Sure would be nice to be able to get ATI tasks naturally, instead of with app_info.xml. Just a suggestion.

---

We just got an ATI card to test on from ATI, so once Anthony has time to compile up and test the ATI applications we should upgrade the server and they should be available automatically.

Expect maybe a week or two for this. I'd push him and labstaff harder but I need to prepare for my defense.

---

I thought the apps already existed, and the hold up was the old server version? I misunderstand?

---

I thought the apps already existed, and the hold up was the old server version? I misunderstand?

The apps exist, but we have a few changes to put into them that the astronomers want tested, so we have to do some changes.

To make a long story short, the model we're crunching now (while valuable) has some problems in describing the background distribution of stars in the milky way galaxy.

What the application does is tries to separate stars which were ripped apart from other galaxies that came close to the milkyway (like the saggitarius stream, which is what our current focus is on) as well as other clusters of stars from stars that were more "originally" in the milky way. This will let us figure out the current shape of the milky way and give us interesting information about how galaxies interact and things of that nature. So right now we've found out that how astronomers have describing the "background" stars of the milky way really isn't very correct. I'm pretty sure Heidi and her students are working on some kind of publication dealing with this issue right now.

So to deal with that issue, they've been testing different models which should help with this in getting us even better models that deal with this problem. So currently you guys have helped us find a problem in astronomies current view of the milky way, and hopefully will help us really understand what the milky way looks like.

So while we may not be very fast in upgrading hardware, we're at least doing some astronomy here :P Computer science too - we've just submitted a paper to this year's PPAM (parallel processing and applied mathematics) conference describing the GPU work, which I should be making a link available to everyone as soon as it's accepted.

I'm sorry that the server issues go unattended for so long, but we don't have anyone really doing the networking. It's just me in my spare time (which i have none of right now while i'm finishing writing my phd thesis). Before we had Dave to work on that but he's graduated and we haven't found another undergraduate student to work on this yet. Hopefully next semester we'll have another one.

---

I'll wait Travis, But then I do have another project giving the PC here work.

---

Has the server been upgraded yet, so that it sends ATI tasks natively (without app_info.xml)?

---

How are the updates to the applications to refine background star distribution mentioned about a month ago coming?

How are the updates to the applications to refine background star distribution mentioned about a month ago coming?

no news?

another small thing: I had a profile here on milkyway, and the fields are already filled if I try to recreate it. But it seems that something is wrong in the database, because it gets accepted but never become visible.

How are the updates to the applications to refine background star distribution mentioned about a month ago coming?

no news?

another small thing: I had a profile here on milkyway, and the fields are already filled if I try to recreate it. But it seems that something is wrong in the database, because it gets accepted but never become visible.

I have the same problem. I pm'd Travis a couple weeks ago about it but got no reply, my guess is it will be fixed when the database is upgraded. ( I hope!)
;-p

---

How are the updates to the applications to refine background star distribution mentioned about a month ago coming?

no news?

another small thing: I had a profile here on milkyway, and the fields are already filled if I try to recreate it. But it seems that something is wrong in the database, because it gets accepted but never become visible.

I have the same problem. I pm'd Travis a couple weeks ago about it but got no reply, my guess is it will be fixed when the database is upgraded. ( I hope!)
;-p

Sorry I've been very busy trying to get my thesis finished on time :P Now that it's all done (i'm in the process of printing it and i'll be submitting it to the graduate school tomorrow) I have some time to get these things worked out.

I'm not quite sure what's up with your profile, but i'll see what I can find.

We're still waiting on labstaff (I know it's a horrible excuse, but my advisors have emailed them and we're still not getting anywhere). We're kind of in a weird spot, because to have milkyway@home be supported by RPI we need to go through labstaff and that means we can't have root access on the machines to do the updates ourselves.

We're not very happy with this situation, so there's going to be a bit of politics going on so we don't have to deal with this kind of thing in the future. Sadly that takes a bit of time :( Either way, I'm hoping to get the server upgraded during winter break as hopefully labstaff will have a bit more time for us. Right now they've been pretty busy moving a lot of the computer science department's equipment, and dealing with all the hard drive failures caused by the construction (we weren't the only project hit hard by this). They're rather understaffed and there's just problems all around :P

---