News archive:

Presented in chronological order.

1999.12.14: P-f-P SETI@home-team.
Formed the Patch-free-Processing SETI@home-team. Join us in a clean crunch!

2000.04.01: The April's Fools joke: "The following article with subject 'Seti Apparent success', appeared in sci.astro.amateur today".
"Seti have announced that a user in Germany of the Seti@home package, wolfgang dwadle, has found a non natural signal.
SETI@home collects its data from the world's largest radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Seti have been recording data at the Arecibo telescope since December 1998, and analysing that data since May 1999.
It appears that the non natural source is between freq. 13400Hz, data from 1/4/00.
Further information of our little green friends are at http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/"

2000.05.15: Celebration time.
The 2,000,000th SETI@home account was opened. I calculated the time at which this probably happened: 14:51:59 UTC.

2000.05.17: Celebration time, with cake and presents.
SETI@home celebrates its first anniversary. Their founding sponsor, The Planetary Society, gives the users a little present: a Certificate of Appreciation.

2000.07.05: New client in Beta.
SETI@home V3 is going Public-Beta with v2.66 of the Windows/Mac GUI and Solaris CL clients. Here's a first impressions page I made.

2000.07.26: The SETI accelerator®, too good to be true. "When reading the alt.sci.seti newsgroup, I noticed a posting about a hardware addon, the SETI accelerator®."
The joke started on 2000.07.19... KrasnoConv Solutions about their SETI accelerator®: "This innovative pci board was designed to significantly speed up the process of work unit calculation"
...and was later debunked by them. KrasnoConv Solutions: "KrasnoConv does not exist. KrasnoConv is an imaginary company, as well as the SETI accelerator board itself. The whole thing was but a hoax."
Sadly no more than a well crafted prank (page is now offline, root shows this instead...), what a pity it wasn't for real.

2000.08.08: Celebration time.
Long live SETI@home! The SETI@home project was originally scheduled to end in May 2001. News arrived that it would be continued and expanded. Articles: The Planetary Society, UC Berkeley News and Mercury Center.

2000.12.16: Celebration time.
SETI@home surpasses a half million years of processing-time.

2001.01.26: A new illegal patch/hack for v3.03.
It was released through the Ars Technica OpenForum. Follow Operating Systems & Software / SETI & RC5 Distributed Computing Arcana - or click and read the thread 'Confession time', author: S.A.R.

2001.01.30: A quick look at 3.03gti.

2001.02.01: SETI@home version 3.03 mandatory for all supported platforms.
As of today, earlier versions will cease to be able to contact the Berkeley server. Results from older clients are not accepted.

2001.02.17: Article about SETI@home users 'cheating' on Wired News.
" Cheaters Bow to Peer Pressure " - by Leander Kahney.

2001.02.19: Eric Korpela of SETI@home puts the Wired News article in the right perspective.
Quoting him from an article posted today in the sci.astro.seti newsgroup: "I think he's [David Anderson] referring to development effort, and I think he's exxagerating. It may have approached 50% at one point. After all the entire reason for the 2.X clients was security. Since then a lot of work has gone into the 3.X clients that is not security related." [-and-] "Right now our cheat percentage is pretty tiny, even when compared to the 'overclock to the point of brain damage' crowd."

2001.02.27: 'The longest outage'.
"... an optical fiber cable connecting the U.C. Berkeley campus with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was cut, apparently by vandals trying to "salvage" copper from other nearby cables". From http://www.net.berkeley.edu/setiathome/.

2001.04.01: P-f-P hacked???
In a sheer act of rebellion against my work, I decided to hack my own website... Naaah. The truth is, having the 'hacked' website online for a few days was my April Fools joke. I hope I didn't tread too hard on anyone's sensitive toes in the process. But hey, it does happen with my kind of shoe size. The HACKED! page is still available.
For the curious, I used Shredder 1.0 on the pages to get the initial effect and replaced some words with 'HACKED!'. Signed it off with a hint: 'one_for_da_job' ('1/4' April 1st; 'DA' my initials reversed).

2001.04.24: SETISpy 3.0.5 is now available with source code.
Download from the official website.

2001.05.07: Celebration time.
The 3,000,000th SETI@home account was opened. I calculated the time at which this probably happened: 22:02:27 UTC. There's a prize to be won, check here!

2001.05.11: Duplicate results error!
In the seti newsgroups, several people are reporting seeing a 'duplicate results' message appear when uploading SETI@home results. This can't be a coincidence, thus an error at Berkeley's end is to be suspected. I have a cache of workunits to clear and no spare one's to crunch. Of course it is still possible to download new workunits without uploading the results, but consider this alternative...
I have temporarily switched the computer to the Genome@home project and will let it crunch aminoacids until the problem at Berkeley is fixed. Go to the SkzDaLimit Genome website for joining instructions if you like the idea of helping out our Genome@home effort for a while.
Good luck on whatever you decide to do and let's hope the troubles at Berkeley are fixed soon.

