This month's most interesting messages:

All from the SETI@home team members at Berkeley. Non-official statements but interesting anyway.

Eric J. Korpela - 2000.12.09 in a.s.s., why not emailing the data tapes?

1.  [ >8 ] there isn't a T1 at Arecibo.
2.  Check the prices on a T1.  (UC cost for bandwidth is usually $600/mo/Mbps.
    That is considered a good price.  We record at 2.5 Mbps, so we're talking
    $1500/mo to ship our data over the internet.  Actually, it's twice that
    because we'd have to pay at both ends.).
3.  A months worth of tape (40 or so) weight about 15 lbs.  Check out
    the cost for UPS to deliver 15 lbs from Peurto Rico to Berkeley.
    Compare it to $3000.

Eric J. Korpela - 2000.12.11 in a.s.s., why not emailing the data tapes? (correction/addition):

2.5M samples/sec with 2 bits/sample, thus [ >8 ] 5 Mbps is the data rate. Pardon my brain pause. :)

We never lost any tapes. [ >8 ] A couple unreadable (with both of these it seems likely that someone put the write protect on before inserting it into the recorder. They were very blank, and only stayed in the recorder a few minutes.) All in all UPS seems a cheap, high bandwidth solution. The shipping cost is much less than the cost of a tape. (On the other hand, Fujifilm gave us the tapes for free.) The latency leaves a bit to be desired.

Eric J. Korpela - 2000.12.13 in s.a.s./a.s.s., connection timeouts... we've found the problem:

We've actually figured out what the problem is, and it took a while. The problem was actually related to something else that was reported on the newsgroups: Workunits with an angle range of 11.

The problem was that for some reason the telescope was slewing at high rate for several days. Of the last 1.6M workunits we generated, 780,000 were at an angle range of 11 to 12. These workunits complete in half the time that a normal work unit does. That means that our attempted connection rate went up by about 30%. Once these work units disappear from the disk the servers should get back to normal.

Matt Lebofsky - 2000.12.13 in s.a.s./a.s.s., 3.03 news and SETI@home mass mailing:

Version 3.03 for Mac and Windows is at ftp.cdrom.com. Sometime today I'll make links from the SETI@home web site. I'll also make some time to revive our other three ftp servers (alien, setidata, serendip). In a word: Woo-hoo!

There will be a page detailing the changes between 3.03 and 3.0 (as well as deltas between older versions).

Also, I'm in the process of sending out a SETI@home mass mailing. I know some people don't like getting these, but (a) we send these out once a year, (b) you have (and always had) the option to deselect being on our mailing list via the account_area.html web site, and (c) most people don't have a valid e-mail address as their user name, so most of these e-mails bounce anyway.

In case you don't get your mass e-mail, a copy is below. I tried to make sure people who wanted off the list last time were off the list this time, but thanks to crashing mail servers (sending out millions of e-mails on machines already clobbered by sending out thousands of workunits a day) I may have lost people's "remove me" responses. In any case, go to the account_area.html website to remove yourself from the mailing list if this deeply offends you. We understand. [ >8 ]

Dear SETI@home user:

Thanks for your participation in SETI@home.  I'm happy to say that
the project is going extremely well, thanks to the continued support of
our millions of users. This newsletter covers the following:

    - Project status
    - Release of version 3 software
    - New sponsorship from One Cosmos and The Planetary Society
    - New SETI@home gear is here

Dr. David P. Anderson
Project Director, SETI@home
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

PS: to be removed from our mailing list, see the bottom of this message.

--------------------------
PROJECT STATUS

Halfway through our second year of operation, SETI@home has processed
over 7000 hours of digitally-recorded signals from the Arecibo radio
telescope, using the power of millions of Internet-connected computers.
As this processing continues, SETI@home's own computers are
doing the next phase, in which we separate man-made radio signals from
those originating outside our solar system.  Our goal is to detect
signals from other civilizations.

By using the Internet to form the world's most powerful computer,
SETI@home has inspired other scientific computing projects,
and is often credited (along with Napster) with defining a
new generation of computer system design, called "peer-to-peer".

Because of the strong continued interest in SETI@home, the project will
continue for at least a year beyond its original ending time.  Plans are

not finalized, but we hope to expand our search to the
southern-hemisphere sky, and to search new frequency bands.

We will also try to make SETI@home more fun and interesting by adding
new content and features to our web site.  Our small but hard-working
staff (5 part-time members) has had little time to work on this area,
but we're expanding our efforts.

--------------------------
RELEASE OF VERSION 3 SOFTWARE

After almost a year of testing and debugging, we recently released a
major new version of our screensaver program.  The new version does
much better signal analysis; it looks for two new types of signals
(pulses and triplets) and it covers a wider range of drift rates.
As a result, it takes more time to process each work unit.

The old version of SETI@home should automatically notify you when
it's time to upgrade to the new version. You can download and
install it from our web site:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/download.html

--------------------------
NEW SPONSORSHIP FROM ONE COSMOS NETWORK AND THE PLANETARY SOCIETY

We're proud to announce an alliance of SETI@home with One Cosmos Network

and The Planetary Society.  This alliance will give us the financial
support necessary to continue and expand SETI@home, as well as
enabling us to provide a richer Web experience.

