NEWS

Hardware freaks trying to make some sense out of a bunch of numbers

Bug Fixes Already?
On the ftp servers there is already a version 2.01 of the Mac and Windows GUI clients.  They haven't updated the download page yet, but they can be found on the ftp servers here.  This is what the readme file says what is fixed:

Bug fixes and new features in Windows v 2.01:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Fixed bug which caused long delays in drawing and made the client unresponsive to mouse clicks.
- Eliminated possible problem with some proxies by tweaking the format of HTTP headers.
- Changed the way we handle the state.sah file to solve a
"can't create file" bug when used with SETISpy, SETIWatch and disk backup programs.

Will users of the 2.00 GUI clients be forced to upgrade to 2.01?  I am not sure.  Since this is only bug fixes (only if you have problems, not critical fixes) I cant see most people being forced to update the client.  One thing to note if you do want to upgrade to 2.01.....you will lose all progress of the current work unit if you install the new version.  There are two ways to prevent restarting a work unit from scratch: 1) only upgrade right after you finish uploading a result....the client may download a new one, but it can be discarded.  2) before installing a new version copy ALL .sah FILES to a different directory, and after installing the 2.01 version, copy all of the .sah file back into the SETI@Home folder.  When you start the client it should pick up where you left off  (but I am not absolutely sure)

Where is the Command Line Client?
Well they are apparently *still* in the process of porting the clients over to different platforms.  They haven't finished the command line client yet.  From the alt.sci.seti newsgroup I found this info:

The ports roll in depending upon the porters work load.  They will trickle in over time.

We are currently testing the winnt-cmdline v2.0 client.  A couple more days.

--Hiram 

Weird This Actually SPED UP My Times!
I thought this was funny.....Someone wrote to complain that he had problems while having the SETI client running in the background while trying to play Quake3:

Anybody out there having problems running Quake 3 when Seti ver 2 is running in the background?
Quake 3 fails to load to the menu screen and the screen goes blank or flickers! If i disable Seti and run Q3 its ok so it must be Seti. Bloody annoying as having it as a screen saver won't get much done at all as i'm continually using the machine. All other games, utilities etc i have tried work fine.

New GUI Graphics
If you have installed the Win98 v 2.0 GUI you probably have noticed the new graphic on the screen.  This graphic will show the current "best score" gaussian in the work unit.  When the client is calculating the best fit for the data, it will sort of spin around like a slot machine, and it may or may not come up with a better fit.  Some people on the newsgroup was wondering why the gaussian fits were *better* than the fits they got on previous versions of the client.  Eric Korpela sort of explained this in a post:

I think the problem is that we display gaussians at a lower threshold than we report them.  We didn't want whole work units to run without anything showing up in that spot.  We should have added something to the readme about this.

To paraphrase, they didn't want the area to be blank, so the area shows the best gaussian score/fit in the area.  There is a certain threshold for reporting a gaussian back to the SETI servers, a lot of the gaussians with really good fits, still don't have a good enough score to be sent to the SETI offices.

Team Musings
There has been quite a bit of changes in the team over the past couple of days.  There have been several new additions to the team who immediately moved into the top 200.  One addition was not necessarily new, but was a member who left the team a while ago and has now returned.  That member is jackal651 @ #52.  Other new members to the team are: Tobi @ #100, SgtZim @ #134, kim.hales #164, and TomCat @ #199.  Welcome aboard!

There has also been a bit of movement in the top 40 over the past couple of days.  svdsinner keeps on moving up...he has cracked the Team Lamb Chop Top 10.  He has moved up 3 spots over the past couple of days and now sits at #8.  UltraMaroon, after being passed by svdsinner, regained the #10 spot by passing Panders today.  Dan Dan the Linux Man moved up one to #17.  ojohnson moved passed OrlBamf and now is #18.  Vulture now at #27 sneaked past _Quinn.  Darkmage and Vasp both moved up one to #33 and #35 respectively.  Finally, jfaulkner moved up two spots and is now sitting at #39.  Way to go!

It Is Official (I guess?)
They changed the links on the SETI homepages to allow direct downloads of both the Mac and Win95/98/NT GUI clients from their mirror sites.  Strange but there is really not news stating that the new versions are out on the SETI pages without having to do some digging......weird.  So far today they haven't added any new clients to the list :-(.

Team Lamb Chop Hit
Were not sinking, but had a minor setback today.  Team Lamb Chop lost members FluffyPants, and Richard Vidal.  The two of them left with a total of 2900 Work Units Between them.  

Faster v2.0 Client or a Bug Fix?
After reporting faster times using the v 2.0 GUI client than I had gotten from the old CLI client got me thinking a bit......going back and looking into the readme.txt from the v 2.0 client there is this blurb:

- Fixed minor bugs in measuring elapsed CPU time.

There is a distinct possibility that the client is not actually faster than the previous versions, but they have fixed a bug in the reporting of the total CPU time used in the client.  The client may now only (and accurately) report the actual amount of CPU Time needed to finish the work unit.  If I am correct the previous client may have been overreporting the CPU time needed to finish a WU.  I have a feeling that previously the time reported may have been more along the lines of the time the client was active, instead of the CPU time.  But again I could be wrong.

Milestones!

- News Archives