2001.05.12: Duplicate result problem acknowledged and fixed.
Read the SETI@home Technical News report.

2001.05.27: Account addresses leeched.
A website, that claimed to have hacked SETI@home, has been online during the last few days. They made available two zipfiles that contained the user-info of the first 60142 registered accounts. SETI@home passwords are safe as these aren't included in the user-info file. The website has been taken down by Angelfire hosting, but Berkeley is taking this seriously nonetheless and pursuing the matter: read more here.

2001.05.31: Interesting article about the theft and other SETI@home related news.
Read the MSNBC Article.

2001.06.15: What's next? A SETI@home virus, that's what.
According to the Symantec profile on this virus: "W32.Hyd@mm is a retro mass-mailing worm that spreads using Microsoft Outlook. When run, it downloads and installs the SETI@Home program and sets it up to perform calculations on the account of the virus writer."

2001.06.30: Addition to your personal SETI@home statistics.
Check your stats to see the 'Total Radio Signal Time Analyzed' and 'CPU Time to Radio Signal Time Ratio'.

2001.07.16: Use your spare machine on an alternative crunch...

2001.07.18: Workunit certificates.
You can now print or put on your desktop, various WU certificates from your personal account summary. They become available when you reach certain milestones. Hint: change the "size=0" parameter in the certificate link to 1 or 2 for a larger size.

2001.07.18: New showcase item at SETI@home.
Submit your 'User Profile' and become a 'SETI@home User of the Day'.

2001.08.07: Keeping track of the SETI@home project...
Learn more about the candidate signal detection process.

2001.09.17: A Glossary of Concepts and Terms has been put up by Berkeley.

2001.09.27: There's more to SETI than SETI@home. Explore NASA's pages on a brief history of SETI.

2001.10.06: "Seti@home Expands Its Back Yard"...
SETI@home "is planning to increase the band of the electromagnetic spectrum it analyzes." Read the article at Wired News.

2001.11.12: A search engine has been added to the SETI@home webitse.
You can find it under "Help & Information" on their home page.

2002.02.04: SETI@home now has an official bulletin board.

2002.03.29: On the update again...
For the past 6 months or so, I was unable to invest the required time for keeping this website updated. This was due to personal real-life circumstances that have nothing to do with SETI@home or anything internet related. I will not bore you with the details, as it goes beyond the scope of P-f-P. Let's just say that I'm AOK. :-)
I will be slowly clearing the backlogs for all sections of P-f-P, starting with the statistics section. Whenever a month is ready, I'll upload it, as I did today with October and November 2001. Watch the "Most recently updated section" line above the news items, for the latest update.

Thanks for visiting Patch-free-Processing and for your continued support during the past 2½ years. Keep 'em crunching clean.
- Alfred.

2002.04.29: Disbanding teams, finally possible
On the teampages (e.g. P-f-P), you can now find an option for disbanding a team. Obviously, this can be done by the teamfounder only.

2002.05.01: Unofficial SETI@home IRC Chat Channel.
Mark Taylor, maintainer of the SETI@home newsgroup FAQ, has made available a S@h IRC Chat Channel. This was his announcement in the seti newsgroups:

Setifaq.org has created a chat channel on the Dalnet network for anyone that wishes to conduct real-time chats with other S@H users. It is open to all for any Seti related topic.

If you need a place to talk with another user in real-time for help with the client or related add-ons, or just to chat, debate, or really argue about things then now there is such a place.

The information and Channel Charter is at www.setifaq.org/irc. Use any Dalnet server, channel #S@H

2002.05.02: The five-hundred-millionth crunch...
The result for the 500 millionth workunit has been returned today at approximately: 10:19:04 UTC.

2002.05.16: Old data, new chances.
The SETI@home staff is re-splitting older tapes for the v3.0x clients. These workunits, from the start of the project in 1999, haven't yet been processed using the scientific algorithms of the latest clients.

2002.05.17: Three candles to blow out on the SETI@home birthday cake.
From the official website:

Today, May 17, 2002, is SETI@home's official three-year anniversary. All the credit for SETI@home's success and endurance belongs to our millions of dedicated users. We thank you and look forward to sharing our future with you.

Has it been 3 years already? Well, congratulations to the Berkeley team and all dedicated crunchers then!

2002.05.28: International Pages for SETI@home are listed here.

2002.05.31: A new feature is available, the SETI@home Photo Collection.

2002.06.02: Total CPU Time milestone of 1 million years.
It was reached today at approximately: 05:24:01 UTC.

2002.06.21: 2002 Computerworld Honors Award.
The 2002 Computerworld Honors Award in the Science category goes to SETI@home. Congratulations to all involved.

