. Find a rich actor who believes in extra terrestials - actors seem keen to give away plenty of money if it makes them look good in the gossip magazines.

RoD

 

[Assimilator1]

Relying on an actor would be a long shot, which they wouldn't need if more active members donated......

Donations so far
Total Donations: $ 248,207.12

Its definitely slowed down

 

[imported_rod]

I'm not saying to rely on an actor or anyone, but I'm sure if they looked around they could find some donations to keep them running in the short-term.

Otherwise, they could try approaching hardware/softrware companies.

Also, i remember seeing a website a while ago where you could 'buy' a star, planet, black-hole etc... Anyone know where the money for that goes?

RoD

 

[A5]

Originally posted by: rod
Also, i remember seeing a website a while ago where you could 'buy' a star, planet, black-hole etc... Anyone know where the money for that goes?

RoD

Some dude's pocket.

 

[Amaroque]

Let me first say, I'm not trying to provoke anyone...

[rant]
This "donation" actually kinda disturbs me. I've been DCing since '97. Rite now I'm running DPAD for AT. I would be upset if Stephen Brooks asked for donations. Why? well I've done many 'unnecessary' hardware upgrades, and built many 'unnecessary' machines to keep production high. This along with the elevated electricity usage is my donation.

Basically I feel that asking people to donate computer time, and electricity is enough. I would say that asking for money on top of that is going too far. I mean, you have to donate money so you can continue donating CPU cycles, and electric? That sounds ludicrous!
[/rant]

 

[Assimilator1]

Mate ,I take your point,but they have to get thier cash from somewhere.
Some of their big company donars have dropped away hence the request.

As you know i run DPAD too ,I assume that DPAD gets its cash from some form of education grants or goverment or research body? ,that being the case they don't have to worry about it. (actually ,how is DPAD funded?)

I know what your saying ,I've put in a lot towards SETI over the years too,upgraded CPUs & mbrds earlier than I otherwise would of ,but of course that is my ,& our choice.
I've also payed more in electricity.

But none of that is relevant ,it simply comes down to this ,either they get the donations or SETI@Home dies (or possibly as rod said ,in the short term at least they might scale down operations ,I would imagine quite drasticly).

Naturally if you don't run SETI & you have no interest in it then your not going to be bothered by that ,but to all those who do it'll be a big loss.

 

[Spacehead]

S@H Major Sponsors


About electric companies giving money to S@H, or any other project. It would'nt be practical here in the US. There are just too many private companies.


When i first read about this, giving donation to S@H, i was of similar mind with Amaroque. Don't i/didn't i already give enough?
But as i think more about this, asking for users to donate isn't all that bad. If people want to donate, that's fine. If others decide they'd rather not, that's fine too.

One thing i read that does bother me was in the PlanetQuest newsletter where you have to become a member($24/year) to run the program. At least that's the way i read it.
I hope this doesn't become a trend.
Text

 

[Assimilator1]

Yep that's their current sponsors ,if you look here you'll see they used to have Nvidia as a sponsor too ,they also used to have Intel listed & I'm sure their were other big names their too.
Btw I hope they no longer have that stupid $10k min corp sponsor:roll:........

Donation update

Number of Donations: 5113
Total Donations: $ 251,065.17

 

[ericlp]

Originally posted by: Amaroque
Let me first say, I'm not trying to provoke anyone...

[rant]
This "donation" actually kinda disturbs me. I've been DCing since '97. Rite now I'm running DPAD for AT. I would be upset if Stephen Brooks asked for donations. Why? well I've done many 'unnecessary' hardware upgrades, and built many 'unnecessary' machines to keep production high. This along with the elevated electricity usage is my donation.

Basically I feel that asking people to donate computer time, and electricity is enough. I would say that asking for money on top of that is going too far. I mean, you have to donate money so you can continue donating CPU cycles, and electric? That sounds ludicrous!
[/rant]

Yep! I agree! And I wrote em a nasty letter like this. I am sure my letter was not the ONLY letter they have recieved.

But ... I did give them 5 bucks. Sigh... I'll give it one further. What happens if they meet the goal this time around. What about next year are they going to be asking for more $$?

Yeah, It's sad that we can spend 2 billion every day in Iraq but can't fund Seti project. That is the bush admin for you. All I can say maybe we will get a government that is a little more caring about the sicence community in the next go around?

 

[petrusbroder]

Amaroque and ericlp, I agree with most you say.

The hardware upgrades, the internet costs, the power bills are great donations and they are the biggest part of the cost of running DC-projects. I agree that for most that is a more than sufficient effort.

OTOH: I can understand the seit@home - people asking for donations. One reason is that the governments (i.e. state and federal) do not support it sufficiently. And that is interesting: many people prefer to pay taxes and through the taxes support the science rather than donating directly and paying - at least in the USA - less tax. I mean: In the USA the taxpayers deduct their donations from their income ... and thus get part of of the donation back (by paying less tax)! Or is it all of it? I do not remember - it was more than 10 years ago I lived in the USA and filled out the IRS-forms ....

An other reason is the following: I have invested quite a few hundreds of dollars (OK Swedish kroner) into harware for crunching seti (and other projects too). I would feel that that investment is less if I did not crunch my favorite project - seti. So: if 25$ or 50$ help to keep that project alive, then it is worth the money - which BTW is probably less than 3% of what I have invested in hardware in the passed 5 years. If I invest 25 $ a year I can - by being more efficient in my purchasing - save that in a jiffy. For example: I saved 2005 more than 400 $ by switching to an other electrical company. 375 $ go into my pocket, 25 $ to seti.
I have decided to include a donation to seti into my DC-budget for the next year. I may get a stick of memory less, or not get the hottest (excuse the pun) CPU, but I get to crunch my favorite project.

