Matt Lebofsky has said over on alt.sci.seti:
"Hi, SETI@homers,
Short story: Version 3.03 is now officially "mandatory." Yes, all earlier versions are obsolete, including 3.0,
even though you may have only installed it as little as
a month ago. Sorry for the inconvenience. We have
been warning this time would come for months, and
have been issuing warning messages to most clients
over the past couple of weeks, and within a week or so
we will shut off all old clients at the router (via a DNS switch).
Long story:
We've been screwing around with the server for the
past month trying to get it to respond politely to all
versions on varying platforms. Due to outdated
client/server communication protocols, unpredictable
behavior of third-party caching software, people
running their clients in while(1) loops, and plain old
bugs, this has been proving difficult but at least almost
completely solveable. However there are some cases,
like the windows 3.00 CLI whirring away on their compute farms,
where we can't do anything about it except the hard
shutoff via the DNS switch.
We never had these problems before, or at least at
this scale, because we made very few versions above
1.x mandatory. However, lessons learned and new logic
in place should make any future transitions *much* easier
for us (and therefore you, the users).
In other words, we do try to make transitions as polite
and seamless as possible. Please bear with us.
Once we get everyone on an even playing field with
version 3.03, there's going to be a huge sigh of
relief in SETI@home-land, and we can continue
working on more interesting things (for both you and us).
Thanks for your time, interest, and effort!
- Matt - SETI@home"
"Hi, SETI@homers,
Short story: Version 3.03 is now officially "mandatory." Yes, all earlier versions are obsolete, including 3.0,
even though you may have only installed it as little as
a month ago. Sorry for the inconvenience. We have
been warning this time would come for months, and
have been issuing warning messages to most clients
over the past couple of weeks, and within a week or so
we will shut off all old clients at the router (via a DNS switch).
Long story:
We've been screwing around with the server for the
past month trying to get it to respond politely to all
versions on varying platforms. Due to outdated
client/server communication protocols, unpredictable
behavior of third-party caching software, people
running their clients in while(1) loops, and plain old
bugs, this has been proving difficult but at least almost
completely solveable. However there are some cases,
like the windows 3.00 CLI whirring away on their compute farms,
where we can't do anything about it except the hard
shutoff via the DNS switch.
We never had these problems before, or at least at
this scale, because we made very few versions above
1.x mandatory. However, lessons learned and new logic
in place should make any future transitions *much* easier
for us (and therefore you, the users).
In other words, we do try to make transitions as polite
and seamless as possible. Please bear with us.
Once we get everyone on an even playing field with
version 3.03, there's going to be a huge sigh of
relief in SETI@home-land, and we can continue
working on more interesting things (for both you and us).
Thanks for your time, interest, and effort!
- Matt - SETI@home"
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