2002.06.26: A new feature for the Signal Candidate List.
SETI@home's Signal Candidate List now shows the users who detected each candidate.

2002.07.09: An interesting article appeared in the July 2002 edition of California Computer News.
IT & SETI: The Role of Computer Technology in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, by Kamil Z. Skawinski.

2002.07.25: Griffith Observatory Star Award.
SETI@home receives the award for the week of July 28 - August 3.

2002.08.25: Something we've wanted to know for a long time...
Catch up on the Future directions of SETI@home.

= BOINC - distributed computing technology for SETI
= Southern Hemisphere Search - increasing SETI@home's sky coverage
= AstroPulse - the search for pulsars, ET, and black holes

2002.09.09: First user to return the one-millionth result!
This feat was achieved by SETI@Sun sometime today.

2002.09.10: More milestone levels were added.
SETI@home milestones now go up to 100000. Check the User Milestones pages.

2002.10.01: The four-millionth account...
It was registered today at approximately: 19:04:40 UTC.

2002.10.07: An interesting page was added to the SETILink website.
Check the 'SETI Papers' page, which has links to papers on other sites. The website is maintained by Jason H., who regularly posts in the SETI newsgroups.

2002.10.10: Get your desktop wallpaper of the Arecibo Radio Telescope at spaceimaging.com.

2002.10.15: Oh dear, oh dear... there's some bad news ahead.

2002.10.16: There's a little discussion going on about yesterday's ZDNet-Au article.
Head over to the S@h message board thread and see for yourself. So, what is it? Bad journalism or half-truths?

2002.10.19: Setting things straight... good news ahead then?

2002.10.30: Sigh...
What a shallow mess... zdnet, arstechnica forum1, arstechnica forum2, arstechnica petition.

2002.11.01: Oh well...
The cleaners mopped it up... arstechnica forum3.

2002.11.01: SETI@home Newsletter #15.
'Identifying SETI@home's Best Signal Candidates for Reobservation' by Eric Person, Dan Werthimer and Steve Fulton.

2002.11.05: The relentless cleaning operation goes on...
Today, "more than 26,000 accounts went in the bit bucket", as Jess Anderson put it digitally. Thanks Jess for spotting these statistics.

2002.11.09: 'SETI@home: An Experiment in Public-Resource Computing'.
This paper about SETI@home is featured in the Nov. 2002 issue of Communications of the ACM and made available online at Berkeley.

2002.11.19: User statistics additionally available in XML format.
'Good for parsing and automated data collection', says SETI@home. See their individual statistics page.

2002.12.17: SETI@home Newsletter #16.
'Magical frames of reference and signal candidates' by Eric Person.

2003.01.07: Team statistics additionally available in XML format.
'Good for parsing and automated data collection', says SETI@home. Go to their team statistics page for details.

2003.01.29: Well boincing boincers!
I just came across a screenshot of the BOINC client. See it here, running AstroPulse. "This demonstrates the 3D graphics, workunit caching and ability to use multiple CPUs at once", according to the Berkeley boys. Also note the 'credit' system with total and average counters.
Also read some inside/insight information on the BOINC project at the Ars Technica OpenForum.

2003.02.01: Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew are lost on re-entry.
Ongoing news at the space.com website.

2003.02.04: SETI@home Newsletter #17.
'Keeping up with data in 2002' by Bob Bankay, Jeff Cobb and Eric Person.

2003.02.11: Copied from the SETI@home website's news section...
Sign The Planetary Society's Declaration of Support for Space Exploration - a response to the loss of Columbia and her crew.

2003.02.14: SETI@home Newsletter #18.
'The Crab Nebula: An example of telescope position testing' by Eric Person and Paul Demorest.

2003.02.20: Additional stats for the Patch-free-Processing team.
The team has been added to the excellent statspages at SETIatWork. Click the banner...

2003.02.25: SETI@home Newsletter #19.
'Receiver testing and maintenance' by Eric Person and Paul Demorest.

2003.03.13: Reobservation of SETI@home's most promising signals.
SETI@home will be reobserving some of its most promising candidate signals on March 18-20 at the Arecibo observatory. Read the articles at The Planetary Society's website and have a look at the skymap of best candidates to be revisited.

2003.03.25: Big Patch-free-Processing team-member milestone...
Congrats to Jose Antonio Solis for the clean crunching of 10000 workunits!

2003.03.26: Reobservation of SETI@home's signals end at Arecibo.
Read Susan Lendroth's article at The Planetary Society's website.

2003.03.28: Beyond the Countdown: SETI@home Makes Plans for the Future.
Read Amir Alexander's article at The Planetary Society's website.

2003.03.31: SETI@BOINC?
The SETI@home team is preparing a BOINC-based version of the client. Have a look at the screengrab:
Original [1400x1050p, 285KB] or Downsized [800x600p, 72KB].

