theSkyNet Project (Non-BOINC)

[AMDave]

Get in quick to be a registered founding member!
theSkyNet Project (Non-BOINC)
The first 1000 participants will be listed as founding members (http://theskynet.org/blog/?p=229).
(NB - I think member numbers actually started at 100000 not at 10000 mentioned in one of the post)

Real awards will be given in the long term, such as personal viewing session at one of the observatories with the project team.

"theSkyNet" is like a non-BOINC version of SETI in that the project client is processing collected signal data.
This introductory article on ZD-Net explains more (http://www.zdnet.com.au/theskynet-launched-set-to-spread-online-339322240.htm).


THIN - It has a web-based Java app that runs.
THICK - Download clients are available for Win-32, Win-64 AND MacOS
(no linux clients but I have two browser clients running in a browser on AMD64 Ubuntu 10.04 to see if they make an impression.

The AMD Users alliance (http://theskynet.org/) (team) has been created

It looks as if the browser-based client is multi-threaded but only to one cpu worth of load.
I suspended the other stuff running on the same machines for a bit but the client continued to only use about 1 CPU's worth across two cores on a 2 core machine.

I will inspect the downloadable thick clients on the weekend and provide feedback, unless anyone else wants to go first :)

*** No stats export. I doubt there will be, in the short term. ***
Some shallow FAQ
No forum
Early days

I have been computing on 3 clients for a couple of hours but no credits yet
I suspect only the windows 1 will yield anything, but I do see some processing now on the browser based java client on linux. Could be interesting.

[AMDave]

theSkyNet on BBC already - article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14896330)

[AMDave]

theSkyNet now on slashdot (http://slashdot.org/story/11/09/13/0449241/theSkyNet-Wants-Your-Spare-CPU-Cycles)

[vaughan]

I've joined but no credits show up yet? Tried the downloadable client but it doesn't seem to run anything so I am back trying the browser / Java-based app.

[NeoGen]

I joined too... installed the background client. Kind of puzzled me for a bit why the 64bit client didn't want to install and was asking about java, and I knew I had Java installed already, and even after updating it to the latest version it complained, but then it struck me... the standard java is 32bit only, I had to go to the Java website, look around and download the installer for the 64bit version. After that it installed fine and seems to be working. (keyword *seems* because I don't see the process using any CPU? maybe it's not working?)

EDIT: The credits show on your dashboard and on the "Ladders" section of the menu... AMD Users is currently ranked 6th.

[vaughan]

I don't think its working. I have Java installed. I have theSkyNet on 3 computers yet the dashboard says I have 1 computer. That's wrong. So far I cannot see any points and I'm not in the list of names - I scrolled through the very annoying 15 at a time. The search for name does nothing. Drilling down on the AMD Users team name doesn't reveal a participant's list.

Methinks this is a waste of time ... back to Poem and Yafu for the time being.

[AMDave]

Yeah. I dropped the client last night until I can spend more time looking at it.
I think the points are accrued every 24 hours.
It took a while for mine to show up.
Note - the client does not appear to process data continuously. There are substantial periods of inactivity. This is by design apparently.

The alliance page (use the alliance link on your dashboard) seems to update earlier than the actual score on the dashboard.
My score on my dashboard is 54, but my score on the alliance page is 118.
Maybe a bug?
Very early days.
It will all get sorted out sooner or later.

The total alliance points shown on the alliance page is many times greater than the total of the individual scores in the alliance.
Definitely some bugs.

[AMDave]

Re: theSkyNet credits, the admins have added the following to the FAQ:

Why aren’t I earning any credits?
Credits are being earned by everyone, but there are some issues in them displaying. Don’t panic, they are all sitting there in the system and we’re working on a fix to this small bug as soon as possible. We’ll announce it in the announcements as soon as it’s fixed.