Founded by Internet executive Joe Firmage and Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's
wife and collaborator of 20 years, One Cosmos Network is dedicated to
carrying on Sagan's effort to humanize science and bring it to people
everywhere.  Toward this end, One Cosmos is constructing an Internet
portal, OneCosmos.net, and a production studio, Cosmos Studios, which
will create compelling science-based entertainment for television and
film.
Their first release is an updated, digitally remastered Collector's
Edition
of the Emmy and Peabody Award winning 13-hour television series,
"Cosmos."
The series is currently available for purchase in DVD or VHS format,
with "The Music of Cosmos" available separately in a double-CD format;
find them at http://OneCosmos.net.

The Planetary Society is the founding sponsor of SETI@home, and its
membership is open to anyone who shares the goals of exploring our
solar system and searching for extraterrestrial life.  In fact, the
Society supports six different SETI efforts, along with many other
projects in space exploration.  We encourage you to join
The Planetary Society and help advance their many worthy programs at
http://planetary.org/html/member/JoinUs.html

We are also extremely grateful to our other sponsors, including
the University of California Digital Media Innovation Program,
Sun Microsystems, Fuji Film Computer Products, Quantum, and
the SETI Institute.

Thanks also to the hundreds of individuals who have made
contributions to SETI@home.  Their names are listed at
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donorlist.html

SETI@home is free for everyone, but if you can consider
making a tax-deductible donation to SETI@home, please visit
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/donor.html.

--------------------------
NEW SETI@HOME GEAR IS HERE

While our goal is to detect life in outer space, we can't do that
without the support of our fellow Earthlings.  Last year, we introduced
several SETI@home products in our online store.  The response was so
great that this year we've expanded the product line.  There are great
new sweatshirts, mugs, T-shirts, jackets, desk clocks, lapel pins,
patches, and even a heat-sensitive mouse pad.  Want more?  How about
your very own, very elegant, blown-glass globe? Or (our personal
favorite) a stylus, red and black pens, and mechanical pencil packed
into one very cool gravity-fed tool.  You'll find them all online at
http://www.exploratoriumstore.com/setihome.html.

The profits from each sale help fund the SETI@home project.

--------------------------
To be removed from our mailing list, please visit:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/account_area.html

Eric J. Korpela - 2000.12.14 in a.s.s., SETI tax deduction?

[ >8 ] We cannot offer tax advice.  We will not provide a receipt for things
we cannot verify were donated.  For example, we have no idea as to
whether you use SETI@home on a computer owned by someone else.

1.  The University of California is a registered non-profit, and
    donations are tax deductable to the extent allowed by law.  We
    encourage everyone to take every legal deducation they can.

2.  We make no claims as to whether computer time and power consumption
    are deductable under current law.  You should consult a tax attourney
    before considering such a deduction.

3.  The fair market value of computer time and power consumption is low
    enough that if your attourney finds that it should be deductable it
    is unlikely that your contribution exceeds the value for which a
    reciept would be required.

4.  We don't keep track of how much CPU time you have donated from January 1
    2000 to Dec 31 2000.  Because of that we can't provide a reciept of your
    annual contribution.  If you are audited, IRS would certainly require
    that you provide evidence of your stats on both dates.   You would also
    most likely be required to provide evidence of what the additional energy
    consumption of your computer is per CPU hour you provide.  You, again,
    should consult with your attorney as to what evidence would be sufficient.
    Tax lawyers can be smart people.  If there is a way to deduct it, they
    might find it.

5.  The cost of your tax attourney will likely exceed the value of your
    deduction.

Eric J. Korpela - 2000.12.14 in s.a.s./a.s.s., the Berkeley connection:

We get 100 Mbps, but the University is currently limiting us 30 Mbps for financial reasons. Our 30 Mbps costs the University $18k/mo. The University is likely to require the SETI@home start paying for its usage at some point.

Because of this, we've added more science to version 3.03, which should reduce our bandwidth somewhat. We're also actively seeking donations of bandwidth. If anyone out there know of a company that might be willing to donate bandwidth, we'd be very happy to hear about it. We're working on distributing servers to other Universties and companies, but bandwidth costs are high enough that people are thinking twice before jumping on the bandwagon. The alternatives are to come up with the funding or to convince the University that SETI@home is good for both California and the University itself.

Hiram Clawson - 2000.12.15 in s.a.s./a.s.s., client restart procedure:

Here's something to consider as you set up controlling structures around your client. For example, a .bat script or crontab entry to keep the client running should it fail. You don't want to try to restart the client immediately upon failure. You need to have a timeout in your restart system. For example, the client itself will wait one hour if it can't contact the server. Your timeout should be at least one hour. (six hours would be better) Otherwise, if your have a system that restarts the client immediately upon failure, you are inadvertantly causing a denial of service attack on the U.C. Berkeley network and SETI@Home gets shut down.

This is one of the problems that has been fixed in the version 3.03 client and one of the reasons why all previous versions are going to be turned off as the switch to v3.03 occurs. We have discovered in our attempts to obsolete the older version 1.* clients, that we do nothing but cause the attack on the network and we see no apparent problem in the version 1.* clients that would cause them to do this on their own.

Thanks for your assistance and cooperation with the program.