2003.04.09: BOINC Beta suspended.
"Due to a legal issue, we are suspending the BOINC beta test, and we have requested that BOINC source code no longer be available at Sourceforge.net. We hope to resolve this issue soon."

2003.04.16: SETI@home publishes reobservation pages.
They compiled a list of participants who analyzed data from the reobservation candidates and some additional info about those candidates.

2003.04.21: SETI@home expands their reobservation section.
The updated section has links to news, articles, detailed candidate information and other related material of interest. See the Signal Candidate Page.

2003.04.23: BOINC Beta resumed.
"We have resumed the BOINC beta test."

2003.04.29: New BOINC project.
"We have created a second project, allowing beta testers to experiment with dividing their resources between multiple projects."

2003.04.30: Quickly find out if you have processed one of the candidate signals...
FloydPinkerton (of Carolyn's Clinic) has compiled a comprehensive list of all candidate signals.

2003.05.11: Gawp at SETI@home's photoalbum from the Arecibo reobservation trip.

2003.05.21: New article at The Planetary Society.
'SETI@home Prepares to Send Out "Reobservations" Work Units' by Amir Alexander.

2003.06.03: Another article about Reob/SCWU's at The Planetary Society.
'SETI@home "Stellar Countdown" Work Units Sent Out to Users Around the World' by Amir Alexander.

2003.06.16: SETI@home finishes sending out the reobservation-workunits.

2003.06.17: The SETI@home Bookstore opens its doors.
Go shop-till-you-drop!

2003.06.28: SETI@home website troubles.
SETI@home: "We are working to speed up our web site and apologize for how slow it's been lately. CGIs (stat lookups, etc) will be off for a few hours."

2003.07.18: Read about how the analysis of SETI@home's reobservations data is coming along in The Planetary Society's latest update.
'Analyzing the Reobservations' by Amir Alexander.

2003.07.25: The SkzDaLimit crunching team has come to an end.
Michael (SkzDaLimit): "It's been fun everyone, but now I must go. I will cherish the past 4 years forever."
Some members joined Team Phoenix Rising where they happily reside in a so-called 'Virtual Team'.

2003.07.25: Wondering why the BOINC beta test had been suspended?
(As announced 2003.04.09)
The answer is in the following official article: 'Why the BOINC public license has been modified'.

July 25, 2003

United Devices is a company that develops software for distributed computing, primarily for corporate intranets. The designer of BOINC, Dr. David Anderson, worked for United Devices from 2000 to 2002.

In April 2003 United Devices filed a lawsuit against Dr. Anderson and his co-workers on BOINC, claiming that BOINC uses trade secrets of United Devices and is a competitive threat to United Devices. United Devices obtained a court order requiring that work on BOINC stop, and that BOINC source code be made unavailable.

While we believe the lawsuit to be without merit, fighting it in court would have taken many months. During this time BOINC (and to some extent SETI@home) would be paralyzed. Therefore we pursued an out-of-court settlement with United Devices. A settlement was finalized and signed on July 15, 2003.

As part of the settlement, we agreed to modify the public license under which the BOINC source code is distributed, to ban the use of the source code in commercial products. This restriction will remain in effect for 18 months from the date of the settlement, or until United Devices goes out of business. The new public license is here.

While the commercial-use restriction is in effect, BOINC is not "open source" according to the definition of the Open Source Initiative. Therefore we can no longer host the project at Sourceforge.net. The source code will be available on the BOINC web site.

We are very grateful to the University of California, which generously advised us and paid our legal fees during this process.

2003.08.19: SETI@home has received over one billion returned results!
As of today, the project's users have crunched over one billion (1*10^9) workunits together. What an effort. See the Current Total Statistics page for daily changes.

2003.08.22: Ooops! SETI@home egg-faced. :)
Apparently they made a mistake when sending the reobservation-workunits to us crunchers. We will have to crunch those again in the name of science.

2003.08.27: Oyer! SETI@home are good eggs. :)
"We made an error in the generation of reobservaton workunits. We have corrected the error and are redistributing these workunits." Details here...

2003.08.28: SETI@home Newsletter #20.
'Telescope Pointing Corrections' by Eric Person and Paul Demorest.

2003.09.25: SETI@home update at The Planetary Society discusses BOINC.
'New and Improved SETI@home will Form the Backbone of Distributed Computing Network' by Amir Alexander.

2003.10.23: Crash not crunch.
SETI@home: "Our data server is down because of a disk problem on the user database host. We are working on a fix."

2003.10.30: "100" errors, take it or leave it.
That 'disk problem' produced some unfortunate errors for some users. Further information and a fix are outlined here...

2003.11.24: An update long overdue.
I finally got around to updating the CITY@home section again.

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