It is also about priorities: I prefer to crunch the seti@home project for a year or two longer compared to putting 25 $ or 50 $ more on the latest hardware now.

 

[BlackMountainCow]

@ Amaroque:
I feel like you do. I've pumped enough money in electricity, mobos, CPUs and many other parts. If they need money, they shouldn't be asking for the crunchers' money.

@Spacehead:
Yes, PlanetQuest will be based on membership fee as far as I understand the project. That in return means that I'll never crunch for PQ. I mean, come on, why the hell should I pay for being allowed to spend even more money via electricity and PC parts?

@Peter:
I understand your points and if SETI really is your fav project, then yes, go and make a donation. I probably would have done the same back then for Find-a-Drug.


[RANT]

But still, I wil never donate money to SETI. It's the biggest and most well known DC project out there, and if they can't manage to get some sponsors, then I really think it's their fault. I don't know why. Are they lazy, do they ask the right people? There are so many sponsors for any kind of stupid thing in this world, so why can't SETi find one? I mean, what does 1,000,000 matter to guys like Trump, Gates, Balmer, Jobs and what have you? Nothing. Heck, they could even go the extreme way and colaborate with AMD / Intel again and offer CPU based enhanced versions, so the AND/Intel vendetta would have a new playing ground.

I don't know.

I just think it's wrong to ask crunchers for their money. This is like Bush (or any other president) asking the people for a donation to keep the country running AFTER they all payed their taxes. Now how many do you think would donate to that cause?

I guess I can bring it down to this: If my indirect money via electricity and parts plus my invested time for crashed WUs and stats posts isn't enough for a DC project, then there's always another one right next ot it that will appreciate my cycles, any my cycles only.

[/RANT]

 

[imported_rod]

Look, if you don't want to donate fine. But don't act like you're the only ones who've upgraded prematurely and spend electricity on S@H. I have 3 PC's crunching (only one 24/7, the others about 6hrs/day each). And I'm a double-degree Uni student working about 15hrs/week, and i managed to find US$30 to donate. I mean, seriously, just think about how much you spend on going to the movies, or junk food, or just buying a DVD you'll only watch once? C'mon, $30 ain't much in the overall scheme of things.

RoD

 

[Assimilator1]

I just think it's wrong to ask crunchers for their money. This is like Bush (or any other president) asking the people for a donation to keep the country running AFTER they all payed their taxes. Now how many do you think would donate to that cause?

I'm not sure 'which' wrong you mean so I'll cover both bases
Morally wrong? definitely not.
Financially wrong? ,as in its not a good idea ,yea your probably right & also I doubt its feasible to do it more than once.But as a one off I don't think its unreasonable to ask for some donations.
Btw if SETI dies there are no alternative equivalents to it.

Unless the info's been published we can only assume that they have tried to get more sponsors & so far have failed ,maybe its their fault maybe it isn't ,but I can't see that it would be that easy to get sponsors for a project like this ,unlikely to get short term results.
I still think that maybe the only way they could entice further sponsors (they do already have some) is some form of free advertising ,at least on their sites.......not that I'm a fan of adverts though
Oh btw comparing a government & a country to a DC project is like comparing apples to oranges ,their are no parallels ,after all we don't give money to S@H on a regular basis like we do for taxes.

 

[networkman]

BlackMountainCow - I agree with your last post!

Another point I should like to bring up is S@H's grossly inflated numbers that they reported at the end of this last project, like 4.3 million users?!? Yes, the old-timers know this, but I'll say it again for the younger generation: That 4.3 million includes every time someone signed up and downloaded a WU; it does NOT mean that everyone who downloaded a WU actually completed and returned it. :frown: When the project was running, you could even see it clearly by downloading one WU, crunching it, returning it, and then checking your stats to see that "You have completed more workunits than 34.122 percent of all users." Interesting statistic with only ONE workunit completed. :frown: So again, if those folks at the top think something like that is okay to let slide, then I can well understand why others might question how much money these folks actually need for the project, figuring that if they're willing to fudge the numbers on how many folks were actually involved and contributing to the project, then they might be just as willing to make up other numbers too. :roll:

Then there's the whole completely absurd point of having all their eggs in one basket as it were by only having Berkeley as a source and distribution point. If asked, I have no doubt that other universities and colleges would like to be able to assist in the project, which would take some of the huge demand off of Berkeley as the only provider. Alas, the folks at the top don't seem interested in this point either. Seems to me that a team approach to the project might be beneficial. Oh wait, we and every other team have already figured that out! :Q Take a lesson from us you morons in the administration! :|

/end rant
*edited for spelling

 

[imported_rod]

Originally posted by: networkman
Then there's the whole completely absurd point of having all their eggs in one basket as it were by only having Berkeley as a source and distribution point. If asked, I have no doubt that other universities and colleges would like to be able to assist in the project, which would take some of the huge demand off of Berkeley as the only provider. Alas, the folks at the top don't seem interested in this point either. Seems to me that a team approach to the project might be beneficial. Oh wait, we and every other team have already figured that out! :Q Take a lesson from us you morons in the administration! :|

Unlike other DC projects, they can't really distribute the core of S@H. S@H is analysing real data picked up from the arecibo radio observatory, whereas most DC projects are working on theoretical data generated by a server. The S@H data you recieve has to be transmitted from arecibo to berkley, where their computers do heaps of pre-processing so it can be distributed. If they were to have another university do this, they would have to re-transmit the data to there, which would increase costs even further.

However, when Parkes comes online (the big-ass radio array in Australia), it might be an idea to try to get ANU (The Australian National University) to do S@H work for Parkes.

RoD